COVID-19 Coronavirus Containment Efforts

[russ_watters]

If the virus dies out, then vaccinated people won't be getting exposed to the virus.

Ok...so, what?

 

[Jarvis323]

Ok...so, what?

I said that exposing more vaccinated people to the virus will help the virus adapt to be able to infect vaccinated people.

You said that is false.

Your argument is that the vaccine could eradicate the virus.

Do I need to keep going?

 

[russ_watters]

I said that exposing more vaccinated people to the virus will help the virus adapt to be able to infect vaccinated people.

You said that is false.

Your argument is that the vaccine could eradicate the virus.

Do I need to keep going?

Evidently yes, you do need to keep going, because you don't seem to be able to finish the line of logic! Sheesh!

The final step is that if the vaccine eradicates the virus, then it can't mutate anymore.

And connecting back to the claim: if more vaccinations and more virus/vaccine interaction results in eradicating the virus, it leads to less adaptation, not more adaptation.

 

[Rive]

There have already been mutations that have helped the virus do better against vaccinated people.

Most often, those mutations came from areas with ongoing widespread pandemic, and not from areas with thorough vaccination.

This argument above is the worst kind of half-truth. More immune people combined with many copies of the virus may end with mutations. That far, it's true.

But: vaccination (with most kind of vaccines) gives better immunity and higher immunity rate in the population than a pandemic, so the chance to get infected and the amount of copies both are lower => with vaccination we actually get lower chance to get a bad mutation.

 

[Jarvis323]

Evidently yes, you do need to keep going, because you don't seem to be able to finish the line of logic! Sheesh!

The final step is that if the vaccine eradicates the virus, then it can't mutate anymore.

And connecting back to the claim: if more vaccinations and more virus/vaccine interaction results in eradicating the virus, it leads to less adaptation, not more adaptation.

I said if x then y.

You said if not x, then not y.

Do you see the problem here?

 

[russ_watters]

Do you see the problem here?

Yup, I definitely do.

 

[Jarvis323]

But: vaccination (with most kind of vaccines) gives better immunity and higher immunity rate in the population than a pandemic, so the chance to get infected and the amount of copies both are lower => with vaccination we actually get lower chance to get a bad mutation.

What does this have to do with anything I've said?

Are you trying to argue that a sub population of non-vaccinated people can go around coughing on vaccinated people without any possible reprocussions for adaptation/immunity escape?

 

[PeterDonis]

There have already been mutations that have helped the virus do better against vaccinated people.

References, please?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Yes, I do.

1. Applying the same argument to smallpox and polio clearly leads to absurdity. That should tell you something.
2. Typically, microorganisms evolve to be less dangerous rather than more. An organism that kills its host is unsuccessful, rather than successful.
3. Mutations happen with a certain probability during replication. If you have no replication, you have no mutations. If you have only a few organisms out there, the odds of a favorable mutation also go down.
4. "Overcome the vaccine" is not even a thing. A vaccine is not a virus-specific poison that is injected into your bloodstream.

 

[russ_watters]

Jarvis is going to take some time off from this thread to process this discussion.

Thanks.

 

[PeterDonis]

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ar...cines-are-effective-against-the-delta-variant

This article seems to support point #2 that @Vanadium 50 made in post #5,294: while vaccines might be less effective at preventing infection altogether by the Delta variant, they are still just as effective at preventing illness serious enough to require hospitalization.

This is a point I didn't bring up in my previous response, but is a perfectly valid point: selective pressures in general for infectious agents favor less harmful variants which cause just enough illness in their hosts to spread to other hosts, without seriously harming the hosts.

 

[atyy]

I see people have objected to @jarvis's statement in post #5625 - if read in the context that his response was to my statement - I thought it was a good point.

 

[russ_watters]

I see people have objected to @jarvis's statement in post #5625 - if read in the context that his response was to my statement - I thought it was a good point.

Probably a typo on the post # there, I think you mean 5265. I had actually "liked" a prior post in the discussion (5251), but I didn't see the line of reasoning going downhill at the time.

Anyway, it's best to let this line of discussion go.

 

[Rive]

I thought it was a good point.

