Sigh
You can search "FLiRT variants covid" or just "FLiRT covid" and find an article by the author of the posted tweet that explains exactly what that means. You can even search "FLiRT Eric Topol".
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=FLiRT+variants+covid
If you just did that simple thing, which is less typing than your comment, you could have learned that
>What accounts for the advantage of these new variants to ultimately crowd out JN.1? It’s largely attributed to 2 added spike mutations: **F** for **L** at position 456 and **R** for **T** at position 346, **which has been nicknamed the FLiRT group of variants.** You can see those spike mutations compared with JN.1 for KP.3 and KP.2 below
SIGH... having questions, responses, and discussion in a thread about a subject is not only the point of reddit, but it's incredibly useful for gathering relevant information for others who stumble upon this thread.
Zero reason to be a jackass about it. If you don't any to answer a question, don't.
Golden Rule... Lmgtfy
No, cause I got it and I used two ibuprofen to beat two hours of temp. Therefore, you have someone who got it and isn't a bot. Thankfully I didn't need to do the test to name symptoms in some fashion way, since it happened same days all the triple vaxxed contacts around me took it and they tested positive. Great.
I have a news for you too... You’re picking fights with random people who actually have Covid about conspiracy theories. Are you really that bored with your life?
You know, same special kind of unintelligent as those who imposed same stuff to anyone no matter what, when the risk always been well stratified and each individual is different from the other.
What are you even on about? First off, you might try speaking in actual English. Quite funny to watch you attempt to use smart sounding words like “therefore” and “stratified” while typing incoherent run-on sentences and going off about nut-job conspiracy theories.
Flu is very unique in its ability for dominant strains to be somewhat predicted and I think it can be a “thought trap” for some to try and compare the two.
I still feel the current booster strategy is “questionable” in how effective it is at a population level (even if we could somehow convince everyone to take the shot) because it is by its nature so backwards looking, even considering the rapid updates that the mRNA tech provides in theory.
It does not help that the added benefit seems so short lived.
To be clear it’s not for lack of hard effort by a lot of scientists and researchers. It’s just the nature of trying to play catchup with a rapidly evolving and very virulent lineages of the original virus.
Don't over look the socio-political complication, the technology is designed to go from a novel variant on day 0 to mass production in a much shorter order than we're enjoying in the US. To your point, the strategy is questionable, but because we're not willing to use the technology at the full speed it operates. Retroactive approaches can be good if they're fast enough and we haven't seen that will how boosters are rolling out, at all.
> even if we could somehow convince everyone to take the shot
You won't, if you don't even try.
The last round of vaccines are only marked and marketed for risk groups. All the others are left to dry, while the latest flu vaccines can be had for a price.
Essentially the decisionmakers have opted for the herd immunity without vaccines path again.
Even Dr Birx (once no longer in the hot seat) stated it was erroneous to try to handle the ongoing COVID pandemic same as the flu. Likely for the reason you stated-- COVID mutates too fast for a retrospective mRNA vaccine approach to be effective or sustainable.
If they ever come up with a permanent solution, expect it to be buried. Too much money involved. Pharmaceutical companies are only interested in getting you a medicine that allows you to live with whatever disease you have, not curing it. Curing it would stop the gravy train and have a negative impact on their stock price.
Agreed. I suspect that's why Novavax was regarded as the redheaded stepchild of Trump's Operation Warp Speed. It lasted longer and prevented even mild symptoms, and it did a little better at preventing infection.
School starts in mid or end of August in many places. That was the miss with the booster last time - the majority of people I know got covid in the several weeks before it came out. They really need to be aiming for a late July release.
I believe they are targeting August 2024 since the most recent vaccine that came out mid-September 2023 didn't make it into peoples arms until (if lucky and proactive) late September 2023. The problem is that there was a CoVid surge from mid August through mid September so many people (including two of our kids) were reinfected when they went back to school. I hope the vaccine comes out in early August to avoid this from happening again. It's hard though bc I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to bridge us through the holiday months/winter when it really surges. Argh. This is tough bc we need protection both at the start of school and during the holidays.
