Hacker News Reader

Comment by pbak | Hacker News Reader

> The Delta variant itself rose in India, which has > really low vaccination rates.

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.

View on HN

> Accordingly, it couldn't evolve due to either selective pressure driven by vaccines

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...

You're making the argument that it might happen in the future.

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.

The original argument was:

> 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.

>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].

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.

Not sure how to be any more clear about this: No one is claiming the vaccine CAUSED or ORIGINATED these variants. We are in agreement, the timeline does not support this idea.

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.

> The Delta variant itself rose in India, which has really low vaccination rates.

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.

I agree with you, I think you may have replied to the wrong comment.

Yes I did, sorry !

Still sparks a lively debate, though ;-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com