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haxxiy on 03 August 2021
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Farsala said:

I got my first shot today. 3 weeks until the 2nd shot. Took about 40 minutes in and out, which is a bit long for my taste, but it's done. I think it is good timing too, I should be well protected for the first few months and in 2022, there should be a booster shot for any stronger variants.

I was thinking something crazy the other day. That with the first wave of coronavirus, Asia was largely unaffected. Why? I have no idea. But a thought I had was that in February 2020, I was severely sick and wearing no mask, as were many other people. I went to work as usual and 100s of people were sick at my workplace. This country is very close to China in proximity. Economically, trade is booming between the 2 countries and so many people would be flying between the countries with business deals. So if Covid spreads as fast as we think it did, I don't think it would be too wild to have already spread throughout Japan by then. I think a lot of people were sick before many cases were known. So when the "first wave" came, a lot of people here already had the first wave before. Or maybe it was a severe flu, which can be dangerous too.

Now Delta variant is spreading, and antibodies/immunity to the first strain does not protect against the more dangerous Delta variant.

Neither SARS-CoV-2 antibodies nor significantly cross-reactive antibodies from another virus were found in appreciable amounts in Eastern Asian populations. It was a common theory back then, but alas.

On the other hand...

Using our previous epidemiological framework to analyze COVID-19 surveillance and sequence data, we estimated that the G614 mutant is 31% (28-34%) more transmissible than the D614 wildtype. As such, interventions that were previously effective in containing or mitigating the D614 wildtype (e.g. in China, Vietnam, Thailand, etc.) might be less effective against the G614 mutant. Source.

The mean Rt for lineage A from Australia and USA were estimated as 1.75 and 1.74, respectively. However, the mean Rt for lineage B from Australia and USA were estimated as 2.33 and 3.18, respectively. Source.

Closing borders might have helped contain the odd B.1 or VoI case that passed through in Eastern Asia, but Delta was just too much.