Yet Another Curveball in the COVID Mutation Nightmare

[Nevilledog]

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The Daily Beast
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These new COVID mutations might not make the virus more infectious the way spike mutations do, but they could be associated with longer infections.

thedailybeast.com
Yet Another Curveball in the COVID Mutation Nightmare
The virus is mutating in new ways. Here’s what to expect.
7:31 PM · Sep 6, 2022

https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-covid-19-mutations-could-make-infected-people-sick-for-a-longer-time

*snip*

“With each major variant that has been identified, we are seeing mutations outside of [the] spike that we are trying to figure out,” Matthew Frieman, a University of Maryland School of Medicine immunologist and microbiologist and lead author of the new study, told The Daily Beast.

It’s possible the virus is accumulating non-spike mutations in an attempt to gain some advantage over our collective immunity as the COVID pandemic grinds toward its fourth year. These new mutations might not make the virus more infectious the way spike mutations do, but they could be associated with longer infections.

If this trend continues—and there’s no reason to believe it won’t—we might eventually need new antiviral drugs and new vaccine formulations that aren’t so specifically focused on the spike.

Vaccine developers weren’t wrong to focus their initial efforts on the spike protein, Frieman and his co-authors explained in their peer-reviewed study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and appeared online on Tuesday. “The spike protein is the immunodominant antigen,” they wrote. In other words, it’s the part of the virus most likely to produce a strong immune response.

*snip*

[brooklynite]

1. Laurie told me she thinks we could face another major spread with a vax-resistant variation.

[Deminpenn]

3. Laurie Garrett?

She's a fear-monger.

[brooklynite]

5. She speaks from expertise...

She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1996 for a series of works published in Newsday that chronicled the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire.

[Meowmee]

2. I hope the new vaccine will fight such a strain

I hope to get the new booster this week.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. Grr.

It’s possible the virus is accumulating non-spike mutations in an attempt to gain some advantage over our collective immunity as the COVID pandemic grinds toward its fourth year.

This is why people have so much trouble understanding evolution. The fucking virus is not making "an attempt to gain some advantage"! Some random mutations survive better than others and thus proliferate. It's not a deliberate, conscious action.

[Ms. Toad]

7. It's not thinking about obtaining an adantage -

But that is ultimately why some mutations survive better than others - because they give the virus an advantage its predecessors did not have. The descriptions anthromophorphizes the virus - but it's not wrong.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. The writing is wrong because it anthromophophizes the virus.

Such sloppy writing leads people to think evolution is something that living things deliberately do to better survive. It also leads people to think that they may as well ignore the isolation and masking because the virus is going to adapt itself anyway, not realizing that reducing the spread also reduces the number of mutations and therefor the likelihood of mutations that can survive any given vaccine.

The walking stick didn't transform itself by recognizing it could hide better if it looked like a twig; those mutations which looked more like a twig were better able to capture prey and therefore thrived while others did not. Over time, only the most twig-like remained.

Three critical factors -- reproduction, time, and random mutation -- result in evolving species. We are the only species now capable of adding deliberation as a factor.

[Sky Jewels]

8. Right. It's not like these little particles are sentient...

Yet.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

12. You haven't seen the training going on in my secret mad scientist lab! Bwahaha!

Fly my pretties! Bring me the head of the Manchurian Cantelope!

[Sky Jewels]

19. ...

[Disaffected]

13. That's a peeve of mine as well.

It's surprising how often evolution is stated in those misleading terms, even by biologists and science writers.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

14. Educational programs do it!

They make it sound like the horse decided it should get bigger, or the moth strived to look like an owl or bumblebee.

[Disaffected]

16. Yes, it is unfortunately ubiquitous.

[Ms. Toad]

6. Less than a month after the CDC removed the qualifier -

that 5 days was a minimum - and you should stay home beyond that if you continue to test positive.

[DET]

9. They Did?

Thought I was on top of things, but I guess not. The ongoing threat of this virus really needs more coverage.

[Ms. Toad]

10. I went to look for it, in response to another post.

They announced new guidelines on 8/11. If the "stay home longer if you test positive" that was there earlier in August is either well hidden, or gone.

ETA: As of August 7, the guidance to stay home longer if you were testing positive was still there. (I found the post I made that day.) The link I used then goes to the current guidelines, which no longer contain this language:

If an individual has access to a test and wants to test, the best approach is to use an antigen test towards the end of the 5-day isolation period. Collect the test sample only if you are fever-free for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication and your other symptoms have improved (loss of taste and smell may persist for weeks or months after recovery and need not delay the end of isolation). If your test result is positive, you should continue to isolate until day 10.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

15. Is there a change in understanding of how long someone remains infectious?

If not, it sounds like the advice is being altered for convenience rather than science.

[Ms. Toad]

17. Not to my knowledge.

As far as I know, if you are positive you are still shedding virus. It's worth noting that both POTUS and FLOTUS did not leave isolation until they tested negative and returned to isolation when they tested positive again.

So it seems to me the advice is being altered for political purposes - namely that elections are about 2 months away and isolation, masking, taking the virus seriously is not politically popular.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

18. That is worrisome. Thanks for the heads-up.

[Ms. Toad]

20. And on a related note - my prof probably exposed me and the others in the front row today

He was home with a "bad cold" last Wednesday. So bad he didn't think he could lead the class by teams. I suggested he test for COVID. He didn't respond to me - but came in today wearing a mask . . . so my guess is I was correct.

BUT - he pulled the mask down to his chin for the entire lecture, including when he walked behind me to look over my shoulder.

Thanks, prof.

(I'm still wearing a KF94, so I should be safe, but still . . . what is the point of wearing your mask for 5 days if you simply pull it down for the entire time you are student-facing.) No one else in the entire class is masked.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

21. He should know that chin diapers don't help. People think there is magic in possessing a mask.

[Ms. Toad]

22. I suspect he's gotten complaints that he is hard to hear.

He doesn't project, the acoustics in the room aren't fantastic, and he doesn't use a mic.

The person sitting next to me moved up after not being able to hear in the back on the first day.

When he opened his mouth today, before converting to a chin diaper, I could barely understand him - so I was prepared for a hard day. Then he solved that problem by converting ot a chin diaper . . . and created another.

On the other hand, he probably exposed people last Monday - since he doesn't wear a mask and by Tuesday at midnight he was so miserable he couldn't envision teaching Wednesday's class.

I don't get people who are so cavalier about COVID. I'm at least hearing more public voices saying that we need to focus on prevention of transmisison. Unfortunately hardly anyone is acting on it.