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Why Scientists Are Very Worried About The Variant From Brazil

Squarehard

Squarehard

Member
Oct 27, 2017
25,909
www.npr.org

Why Scientists Are Very Worried About The Variant From Brazil

They don't yet understand why the coronavirus variant called P.1 has spread so explosively there. Its set of mutations seem especially dangerous. And this week P.1 was confirmed in the U.S.
www.npr.org www.npr.org
the most worrying variant might be the newest one. A variant called P.1, which emerged in early December in Manaus, Brazil, and by mid-January had already caused a massive resurgence in cases across the city of 2 million people.

On Monday, officials detected the first confirmed case of P.1 in the U.S., specifically in Minnesota. The state Department of Health picked up the case by randomly sequencing 50 nasal swabs from positive patients each week. The person infected with P.1. had previously traveled to Brazil.
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The concern with P.1 is twofold: Scientists don't understand why the variant has spread so explosively in Brazil, and the variant carries a particularly dangerous set of mutations.

While the variant from the U.K. took about three months to dominate the outbreak in England, P.1 took only about a month to dominate the outbreak in Manaus. In addition, Manaus had already been hit extremely hard by the virus in April. One study estimated that the population should have reached herd immunity and the virus shouldn't be able to spread easily in the community. So why would the city see an even bigger surge 10 months later? Could P.1 be evading the antibodies made against the previous version of the virus, making reinfections easier? Could it just be significantly more contagious? Could both be true?
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Reinfections are a serious concern for several reasons. First off, like the variant from South Africa, P.1 carries a cluster of mutations along the surface of the virus where antibodies — especially the potent antibodies — like to bind. "They are kind of the major targets of the immune system," said virus expert Penny Moore at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. "So when we see a whole lot of mutations in [those surfaces], it raises the possibility that the mutations might be conferring immune escape." That is, the mutations are helping the virus evade antibodies or escape recognition by them. In essence, the mutations are providing the virus with a type of invisibility cloak.
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To test out this hypothesis, Moore and her colleagues took blood serum from 44 people infected with the previous version of the virus and checked to see if the antibodies in that serum still worked against the new variant from South Africa. Or did the antibodies lose their sensitivity?

"Indeed that's what we saw," she said. "In fact, it was really quite a dramatic drop-off in sensitivity. We saw that in half of the serum, the antibodies were significantly less effective against the new variant [from South Africa]." So far, scientists haven't tested out P.1 in similar neutralization experiments, but P.1 has two mutations that scientists have already shown reduce antibody binding.
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Pwnz

Pwnz

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Oct 28, 2017
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Not too surprising. Something similar happened in 1918.

Not the end of the world, we have a pipeline to develop vaccines for the coronavirus family.
 
Friskykillface

Friskykillface

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Nov 27, 2017
30,142
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Traveling to a different state is bad enough but dummies just traveling all over the world is crazy

If it's in Minnesota it's already in other states

Two masks should be the norm by February 1st
 
Saito

Saito

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Oct 25, 2017
1,806
Unless that person traveled to Brazil to cure cancer they can fuck right off.
 
jman2050

jman2050

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Oct 25, 2017
5,811
I'm curious, are mutations of this nature typical in other coronaviruses or other well-established viruses in general? If they are, this whole thing just kinda underscores the fact that just waiting out the virus really isn't an option. On a global scale, we still really haven't done anywhere near enough to make the virus's job harder.
 
Rowsdower

Rowsdower

Prophet of Truth - The Wise Ones
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Oct 27, 2017
16,572
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Here's another article about the Manaus variant (a non-paywall version from the Washington Post):


Believed to have been circulating in the Amazon since December, P.1 now appears to be the dominant coronavirus strain in Manaus. It's been detected in São Paulo and as far away as Japan. A first case was identified in the United States on Monday.
Scientists are racing to understand the variant, one of several to have emerged in recent months. They are trying to determine whether it truly is more transmissible or has simply exploited lax behavior in a region where many people are either unable or unwilling to take precautions against the virus. The biggest unknown is whether the variant can infect people who have recovered from the more common coronavirus strain.
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For a time, after the wave of April and May subsided, scientists and government officials wondered whether the city had achieved herd immunity. Some scientists estimated three-fourths of the population had been infected. Many believed the worst was behind the city.
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To understand what was happening — and why the city wasn't protected from a debilitating second wave — the team started sequencing fresh samples, to see if any changes in the virus could explain it.
On Jan. 10, Japan announced the discovery of a new variant, found to have infected four travelers from Brazil's Amazon region. Then Sabino's team published preliminary findings showing that the strain accounted for 42 percent of the coronavirus cases sampled in December.
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Sylvain Aldighieri, a senior official with the Pan American Health Organization who has been tracking the Manaus outbreak, said there is no evidence to suggest that reinfections are driving the health crisis. "We would have many more reports," he said. "We have to use our common sense at this point. Herd immunity in Manaus was not achieved."

Other scientists have expressed doubt that 76 percent of people in Manaus were infected.
Doctors said they haven't seen many reinfections but cautioned that it's nearly impossible to know. The city was swept by the disease at a time when shortages in supplies meant few could get tested. That early failure has seeded today's: Without previous testing, it's impossible to confirm a reinfection.
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It's a good article.
 
Pwnz

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jman2050 said:
I'm curious, are mutations of this nature typical in other coronaviruses or other well-established viruses in general? If they are, this whole thing just kinda underscores the fact that just waiting out the virus really isn't an option. On a global scale, we still really haven't done anywhere near enough to make the virus's job harder.
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I'm no immunologist, but generally mutations are common. There isn't a lot of data yet but some suggests coronavirus family doesn't mutate to the degree where you are completely vulnerable from strain to strain, eg there's partial immunity if you had a different strain.

