All variants right now are significantly more effective at transmission in unvaccinated individuals.
The reason the mutations are on the spike protein is because it's the part of the virus that matters the most for infectivity. The more effective the spike protein, the more easily other people are affected and the faster the virus is produced.
The Delta variant itself rose in India, which has really low vaccination rates.
> All variants right now are significantly more effective at transmission in unvaccinated individuals.
Please cite your primary source(s).
[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
Beyond that, we do know that all variants are more infective in unvaccinated individuals : http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/fileCCDCW/journal/img/cover/ffd464...
If it wasn't, it would never have out-competed the ancestral type in unvaccinated India.
The OP's point was that vaccines drove mutations. So far, that has not happened. There is no variant that is more infective in vaccinated individuals but not in unvaccinated individuals, all variants are simply more effective across the board.
You're making very broad claims here that are again contradicted by the literature, see [1].
The very short paper you linked to "Transmission Dynamics of an Outbreak of the COVID-19 Delta Variant B.1.617.2" does not even discuss vaccination status. I'm inclined to believe you linked to the wrong paper - or you haven't thoroughly reviewed it yourself.
I'm not interested in arguments based on logical deductions. Show me the peer-reviewed sources backing your point and I will happily read them with an open mind.
[1] SARS-CoV-2 immune evasion by the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant of concern https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/30/scie...
You are again posting evidence that does not back your argument. Any mutation in the RBD will affect immunity. The question is whether these mutations were from selection pressure from the vaccine or for higher infectivity. Given that the evolutionary millieu had low vaccination rate and that the variants are more infective in non-vaccinated populations, we know this is not the case.
If you can find an article that shows that vaccines cause evolution of variants, then post it. Otherwise, don't, I'm not interested in non-sequiturs.
Here are several more peer-reviwed primary sources that present strong evidence & theories supporting the fact that "vaccines cause evolution of variants" [1][2][3][4].
Note that, no one is claiming that ONLY vaccines cause evolution of variants - obviously a virus will evolve naturally through random mutation as well, and that is acknowledged in the cited sources.
> You are again posting evidence that does not back your argument
If you take a few minutes to read the sources I've linked to in the this thread, you will see that they corroborate everything I have stated. These ideas are relatively new in the last decade or two, so you may not have heard of them before. That does not mean they are unfounded or based on logical fallacies as you claim.
> Given that the evolutionary millieu had low vaccination rate and that the variants are more infective in non-vaccinated populations, we know this is not the case.
You continue to use the same unsupported points and build on them with logical deduction. I have given you plenty of counter-arguments supported by peer-reviewed literature.
If you have nothing else to add to the discussion, then I will not be continuing it.
[1] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...
[2] The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...
[3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016...
[4] Monitor for COVID-19 vaccine resistance evolution during clinical trials https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
They provide a plausible mechanism by which future variants may be cause by vaccines. But simply none have done so by now.
I'm going to stop replying because you are actively mischaracterizing your argument, ie, arguing one thing and then providing evidence and arguments from another.
What I provided evidence for, and what we also seem to agree on, is that "They provide a plausible mechanism by which future variants may be caused (or enhanced) by vaccines".
> But simply none have done so by now.
Time will tell - we just don't have the scientific evidence to support a conclusion either way on this yet.
We all know that if vaccines are not effective enough for herd immunity, then cases of variants due to vaccines are likely to happen. They haven't yet, and it is possible they never happen.
Edit- added "meaningful"
If you're debating the existence of vaccine-driven VOCs, then there is data. If you are going to debate whether vaccines will cause variants, that's a fundamentally speculative assertion for which there is no hard evidence, only speculation.
Just because someone cites evidence doesn't mean it's actually evidence for what they are pushing. So far we had evidence that : Very ineffective vaccines see eventual immune escape, academic articles that link targeted therapies to immune escape but without any evidence that the current vaccines are as targeted as the examples they took, and evidence that a variant that is less neutralized by antibodies can evolve, without taking into account general reduction of infections that mass vaccine rollout necessary for it to be evolutionarily fit or other aspects to immune response, etc...
That is to say, evidence is not necessarily evidence for one's argument. There is no evidence variants will evolve because of vaccination, and I can't prove a speculative negative as a matter of logic.
All of them.
>> It's simply true...
"Everyone knows..."
>> If you're debating the...
I am honestly not debating any issue with you. I was pointing out that the statements you have made in posts above are supported, in those posts, by nothing more than your assertions. They are in effect tautological, nothing more.
