The Virus: Mutate Around This. By David Archibald.
The Israelis are disappointed in the result of vaccinating most of their population. Now we have some better detail on why. The coronavirus vaccines are an immunological Potemkin village:
The graph above of early data from Israel indicates that vaccine efficacy in preventing infection and symptomatic disease (mainly Pfizer-BioNTech) goes from 75-79% to 16% within four months against the Delta variant.
The graph shows efficacy by monthly cohort. Blue is the population who were vaccinated in January, orange in February, green in March and yellow is April. Purple is the average and can be ignored.
Efficacy against infection, asymptomatic and symptomatic, falls away rapidly. After six months (blue):
- catching covid: 16% effective
- mild symptoms: 16%
- hospital: 82%
- severe cases of covid: 86%.
The vaccines do provide some protection against hospitalization, and so far that doesn’t seem to be falling with time.
But that is good news for the virus — it gets more opportunity to spread if it doesn’t kill its host. And every new host is a chance to mutate and make a more effective version of the Chicom bioweapon. The Delta variant has made a lot of progress to that end, [moving] halfway towards measles in terms of being infectious [since its release]. …
The solution is the same as that found for HIV — a cocktail of antivirals, each contributing its own mode of action, possibly supported by vaccination. It will be like serving in the tropics and taking your antimalarial with you. The antivirals like ivermectin don’t need to recognize anything on the virus to work, as vaccines do. So the virus can’t mutate around them easily, especially when they are used in combination.
This first generation of covid vaccines is good enough to prevent most hospitalizations and deaths, but it is not going to stop you catching it if covid is about. They are more dangerous than the usual vaccines, so might only be worth taking if you have risk factors — old age (over 60?), diabetes, obesity, etc.
The Israeli data above is what sent the markets into a swoon on Monday.
