COVID model - Bio stats observations and questions

[WFJ]

I have absolutely no training in Bio stats or anything to do with virus theory/practice/treatment, please fill in the blanks in my knowledge if anyone is experienced in these areas. Please refrain from "But your killing my grandma" from vaxxer nation or "Bill Gates will control your thoughts after vaccinated" anti-vaxxer nation comments. But from a game theory perspective, I am growing weary of the treatment strategy deployed across the world, possible unintended consequences and wonder if anyone with more training in this area can weigh in.

Back in January 2020, there appeared to be three distinct treatment strategies to follow.

1. Do nothing, let the human race and each individuals natural immunity deal with the virus, understanding that many will pass or become sick, but those who survive will be well equipped for most future COVID and related viruses (maybe the Sweden model as reported but have no experience with the implementation). "To do nothing is also a good remedy" Some old dead white guy

2. Develop several vaccines, select the best one and deploy across the world as quickly as possible. This would take a little bit longer in the beginning, but once economies of scale were developed in manufacturing and distribution, more vaccines would be available to more of the world's population more quickly. This would also allow scientist to reliably estimate the who, what when of a booster shot, track effectiveness relative to personal characteristics, location, climate, and track potential virus mutations related to the one vaccine. Actually use the scientific method, developed by a collection of other old dead white guys, to solve this problem.

3. Panic the public and develop as many vaccines as possible, distribute all the vaccines all over the world on a first come first serve haphazard method assuming doing something is better than doing nothing. This is where my training ends and just speculating, but if there are 10 different vaccines being used across varying areas in all kinds of frequencies and durations, the situation has created an explosion in permutations for the virus to potentially mutate into something more difficult to control, more dangerous or both. This explosion in treatment permutations would make any future health recommendations worthless. As different vaccines are deployed across the world to populations with different characteristics, in different frequencies/durations, the virus will be provided with a geometric increase in stimulus/conditions to mutate. Without any training in the area, one could predict an explosion in mutations in a strategy #3 world

My personal opinion would have been to follow strategy #1, but this is politically impossible to let people die although this may prove to have been the best strategy in the long run for the human race. Strategy #2 would have required planning, intelligence, honesty and trust across world governments and media, all of which are in short supply or non-existent. Strategy #3 is the best short term strategy and the best for politicians with a short term elections or want to virtue signal with daily press conferences, but from a pure game theory perspective, quite risky. Strategy #3 may also require a lifetime of vaccines to respond to the endless mutations caused by the delivery of different vaccines, at different times in different locations.

From a game theory perspective, once one person is vaccinated, all other players must vaccinate or will be setting themselves up to be a host for both the original virus and any virus mutations. The unvaccinated are not putting anyone else in danger, but allowing themselves to be a control group in this uncontrol-able experiment.

For anyone with Bio/virus training, does the implantation of several vaccines increase the potential for mutations? Are we entering a mutation permutation scenario of madness? The strategy followed appears to create an explosion of outcomes, increasing the probability that one or more mutations will be worse than the original virus. The "cure" may be worse than the disease

[Jean]

There are two different things.
Thé mutation rate is proportional to the viral charge over the whole population. This is why people want to vaccine everybody.
Thén, there is sélection pressure over variant that vaccination can't stop.
The question for any pandemic situation is "Can vaccinnes keep the probably that a vacciné résistant variant appears significatively bellow 1"
This is where m'y knowledge ends.

[Dream of Freedom]

So how would you know what the best vaccine is? We don't know what the long term side effects are with any of them, because they haven't existed long enough. One might increase your chances of a horrible condition 5 years from now and we won't know (covid itself could have long term effects we don't know about yet too). Why put all your eggs in one basket?

[ducknald_don]

We don't know what the long term side effects are with any of them, because they haven't existed long enough.

After 4.5 billion doses I suspect we would have a good idea by now.

[Lemon]

So there are many issues with option '1'. "Killing Grandma' is a bit of an oversimplification. Yes most of the people who die from COVID are older. But there are also those who are younger and unlucky or more vulnerable who also die. Plus you overwhelm the healthcare system given basically all systems who did something like this initially did get to hospital overwhelm - That means other care is affected. Plus the moral injury to staff and resulting shortages it causes afterwords - See the US and UK for this. This would have been worse under scenario 1. These are real costs you have to factor in to the strategy. The other issue is people are still going to change their behaviour when there are bodies pilling up outside hospitals and oxygen shortages are all over the news. So you don't also get some sort of magical scenario of behaviour stays the same and the economy is unaffected by a load of extra deaths of 'grandma'. Plus long COVID etc. But you didn't want that side of things.

Past the costs of this, it doesn't work. 'Wild type' immunity isn't superior to 'Vaccine type'. You can get reinfected with COVID pretty soon after catching it the first time. This is because COVID is more like Flu than Smallpox. Infection doesn't grant you permanent or sterilising immunity. So you can still get 'wild type' immunity escape. In fact 'wild type' immunity has less evidence for long duration than 'vaccine type' immunity at present. Impossible to know how that plays out over decades, because we are not even 2 years in. But ability to mutate varies virus to virus. COVID mutates more than some and less than others but certainly enough 1 'wild type' infection isn't going to cover you for decades.

