The COVID-19 Science and Medicine Question Thread

[New COVID-19 vaccine coming in the fall ]('https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/covid-vaccines-expected-fall/story?id=87623728')

[New COVID-19 vaccine coming in the fall]('https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/covid-vaccines-expected-fall/story?id=87623728')

to a theater near you...........................

:)

[interesting]('https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/type-frequency-animals-coming-down-182808441.html')

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/new-covid-boosters-could-mark-turning-point-in-pandemic-191546745.html[/URL]

[HEADING=2][SIZE=6]What to Know About the New Booster Shots[/SIZE][/HEADING]
New shots targeting the latest version of the Omicron variant will be available soon. When should you get yours? Here’s what experts recommend.

With fall and winter looming, along with an anticipated seasonal surge in Covid cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention greenlit [a new tool]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/health/covid-omicron-vaccines.html') for battling the pandemic: updated booster shots. The Food and Drug Administration [authorized the shots]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/us/politics/covid-booster-shots-variants.html') earlier this week.

The new shots target the Omicron subvariant BA.5, the dominant version of the virus. Here’s what you need to know.
[HEADING=1]When will new boosters be available?[/HEADING]
The [updated boosters could roll out]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/health/covid-omicron-vaccines.html') within days.

It typically takes around one to two weeks after you get the shot for your antibodies to “kick in,” Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, said.

[HEADING=1]Where can I get the new booster shot?[/HEADING]
The new vaccine will most likely be available at pharmacies, doctors’ offices and community health centers. Many mass-vaccination clinics across the country [have closed]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/28/health/covid-vaccines-money.html'), so you may have to seek out a new vaccination site. You can search a directory of sites at [vaccines.gov.]('https://www.vaccines.gov/')

[HEADING=1]What is the difference between the Pfizer and Moderna boosters?[/HEADING]
Beyond the difference in age criteria, there is no practical difference between shots, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. “From your body’s immune system perspective, it doesn’t remember which brand it is,” he said.

[HEADING=1]Will this Omicron-specific booster entirely replace the other boosters?[/HEADING]
The new booster shot is a bivalent vaccine, meaning that it targets two versions of the coronavirus: the original strain, and the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. The previous booster shot targeted only the original version of the virus.

The new shots will most likely become the only available boosters. The F.D.A. no longer authorizes the previous booster doses for people in the approved age groups. People who have not received their first doses of the vaccine will still receive the original vaccines that were rolled out in late 2020.

[HEADING=1]How long should I wait to get the new booster if I recently had a shot or got Covid?[/HEADING]
The F.D.A. authorized the updated boosters for people who were at least two months out from their last shot (whether that was the original vaccine or a booster), but you might want to wait longer. An advisory panel to the C.D.C. voted to recommend the same interval between doses, although several members voiced concerns that two months was too short.

Doctors and immunologists said that in general, people should wait around four to six months after immunization or infection.

That’s because your body will probably not generate much of an immune response so soon after a previous encounter with the virus, Dr. Gordon said. “Your immunity level is so high that you’ll just neutralize immediately the antigen that’s being produced — you kind of reach a ceiling,” she said. “You don’t have that much higher to go.”

[HEADING=1]Does the new booster offer better protection than past ones?[/HEADING]
The previous booster shots provided [robust protection]('https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7129e1.htm?s_cid=mm7129e1_w') against severe disease. There were, however, people who had breakthrough infections even shortly after receiving booster shots, [including President Biden]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/health/biden-covid-booster.html').

Doctors expect the newest iteration of boosters to offer more protection against breakthrough infections, but they won’t be bulletproof. “It’s not a game-changer,” Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said. “But it is going to be better.”

There is not yet real-world data on how these bivalent vaccines perform in humans. Infectious disease experts compared the process of creating the new boosters to that of the annual flu shot, which is updated each year and primarily tested on animals, not humans.

“I’m not worried at all,” Dr. Chin-Hong said. “They’re not using any new ingredients. It’s like you’re still making brownies — you’re still using chocolate, sugar, flour. Maybe now you’re using more chocolate.”

[HEADING=1]Will there be more boosters in the future?[/HEADING]
It’s unclear whether this will be the last Covid booster offered, or whether there will be new boosters on a regular basis. The United States could offer the vaccine each year around the fall, similar to the flu vaccine, if the virus surges become predictable, Dr. Chin-Hong said.