So that's a plus and we have a pipeline to develop a new vaccine it's no longer novel. Once everyone is immunized, it would be much more difficult for the virus to mutate like it did in Brazil. But we don't have a long history with this virus, so we don't know to the degree it can change yet. Maybe it could mutate into something far deadlier and virulent. There are flu strains in animals only that kill like half or something and make this pandemic seem like a cakewalk.
 
ArrogantBastard

ArrogantBastard

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Oct 25, 2017
12,029
So basically it sounds like this is rapidly evolving and we are going to need to get yearly vaccinated against a new variant... like the flu but worse.
 
GMM

GMM

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Oct 27, 2017
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Traveling needs to be heavily restricted, curious how effective existing vaccines are with this variant.
 
Kyrios

Kyrios

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Oct 27, 2017
14,677
I say worst case scenario is an annual covid shot if shit really does hit the fan with the mutation lottery.
 

Deleted member 39374

Banned
Feb 1, 2018
5,083
haha cool more fear mongering from news media

How about we wait for peer reviewed findings or direct announcements from moderna et al. regarding their vaccine efficacy against this variant
 

charmeleon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,383
It's insane that international travel has been/still is allowed. Most countries are barely doing genomic sequencing so these variants are just being seeded everywhere.
 
Bedlam

Bedlam

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
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Possible mutations are one of the main reasons why keeping the numbers via the lockdowns was and is so important.

Brazil did the opposite. Loads of pictures of crowded beaches over the last months and the president is a conspiracy nutcase.

"Thanks and FU", I guess.
 
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platocplx

platocplx

2020 Member Elect
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Oct 30, 2017
36,072
Red said:
☝

"It doesn't end" is absolutely true, but "it" is human stupidity. We had it in our power to contain this. We chose not to.
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Yup. People don't get that viruses really are the pendulum that swings on earth and keeps populations of every damn thing on the planet from going out of control, and the quicker we contain one the more lives we can save until the next one.
It's kind of terrifying and fascinating how little we know about them, and just how they work and how they do kind of balance a lot of things in a fucked up way.
 
ty_hot

ty_hot

Banned
Dec 14, 2017
7,176
Thanks Bolsonaro for being this dumb fuck

Side note about Manaus: last week hospital's ran out of oxygen and everyone that needed it died (Covid patients, newborns, etc). The Health Minister was warned that this was going to happen and he sent a plane with a hundred thousand hydroxichloroquine. The situation was so terrible that Venezuela sent trucks with oxygen to help. Relatives from patients in Manaus are trying to buy their own oxygen tanks...

2021-01-16T050610Z_1300110685_RC2J8L9G25PY_RTRMADP_3_HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS-BRAZIL.jpg


👍
 
maxxpower

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Oct 25, 2017
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Red said:
☝

"It doesn't end" is absolutely true, but "it" is human stupidity. We had it in our power to contain this. We chose not to.
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The best thing we can do right now is work hard on containing it and reducing spread so that the vaccines can be as effective as possible. Of course we know that's not gonna happen.
 

Deleted member 39374

Banned
Feb 1, 2018
5,083
Easystride said:
This, so much. I feel like there has been similar articles on every single strain posted on her followed by the doom and gloom, "well, fuck" post.
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I started ignoring covid news because of it. I only read shit directly from Pfizer, Moderna, or the CDC. Everything else is bullshit. County and state don't know what the fuck is going on, and the journos just want to monetize your doomscrolls

And yes, avatar quote me
 
SpankyDoodle

SpankyDoodle

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Oct 25, 2017
6,082
Fisty said:
I feel like we are living in one of those slow apocalypses
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I know humanity will get through this but at times it really does feel that way, doesn't it? My analogy of choice is that it's a movie where the solution is caring for each other... so naturally we are completely fucked. "lol" ):<
 
amoy

amoy

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,230
ty_hot said:
Thanks Bolsonaro for being this dumb fuck

Side note about Manaus: last week hospital's ran out of oxygen and everyone that needed it died (Covid patients, newborns, etc). The Health Minister was warned that this was going to happen and he sent a plane with a hundred thousand hydroxichloroquine. The situation was so terrible that Venezuela sent trucks with oxygen to help. Relatives from patients in Manaus are trying to buy their own oxygen tanks...

2021-01-16T050610Z_1300110685_RC2J8L9G25PY_RTRMADP_3_HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS-BRAZIL.jpg


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WTF.
That's fucking awful.

edit: how did Hydroxychloroquine gain traction with government bodies, thought it was proven ineffective against COVID
 
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Culex

Culex

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
6,844
A lot can be blamed on Trump, but the scary thing is a perfectly laid out plan under a better organized US administration would have only delayed the inevitable here. If there was no Trump, and say a much better non-Trump did everything better, we simply cannot stop the mutations coming from the rest of the world.

This is going to be a long fight.
 
subpar spatula

subpar spatula

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Oct 26, 2017
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Fisty said:
I feel like we are living in one of those slow apocalypses
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How so? The plagues lasted longer than this and was more deadly. Literal streets full of corpses that folks would gather daily. Villages wiped out. Treatment for covid will only get better with time, vaccines will roll out. Humans have survived far worse with way less resources.
 
Tremorah

Tremorah

Member
Dec 3, 2018
4,955
Its a new virus for us so its going to give us quite a lot of surprises, lets hope vaccines can keep up with the variations
 
Fisty

Fisty

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Oct 25, 2017
20,235
subpar spatula said:
How so? The plagues lasted longer than this and was more deadly. Literal streets full of corpses that folks would gather daily. Villages wiped out. Treatment for covid will only get better with time, vaccines will roll out. Humans have survived far worse with way less resources.
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Someone with the plague couldn't make it from Brazil to New York in 8 hours
 
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