Covid-19 #15 : It Ain't Over Until It's Over

[rotting sea cow]

Ok. Since there is some worry around here regarding short lived antibodies and its effect in immunity, this may be interesting to some.

 

Intrafamilial Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 Induces Cellular Immune Response without Seroconversion

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Background. In the background of the current COVID-19 pandemic, serological tests are being used to assess past infection and immunity against SARS-CoV-2. This knowledge is paramount to determine the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the post pandemic period. Several individuals belonging to households with an index COVID-19 patient, reported symptoms of COVID-19 but discrepant serology results. Methods. Here we investigated the humoral and cellular immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 in seven families, including nine index patients and eight contacts, who had evidence of serological discordances within the households. Ten unexposed healthy donors were enrolled as controls. Results. All index patients recovered from a mild COVID-19. They all developed anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and a significant T cell response detectable up to 69 days after symptom onset. Six of the eight contacts reported COVID-19 symptoms within 1 to 7 days after the index patients but all were SARS-CoV-2 seronegative. Six out of eight contacts developed a SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell response against structural and/or accessory proteins that lasts up to 80 days post symptom onset suggesting a past SARS-CoV-2 infection. Conclusion. Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 can induce virus-specific T cell responses without seroconversion. T cell responses may be more sensitive indicators of SARS-Co-V-2 exposure than antibodies. Our results indicate that epidemiological data relying only on the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies may lead to a substantial underestimation of prior exposure to the virus

So basically, serological studies might be missing infected people because they rely in the detection of short-lived antibodies. However, infected people develop strong T-cell response for a longer period of time. This needs to be followed of course.

 

It is also in the outlets. I hope it can calm the waters.

Scientists focus on how immune system T cells fight coronavirus in absence of antibodies

 

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

If these COVID partygoers could only attend, contract and then perish, I would heartily support such activities as a great way to uphold the Darwinian tradition of thinning the herd. However these bastards are also likely going about and spewing their infections onto the innocent in the community and that's unfortunate.

Maybe a locked arena they could all go to and stage a mass death by covid event. As long as no one is allowed out once they enter it would likely cull large amounts of the so called super spreaders in nice fell sweeps.

Not to mention what these too stupid to live types (about 70%, young, middle-aged and old, it seems of the US population) are doing to the health care workers and hospital and medical teams, who are so overworked, over stressed and so at risk from so many of these assholes they too get sick -- and died.

Also from where comes this persistant bs that 20% of a population with antibodies creates herd immunity?  Herd immunity is just something gummits pull out because they are too stupid, too lazy, too cheap to actually do anything practical about the rates of infections and deaths -- like mandate and enforce the mandate for distance and masks. 

But no -- the US gummit instead is determined to mandate that students and teachers must be pitched into airless classrooms for 10 hours a day starting in the fall.  That's what these governments do -- while stealing all the money for public education for Betsy deVoss and her private charter school corporation.

Tell me that is not at best a reckless disregard of human life and manslaughter.  At worst, well death cults never are satiated.

 

 

[Zorral]

 

[Spring Bass]

We don't know how long Covid-19 immunity lasts, but SARS immunity apparently lasted about two years: 

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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.

On the other hand, there's a couple coronavirus infections that cause a big share of colds, and immunity from those is pretty short-lived. 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Seriously?

Quote

Before he died in hospital, a US man reportedly told nurses that he’d “made a mistake" by attending a “Covid-party”.

The 30-year-old man died at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, Texas, after becoming infected with Covid-19.

The hospital's chief medical officer, Dr Jane Appleby, told the unidentified man’s story to help raise awareness of just how dangerous both the virus and also “Covid-parties” can be.

There have been multiple reports in the US of so-called “Covid-parties" – which is where someone with Covid-19 is either invited to, or hosts a gathering to intentionally try to infect others.

Dude thought it was all a hoax. Because why wouldn't you when the media and pundits you choose to believe as the tellers of truth are saying as much, or something close enough to it as makes no difference?

[DaveSumm]

It feels like we need to start teaching this in schools; if the conspiracy you’re advocating requires more than about 50 people to uphold it, and not one person has come forward to reveal it? It’s very likely bullshit. If it requires an international syndicate of every single government on Earth, then you’re an absolute moron if you can’t see why it has a zero percent chance of being a hoax.

[rotting sea cow]

9 hours ago, Spring Bass said:

We don't know how long Covid-19 immunity lasts, but SARS immunity apparently lasted about two years:

 

In case of SARS1, they were detected even after 12 years of infection.

Long-Term Persistence of IgG Antibodies in SARS-CoV Infected Healthcare Workers

Notice, these are the same kind of antibodies that are raised by SARS-CoV-2 but now disappearing. My take, it's still to early to say.

