Molecular analysis of Omicron variant shows it's 'highly evasive of immunity': UBC
Source: Coast Mountain News (British Columbia)
Molecular analysis of Omicron variant shows it’s ‘highly evasive of immunity’: UBC
Vaccines remain the best defence, researchers found
KATYA SLEPIANDec. 22, 2021 8:50 a.m.NEWS
A group of University of B.C. scientists have unveiled a molecular-level analysis of the Omicron variant that is swiftly becoming the dominant strain of COVID-19.
The analysis, which was done at “near atomic resolution” using a cryo-electron microscope, showed how the heavily mutated variant infects cells and is “highly evasive of immunity.”
Sriram Subramaniam, a professor at UBC’s faculty of medicine’s department of biochemistry and molecular biology, said that the Omicron variant had 37 spike protein mutations, much more than any previous variants.
According to Subramaniam, that has big implications for how the variant will act, because the spike protein is responsible for both how the virus attaches to and infects human cells and because its also where the antibodies attach to fight off the virus.
Read more: https://www.coastmountainnews.com/news/molecular-analysis-of-omicron-variant-shows-its-highly-evasive-of-immunity-ubc/
Picture of the enemy:
= new reply since forum marked as read
Normal morbidities aren't going to take time off for this covid thing. God help those with heart attacks, strokes or car wrecks. 
They uploaded their paper for peer-review - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.19.21268028v1
Link to tweet
@Tuliodna
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Dec 18, 2021
Replying to @Tuliodna
In Nov 2021, genomic surveillance teams in South Africa & Botswana detected a new SARS-CoV-2 variant associated with a rapid resurgence of infections. Within 3 days, it was designated a variant of concern (Omicron) by @WHO and, within 3 weeks, had been identified in 87 countries.
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Tulio de Oliveira
@Tuliodna
The Omicron variant is exceptional for carrying over 30 mutations in the spike glycoprotein, predicted to influence antibody neutralization and spike function.
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2:44 PM · Dec 18, 2021
is that apparently because of the new configuration of the spikes, the change slightly alters where the viral particles have tended to "land" and the way they fold around (like jello strands), it can make it difficult for the immune cells to get to the viral spikes or virus body itself, then attach, and then start neutralizing it.
In general with these variants, they find cells that have certain "receptors" (ACE2) and then like velcro, the virus can attach to those locations, puncture the cell wall, and then inject their genetic material in it to start replicating.
A computer sim of the virus is here (you can see the "spikes" with the cluster of stuff at the end, which was from a Nature article here - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02039-y) -
The fascinating illustration of how they attach and pull in to the cell -
The (landing) receptors are located all around the human body on some critical organs like the lungs (most common), heart, kidneys, and even along the neural, digestive, and circulatory systems. The entry points (nose/mouth) have quite a few so the virus can land there first and start reproducing, and then those child viral particles can move deeper into the body.
However what they are finding is that based on the changed configuration of the Omicron spikes, there have been some more favorable landing zones along the way to the lungs (bronchial tubes) that are not as deep inside them and that has apparently lessened the more immediate severe impacts in the lungs. I.e., they were finding that this version of the virus, if it makes it deeper inside the lungs, is apparently slower to find a place to land and reproduce.
December 15, 20217:15 PM ET
Michaeleen Doucleff 2016
Omicron is spreading lightning fast. In the U.S., the percentage of cases caused by this new coronavirus variant jumped seven times in just a week, from 0.4% of the total cases sequenced to 2.9%, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. And it's already causing about 13% of cases in a region that includes New York and New Jersey.
In a household, the risk of spreading the omicron variant to another member is three times higher than it is with the delta variant, U.K. health officials estimated Friday. And delta, as you may know, is considered highly transmissible. Why is omicron such a superspreading variant? Preliminary data, published online Wednesday, gives us the first look at how omicron may behave inside the respiratory tract — and the data offers a tantalizing clue as to why this heavily mutated variant is spreading so fast and even outcompeting delta.
The omicron variant multiplies about 70 times faster inside human respiratory tract tissue than the delta variant does, scientists at the University of Hong Kong report. The variant also reaches higher levels in the tissue, compared with delta, 48 hours after infection. "That's amazing," says immunologist Wilfredo Garcia-Beltran, who's a fellow at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital and wasn't involved in the study. This finding indicates that mutations in omicron have sped up the process of entering or replicating (or both) inside the tissue.
But how this finding, from tissue studied in the lab, relates to viral loads inside an actual person's respiratory tract is still unknown, he emphasizes. These findings from the University of Hong Kong haven't been peer reviewed — and the experiments occurred entirely inside cell tissue. Nonetheless, the research supports another study, published online Tuesday, from Garcia-Beltran and his colleagues that also suggests omicron is more infectious than delta.
(snip)
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/12/15/1064597592/a-tantalizing-clue-to-why-omicron-is-spreading-so-quickly
The research above was based on in vitro (in the lab) behavior of the virus with lung tissue and bronchial tissue vs actual observed behavior in vivo (in the body), but it gives some clues that can be further looked at.
One of the things that a number of not just viruses but bacteria can do, is configure themselves to make it harder for the various cells that make up our immune system (and there are a number of them) to find a place to attach to them and neutralize them.
In general the body has many actors that have certain roles when an infection occurs - some that react immediately and others that eventually adapt to help join the fight. It's like an army with various specialists.
In the above circle of entities to the left, you have the "first line of defense" that get triggered with an infection and then those seen in the circle to the right, are what make up the final attack response to an invader, and can be enhanced by vaccines.
(sorry I geeked out on you but as a former chemist, I couldn't help it
)Thank you so much for real science! I had to go and read the whole article, and bookmarked it with the others. As a former chem eng, I love this stuff. To me, this is science, not the far too many headlines telling us what science is from reporters and politicians 
I used to be in chem and physics classes with ChemEs and pre-meds.
I never really thought of myself as a "visual" learner but over the years, stuff like this has pointed to how I apparently am. It's like remembering when taking multivariable calculus and how my old professor would say it was nothing more than taking 2-dimensional curves and rotating them around a 3rd axis to get a volume. I was like whoa! 
And as another visualization to add (I didn't want to completely swamp the previous post) - this shows just how the thing enters a cell, reproduces, and exits (I think from the same article) -
The one thing that lay folks have to realize is how tiny viruses are compared to the cells they break into (and that even includes bacteria, which are also larger than viruses).
My wife is similar. You're correct about the steroidal inhalers - they can suppress the immune system (but if it's necessary to breathe, well, stuck using it, I guess). However inhalers like Advair was found to help with dilation without the effect steroids do, and had a side benefit of inhibiting the replication of the virus. We all had COVID last month, and her coughing was pretty frequent, she came though after about 5 days pretty well using Advair first, inhaler if needed.
Antihistamines may suppress the immune system to some extent, but because the body's response to COVID is one of inflammation, it may help more than hurt. May also add that it looks like Omicron loves your sinuses, and if you're vacc'd or had it before, doesn't do well at all in your lungs and the rest of your innards, so another plus.
Hope you don't ever need to find out personally
after potentially having contracted swine flu (at the tail end of it in 2010) and getting pneumonia from it and that stuff was $250/month. 
My pulmonologist wanted to keep me on it forever (I was like um no... ). I never had continual "chronic" bronchial issues to justify it. It was always more something that got triggered and would resolve.
I expect something like Advair (or equivalents - it finally generic versions) might be useful for anyone that ends up with long COVID if there was more severe lung damage that has been slow to heal.
Terminate with extreme prejudice
This is what the enemy pics look like to me