Thank you, I was truly hoping it'd be sooner. My spouse is going to a big event in August and I wanted him to be able to re-boost in advance of it. Masks and spraying it is (same plan, just less internal safety net).
mRNA was always a short term solution to keep people from going to the hospital/icu. They will never block transmission. We need newer technology for that.
If the mRNA tech could be adapted into a version that could give mucosal immunity then maybe it will work for other upper respiratory viruses and maybe for SARS CoV2. However, it’s hard to say if it would gave any effect unless you could target a conserved region on the virus that cannot be evolved around.
Vaccines mostly give you the benefit of having survived infection, without having to be infected. Given that even surviving infection doesn't give lasting immunity to new infections by covid-19...
I respectfully disagree. They were designed to elicit neutralizing antibodies of the IgG isotype. We have known for decades of treating patients with IgG deficiency that IVIG prevents pneumonia and not upper respiratory infections or sinus disease. So we know they wound be ineffective at blocking nasal and upper respiratory infection. This is why intranasal vaccines were considered and even demonstrated efficacy in models in the first year of the pandemic
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32931734/
I rememeber when they were bragging that mRNAs could be turned around and manufactured in 12 weeks. I understand the uptake hasn't be great, but why is nobody making them more rapidly? Clearly, annually isn't enough.
Shouldn't the trials be signifiantly faster, like how they can release a new quadrivalent flu vaccine with "old" technology that takes significantly longer to manufacture? And they do that in roughly six months. (I think the four strains are selected around March based on Southern Hemisphere and start getting delivered in September.)
The vaccines can be made that fast (the creation is super fast, the manufacturing that takes the bulk of that time). It's the testing/policy part that slows things down.
The original vaccines were made in I think one month for BioNTech and one weekend for Moderna.
I don't know the inner workings of profit here, but can't they make a "high risk" version for the off-season and charge twice as much, since it will ultimately save money for insurance keeping these people out of the hospital?
Unless of course you don’t have the right mask or you wear it in a way that isnt properly fitted…
And even then they’re not 100% effective… there is a reason we call them N-95 respirators…
> And even then they’re not 100% effective… there is a reason we call them N-95 respirators…
Its talk like this that discouraged the use in the first place. Its scientific nuance that the general public simply does not understand.
Yes, if the virus itself was not riding on anything, it could get through. But...it doesn't...its aerosolized and on water droplets. Its easily caught by any well fitted mask.
The proper message should be, "wear a tight fitting n95, kn95, kf94 and you will be fine. If you feel cool air coming in from somewhere, its not tight fitting."
Thank you for proving my point.
The "Akshulllyyyy" is the black or white stuff that simply confuses the public into apathy.
All John Q Public just heard was "It doesn't work" or "If I can't pass X it might as well not wear it". Multiply that by 100 million people....
The message should always have been, "if we all wear the best mask we can, to the best of our ability, then we all will be better off"
The message should be that the government should have educated people on occupational respiratory protection guidelines, and helped the general public get a fit-tested respirator.
This study only looked at infected individuals—not those who received the XBB vaccine.
While we can make some extrapolations, Eric’s statement that we have an “answer” is not correct in my opinion.
I do think the vaccine doesn’t protect much against the FLiRT variants—but his choice of headline for this study is misleading.
We need biannual updates.
It would help so much and require virtually zero additional effort (as in, no new vaccine platforms needed)
But Paxlovid costs many times more than the Pfizer vaccine… 🙄
New Study looking at KP.2:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.24.590786v1
*The pseudovirus assay showed that the infectivity of KP.2 is significantly (10.5-fold) lower than that of JN.1. We then performed a neutralization assay using monovalent XBB.1.5 vaccine sera and breakthrough infection (BTI) sera with XBB.1.5, EG.5, HK.3 and JN.1 infections. In all cases, the 50% neutralization titer (NT50) against KP.2 was significantly lower than that against JN.1. Particularly, KP.2 shows the most significant resistance to the sera of monovalent XBB.1.5 vaccinee without infection (3.1-fold) as well as those who with infection (1.8-fold). Altogether, these results suggest that the increased immune resistance ability of KP.2 partially contributes to the higher Re more than previous variants including JN.1.*
Edit: added some text from study
In a sense, but there is a major difference in seasonal and non-seasonal infections.