While you propose some good points that would otherwise be interesting to debate, without supporting evidence these points are nothing more than strongly held opinions, cleverly defended. In this case, there is nothing to be gained on either side through the debate of opinions- other than satisfaction from preening in the light of one's intellect or the presentation of a clever argument.
It does not matter where or how the variants originated - in fact it's very likely that variants arose under neutral genetic drift. What matters is the selective pressure induced by the current mRNA vaccines which illicit an immune response that is highly targeted toward the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
Here are some excerpts from [1], I highly suggest reading it if you're interested in these ideas:
- "The spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 is the molecular target for many vaccines and antibody-based prophylactics aimed at bringing COVID-19 under control."
- "Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these biomedical interventions. With the emergence of new strains of SARS-CoV-2 with altered transmissibility and immune evasion potential, a critical question is this: how easily can the virus escape neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) targeting the spike RBD?"
- "Our modeling suggests that SARS-CoV-2 mutants with one or two mildly deleterious mutations are expected to exist in high numbers due to neutral genetic variation, and consequently resistance to vaccines or other prophylactics that rely on one or two antibodies for protection can develop quickly -and repeatedly- under positive selection."
- "The speed at which nAb resistance develops in the population increases substantially as the number of infected individuals increases, suggesting that complementary strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral prophylactics) or that do not exert a specific selective pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration, masking, ultraviolet air purification) are key to reducing the risk of immune escape"
- "Strategies for viral elimination should therefore be diversified across molecular targets and therapeutic modalities"
Vaccines aren't a factor as they weren't available when any of the variants emerged. The emergence can't be either the vaxxed or the unvaxxed's fault. Nobody's responsible or culpable, it's entropy.
Of the current strains which are active everywhere : - Alpha emerged in the UK before vaccines - Beta in SA before vaccines - Delta and Gamma in India before vaccines.
Of the current variants of interest: - Eta and Iota come respectively from France+UK and New York City, both before vaccines. - Epsilon (not of interest anymore) came from California before vaccines. Same for theta in the Philippines. - Kappa and Lambda come respectively from India and Peru, both before vaccines.
As for who's at fault for spreading : vaxxing 60% of the population only drops Deltas R_0 from 4.6 to 4.3.
It is immaterial whether you are vaxxed. The virus is smarter.
See my comment for details : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28076327
This is what's being said, but it's not what the data seem to show. In the recent surge in cases in Provincetown, MA, 69% of people were fully vaccinated but 74% of confirmed positive cases were among that subgroup.
Obviously there are confounding factors here but it seems readily apparent that delta isn't "significantly more effective at transmission in unvaccinated individuals".
CDC study: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm...
Do you claim that the Delta variant is not more infective in non-vaccinated individuals?
Do you understand that the Delta variant outcompeted other variants in India, with a vaccination rate lower than 10%?
Beyond that, please don't cite subgroups of data when we have larger groups. By selecting specific outbreaks despite larger data you can p-hack any conclusion.
In this study, there were more infections in the vaccinated group. That defies logic, though, and intuitively the infection rate of the vaccinated group cannot be higher than that of the unvaccinated. That's why I mentioned confounding factors.
From this study and others, I believe the vaccines used in the US do not provide substantial protection against infection by delta.
> Do you understand that the Delta variant outcompeted other variants in India, with a vaccination rate lower than 10%?
Yes, which means that it is more infectious. Its resistance (or lack of) to the vaccines isn't really relevant in a country with a 10% vaccination rate.
The fact that it's outcompeting other variants in countries with relatively high vaccination rates likely means that the vaccines are less effective against it.
> Beyond that, please don't cite subgroups of data when we have larger groups.
We're specifically talking about delta here, and I'm unaware of a study based upon a larger cohort where a statistically significant number of cases were sequenced, the variant determined, and the dominant variant found to be delta.
> By selecting specific outbreaks despite larger data you can p-hack any conclusion.
Again - show me the larger data here.
Unless you're going to make a rigorous statistical analysis, no, we had studies on this subject with a proper methodology and this is not what they found : https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2108891 (88% efficacy found).
>Yes, which means that it is more infectious. Its resistance (or lack of) to the vaccines isn't really relevant in a country with a 10% vaccination rate.
>The fact that it's outcompeting other variants in countries with relatively high vaccination rates likely means that the vaccines are less effective against it.
No one is disputing this. The point of contention is that the person I'm replying to had the thesis these variants arose because of vaccines, which is simply not true.
> We're specifically talking about delta here, and I'm unaware of a study based upon a larger cohort where a statistically significant number of cases were sequenced, the variant determined, and the dominant variant found to be delta.
