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COVID research: Masks, Vaccines, Social Distancing, Treatments

We have ALL your misinformation, plus some TRUE FACTS and SCIENCE.
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Volkonski
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#151

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Sam the Centipede
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#152

Post by Sam the Centipede »

That's good news! The vaccine itself is an adenovirus-based one, meaning it uses a modified virus of a different type (an adenovirus rather than a coronavirus) as a vector to deliver DNA that will build antigens similar to those on the SARS-CoV-2 virus so the body creates an immune response (antibodies, etc.) to those antigens. The vector itself doesn't cause disease. The Astra-Zeneca vaccine uses similar technology.

Big pluses of the adenovirus vaccines over mRNA vaccines: they only need ordinary refrigeration so are more appropriate in countries or circumstances where a reliable "cold chain" is not difficult to guarantee. And they are cheaper.

Big pluses of inhalables: reduced vaccine hesitancy (no needle phobia to worry about), possibly quicker to administer (but recent vaccinees know how slick the vaccinators are now!). Easier with children perhaps? Reduced dose: perhaps one-fifth to achieve the desired response. Targeting: the immune response is created in the mucosal lining of the lungs, exactly where the Covid virus might attack – mRNA vaccines are administered intramuscularly (because there are dendritic cells there which can do the necessary work) so the body tunes its response to a (impossible) muscular attack and needs to refocus to the mucosa when it first sees the live virus.

One possible use is as a heterologous booster, on the basis (which I believe has some scientific support) that receiving a variety of vaccines can produce more robust immunity than several doses of one vaccine.

Of course these inhalers require entirely new nanobots for Bill Gates to track us! Those nanobots will be programmed to convert the ingredients into a nerve gas on a signal from the Illuminati. You're all doomed suckers! I bet you regret not joining the AMFF Armaduh now!

There, that's balance: some real science and a bit of anti-science!
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#153

Post by tek »

Lifting Universal Masking in Schools — Covid-19 Incidence among Students and Staff

Conclusions
Among school districts in the greater Boston area, the lifting of masking requirements was associated with an additional 44.9 Covid-19 cases per 1000 students and staff during the 15 weeks after the statewide masking policy was rescinded.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2211029
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#154

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... id-deaths/
Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

It’s a continuation of a troubling trend that has emerged over the past year. As vaccination rates have increased and new variants appeared, the share of deaths of people who were vaccinated has been steadily rising. In September 2021, vaccinated people made up just 23 percent of coronavirus fatalities. In January and February this year, it was up to 42 percent, per our colleagues Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cox told The Health 202.

Being unvaccinated is still a major risk factor for dying from covid-19. But efficacy wanes over time, and an analysis out last week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights the need to get regular booster shots to keep one’s risk of death from the coronavirus low, especially for the elderly.

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s preeminent infectious-disease expert, used his last White House briefing yesterday ahead of his December retirement to urge Americans to get the recently authorized omicron-specific boosters.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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#155

Post by RTH10260 »

New Omicron sub-lineage likely to cause further increase in COVID-19 cases

Epidemiological update
21 Oct 2022

At least five EU/EEA countries have detected the circulation of the SARS-CoV-2 variant sub-lineage BQ.1 during week 40, 2022. ECDC modelling forecasts predict that BQ1 and its sub-lineage BQ1.1 will become the dominant SARS-CoV2 strains in EU/EEA by mid-November to the beginning of December 2022.

This will likely contribute to an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the coming weeks to months, according to an epidemiological update released today by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Preliminary laboratory studies in Asia indicate that BQ.1 has the ability to considerably evade the immune system response. However, according to the limited data currently available there is no evidence of BQ.1 being associated with increased infection severity compared to the circulating Omicron variants BA.4/BA.5.



https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-even ... d-19-cases
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#156

Post by RTH10260 »

Tables of variants, please check the website

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern as of 10 November 2022
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#157

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https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/05/cdc-enc ... u-rsv.html
The Centers for Disease Control Prevention on Monday encouraged people to wear masks to help reduce the spread of respiratory illnesses this season as Covid, flu and RSV circulate at the same time.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, in a call with reporters, said wearing a mask is one of several everyday precautions that people can take to reduce their chances of catching or spreading a respiratory virus during the busy holiday season.

“We also encourage you to wear a high-quality, well-fitting mask to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses,” said Walensky, adding that people living in areas with high levels of Covid transmission should especially consider masking.

The CDC director said the agency is considering expanding its system of Covid community levels to take into account other respiratory viruses such as the flu. The system is the basis for when CDC advises the public to wear masks. But Walensky encouraged people to take proactive action.
Transmission has been low here for a while now, but I note the numbers going up again. I will have to get back to wearing masks when necessary as my three-months'-get-out-of-jail card-free is up. I don't see many people wearing masks, but I always see some people wearing them.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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#158

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... ationship/
Harvard researchers analyzed data on covid-19 mortality rates and the stress on hospital intensive care units across all 435 congressional districts from April 2021 to March 2022. They also examined congressional members’ overall voting records, how they voted on four coronavirus relief bills, and whether the governor’s office and legislature of a state were controlled by one party.

