Immune Escape of SARS-CoV-2 Variant Omicron

The significant immune escape of pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 Variant Omicron

The emergence of Omicron has brought new challenges to fight against SARS-CoV-2. A large number of mutations in the Spike protein suggest that its susceptibility to immune protection elicited by the existing COVID-19 infection and vaccines may be altered. In this study, we constructed the pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron. The sensitivity of 28 serum samples from COVID-19 convalescent patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 original strain was tested against pseudotyped Omicron as well as the other viruses of concern (VOCs, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta) and viruses of interest (VOIs, Lambda, Mu). Our results indicated that the mean neutralization ED50 of these sera against Omicron decreased to 66，which is about 8.4 folds compared to the D614G reference strain (ED50 = 556), whereas the neutralization activity of other VOC and VOI pseudotyped viruses decreased only about 1.2-4.5 folds. The finding from our in vitro assay suggest that Omicron variant may lead to more significant escape from immune protection elicited by previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and perhaps even by existing COVID-19 vaccines.

Le me first say I don't understand a lot of this medical stuff. But I think this is important to discuss on ATS.
We need to be aware of the variants coming around and what effect the vaccines are having on them. And what effect the vaccines are having on the variants
Because from what I have read, the vaccines are contributing to the variants coming down to us.

And, PLEASE...this is not a thread where we need to go down the I am vaxxed/unvaxxed road.
I'd like to hear just what this study shows. Good or bad.

Mu has a 9.1 fold decrease. According to this article, omicron escapes less than mu does.

Neutralization of the SARS-CoV-2 Mu Variant by Convalescent and Vaccine Serum

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

One major caveat of the current study is that we used an in vitro assay system and the pseudotyped viruses but not the real viruses were used in the assay. However, our previous study established a good correlation between our PV based assay and the assay using real virues 9. Additionally, COVID-19 vaccine literature has established that the in vitro neutralization assays are good predictors of vaccine protection efficacy and real-world vaccine effectiveness10. Therefore, data from the current PV-based neutralization sensitivity assay may well predict the potential reduction of vaccine protection against the new Omicron variant.

Viruses that are not manipulated through gain of function are like radioactive isotopes that decay (less lethal) over time, naturally, according to my understanding.

It's also my understanding that viral infections are caused by a parasite infestation that our bodies fight off naturally.

It wasn't until after the needle was invented that funky new cancers became prevalent?

#Ivermectin
🙏❤

The vaccines are not very good, way too many side effects, they should never have been approved. This is just one of the side effects that the agencies governing the medicines in countries are ignoring because those agency heads were backing these improperly tested vaccines. I do not know who talked Trump into fast tracking these vaccines, I would bet that Fauchi was one of the ones who did. I would suspect some high in the FDA and CDC also pushed to simplify the testing before approval too. So the coverups will continue till these people are removed from their positions in these agencies.

I doubt if they are even researching other historical vaccine creation for this disease much, all the money is going to promote the mRNA vaccines in this country.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

The study predicts that there will be some protection observed but that there will also be an increase in breakthrough infections. They say more research is needed to know how well the vaccines will prevent serious illness.

Here are some good articles that explain this study. I'm sharing both to show that it is a glass half-empty or half-full situation.

COVID Omicron Variant May Have “Significant” Capability To Evade Vaccine Protection – Even From Third Dose
Vaccines and previous infection could offer some “stronger than basic” protection to Omicron, early study suggests

I think the biggest question is how severe the illness from Omicron is. I find it to cause less severe illness than Delta. If you don't want to take my word for it, here are the links I've used. You can compare the cases, hospital admissions, and icu use, etc between their current Omicron wave and their delta wave, or any of their other waves. The daily reports are archived on these websites.

NICD Daily Hospital Surveillance Report

NICD Daily Case and Hospitalization Reports

DHRSA daily covid reports

Removed By Staff

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

I'm pretty fed up with this now...

I think the vaccines have helped the virus to mutate but we aren't being told this by our Governments, instead they keep pushing for the booster shots, even though they say the vaccines aren't having much of an effect now.

The virus has got weaker according to n ews from South Africa and even our Scientists here in the UK.

So... why keep pushing for the vaccines??

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Dr. Michael Vincent Callahan, MD is an Infectious Disease Specialist and says our vaccines are designed to allow escaped variants.

Here he is at the Gain of Function Symposium: Perspectives of Key Stakeholders in the Biomedical and Public Health Communities: www.youtube.com...
Its not clear if he was referring to traditional vaccines or mRNA from the vid and when he was working on Gain-of-Function research.

ScreenCaps from the vid...

Michael Callahan Disclaimer:




Halal vaccines are pork-free for Muslims. If I were Muslim I'd be highly skeptical!

Based on the number of views I'm surprised nobody has come across it since Covid entered our world and GoF has been a nuclear topic. Even the channel is named "Gain of Function" with a playlist from 2014. Session 4: Potential Benefits of GOF Research I: Surveillance, Detection and Prediction" including Coronaviruses.

When a virus strikes, epidemiologist Michael Callahan always seems to be in the thick of it.

How do you think the coronavirus crisis will end?

