Even if BA.2.86 does becomes widespread — and proves adept at dodging neutralizing antibodies, which seems likely, on the basis of its set of spike mutations — other forms of immunity will probably stop most people from getting seriously ill if they are infected, Bloom adds.
Ok, still something to keep an eye out, but it might not be that devastating as it once was back in 2019-2020
deleted by creator
T cells.
“Most studies on COVID-19 vaccines have focused on neutralizing antibody (NAb) responses, with little emphasis on cellular immunity. However, accumulating data suggest that T cell responses play an important role in vaccine protection against severe COVID-19 disease, particularly against viral variants that partially escape from recognition by NAbs. These insights have implications for using current COVID-19 vaccines and for developing next-generation vaccines against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases”
deleted by creator
@notacat speaking of those – there is evidence that SARS-CoV-2 sticks around and causes chronic T cell activation, and there are only so many naive T cells the thymus can supply before it shrinks (it normally shrinks with age)
This implies that all covid infections, even those that don’t produce obvious long covid at first, may be prematurely aging the immune system
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.27.23293177v1.full
deleted by creator
As someone who plays a lot of D&D I would not like to keep rolling a 5% chance to die.
imagine playing a slot machine, knowing, on the next use, you have less than a 1% chance of winning big, but 5% chance of dying an excruciating death. or hell, imagine knowing beforehand you had a 5% chance of dying if you leave the front door of your house on a specific day - 5% is insanely high for the risk. or your family is in a group of 100 different families, and 5 are chosen at random to experience the most brutally agonizing period of their life that leaves a lifelong emotional scar from losing someone they loved.
I’m agreeing with you, but I feel equating the end result to a tabletop game just doesn’t communicate the appropriate gravity of the situation to others that may be reading through our inconsequential leavings in this digital void.
Yeah, the Pirola variant has around 30 mutations as compared to other variants recently. The actual effect of these mutations is still being investigated, but what has been uncovered thus far doesn’t look good.
