Conservatives continue to be the biggest crutch in fighthing this thing Trump is literally blaming Obama for bad Covid tests. This MF is so stupid and his followers are just as stupid and are also sociopaths Some news outlet posted a restaurant in Katy being re-opened. I only saw older white males without masks. At this point, they can give it to each other and take the risk of dying. Keep us out of it.
You have 2( and sometimes 3) problems. 1 = virus. 2 = economy/unemployment. (3 = is your decision maker in an election year?) Decision makers are trying to alleviate both problems simultaneously. You cant. It's one or the other. And if you act too soon on either item #1 or item #2, 1 step forward might be 2 steps back. This idea that there might be a healthy balance is dangerous.
Is it possible we do a "Human Challenge" effort for stage 3 testing? This MIGHT cut months off of a phase 3 trial. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01179-x This, of course, involves trying to directly infect people that have taken a vaccine with the virus to test its efficacy. Normally phase 3 takes so long because you just let people go about their business and see if they get it.
Back on the virus, I thought this was a great read in Q&A format: It's a Quanta magazine look at What Other Coronaviruses can Teach Us. Excerpts, with good news before bad news: "Could SARS-CoV-2 become endemic among humans and just never go away? What then? It’s hard to say. ... One outcome: The disease could become milder with time. This may have happened with HCoV-OC43, which appears to have diverged from its ancestral virus BCoV around 1890, when it jumped from cattle to humans. Coincidentally, that was also the year of a nasty influenza epidemic — though it may very well have been a coronavirus outbreak, like today’s. ... A deletion of part of the spike gene and several other changes in a second gene led to the emergence of PRCV from an ancestral swine gastroenteritis virus. These mutations seem to have changed the virus’s tissue preference, transforming it from a deadly enteric (intestinal) pathogen to a milder respiratory one. Could SARS-CoV-2 undergo a similar change in binding sites in the body that could affect its tissue preferences or lead to a milder presentation? Time will tell, but it does seem to be a habit of coronaviruses." "Is it possible to get COVID-19 twice? Or are we immune once we get it? Unfortunately, the news here is not good. While catching and successfully fighting off a virus usually results in a natural immunity to it, coronavirus infections do not seem to result in long-term immunity. Individuals could be reinfected when that immunity wanes. Volunteers experimentally inoculated with HCoV-229E showed a steep decline in antibody response over time, and the majority could be successfully reinfected a year later. Patients infected with SARS-CoV also showed a decline in antibody titers over time. On the animal side, cattle infected with bovine coronavirus (BCoV) — the ancestor of at least one human coronavirus — are susceptible to reinfection and show no long-term immunity." "Does the amount of virus exposure affect disease severity? It looks that way. Many health care workers have become seriously ill with COVID-19, despite being young and healthy. Various reports have suggested it’s because they were exposed to more virus than a typical COVID-19 patient. This is consistent with experimental studies of porcine respiratory coronavirus (PRCV). Scientists found pigs that were inoculated with it developed more severe cases than the pigs that caught the disease naturally. This makes logical sense, since the higher the amount of virus infecting you, the harder it is for your body to control its replication and spread."
^I wasn't too happy reading about Corona virus reinfection rates the other day. But we really don't know so it's not something I can worry or change about. If it is 1-2 years like others, I would be half as supportive for current isolation measures. I don't think people can function with this as the new normal.
It is also entirely possible, yet unproven, that even if you get it again, it won't kill you. If it becomes endemic, which it probably will, we will have to blunt the effects with medicine and then it'll just become another "common cold" type virus over time. I think the general scientific community has know that it'll just become endemic for months now. That's not really new news. What might happen: 1. It'll get milder over time. Almost all novel infectious diseases "select" for milder strains over time. 2. You'll get your yearly vaccine along with your flu shot. Even if you "miss" on the vaccine and its only 20-30% effective at prevention, vaccines blunt the effects if you do get it and keep you out of the hospital. We can live normally with that. 3. This will probably end up being just another virus in time.
Agree but we just don’t know. Some of the “reinfection” cases now appear to be more about viral fragments from the original infections. I found the comparisons to other coronaviruses interesting (and depressing).
In a lot of the scientific articles written about this, almost all of the immunologists posited that this is most likely testing issues. Either they were never really negative, returned a false positive, or like you said: picking up fragments of virus that aren't really communicable. These tests only find the presence or not of the virus in most cases. They give no indication on viral load or communicability. Additionally, these tend to be one-off types of results and anomalies, no trends. This does not, however, help with the question: how much or how long are you immune once you've had it?
Here's that specific study relating to SARS-CoV https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851497/ "Among 176 patients who had had severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), SARS-specific antibodies were maintained for an average of 2 years, and significant reduction of immunoglobulin G–positive percentage and titers occurred in the third year. Thus, SARS patients might be susceptible to reinfection >3 years after initial exposure." There are more charts and information at the link. Obviously, I'm not an immunologist, but I would expect if the body was continually exposed to this virus then it would continue to maintain antibodies for it after fighting it. Meaning if it is something that becomes an aspect of society then we would maintain immunity or we could get booster vaccines every 2 years.