But the pandemic’s trajectory has been anything but straightforward, and it’s hard to anticipate the state of the virus over the next few months, let alone the next few years. If the virus had not evolved, we probably would not need any new shots now, Dr. Crotty said, adding, “It’s really up to the virus.”

The realities of viral evolution...

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Why Omicron Might Stick Around[/SIZE][/HEADING]
Omicron, the 13th named variant of the coronavirus, seems to have a remarkable capacity to evolve new tricks.

Where is Pi?

Last year, the World Health Organization began assigning [Greek letters]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/health/covid-variant-names-india-delta.html?searchResultPosition=3') to worrying new variants of the coronavirus. The organization [started]('https://www.who.int/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants') with Alpha and swiftly worked its way through the Greek alphabet in the months that followed. When Omicron arrived in November, it was the 13th named variant in less than a year.

But 10 months have passed since Omicron’s debut, and the next letter in line, Pi, has yet to arrive.
That does not mean SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, has stopped evolving. But it may have entered a new stage. Last year, more than a dozen ordinary viruses independently transformed into major new public health threats. But now, all of the virus’s most significant variations are descending from a single lineage: Omicron.

“Based on what’s being detected at the moment, it’s looking like future SARS-CoV-2 will evolve from Omicron,” said David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow.

It’s also looking like Omicron has a remarkable capacity for more evolution. One of the newest subvariants, called BA.2.75.2, can evade immune responses better than all earlier forms of Omicron.

For now, BA.2.75.2 is extremely rare, making up just[ .05 percent ]('https://cov-spectrum.org/explore/World/AllSamples/Past3M/variants?nextcladePangoLineage=BA.2.75.2&')of the coronaviruses that have been sequenced worldwide in the past three months. But that was once true of other Omicron subvariants that later came to dominate the world. If BA.2.75.2 becomes widespread this winter, it may blunt the effectiveness of the newly authorized [boosters]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/us/politics/covid-booster-shots-variants.html?searchResultPosition=8') from Moderna and Pfizer.

Every time SARS-CoV-2 replicates inside of a cell, it might mutate. On rare occasions, a mutation might help SARS-CoV-2 replicate faster. Or it might help the virus evade antibodies from previous bouts of Covid.

Such a beneficial mutation might become more common in a single country before fading away. Or it might take over the world.

At first, SARS-CoV-2 followed the slow and steady course that scientists had expected based on other coronaviruses. Its evolutionary tree gradually split into branches, each gaining a few mutations. Evolutionary biologists kept track of them with codes that were useful but obscure. No one else paid much attention to the codes, because they made little difference to how sick the viruses made people.

But then one lineage, initially known as [B.1.1.7]('https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/health/coronavirus-mutations-B117-variant.html'), defied expectations. When British scientists discovered it, in December 2020, they were surprised to find it bore a unique sequence of 23 mutations. Those mutations allowed it to spread much faster than other versions of the virus.

Within a few months, several other worrying variants came to light around the world — each with its own combination of mutations, each with the potential to spread quickly and cause a surge of deaths. To make it easier to communicate about them, the W.H.O. came up with its Greek system. B.1.1.7 became Alpha.

Different variants experienced varying levels of success. Alpha came to dominate the world, whereas [Beta]('https://covariants.org/variants/20H.Beta.V2') took over only in South Africa and a few other countries before petering out.

What made the variants even more puzzling was that they arose independently. Beta did not descend from Alpha. Instead, it arose with its own set of new mutations from a [different branch]('https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global/6m?dmax=2022-01-01&l=radial') of the SARS-CoV-2 tree. The same held true for all the Greek-named variants, up to Omicron.

It’s likely that most of these variants got their mutations by going into hiding. Instead of jumping from one host to another, they created chronic infections in people with weakened immune systems.
[]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/books/review/celeste-ng-our-missing-hearts.html?action=click&algo=identity&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=708104949&impression_id=889add52-3a62-11ed-9014-45c6f95b00d8&index=2&pgtype=Article&pool=editors-picks-ls&region=ccolumn&req_id=617233226&surface=home-featured&variant=0_identity')
Unable to mount a strong attack, these victims harbored the virus for months, allowing it to accumulate mutations. When it eventually emerged from its host, the virus had a startling range of new abilities — finding new ways to invade cells, weaken the immune system and evade antibodies.