It's just based on a half-truth which is often exploited by some anti-vaxxer crooks. The selection pressure on the virus is about immunity, not just about vaccines.
In this regard vaccines (most of them) are far better than the unreliable immunity achieved the 'bio' way.
So travels of the 'bio' immune people should be the concern instead.

 

[PeterDonis]

In this regard vaccines (most of them) are far better than the unreliable immunity achieved the 'bio' way.

Why do you think this is true? And do you think it is true for all viruses, or just SARS-CoV-2?

 

[atyy]

It's just based on a half-truth which is often exploited by some anti-vaxxer crooks. The selection pressure on the virus is about immunity, not just about vaccines.
In this regard vaccines (most of them) are far better than the unreliable immunity achieved the 'bio' way.
So travels of the 'bio' immune people should be the concern instead.

When read in context, there did not seem any intent to promote an anti-vax agenda.

 

[Rive]

there did not seem any intent to promote an anti-vax agenda.

And I did not said that either.

do you think it is true for all viruses, or just SARS-CoV-2?

I know that some other human Coronavirus can do it too (as I recall there was a group experiment about this), and I think that there may be further examples amongst the understudied group of 'colds'.

Why do you think this is true?

You mean, at this point this is still in question?

 

[pinball1970]

Why do you think this is true? And do you think it is true for all viruses, or just SARS-CoV-2?

I would say true for the viruses that cause serious disease/death where vaccines are available and where there is a significant risk of infection.
COVID vaccine Globally? – justified
Smallpox Vaccine today in 2021 in the USA? – Not justified (this has been mentioned on pf in a thread, by you possibly? Wrt 911?)
Ebola Vaccine in Congo? – Probably justified. A discussion on pf about that https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/nearing-a-cure-for-ebola.976033/

 

[PeterDonis]

You mean, at this point this is still in question?

It is for me. I want to see a reference, or at least an argument, that vaccines will always give better protection than immunity acquired by having the viruses itself. It is certainly not obvious to me that that will be true for all (or "most") vaccines and all viruses, which is the claim you were making.

The only argument I have seen being made is specifically about mRNA vaccines and SARS-CoV-2: the argument there is that the mRNA vaccines specifically target the spike protein, which is how the virus gets inside cells, any viral mutation that avoids the mRNA vaccine would also make the virus unable to infect people since it wouldn't be able to get inside cells any more. Whereas with immunity acquired by having COVID-19, you don't know what your immune system actually is targeting; it might have learned to recognize the spike protein, or it might have learned to recognize some other part of the virus that is nonfunctional and so could mutate without impairing the infectivity of the virus.

But that argument is specific to the way mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 work; it certainly doesn't generalize to all (or "most") vaccines and all viruses.

 

[PeterDonis]

I would say true for the viruses that cause serious disease/death where vaccines are available and where there is a significant risk of infection.

How does this imply that vaccines give better protection than having the virus itself and recovering from it? I don't see any such implication. The only implication I see is that, if you haven't been infected, being vaccinated is better than not being vaccinated. But that wasn't the argument @Rive was making that I was responding to.

 

[BillTre]

The only argument I have seen being made is specifically about mRNA vaccines and SARS-CoV-2: the argument there is that the mRNA vaccines specifically target the spike protein, which is how the virus gets inside cells, any viral mutation that avoids the mRNA vaccine would also make the virus unable to infect people since it wouldn't be able to get inside cells any more. Whereas with immunity acquired by having COVID-19, you don't know what your immune system actually is targeting; it might have learned to recognize the spike protein, or it might have learned to recognize some other part of the virus that is nonfunctional and so could mutate without impairing the infectivity of the virus.

Seems like a good argument to me.
One might also expect variation among different people's immune responses.
A person with a weaker immune response might gain more benefit from a more directed immune stimulation like you describe.

 

[Rive]

I want to see a reference, or at least an argument, that vaccines will always give better protection than immunity acquired by having the viruses itself.

This topic, and what I wrote is Covid specific. I can see what caused the misunderstanding (multiple vaccines for the same virus also referenced the 'general' way).