[rotting sea cow]

On 7/8/2020 at 5:10 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

You have to be careful with citing countries with low testing/million (like Uruguay) for having the virus under control. Uruguay has double the deaths/million than New Zealand but about 10% fewer confirmed cases per million. And tests/million is about 1/4 that of New Zealand. Uruguay is still getting new cases (not sure if they are recent arrivals in isolation like NZ's current 24 cases or if they are existing residents). So all that adds up to maybe there's more virus in the country than official figures imply. Which maybe means its circulating somewhat undetected in the population.

These countries do appear to have the disease under control and I hope it stays that way. But the disease may also just be bubbling away in the population and will break out as soon as people stop taking the appropriate precautions.

Sure, the thing is if that happens, Uruguay can afford going into quarantine and full lockdown if needed.  Argentina has been in lockdown pretty much forever and will need to re-open soon amid rising waters. And every month that you delay the wave is a month gained in the understanding of the disease and a month gained in hoarding supplies.

There have been deaths in Uruguay, but very few in comparison neighbouring countries. Maybe testing is not enough, maybe it is and there are simple very few people reporting covid-like symptoms and thus no need for going door-to-door for testing randoms. I've been sniffing around spanish speaking forums and pretty nobody really thinks that the governments is hiding cases or deaths. Most of the cases are actually around the border, particularly with Brazil, the southern border is better protected by the "Muro" de la Plata.

So pretty much, excellent response until now.

[Fez]

I missed this before, but on Thursday, one of Pfizer's chief anti-viral executives, who is Mormon, gave an in-depth interview to a Mormon magazine. There's a fair amount of talk about faith and god and so on, but there's also some really optimistic updates on the vaccine front. I don't know if all this already known, but I hadn't seen it:

https://latterdaysaintmag.com/pfizer-head-of-anti-viral-has-good-news-on-covid-19/

Quote

 

In the first of five constructs of the vaccine we are looking at, patients did very, very well. They have averaged between two or three times the amount of antibodies that are being seen in people who have had COVID-19. They have measured their blood samples to see about their future immunity to infection. We don’t know how long that immunity will last. We don’t know if that’s a year or a lifetime. It’s too new of a disease.

What we do know is that the early stages of our vaccines show that we are double or triple the level of antibodies already after 28 days.

 

 

Quote

I see great and promising data both inside and outside of Pfizer that we’ll have vaccines available soon. At our press conference, Pfizer said that we are going into the Phase 3 study, with 30,000 volunteers starting later in July, and then we’ll be manufacturing at risk, assuming it is positive, to have 200 million doses available in November of this year. That will be 100 million in the U.S. and 100 million ex-US, and in 2021, we are gearing up to make available 1.2 billion doses.

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How will those get administered to all of us in a timely manner?

Pfizer has been in the vaccine business, as one of the major companies in the world. They are one of the few companies that have manufacturing capacity that can scale to this volume. There are very, very few companies in the world with this capacity—two or three. But in this case we are doing things differently to get to that level of dosing more quickly.

For example, rather than having every vial manufactured being an individual dose, we’re using a larger vial and 7 doses can be pulled from a single vial. It is pandemic dosing. You line up. They pull from a single vial, obviously different syringe, but they are able to vaccinate 7 people from a single vial. Things like that are enabling us to get to a larger number of doses quicker.

 

Quote

 

Separately, we are also developing therapeutics. What would happen if someone got infected and needed some treatment. Right now, there are no really effective treatments available.

We have a drug that is about to go into human testing in August which is a protease inhibitor. This virus, the SARS-2 virus, protease enzyme is inhibited by this drug. It was actually designed in 2004 to inhibit the SARS-1 enzyme. You remember, SARS in 2003, 2004, it went away very quickly. It was a different virus. People got very sick right away so they were able to contain it and basically it just died out. They were able to contain it and it’s gone. We developed a protease inhibitor back then that we put on the shelf, but now we’ve pulled it off the shelf. Remarkably, even though there’s been significant change from SARS-1 to SARS-2 the protease enzyme itself is largely unchanged.

This would have been effective against SARS-1. We believe in testing, it will be effective against SARS-2. It would have been effective against the MERS virus. Back to your question if it mutates, also on the therapeutic front, we believe that effective therapeutics are coming for this and for future mutations, because there are pieces of the virus that don’t seem to change from one strand to the next in any significant way.

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

I missed this before, but on Thursday, one of Pfizer's chief anti-viral executives, who is Mormon, gave an in-depth interview to a Mormon magazine. There's a fair amount of talk about faith and god and so on, but there's also some really optimistic updates on the vaccine front. I don't know if all this already known, but I hadn't seen it:

https://latterdaysaintmag.com/pfizer-head-of-anti-viral-has-good-news-on-covid-19/

 

 

That fits in with the news that Pfizer has been put on the fast track list, which means getting hundreds of millions if not a billion from the government.

