Covid

[alec]

Danny - "Is it as usual a paper about people who attended hospital with covid? thats how most of these studies find their subjects, from medical records. If you arent ill enough to have a hospital record about your covid illness, then you dont get included. So obviously all the people who are not very ill with covid get left out."

That's a perfect example of the kind of grossly wayward thinking I referenced in my last post. Your inability to read and understand the evidence I post leads you to write garbage - there's nothing more charitable I can say about your post on this. You either haven't studied the paper at all, even on a very cursory basis, or you have but you're totally misunderstood or misrepresented it. You've then gone on to invent something that is utterly false - "If you arent ill enough to have a hospital record about your covid illness, then you dont get included" - and so you keep going round and round in circles, completely failing to understand just how woefully wrong you are. There is a debate to be had on very many aspects of covid, but you aren't even in the stadium, let alone on the starting blocks. You need to be far more careful in how you study the data before commenting if you want a reasoned discussion.

In this particular case, go read the paper. You'll see in the sections 'Study Population' and 'Systematic Review and Data Extraction' how they selected participants, and it's nothing to do with being in hospital. Unlike your daft statement about medical records, you don't need to be admitted to a hospital to have one, and in the cases of the US databases they also used insurance records. "Data from the study populations ranged from a full account of all cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the Faroe Islands to cases identified at health facilities, volunteers reporting symptoms in an app, and individuals enrolled in medical insurance."

So, as ever, your critique falls flat on it's face from the start. There are lots of intricacies in the data and many areas of uncertainty, which all the experts agree exist, but you really can't just make up pretend truths like you do and expect anyone to take you seriously. If you read the science with an open mind, you really can learn new things, and by learning, we can allow our minds to expand and sometimes our preconceived views to change.

[Danny]

Oct 11, 2022 14:15:28 GMT alec said:

That's a perfect example of the kind of grossly wayward thinking I referenced in my last post. Your inability to read and understand the evidence I post leads you to write garbage

I merely asked if this was another study of patients attending hospital because of covid. Perfectly sensible engagement with the debate. I havn't read the study but you did say its a meta review. Which basically means its a compendium of other's studies, not their own work. So then the question is whether most studies are in fact carried out on hospital patients, to which the answer is almost always yes. But I asked what was the situation here, and you seem upset by my engagement.

There is an obvious reason why such studies are conducted on hospital patients, its because they are the only ones about whom records exist to analyse. It doesnt overcome the flaw that all the people who didnt suffer much or at all from covid just dont get taken into account.

Unlike your daft statement about medical records, you don't need to be admitted to a hospital to have one, and in the cases of the US databases they also used insurance records.

But you do need to have asked for hospital help. And as you point out, no one in the US is going to ask for that unless they think they need it. Thats the thing about mild covid, its just a cold. We all know first how to treat a cold, and second that involving professional medics wont help us anyway. And in the US and indeed many other countries, will just cost us money.

Incidentally, I never said hospital in-patients. The phrase I used was 'attending hospital'. I dont think hospitals make visits to your home, so I was indeed thinking of people who turned up for some sort of out patient treatment. Or a clinic, or even a GP. Regardless, most people have no need to speak to any kind of professional medic if they catch covid. Indeed, its now reached the stage that people are looking forward to catching covid because it means they get some paid days off work. Not everyone of course, but its always been that way, you must not treat the entire population as if they were at the same risk, because they simply arent. If you did that with all diseases you would waste most of the resources of the NHS.

Do please attend to what I write. Then maybe you wouldnt get quite so upset.

[alec]

@danyinexile - "I merely asked if this was another study of patients attending hospital because of covid. Perfectly sensible engagement with the debate. I havn't read the study...."

No Danny, that's what is commonly known as 'trolling'.

Perfectly sensible engagement would be to actually read the paper so you at least have a clue what you are talking about.

I've tried to give you a few pointers about covid, and wider matters like how to engage with science, but I don't think you have any interest in learning so I'll leave you to it. Dont bother responding to my posts any further unless you reform yourself and wish to engage properly.