The problem is, that 'bio' immunity for Covid is not reliable. Some asymptotic people got high antibody levels: some none. Some people who got it hard has good levels of antibodies: some none. It's not about 'always'. It's about reliability. It's an unreliable 'sometimes'.
Unlike 'bio', vaccine doses are calibrated to give good, reliable and lasting antibody levels.
Looks like sino-stuff is not that good.
Some vector vaccines can be tricky too, but in general, in case of covid, the 'western' vaccines are giving a far more reliable protection than getting it 'bio'.

This part of the topic started from that half-truth about vaccines generating immunity-bypassing mutants.
Since immunity achieved by vaccines is more reliable in this case => giving less chance to re-infect and infect: keeping the pandemic more curbed, opposing the anti-vaxxer interpretation it's the 'bio' what's troublesome, not the vaccine.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It is for me. I want to see a reference, or at least an argument, that vaccines will always give better protection than immunity acquired by having the viruses itself.

I think the only sound argument is with viruses like rabies, where after infection the patient will never contract it again - because he is dead.

I don't think I buy the argument upthread that the vaccine is better because our bodies respond to the virus differently. Our bodies respond to the vaccine differently as well. Look at the side effect thread. I'd certainly want to see a study. The argument seems to look at only half of the story.

I suppose that in principle, our bodies could develop antibodies against the spike and some other protein and thus be marginally better than a vaccine which immunizes against the spike alone. I don't think I would consider the difference between 95% and 95.000001% protection worth quibbling about.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Regarding immunity from infection vs immunity from vaccines, one theoretical reason to think that vaccines might be more effective at inducing immunity is that viruses have evolved measures try to hide themselves from the body's immune system while vaccines are designed to stimulate strong immune responses. Furthermore, the prime-boost strategy used by most of the vaccines might be more effective at inducing long term immunity (though we don't have a lot of data on long term immunity yet).

Empirically, an observational study in Denmark identified 11k people infected during the first wave of COVID-19 and tracked whether they were infected during the second wave of infection. They found previous infection conferred 80.5% protection from reinfection (and a 93% protection against symptomatic infection). This level of protection is similar to that reported for the more effective vaccines (e.g. Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax). However, the study did find that previous infection was not as effective at protecting older adults (age > 65) from subsequent infection (~50% protection) whereas the vaccines above showed no signs of reduced efficacy in older individuals.

So, for younger individuals, it seems like there is a similar amount of protection from previous infection vs vaccination, but in older individuals, vaccination likely provides stronger protection than prior infection.

On the issue of the evolution of variants in vaccinated populations, one leading hypothesis on the evolution of the variants is that arise during long term infection of immunocompromised individuals (see my previous post for more discussion and citations to the scientific literature). This idea fits with general thinking about natural selection. It has been observed (for example, in studies of the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria), that low levels of selection give the best chance for new traits to evolve. If there is no selection, there is no pressure for new variants to take over the population. Similarly, high levels of selection are problematic for the evolution of new traits because 1) if selection is too strong, the organism just dies off before resistant variants are able to arise and 2) mutations that might provide new traits (e.g. antibody resistance) usually also compromise the function of the protein, so these neofunctionalizing mutations often need compensatory mutations to come along to restore the function of the protein. High levels of selection impose a high cost to these neofunctionalizing mutations, which stops them from accumulating in the population.

Long term infection of an immunocompromised host would provide a perfect environment where the virus is exposed to selection by the human immune system, but that selection is too weak to eliminate the virus. This gives the virus the opportunity to accumulate mutations until eventually a set of mutations arise that allow it to get around the immune system and replicate more quickly than the original virus.

Under this hypothesis, the greater number of people infected, the greater the chance that the virus might find such a suitable host where this type of evolution can occur. Increasing the population of vaccinated individuals would decrease the number of vulnerable individuals and limit the spread of the virus, lowering the number of people carrying the virus, lowering the probability that the virus could evolve new variants. Having fully vaccinated people in the population would present the "strong selection" case discussed above, which would likely present challenges to the evolution of new variants.

Consistent with this idea, preliminary data from Public Health England suggests that the Pfizer vaccine seems to protect against new variants such as alpha (B.1.1.7) and delta (B.1.617.2). It's likely that these variants spread throughout the world primarily because of their increased transmissibility, not their ability to get around pre-existing immunity.