The study, published this month in the Lancet Regional Health-Americas, found that the more conservative the voting records of members of Congress and state legislators, the higher the age-adjusted covid mortality rates — even after taking into account the racial, education and income characteristics of each congressional district along with vaccination rates.

Covid death rates were 11 percent higher in states with Republican-controlled governments and 26 percent higher in areas where voters lean conservative. Similar results emerged about hospital ICU capacity when the concentration of political power in a state was conservative.
RSV, flu and covid-19 prompt worries about ‘tripledemic’

The findings cannot be explained away as features of the economic and social conditions of the people who live in various congressional districts, Krieger said. This is “somehow above and beyond the demographics of the district [that members] represent. It’s suggesting that there is something going on through political processes associated with the political voting patterns of elected officials,” she said.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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#159

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/cor ... tests#list
At-Home OTC COVID-19 Diagnostic Tests

List of Authorized At-Home OTC COVID-19 Diagnostic Tests

The table below* lists FDA-authorized at-home OTC COVID-19 diagnostic tests, and includes information on expiration dates, who can use the test, and other details that may help you decide what test is right for you. To see complete information on smaller screens, select the blue plus (+) button beside the test name.
*Just keep scrolling.
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#160

Post by Danraft »

For somewhere…. There is a divide in mortality in red counties vs blue counties. It could make a difference in elections.
I posted my final analysis of the potential impact of the COVID death rate divide between Republicans & Democrats on 2022 midterm election results back in September.

According to official CDC data, around 815,000 Americans died of COVID-19 between 10/31/20 - 09/10/22. Of those, I had estimated that perhaps 569,000 had actually voted for Biden or Trump. The total number has tragically risen by around 7,000 more since mid-September, which means the number of 2020 voters who've died is also likely around 4,900 higher.

Nationally, Joe Biden received 81,283,501 votes to Donald Trump's 74,223,975 votes. If COVID impacted both voting blocs at identical rates, you'd normally expect roughly 9.5% more Biden voters to have died of COVID over the past 2 years than Trump voters...or roughly 25,000 more Biden voters.
https://acasignups.net/22/11/18/update ... ewide-race
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#161

Post by AndyinPA »

I'm not sure if this is common or not, but my grandkids were each sent home at the beginning of the Christmas holiday with Covid tests to take before they return to school tomorrow.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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#162

Post by raison de arizona »

Nothing in AZ, but friends in NYC get tests sent home with their kids biweekly.
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#163

Post by Sam the Centipede »

:o Recent research is worrying. There is a paper published in the journal Cell just two weeks ago: Alarming antibody evasion properties of rising SARS-CoV-2 BQ and XBB subvariants

It reports that descendants of the Omicron variants are sufficiently different from older lineages that they are evading immunity both from vaccines (including the current bivalent mRNA vaccines) and from infection with older lineages.

Monoclonal antibodies (typically drugs with generic names ending -mab) were also ineffective. These are used when an infected person's own immune system is compromised and might not generate enough antibodies on its own.

The paper states:
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 were first identified in Nigeria in early July and then expanded dramatically in Europe and North America, now accounting for 67%, 35%, and 47% of cases in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, respectively
This is evolution in action: those viruses with a greater antigenic distance from earlier viruses will be less well recognized by antibodies and the immune cells that produce them, so will reproduce more, which is textbook natural selection. But it's horrifying how quickly it can operate.

We're going to need more vaccines. :(
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#164

Post by Frater I*I »

Sam the Centipede wrote: Mon Jan 02, 2023 3:42 pm :snippity:
This is evolution in action: those viruses with a greater antigenic distance from earlier viruses will be less well recognized by antibodies and the immune cells that produce them, so will reproduce more, which is textbook natural selection. But it's horrifying how quickly it can operate.

We're going to need more vaccines. :(
That's gonna happen when half the population of the planet won't trust science and would rather just be a giant peachtree dish....

War on Science, that's a joke...it's over, and science lost...
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He's got the answers to ease my curiosity, He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity"

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#165

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Obviously lack of confidence in science is bad, but that affects the speed of spread of the infection. What is surprising to my (incorrect!) intuition is how rapidly one (sub)variant can displace others by out-competing.

To pick up discussion from another thread: that's the difference between a rational/scientific mind and purely emotional thinking: it feels wrong but it's correct, so it's appropriate to accept the revised counterintuitive result.
Off Topic
The world has had flu epidemics and pandemics for centuries, and flu is a strange mix-and-match virus. We can identify which strains caused most 20C and 21C outbreaks from retained samples but there is little concrete evidence of what caused flu before the great 1918 pandemic. Of course a large factor in this is the paucity of appropriately preserved samples as we go back in time. But a significant issue is that the 1918 virus was so infectious that it out-competed all other strains and they were ineffective in 1918. So we can't prove that older flu-like epidemics were similar to modern flu, and they could possibly have been due to very different respiratory viruses.