[Danny]

The big issue I have with the whole handling of covid is the lack of evidence that big interventions like lockdown created any health benefit. if anyone could find clear conclusive evidence of this then the debate would be over, but they cannot. Across the world countries which intervened little did as well as countries which intervened a lot. Amongst those which did little or amongst those who did a lot, outcomes varied enormously. The most obvious difference is that countries outcomes clustered according to what part of the world those countries are in, not according to what they did.


The implication of this is that there is something about those parts of the world which had a much bigger effect on outcomes than any of the interventions. Yes, we do know something could account for this, its called immunity. If those parts of the world had been vaccinated against covid because there was a lot of disease there in the past which was sufficiently close to covid, then that past disease could have created immunity which works against covid. This is a process called vaccination, which word was invented by Edward Jenner to describe how he deliberately gave people cow pox to prevent them catching smallpox. Its a very well established fact that catching a related mild disease can protet you against a more dangerous cousin. Nothing remotely controversial about that.

Next, we know that populations all over the world had antibodies effective against covid before it started spreading. We know this because of testing done on stored blood in 2020. This isnt quantified, we dont know how good this protection was, and indeed that isnt something we are very good at measuring. The standard tests only say that someone has enough antibody so that it is more likely than not they would not get ill with a certain disease. if the measured result is less than that, it doesnt mean they have no protection, it just means they might expect more symptoms. But the existence of any effective antibody in their blood implies they are already protected in some degree.

Its easy to see how this could happen. There are several corona viruses in circulation which infect us all the time causing colds. Moreover, kids might get 3-4 a year whereas adults get fewer as they age, just the inverse pattern of covid infections. Those who got most corona virus infections before covid arrived, had least bad covid. SARS and MERS which created outbreaks in certain areas in recent years also confer protection against covid. Not exactly recommended as a vaccination program, but if you had one of those then it will have given you some protection against covid. If you live in a country where these circulated, then you likely had some exposure and therefore some protection against covid. No doubt there are others.

Ironically, covid most likely arrived in man from animal hosts in China. This very likely means Chinese have been exposed to similar diseases which however never managed to take off amongst people for their whole lives. And so China very likely had more immunity to covid than most nations from the outset. This is consistent with its extraordinarily low covid death rate. But despite this some people got very ill, as is inevitable despite everything we could do, and those created a panic because this was a disease unknown to medicine. It set the pattern of a panic reaction which was never justified by the actual real severity of the illness if left to itself. China is still imposing lockdowns. There is no evidence that had it never introduced them, then their final covid death toll would have been worse than it will eventually be. The only way to know that is to try. But what we do know is China has not ended its covid problem using lockdowns. These have been more rigorously enforced than most nations, maybe all other nations, but the only result has been to defer covid infections which will eventually happen anyway. That does not help the final outcome. WHO have always been clear that a lockdown by itself cannot change the final outcome, only delay the epidemic reaching its natural end. So what we all did was go sit at home doing nothing for a year, delaying the end of the epidemic by a year. At an unsurprisingly vast economic cost which is now falling due for payment.

Meanwhile, there is other evidence lockdowns are ineffectual in improving health outcomes. During our lockdowns, after the spring 2020 national one government tried local ones because, obviously, outbreaks began at different times in different places. It gave this up because it concluded they didnt work. impose a lockdown, it didnt slow the disease. This failure was blamed on people ignoring the rules and travelling out of area, but the equally possible reason is simply lockdowns didnt work. We have never had the rigorous lockdowns in China with armed guards on buildings. Millions of workers in the Uk continued their normal activities throughout because they are considered essential. It still cost a fortune, but didnt do much to slow spread.

So then we tried national lockdowns again. But these are timed according to average national case levels. So some places start first and had a month or two of infection before national restrictions were applied. And guess what? In those places covid did not grow exponentially as predicted, but ended by itself after a month or two. Much the same as happened when lockdowns were imposed. No significant difference, just the cost of those lockdowns. The evidence form those places where lockdown didnt get applied, was that it ended by itsself!

And personally, I had a disease late 2019 with the classic covid symptoms. I caught it from my partner, his workplace had it, asking around the whole town of hastings had it. There was a modest wave of deaths in old peoples homes. Unidentified cause, of course. But not markedly above the usual for a winter outbreak of something like flu (but not flu, that would have been identified). The index case was someone who arrived in the Uk from Wuhan in China, with a cold. We now know that covid was also spreading from China to other places around the world by this time.

