VERY bad news from Brazil and its variants: worldwide threat

OK, my friends, I'm sorry but these are very bad news. You know of the out-of-control Covid-19 outbreak in Brazil, the current world epicenter of the pandemic, driven by the chaotic leadership (if we can call it that) of their denialist, anti-vaxxer, chloroquine-fan, anti-masks and anti-social distancing crazy president, right? Well, we scientists on the field have worried that this extremely rapid transmission chain in such a large and populous country with many economic ties with the rest of the world (they're something like the 10th world economy) with Brazilians trading and living everywhere, was a threat to the health of the entire humankind because this kind of rapid and widespread transmission is what allows the virus to mutate.

OK, done. What we feared has happened. The dreadful P.1 variant (out of the city of Manaus, derived from the B.1.1.28 , which is 2.5 times more contagious than the ancestral variant, and hits younger people much harder; 50% of ICU cases in Brazil are currently younger than 40 all the way down to the early 20's), continues to further mutate, and already has the E484K mutation that made the South African strain the most resistant one against the vaccines. Well, the South African one is not as contagious as the P.1... but the P.1, super-contagious, is getting more resistant too, to antibodies acquired by natural ancestral infection or vaccines. It's been already shown to re-infect people who had the ancestral variant, doing away with herd immunity.

Now, a new variant of interest has just emerged in Brazil: a new strain derived from the B.1.1.33, which is being called N.10, out of the northeastern areas of the country (state of Maranhão). It has the E484K mutation and... 14 others.

https://virological.org/t/identific...no-n-terminal-domain-of-the-spike-protein/675

Brazil also has the P.2 and the N.9. They're a bit less concerning, but still. And they certainly could further mutate, too.

So now Brazil has 4 nasty bugs.

We're so close to defeating the pandemic in the United States... but if this situation continues in Brazil, we could get everywhere a 4th or 5th wave with still different coronaviruses with high lethality, more potential to get young people very sick, much more infectious, and resistant to antibodies from the natural disease and the vaccines (good bye, herd immunity).

Can we adapt the vaccines fast enough to stop this bubbling flow of new variants out of Brazil's disastrous outbreak? I have my doubts. Scientifically speaking, we can, but logistically speaking, I'm afraid we can't; new adapted vaccines need new studies, new production lines, new distribution, new inoculation efforts... one update per year is possible but if this thing keeps mutating faster and faster then the variants will overwhelm vaccine development and production capacity.

France has cancelled all flights to and from Brazil, since yesterday. We haven't. I think we should do the same. But you know, these bans can only delay things for a while... but the more aggressive variants always manage to still infiltrate countries worldwide.

The above is a scientific paper about it. Here is a lay press article about it, too:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...may-become-more-dangerous-study-idUSKBN2C11XX

 

I trust my immune system more than any rushed "vaccine". I beat the covid19 and I'll beat covid21.

 

Good for you. Unfortunately not everybody is as lucky.

 

Thank you for telling us this. I know this might be hard to hear, but you are doing amazing work and you should be proud of yourself, along with all other scientists fighting the pandemic right now. I wish I could be as brave as you @CenterField but I'm not. So hopefully you can do well with my support from the sidelines. Maybe if you need something to eat or a donut party we can help sponsor one for you. If you would be okay with that.

 

I wonder if some sort of international intervention should happen in Brazil. They are jeopardizing the entire planet. At one point there was some pressure especially from the government of France on Brazil's irresponsible burning of their tropical forest, and it generated a lot of push back about sovereignty, neo-colonialism, etc. But now they are becoming a worldwide health threat too. What a mess.

I have worked in Brazil, I have colleagues and friends there, I speak the language, and I admire their vibrant culture and their friendly people... but in terms of their federal government, it's a full-blown disaster. Well, they freely elected their president. No fraud, no cheating. He is the legitimate president. But the guy is a disaster and now this country is threatening the whole planet with becoming a cradle for increasingly deadly coronavirus strains.

Maybe the intervention should not be a nasty one... but a concerted effort to help them vaccinate their population so that the virus stops mutating wildly there.

 

Is it possible we can make enough noise for the Biden admin. to close all our borders in all directions? If so, how do we do it?

 

You know, the P.1 variant is already here in the US and already has community transmission. We won't be able to stop all variants coming from abroad. But I'd favor a freeze in air flight between Brazil and the US like France did, to gain time. The more time we gain, the more of our people we can vaccinate, blunting the variants' assault. Some of them do evade the vaccines but the vaccines are thought to confer at least some protection, to decrease the severity of the illness. There is also cell immunity fostered by the vaccines. So the more we delay these variants from developing here, the more we can limit the damage by vaccinating more people.

Currently regular Brazilian nationals are not allowed to enter the United States... but with numerous exceptions; no dual national is stopped from coming in (and there are lots of naturalized Brazilian-Americans particularly in Florida, California, and Massachusetts), no green-card holder is stopped, plus the spouses and children including adult children of these people. Plus some other diplomatic exceptions, business exceptions, researchers, etc.

