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Covid 47: Waving Invisibly


Zorral

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Vaccines may not prevent many symptoms of long covid, study suggests
Veterans Affairs analyzed records from nearly 34,000 people in U.S. who experienced breakthrough infections

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/25/long-covid-vaccines-slight-protection/

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A large U.S. study looking at whether vaccination protects against long covid showed the shots have only a slight protective effect: Being vaccinated appeared to reduce the risk of lung and blood clot disorders, but did little to protect against most other symptoms.

The new paper, published Wednesday in Nature Medicine, is part of a series of studies by the Department of Veterans Affairs on the impact of the coronavirus, and was based on 33,940 people who experienced breakthrough infections after vaccination.

The data confirms the large body of research that shows vaccination greatly reduces the risk of death or serious illness. But there was more ambiguity regarding long covid.

Six months after their initial diagnosis of covid, people in the study who were vaccinated had only a slightly reduced risk of getting long covid — 15 percent overall. The greatest benefit appeared to be in reducing blood clotting and lung complications. But there was no difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated when it came to longer-term risks of neurological issues, gastrointestinal symptoms, kidney failure and other conditions. .... 

 

 

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I saw a story pop up on the Apple News feature that said daily cases in the US have gone up 5-fold since almost vanishing back in April. I didn’t have a chance to read the story, but a look at Worldometer shows a quick increase from a low of less than 25k in April to 120,000 or so now. I assume that number is low because of vanishing testing and a failure to track by some states, and, I assume, many cases are very mild. 

The story caught my eye because yesterday a radio DJ mentioned the two Harry Styles concert dates in Toronto had been sold out in moments, and he suggested trying NYC because Styles is doing 15 concerts there. I’m not exactly a fan, but his voice and his devil-may-care attitude made me consider the Toronto dates. Silly me! Everybody is going back to concerts now. I think everything is sold out, the Beebs, Shawn Mendes, The Weekend et al. Lots of tickets in the resale market, lol, for an arm and a leg!

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Last weekend, against my advice, bro, niece and grandniece 2 1/2 years old, went to a wedding -- niece was in the wedding party.  Sure enough, they all have covid.  They believe they contracted it from bro's ex-wife, who flew to wedding from Florida, and was sick before she flew back to Florida.

Nevertheless, as bad as the numbers are here, we're going uptown to a backyard get-together for the Monday holiday -- 6 people.  All full vaxxed and boosted, wear masks in public spaces and shops, and with a single exception, none of us have been tested positive or gotten it.  So far.  But it seems impossible not to get it, as many people as we know who are currently positive or sick.  The numbers are soaring but everyone behaves as if there isn't any covid.

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You Are Going to Get COVID Again … And Again … And Again
Will the danger mount each time, or will it fade away?

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/05/covid-reinfection-research-immunity/639436/

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... By this point, in fact, most Americans have. But now, as wave after wave continues to pummel the globe, a grimmer reality is playing out. You’re not just likely to get the coronavirus. You’re likely to get it again and again and again.

“I personally know several individuals who have had COVID in almost every wave,” says Salim Abdool Karim, a clinical infectious-diseases epidemiologist and the director of the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa, which has experienced five meticulously tracked surges, and where just one-third of the population is vaccinated. Experts doubt that clip of reinfection—several times a year—will continue over the long term, given the continued ratcheting up of immunity and potential slowdown of variant emergence. But a more sluggish rate would still lead to lots of comeback cases. Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, told me that her best guess for the future has the virus infiltrating each of us, on average, every three years or so. “Barring some intervention that really changes the landscape,” she said, “we will all get SARS-CoV-2 multiple times in our life.” ....

... Perhaps, as several experts have posited since the pandemic’s early days, SARS-CoV-2 will just become the fifth cold-causing coronavirus.

Or maybe not. This virus seems capable of tangling into just about every tissue in the body, affecting organs such as the heart, brain, liver, kidneys, and gut; it has already claimed the lives of millions, while saddling countless others with symptoms that can linger for months or years. Experts think the typical SARS-CoV-2 infection is likely to get less dangerous, as population immunity builds and broadens. But considering our current baseline, “less dangerous” could still be terrible—and it’s not clear exactly where we’re headed. When it comes to reinfection, we “just don’t know enough,” says Emily Landon, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Chicago. ....