2&3 are basically the same thing with different numbers of vaccines being trialed. Fewer vaccines trials just reduces your chances of getting an efficacious one. Given the massive potential impact of COVID throwing large amounts at the problem and seeing what sticks was pretty reasonable and given even the most expensive vaccines are well <$100/head has come out as a massive investment compared to hit to the economy (this is generally true of most vaccines for all but the most trivial diseases - ROI is normally massive on an public health scale). 'Actually use the scientific method' what do you mean? all these vaccines have gone through trials and have proven efficacy and EVERYONE is looking at their effectiveness in variants. We can't use RCTs for data anymore because it wouldn't be moral at this point to have a control arm - there is not equipoise because all approved vaccines still are effective against all known variants to a great or lesser degree. Unsurprisingly they do not give sterilising immunity just like 'wild type' immunity. Yes the vaccines provide selection pressure to circumvent them but....so does 'wild type' immunity! See the delta variant appearing in an essentially unvaccinated population (india) and being far more problematic. Indeed you could make an argument that more vaccines gives your more backups - if you have 5 vaccines in production the odds of a variant completely nullifying all of them is less than 'one good one'

Genetic mutations happen in a way proportional to replication rate and the selection pressure. So high replication rate (infections) increases the number of mutations and so potential for a mutation that is beneficial to the virus. Selection pressure will determine which of these mutations are beneficial to the virus. But reduce the replication rate enough and mutations reduce and so ability to become resistant to a given treatment (vaccine, drug, whatever) reduces significantly. This is how treatment for HIV works - You take a bunch of pills that stop the virus reproducing and because you use multiple drugs and massively drop replication to near zero you can control the virus in an infected individual. If instead of using 3 drugs you use say, 1 the replication rate doesn't drop as much and you only have 1 not 3 different things the virus need to mutate and get around and so resistance can develop rapidly. So the idea being more vaccinated > reduced spread > reduced replication > reduced likelihood of 'escape variants.

The most likely endgame with all this is COVID becoming ' a bit like flu' and so an endemic virus that at uncertain points in the future can lead to further pandemics. This is likely in options 1,2 and 3. Total number of diseases we have eradicated stands at 1 and at best we might push it to 2 anytime soon and number two I will go all in on being 'not COVID'.

[Dream of Freedom]

After 4.5 billion doses I suspect we would have a good idea by now.

We have great data on the short term effects, but you shouldn't just think that observing tons of short term data equals observing over the long term. Some things take time to play out. You could observe chimps for a month after mating and conclude that offspring never result from sex. Or follow ERE people for 3 months after beginning ERE and not see any become financially independent. I hope you're right anyways and there are no side effects, but from a risk management point of view I think diversifying is a good idea.

[ducknald_don]

Some things take time to play out.

They do but in most biological processes you usually see a few unlucky individuals that develop disease early just as you might come across an individual who ERE's early after a windfall. The chances that we have stored up a problem that is going to unfold in ten or twenty years looks minuscule to me.

[boomly]

From the viruses standpoint, there is no difference between a vaccinated individual and a previously infected one.
The virus evolves to evade those who have some immunity to the virus, not specifically vaccinated people.

A "vaccine-evading" strain could just as easily evolve in a population of previously infected individuals who have no vaccinations. It would really be a "human immune system evading" strain.

These strains start evolving and becoming dominant if we tarry right at the edge of herd immunity, but don't quite get to it. Currently, the delta variant has evolved to rapidly spread through non-resistant populations. Yes, we do hear of some re-infections, and "break-through" infections, but the majority of the delta's fodder is naïve immune systems. As long as it has lots of completely non-resistant individuals to infect, immune-evading strains will not be dominant.

If we mess around for a long time where a large portion of the population is resistant (either through vaccines or infection - doesn't matter), yet there's enough non-resistant individuals to keep things going, the opportunities for an immune-resistant strain to develop increase.

[boomly]

Jacob will almost certainly unceremoniously dump this thread in the locked politics section, so I might as well make a pro-vaccine argument.

The side effects from vaccines are the same as side effects from viral infections, because they mimic viral infections.
The various auto-immune disorders, blood clots, etc. - You can get those just as easily from the virus, or actually more easily, since the virus doesn't give a shit, and vaccine manufacturers try to limit the side-effects from their vaccines.

So, you can get resistance from the virus with a vaccine that has a small chance of side effects, and no nasty viral disease.
OR
You can get resistance with a viral infection, which carries the same side effects, but also causes a nasty viral disease.

[Solvent]

I'm genuinely puzzled as to why OP thinks #3 on his list results in more mutations than any other path. Shouldn't #1 be the path to more mutations? Resistance to the disease following vaccination is stronger than resistance following a natural infection, as I understand it.

[Bankai]

Just want to say thanks to @Lemon for a very informative post.

[Ego]

'Wild type' immunity isn't superior to 'Vaccine type'.

That is simply not true.

