Now we are the end of July with a very mixed picture. I will try and explain.
First the doubling time per town. Take Netcong and Harding. They have short doubling times. Dover is now quite high. Apparently it is working there. Chatham Boro is low. This means a very mixed message, Chatham has very high vaccinations with teen age breakouts.
Now we can review what we said over a year ago.
1. The spike protein is temperature sensitive. In the nasopharynx it is 94F and the protein does not bond with ACE2, it is wrapped too tight.
2. As the virion gets into the lung the temperature increases, the protein opens and bonds. Then we get an infection.
3. However if are vaccinated the Ab attach and the T cells delete the virus. Done!
4. However, and we said this almost a year and a half ago, the nasopharynx if exposed to Delta keeps Delta alone for 24-48 hours until destroyed by the innate immune system. I leave the details to the reader.
5. Immunized or not the nasopharynx expels the virions in aerosols.
6. However, and this is still a fact, we have no clue as to the physics of this process. If the particles ate nm in size, which they are, mask or no mask we have a problem. We need at least a Level 3 facility to manage this.
7. The solution is measuring the infected, immunized etc. The CDC seems clueless here.
8. The real only solution is universal vaccination, the Delta will die out.
9. However, if we do not kill it off, it will mutate again and we are back to ground zero.
10. We need effective communicators not the wanton self promoters we now have. Time is of the essence. None of the above is new! What is "new" is the "story tellers" either gross incompetence or their refulsal for reasons unknown to have told the truth from the outset.
Vaccines generate antibodies, Ab. The mechanism in simple terms is as follows:
1. The mRNA vaccine, surrounded by PEG, enters the cells and produces the spike protein.
2. The spike protein is an antigen, Ag, which gets picked up by a dendritic cell, DC, and flows to a lymph node.
3. The lymph node immune process takes over creating AB and also sends out T cells.
4. Some of these T cells return to the tissues in the body.
5. Some of these become what is known as resident memory T cells, "T RM", namely the stay in the tissues and remember the Ag that sent them there.
6. Ab can be depleted over time, however the T RM last almost forever,
7. When the person is infected again, even with depleted AB, the T RM get re-activated and massively re-create T cells to attack the invader.
8. The question then is; how effective is this T RM cells process with COVID?
We have written a paper discussing this and attempt to shed some light.
Why do our whiz kids in the CDC and NIH not delve into this one? They use it for cancer therapeutics, so where are the virus folks?
Vaccines work. However as we have noted for more than a year the virus mutates. The target has been the spike protein and with the new variants the ability of the generated antibodies may become less. But the solution is simple. Just like the flu. Make a batch of new mRNA to match the Delta variant and keep vaccinating. But alas, we have so politicized this mess that half the population is subject to extinction.
I guess one can decide thay they will become extinct however the externalities of that choice is horrific for all others.
The targeting of the unvaccinated is easy. It is not saying it is Trump supporters. It is the facts. Just look at New Jersey. We can tell you what town and what age and what ethnicity. Extinction of those unvaccinated may be real or imagined but the cost to all of us should be borne by those causing it.
Just a thought of the day. Again it is the bunch of Government employees who have not been vaccinated as well!
The NY Times notes that the person, I assume, in charge of managing the current pandemic and espousing a multiplicity of dicta, has just noted the need for more vaccine development. They note:
But what will happen if the next pandemic comes from a virus that causes Lassa fever, or from the Sudan strain of Ebola, or from a Nipah virus? Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is promoting an ambitious and expensive plan to prepare for such nightmare scenarios. It would cost “a few billion dollars” a year, take five years for the first crop of results and engage a huge cadre of scientists, he said. The idea is to make “prototype” vaccines to protect against viruses from about 20 families that might spark a new pandemic. Using research tools that proved successful for Covid-19, researchers would uncover the molecular structure of each virus, learn where antibodies must strike it, and how to prod the body into making exactly those antibodies. ... The prototype vaccines project is the brainchild of Dr. Barney Graham, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He presented the idea in February of 2017 at a private meeting of institute directors.
However we proposed an even more aggressive program which uses Bayesian or predictive approaches. We noted:
Viral variants have been developing in COVID-19 and especially in the spike protein. In order to address these changes one must also modify the vaccines currently being produced. There are several ways to do this. One is the classic post hoc manner of monitoring what is produced and then address it. The second extreme is pre hoc, anticipating what most likely will occur and vaccinate against this anticipated variant. We present a proposal for a Bayesian pre hoc approach to vaccine development with COVID-19 variants.
