COVID-19:  Delta and the multiple variants and mutants yet to come.

Herd immunity is unlikely to be achieved in our lifetime.  As with the H1N1 and HIV virus, global waves of COVID-19 and its variants and mutations can be expected to continue far beyond our lifespan and that of succeeding generations.

Viruses are asexual parasitic organisms – neither male nor female.  Viruses rely on the cells of a host to provide the DNA and RNA necessary for reproduction.  A process known as replication. and preserve the species

Species preservation is the inescapable driving force hard-wired in all living organisms – whether by copulation or, as in unicellular viruses, by way a host.    

Hosts upon which viruses rely on for replication cover the full spectrum living organisms – human, animal, insect, and plant. 

What is herd Immunity?

In essence, human herd immunity is defined as a total and lifelong immunity against any given virus, bacterium or parasite in a population or group of people.

Eventual herd immunity relies on a continuum of cross-infection between the hosts of COIV-19: humans and bats.   

This, so that as the virus becomes increasingly attenuated by the different immune mechanisms inherent in each of the hosts it passes through. 

Human herd immunity can only be acquired by way of vaccination with a fully efficacious vaccine coupled to the removal of all other anti-transmission interventions: face masks, social mixing, lockdown mandates and strict avoidance of snake-oil medicines. 

Curbing man-made viral transmission is aimed at permitting the natural ebb and flow of viral disease among the population of the world.  This global transmission of any given virus will grant mankind with full, lifelong immunity.  A sadly brutal exercise incurring as it does disease and possible death in the aged, weak, and vulnerable.

This unfettered spread of viral disease is an excruciating road yet to be travelled. A road dictated by Nature  since the emergence of the living matter on our planet.

It is of merit to consider those parents who wisely, or perforce of economic circumstance,  allow their children to share a sandpit with other children, to pass among themselves the myriad pathogens that threaten future morbidity and mortality; nevermind the pathogens shed through scrabbling and squabbling in sandpit polluted by night-time visits of cats, dogs, and other disease-infested vermin. Children resistant to most ailments, up to and including cancer as they progress to adulthood and procreation.

Herd immunity is aggravated by

• False confidence in the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.  
• The reality is that science has still no vaccines against HIV and H1N1 viruses and many more. 
• The failure to face up to the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic: countries and their politicians who continue to exercise erratic and often irrational lockdown, compromising the lives of people on multiple fronts – education in the skills necessary to mitigate COVID-19 transmission and infection
• We need to confront the reality that our delusions of developing an efficacious life-long COVID-19 vaccine is    

What has Changed?

• Nothing
  • The COVID-19 virus, variants and mutations are as likely to cause disease as are all other human viruses – many of which humans are unaware of as they do not cause ill-health. Example: the symbiotic relationship of viruses living in the hair follicles human eyebrows. They need us as much as we need them    
  • All viruses mutate to survive in human or any other host. To do this, viruses need to mutate so that they are not killed by antibodies that seek to kill COVID-19. The Delta variant is  an example – more variants are inevitable
• SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2) is a highly transmissible and pathogenic coronavirus that emerged in late 2019 and has caused pandemics of acute respiratory disease, named by scientists as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
• Initially, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) was thought to reproduce at a rate of between 2.5 and 4 in a fully susceptible population i.e., in a population where no counter-measures are in place (masking, social distancing, lockdown, vaccination) every 1 person infected is expected, on average, to infect 2.5 to 4 un-infected persons
• The Delta variant of COVID-19 is at least twofold more transmissible
  • Even in populations that are fully up to speed on vaccination and all other defensive measures, the reproductive rate of the Delta variant is probably closer to infecting 6 other persons 
• Robust medical science has long-since proven that the COVID-19 virus across the world has shown an ability to mutate rapidly, making it resistant to antibodies induced by previous COVID-19 infection and vaccines. 
• Politicians, denialists, and the obscenities of social media have well succeeded in ensuring the relentless human decimation at the hands of COVID-19.  As successfully as they did, and in many places continue to do, in ensuring that HIV has become ineradicable and is now an endemic disease, with 70% of the world’s people living with HIV resident in South Africa      

• At this time the durability and protection afforded by memory cells has been recorded by scientists to last for a mere 6 to 9  months. Memory responses to the continually evolving variants are thought to attenuate (mitigate) the clinical course of new COVID-19 infection, but not able to provide full immunity  
• The inequitable global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines continues to provide fertile ground for the ongoing evolution of COVID-19 variants and mutations
• At present 1% of the global low-income population have been vaccinated. Only 27% of the global population has been incompletely or fully vaccinated
• In the absence of non-pharmacological global intervention, all countries require the political will to scaffold the sluggish vaccine rollout by a universally binding agreement on easy and affordable ancillary preventive measures:
  • Mandatory respiratory masking
  • Installation and education in the new-norm and forever economic advantages of working from home as employees or entrepreneurs through free access to internet communication    

The Brave New Road to Herd Immunity

Herd immunity is the essence of a Brave New World.   An unpalatable, if not terrifying, new world. A written-in-stone  road toward a Brave New World is road toward the sustaining of robust herd immunity.

Next Steps

To become familiar with the H1N1 virus of avian origin virus, forerunner of COVID-19 of bat origin.  The H1N1 that too the lives of an estimated 500 million lives in 1918 – one-third of the world’s population. The number of deaths estimated at that time to be at least 50 million around the globe

The only sustainable solution is that mankind comes to terms with global waves of this and the inevitable future viral pandemics.  To heed only peer-reviewed science and not fall victim to greed  driven political business agendas ………

……..learn to embrace viral infections so as to rapidly achieve the symbiosis enjoyed with viruses such as those resident in the hair follicles of our eyebrows…..

Finally, to achieving the annual living-together management of the H1N1 influenza virus  

South Africans would be wise to fully acquaint themselves with COVID-19 so as to drive out the perversities of conspiracy theorists, manipulated scientists and the self-serving politicians in our midst who are intent upon satisfying their own sinister agenda  

Sources and References:

1. BizCommunity – Shabir A Madhi – 04^th August 2021

2. Cui, J., Li, F. & Shi, Z. L. Origin and evolution of pathogenic coronaviruses. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 17, 181–192 (2019) US National Archives and Records Administration, 1918 -1920    

3. Pima Agency, Arizona, regarding condition of flu [the] patient, October 17, 1918. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

4. Directive from Washington, D.C., regarding treatment and procedures. September 26,1918

5. Naval Districts and Shore Establishments: National Archives at New York City. Record Group 75 .