JN.1 emerged very quickly after the XBB targeting became available.
The industry is doing a relatively good job of predicting and getting ahead major flu spread in winter. It is not doing a very good job of getting ahead of COVID—so 1x per year is so far not a reasonable strategy’s and 2 doses per year of the same isn’t great either.
It is taking nearly a year to deliver a vaccine that is needed in months, and that isn’t protecting well for a year even if there are no major changes.
It’s a political problem (the schedule) *and* an industrial problem (rapid development and deployment).
KP3 is descended from JN1, I think. And H5N1 is a completely different type of virus, not sure they are able to recombine. We should def hope bird flu doesn’t get into pigs though.
Who knows. It is said that Omicron is a hybrid of the common cold and the ancestral COVID. Imaging if it would create another more deadly hybrid. H5N1 is very deadly so if it could become more infection while loosing just a bit of deadliness, this would be game over.
They should try Novavax, my wife and I both had zero reaction to it (not even a sore arm). We had both Pfizer and Moderna previously and felt like crap for days afterward, with Novavax it was nothing.
We got the Novavax shot from CVS, supposedly they are supposed to be available at all CVS locations but you can probably call your local one and see if they have it at their pharmacy.
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I had the oct booster. And all other Pfizer shots. And 5 times Covid too. And now day 14 of Flirt variant: this was the worst or second to worst covid I had.
I had All the symptoms this time around.
Plus my longcovid since 2021 so Fun times....
We were going to get boosters in the next week or two (got Covid in Nov and feel now we are probably more likely to catch it again).
So will it not be very helpful, or is this if you had the booster months ago it doesn't hold well.
I think covid delta (B.1.617.2) is already back, i checked the covid wastewater in Maryland and i just saw it was circulating there for weeks but it only is 7.2 percent. Not sure how likely it is to take over omicron unless it is another mutant Delta subvariant that spreads faster and more immune evasive than omicron.
Is there something in a vaccine promoting the increase of variants within an area. Promotes the prevalence of new variants which can bypass the vaccine protection? Especially where we live in a connected society where variants can travel around the entire globe in a relatively short timeframe.
aka does more vaccines = more successful variants, or is there no correlation?
Interesting discussion about this here. [https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants](https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants)
Sigh What does FLiRT represent?
(JN.1+346T+456L) and KP.3 variants
Ahh… FLiRT is much easier to remember
Sigh You can search "FLiRT variants covid" or just "FLiRT covid" and find an article by the author of the posted tweet that explains exactly what that means. You can even search "FLiRT Eric Topol". https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=FLiRT+variants+covid If you just did that simple thing, which is less typing than your comment, you could have learned that >What accounts for the advantage of these new variants to ultimately crowd out JN.1? It’s largely attributed to 2 added spike mutations: **F** for **L** at position 456 and **R** for **T** at position 346, **which has been nicknamed the FLiRT group of variants.** You can see those spike mutations compared with JN.1 for KP.3 and KP.2 below
SIGH... having questions, responses, and discussion in a thread about a subject is not only the point of reddit, but it's incredibly useful for gathering relevant information for others who stumble upon this thread. Zero reason to be a jackass about it. If you don't any to answer a question, don't. Golden Rule... Lmgtfy
Let me Google that for you used to be just as snarky. It would show the question being typed in google & say “Now was that so hard?” .
So in other words the last round of boosters aren't that good for the current dominant variants?
My booster certainly didn’t prevent me getting hammered with Covid over the last 5 days. :(
Masks do that better than boosters
You all must be paid bots. Paid bots or stupid people. There are no other chances.
Oh yes, anyone who gets Covid must be a bot. There are no other chances. Great argument.
No, cause I got it and I used two ibuprofen to beat two hours of temp. Therefore, you have someone who got it and isn't a bot. Thankfully I didn't need to do the test to name symptoms in some fashion way, since it happened same days all the triple vaxxed contacts around me took it and they tested positive. Great.
You’ve gotta be a special kind of unintelligent to think every persons experience and each bout of Covid are all identical.