“When it gets out, it’s like an invasive species,” said Ben Murrell, a computational biologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Omicron did [particularly well]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/science/omicron-mutations-evolution.html') in this genetic lottery, gaining more than 50 new mutations that helped it find new routes into cells and to infect people who had been vaccinated or previously infected. As it spread around the world and caused an unprecedented [spike]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/22/us/omicron-cases-us-deaths.html?searchResultPosition=154') in cases, it drove most other variants to extinction.

“The genetic innovations seen in Omicron were far more profound, as if it was a new species rather than just a new strain,” said Darren Martin, a virologist at the University of Cape Town.

But it soon became clear that the name “Omicron” hid a complex reality. After the original Omicron virus evolved in the fall of 2022, its descendants split into at least five branches, known as BA.1 through BA.5.

Over the next few months, the subvariants took turns rising to dominance. BA.1 went first, but it was soon outcompeted by BA.2. Each one was distinct enough from the others to evade some of the immunity of its predecessors. By this summer, BA.5 was on the rise.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration responded by inviting vaccine makers to produce booster shots that included a BA.5 protein along with one from the original version of the virus. Those boosters are now rolling out to the public, at a time when BA.5 is causing 85 percent of all Covid cases in the United States.

But BA.5 could be fading in the rearview mirror by winter, scientists said. Omicron has continued to evolve — likely by sometimes jumping among hosts, and sometimes hiding for months in one of them.

Since these new lineages belong to Omicron, they haven’t gotten a Greek letter of their own. But that doesn’t mean they’re just a slight twist on the original. Antibodies that could latch onto earlier forms of Omicron fare poorly against the newer ones.

“They could arguably have been given different Greek letters,” Dr. Robertson said.

BA.2.75.2 is among the newest of Omicron’s grandchildren, identified [just last month]('https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/963'). It’s also the most evasive Omicron yet, according to Dr. Murrell. In lab experiments, he and his colleagues tested BA.2.75.2 against 13 monoclonal antibodies that are either in clinical use or in development. It evaded all but one of them, bebtelovimab, made by Eli Lilly.

They also tested the antibodies from recent blood donors in Sweden. BA.2.75.2 did substantially better at escaping those defenses than other Omicron subvariants did.

The researchers posted their [study]('https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.16.508299v2') online on Friday. Researchers at Peking University reached similar conclusions in a [study]('https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.15.507787v1') posted the same day. Both have yet to be published in a scientific journal.

Dr. Murrell cautioned that scientists have yet to run experiments that will show the effectiveness of BA.5 booster shots against BA.2.75.2. He suspected that getting a big supply of BA.5 antibodies would provide some protection, especially against severe disease.

“It’s still important, but we’ll have to wait for the data to come out to see exactly what the magnitude of the boosting effect is,” Dr. Murrell said.

There’s no reason to expect that BA.2.75.2 will be the end of the evolutionary line. As immunity builds to previous versions of Omicron, new versions will be able to evolve that can evade it.

“I don’t think it’s going to hit a wall in the mutational space,” said Daniel Sheward, a postdoctoral researcher at the Karolinska Institute and co-author on the new study.

Lorenzo Subissi, an infectious disease expert with the W.H.O., said that the organization was not giving Greek letters to lineages like BA.2.75.2 because they are much like the original Omicron viruses. For example, it appears that all Omicron lineages use a [distinctive route]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/health/covid-omicron-lung-cells.html') to get into cells. As a result, it is less likely to lead to severe infections but possibly better able to spread than previous variants.

“W.H.O. only names a variant when it is concerned that additional risks are being created that require new public health action,” Dr. Subissi said. But he did not rule out a Pi in our future.

“This virus still remains largely unpredictable,” he said.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-next-us-covid-wave-is-coming-why-it-will-be-much-weirder-than-before-200044795.html[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-next-us-covid-wave-is-coming-why-it-will-be-much-weirder-than-before-200044795.html[/URL]

And with the exhibitionist bullshit of a staff headline writer, we have a "Weird Virus"...

Nothing WEIRD to see here folks, move along; just a virus, who many are over, being a virus, reminding us, in no uncertain terms, that it IS NOT over with us, as it merrily mutates along...

Good explanation of the potential winter surge we may see, and the inherent weakness of the currentmonoclonal antibodies as a treatment, in that they are "1 Trick Ponies", and fairly ineffective with the Omicron Gang...