Now, if we simply cancelled ALL flights to and from Brazil like France has done, then the people who qualify for these exceptions would be severely curtailed in their ability to travel to the United States. Sure, some very rare individuals might still find some means but that would be the absolute exception. Much more efficient than these prohibitions is simply to cancel the flights.

That's what Uruguay did at the beginning of the pandemic. They simply grounded all airplanes. No flights in or out of Uruguay. They closed their land and sea borders too. So, they got one of the smallest outbreaks in the world. But of course Uruguay is a tiny country with fewer international ties than the United States'. So it wasn't as simple for us.

It's too late for us. We are after all the country with the MOST infected people. But at least cancelling all flights to and from Brazil would help with delaying these Brazilian variants until we vaccinate more of our people.

 

A CBS article: Why Americans Should Be Very Worried About The Covid Variant Tearing Through Brazil (and this was before the bad news I reported on the OP):

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brazil-covid-variant-cases-deaths-united-states-coronavirus/

In the words of Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, someone I know personally, a renowned Brazilian-American scientist from Duke University, quoted in this article:

"If I were talking to someone in Oklahoma, I would tell him or her to be very worried about it. Because if Brazil is out of control, the world will be out of control in a few weeks. Because variants that are brewing here every day, every week… they will escape."

 

I'm amazed at how slowly this kind of thing infiltrates MSM and consciousness. This could be far worse than the initial pandemic and hardly a peep...

 

As an aside, I wonder why Brazil in particular is having these variants. For example, the virus is sweeping through India as well, and we presume Africa. I wonder if a similar mutation process is happening there as well and it is simply not being detected?

 

Well the linked articles include CBS News, & Reuters News Service, so the fact we don't hear it spoken about on tv, is not strictly a result of the MSM being totally unaware of the story. As to their rationale for not promoting it, that could be anything from not believing the story would draw viewers from a Covid-weary populace, to having been asked, by the government, to not overly-panic people with concerns that our current vaccines might not protect them.

When it comes down to it, the ball is in Brazil's court, & there's not much any U.S. civilians can do about it. I'm sure Tony Fauci is aware of the situation, so I would presume he has informed Pres. Biden of it. It would be great if Biden could effect a change in Brazilian policy, but that's a tall ask, when President Bolsonaro, the Trump with the real tan, was one of the last world leaders to congratulate Biden after our election, that is, if Bolsonaro even has congratulated him.

This does seem just the sort of thing that the United Nations was built for; that said, I'm not optimistic of that organization getting it done, at least not on the requisite time-table. Many of our European partners, for example, already have full-plates, dealing with their own, current Covid-woes, not to mention the prospects of a Russian invasion into their (4-) border-sharing neighbor, Ukraine.

If thinking about this doesn't put you in the mood to buy a car, or to finally get going on fighting your moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, by talking to your doctor about a new medication, or to eat some Doritos snacks, maybe that's why we're not hearing more about it.

 

Basically a truth hurts argument @DEFinning ?

As a psychologist I regularly find myself curious about the, well..., psychology that influences politics.

On a personal note I am planning to travel to Germany, however this update makes me a bit uncertain. I am in the vulnerable demographic for this P1 variant.

 

Just close your damned borders, America!

Holy Variants ... it's not like we don't know how to handle it at this point. If no one can move around, then no one can spread the darned thing.

 

A psychologist eh? How interesting

Meantime, don't go to Germany. Too much risk!

 

Actually from the outset, plenty of boffins have been saying the first run was a dress rehearsal. They said that a much more dangerous virus (or variant of the original) is coming, and so we need to have protocols for suppression solidly in place. They had little to no faith in long term utility of immunity - whether via infection or inoculation.

In fact I posted quite a bit about this early last year, having access to said boffins via social circles.

 

Likely. We just don't know about it yet.

Though there's the possibility that something in the Brazilian 'lifestyle' is creating ideal conditions for mutation. We know that it isn't strictly crowding and poverty (since places like Vietnam and Thailand have managed to control the virus very well), but individual behaviour within that crowded /poverty context. Vietnamese and Thais are highly 'socially responsible' cultures, and so will tend to comply with protocols in the home out of respect for those they live with (and for their broader communities), etc. Perhaps Brazilians tend more towards their Leader's attitude, and don't really take it as seriously as they should?

 

All makes sense. Further to that I thought that genetics might play a role.

 

Doubtful, since the average Brazilian is a hybrid.

Would need a LOT of solid evidence for a DNA link (in 'pure' populations) meantime, since so often claims to genetics are not founded upon available science but upon preferred explanations.