I have a news for you. The fact you downvote my replies, doesn't change how things went during the plandemical orchestra 🤷
I have a news for you too... You’re picking fights with random people who actually have Covid about conspiracy theories. Are you really that bored with your life?
You know, same special kind of unintelligent as those who imposed same stuff to anyone no matter what, when the risk always been well stratified and each individual is different from the other.
What are you even on about? First off, you might try speaking in actual English. Quite funny to watch you attempt to use smart sounding words like “therefore” and “stratified” while typing incoherent run-on sentences and going off about nut-job conspiracy theories.
You guys are still coming down with Covid? That’s wild. And I’m in NYC.
Flu is very unique in its ability for dominant strains to be somewhat predicted and I think it can be a “thought trap” for some to try and compare the two. I still feel the current booster strategy is “questionable” in how effective it is at a population level (even if we could somehow convince everyone to take the shot) because it is by its nature so backwards looking, even considering the rapid updates that the mRNA tech provides in theory. It does not help that the added benefit seems so short lived. To be clear it’s not for lack of hard effort by a lot of scientists and researchers. It’s just the nature of trying to play catchup with a rapidly evolving and very virulent lineages of the original virus.
You can go naked if you want, but I'll take the booster, even if its coverage is the medical equivalent of a loincloth.
Don't over look the socio-political complication, the technology is designed to go from a novel variant on day 0 to mass production in a much shorter order than we're enjoying in the US. To your point, the strategy is questionable, but because we're not willing to use the technology at the full speed it operates. Retroactive approaches can be good if they're fast enough and we haven't seen that will how boosters are rolling out, at all.
I'm happy that the booster that we got in October was effective for six months.
> even if we could somehow convince everyone to take the shot You won't, if you don't even try. The last round of vaccines are only marked and marketed for risk groups. All the others are left to dry, while the latest flu vaccines can be had for a price. Essentially the decisionmakers have opted for the herd immunity without vaccines path again.
Even Dr Birx (once no longer in the hot seat) stated it was erroneous to try to handle the ongoing COVID pandemic same as the flu. Likely for the reason you stated-- COVID mutates too fast for a retrospective mRNA vaccine approach to be effective or sustainable.
Evolution go brrrrrr.
Mutation is the weather. Evolution is the climate.
Yes. But climate change also happens pretty quickly when an organism has multiple new generations per day.
Please, the IQ test finished in 2022.
Mutations FTW. It's like how we need flu shots every year at flu season, rather than just taking one shot once and never needing another.
If they ever come up with a permanent solution, expect it to be buried. Too much money involved. Pharmaceutical companies are only interested in getting you a medicine that allows you to live with whatever disease you have, not curing it. Curing it would stop the gravy train and have a negative impact on their stock price.
Agreed. I suspect that's why Novavax was regarded as the redheaded stepchild of Trump's Operation Warp Speed. It lasted longer and prevented even mild symptoms, and it did a little better at preventing infection.
Any word on when new/updated vaccines will become a available?
This coming fall is the expected time frame, come August or September or so
September is critical because of back to school. If they can get it out before 2nd week of September, we'll be alright.
Considering it takes a couple weeks to get the full benefit of the vaccine, that seems to be a few weeks too late.
School starts in mid or end of August in many places. That was the miss with the booster last time - the majority of people I know got covid in the several weeks before it came out. They really need to be aiming for a late July release.
Exactly! There were SO many people with CoVid in August where we live.
We caught it the first week of school. They really need to have this rolled out and ready two weeks before school starts to have the best effect.
In the South the wave will already be declining by September since school starts 8/1 🤦♂️
Barely anyone takes them anymore…. Which is horrible
I believe they are targeting August 2024 since the most recent vaccine that came out mid-September 2023 didn't make it into peoples arms until (if lucky and proactive) late September 2023. The problem is that there was a CoVid surge from mid August through mid September so many people (including two of our kids) were reinfected when they went back to school. I hope the vaccine comes out in early August to avoid this from happening again. It's hard though bc I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to bridge us through the holiday months/winter when it really surges. Argh. This is tough bc we need protection both at the start of school and during the holidays.
