COVID-19...The Race Against The Variants (ctd).

MutationsMatter
SpikeProteinVille

There will likely be all kinds of chatter, not to mention headlines in the popular prints, over the next few days about how effective the currently approved Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines are against the so called UK (B.1.1.7) and South African (B.1.351) variants.

The reason for this is the slew of new data that are coming out that have experimentally assessed the ability of specific antibodies directed at the viral spike protein to neutralaize the viral variants (don't forget that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines specifically target this protein).

The issue here are the specific mutations (i.e. changes) in the Spike proteins in each variant, which have now been mapped. 

Clearly there is a decrease in the ability of antibodies generated by the vaccines to neutralize both variants with the decrease being greater against the South African variant due to the specific location of the mutations in the latter. However, the decreases are not alarming at this point. 

The details of this are all thoroughly explained based on a thoughtful, critical, and fully cited, analysis of the new data by Derek Lowe in his latest post, here.

I'm super busy today so I'll get back to the details later, but I very much agree with Lowe's current conclusions (which will of course evolve as new data, especially of the clinical variety, come to light) which are the following:

"...What the data are telling us right now is that it definitely looks like vaccination can still handle the variant forms of the coronavirus that we are seeing – but that we also have to be on our guard, because there is no law that says that this protection can’t be breached. Taking public health measures to decrease the spread of the new variants is critical, as is getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible. If we mess either of those up, we are asking for serious trouble..."


Talk to you all later.

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A separate concern, not noted above, is the fact that the antibodies produced by non-vaccinated folks who were previously infected with forms of the virus that are neither B.1.1.7 or B.153 showed a greater decrease in neutralizing activity against the variants...More on the specifics of that later, also, given that this could affect follow on immunity. 

A little off topic but... I want to apologize to those of you who have been frustrated recently by the fact that I've had the 'comment moderation' feature on for the last few weeks. I understand that this decreased discussion in the threads significantly but I've been dealing with a troll problem. This seems to have passed so I've taken the moderation off for now. We'll see how it goes but it  may have to go on again if the waves of conspiracy-driven gobbledy-gook and ad hominem attacks return...Thanks.


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