Covid 1/23/21 | COVID 19 Information Page

Covid19mathblog.com

Confusing message for vaccine – particular those requiring two shots – personally I would lean towards to one shot vaccine just due to implementation issue and how busy peoples lives can get – https://www.post-gazette.com/news/covid-19/2021/01/23/CDC-2nd-shot-can-be-other-vaccine/stories/202101240114

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quietly changed its recommendations for coronavirus immunizations to allow patients to switch the authorized vaccines between the first and second doses in “exceptional situations,” and to extend the interval between doses to six weeks, even though such changes have not been studied in large clinical trials.”

“With respect to dosing, the guidance says the second dose should be administered as close as possible to the recommended interval — three weeks for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and four weeks for Moderna. But if that is “not feasible,” the agency wrote, the interval between doses may be extended to six weeks.”

Not the most optimistic article on our vaccine approach which is very systematic – https://theprint.in/opinion/why-a-mucosal-covid-vaccine-has-a-better-shot-at-ending-the-pandemic/589821/

“A systemic vaccine against a mucosal pathogen may reduce disease severity, but may not impact the infectivity and spreading of the pathogen. The systemic Covid-19 vaccines available or undergoing evaluation will be able to induce IgG antibodies and other protective immune cells in the blood, but are unlikely to induce mucosal IgA antibody production, as demonstrated in the monkey immunisations.

This is because the nature of antibodies generated in these two compartments — in case of natural infection or by a vaccine — is different. A systemic vaccine injected into the muscles induces the production of IgG antibodies, not IgA antibodies that can block a respiratory virus from attaching to a host cell there. Only a mucosal vaccine can stimulate the production of IgA antibodies.

The IgG antibodies present in the blood can reach the mucosal layers, but this process is inefficient. So even if a high concentration of IgG antibodies is present in the blood after a successful systemic vaccination, sufficient quantities of these antibodies may not reach the upper respiratory tract to prevent viral infection or stop the spread of the viruses to other subjects. For nearly all mucosal infections, the real sign of protection is the presence of elevated IgA levels in the respiratory compartment.

Although mucosal vaccines can elicit IgA antibodies, these vaccines suffer from a limitation — that mucosal responses induced by them usually are not long-lasting.”

“A good Covid vaccine must protect at three different levels. First, the vaccine must induce IgA antibodies in the upper respiratory tract where the coronavirus attaches initially and prevent viral infection. The virus subsequently spreads to the lower respiratory tract and the lungs. We need a combination of IgA and IgG antibodies to stop the viral expansion to the lungs, which only a mucosal, but not a systemic, vaccine can do.

Second, in a minority of subjects, the virus can disseminate to systemic body organelles, such as the brain, gut, liver, heart, etc. A systemic vaccine can minimise disease severity by preventing viral dissemination. Lastly, the virus will spread to other subjects through aerosol droplets generated in the upper respiratory tract. Only IgA antibodies can prevent the shedding of viral particles by this route.”

Policy makers make rules but there is little evidence either way certain rules will be effective. Challenges arise particularly when culture and human behavior is not accounted for. Article here questions curfews effectiveness and uses China as evidence of effectiveness. US society and policing of the rules cannot be farther from China. IF curfews and quarantine would be followed by all and have strict enforcement it would work. HOWEVER the reality is the people in charge of policing in general don’t support that lifestyle either. Therefore cheating occurs with individuals going out and then gathering INDOORS in secrecy which is probably the worse one can do without a change in ventilation systems. CO2 readings should be standard now. We should all carry CO2 sensors and realize if an area is not well ventilated. Public places should be measuring this and reducing this metric. But yet we are focus on RULES/POLICING vs solving the issue – https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/health/coronavirus-curfews.html

“One study, published recently in Science, analyzed data from Hunan Province, in China, at the start of the outbreak. Curfews and lockdown measures, the researchers concluded, had a paradoxical effect: These restrictions reduced the spread within the community, but raised the risk of infection within households, reported Kaiyuan Sun, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, and his colleagues.

Dr. Longini and his colleagues incorporated lockdowns and curfews into models of the pandemic in the United States, and concluded that they can be an effective way to reduce transmission.”

Bright side still under 4K daily deaths in US