The only way out of it is that everybody becomes immune because they’ve either got the infection or they got vaccinated. If I had to put my money down, one of the vaccines on the immediate horizon will give us transient immunity, and if it holds for four to six months, we’ll break the pandemic cycle. Then, we’ll do it again with another, better vaccine. So, we’ll live through it. We’re not going to knock it out of the park with the first vaccines.

NatGeo interview

Basically, same viewpoint as Dr. Fauci. We'll keep doing it until we get it right and we have 7+ billion subjects to experiment on.🙄

New York clinical trial quietly tests heartburn remedy against coronavirus (Science Mag, by same author as above article) APR 2020

A globe-trotting infectious disease doctor named Michael Callahan was the first to call attention to the drug in the United States. Callahan, who is based at Massachusetts General Hospital and has extensive connections in the biodefense world, has spent time in disease hot zones around the world, including the 2003 outbreak of another coronavirus disease, SARS, in Hong Kong. In mid-January, he was in Nanjing, China, working on an avian flu project. As the COVID-19 epidemic began to explode in Wuhan, he followed his Chinese colleagues to the increasingly desperate city.

After returning from Wuhan, he briefed Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, then checked in with Robert Malone, chief medical officer of Florida-based Alchem Laboratories, a contract manufacturing organization. Malone is part of a classified project called DOMANE that uses computer simulations, artificial intelligence, and other methods to rapidly identify U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs and other safe compounds that can be repurposed against threats such as new viruses.

When it comes to experience with COVID-19, Kadlec says, “No amount of smart people at the [National Institutes of Health] or Harvard or Stanford can outclass an average doctor in Wuhan.”

Virology Journal


Zika Virus: Medical Countermeasure Development Challenges [PDF]

Oddly, his LinkIn profile was recently deleted. Partial resume:

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Firstly, the vaccines don't 'cause' new strains. These mutations arise fairly randomly and their likelihood depends on number of hosts, and time period that an infection lasts, in which the mutation can occur.

The vaccines, however, can shape the population numbers of strains in respect to each other. I.e: if a vaccine suppresses one strain better than another, there will be a higher ratio of strain with the advantage. But this effect itself is over time and is moderated by numbers of available hosts. Even if a vaccine is partially effective against the advantaged strain, then the total viral load of all strains are reduced by vaccination.

And with fewer hosts, and reduced infection duration, the vaccines still mean less likelihood of new strains coming into existence.

Since the reaction caused by the vaccines is an immune reaction, suggesting that new strains are somehow more likely is like saying that our immune response is causing new strains.

a reply to: chr0naut

Since the reaction caused by the vaccines is an immune reaction, suggesting that new strains are somehow more likely is like saying that our immune response is causing new strains.

Our immune response, or the failure of it, is what enables new mutated strains to proliferate and overwhelm the host, so that it can spread. The same but on a lower viral count, still infectious many times though but asymptomatic, happens when you have been vaccinated.

Being uneffectively protected by the vaccine and being asymptomatic at the same time, while still being actively infectious for weeks gives a longer generational count. That means more mutations that in itself have nothing to do with being vaccinated or not directly. It's just the timespan is longer for mutations to occur. And I am not thinking about mutations like in flu viruses but transcribing errors and such.

You're semantically circling around this by using the word "cause". The stronger and better adapted mutations survive and always have. Being asymptomatic and or ignoring virality of onself because being vaccinated and despite all we have learned by now, still saying the vaccines are effectively fighting mutations is not scientific correct.

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
The significant immune escape of pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 Variant Omicron

The emergence of Omicron has brought new challenges to fight against SARS-CoV-2. A large number of mutations in the Spike protein suggest that its susceptibility to immune protection elicited by the existing COVID-19 infection and vaccines may be altered. In this study, we constructed the pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron. The sensitivity of 28 serum samples from COVID-19 convalescent patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 original strain was tested against pseudotyped Omicron as well as the other viruses of concern (VOCs, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta) and viruses of interest (VOIs, Lambda, Mu). Our results indicated that the mean neutralization ED50 of these sera against Omicron decreased to 66，which is about 8.4 folds compared to the D614G reference strain (ED50 = 556), whereas the neutralization activity of other VOC and VOI pseudotyped viruses decreased only about 1.2-4.5 folds. The finding from our in vitro assay suggest that Omicron variant may lead to more significant escape from immune protection elicited by previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and perhaps even by existing COVID-19 vaccines.

Le me first say I don't understand a lot of this medical stuff. But I think this is important to discuss on ATS.
We need to be aware of the variants coming around and what effect the vaccines are having on them. And what effect the vaccines are having on the variants
Because from what I have read, the vaccines are contributing to the variants coming down to us.

And, PLEASE...this is not a thread where we need to go down the I am vaxxed/unvaxxed road.
I'd like to hear just what this study shows. Good or bad.

It's been obvious from the outset that the vaccine would cause variants to emerge fast. They will emerge with or without vaccination, but a LOT faster with vaccination. The first one to emerge was from Africa which is the first place where vaccines were trialed. This is not news, this is virology 101. The news tries to make it look like some complex thing they're figuring out, while any immunologist will tell you this was always going to happen.

