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Taking it to the Streets - Covid-19 #12


Fragile Bird

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I think another reason for the unnaturally high stock market upswing is that a lot of people are probably worried about missing out on a major bounce if/when a vaccine is found. While I sort of understand that sentiment, it's just too risky/greedy for my liking. If I miss out on a bounce, fine...at least I still have my original money, it's not as if I've actually lost anything. I did put a little bit of money into stocks a month ago (when it was quite bad) but just in blue chip dividends that I was going to hold onto for a long time anyway, so I'm not concerned about what happens in the short term.

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6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's not necessarily true

But it could be true in the way many people talk about it, as if all sense of what we know about the immune has suddenly gone out the window about this disease.

A vaccine will come, but no one knows when. The only thing that's certain is that Covid-19 will become endemic.

 

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21 minutes ago, Ran said:

But it could be true in the way many people talk about it, as if all sense of what we know about the immune has suddenly gone out the window about this disease.

A vaccine will come, but no one knows when. The only thing that's certain is that Covid-19 will become endemic.

 

There is certainly a shitload we don't know about this virus and the disease.

Covid19 has become endemic. Even if NZ and Australia eradicate it, it will come back once international travel opens up again, which it must. But it won't happen until there is certainty about a vaccine one way or another. From the video it sounds like a decision on whether to proceed with phase III trials will happen before the end of the year, and as the IVI dude said, you don't proceed with phase III unless you are very confident you have an efficacious product.  So we should know one way or the other before the end of the year.

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29 minutes ago, Ran said:

But it could be true in the way many people talk about it, as if all sense of what we know about the immune has suddenly gone out the window about this disease.

Not everything. As an example, there is the concept of an accelerated infection rate (ADE) which actually increases the efficacy of the virus if you've already had the virus and had antibodies, and the antibodies are at a fairly low rate. 

The real issue is simply we don't know enough about this virus to make any predictions, only observations. If Covid behaves like the cold then we're going to have some seasonal garbage. If it behaves like the flu and is wildly mutative that changes things, like the efficacy of a vaccine. If it behaves like SARS that's another thing too. But we just don't know, and making major strategic choices such as herd immunity actually working when we don't know if that is even a thing yet is not a great choice. 

29 minutes ago, Ran said:

A vaccine will come, but no one knows when. The only thing that's certain is that Covid-19 will become endemic.

Even that isn't for certain. 

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10 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

So do you all think it's a safe course of action to restart economies and reopen businesses, starting in May/June, for European nations? Are we truly out of the woods? 

Or do you all think that restrictions should stay in place much longer, because the fall in new cases and new deaths many countries have been reporting over the past few days, couple weeks is merely a calm before another storm? 

Yes, it is safe to restart a lot of things now, but also Yes we will have a new wave in fall.

We (Europeans; it may be different for NZ and Australia) can not eradicate it any longer, no chance,  so if the numbers are down at the moment, you have to get things done. I do not talk about events (sports, concerts) with hundreds of people or travel or partys or such, but it is important that work and school resume. We will have a vaccine in 12-18 month if we are lucky, so until then should children stop learning?, should it be impossible to earn money? We must use the time between waves effectivly to minimise the damage of lock-down. This must be done in a smart way: a lot of testing to know when it starts to get worse again, keeping rules that helps like social distancing and face masks, open slowly to monitor the effect and so on. But we have to work now and get things done so

when the cold season starts and  Winter Is Coming, we will hopefully be better prepared than last time.

 

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Just came across this very interesting piece of journalism, collecting examples of superspreading events to see what they have in common.  I found it quite encouraging that these tend not to be places where people are quiet, so maybe a ban on loud rumbunctious sing-alongs for now would cut out the most common forms of transmission.  

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Germany’s Covid-19 expert: ‘For many, I’m the evil guy crippling the economy’

Germany’s leading coronavirus expert Christian Drosten on Merkel’s leadership, the UK response and the ‘prevention paradox’

 

Christian Drosten, who directs the Institute of Virology at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, was one of those who identified the Sars virus in 2003. As the head of the German public health institute’s reference lab on coronaviruses, he has become the government’s go-to expert on the related virus causing the current pandemic.

In an exclusive interview, Drosten admits he fears a second deadly wave of the virus. He explains why Angela Merkel has an advantage over other world leaders – and why the “prevention paradox” keeps him awake at night.

...

ARTICLE CONTINUES

 

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/26/virologist-christian-drosten-germany-coronavirus-expert-interview

 

 

Quote

Bloody quote function!

