SD on 5/7/2021 at 19:12
Quote Posted by lowenz
There's no
lasting immunity and there are new variants boosting the risk of reinfections.
No lasting immunity? Who says? People who got SARS 1 in 2003 still had a T-cell response 17 YEARS later. Are you a visitor from 2038?
Quote Posted by zombe
What are you comparing? What are you talking about?
I was talking about the predictions of doom that failed to materialise in Texas, like almost all the earlier predictions of doom.
Not really sure what those graphs are supposed to prove?
Azaran on 5/7/2021 at 20:05
A bit of good news is it's looking more and more like most reinfections are (
https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20210504/sarscov2-reinfection-milder-than-primary-infection-in-us-study) milder
Another (
http://www.siouxfallsscientists.com/evolution-news-2021-06.html) article.
Quote:
BACK in August 2020, a worrying report came in from Reno, Nevada. A 25-year-old man who had recovered from covid-19 in April had fallen ill with it again, and this time his symptoms were worse. He had tested negative for the virus in between bouts, so had been infected twice. Other reports of reinfection were also circulating at the time, raising fears that infections don't lead to long-lasting immunity. Nine months on, however, those fears have receded. Not only is vaccination proving highly effective, a number of large studies in Europe and the US have now shown that while reinfection is possible, it is rare and usually produces mild disease at worst. One such study was carried out over four months in 100 care homes for older people in England. Between June and November 2020, Maria Krutikov at University College London and her colleagues took blood samples from 682 residents and 1429 staff and tested them for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Over the next four months, all the subjects were regularly screened for infection using PCR tests. Initial blood tests found that 634 of the total 2111 people were antibody positive, meaning they had already been infected. Only 14 of them subsequently had a positive PCR test - a reinfection rate of just over 2 per cent. In comparison, 204 of the 1477 (14 per cent) people whose blood test came back antibody negative subsequently caught the virus. Data from residents and staff who had been vaccinated more than 12 days before their samples were taken were excluded from the analysis (The Lancet Healthy Longevity, doi.org/gkc8dr). Eleven of the 12 reinfected people for whom symptoms were recorded had symptoms such as a cough or fever, but none required hospitalisation. The researchers warn that the numbers are quite small, so it is hard to draw firm conclusions, but it seems that previous infection reduces the risk of reinfection by about 70 per cent. This is in line with another study of healthcare workers in England, also carried out between June and November 2020.
lowenz on 6/7/2021 at 09:50
Milder reinfections=infections so the virus CAN always mutate thanks to the host with "milder symptoms".
We know well that vaccines (or a previous severe expression of the infection) can avoid hospitalization, that's NOT in question. Problem is virus becoming endemic. The so called "immunity" is not a real immunity thanks to how coronaviruses work. You simply got a cold-like (->nose+throat) version of the disease but it's enough for the virus to mutate and propagate.
faetal on 6/7/2021 at 10:10
Likely that mutant flare-ups and ad hoc restrictions on travel etc. may just have to become a way of life.
Cipheron on 7/7/2021 at 02:57
Quote Posted by lowenz
Milder reinfections=infections so the virus CAN always mutate thanks to the host with "milder symptoms".
We know well that vaccines (or a previous severe expression of the infection) can avoid hospitalization, that's NOT in question. Problem is virus becoming endemic. The so called "immunity" is not a real immunity thanks to how coronaviruses work. You simply got a cold-like (->nose+throat) version of the disease but it's enough for the virus to mutate and propagate.
This virus is also nasty in that it's a multi-organ disease. It gets into your brain and other organs. Some researchers suspect Covid-19 may predispose people to Parkinson's or Alzheimer's later on.
(
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects.html)
(
https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-changes-from-covid-19-look-eerily-similar-to-alzheimers-and-parkinsons-disease)
Quote:
Brain Inflammation From COVID-19 Looks Eerily Similar to That From Alzheimer's
The SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn't just cause enduring damage to the lungs and the heart. A large number of patients who contract COVID-19 also report long-lasting neurological issues, including brain fog, memory loss, difficulty concentrating, hallucinations, headaches, and loss of smell or taste.
...
The most comprehensive molecular investigation to date has now uncovered extensive inflammation and degeneration in the brains of those who have died from COVID-19 - even when they didn't report any neurological symptoms in life.