Several medieval diseases cannot be identified with any confidence. The "sweating sickness that killed young Prince Arthur, the husband of Catherine of Aragon, and older brother of Henry, who became King Henry VIII of England, was a horrible disease: sudden onset of profuse sweating one day, probably dead before the next morning. But it came, it flourished, it disappeared for ever, and we don't know with any certainty what infectious agent caused it.
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#166

Post by AndyinPA »

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/siounds-a ... d=96236451
The World Health Organization is warning that a new omicron subvariant known as XBB.1.5 is the most transmissible strain to date.

As COVID-19 hospitalizations rise in some parts of the Northeast -- where the subvariant makes up about 75% of new cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- so are concerns about how to mitigate a potential surge following large holiday gatherings.

In the past few years, the post-holiday rise in COVID numbers was typically attributed to large gatherings and the colder weather bringing people indoors. Experts said it remains to be seen how much XBB.1.5 may be contributing to the most recent rise in hospitalizations.
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#167

Post by Volkonski »

China's 'great migration' kicks-off under shadow of COVID

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chi ... 023-01-07/
China on Saturday marked the first day of "chun yun", the 40-day period of Lunar New Year travel known pre-pandemic as the world's largest annual migration of people, bracing for a huge increase in travellers and the spread of COVID-19 infections.

This Lunar New Year public holiday, which officially runs from Jan. 21, will be the first since 2020 without domestic travel restrictions.

Over the last month China has seen the dramatic dismantling of its "zero-COVID" regime following historic protests against a policy that included frequent testing, restricted movement, mass lockdowns and heavy damage to the world's No.2 economy.

Investors are hoping that the reopening will eventually reinvigorate a $17-trillion economy suffering its lowest growth in nearly half a century.

But the abrupt changes have exposed many of China's 1.4 billion population to the virus for the first time, triggering a wave of infections that is overwhelming some hospitals, emptying pharmacy shelves of medicines and causing long lines to form at crematoriums.
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#168

Post by Lani »

Omicron offshoot XBB.1.5 could drive new Covid-19 surge in US
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/health/c ... index.html

Here we go again.
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#169

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Yes, it's worrying. With little social distancing and evasion of vaccine- and infection-induced immunity by these subvariants a lot of people will get sick. The vaccines (especially the recent bivalent) provide significant protection against bad outcomes, but the protection is relatively weak.

We shall see. With seasonal flu around as well, there's going to be some must months in both North America and Europe.
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#170

Post by pipistrelle »

Sam the Centipede wrote: Sat Jan 07, 2023 11:57 am Yes, it's worrying. With little social distancing and evasion of vaccine- and infection-induced immunity by these subvariants a lot of people will get sick. The vaccines (especially the recent bivalent) provide significant protection against bad outcomes, but the protection is relatively weak.
My doctor told me in 2020, pre-shots, not to get COVID-19 "because you will go straight to ventilator." I'm still congested with no sense of taste or smell, but I've not been short of breath or feverish. Fitbit says oxygen saturation has been in my usual range. I don't know yet of course if I'll have the effects of long COVID-19. But I suspect that I didn't go straight to ventilator because of all those shots.
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#171

Post by Lani »

I'm wearing a mask more frequently, and I've noticed that more people are using them as well. Some small stores and hair salons have returned to requiring masks. It's hard to know how much the cases are rising since many people ignore a minor illness and others don't report if they test positive.
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#172

Post by AndyinPA »

I get the county reports every week. We are at low levels of Covid here. I don't know about the flu for sure, but I think they said they thought it had peaked, but it had been high. They are expecting a post-holiday jump, but I haven't seen that yet. I'm not wearing a mask all the time as our levels are low, but I'm aware that there are some new variables out there, so I'm extra careful about distancing, and I carry masks with me and use when I feel necessary.

There is nothing going on around here like Slim and Bill have had to endure for their loved ones. I hope it stays that way. :pray:
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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#173

Post by MN-Skeptic »

I thought this tweet was very informative -

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#174

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Lateral flow tests (LFTs) are wonderful technology considering their size and convenience. Setting aside the issue of (sub)variants, they can never be 100% sensitive*. With no amplification, self-administered swabs, variable shedding of virions and virus debris in time and location, there will always be variability. Specificity* will always be good, meaning a positive result can be assumed correct.

I always swab my throat and nose diligently and I am careful to do so at least half an hour after eating or drinking, but my one bout of Covid in 2021 produced initial false negative, then a weak positive, then alternated false negative then weak positive for about a week. I never had a strong red stripe, but I definitely was infected, albeit with a mild case.

The real worry (for me) is whether LFTs are sensitive enough to the most recent subvariants, those mentioned in the Cell paper and CNN article linked above.

* Just a reminder for those who might have forgotten: sensitivity and specificity measure that different aspects of the accuracy of a correctly administered test. Sensitivity answers the question "if the patient is positive, how probable is a correct positive test result?" whereas specificity answers the question "if the test result is positive, how probable it that the patient is positive test?" Sensitivity is about avoiding false negatives, specificity is about avoiding false positives.
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#175

Post by keith »

(harumph i just had a nice novel length post almost ready to send and reached for my coffee in celebration before final edit and spilled it all over the place. fortunately I'm outside with my waterproof tablet and keyboard and the coffee had cooled sufficiently that I didn't scald my legs, but the entire post went POOF somehow.)
Has everybody heard about the bird?
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