 

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33 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

 

 

In an exclusive interview, Drosten admits he fears a second deadly wave of the virus. He explains why Angela Merkel has an advantage over other world leaders – and why the “prevention paradox” keeps him awake at night.

 

 

form the interview:

"Another factor that could impact herd immunity is whether other coronaviruses – those that cause the common cold, for example – offer protection to this one. We don’t know, but it’s possible."

This may be very interesting and promising. He also said the same in a talk show, speaking about a paper where the researchers examined infection in families, and found that not all family members got infected, though they were all living together ( I searched for this paper but could not find it).

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7 hours ago, Ran said:

But it could be true in the way many people talk about it, as if all sense of what we know about the immune has suddenly gone out the window about this disease.

A vaccine will come, but no one knows when. The only thing that's certain is that Covid-19 will become endemic.

 

Unfortunately, from what I read recently, I tend to agree.

It is then of uttermost importance 1) to identify risk factors (and population), 2) to come up with some sort of prophylaxis that reduce the risk of complications 3) a clear treatment (and testing) that can be performed at home at the onset of the symptoms that reduce the risk of said complications

 

 

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3 hours ago, JoannaL said:

form the interview:

"Another factor that could impact herd immunity is whether other coronaviruses – those that cause the common cold, for example – offer protection to this one. We don’t know, but it’s possible."

This may be very interesting and promising. He also said the same in a talk show, speaking about a paper where the researchers examined infection in families, and found that not all family members got infected, though they were all living together ( I searched for this paper but could not find it).

But doubtful. The other coronaviruses involved in the common cold don't even do a great job at stimulating immunity against themselves.

Prevention paradox is not a term I've seen before, so if there are others like me who don't get around to clicking on the article:\

Quote

Now, what I call the “prevention paradox” has set in. People are claiming we over-reacted, there is political and economic pressure to return to normal. The federal plan is to lift lockdown slightly, but because the German states, or Länder, set their own rules, I fear we’re going to see a lot of creativity in the interpretation of that plan. I worry that the reproduction number will start to climb again, and we will have a second wave.

We had prevention paradoxing happening withing a couple of week of the start of our lockdown. Fortunately more sensible heads spoke against this bunch of vested interest individuals, and also public opinion at the time was overwhelmingly against anyone suggesting we were going too far. They blew their load too early, but the way things are going the "the govt overreacted" people will never really get a look in here. However we now have 3 regions where the virus has been eradicated. 2 regions where it's been gone for 2 weeks, one region that has just gone clear. Theses regions will accpet sticking with the crowd in lockdown lvl3 for the next two weeks, so that we can be doubly sure the virus is gone. But if these three regions aren't substantially opened up after the next two week (assuming no new cases) then there will be complaints about keeping people restricted within these boundaries as being unjustified. And they will be right. Distinct functional regions with no circulating virus should be opened up, at the same time as having controlled entry (essential services only) from outside the region.

I do happen to live in the region that first eradicated the virus, so I do have a vested interest in virus free regions being substantially opened, but I also think it is a reasonable course of action. Unfortunately I want to exit that bubble to go visit family early in June (my mother's 80th birthday), so I am also hoping that there is nationwide opening up by then. If not I may not be allowed to exit and return without a 14-day self isolation. There was talk right at the start of our lockdown that the govt would look at putting different regions on different lockdown levels at some point and it would probably mean controls on movements between regions, but they didn;t go into specifics at that time.

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4 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

 

Germany’s Covid-19 expert: ‘For many, I’m the evil guy crippling the economy’

Germany’s leading coronavirus expert Christian Drosten on Merkel’s leadership, the UK response and the ‘prevention paradox’

 

Christian Drosten, who directs the Institute of Virology at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, was one of those who identified the Sars virus in 2003. As the head of the German public health institute’s reference lab on coronaviruses, he has become the government’s go-to expert on the related virus causing the current pandemic.

In an exclusive interview, Drosten admits he fears a second deadly wave of the virus. He explains why Angela Merkel has an advantage over other world leaders – and why the “prevention paradox” keeps him awake at night.

...

ARTICLE CONTINUES

 

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/26/virologist-christian-drosten-germany-coronavirus-expert-interview

 

 

 

Drosten has become quite a celebrity. Which of course some of his colleagues begrudge him. He does a regular podcast on Covid-19. As for Merkel, she isn't really calling the shots. It's the state governments that decide about lockdown measures etc., Merkel just chairs the meetings. And there is quite some competition between certain state prime ministers with ambitions to become her successor. Last week it was all about who was fastest to make wearing masks mandatory. We'll see what's the next great thing.

