Covid - News and Updates

[Terryray]

a slide from presentation at meeting from last week's CDC hearing on boosters.





ya see Moderna holding strong.....some question whether Moderna folks will need a booster....but Moderna claims their internal data shows it gonna absolutely be necessary....

ya see J&J (Janssen) the ones who need it now...but will be a month, at least, before they have enuf data to formally ask for boosters.

Some hi risk folks with J&J (over age 80, or with serious comorbidity) are asking their doctors to prescribe a booster now...Canada and Japan have already allowed not just that, but also mixing it up, making the booster shot an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna)..

and you read this link how natural immunity, from having gotten covid, is generally not as good as vaccine immunity, sometimes way worse

https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/covid-19-studies-natural-immunity-versus-vaccination

nerdy discussion here on how vaccine effectiveness means and how it works:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1430218372348878860.html


many virologists think this simple corona virus, with it's limited spike proteins being it's only game, has already reached peak fitness and don't expect any more serious variants or mutations to appear:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01421-7


but other viruses out there!.....they just found bats in Laos with corona viruses very very similar to covid:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2


and one bat in particular was an impressive living petri dish: "one individual... was..infected by an alphacoronavirus and a betacoronavirus ...BLAST analysis of obtained sequences identied alphacoronavirus sequences of the Decacovirus, Pedacovirus, and Rhinacovirus subgenera and betacoronavirus sequences of the Nobecovirus and Sarbecovirus"



why some doctors are skeptical of boosters:

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2320


finally, a randomly controlled trial of mask effectiveness among thousands of folks in villages in Pakistan. Should have done this a year ago!

They found cloth masks don't work......surgical masks do have a modest benefit, but mostly to those over age 50...and after the researchers left these villages, the villagers all went back to wearning no masks...warning, pdf file:

https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publications/Mask_RCT____Symptomatic_Seropositivity_083121.pdf

 

[Terryray]

but yes, you see in the slide above, it is vaccine protection vs hospitalization.

What about vs getting symptoms?

many folks will get covid infection, sometimes for second time, and be very symptomatic, but manage to avoid the hospital. . Sometimes so sick in bed, in so much pain, they don't feel like going to a hospital!....and plenty of these folks, after recovery, have long term covid side effects (tho vaccinated will have less long covid).

so...

How do these vaccine protect against symptomatic infection, short of going to hospital?....as you might guess, not as well as vs hospitalization....and Moderna you see is only marginally better than Pfizer with this metric....green line is pre-delta, red is vs the current Delta variant:





and this is early into the waning period, longer might play out worse....Many practicing doctors don't want to see their patients suffering with the symptoms, spreading it to others, maybe getting long term covid - and therefore, they are much more prone to push the vaccine, and vaccine boosters, on their patients.


here's a study they looked at 273,618 survivors of COVID-19, what long term effects they having after 6 months.....42% had at least 1 lingering symptom, whereas it was 30% of flu patients

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003773


the symptoms experienced (myalgia is muscle aches and pain):





The long covid picture for kids is even better, 0% - 1.7% ....I suspect many of the long covid in adults is explained by mental effect on them, being less resilient than kids to bounce back, and some of them having the sort of predisposing mental conditons we don't find in kids, which produce the anxiety, neurosis, poor sleeping issues, heightened sensitivity, etc, which can turn short covid symptoms into longer ones.



and there is no solid study anywhere that shows opening schools causes an increase in transmission among children or in the community at large. It's possible that children get easily infected by adults, but do not transmit so easy to each other or adults - thus, opening schools might then reduce covid transmission overall.


Breakthrough infections of the already vaccinated, we see here (warning, PDF file),
336 per 100,000 for Moderna,
963 for J&J, and
1458 for Pfizer.


turns out many researchers question the received wisdom that prior covid infection confers a spotty and, for many, a weak protective immunity compared to vaccines. That's the thing about a novel virus, many unknowns and the picture and understanding will change as we learn more...

 

[Terryray]

How will it end?....Covid is not the type of virus you can eradicate -- as it is easily transmitted, by folks showing no symptoms, and those symptoms looks like a bunch of other respiratory viruses....a stable steady state I don't see, with all the global travel and different rates of vaccination + boosters, and infections, all over.


So I see a new normal world as it opens up, with a moderate level of endemic covid, each country doing their level of containment they are comfortable with..... waves appearing here and there, local authorities cracking down to lower the spread and disruptions various places.....be always on our minds...


but is a small chance they can't do this too well, or new more dangerous strains come about -- then costly massive global and intrusive controls and mandates to stamp it down to low low levels of endemicity will happen..


Big study here shows vaccines reduce transmission, but does wane over time.


and yesterday Merck announced a breakthrough Covid treatment, 5 day course of this pill reduces chance of hospitalization and death by 50%...small numbers in this study tho, and no safety data released yet.










"Covid Partisan Pattern" is growing:







and on Howard Stern, the conspiracy theory that the libs a fooling their enemies into believing and perpetuating a grievous misunderstanding of Covid, so that bunches of them will die!









Engineer lettuce to deliver the covid vaccine!

 

[Pokitren]

If the covid passes, there will be a new virus. So train your immune system.

 

[Scrapman]

yes train your immune system take Vitamins C and D daily thats what i did before getting vaccinated and never had positive result 7 test nasal swabs ughhh they hurt lil bit

and im 68 yrs old now and Diabetic type 2

 

[Scrapman]

COVID warnings vaccinations

COVID warnings vaccinations

BY GEORGE Carlin

ff to 2:55 hear him talk about protecting his immune system as lil boy

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