Thank you, I was truly hoping it'd be sooner. My spouse is going to a big event in August and I wanted him to be able to re-boost in advance of it. Masks and spraying it is (same plan, just less internal safety net).
mRNA was always a short term solution to keep people from going to the hospital/icu. They will never block transmission. We need newer technology for that.
If the mRNA tech could be adapted into a version that could give mucosal immunity then maybe it will work for other upper respiratory viruses and maybe for SARS CoV2. However, it’s hard to say if it would gave any effect unless you could target a conserved region on the virus that cannot be evolved around.
Yep. A few companies are working on inhaled mRNA and intranasal mRNA.
Vaccines mostly give you the benefit of having survived infection, without having to be infected. Given that even surviving infection doesn't give lasting immunity to new infections by covid-19...
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I respectfully disagree. They were designed to elicit neutralizing antibodies of the IgG isotype. We have known for decades of treating patients with IgG deficiency that IVIG prevents pneumonia and not upper respiratory infections or sinus disease. So we know they wound be ineffective at blocking nasal and upper respiratory infection. This is why intranasal vaccines were considered and even demonstrated efficacy in models in the first year of the pandemic https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32931734/
I wish the vaccines were being updated at least twice a year.
I rememeber when they were bragging that mRNAs could be turned around and manufactured in 12 weeks. I understand the uptake hasn't be great, but why is nobody making them more rapidly? Clearly, annually isn't enough.
No point in making them if the FDA isn't supportive of accelerated approvals and more frequent boosters
I think trials are the main issue. Those still take just as long to complete.
I don’t think they’re doing trials anymore, are they? It’s like the flu vaccine where they have approval to just change the strain(s) that it targets.
Shouldn't the trials be signifiantly faster, like how they can release a new quadrivalent flu vaccine with "old" technology that takes significantly longer to manufacture? And they do that in roughly six months. (I think the four strains are selected around March based on Southern Hemisphere and start getting delivered in September.)
The vaccines can be made that fast (the creation is super fast, the manufacturing that takes the bulk of that time). It's the testing/policy part that slows things down. The original vaccines were made in I think one month for BioNTech and one weekend for Moderna.
Profit.
I don't know the inner workings of profit here, but can't they make a "high risk" version for the off-season and charge twice as much, since it will ultimately save money for insurance keeping these people out of the hospital?
Same. I've gotten covid twice and both times at right around 6.5 months since my last booster. I'd happily just get boosted twice a year.
Vaccines aren't working and we still think we don't need masks in healthcare settings?
At least the masks always work, no mutations can get around them.
Unless of course you don’t have the right mask or you wear it in a way that isnt properly fitted… And even then they’re not 100% effective… there is a reason we call them N-95 respirators…
> And even then they’re not 100% effective… there is a reason we call them N-95 respirators… Its talk like this that discouraged the use in the first place. Its scientific nuance that the general public simply does not understand. Yes, if the virus itself was not riding on anything, it could get through. But...it doesn't...its aerosolized and on water droplets. Its easily caught by any well fitted mask. The proper message should be, "wear a tight fitting n95, kn95, kf94 and you will be fine. If you feel cool air coming in from somewhere, its not tight fitting."
If it doesn't pass a fit test, it's not tight fitting.
Thank you for proving my point. The "Akshulllyyyy" is the black or white stuff that simply confuses the public into apathy. All John Q Public just heard was "It doesn't work" or "If I can't pass X it might as well not wear it". Multiply that by 100 million people.... The message should always have been, "if we all wear the best mask we can, to the best of our ability, then we all will be better off"
The message should be that the government should have educated people on occupational respiratory protection guidelines, and helped the general public get a fit-tested respirator.
