Russia, as always, is moving in its own special way – according to official statistics, the rate of vaccination against coronavirus is at the global average, but at the same time we are breaking all records in terms of mortality from coronavirus. At first glance, there is no logic in this. However, Pavel VOLCHKOV, head of the MIPT Laboratory of Genomic Engineering, does not consider such statistics to be paradoxical. In his opinion, the worst is yet to come – we can lose up to 10% of the population during a pandemic.
– Pavel, why, despite the vaccination, the death rate from covid is higher than last year?
– High rates of vaccination are actually deceiving. The vaccines are given by the same people. First they were vaccinated, now they are revaccinated. And those who did not even think about getting vaccinated earlier do not deal with this issue now. Therefore, in fact, we are marking time in the same place.
– The main reason, as far as I understand, is the lack of confidence in vaccines. In my opinion, everyone has already believed in the reality and ferocity of the virus.
“Any bad vaccine is better than none. I am now talking about this abstractly, not about its specific types. People who go to hospitals with a severe course, and then die from the coronavirus, have not been sick with it before and have not been vaccinated at all. Their immunity remained virgin.
“But when there were no vaccinations at all, the mortality rate was lower.
– The virus is becoming more and more contagious and lethal. It mutates. This is his evolutionary path.
– Are you talking about the Delta strain, which everyone is afraid of?
– Delta is already a collective concept, it has dozens of varieties and is not at all like the Delta that appeared in India. Among the new subspecies there are dominant ones, they, shall we say, “improve” this strain – towards contagiousness. The first Wuhan strain was very slow. The incubation period lasted more than six days, so the adaptive immunity in young people had time to prepare for the virus attack. In the elderly, adaptive immunity is much weaker, so it was they who suffered at the beginning of the pandemic. And now the strains have become more pathogenic and faster. Immunity, both young and old, does not have time to react to them. So now everyone, young and old, is sick.
– And if the coronavirus continues to mutate, can it become even faster and more deadly?
– I would not like to consider this scenario. Let’s take a different angle. If 80% of the population acquires the so-called effective immunity (when antibody titers in the blood are high), the virus will begin to evolve towards “overcoming the formed adaptive immunity.” That is, it will look for resources to take a new height, but from the experience of epidemics known to us from the beginning of time, we know that nothing will come of it. He will have two ways: either he will completely disappear (the immune barrier will be too high for him), or he will be included in the number of standard colds.
– Is it possible that without vaccination, people in large quantities cannot acquire active immunity against covid, simply having been ill with it?
– They can, but at the same time we will lose 10% of the population at once. This is called natural decline.
– But now the picture is motley. Someone gets sick easily, someone is hard. And vaccination does not save the general situation.
– If the vaccination had not been so prolonged, the situation would certainly have been much better. But vaccination has been going on for a year and a half. While some are just thinking of being vaccinated, others’ antibody titers have already decreased, and the virus continues to circulate, increasing its power and adapting to new conditions. Now, on average, one person infects three to four. If we broke this chain at once, we would have nothing to worry about.
– Does the virus strike mainly the cardiovascular, endocrine and central nervous systems?
– Not only, but it is they who are at great risk. The consequences for those who are seriously ill with the disease are as follows. The first step is thrombosis. The second step is strokes and heart attacks. Delayed effect – the appearance of cholesterol plaques. British scientists have conducted extensive research and recently proved that many patients with coronavirus had a severe IQ drop. That is, the disease has damaged the centers of the brain that are responsible for rational activity. During the pandemic, we have become trite stupid.
– Sounds like a sentence. And what percentage of the vaccination of the population, in your opinion, will save us from the continuation of the pandemic, new lockdowns and covicules?
– Initially, we thought that 70% would be enough. But then I had to admit that in megacities with a high population density, this percentage should be higher. And then, we must not forget that we are talking about 70% of the total number of residents of the regions. But the remaining 30% are children who are not vaccinated in our country. However, they are very active carriers of the virus. It turns out that in order to reach at least 70%, absolutely the entire adult population must be vaccinated.
– Are the real figures far from this level?
– In most cities, no more than 35% of adults are vaccinated. And this figure is very different from what we need now to feel protected.
– There is a lot of information about vaccination in the media and social networks, but it is contradictory. Many people continue to question the effectiveness of vaccines.
– If arguments at the level of rational logical thinking do not work, other arguments will not help either. In fact, the whole point is that a person is used to thinking positively, because he has lived up to the current situation. This is called passive optimism. No amount of mathematical calculations will convince him of the existence of a real threat, as long as he is sure that he is safe, and this attack will never touch him personally. This is exactly how anti-vaccine people think – they will not be convinced by any reasonable arguments and arguments, so I see no other way out for us other than the introduction of mandatory vaccination.
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