It’s not so much “break through” as natural selection. Viruses are unlike living things, because they’re always evolving. Their reproduction is imperfect, so even within one person’s body you’re going to have a whole cloud of variants, some of them better at reproducing than others (and probably some better at getting shed than others). If the body does something that reduces the viability of some portion of that cloud (like mounting an immune response) then the remaining portions of the cloud are almost by definition going to make up a higher percentage of the detectable viral population.
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They were designed to prevent the worst symptoms of Covid, not stave off infection. There are some encouraging signs that they may also prevent infection and spread, but that is all preliminary at this point.
Which is why masks and social distancing are as important as they were before we had the vaccines, and why all the reopening going on is premature.
Edit: and I am forgetting testing, tracing, and quarantining.
Seems like that would make sense.
Me? Yes.
Edit: of what relevance is that?
(edit: removed quote from bonvivant that was not relevant)
Reply to caifdemdreamer;
Vaccination can’t “cause” variants to occur. But vaccination does apply selective pressure that could result increased prevalence of resistant variants, just as use of antibiotics will select for pathogens that are resistant to those antibiotics.
The general evolutionary principle is that selective pressure does not cause evolutionary change. That would constitute “inheritance of acquired characteristics” - Lamarckism -which is generally discredited. Instead, selective pressure increases the likelihood of survival of organisms that have certain genotypes that provide resistance or immunity to the pressure. The genetic and biological mechanisms behind this are well-established.
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That is not a scientific article. It is a lay article based on a small scale study that is not peer-reviewed. That doesn’t mean that the conclusion is necessarily false, of course.
With widespread vaccination, there will be more and more data on exactly how frequent post- vaccination infection is, how viral variation plays into this and how the three vaccines in use in the US may differ in post-vaccination infection rates. Information may also emerge on how host genetic variation plays into this, in particular the variation of HLA genes that encode proteins that allow antigen-presenting cells to present antigens to B and T cells. I’m enrolled in a study that tests for antibodies every 8 weeks after vaccination, combined with weekly questionnaires. 16 weeks out and I’ve tested positive for antibodies both times (Pfizer vaccine). Alas, they don’t give you your antibody titer!
However, it is enough at this point to know that at some level there can be infection after vaccination, so that being “fully vaccinated” does not mean you are home free. But, the likelihood is that if you are infected after vaccination, the severity of disease should be considerably reduced.
A corollary of that is that if you are infected after vaccination, you may still produce infectious virus.
A second corollary is that if you are infected after vaccination, the levels of viral replication in you will be considerably reduced, so the likelihood of the virus acquiring a mutation is also reduced. Variants are most likely to occur in patients that are highly viremic (having lots of virus) and that the primary selection for the variants will not be pathogenicity but infectivity. Of course, more infectious virus may well be more pathogenic, because the infection should spread more rapidly within your tissues after infection. It is always a race between the infection and the immune response. Your immune response has a considerable head start if you’ve been vaccinated - but more infectious variants will have an advantage - not just in their infectivity but they also may have a spike protein that does not bind well some of the antibodies elicited by the vaccine. A solution to this will be vaccine that contain sequences of variant spike proteins (and the pharma companies are already on this).
Anyway, there are plenty of good reasons to proceed with caution after vaccination - both to limit your exposure and to reduce the likelihood of your transmission of the virus to others if you are infected after vaccination.
For “more vaccines” I was referring to Michigan as a whole.
Regarding logistics, it means making it easy for people to get vaccines. Easy transportation to vaccination centers. Flexible timing around jobs etc.
Maybe this isn’t technically logistics, but if the population has anti-vax attitudes, then a public education campaign is necessary also.
Easy transportation to vaccination centers. Done.
Flexible timing around jobs etc. This part’s a work in progress, tbh
if the population has anti-vax attitudes, then a public education campaign is necessary also. Yep. Which is why the City is also working on that
Gross assumption on your part. I’ll stick this in my “Duh File”.
Which is exactly what I called it. An Israeli study. And I wrote that IF it bears out. I made no claims about its accuracy or veracity.
But Israel did a couple other small studies that were very similar in scope and that resulted in Pfizer reprinting them and citing them as gospel proving their vaccine is GREAT. They were not peer reviewed either.
.And those other two small Israeli studies of a positive nature were reprinted or cited all over the media and also by Pfizer as nearly irrefutable proof.
But really, I don’t care. What will matter is the real world data from the millions vaccinated. And that data will be gone over and over. And in 6 months or so, we should know a lot more.
Although there is some evidence – limited studies blah blah – that some bacteria under stress experience higher mutation rates and hence evolve more rapidly. (There is also some evidence for limited inheritance of acquired characteristics in epigenetics, although the term “acquired” might be pushing the envelope – TL;DR is that if one of your ancestors undergoes an event that results in turning some gene on or off, you may inherit the new state of that gene. The variation was already implicitly present, but its expression was the result of a life event, and it is potentially heritable.)
I have no idea whether there’s anything in the cellular environment that might cause Covid-19 genes to do a better or worse job of proofreading the next generation.
That’s because Detroiters won’t avail themselves of a $2 car ride to and from a drive-through vaccination center – despite these are located all over the city
Pfizer and Moderna are 95% effective. That means your chances of getting the virus are 1/20th what they would be unvaccinated.
The current virus prevalence in Michigan is 20 times what is was July 1, 2020 in Michigan. Mitigations are absolutely needed until we grind virus prevalence into the dirt.
If we can have bookmobiles and food trucks we can have vaxmobiles.
Detroit has already announced mobile vaccinations. Don’t look like we’ll ever have a bookmobile though. Not even sure how many can read
I haven’t seen a bookmobile since I was in grade school. I was born in 1951… so that’s a long time ago.
Do they still have bookmobiles anywhere?
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Ah…so you have some method to micro-mange dose allotment so you only screw over specific folks.
Calm down, rage posting and you get silly.
Do RNA-based viruses even have epigenetics? I mean I don’t actually know the answer to this, but I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere
You said, “Because the vaccines are palliatives, and don’t appear to prevent infection or spread”
Which was silly. End of.