The result of doing nothing about our covid outbreak was it simply ended by itself. Come the spring when the rest of the UK had covid, Hastings had hardly any. Just what you would expect if it already had had it the winter before. I dont know any other reason how hastings could have escaped covid infection at that time, except it was already immune because it was already over there. Come the autumn, Hastings caught Kent strain just like anywhere else. Everywhere caught that despite having the original strain in the spring and becoming sufficiently immune to it that it had died out. The nation pretty much achieved herd immunity to that first strain though the first half of 2020, despite all those regulations. We had it anyway. Theres some evidence it peaked in S England before lockdown even began!

From Hastings in that winter, covid would have spread to London. So that when medics finally started testing the general population they found it was all over London. London schools reported record illness amongst their kids, before covid officially arrived. Gee, no surprise if it was already here. And who would know? Its just a cold if mild or flu if more severe. The signature loss of taste thing wasnt known then. No one bothers medics about colds or flu unless it gets really bad. There were no specific tests. Only high risk people get seriosuly ill, and those are mostly pensioners who are naturally most protected against catching it, because they simply dont socialise as much. Deaths really only mount once the disease infects hospitals and care homes, where it can infect highly susceptible people. Thats some time after it gets started. Its never discovered until its well established unless there is a massive screening program already in place, and there certainly wasnt then. All this is why the government's attempts to keep covid out of the Uk, and their staged plan of responses, all failed. It was over in some places before they even knew it had arrived!

Taken together, all this means lockdowns were pointless. They never stopped people catching it, never stopped us building our natural immunity, never stopped the susceptible still being exposed and dying. Vaccines have been developed but they arent very good. They cannot stop infections and repeat infections. They may mean you get a milder case but that isnt certain as I know myself. My partner with three vaccinations had it worse second time around than i did with none. Plus he was sick three extra times, after each vaccination. Some countries simply havnt bothered vaccinating any except the high risk.  Noteably these are poorer countries than the Uk, so presumably they concluded it simply wasnt cost effective to do this, despite the quite low cost of a vaccination. Which is nothing compared to the cost of lockdown which didnt work either. The Uk is now seeing that it might be richer, but it couldnt afford lockdown.

[Danny]

Further to above, heard another interview on R4 science program this afternoon, where a professor of immunolgy working on covid confirmed there are now lots of pre covid existence samples which have been analysed and contain antibodies effective against covid. She was working on lung samples because a better vaccine creating antibodies in airway fluids is likely to get to incoming covid faster. Also looking at what parts are common and invariant between different covid strains and indeed other corona viruses, so they would be better targets for a new vaccine than the current spike protein vaccines.

She confirmed the most accepted theory about how this pre covid immunity came about is because of circulating cold viruses, quite a few of which are corona viruses closely related to covid. Children get many infections a year and so created immunity to covid, but also pass them on to wider family, etc.

So...it is certain we had immunity to covid before it even arrived. Its likely this was strongest amongst kids because they get the most infections each year. The concept that the more infections you get, the safer you are, is confirmed, and this inversely mirrors how covid was more severe in older people, who also get fewer colds. She said there was little evidence that certain people were just naturally more immune to covid, it is a question of past exposure.

She also said that anyone who has had a covid infection as well as a vaccination will be better protected than someone who has only had a vaccination. her work seems to be about trying to find how to improve a vaccine to do the same job as an actual infection.

They also talked about the meaning of antibody tests. While a clear positive N antibody test shows you have antibodies effective against covid and likely means you have had covid itself, a low or too low to measure level doesnt mean you have not. Because antibody levels fall fast, and in particular N antibodies from natural infections fall off faster than S antibodies created by vaccines. But while higher is better, it doesnt tell you much about the real level of protection this represents. There seems to be an issue of quality of antibody as well as quantity, and the human vaccines have all gone for quantity.

Pleasant to hear someone confirming stuff I have regularly posted, which was no more than posting the statements of other professionals who have said similar things in the past. Disturbing that some just cannot accept these facts.