 

 

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Numbers have been rising in Chicago, putting us back into "high risk" territory. I've started masking more, but not particularly consistently. From the guidance and studies I've reviewed, wearing a cloth or surgical mask does basically nothing as far as protection, so is really only useful in places where masks are mandated for everyone. I did bust out a more protective N95 mask onboard the plane/in the airport for a recent trip, but I find them pretty uncomfortable and not worth the hassle for things like short grocery trips or whatever.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but after 2 flights, a roadtrip through CA, and a weekend night spent in a packed dueling pianos bar (that was an unfortunate side effect of getting very drunk at an earlier location and completely losing track of what was going on--felt super anxious about it afterwards and took a covid test 5 days after to make sure it was okay), I think we're still covid-free. And luckily it's basically summer now, so I'll be at home or outdoors mostly for the next few months!

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We wore our N95 respiratory masks on the subway going uptown and back down after our holiday get-together with dear friends in their backyard.  Once we got to our stop uptown, we could see through the windows of the various supermarkets, laundries, and sundry other spots just about everyone was masked. This is a neighborhood where this wasn't so the first year or so of the pandemic -- and which has lost a very large number to covid death, long illness and long covid itself.  So that must have something to do with it.  Down here in our own neighborhood, the locals and people who work in the stores are all masked. But nobody from other parts of the country and the world mask.

 

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10 minutes ago, Zorral said:

We wore our N95 respiratory masks on the subway going uptown and back down after our holiday get-together with dear friends in their backyard.  Once we got to our stop uptown, we could see through the windows of the various supermarkets, laundries, and sundry other spots just about everyone was masked. This is a neighborhood where this wasn't so the first year or so of the pandemic -- and which has lost a very large number to covid death, long illness and long covid itself.  So that must have something to do with it.  Down here in our own neighborhood, the locals and people who work in the stores are all masked. But nobody from other parts of the country and the world mask.

 

They nobody else masks tends to be a lie spread by anti-maskers. I mean people here claim that there is no mask mandate on public transport anywhere else in the world which is not even true in freaking Bavaria just across the border. But even such lies remain unchecked.

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25 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

But nobody from other parts of the country and the world mask.

I meant that others from other parts of the country and world who come to my neighborhood in their thousands every week don't mask. But we who live here  do.

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18 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I meant that others from other parts of the country and world who come to my neighborhood in their thousands every week don't mask. But we who live here  do.

Ah that makes sense.

People who believe that masking is necessary in your part of the world probably avoid traveling there though.

Masking is definitely not a tourist thing from what limited traveling I have done in the last few months.

People I know from the board are the exception though.

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18 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Masking is definitely not a tourist thing from what limited traveling I have done in the last few months.

They are fools then, coming here, because our numbers are THE HOT SPOT in the nation,  and, maybe? the hemisphere? at present.

We're at that people not getting hospital beds and medical treatments they need due to the numbers.  The numbers are increasing everywhere now, and shall particularly after this last weekend which was a holiday, which has coincided with graduations, weddings, family reunions, which are also traditional at this time of the year.  Like I mentioned in the covid thread, my brother's family went to a wedding and came back sick.

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During the Omicron Wave, Death Rates Soared for Older People
Last year, people 65 and older died from Covid at lower rates than in previous waves. But with Omicron and waning immunity, death rates rose again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/health/omicron-deaths-age-65-elderly.html

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.... “This is not simply a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” said Andrew Stokes, an assistant professor in global health at Boston University who studies age patterns of Covid deaths. “There’s still exceptionally high risk among older adults, even those with primary vaccine series.”

 Covid deaths, though always concentrated in older people, have in 2022 skewed toward older people more than they did at any point since vaccines became widely available.

That swing in the pandemic has intensified pressure on the Biden administration to protect older Americans, with health officials in recent weeks encouraging everyone 50 and older to get a second booster and introducing new models of distributing antiviral pills.

In much of the country, though, the booster campaign remains listless and disorganized, older people and their doctors said. Patients, many of whom struggle to drive or get online, have to maneuver through an often labyrinthine health care system to receive potentially lifesaving antivirals.