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5 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Not everything. As an example, there is the concept of an accelerated infection rate (ADE) which actually increases the efficacy of the virus if you've already had the virus and had antibodies, and the antibodies are at a fairly low rate. 

So far studies on this show little evidence of ADE being a factor for Covid-19, or any of the other coronaviruses that are endemic (SARS and MERS included). That said I recall that there was a concern about the mRNA vaccine in phase 1 trials could inadvertently cause lung damage, because of the specific protein they were focusing on.

 

Quote

If it behaves like the flu and is wildly mutative that changes things, like the efficacy of a vaccine.

There's been enough genomic studies to show that it's not wildly mutative. Coronavirii have larger genomes and appear to be slower to change

@JoannaL

I saw Drosten somewhere is involved in a paper that seemed to show cross-reactivity in T-cells for covid-19 from people who had never had it. I'll try to dig it up.

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Well, this is not concerning in any way.

NHS warns of children with new illness that may be linked to coronavirus

 

Tl:dr - the symptoms look similar to toxic shock, and include gastrointestinal problems (which is in line with viruses that go for adult respiratory system instead going to children's stomachs).

One of the signs not mentioned in this piece (in another I can't find rn) is apparent bruising around joints in feet and hands. This could have a nasty similarity to the observed rise in strokes in adult SARS-COV2 patients - clotting abnormalities.

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43 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

@JoannaL

I saw Drosten somewhere is involved in a paper that seemed to show cross-reactivity in T-cells for covid-19 from people who had never had it. I'll try to dig it up.

Found it.

Quote

Our study is the first to directly measure SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cell responses providing critical tools for large scale testing, in depth epitope mapping and characterization of potential cross-reactive cellular immunity to SARS-CoV-2. The presence of pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in healthy donors is of high interest 

 

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30 minutes ago, Zoë Sumra said:

 

One of the signs not mentioned in this piece (in another I can't find rn) is apparent bruising around joints in feet and hands. This could have a nasty similarity to the observed rise in strokes in adult SARS-COV2 patients - clotting abnormalities.

Covid toes in children. Someone in the comments says it looks like chillbains. There's a picture.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/covid19-toes-kids_ca_5ea35583c5b669fd8924d3b9

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I also posted this in the US Politics thread. I saw a story from CNN International last night about how POC were being hit extremely hard in the UK as well as in the US, and, of course, the UK has universal health care.

They were showing a Muslim cemetery somewhere, where trenches had been dug for 40 coffins each, because there were so many deaths they couldn’t keep up. Reminded me of the trenches in Iran. They also showed a coffin maker’s shop where they were making plain pine boxes as quickly as they could. A gentleman was there praying for his mom, and then over to his 32 year-old brother’s coffin, since no ceremonies were being held and the coffins were being taken straight to the cemetery.

Are there any statistics?

Questions have been asked here in Canada about the deaths among the non-white communities, and the medical officer in the press conference said they didn’t collect statistics on race. I wonder if anyone has been demanding them more vigorously since then. A couple of provinces don’t even publish information on deaths by age, which is really annoying, but they are small ones with a handful of deaths. However, 70% of deaths are in nursing homes, so it’s not hard to guess, and all the big provinces where 98% of the deaths are do break them out by age.

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14 hours ago, Jeor said:

may be making unfair assumptions here,

Why, yes, yes you are.  And still pulling what you think out of your whosis without evidence -- even in Germany, look at Bavaria, for instance.  Also smug and complacent.

 

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Adding a nylon stocking over your cloth mask can really improve efficiency. 

ie, cut out a section from pantyhose., pullit over your head on top of the mask. There is a photo in the link.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/22/840146830/adding-a-nylon-stocking-layer-could-boost-protection-from-cloth-masks-study-find

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4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Adding a nylon stocking over your cloth mask can really improve efficiency. 

ie, cut out a section from pantyhose., pullit over your head on top of the mask. There is a photo in the link.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/22/840146830/adding-a-nylon-stocking-layer-could-boost-protection-from-cloth-masks-study-find

Maybe its time to buy some stockings. I don't think I have any nylon right now.

I've been dual layering bandanas and folding them over twice when I go out, which means I have 8 layers of cloth between my nose/mouth and the outside air. The bandana cloth is pretty thin, but I'm hoping that having it layered that many times helps make it more effective.

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