Did Covid-19 vaccines cause delta variants of the coronavirus? Here’s what the timing says

As they say in life, timing is everything. It is now claimed that the Covid-19 vaccines have given rise to the Delta variant of the Covid-19 coronavirus. For example, here’s something that was posted on Facebook:

There is, however, a big flaw in such assertions. It has to do with the space-time continuum and the lack of a flow capacitor.

In general, a cause must precede an effect. For example, the song “Friday” by Rebecca Black did not cause the stock market crash of 1929. That’s because the song was released in 2011. And Rebecca Black, to our knowledge, has no winding machine. the weather.

The same logic should apply when considering the origins of the Delta variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Take a look at the World Health Organization (WHO) “Tracking SARS-CoV-2 Variants” website. This shows when the various “variants of concern” and “variants of interest” were first detected. As you can see, all of these variants emerged in 2020. Among the worrisome variants, the Alpha variant was first found in the United Kingdom (UK) in September 2020, the Beta variant in South Africa in May 2020 , the Gamma variant in Brazil in November 2020 and the Delta variant in India in October 2020. Among the variants of interest, the Eta variant was first detected in several countries in December 2020, the Iota in the United States in November 2020, the Kappa in India in October 2020, and the Lamba variant in Peru in December 2020.

Next, keep in mind when the Covid-19 vaccination actually started in different parts of the world. As Krishna N. Das and Mayank Bhardwaj pointed out for Reuters, Vaccination against Covid-19 did not really start in India until January 2021, about three months after the emergence of the Delta variant. Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna did not receive Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the United States Food and Drug Administration for their Covid-19 mRNA vaccines until December 2020, the same month as Astra-Zeneca Covid-19 vaccine first received clearance in UK It was all after the four variants of concern had already spread.

Next, take a look at where many of these variants were first detected. Um, what do they have in common? Could it be that they have all failed to truly control the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus? The US, UK, India, Brazil and Peru would not be the answer to the Jeopardy question, “Which countries have done best to contain SARS-CoV-2?” These countries are not Taiwan, South Korea and New Zealand. The US, UK, India and Brazil consistently sit at the top or near the top of the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center’s list of countries with Covid-19 cases the most reported in the world. Peru leads the world with the highest per capita death rate linked to Covid-19.

This brings us to the real reason why variants of the Covid-19 coronavirus have emerged. “They multiply” in the words of John Travolta from the film Fat. In this case, they mean the virus and not Olivia Newton-John’s crush. As I described previously for Forbes, whenever the virus infects a cell and uses the cell as a cheap motel to reproduce itself, the virus can make mistakes. The virus can be like that drunken person at an office party who decides to use the copier to make multiple copies of their butt. Each copy can be shifted slightly, resulting in end-to-end variants when it’s the bottom line, so to speak, and virus variants when it comes to the Covid-19 coronavirus.

Copy errors basically mean that the resulting viruses (i.e. progeny) may contain mutations, slightly different genetic codes. Many of these variants may be weaker than the original virus. These weaker versions may not spread as well. Problems arise when a resulting new variant has characteristics that allow it to spread faster and further like the Delta variant. As with Olympic judo matches or cheese-rolling competitions, the strongest survive and win.

Thus, the best way to prevent the emergence and spread of new variants is to better prevent the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus. The way to achieve this is to maintain Covid-19 precautions such as social distancing and the use of a face mask until a sufficient portion of the population is fully vaccinated to reach immunity thresholds. collective. Once the collective immunity thresholds have been reached, the Covid-19 coronavirus will have a hard time finding new people to infect and will not be able to continue to spread as it has.

Covid-19 vaccines help protect against the Delta variant. Blaming vaccines for the emergence of such variants would be like blaming the doctor after you’ve already glued your genitals to a bobblehead doll. Chances are your doctor has never used the words “superglue”, “bobblehead”, “genitals” and “that would be good” all together in one sentence on a previous visit to the clinic. In fact, the words “superglue”, “bobblehead” and “genitals” probably should not be used together without special permission.

Again, if you don’t want varying copies of your butt flowing around the office, don’t sit on the copy machine and hit the “Copy” button 1,000 billion times. Likewise, the inability to control the Covid-19 coronavirus will ultimately lead to more variants. The longer countries like the United States go without meeting collective immunity thresholds and seriously implementing other Covid-19 precautions in the meantime, the greater the chance that worse variants will emerge. Spreading false information about the Covid-19 coronavirus and the vaccine may cause people to skip the shot and maintain Covid-19 precautions now. The unfortunate effects of all of this can come later.