[Zorral]

The LDS ruled that masks are to be worn so now in Utah everybody's wearing masks, according to a friend who lives there -- whereas before nobody was wearing masks except, evidently, Romney.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/07/10/wear-masks-latter-day/

 

 

[Heartofice]

Forgive me if this has been asked before,  but what has changed in the science regarding masks since this all started? 

[rotting sea cow]

12 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Forgive me if this has been asked before,  but what has changed in the science regarding masks since this all started? 

It has become widely accepted they are crucial in preventing the transmission in high risk settings.

I mean, the evidence was there already in February when neighbouring countries to China didn't start major outbreaks. But between the confusing statement that "the virus is not airbone and thus masks don't help" by certain authorities and the difficulty to do real science in time critical situations, it was not readily clear.  It should be by now.

[DireWolfSpirit]

14 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Forgive me if this has been asked before,  but what has changed in the science regarding masks since this all started? 

We now have been able to make the observation of fools not wearing them?

[DaveSumm]

39 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Forgive me if this has been asked before,  but what has changed in the science regarding masks since this all started? 

Personally, I think the onus is on the detractors to explain why a respiratory disease wouldn’t be hampered by everyone wearing masks. I’m not sure any specific science has changed, although anecdotally, countries that were more affected by SARS and adopted mask wearing rapidly seem to have fared better than other countries.

[Raja]

39 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

I mean, the evidence was there already in February when neighbouring countries to China didn't start major outbreaks. But between the confusing statement that "the virus is not airbone and thus masks don't help" by certain authorities and the difficulty to do real science in time critical situations, it was not readily clear.  It should be by now.

This is not an accurate representation of what has occurred. I will post later to expand on this when I have the time, maybe the weekend, but neighbouring countries to China have had severe outbreaks even with early masked guidance ( See India). Simplistic explanations of complex issues should be avoided.

[Zorral]

The mentally ill, the evolution-in-action, all-around-jerks, and those who want to actively harm others refuse to wear masks.

Also that people without masks look less attractive than others, i.e. see: the so-called leader of the United States.

Additionally, o yes, that massive mask wearing really helps to slow and stop the spread of the illness.

All this has been learned in the western hemispheres since March, 2020.  It is currently being learned only now in the vast swathes of the United States that the virus isn't a hoax, learned only as they actually, you know, die, even though only 30 years old.

 

[rotting sea cow]

55 minutes ago, Raja said:

This is not an accurate representation of what has occurred. I will post later to expand on this when I have the time, maybe the weekend, but neighbouring countries to China have had severe outbreaks even with early masked guidance ( See India). Simplistic explanations of complex issues should be avoided.

India is a bad example. Its outbreak is rather recent, they managed to do fairly well for a longish span of time. Russia did prevent immediate contamination from the eastern border but when the wealthy russians returned from Paris and Milan from holidays they brought the virus to the country. Mongolia has zero deaths and all cases are imported.  S. Korea can pin up lots of their troubles to a single super spreader that violated rules (that pastor of some church). Japan has done fairly well in comparison to other countries despite doing pretty much nothing, besides closing borders and using masks. Taiwan has had an exemplary response.  Etc. True, a lot of countries around have done their jobs, contact tracing, early testing, etc. But clearly, the usage of masks prevented that the outbreak gets out of control.

[Paxter]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Forgive me if this has been asked before,  but what has changed in the science regarding masks since this all started? 

The Economist had a good summary on this, including an explanation of actual research (which is limited on ethical grounds) and the "natural experiment" of comparing jurisdictions (you can register for free to get access). Or alternatively here's the relevant excerpt:

Quote

Neither laboratory studies nor the data on asymptomatic transmission provide watertight evidence of the efficacy of masks. That would need randomised controlled trials, in which one group wore masks and the other did not. This would be ethically tricky, since it might condemn one of the groups to a higher death rate. Hamsters, which are susceptible to covid-19, are the next best thing to people. So researchers at Hong Kong University put cages of healthy hamsters next to cages of infected ones, with a fan in between drawing air from the infected to the healthy cage. They sometimes also placed a stretched-out face mask in the air stream. With no interposed mask, two-thirds of the healthy animals were infected within a week. With a mask interposed close to the healthy hamsters (the equivalent of a healthy person wearing a mask), one-third were. With the mask close to the infected hamsters, only a sixth were.

Bottom line is that the mask worked OK when on the non-infected hamsters, and better when on the infected hamsters.

And hey, they are causing limited (or no) harm. So we may as well take a "Pascal's wager" approach and put masks on, especially in indoor settings. 

ETA: On India, I'd be surprised if mask adoption was anywhere as high proportionally as East Asian countries like China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and S Korea.

[Kalbear]

There was a lot early on of how wearing masks didn't protect YOU from things, and I think that somehow got conflated to people not wearing masks at all because they were useless. It was a messaging error, probably done in part to allow for essential workers to keep most of the N95 masks that do protect at least a bit.

But we're hosed now, at least in the US.