In fact recent work on protein structure makes many of these ideas current. In Science they note:
Last week, two groups unveiled the culmination of years of work by computer scientists, biologists, and physicists: advanced modeling programs that can predict the precise 3D atomic structures of proteins and some molecular complexes. And now, the biggest payoff of that work has arrived. One of those teams reports today it has used its newly minted artificial intelligence (AI) programs to solve the structures of 350,000 proteins from humans and 20 model organisms, such as Escherichia coli bacteria, yeast, and fruit flies, all mainstays of biological research. In the coming months, the group says it plans to expand its list of modeled proteins to cover all cataloged proteins, some 100 million molecules.
Namely we take the above posed approach and using the recent efforts on protein synthesis, and then using the putative most likely changes in current variants predict the most likely next step. From that we can generate a plethora of new vaccines in an ongoing rolling forward preemptive basis.
I think the NY Times has written an Editorial supporting free speech. In a piece support such free speech the Times notes:
Americans, especially judges, have an obligation to know the law. The limits of free speech are subject to debate, but Ms. Dick’s case does not approach those boundaries. She has the right to curse out the president of the United States, and it should not require an appeals court to deliver that news to Roselle Park. Discomfort with vulgarity is understandable. The word Ms. Dick used is one that this newspaper often avoids publishing. But the decision by a judge in a liberal town to constrain the free speech rights of an outspoken conservative is symptomatic of a troubling trend: a growing sense among many Americans that the United States cannot afford to maintain the full measure of its foundational commitment to free speech.
The word in question is the simplification as an old Anglo Saxon directive allowing intimate relations winch was called, Fornication Under Consent of King. In fact is was one of the first English Crown directives written in what was then Middle English, supplanting some older French directives.
Now the local Magistrate deemed this obscene. Perhaps he did not look at the license plates on the cars in the parking lot. This is New Jersey. Here the word is used as a noun, adverb, adjective, gerund, participle, and is often interjected in between every other word. It is like the "uh" some political commentators use.
My introduction to such an expansive usage was as a Senior in High School when my father got me a job in the New York City Sanitation, to show me what real work was like. Up at 3 AM, to the garage by 5 AM, on the street by 5:15 AM and then listening to my co-workers use this phrase about everything. One got a sense that it helped the flow of New York and New Jersey dialects. Think of the Soprano folks.
In fact the current President was caught on a mic uttering it at a major Press Conference!
Thus the Times has a good point but alas, watch out for those Magistrates. Better yet, Magistrates most likely interject the phrase themselves from time to time. After all, it is New Jersey!
We see a continual rise nationally and in the state. Here is the analysis. First the doubling time is a reasonable metric to see the growth or decay. The doubling time still is decreasing which is a poor indication.
As the NY Times reports:
Biden administration health officials increasingly think that vulnerable populations will need booster shots even as research continues into how long the coronavirus vaccines remain effective. Senior officials now say they expect that people who are 65 and older or who have compromised immune systems will most likely need a third shot from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, two vaccines based on the same technology that have been used to inoculate the vast majority of Americans thus far. That is a sharp shift from just a few weeks ago, when the administration said it thought there was not enough evidence to back boosters yet. On Thursday, a key official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency is exploring options to give patients with compromised immune systems third doses even before regulators broaden the emergency use authorization for coronavirus vaccines, a step that could come soon for the Pfizer vaccine.
OK, so we said almost a year ago that annual vaccinations were necessary. BUT, and this is critical, we argued that most likely they would be updated with the latest antigen/antibody mix.
The problem is that the CDC et al appear to have been grossly deficient in performing the data tracking and analysis of the current vaccines. It has been overly political and lacking in trust. The questions that need real data and answers is:
1. What is the antibody levels for segments of ethnicity, age, sex (yes XX and XY) which means 5X6X2 or 60 segments of at least 1,000 in each. Namely the CDC must track this set of cohorts, and it seems they just sit in Atlanta sipping mint juleps.
2. We also must understand the import of memory T cells. They reside in the epithelial cells and have a long lifetime. Assessing them can be invasive, costly and difficult but essential.
3. Adding additional Ag/Ab combos. Since we have the first such combo we should now have a viable mix. What has the CDC done here? Nothing apparently.
4. Why has the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines gotten final FDA approval! Hundreds of millions of doses and one would assume adequate data that approval would be timely and forthcoming. So what is the hold-up.
The shame is the CDC has failed to provide transparent data on the ongoing efficacy and sustainability. The organization is self protective and inward looking. Public Health is outward looking and instructive allowing the public to understand and have confidence. The problem is this is sorely lacking.
