Activision and Pfizer Again

The ATVI short worked well. I expected more of a bounce. This looks ready for a trip to long-term support whether or not the broader market cooperates, but no position yet.

The Pfizer short opened yesterday is going well so far. There could be much larger downside potential. I'm not trading on this, only filing it away for later. Japanese research paper says SARS2 has developed 3 of 4 needed mutations to render Pfizer vaccine useless.

The SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant is poised to acquire complete resistance to wild-type spike vaccines

Abstract: mRNA-based vaccines provide effective protection against most common SARS-CoV-2 variants. However, identifying likely breakthrough variants is critical for future vaccine development. Here, we found that the Delta variant completely escaped from anti-N-terminal domain (NTD) neutralizing antibodies, while increasing responsiveness to anti-NTD infectivity-enhancing antibodies. Although Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2-immune sera neutralized the Delta variant, when four common mutations were introduced into the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the Delta variant (Delta 4+), some BNT162b2-immune sera lost neutralizing activity and enhanced the infectivity. Unique mutations in the Delta NTD were involved in the enhanced infectivity by the BNT162b2-immune sera. Sera of mice immunized by Delta spike, but not wild-type spike, consistently neutralized the Delta 4+ variant without enhancing infectivity. Given the fact that a Delta variant with three similar RBD mutations has already emerged according to the GISAID database, it is necessary to develop vaccines that protect against such complete breakthrough variants.