Scientists used plasma, a blood product that contains antibodies, from the participants to test the ability of the antibodies to control both Omicron and Delta.
The scientists used plasma, a blood product which contains antibodies, from the participants to test the ability of the antibodies to control both Omicron and Delta in the lab a so-called neutralisation test. They measured this close to when the participants had symptoms, and again around two weeks later. 🍏 Omicron Antibodies Could Provide Immunity Against Delta COVID-19 Variant: Study.
is whether or not the next variant, which by natural selection you will expect to be more evasive to omicron antibodies, would also, you know, be milder as well. if you look at the 1918 influenza pandemic, it ended because of two reasons. increasing immunity in a population with waves in infection. but also a milder variants or milder flu. so that s what we can hope for and i m crossing my fingers. at the end of the day, i think we may be faced with a situation where you get a variability seasonably once a year, some people get infected, some people have some antibodies. the next year, you get another variant. we ll see this over and over again until enough of the world is immunized. right now, there are so many inequity, that i m pessimistic it will come to an end that quickly.
dana: the first omicron death is confirmed. jonathan, this comes with important context. absolutely. texas authorities have confirmed this death in the houston area. it is a man in his 50s. he was apparently unvaccinated and had underlying health conditions. take a listen. we ll have hospitalizations, tragically deaths like what we ve seen now. but the evidence shows that for those vaccinated and with the booster it is much less likely. moderna released new data showing its current booster shot produces a 37 fold increase in omicron antibodies and pfizer earlier this month. this is important. without boosters existing vaccines are less effective against omicron than previous variants. seem to go through like wildfire in certain states. a lot of it has to do with the