The herd immunity strategy was pretty reckless from the start: this is an unknown disease. Yeah, let's get everyone infected with a completely unknown disease, that'll be a good way to stop it being a problem.
lowenz on 7/7/2021 at 05:25
About the brain (and the nerves) the target is always the vascular system and not directly the neurons. Of course no matter what is the target the damage is real and lasting.
demagogue on 7/7/2021 at 08:34
I guess I need to respond to that.
I'm in a number of long covid groups. After the acute phase, the major and by far numerically dominant problem with covid, at least going by the polls done in these groups and studies they like to post, is dysautonomia, which is exactly a problem in neural control by the autonomic system. This includes the problems I've had with my heart rate. And no, my vision problems weren't a result of low blood pressure / hypovolemia, although that is a problem in the acute phase and I had some of that issue when I had tachycardia (which itself was dysautomic). But I haven't had any blood pressure issue after the first month, and my problems now are in the same territory as my hyper sensitivity to certain tones, the crazy tinnitus, the loss of smell and taste, the vertigo ... all these things that come with dysautonomia.
Long story short, after the first 2 or 3 weeks, and excepting lasting complications from the acute phase, the problem of covid is the problem of dysautonomia, a neural problem. I'm not saying that as a medical professional; just going by what I'm reading in long covid groups, which granted is a self-selected group, so of course you're going to have a selection bias by that alone. But if you search covid issues, you keep getting directed to these groups & a similar set of opinions. So I wouldn't dismiss it either.
Starker on 7/7/2021 at 08:56
The callousness and shortsightedness of Branch Covidians never fails to impress.
Quote Posted by Cipheron
So we have people saying to learn to live with Covid-19 like we do flu. But, Covid's about 10 times as deadly as the flu. A bad flu year kills about 50,000 Americans.
The regular, seasonal variant kills 50 000 people in the US on a bad year. And that's with vaccines and antiviral drugs and doctors having lots of experience with the complications suppressing the count. A
bad flu (that is, a novel strain that turns into a pandemic every few decades or so) can kill much, much more. The famous one killed as many as 850 000 people over 2 years in the US, though of course there were a lot fewer people in the US back then.
I really wish people would stop underestimating the flu.
Cipheron on 7/7/2021 at 09:35
Quote Posted by SD
No lasting immunity? Who says? People who got SARS 1 in 2003 still had a T-cell response 17 YEARS later. Are you a visitor from 2038?
I was talking about the predictions of doom that failed to materialise in Texas, like almost all the earlier predictions of doom.
Not really sure what those graphs are supposed to prove?
Doom is relative. About 22-23 people a day are dying of Covid in Texas. That works out to 8000+ people on a yearly basis. It's not 'doom' but it's still not nothing.
But ... remember like I said it's midsummer in Texas right now. 8000 is around the number of deaths of a "light" influenza year, for the entire USA. And Texas is averaging that right now, in the middle of summer, in only one state. If *Texas* is getting those sorts of numbers for a winter virus, in the middle of the Texan summer heat, then it doesn't actually bode well for Texas any more than claiming you "beat influenza" because there are also very few influenza deaths in the summer.
Remember, the same politicians who are saying this respiratory illness isn't a threat any more (because it's summer, duh) are also the ones who say global warming isn't happening, because it gets cold every year in winter. And I really wish this wasn't literally a thing they do:
(
https://davidsuzuki.org/story/winter-weather-doesnt-disprove-global-warming/)
Easing up in the warm months makes sense, as long as you have a government willing to pull the stops out come next winter. Which I'm really betting that Texas *doesn't* have. It's the same as it makes sense to do deficit spending in the bad years IF you're going to save up a surplus in the good years. Which is also something the US government seems to have a problem with. Both probably due to lack of forward thinking that's endemic in US politics.
faetal on 7/7/2021 at 13:29
Tweet from a population genomics professor in Liverpool UK: (
https://twitter.com/scottishwormboy/status/1411952287132618752)
"Letting a virus rip through a partially vaccinated population is exactly the experiment I'd do to evolve a virus able to evade immunity"So yeah, worst case scenario is an extent of the vaccination efforts ending up undone.
For what it's worth, my understanding of genomics & population genetics (which stops at undergraduate level, so not expert by any means) brought me to the same conclusion, so it's not even that much of a hot take, it's just how evolution works in rapidly mutating entities.
As another person said later in the thread, the UK is about do the country equivalent of not finishing a course of antbiotics.