Role of spike in pathogenic and antigenic behavior of SARS-CoV-2 BA.1 Omicron | Hacker News Reader

Role of spike in pathogenic and antigenic behavior of SARS-CoV-2 BA.1 Omicron

biorxiv.org

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The paper Title is >Role of spike in the pathogenic and antigenic behavior of SARS-CoV-2 BA.1 Omicron<

>Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells.

In *K18-hACE2 Mice* , while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%.

This indicates that while the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by mutations in S, major determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of S.

The "h" in the name of the mice stands for "humanized" so the fact that they did this experiment in mice is close to irrelevant, the cells being infected are genetically engineered to be the same as ours.

Only the ACE2 receptor is human. The rest is of murine origin

Shiiit. So they do this to understand preemptively what might occur out there or?

If I understand this correctly, they do this to show whether the vaccine-escape is controlled by the spike protein (it is), and whether the lethality is from the spike protein (it is not). The fact that it might kill us all doesn't seem to trouble their quest for knowledge...

"The authors have declared no competing interest."

Not even, it seems, preservation of their species.

80% mortality rate in mice.

For this one I don't want to find if it replicates in humans.

While it sounds very bad, and it is in fact horrible, just like Ebola, it wouldn't be able to cause a world wide pandemic killing millions of people as people would be much more caucious around it.

Not entirely just like Ebola virus disease, considering it would still be an airborne virus and consequently be even more difficult to contain.

I don't find that the outcomes from the latest 3 years of people being supposedly cautious inspire much confidence in the effectiveness of it, and I don't really see that changing (soon enough) even if the lethality spikes dramatically. Especially if the symptoms in the early phases were to stay relatively inconspicuous in a large fraction of cases.

Another completely editorialized submission rising to the front page.

It's funny because a few days ago someone made a thread [1] asking for non-clickbait/non-sensationalist resources and almost all enthusiastically suggested HN.

If only they knew...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33212499

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