The vaccine is not a panacea, but it's too early to panic
Source: newsvladimir.ru
The Delta strain ruined everything
The logic of specialists from the very beginning of the pandemic was simple - the more the population receives the coronavirus vaccine, the faster we will cope with the infection.
In the earliest and most optimistic expectations of researchers, there are ideas about achieving herd immunity at 50–55% of those vaccinated. With each passing month, this number has grown and at present it is not at all clear how many vaccinated people are needed to keep COVID-19 in check.
They counted on a gradual emasculation of the lethality of the virus strains. This was the case before - infections in opposition to the immune system slowly weakened, turning into relatively harmless or, as they say now, seasonal diseases. Usually cited as an example of the "Spanish flu", which mowed down several million people at the beginning of the century. Over the course of time, the virus has become obsessed and turned into a modern flu, with which humanity somehow gets along.
But, either the epidemiologists overlooked something, or the coronavirus plays by completely different rules and is not ready to take an example from a distant relative? Instead of behaving like a real parasite and gradually getting used to living with a host, SARS-CoV-2 throws fierce strains into the population. This is what the "Indian virus" or, as it is politically correct to call it, the "delta" strain, has become.
Delta is dangerous because of its unique rate of reproduction in the body.
A small educational program.
All viruses conditionally refer to living beings, since they do not have the function of reproduction outside of other organisms. Any virus needs someone more perfect for the appearance of descendants. At the same time, the destruction of the host is not included in the plans of any virus - it is just that the circumstances develop. In one case, it is possible to bypass the immune system and repeatedly self-replicate without causing much harm, while in the other one has to go to extreme measures and destroy the host.
Despite the fact that viruses do not possess intelligence, they behave quite "consciously" and it seems that the causative agent of COVID-19 is the "smartest" of them. The human population is very large, people live crowded, and viruses can not adhere to the rules of good manners, turning into relatively harmless parasites.
So "delta" disarms the immune system in a new way - with an avalanche-like rate of reproduction in the host's cells. For a conditional day, such a strain releases into the wild a thousand times more copies of itself than the original "Wuhan" virus. And this is amazing, because the initial variants of pathogens, or, as they are called, "wild" variants, are usually the most evil. And here the opposite is true.
COVID-19, quite likely, revealed an important problem of our time - the lack of knowledge of what is happening around.
Until 2020, it seemed to us that epidemiologists and virologists are well aware of the modern microcosm and the rules of behavior in it. They know, of course, but not everyone. Many processes were not completed or were not initiated at all. This is partly to blame for the system of grant support for scientific research - the money is received by those who have managed to prove the relevance of the idea. And at this time in the world of viruses, obviously, amazing and imperceptible evolutions took place. With its own laws and tragedies.
Who would have thought of studying coronaviruses and vaccines against them two years ago?
And now it is a real scientific mainstream and trillions of dollars. So it turned out that the logic of the evolution of the virus is incomprehensible, from the word "absolutely".
Death or vaccine
The COVID-19 large-scale accounting system has been operating in the world for a long time and quite effectively, and in recent months it has been giving depressing results.
As an example of what is happening, Great Britain is well suited, which recently showed 75% of the population enviable for Russia with vaccinations. According to all the scenarios that were discussed six months ago, COVID-19 in this country should be, if not defeated, but surely well crushed?
But on September 13, more than 26 thousand infected are recorded! Almost one and a half times more than in Russia with 25% of vaccinated. Skeptics will say one example confirms the rule rather than refutes it.
Consider the United States, where almost 64% of the population received the two components of the vaccine. But despite this, on September 13, more than 226 thousand Americans were infected in the country!
What does this mean?
First of all, that the vaccinated get sick quite often. For example, in New York on July 19, 5,5 thousand unvaccinated and 2,8 thousand vaccinated were infected with the notorious "delta" strain. At the same time, 65,5% received two components of vaccination in the city.
The notorious herd immunity has been achieved, can we celebrate victory?
But the difference in the number of cases among vaccinated and "anti-vaccine" is only two times makes us think about the advisability of artificial immunity. It would be nice to show here similar Russian statistics, but they are not ready yet, and there will be a lot of questions for it. For example, how to weed out falsely vaccinated people who just bought a certificate for themselves? We still do not know the true volumes of this market, so it is difficult to catch the error here.
But all of the above is true only at first glance.
Understanding the effectiveness of the vaccine comes from taking into account the deaths from the coronavirus. In Great Britain, on September 14, 185 people died (with 26 thousand infected), and in Russia, 781 people died on the same day, with 17,8 thousand infected. By the way, the British still recovered more than fell ill - we have the opposite.
In the United States, on September 13, 2,13 thousand died from coronavirus, about 2,6 times more than the daily deaths from COVID-19 in Russia. But there are more cases than ours, almost 15 times.
The conclusion suggests itself: vaccination is far from a panacea, but it significantly reduces mortality. Even for the "delta" variant. And this is perhaps the most important subtotal of the entire pandemic.
Forecasts, of course, are a thankless task. Especially in the app with the coronavirus history... Everyone who predicted a quick return to normal life back in 2020 is now modestly silent on the sidelines. Nevertheless, the options for the development of events can and should be considered. To convince the hardest vaccine skeptics.
The not very high rates of formation of population immunity have already led to the fact that the virus has a constant and quite large-scale sample for its own evolutionary experiments. The virus refuses to turn into cute and fluffy precisely because of this - everything is fine with it, it will not work to exterminate humanity, since there are still a lot of potential unvaccinated hosts.
With each new aggressive strain, the notorious share of herd immunity is growing steadily. Now scientists, in general, are talking about the need to vaccinate 100% of the population. In particular, this idea was expressed by the virologist Anatoly Altstein. This is impossible in principle, of course. Creeping vaccination gives the virus time to modify and search for new victims.
What prevents a new modification of the S-protein in the virus from appearing and infecting children?
This, by the way, will be a completely different picture of the world and other consequences for the world community and the psyche of people.
New, more dangerous variants of COVID-19 will require different types of vaccines from virologists. And this, in turn, can lead to the emergence of superviruses that are resistant to all drugs and drugs.
And these are far from horror stories - antibiotic-resistant disease-causing bacteria were one of the main medical problems of the century before COVID-19. Due to constant stress, bacteria have evolved into pathogens that take nothing at all.
We are told that viruses are not capable of this, they say, they are too primitive. However, the events of recent months only confirm the inability of doctors to predict events, scientists - to make adequate forecasts, and ordinary people - to rally in the face of a global threat. Every man for himself is an excellent breeding ground for new strains of coronavirus.
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