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Firstly, the vaccines don't 'cause' new strains. These mutations arise fairly randomly and their likelihood depends on number of hosts, and time period that an infection lasts, in which the mutation can occur.

The vaccines, however, can shape the population numbers of strains in respect to each other. I.e: if a vaccine suppresses one strain better than another, there will be a higher ratio of strain with the advantage. But this effect itself is over time and is moderated by numbers of available hosts. Even if a vaccine is partially effective against the advantaged strain, then the total viral load of all strains are reduced by vaccination.

And with fewer hosts, and reduced infection duration, the vaccines still mean less likelihood of new strains coming into existence.

Since the reaction caused by the vaccines is an immune reaction, suggesting that new strains are somehow more likely is like saying that our immune response is causing new strains.

not at all. Vaccines put pressure on the virus to mutate. Again, variants will emerge regardless, but vaccines speed up the process. In a normal situation, vaccines are given out once a virus has essentially disappeared. They have never been given out to the ENTIRE WORLD when the virus was still this active in the population and this is causing pressure on the virus to mutate faster.

originally posted by: thebtheb

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Firstly, the vaccines don't 'cause' new strains. These mutations arise fairly randomly and their likelihood depends on number of hosts, and time period that an infection lasts, in which the mutation can occur.

The vaccines, however, can shape the population numbers of strains in respect to each other. I.e: if a vaccine suppresses one strain better than another, there will be a higher ratio of strain with the advantage. But this effect itself is over time and is moderated by numbers of available hosts. Even if a vaccine is partially effective against the advantaged strain, then the total viral load of all strains are reduced by vaccination.

And with fewer hosts, and reduced infection duration, the vaccines still mean less likelihood of new strains coming into existence.

Since the reaction caused by the vaccines is an immune reaction, suggesting that new strains are somehow more likely is like saying that our immune response is causing new strains.

not at all. Vaccines put pressure on the virus to mutate.

How could they?

The vaccines can provide selection pressures that may advantage one strain over another, but that is after the mutation has occurred, and the strain's infection is already prevalent in numbers of the population.

There is no way for the virus to 'know' about the existence of a vaccine. All that the virus faces, at the most, is a primed immune system in the host, or not.

Again, variants will emerge regardless, but vaccines speed up the process.

How could they? By what mechanism would something that supresses a bloom in viral load and duration, speed a process that is a function of both a high viral load and a longer duration?

In a normal situation, vaccines are given out once a virus has essentially disappeared.

What?

Vaccines are given to fight existing diseases.

Usually, with mass vaccination campaigns they are so effective that the pathogen dies out, or almost does, as a result.

Lets take some cases from history:

Smallpox. About three out of every 10 people who got the disease died. In the 20th Century, it has been estimated that between 300 million and 500 million people have died of smallpox, despite an effective vaccine having existed since 1796. In other words, the disease was raging when vaccination against it began. It wasn't until 1979 that it was declared to have been eradicated. The reduction and eventual eradication of smallpox has never been attributed to anything else other than vaccination.

Polio. Polio is more likely to leave people paralyzed than to kill them but it still kills those severly paralyzed. The US CDC recorded that there were 350,000 cases of polio in 1988. These days, nearly everyone has had at least four shots/doses of polio vaccine as infants and in 2019, there were only 175 cases of polio in the wild. There is no cure for polio and vaccines remain the primary way to fight the disease.

Pertussis (whooping cough). An estimated 16.3 million people were infected with this disease in 2015, and there were 58,700 deaths from it in 2015. Vaccination is the primary preventative. The CDC estimated that vaccines saved half a million lives from pertussis in 2002. Vaccination requires more than three doses and does not confer lifelong immunity.

Measles. Measles is a relative if rinderpest in cattle which has been eliminated by vaccination. Sadly, measles has not been eliminated. During the American Civil War, about 20,000 Union soldiers had measles and about 500 of them died of it. Measles did not really begin to decline until 1963 when the first vaccine was developed. Outbreaks still occur in the US and usually among the unvaccinated. In New York City in 2018, a measles outbreak happened among Orthodox Jewish community members whose religious practice is to not vaccinate. That outbreak is ongoing.

They have never been given out to the ENTIRE WORLD when the virus was still this active in the population and this is causing pressure on the virus to mutate faster.

That statement is wrong on nearly every count.

originally posted by: EndtheMadnessNow
a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

I'm sick as hell rn don't have the energy today to go through your links yet but very intrigued and looking forward to hopefully tomorrow. I noticed Dr
Malone brought up - just curious if you've been paying attention to anything he's been saying? He's been speaking out against the vaccines -he's definitely not entirely against them but there are a number of concerns he has including regarding children taking them. He's been pretty heavily censored online

originally posted by: CrazeeWorld777
a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

I'm pretty fed up with this now...

I think the vaccines have helped the virus to mutate but we aren't being told this by our Governments, instead they keep pushing for the booster shots, even though they say the vaccines aren't having much of an effect now.

The virus has got weaker according to n ews from South Africa and even our Scientists here in the UK.

So... why keep pushing for the vaccines??

i just heard the UK has hit 200k cases and 1 death.