You've not been looking then. Entire countries sample variants in the population.
For example full vaccinated people could just act more careless because they feel protected. How is the severe illness and death rate in both groups is a more important aspect.
> From this study and others, I believe the vaccines used in the US do not provide substantial protection against infection by delta.
This is a common error, but an error nonetheless. Take an extreme example of a population that is 100%. Any clusters of cases that pop up will thus be 100% in vaccinated folks. Of course, would would never see that and think "well, I should be unvaccinated, because 0% of infections happen for unvaccinated people."
Focus on this conflation that you are making:
> there were more infections in the vaccinated group and > and intuitively the infection rate of the vaccinated group cannot be higher than that of the unvaccinated.
You are conflating total number of infections with infection rate, which is what is leading you astray. Imagine you have 100 people. 90 are vaccinated. 10 aren't. Imagine that all 100 of those people are exposed to the Delta variant, and 10% of vaccinated folks end up testing positive, while 50% of of unvaccinated folks end up positive. In pure numbers, you end up with 9 vaccinated folks who are positive, and 5 unvaccinated folks who are positive. Voila, more infections in the vaccinated group! But, clearly, that's misleading, because comparing raw infection numbers is meaningless without also looking at percentages vaccinated.
Vaccines became available in India on February 1st, 2021. The delta variant was first detected during the same week.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.07.21260142v...
I hardly believe it managed to both mutate and be detected within that week. Accordingly, it couldn't evolve due to either selective pressure driven by vaccines, nor a lackadaisical anti-vaxx attitude.
It just happened randomly, as such things do. Nobody's responsible, nobody's culpable.
Check your facts, and you prejudices, against whomever they may be.
Still sparks a lively debate, though ;-)
You seem to be missing the critical fact that - regardless of whether the mutation evolved by pure random chance or via a vaccinated individual - the selective pressure induced through mass vaccination using a highly targeted vaccine can drive further evolution of the virus. To support my statement, see the reasoning in this paper from very well respected researchers at top institutions across the country [1]. Or take a look at the historical examples of vaccine induced immune escape, for example in chickens [2], or other human viruses [3].
[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
[2] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...
[3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016...
The original argument was that it did happen.
Beyond that, the main factor for vaccine induced immune escape is incomplete vaccination or ineffective vaccination, not targeted vaccination. The existing vaccines are not even that targeted as they target the entire spike protein - the only other antigen source would be the capsid.
> depending on a vaccine based on a single gene is what will (has already) lead to variants
It's the "(has already)" part that you're overly fixated on, and is not a charitable interpretation of the comment given the extraordinary amount of supporting evidence I've provided.
Listen to the feedback you're getting from others here - it doesn't seem to be getting through to you.
Selective pressure _can_ certainly apply, and as it has in the past, and you pointed it out correctly.
However, my point is here it _can't_ have. The timeline simply doesn't work (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28078077 for all variants).
It's literally entropy, or karma, or god, whatever you may believe : everybody was unvaxxed in India at the time. This particular Delta variant, it can't anybody's action or lack thereof in regards to vaccines.
As for the other variants, well, you might be very correct. I don't know, haven't looked into it at all.
And to be pedantic, please let me point out citing models of a natural mechanisms and suspicions by respected researchers who are probably right is not a "critical fact", it's a "well reasoned argument".
Similarly, I won't use models and past experiences projected on current unknowns when temporal logic and direct inductive reasoning gives you an unambiguous answer.
If you read GP's comment closely, it's worded such that it acknowledges this point (though I admit it could be made even more clear).
Now consider the massive increase in dominance of these strains, not where or how they originated. That is what's relevant to the sources I've provided.
Hopefully with that cleared up, through your "temporal logic" and "direct inductive reasoning" you'll see that the timeline on which these variants came to dominate matches very closely with the mass vaccination efforts.
Sorry, I mixed your comment with somebody else's which used the word "emerged" and argued delta and lambda appeared because of the unvaccinated.
On the rest, not arguing on the mechanics and dynamics of the epidemic.
The only meaningful effort made to systematically track the vaccination effort effects since day one is Israel's 580K control group matched cohort. The UK is not quite at this level of details, let's say. Those two countries are not enough.
Most of the rest which I seen is "let's throw a model at the wall and see what sticks", followed "the study is under-powered but let's publish anyway", concluding with "have clueless random msm journalists and anti-covid-vaxx sleuths misquote the results".
On that account, I don't really trust anybody's observations either way quite yet. We'll have to see the post-mortem in a couple year's time.