[HEADING=2]XBB, BQ.1.1, BA.2.75.2 — a variant swarm could fuel a winter surge[/HEADING]
[pressherald.com/2022/10/18/xbb-bq-1-1-ba-2-75-2-a-variant-swarm-could-fuel-a-winter-surge/]('https://www.pressherald.com/2022/10/18/xbb-bq-1-1-ba-2-75-2-a-variant-swarm-could-fuel-a-winter-surge/')

By Carolyn Y. Johnson October 18, 2022

For two years, coronavirus variants emerged, one by one, sweeping the globe.

But this fall and winter are expected to be different: Instead of a single ominous variant lurking on the horizon, experts are nervously eyeing a swarm of viruses — and a new evolutionary phase in the pandemic.

This time, it’s unlikely we will be barraged with a new collection of Greek alphabet variants. Instead, one or more of the multiple versions of the omicron variant that keep popping up could drive the next wave. They are different flavors of omicron, but eerily alike — adorned with a similar combination of mutations.
Each new subvariant seems to outdo the last in its ability to dodge immune defenses.

“It is this constant evolutionary arms race we’re having with this virus,” said Jonathan Abraham, an assistant professor of microbiology at Harvard Medical School.

The pace of evolution is so fast that many scientists depend on Twitter to keep up. A month ago, scientists were worried about BA.2.75, a variant that took off in South Asia and spawned a cloud of other concerning sublineages. In the United States, BA.4.6 and BF.7 have been slowly picking up steam. A few weeks ago, BQ.1.1 started to steal the spotlight — and still looks like a contender to take over this fall in Europe and North America. A lineage called XBB looms on the sidelines, and threatens to scramble the forecast.

To focus too much on any one possible variant is, many experts argue, missing the point. What matters is that all these new threats are accumulating mutations in similar spots in what’s called the receptor binding domain — a key spot in the spike protein where virus-blocking antibodies dock. If those antibodies can’t dock, they can’t block. Each new mutation gives the virus a leg up in avoiding this primary line of immune defense.

Most virologists demur when asked about which variant — or variants — will be infecting people this winter. That doesn’t mean they think the virus is standing still.

Much of the world’s population has gained a measure of immunity because of vaccinations and infections with omicron. That protection gave us the relative freedoms of the moment — with many people returning to normal life. But protection is fleeting for two key reasons: immunity wanes and the virus is changing. And then there’s this: Monoclonal antibodies, targeted drugs that can be used as a treatment or to protect immunocompromised people who don’t respond well to vaccines, are likely to be knocked out by future variants.

“It’s important for people to understand that the fact there’s not a Greek letter name that has come out does not mean the virus stopped evolving,” said Jesse Bloom, an expert on viral evolution at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who described the evolutionary rate of SARS-CoV-2 as “strikingly rapid.”

Instead of worrying about which variant will win, or even focusing on particular mutations, many scientists have shifted to watching hotspots — specific sites on the virus, known by numbers like a street address, where any change in the virus’s code might allow it to slip by the neutralizing antibodies that are a first line of defense.

The coronavirus spike protein is made up of about 1,300 building blocks called amino acids, and mutations that change even a single building block can make it harder for antibodies to block the virus. Instead of a Greek alphabet, scientists are maintaining shortlists of worrisome spots for mutation: 346, 444, 445, 452, 460, 486, 490.

Seeing so many lineages of the coronavirus develop similar constellations of genetic changes at these spots is a sign of convergent evolution — when different versions of the virus have slammed into the wall of immune defenses in the human population, and then come up with similar ways to get around them. That happens with influenza but is fairly new to SARS-CoV-2. And in the case of the coronavirus, the more mutations, the bigger advantage a new variant seems to have.

Cornelius Roemer, a computational biologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, has been ranking the new omicron sublineages by how many mutations they have in the receptor binding domain.

XBB appears to be the best at evading immunity. Researchers in China have found that XBB can elude the protective antibodies generated by a breakthrough BA.5 infection, raising concern that fall boosters engineered to target the BA.4 and BA.5 versions of omicron may be quickly outpaced. Still, those booster shots remain the best tool on the shelf.

“We do not have a better choice at the current stage,” Yunlong Cao, a scientist at the Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center in Peking University in Beijing, said in an email.

On Friday, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 had grown to about 11 percent of the viruses sampled in the United States. Whether it is XBB, BQ.1.1, or some as yet unknown twist on omicron, most experts agree variants will help fuel a difficult fall and winter.

“These lineages are going to have a greater ability to reinfect people than what is currently circulating … which is very likely to drive or contribute to infection waves over the winter,” Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, said in an email.