Nationwide Covid deaths in recent weeks have been near the lowest levels of the pandemic, below an average of 400 a day. But the mortality gap between older and younger people has grown: Middle-aged Americans, who suffered a large share of pandemic deaths last summer and fall, are now benefiting from new stores of immune protection in the population as Covid deaths once again cluster around older people. ....

 

 

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On 5/29/2022 at 6:39 AM, Zorral said:

Last weekend, against my advice, bro, niece and grandniece 2 1/2 years old, went to a wedding -- niece was in the wedding party.  Sure enough, they all have covid.  They believe they contracted it from bro's ex-wife, who flew to wedding from Florida, and was sick before she flew back to Florida.

Bloody weddings. A friend and her 93 year old father went to a family wedding recently, and now both have COVID. My friend's husband is a vulnerable person, being a liver transplant recipient several years ago.

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Seems like I have it for the third time (that I know of). Caught it from my daughter, who caught it from a friend who was picking her up from school, who in turn caught it from her daughter. Mild symptoms so far.

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‘We’re playing with fire’: US Covid cases may be 30 times higher than reported

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/01/us-covid-surge-cases-rate

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Severe undercounting undermines our efforts to ‘understand and get ahead of the virus’, researcher says after New York survey

The United States is now in its fourth-biggest Covid surge, according to official case counts – but experts believe the actual current rate is much higher.

America is averaging about 94,000 new cases every day, and hospitalizations have been ticking upward since April, though they remain much lower than previous peaks.

But Covid cases could be undercounted by a factor of 30, an early survey of the surge in New York City indicates. “It would appear official case counts are under-estimating the true burden of infection by about 30-fold, which is a huge surprise,” said Denis Nash, an author of the study and a distinguished professor of epidemiology at the City University of New York School of Public Health.

About one in five – 22% – of adult New Yorkers likely had Covid between 23 April and 8 May, according to the preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed or published. That would mean 1.5 million adults in the city had Covid in a single two-week period – far higher than official counts during that time.

While the study focused on New York, these findings may be true throughout the rest of the country, Nash said. In fact, New Yorkers likely have better access to testing than most of the country, which means undercounting could be even worse elsewhere.

“It’s very worrisome. To me, it means that our ability to really understand and get ahead of the virus is undermined,” Nash said.

More than half of the Covid patients surveyed also said they didn’t know about Paxlovid, an antiviral that can be highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death among high-risk people. And those who were able to access Paxlovid tended to be younger, with better access to resources, signaling that Paxlovid may still not be reaching those who need it the most.

“We need to be able to know who among the most vulnerable is not getting access to Paxlovid after they have a Covid infection, and make sure that they’re being reached and targeted quickly,” Nash said. ....

 

 

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A very long article regarding the rollout later this summer of the long awaited Novavax covid vaccine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/05/novavax-coronavirus-vaccine-fda/

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More than a year after people began rolling up their sleeves for cutting-edge coronavirus shots, a new vaccine — this one based on a classic, decades-old technology — is expected to begin rolling out in the United States this summer.

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration are scheduled to debate Tuesday whether a shot developed by the Maryland biotechnology company Novavax, an underdog in the vaccine race, is safe and effective. If the shot gets the greenlight, it will become the fourth coronavirus vaccine in the nation.

For most people, some already on their third or fourth messenger RNA coronavirus shot from Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech, it’s a puzzle: A new vaccine? Now? Why bother?

But for a small contingent of holdouts who have closely tracked the progress of the Novavax vaccine, this is a long-awaited moment of truth.

“Some people can’t take the mRNA vaccines, and it’s important to have a choice,” said Victoria Dawson, 74, of New York, who is allergic to an ingredient in the mRNA shots. She received a Johnson & Johnson shot and booster but hopes her next shot will be from Novavax.

Even though Novavax lost the race to be first, company executives argue that their shot will help fill in the margins of the pandemic vaccination campaign and play an important role in helping people live alongside the virus into the future.