Last year I posted this from MIT Technology Review. In early 2020 at the very beginning of the pandemic a group of geneticists including George Church from Harvard experimented on themselves with a nasal spray administered (traditional) peptide vaccine.

A nasal vaccine is easier to administer than one which must be injected and, in Church’s opinion, is an overlooked option in the covid-19 vaccine race. He says only five out of about 199 covid vaccines listed as in development use nasal delivery, even though some researchers think it’s the best approach.

A vaccine delivered into the nose could create what’s called mucosal immunity, or immune cells present in the tissues of the airway. Such local immunity may be an important defense against SARS-CoV-2. But unlike antibodies that appear in the blood, where they are easily detected, signs of mucosal immunity might require a biopsy to identify.

Natural infection occurs in the respiratory tract. It provokes a response by our innate immune system. T-cells, NK-cells.... When we inject the vaccine directly into the muscle it skips that entire process. Children are not vulnerable to covid in large part because of their robust innate immunity.

This is because COVID is more like Flu than Smallpox. Infection doesn't grant you permanent or sterilising immunity. So you can still get 'wild type' immunity escape. In fact 'wild type' immunity has less evidence for long duration than 'vaccine type' immunity at present.

That's because the "evidence" is antibodies. Antibodies are not produced in people with robust innate immunity because their system kills the virus before it ever gets to the antibody building stage. Again, we knew it was more like flu than smallpox in the first months of 2020 yet we continued to follow the smallpox playbook.

The most likely endgame with all this is COVID becoming ' a bit like flu' and so an endemic virus that at uncertain points in the future can lead to further pandemics. This is likely in options 1,2 and 3. Total number of diseases we have eradicated stands at 1 and at best we might push it to 2 anytime soon and number two I will go all in on being 'not COVID'.

Fait accompli in December 2019. At that point Covid had spread so far and wide. It was unstoppable. Unsolvable. But we hate unsolvable problems so we do things that allow us to feel like we are doing something.

PS. I am vaccinated.

[Ego]

Duplicate

[Mister Imperceptible]

PS. I am vaccinated.

Interesting you considered that this was in any way necessary to add legitimacy to what you wrote above it.

[Ego]

Interesting you considered that this was in any way necessary to add legitimacy to what you wrote above it.

I will double down. I got the prophylactic rabies jabs before traveling around India by motorcycle. Rabies is endemic in India and dogs, rabid or not, like to chase motorcycles. I got the shingles vaccine after a few people I know (one here) mentioned how terrible a shingles outbreak is. I actually paid to get the pneumonia vaccine even though I am not old enough for my insurance to pay for it because I believe (may be wrong) that the more times I am vaccinated against the 23 types of pneumococcal bacteria that cause pneumonia, the less likely it is that I will die from it in later life. The next time we travel to a country where they administer the BCG vaccine I will be getting it for the potential non-specific immunity it appears to provide for sepsis, yellow fever, influenza, auto-immune diabetes, covid and even cancer.

I am a big believer in vaccines. Many with strong opinions about covid vaccination are the opposite. So, yes, it needs to be said.

[Mister Imperceptible]

What does a rabies vaccine, or a pneumonia vaccine, or a shingles vaccine (all of them voluntary) (and for that matter, a smallpox vaccine or a polio vaccine)…

….have to do with a mandating as necessary an experimental Covid vaccine for which the manufacturers have a no liability clause, which received only conditional emergency approval, with no long term studies, being pushed by a government that considers its citizens to be domestic terrorists?



Did the authorities who developed the rabies vaccine and pneumonia vaccine and shingles vaccine consider people who did not take it to be domestic terrorists?

Are people being accused of domestic terrorism for being skeptical of the Covid vaccine more or less likely to trust the Covid vaccine after being accused of terrorism, and any of the other measures being taken by the same political bodies pushing that Covid vaccine (and also accusing them of terrorism)?

[white belt]

@MI

I’m not seeing any of that language in the actual Terrorism Alert: https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/natio ... st-13-2021

[white belt]

Edit - After reading the PDF version, this is the only statement that comes close:

There are also continued, non-specific calls for violence on multiple online platforms associated with DVE ideologies or conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud and alleged reinstatement, and responses to anticipated restrictions relating to the increasing COVID cases.

Regardless, any COVID-19 thread at this juncture is going to be locked down due to inevitably turning into political arguments (just like the last 2 COVID-19 threads).

[Mister Imperceptible]

@MI

I’m not seeing any of that language in the actual Terrorism Alert: https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/natio ... st-13-2021

Right there in the first bullet point, which NBC summarized as “Opposition to Covid measures”:

“Through the remainder of 2021, racially- or ethnically-motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and anti-government/anti-authority violent extremists will remain a national threat priority for the United States. These extremists may seek to exploit the emergence of COVID-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks.”

Opposition to Covid measures is now associated with being what they call an “RMVE.”

[chenda]

It seems eminently plausible that covid measures could motivate violence in the sense outlined in the government report.

But maybe we could avoid a thread lockdown and return to the science. I also appreciated @lemons post above and would be interested in hearing a further reply if lemon is so minded.