It’s a matter of debate what will happen when one or more of them gets a toehold in a population with a protective layer of underlying immunity. Protection against the worst outcomes is likely to hold up, particularly if bolstered by boosters, many scientists predict.

Cases are ticking up in Europe already. Many scientists think the upswing is driven largely by factors such as children going back to school, people spending more time indoors and the seasonality of the virus. The variants may just be starting to contribute.

“We are certainly in a better place than we were many months ago; we are still in a downward trend” in the United States, said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who exhorted people to get an updated booster if eligible. “We need to watch and follow these things very carefully, because we want to make sure we have a good handle on what is going on with regard to the emergence of variants, and what impact they’re going to have on any trends we are going to see in winter.”

But the impact on society could still be considerable even with a surge in cases that doesn’t lead to a massive wave of hospitalizations.

“To put it in context, the summer wasn’t considered a wave — but at the same time, there were lots of issues with work absences, and that kind of thing did have an impact on the world as a whole,” said Manon Ragonnet-Cronin, a scientist at the University of Chicago. “Our primary measurement of how bad these waves are tends to be hospitalizations and deaths, but those other effects shouldn’t be discounted.”

There’s nothing certain about a late-fall wave — whether one will happen, what its magnitude might be or what could spark it. The new crop of variants clearly escapes immunity, but Justin Lessler, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Public Health, said the question will be how that advantage plays out in the world.

“A strain can have a growth advantage compared to the other strains, but still not enough of an advantage to lead to a resurgent epidemic,” Lessler said.

What’s more predictable: Any variant that winds up dominating in coming months will probably challenge a key line of treatment and protection for people with compromised immune systems — the drugs known as monoclonal antibodies. Evusheld is a long-acting version used to prevent illness in people with compromised immune systems. Another monoclonal, bebtelovimab, is used as a treatment.

The pharmaceutical companies making these drugs stress that they remain useful against variants that are prevalent now. But for many scientists, the writing is on the wall. The swarm on the horizon threatens to wipe out one or both of those therapies — and may even subvert the next generation of candidates yet to make it into the medicine cabinet.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, a major maker of monoclonal antibodies, paused start-up activities in late September on clinical trials for its new drug — pointing not to a particular new lineage of omicron but to a mutation at one of the hotspots.

“We ask that all start-up activities … be paused to allow Regeneron to evaluate the new variant and its potential impact to our planned clinical development trials,” a company memo sent to investigators running the trials said.

Scientists are worried that Evusheld could be useless by the end of the year, as new variants take over. The Food and Drug Administration warned this month that the drug is unlikely to protect against infection from BA.4.6, a strain that represents about 12 percent of the viruses circulating in the United States.

Bebtelovimab, the monoclonal made by Lilly, could also face a ticking clock as yet other mutations threaten to undermine its effectiveness.

Companies can choose from many libraries of monoclonal antibody drugs, but questions about how to pick them, prove they work and whether they are safe have become more pressing as the drugs turned out to have a short shelf life, because of the pace of viral evolution.

In an effort to make their drugs more variant-proof, companies are trying to design antibody products that are not similar to the dominant antibodies the human body naturally creates to rout the virus.

Laura Walker, chief scientific officer of Invivyd, a biotechnology company working on monoclonal antibody drugs, described one of the compounds her company is hoping to start testing in people in January as a “freak of nature” — because it binds to an unusual spot on the virus.

“You want to try and look ahead, and the question is: How far do those headlights go?” Walker said.

Unmitigated transmission of the virus will allow it to find vulnerable people — whether because of age or medical risk factors. It could also result in the wild-card scenario that many experts fear: A new and very different variant could emerge from some other branch of the coronavirus evolutionary tree.

A leading theory of omicron’s origin is that it evolved as the result of a long-term infection in an immunocompromised patient — and the possibility of a huge jump happening again can’t be ignored.

“If we sit on our hands and say, ‘Well, we are all fine,’ and forget about the vulnerable people who don’t make good immune responses, then that might increase the likelihood a new, scarier variant emerges,” Abraham, of Harvard, said. “I’m not sure if it’s going to happen this winter, but I think it’s likely. There’s still a lot of room for evolutio

XBB, BQ.1.1, BA.2.75.2 is far too complex a name for either the news or the majority of the population to take seriously. They need something like Corona X Magnum.
Genetic mutation and virus evolution is too complex and subtle a topic for a twitter fight or facebook showdown. Folks want things black and white, one size fits all.
Too many folks will interpret this as: "See, the vaccines, masks and social distancing don't work." That will lead to more spreading, which will lead to more mutating, etc.