 

[atyy]

Consistent with this idea, preliminary data from Public Health England suggests that the Pfizer vaccine seems to protect against new variants such as alpha (B.1.1.7) and delta (B.1.617.2). It's likely that these variants spread throughout the world primarily because of their increased transmissibility, not their ability to get around pre-existing immunity.

In that article, the second dose difference between alpha and delta variants is about 6%, but the first dose difference is about 15%. What do you think about the suggestion that the long interval between first and second doses in the UK gave delta additional help? @PeroK gave estimates in this post in another thread of vaccinations with first and second doses in the UK at the start of May, when delta's advantage started becoming apparent there.

 

[atyy]

However, the study did find that previous infection was not as effective at protecting older adults (age > 65) from subsequent infection (~50% protection) whereas the vaccines above showed no signs of reduced efficacy in older individuals.

In a different Danish study, vaccine effectiveness was different for long-term care facilities (LTCF residents) and frontline healthcare workers (HCW). There were many differences between the groups, so they don't know whether age was a factor, but they do discuss the possibility that age is a factor.

"This could be explained by the higher vulnerability and age distribution in our cohort, a median age of 84 years in LTCF residents compared to 52 years among the trial participants. It is also evident from studies of influenza vaccines, that vaccines are less effective in the elderly."

 

[morrobay]

Some good news from this popular article : In addition to this virus evolving to a common flu. ' There is likely a dose response between virus exposure and disease severity. A person exposed to a small dose of virus will be more likely to get a mild case of Covid 19 ' https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210520174200.htm

 

[Astronuc]

COVID-19 cluster worsens in Australian city - Sydney - or How not to contain a pandemic
https://apnews.com/article/lifestyl...iness-travel-82991e404f40b05b89308fa27a417111

SYDNEY, Australia — A state government minister has been infected with COVID-19 and another minister is in isolation as a cluster in the Australian city of Sydney worsens.

New South Wales Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said he was told on Thursday that he had tested positive after dining with three government colleagues on Monday at a Sydney restaurant after an infected diner.

All four lawmakers had been attending Parliament as recently as Tuesday.

Health Minister Brad Hazard said he was self-isolating after being exposed to a potential case at Parliament House.

Colombia hits 100,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, president blames anti-government protests! Yikes!

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York will lift more COVID-19 restrictions when the state of emergency expires later this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.

New Yorkers will still have to wear masks on public transit, hospitals, nursing homes, correctional facilities and homeless shelters, in accordance with federal guidance.

I would sure wear a mask in an enclosed meeting with people.

BERLIN — Germany’s disease control center says the delta variant accounted for more than 15% of Coronavirus infections in the country by mid-June, with its share roughly doubling in a week.

The Robert Koch Institute said in a weekly report Wednesday that the more contagious delta variant’s share in sequenced samples rose to 15.1% in the week ending June 13. That compares with 7.9% a week earlier.

The alpha variant, first detected in Britain, remained dominant in Germany, though its share declined to 74.1% from 83.5%.

GENEVA — Swiss authorities are vastly easing measures aimed to combat COVID-19 and relaxing some key requirements facing incoming travelers, as case counts and deaths from the pandemic have plunged in Switzerland in recent weeks.

Among the new steps effective Saturday, the Federal Council said work-from-home rules and the requirement to wear masks outdoors will be lifted. Restaurants will also no longer have to limit the number of patrons that can dine together.

The Swiss government said people from the European Schengen area will no longer be required to quarantine upon entry to Switzerland.

LISBON, Portugal — The Lisbon region’s recent surge in COVID-19 cases is powering ahead, with new infections pushing Portugal’s number of daily cases to a four-month high.

Portugal on Wednesday reported almost 1,500 new cases, with two thirds of them in the region of the capital where some 2.8 million people live.

 

[Astronuc]

I want to see a reference, or at least an argument, that vaccines will always give better protection than immunity acquired by having the viruses itself.

I had heard that acquired immunity is not necessarily as effective as the immunity developed from the vaccine, which is apparently one reason that the CDC and NIH encourage those who had a COVID-19 infection get the vaccine. Individuals do respond differently to the vaccines.

There are studies trying to discern why acquired immunity seems less effective than vaccination immunity. One concern is the new variants, for which vaccinated folks will likely need a booster later this year.

