Eric Topol recently posted about the most recent COVID wave which appears to be the result of yet more mutations of the virus. This wave is the real deal "It’s a major wave now, with an estimated new 900,000 infections per day . . ."
One small piece of good news is that this wave is not resulting in as many severe cases of COVID, at least so far "Fortunately, the rise in levels of the virus. . . has not been linked with as much severe Covid (absolute increase) as was seen in prior waves . . ."
Here's what Topol says about the current vaccines:
>>>The new KP.2 boosters will not be ready until the first week of September. It isn’t clear about the timing of availability for the JN.1 shots from Novavax which the company announced at the June FDA meeting would be ready in August. Most likely all 3 will be rolled out the first week of September. The match up of KP.2 (vs KP.3.1.1) is clearly better than JN.1, but some people prefer Novavax with its less acute phase side effects.
That’s still more than month away.
The XBB.1.5 (old) booster is available and it will increase protection, so if you’re worried about making a trip or being exposed, it’s a reasonable strategy to get it. While suboptimal, the added level of protection afforded from that booster is useful.
How to respond without denialism or complacency
erictopol.substack.com
This is a very interesting blog post, but it's also somewhat disheartening because as Topol states: "
The virus will not stop [mutating] here, despite our desire to will it way. It will continue to find new ways to infect and reinfect us, under selection pressure from our prior immunity (be it infections, vaccinations, or combinations)" yet no one is willing to seriously fund development of better vaccines and drugs, and the U.S. government is force-fitting the vaccine program into a once a year flu model, even though COVID has not demonstrated a once a year wave pattern.
As Topol states, evolution of the virus and waning immunity is not a good combination:
>>Added to problem of the virus‘s evolution and, as a result, is the blunting of our immune response, the big issue of waning immunity. The vaccine boosters only last 4-6 months for protection from severe Covid, do little after early weeks for any protection from infections or spread. The same goes for infections. Neutralizing antibody levels go down.
Our interferon first line of defense gets blocked (Shane Crotty called this the “superpower of SARS-CoV-2” in our podcast this week). The virus evolves and, at the same time, our immune response wanes. That’s not a good combination.<<< (emphasis added)
I tried reading a couple articles on how the COVID virus blocks the interferon response of our immune system. It's fair to say my understanding of this topic is very limited, but I was amazed at how complex the the virus's attack on the interferon response is. My initial reaction was "Holy cr*p, it's a wonder this virus hasn't killed us all!"
Here's one article on the topic that incudes a summary of various blocking mechanisms:
>>
>Here, we summarise the various mechanisms adopted by SARS-CoV-2 to impair IFN production.
Repression of activation of IFN coding genes . . .
Blocking recognition by the host . . .
Disrupting antiviral signaling pathways . . .
Post-transcriptional regulation of IFN production . . .
Interrupting mRNA splicing . . .
Blocking the mRNA nuclear export . . .
Repressing mRNA translation . . .
Targeting IFN-related transcripts by microRNAs and microRNA-like non-coding RNAs . . .<<<
Interferons (IFNs) are crucial components of the cellular innate immune response to viral infections. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has shown a remarkable capacity to suppress the host IFN production to benefit viral ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
If I understand it (which is doubtful) the big problem with all this is that it suppresses the production of
@Swerd's favorite cells, the killer T cells, so the virus reproduces rapidly (someone seriously needs to name a band after them, it is certainly better than "Soft Cell").