A seminal discovery in vaccine development, truly worthy of a Nobel Prize. Of course our brain dead journalists threw in a misleading, sensational headline. The prize was awarded because of their work enabling cells to take up injected mRNA and incorporate it into their manufacture of proteins. These two never worked on COVID. Their discover regarding mRNA did allow Moderna and BioNTech to craft their COVID vaccines...

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Nobel Prize Awarded to Covid Vaccine Pioneers[/SIZE][/HEADING]
The physiology or medicine prize for Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman recognized work that led to the development of vaccines that were administered to billions around the world.

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who together identified a chemical tweak to messenger RNA that laid the foundation for vaccines against Covid-19 that have since been administered billions of times globally, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday.

Their discovery “fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system,” the panel that awarded the prize said, adding that the work “contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.”

Dr. Karikó, the daughter of a butcher in Hungary who became an mRNA specialist, and Dr. Weissman, a physician and virologist searching for an H.I.V. vaccine, met over a copy machine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1998.

Their work soon transformed vaccine technology.

Dr. Karikó, who had come to the United States two decades earlier when her research program at a Hungarian university ran out of money, was preoccupied by mRNA, which provides instructions to cells to make proteins. Defying the decades-old orthodoxy that it was clinically unusable, she believed that it would spur many medical innovations.

At the time, Dr. Weissman was desperate for new approaches to a vaccine for H.I.V., which had long proved impossible to defend against. He wondered if he and Dr. Karikó could team up to make an H.I.V. vaccine.

It was a fringe idea that, when they began their research, seemed unlikely to work. The mRNA was delicate, so much so that when it was introduced to cells, the cells instantly destroyed it.

Initially, Dr. Weissman and Dr. Karikó were flummoxed.

Countless experiments with mice failed. They wandered down one blind alley after another. Their problem was that the immune system sees mRNA as a piece of an invading pathogen and attacks it, making the animals sick while destroying the mRNA.

But eventually, the scientists solved the mystery. The researchers discovered that cells protect their own mRNA with a specific chemical modification. So the scientists tried making the same change to mRNA made in the lab before injecting it into cells. It worked: The mRNA was taken up by cells without provoking an immune response.

At the time, scientists were largely uninterested in taking up that new approach to vaccination. Their paper, published in 2005, was summarily rejected by the journals Nature and Science, Dr. Weissman said. The study was [eventually accepted by a niche publication called Immunity]('https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761305002116').

But two biotech companies soon took notice of the work: Moderna, in the United States, and BioNTech, in Germany. The companies studied the use of mRNA vaccines for flu, cytomegalovirus and other illnesses. None moved out of clinical trials for years.

Then the coronavirus emerged. The strikingly effective vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech use [the modification Dr. Karikó and Dr. Weissman discovered]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/health/coronavirus-mrna-kariko.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap').

Some 400 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 250 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have now been administered in the United States. Hundreds of millions more have been given globally. The use of mRNA has enabled both vaccines to be updated against new variants.

Dr. Karikó is the 13th woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine since 1901, and the first since 2015. Women represent a small fraction of the total of 227 people who were awarded the prize, a reflection of how women are still largely underrepresented in the field of science and scientific awards, including the Nobel Prizes.

Women account for less than 7 percent of Nobel laureates, a total that has produced [criticism]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/world/nobel-prize-woman-gender-ethnicity.html') for the institute that awards the prizes.

what’s the question.?

what’s the question.?

How you were sold a bag of bullshit

Ah natural selection... A sobering revelation for those of us who have stopped over their shoulder...

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Omicron, Now 2 Years Old, Is Not Done With Us Yet[/SIZE][/HEADING]
The dominant variant of the coronavirus has proved to be not only staggeringly infectious, but an evolutionary marvel.

By November 2021, nearly two years after the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan and spread across the world, the surprises seemed to be over. More than four billion people had been vaccinated against the virus, and five million had died. Two new variants, known as Alpha and Delta, had surged and then ebbed. As [Thanksgiving approached,]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/22/us/us-covid-cases-rising-thanksgiving.html') many Americans were planning to resume traveling for the holiday.