 

Oh, the other places have variants too. Look at my Variants thread (link below). It's just that in this thread I'm addressing the Brazilian ones.
Yes, there is converging evolution. The E484K mutation has popped up independently in several variants around the world.
Do you know how many variants exist? Last I counted and it was a while ago, 300,000. My thread about variants has more details:
http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/sars-cov-2-variants.584511/page-2#post-1072501508

 

Thanks, found it.

This is just a snippit in my catch up reading, and may be outdated already... I read that the J&J vaccine that they are axing could work well against the P1 variant.

https://mobile.twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1373712302894026752

 

There are many reasons why the situation is dire in Brazil.

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First of all, much like in the United States, Brazil is politically very polarized right wing vs left wing (although Brazil has multiple parties and centrists/moderates are more represented than here but they tend to lose elections to the more radical left or right). Currently the Federal Government in Brazil is very right wing, and president Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has acted in many ways that made the outbreak worse:
1) Called it a little flu
2) Never endorsed any epidemiological containment (social distancing, masks, lockdowns) and told the population not to obey local ordnances in cities and states calling for lockdowns
3) Actively worked against control measures, for example, vetoed a bill that allocated funds to distribute masks to the population, cancelled vaccine purchases his Health Minister had arranged
4) Mocked the vaccines, literally said (no kidding) that they would turn people into alligators, and turned down an offer of 70 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine
5) Promoted large unmasked rallies
6) Championed medications with no effect on Covid-19 like chloroquine instead of vaccines. He fired in less than a month two Health Ministers who were knowledgeable medical doctors, because they refused to endorse chloroquine. He is now in his 4th Health Minister since the beginning of the pandemic.
7) The actions of the federal government regarding the pandemic have been characterized as "no leadership, no vaccines, no end in sight."
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Second, Bolsonaro's fans adopted his attitude and mocked and dismissed the danger, and behaved irresponsibly like their idol (they call him The Messiah)
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Third, Brazil has a large but relatively precarious health system. For example, in the middle of the P.1 surge in the city of Manaus, they ran out of oxygen tanks and hundreds literally died suffocated. In the vast majority of states, ICU occupancy got close to or at 100%. The health system can be described as in collapse, right now.
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Fourth, while Brazil has extremely developed and rich areas, with cities and populations as sophisticated as anywhere in the developed world, Brazil also has huge pockets of poverty where people live in crowded and unsanitary conditions, ripe for the wild spread of the virus. It's one of the countries with the biggest wealth disparity in the world. The "haves" there have a lot, and the "have nots" there have nothing.
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Fifth, with all the hesitancy and Bolsonaro even trying to boycott the vaccines, Brazil has vaccinated so far only 3% of its huge population of 220 million people, and they only have available two vaccines that are not great in efficacy against these variants, the AstraZeneca and the CoronaVac.
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Sixth, yes, culture. Brazilians are gregarious, like to party, and they keep defying the lockdowns and it's common to read news of the police interrupting parties with 100 people. Well, for the few that the police do break down, I'm sure there are many others that happen anyway without the police noticing them. Another example, they have the huge Carnival parade around Mardi Gras which happens everywhere with literally millions of people dancing on the streets, and while the organized forms of it (such as the Rio Samba Schools Parade) got forbidden everywhere by local and state governments, the people went to the streets to celebrate Carnival anyway, which resulted in a bad surge.

 

Well, the guy you quoted doesn't know what he is talking about. He says that the P.1 is not as contagious as the B.1.1.7. LOL, the P.1 is the most contagious variant. It is 2.5 times more contagious than the ancestral strains, while the B.1.1.7 is only 50% more contagious.

Yes, the vaccines have shown variable efficacy against the P.1, but the problem is, the P.1 seems to be further evolving, now. There is a possibility of a stronger evasion from the vaccines.

 

Yes, I doubt it too. Brazil is a melting pot of several races. European whites, African blacks, Middle Easterners, Japanese, indigenous peoples, the works, and inter-racial marriages are more common than in the United States with many people being of mixed races. It is very unlikely that one would find some sort of genetic predisposition in the Brazilian population, given that the P.1 is attacking relatively equally people of all races, there.

Brazil is a society of cast segregation more than racial segregation. Sure, the rich people can afford N95 masks, can practice more epidemiological control given better education, and yes, among the rich there is a predominance of white people, but there are many poor white people as well, and they are being hit just as badly as the other racial groups.

 

And it's their choice how they want to deal with it. My parents opted for the jab and they are doing OK. I don't care how people protect themselves, but I refuse to be pressured into something I don't trust, especially when I already have antibodies for what the vaccine is for.

 

Fine, although I don't see why you shouldn't trust our two mRNA vaccines which are excellent and very safe (Moderna and Pfizer). Just realize that the natural infection doesn't confer antibodies as strong as the mRNA vaccines do, especially against the new variants. You could get re-infected and the second time it could be worse given that some of these new variants seem to be more infectious and more lethal and affect harder younger people. So, if you don't want to get vaccinated, at least remain prudent.