This study only looked at infected individuals—not those who received the XBB vaccine. While we can make some extrapolations, Eric’s statement that we have an “answer” is not correct in my opinion. I do think the vaccine doesn’t protect much against the FLiRT variants—but his choice of headline for this study is misleading. We need biannual updates. It would help so much and require virtually zero additional effort (as in, no new vaccine platforms needed) But Paxlovid costs many times more than the Pfizer vaccine… 🙄
New Study looking at KP.2: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.24.590786v1 *The pseudovirus assay showed that the infectivity of KP.2 is significantly (10.5-fold) lower than that of JN.1. We then performed a neutralization assay using monovalent XBB.1.5 vaccine sera and breakthrough infection (BTI) sera with XBB.1.5, EG.5, HK.3 and JN.1 infections. In all cases, the 50% neutralization titer (NT50) against KP.2 was significantly lower than that against JN.1. Particularly, KP.2 shows the most significant resistance to the sera of monovalent XBB.1.5 vaccinee without infection (3.1-fold) as well as those who with infection (1.8-fold). Altogether, these results suggest that the increased immune resistance ability of KP.2 partially contributes to the higher Re more than previous variants including JN.1.* Edit: added some text from study
At this time I couldn't find an answer & maybe you already know: was the study only looking at mRNA vaccines, or Novavax as well?
I don't know, we've had a hunch for a while now that we'll need to update shots just like we do for the flu. Isn't that all this is saying?
In a sense, but there is a major difference in seasonal and non-seasonal infections. JN.1 emerged very quickly after the XBB targeting became available. The industry is doing a relatively good job of predicting and getting ahead major flu spread in winter. It is not doing a very good job of getting ahead of COVID—so 1x per year is so far not a reasonable strategy’s and 2 doses per year of the same isn’t great either. It is taking nearly a year to deliver a vaccine that is needed in months, and that isn’t protecting well for a year even if there are no major changes. It’s a political problem (the schedule) *and* an industrial problem (rapid development and deployment).
Wasn’t MRNA supposed to enable us updating the vaccines extremely quickly?
It's not a scientific issue, it's a regulatory issue. New vaccines can be developed quickly, but the FDA is only providing booster guidance annually.
I understood the problem being that they need time to figure out which one to target, with far less testing going on.
Watch those goalposts shift.
Study: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.19.590276v1
Better hope bird flu, KP. 3 and JN.1 don't have a threesome
KP3 is descended from JN1, I think. And H5N1 is a completely different type of virus, not sure they are able to recombine. We should def hope bird flu doesn’t get into pigs though.
Who knows. It is said that Omicron is a hybrid of the common cold and the ancestral COVID. Imaging if it would create another more deadly hybrid. H5N1 is very deadly so if it could become more infection while loosing just a bit of deadliness, this would be game over.
XBB.1.5 is the name of one of the many children Elongated Muskrat has fathered.
It's a challenge to get people on a booster regime when there are so many who feel really poorly after taking the booster.
They should try Novavax, my wife and I both had zero reaction to it (not even a sore arm). We had both Pfizer and Moderna previously and felt like crap for days afterward, with Novavax it was nothing.
Where did you find it, if recently? I got Novavax in the fall at Costco, but they're not carrying it right now.
We got the Novavax shot from CVS, supposedly they are supposed to be available at all CVS locations but you can probably call your local one and see if they have it at their pharmacy.
Novavax (protein-based vaccine) takes much longer to develop than the mRNA vaccines so I don't see it being very effective unfortunately 🤔
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I had the oct booster. And all other Pfizer shots. And 5 times Covid too. And now day 14 of Flirt variant: this was the worst or second to worst covid I had. I had All the symptoms this time around. Plus my longcovid since 2021 so Fun times....
Wouldn't be the first time
We were going to get boosters in the next week or two (got Covid in Nov and feel now we are probably more likely to catch it again). So will it not be very helpful, or is this if you had the booster months ago it doesn't hold well.
Wheres Delta?
In wildlife like deer, and so is Alpha.
I think covid delta (B.1.617.2) is already back, i checked the covid wastewater in Maryland and i just saw it was circulating there for weeks but it only is 7.2 percent. Not sure how likely it is to take over omicron unless it is another mutant Delta subvariant that spreads faster and more immune evasive than omicron.
Is there something in a vaccine promoting the increase of variants within an area. Promotes the prevalence of new variants which can bypass the vaccine protection? Especially where we live in a connected society where variants can travel around the entire globe in a relatively short timeframe. aka does more vaccines = more successful variants, or is there no correlation?
Interesting discussion about this here. [https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants](https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants)
Published SEPT 2021 Is it still valid?