As folks go back and forth on the origin of the current viral pandemic there is a recent paper that some use to justify a natural origin. In this paper they state:
The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 differs markedly from documented laboratory escapes that, with the exception of Marburg virus24, have been of readily identifiable viruses capable of human infection and associated with sustained work in high titer cultures25–27. No previous epidemic has been caused by the escape of a novel virus and there is no data to suggest that the WIV—or any other laboratory—were working on SARS-CoV-2, or any virus close enough to be the progenitor, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Viral genomic sequencing without cell culture, which was routinely performed at the WIV, represents a negligible risk as viruses are inactivated during RNA extraction28 and no case of laboratory escape has been documented following the sequencing of viral samples. Known laboratory outbreaks have been traced to both workplace and family contacts of index cases and to the laboratory of origin25–27,24. Despite extensive contact tracing of early cases during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been no reported cases related to any laboratory staff at the WIV and all staff in the laboratory of Dr. Shi Zhengli were reported to be seronegative for SARS-CoV-2 when tested in March 202010. During a period of high influenza transmission and other respiratory virus circulation29 reports of illnesses would need to be confirmed as caused by SARS-CoV-2 to be relevant. Epidemiological modeling suggests that the number of hypothetical cases needed to result in multiple hospitalized COVID-19 patients prior to December 2019 is incompatible with observed clinical, genomic, and epidemiological data20. The WIV possesses an extensive catalogue of samples derived from bats and has reportedly successfully cultured three SARSr-CoVs from bats, all of which are genetically distinct from SARS-CoV-230–32. These viruses were isolated from fecal samples through serial amplification in VeroE6 cells, process that consistently results in the loss of the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site33–39. It is herefore highly unlikely that these techniques would result in the isolation of a SARS-CoV-2 progenitor with an intact furin cleavage site. No published work indicates that other methods, including the generation of novel reverse genetics systems, were used at the WIV to propagate infectious SARSr-CoVs based on sequence data from bats. Gain-of-function research would be expected to utilize an established SARSr-CoV genomic backbone, or at a minimum a virus previously identified via sequencing.
First and most important, all earlier viral work, say a decade ago, did not have the ability to do what can be done today with bio-technology. We can now splice, insert, and so forth, and China has shown great leadership in this field. Thus the argument that it never happened before is specious at the very best and in my opinion useless.
Second the furin issue is a a key one which in my opinion the authors dismiss out of hand.
Third, and this is key, the last sentence asserts a "fact not in evidence". It assumes something that justifies their conclusion.
I am far from having an answer, the data is lacking and one would now guess unattainable. But just from a simple reading of the text one sees major faults in the basic logic and defects in the evidence as well as an attempt to ignore the the clinical expertise of the Chinese in this area.
Let us assume the CDC is correct (namely 217,560 new cases in just one day!), an assumption based on prayer not fact.The chart below is as of today. The normalized incidence has just exploded! Why? Border crossers, if they are even counted, data entry error, massive infections, whatever
A writer for the NY Times states:
Likewise, lots of groups are more likely to be hesitant than firmly resistant, but they still have overall vaccination rates close to the rate for Republican constituencies. Black adults, for instance, have a vaccination rate of 60 percent, while Hispanics stand at 63 percent, both close to the white-evangelical rate of 58 percent. Looking at the Kaiser data, then, doesn’t yield a picture of a vaccination effort foundering on the rocks of Republican obduracy and paranoia. It yields a picture of an effort that has been incredibly successful among seniors, well-educated liberals and Democratic partisans and yielded diminishing returns for other groups — from racial minorities to rural Americans to the less educated and young and uninsured. The friendliness of certain Fox News shows to vaccine skeptics is a subset of this problem, but not even close to the problem as a whole.
Now yesterday we showed just the opposite for New Jersey. Asians are more than twice the vaccination rate than Blacks and Whites are not far behind Asians. Examining voter rolls it also shows Democrats well behind Republicans. Facts vs opinions?
The classic recommendation is to "pay" them for getting vaccinated. The opposite tactic is Darwinian, namely let them run loose and see what happens. Kind of survival of the whatever. Just a thought.
In examining the NJ vaccine data by demographic focus we come upon the following. By ethnicity:
Note Asians are well vaccinate followed by Whites then Hispanics. However Blacks are at the very bottom in the 30% range. Since we do not have incidence and mortality by demographics we can only assume some pari passu relationship. Thus in NJ the least vaccinated hardly follow the current meme of political adhesion. Facts can be annoying.
Now as to age the following tells a similar tale. The older folks seem quite compliant and thus the lower overall mortality. However the worst batch is the 30+ age group. Also the 12+ is a problem for return to class.
The 4th of July peak is now occurring. Let us review the numbers. First the new per town and county. Town seems flat and county peaking upwards.
Perhaps our "leaders" could get better "tellers" to explain this. The "Jaw" has outlasted his usefulness. In fact I would suspect his effect is now negative.
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