I think the theory that it was man made has been pretty heavily disproved by the genetic studies of it. I would have to find the links again because I don't have them saved, but I think they were relatively definitive. The reason why I hesitated posting that story was because I didn't want to make it seem like I believed it was a man made virus when there is no evidence supporting it. That story did not make that claim, but I can see how it is easy to jump to that conclusion. Also, I haven't watched those daily pressers in a bit because I got tired of them and I get most of my info from other sources. WHO, CDC, IHME models, and the US administration have simply been inferior and/or behind the curve sources. I mean it's going to be silly if my simple model that I posted here using other countries to predict our death rate decline outperforms that IHME one, but that's a whole other thing.
Great stuff, thanks. 2 years would feel like a lifetime at this point, right? I'm no immunologist either, but I've wondered if it could work in a non-binary way. Like with a certain antibody level, you're immune to mild exposure, but then you wouldn't be immune to a huge dose like being a caregiver to a very sick COVID-19 patient.
The reply I posted above to No Worries pretty much applies to this. Nuance is difficult to convey on a message board and I don't think the virus was man made because nothing shows that it was. This is the difficult thing is that you guys don't know exactly what I am thinking and I can't quickly correct what you think I am thinking or not thinking. It would have been better if I posted a disclaimer, but I also didn't think the article implied that the virus was man made even though I can see how someone can arrive at that conclusion. (edit: as I re-read the article I did see a line in there were they left the question open ended. I had only focused on the Fauci quote before that said the virus was not man made and that no evidence exists to suggest it was.) That stated this doesn't mean that this work is not happening and I don't have any knowledge of how dangerous or not dangerous it truly is or how pervasive the research truly was. It's headlining grabbing, but so are stupid articles that media posts like "Scientists are trying to create a black hole....will it swallow the Earth??" That was the thing I was more curious about, but again you guys don't fully know this if we aren't talking face to face. #hugs #rainbows
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/public/downloads/cidrap-covid19-viewpoint-part1_0.pdf Issues: 1. Because of a longer incubation period, more asymptomatic spread, and a higher R0, COVID-19 appears to spread more easily than flu. 2. A higher R0 means more people will need to get infected and become immune before the pandemic can end. 3. Based on the most recent flu pandemics, this outbreak will likely last 18 to 24 months. 4. It likely won’t be halted until 60% to 70% of the population is immune. 5. Depending on control measures and other factors, cases may come in waves of different heights (with high waves signaling major impact) and in different intervals. We present 3 possibilities. Scenario 1: The first wave of COVID-19 in spring 2020 is followed by a series of repetitive smaller waves that occur through the summer and then consistently over a 1- to 2-year period, gradually diminishing sometime in 2021. The occurrence of these waves may vary geographically and may depend on what mitigation measures are in place and how they are eased. Depending on the height of the wave peaks, this scenario could require periodic reinstitution and subsequent relaxation of mitigation measures over the next 1 to 2 years. ¤ Scenario 2: The first wave of COVID-19 in spring 2020 is followed by a larger wave in the fall or winter of 2020 and one or more smaller subsequent waves in 2021. This pattern will require the reinstitution of mitigation measures in the fall in an attempt to drive down spread of infection and prevent healthcare systems from being overwhelmed. This pattern is similar to what was seen with the 1918-19 pandemic (CDC 2018). During that pandemic, a small wave began in March 1918 and subsided during the summer months. A much larger peak then occurred in the fall of 1918. A third peak occurred during the winter and spring of 1919; that wave subsided in the summer of 1919, signaling the end of the pandemic. The 1957-58 pandemic followed a similar pattern, with a smaller spring wave followed by a much larger fall wave (Saunders-Hastings 2016). Successive smaller waves continued to occur for several years (Miller 2009). The 2009-10 pandemic also followed a pattern of a spring wave followed by a larger fall wave (Saunders-Hastings 2016). ¤ Scenario 3: The first wave of COVID-19 in spring 2020 is followed by a “slow burn” of ongoing transmission and case occurrence, but without a clear wave pattern. Again, this pattern may vary somewhat geographically and may be influenced by the degree of mitigation measures in place in various areas. While this third pattern was not seen with past influenza pandemics, it remains a possibility for COVID-19. This third scenario likely would not require the reinstitution of mitigation measures, although cases and deaths will continue to occur. Recommendations 1. States, territories, and tribal health authorities should plan for the worst-case scenario (Scenario 2), including no vaccine availability or herd immunity. 2. Government agencies and healthcare delivery organizations should develop strategies to ensure adequate protection for healthcare workers when disease incidence surges. 3. Government officials should develop concrete plans, including triggers for reinstituting mitigation measures, for dealing with disease peaks when they occur. 4. Risk communication messaging from government officials should incorporate the concept that this pandemic will not be over soon and that people need to be prepared for possible periodic resurgences of disease over the next 2 years.
Isn't acting not too soon, or not too late a balance ? The problems are you have a virus that kill people and you have lockdown that kill the economy. The initial solution was a hammer to the virus, as we were in dark dark territory of unknown. Ongoing solution is indeed trying to find the right balance... hopefully with data and not politic. Yea, I know problem 3 causes all kind of issues right now for us.