And then, the day after turkey, the pandemic delivered a big new surprise. Researchers in Botswana and South Africa [alerted the world]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/25/world/variant-south-africa-covid.html?searchResultPosition=4') that a highly mutated version of the virus had emerged and was spreading fast. Omicron, as the World Health Organization called the variant, swiftly overtook other forms of the virus. It remains dominant now, on its second anniversary.

In the two years since its emergence, Omicron has proved to be not only staggeringly infectious, but an evolutionary marvel, challenging many assumptions virologists had before the pandemic. It has given rise to an impressive number of descendants, which have become far more adept at evading immunity and finding new victims.

“It was almost like there was another pandemic,” said Adam Lauring, a virologist at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Lauring and other Omicron watchers are now trying to make sense of the past two years in order to prepare for the future. It’s possible that Omicron will become a permanent part of life, steadily mutating like seasonal influenza. But researchers warn that the virus still has the capacity to surprise us, especially if we stop paying close attention.

When Omicron first came to light, the United States and other countries wrongly believed they could stop its spread by banning travel from South Africa. In reality, it had already spread far and wide. [In a matter of days]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/africa/coronavirus-omicron-africa.html?searchResultPosition=6'), Britain, Italy and Germany discovered Omicron in positive Covid tests.

Omicron’s gift for spreading fast was the result of dozens of mutations. They altered the virus’s surface, so that antibodies produced by vaccines or previous infections could not stick tightly to it and prevent the virus from invading cells.

“It was the first virus to figure out in a major way how to escape immunity,” said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Lemieux and many other Omicron experts suspect that the variant gained its new mutations while infecting a single person with a weak immune system. Immunocompromised people can only fight off some of the coronaviruses in their bodies during an infection, allowing the ones that remain to acquire mutations that can thwart the immune system.

“It becomes like a laboratory for virus evolution,” said Peter Markov, a virologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

As epidemiologists tracked the Omicron wave in late 2021, they saw a crucial difference from earlier surges. Compared with previous variants, Omicron put a smaller fraction of infected people in the hospital. One reason for that shift was that so many people had immunity to earlier forms of the coronavirus. Our immune defenses include not just antibodies, but special immune cells that can recognize and kill infected cells. This second line of defense [held up even against Omicron]('https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.28.23297714v1'), preventing many of the new infections from becoming severe.

Still, Omicron caused so many new infections — the initial wave infected almost half of all Americans, according to [one recent estimate]('https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.07.23298178v1') — that it still unleashed a devastating wave of hospitalizations.

The Omicron surge hit the United States and most other countries in early 2022. China managed to hold back the waves with its “zero Covid” policy, but protests against its brutality grew so intense that President Xi Jinping dropped it abruptly in November 2022. The floodgates opened: Within a few weeks, more than a billion Chinese people contracted Omicron, resulting in [over a million deaths]('https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/29/10/23-0585_article').

As Omicron moved from person to person, its descendants gained more mutations. Sometimes two Omicron viruses would wind up in the same cell, which would produce new hybrid viruses with a mix of their genes. One of these so-called recombinations hit the jackpot by mixing together two sets of evasive mutations. The result was a new hybrid called [XBB]('https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/science/covid-omicron-variants-xbb.html').

XBB easily infected people, even those who had already been infected with Alpha, Delta or earlier forms of Omicron. As a result, XBB became dominant in the United States in early 2023.

Vaccine makers tried to keep up with Omicron’s rapid evolution. In August 2022, the Food and Drug Administration authorized [booster shots]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/us/politics/covid-booster-shots-variants.html') that targeted the BA.5 Omicron variant, which was then dominant. In September 2023, the agency authorized an [XBB shot]('https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/health/covid-vaccine-boosters-fda-pfizer-moderna.html'). But XBB is now ebbing as a menagerie of even more evasive variants has evolved.

“Right now we’re in a period of chaos,” said Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri.

Several Omicron experts said the chaos might soon end. In August, a variant called BA.2.86 emerged with a host of new mutations — likely the result, once again, of evolution taking place in an immunocompromised person.

At first, BA.2.86 did not seem to live up to its genetic potential, failing to spread fast. “If genetics was all that mattered, it would have gotten its own Greek letter,” said Thomas Peacock, a virologist at the Pirbright Institute in Woking, England. “But BA.2.86 was a bit of a damp squib.”