They argue that their vaccine, which can stay stable at refrigerator temperatures long-term and may be better tolerated than alternatives, will have key advantages once the exigencies of the pandemic recede. But hopes were dashed Friday that the vaccine would offer an alternative for people worried about rare heart inflammation associated with mRNA vaccines. An FDA review found that there were five cases of inflammation, mostly in men, within two weeks of being vaccinated in the company’s trials, “raising concern for a causal relationship.”

The Novavax vaccine is poised to hit the U.S. market as more than three-quarters of people 18 and older are already fully vaccinated. Among the unvaccinated, some may be waiting for another option, but others may not be interested at all. Novavax plans to seek expanded authorization for use of the shot in adolescents and as a booster.

The vaccine’s rollout is likely to be slower than that of earlier coronavirus vaccines, which were available days after FDA advisers met.

An agency review released Friday said that testing and submission of manufacturing information about the vaccine was “still in process” and would be essential “to ensure the vaccine’s quality and consistency for authorization.” A meeting of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisers, a critical step before a vaccine becomes available, has not been scheduled yet. The company plans to have shots ready to supply “within a very short period of time” — a few weeks after the FDA authorizes the shot, said John Trizzino, chief commercial officer at Novavax.

Despite the late arrival of their vaccine, Novavax executives remain confident it will fill a need. ....

 

 

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22 hours ago, Zorral said:

A very long article regarding the rollout later this summer of the long awaited Novavax covid vaccine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/05/novavax-coronavirus-vaccine-fda/

 

Austria ordered 4,1 million doses. 

2,6 million doses have already arrived and their expiry date is the 31th of August. It has been available for months now.  ~6k doses had been used by the end of April. The rest will most likely be destroyed.

Giving the anti-vaxxers that said they are waiting for it the benefit of doubt has wasted a huge amount of money.

When it arrived 100% of the people who wanted a vaccine had it(probably by August). The rest just got vaccines because of the vaccine passport and the threat of the vaccination mandate not because they wanted it. Now that they the decided against enforcing the vaccine mandate(at least until fall) and the end of vaccine/test passports people won't fall for that again. Our goverment has shown that it has no power will to enforce any measures when it comes to covid. The police has started arresting people who are protesting for climate or animal rights reasons again which shows that the power was there just that there was not interest to do the same with people violating covid rules during protests. The Austrian police only enforces rules against groups that the far right organization that it is considers the enemy.

Trusting the word of people disconnected from reality is an incredible stupid thing and our government keeps falling from it. 

Even ordering just 100k doses would have been optimistic at best. 

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They Say this Northeast hotspot, for this most current wave, may have peaked, be peaking, while it begins surging in other parts of the country.  They Say also we need to be prepared for both fall and winter surges/waves again here, of course.

I hope at some point --soon! -- there can be an annual vax, as with the annual flu vax, so that I don't have to go through these reaction 4 times a year to boost up what the serum does.

 

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Moderna says new trial results show that a revised vaccine works better against Omicron.
The findings indicate that the updated vaccine produced a significantly stronger immune response against Omicron, but it is unclear how it will fare against future versions of the virus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/us/politics/moderna-vaccine-omicron-variant.html

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Moderna released preliminary results on Wednesday on an updated coronavirus vaccine targeting the Omicron variant, calling it “our lead candidate” to serve as a U.S. booster shot in the fall.

The firm’s researchers tested a booster dose combining the original vaccine with one targeted specifically against Omicron, the variant that became dominant last winter. They found that among those with no evidence of prior coronavirus infection, the combination produced 1.75 times the level of neutralizing antibodies against Omicron as the existing Moderna vaccine did alone.

While those results seem encouraging on their face, many experts worry that the virus is evolving so fast that it is outpacing the ability to modify vaccines — at least as long as the United States relies on human clinical trials for results.

Moderna’s new findings, from a clinical trial involving 814 volunteers, indicate that the updated vaccine produced a significantly stronger immune response against Omicron than the existing vaccine a month after the booster shot was given. The booster shots followed three earlier doses of Moderna’s vaccine. ....

 

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Two new versions of Omicron are gaining ground in the U.S., according to C.D.C. estimates.
The spread of the subvariants adds more uncertainty to the trajectory of the pandemic in the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/08/world/covid-19-mandates-vaccine-cases#omicron-ba4-ba5-variant


 

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