For example, How Immunity Generated from COVID-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/...-covid-19-vaccines-differs-from-an-infection/

A key issue as we move closer to ending the pandemic is determining more precisely how long people exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 virus, will make neutralizing antibodies against this dangerous coronavirus. Finding the answer is also potentially complicated with new SARS-CoV-2 “variants of concern” appearing around the world that could find ways to evade acquired immunity, increasing the chances of new outbreaks.

Now, a new NIH-supported study shows that the answer to this question will vary based on how an individual’s antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were generated: over the course of a naturally acquired infection or from a COVID-19 vaccine. The new evidence shows that protective antibodies generated in response to an mRNA vaccine will target a broader range of SARS-CoV-2 variants carrying “single letter” changes in a key portion of their spike protein compared to antibodies acquired from an infection.

These results add to evidence that people with acquired immunity may have differing levels of protection to emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. More importantly, the data provide further documentation that those who’ve had and recovered from a COVID-19 infection still stand to benefit from getting vaccinated.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/

Not a scientific study, but an opinion ostensibly based on evidence - Why COVID-19 Vaccines Offer Better Protection Than Infection. Vaccination offers longer, stronger immunity, says virologist Sabra Klein.
https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/arti...s-offer-better-protection-than-infection.html

The NY Times reports ‘Natural Immunity’ From Covid Is Not Safer Than a Vaccine
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/covid-natural-immunity.html
I haven't read the article.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html?s_cid=10482:vaccine after covid:sem.ga:p:RG:GM:gen:PTN:FY21

you should be vaccinated regardless of whether you already had COVID-19. That’s because experts do not yet know how long you are protected from getting sick again after recovering from COVID-19. Even if you have already recovered from COVID-19, it is possible—although rare—that you could be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 again. Studies have shown that vaccination provides a strong boost in protection in people who have recovered from COVID-19.

Interesting commentary - https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/marty-makary/92434

Racaniello: I think it's an interesting question and there's no one answer because every virus is slightly different. For example, the human papillomavirus, the vaccines we have make amazing immunity, better than immunity you get from natural infection, because there's so much protein in those vaccines. And you end up having great mucosal immunity, which is what you need there. On the other hand, other vaccines allow infection without disease. Of course, the polio vaccines were only tested to prevent polio, not to prevent infection. That's all we cared about.

Now for SARS-CoV-2, yes, having other proteins in the mix is a good idea. I think it depends on the severity of the disease. We did a paper 6 months ago which studied people who had died from COVID. So this was a very serious disease. And their lymph nodes had no germinal centers, which means no memory B cells to SARS-CoV-2. Even though they had antibodies, they had very low affinity antibodies.

Apparently HPV is a virus that one can contract again after an infection, but much less likely if one has the vaccine.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

In that article, the second dose difference between alpha and delta variants is about 6%, but the first dose difference is about 15%. What do you think about the suggestion that the long interval between first and second doses in the UK gave delta additional help? @PeroK gave estimates in this post in another thread of vaccinations with first and second doses in the UK at the start of May, when delta's advantage started becoming apparent there.

Yes, the data suggest that the UK's decision to prioritize first doses over second doses put more people at risk than if they had followed the recommended dosing schedule. The data also suggest that the UK should prioritize second doses for vulnerable populations before they proceed with more relaxation of social distancing and other infection control measures. For more discussion see: https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1346

In a different Danish study, vaccine effectiveness was different for long-term care facilities (LTCF residents) and frontline healthcare workers (HCW). There were many differences between the groups, so they don't know whether age was a factor, but they do discuss the possibility that age is a factor.

"This could be explained by the higher vulnerability and age distribution in our cohort, a median age of 84 years in LTCF residents compared to 52 years among the trial participants. It is also evident from studies of influenza vaccines, that vaccines are less effective in the elderly."

The Phase 3 clinical trial of the Pfizer vaccine observed a 100% vaccine efficiency for those > age 75 (though this was based on a fairly low # of people, N = 774 vaccinated individuals > age 75) and real world observational data from Israel indicated a 95% protection for those > age 70 (N = ~80,000 vaccinated individuals > age 70). Similar findings have been shown for the Moderna mRNA vaccine.