Over the past few months, however, the BA.2.86 lineage seems to have kicked into high gear, gaining a mutation that allows it to evade even more antibodies. JN.1, as this mutated form is known, has become the most resistant version of the coronavirus. It appears to be growing quickly in France, and may soon spread to other countries.

It is hard to predict the future path of a new variant like JN.1. Its success will depend on what kind of immune defenses it encounters while spreading from host to host. At the outset of the pandemic, things were simpler because no one had developed immunity to the coronavirus.

“At the beginning, we were one big kindergarten,” said Michael Lässig, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cologne.

Today, in contrast, most people on Earth have immunity of one form or another, whether from a natural infection, vaccination or both. “The virus sees a much more complex ecosystem,” Dr. Lässig said.

This worldwide immunity means that a smaller fraction of people will die than did at the start of the pandemic. Still, Omicron’s toll remains heavy. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [found]('https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/2023-2024/22-23-summary-technical-report.htm') that between October 2022 and September 2023, more than 80,000 people died of Covid, more than eight times as many as those who died of influenza.

As Omicron continues to evolve, epidemiologists still see a benefit to vaccinations. Justin Lessler, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, and his colleagues recently ran a projection of future Covid infections and [concluded]('https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.26.23297581v1') that annual vaccination campaigns could save up to 49,000 lives a year.

Those vaccines will be more effective if they’re updated to keep up with the evolving virus. But Katrina Lythgoe, a biologist at Oxford University, worries that their development will slow down as governments stop paying for genetic sequencing of new variants.

“If we don’t sequence things, then we won’t see them,” she said.

How does the fifth shot stand up to this variant?

Science !!!

How does the fifth shot stand up to this variant?

If you're referring to the Fifth Booster, which would be jab #7 on the "full slate" for both Moderna and Pfizer that was released back in late September, it's "OK", but its efficacy drops off pretty quickly after 6 months as far as I can figure out from the literature. The "good news" is that COVID is following the normal lifeline of virus, as they become more contagious, they tend to be less virulent so fatality rate drops.

The challenge here is that Omicron and it's "children" are continually mutating the spike protein, which is the target antigen of all the vaccines. Without going into too much scientific "mumbo jumbo" when your body makes antibodies, you make a whole slew of them with different reactivities so "cross reactive" ones can keep you protected in the short term.

Remember that NO vaccine is akin to Star Trek "Shields". The disease agent, be it viral, bacterial or parasitic, has to get into you for the antibodies to work. Therefore the first line of defense for any disease is avoiding getting infected in the first place.

We are now in a situation somewhat like the yearly flu vaccine, which is formulated in the late spring to be most effective against the anticipated flu strains for the coming year. Most times the vaccine is very effective for a given year, but some years it isn't because Mother Nature tossed us a screwball. I'm guessing that if a yearly COVID shot is the new normal, they will be formulated for maximal efficacy against the latest variants akin to the process used to determine the yearly flu vaccine formulation.

If you're referring to the Fifth Booster, which would be jab #7 on the "full slate" for both Moderna and Pfizer that was released back in late September, it's "OK", but its efficacy drops off pretty quickly after 6 months as far as I can figure out from the literature. The "good news" is that COVID is following the normal lifeline of virus, as they become more contagious, they tend to be less virulent so fatality rate drops.

The challenge here is that Omicron and it's "children" are continually mutating the spike protein, which is the target antigen of all the vaccines. Without going into too much scientific "mumbo jumbo" when your body makes antibodies, you make a whole slew of them with different reactivities so "cross reactive" ones can keep you protected in the short term.

Remember that NO vaccine is akin to Star Trek "Shields". The disease agent, be it viral, bacterial or parasitic, has to get into you for the antibodies to work. Therefore the first line of defense for any disease is avoiding getting infected in the first place.

We are now in a situation somewhat like the yearly flu vaccine, which is formulated in the late spring to be most effective against the anticipated flu strains for the coming year. Most times the vaccine is very effective for a given year, but some years it isn't because Mother Nature tossed us a screwball. I'm guessing that if a yearly COVID shot is the new normal, they will be formulated for maximal efficacy against the latest variants akin to the process used to determine the yearly flu vaccine formulation.

I miss spoke; I got the original (2 doses) and 3 boosters so if I opt in it will be my 6th.

I miss spoke; I got the original (2 doses) and 3 boosters so if I opt in it will be my 6th.

Not important, you will receive the current and most updated one, booster #5. It will provide the best protection for Omicron for about 6 months after vaccination.