I'm not sure why the Danish study shows lower vaccine efficiency in LTCF residents vs HCWs. One possibility is that LTCF residents are not representative of older adults and may have more conditions that might reduce vaccine effectiveness (e.g. have conditions or take drugs that cause them to be immunocompromised). Another possibility is that, because the article notes that 86% of LTCF residents were fully vaccinated, the LTCFs reached herd immunity, so unvaccinated residents also experience protection from the vaccinated residents.

 

[PeroK]

Yes, the data suggest that the UK's decision to prioritize first doses over second doses put more people at risk than if they had followed the recommended dosing schedule. The data also suggest that the UK should prioritize second doses for vulnerable populations before they proceed with more relaxation of social distancing and other infection control measures.

The "vulnerable" half of the UK population (about 31 million people who were prioritised) have had both vaccinations. That is done. Relaxation of social distancing has been postponed by four weeks until the 19th of July.

The UK has fully vaccinated 46% of the total population. This compares with 45% for the US, 32% for Germany, 27% for Italy and France. There may be reasons other than vaccination schedule, therefore, that have caused the Delta variant upsurge.

Finally, the UK policy to give all vulnerable people the first vaccine may have saved many thousands of lives, as the Alpha variant was predominant at the time. This was completed by the end of March. Since then, the hospitalisation and fatality rates have remained very low.

The current outbreak is predominantly among young unvaccinated people and school children, hence not immediately resulting in significant hospitalisations and deaths (*).

We're not quite as stupid as you Americans think we are!

(*) I haven't found the figures for how many once-vaccinated people have tested positive. This is a critical piece of information.

 

[atyy]

(*) I haven't found the figures for how many once-vaccinated people have tested positive. This is a critical piece of information.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...ars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201

There's partial information in Table 4 on p12 of https://assets.publishing.service.g...ants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_16.pdf

 

[pinball1970]

This topic, and what I wrote is Covid specific. I can see what caused the misunderstanding (multiple vaccines for the same virus also referenced the 'general' way).

The problem is, that 'bio' immunity for Covid is not reliable. Some asymptotic people got high antibody levels: some none. Some people who got it hard has good levels of antibodies: some none. It's not about 'always'. It's about reliability. It's an unreliable 'sometimes'.
Unlike 'bio', vaccine doses are calibrated to give good, reliable and lasting antibody levels.
Looks like sino-stuff is not that good.
Some vector vaccines can be tricky too, but in general, in case of covid, the 'western' vaccines are giving a far more reliable protection than getting it 'bio'.

This part of the topic started from that half-truth about vaccines generating immunity-bypassing mutants.
Since immunity achieved by vaccines is more reliable in this case => giving less chance to re-infect and infect: keeping the pandemic more curbed, opposing the anti-vaxxer interpretation it's the 'bio' what's troublesome, not the vaccine.

I did not understand where @PeterDonis was going with this, I think I do now (reading back through the posts) but see it as a moot point.
No is Suggesting we consider natural immunity are they?
Just that "natural immunity" may be "better" in the long run for protection against Covid in the future but getting there is not the worth the risk now. CCU, long COVID, NHS cripped, death.

 

[Astronuc]

NEW DELHI—India is warning about new versions of the highly infectious Delta variant of the Coronavirus that are spreading around the country, containing a mutation that the original didn’t have.

Indian officials have dubbed new versions of the variant containing the mutation Delta Plus. Delta Plus—with the mutation causing concern designated K417N—has been detected in at least 11 countries, including the U.S., U.K. and Japan, according to government health agency Public Health England.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/india-warns-of-new-versions-of-delta-variant-spreading/ar-AALrizl

More here: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/covid-delta-variant.1004265/page-2#post-6507156

K417N mentioned here - https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/sars-cov-2-mutations.998345/

 

[pinball1970]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/india-warns-of-new-versions-of-delta-variant-spreading/ar-AALrizl

More here: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/covid-delta-variant.1004265/page-2#post-6507156

K417N mentioned here - https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/sars-cov-2-mutations.998345/

Looking at the figures you would think things are moving in the right direction.
There are still issues in terms of education, primary care and Vaccines.