Food for thought that catching colds and helping them to circulate keeps us safe, and kept us safe from covid. Without that it could have lived up to the fears of such as professor lockdown, but he didnt know we already had some immunity.

[Deleted]

Anecdotal update on my own Covid experience. Just had a chest x-ray following my recent post-Covid bout of bronchitis, (which persists after two weeks, longer than any previous occasional bout I have experienced).

I asked the radiologists what their own experience was of post-Covid respiratory-type infections. They said that the most recent wave of Covid locally, (i.e. last month or so), there has definitely been an uptick in such infections, so I don't appear to be an isolated case.

For info, following alec's recent note on the main thread, I was puzzled to note that that encouragement to use hand sanitisers in the hospital was quite prominent. However, I didn't see any notice even suggesting wearing face masks. This seemed completely counterintuitive to me. The strange thing was, everyone I saw was wearing a mask. Bar none.

[alec]

Danny - "The big issue I have with the whole handling of covid is the lack of evidence that big interventions like lockdown created any health benefit. if anyone could find clear conclusive evidence of this then the debate would be over, but they cannot."

Rather than write long, pointless posts that are devoid of factual veracity, spend the time looking for evidence in a non-partisan, unbiased manner.

The evidence that lockdowns and many other big interventions had health benefits is utterly overwhelming. This is not remotely surprising, because we've done all these things many times before in human history.

I'm afraid it's not good enough describe a 'lack of evidence' when the evidence is there, but the lack is your lack of willingness to look for it. That's just childish laziness.

[alec]

@isa - really sorry to hear about your prolonged illness. Sadly it doesn't surprise me, and I've heard plenty of other similar stories.

[Danny]

Oct 13, 2022 16:42:15 GMT alec said:

The evidence that lockdowns and many other big interventions had health benefits is utterly overwhelming. This is not remotely surprising, because we've done all these things many times before in human history.

We really havnt.  The initial emergency pandemic plan was simply to manage cases as they came along. A quarantine of some sort might be applied if cases became too many to manage, which actualy for covid they never did. The purpose of this being solely to slow cases so medics could cope with the numbers, but then allow it to work through the population until it ended naturally.  During the black death for example, people were qurantined in their own homes if someone living there showed symptoms, but only for a fortnight. Individual towns might be quarantined, though only until it died down there,  but never an entire  country at once.  The original plan was based upon tried and tested historic approaches where we did NOT impose long term national lockdowns. That was what we did differently this time, and it did not work.

It was a grand experiment where: 

1) it was hoped the extended lockdown would suppress cases completely until a vaccine arrived, but it never did suppress cases like that. Instead they passed through the population anyway, creating herd immunity to each successive strain as you might have expected.   To understand how to minimise the harm from covid, you need to look at how it spreads. Most cases and transmission are amongst the young (working age and below), but these arent dangerous. Its when there is contact from young to old, and then the old who are more susceptible start dying that we have a problem.  So the question is not how to stop the young catching covid (and indeed then becoming immune or partially immune so they will not spread it or spread it less),  but how to stop them passing it to the old.  What we did slowed spread amongst the young and so kept the virus in circulation for longer. Which must have increased its opportunities to spread to the old. This was especially true at the outset, where virtually no attempt was made to quarantine care homes etc. Instead things like ppe and tests were given to the general population where it didnt really matter and refused to care homes.

What we really needed to do was get it over as fast as possible amongst the young. Which is much more what a traditional approach would have done. The old are actually  significantly separated from the young by the way society works anyway. They dont go to work, and they dont do wild parties.

2) When the vaccine eventually did arrive, it was incapable of creating herd immunity and could only suppress infection for a month or two. This seems to be  a fundamental property of this sort of disease and this sort of vaccine, which has been born out by the failure of attempts to create lasting vaccines for colds and flus in the past. It does seem to offer protection against serious disease, but thats only relevant for those people susceptible to serious disease if infected. Hence strategies adopted by some countries where only the old are vaccinated. As per flu.

[alec]

Danny - "We really havnt."

Yes we have. You know nothing.

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

Excerpts from Covid article in the Telegraph:


“Although no single variant is currently dominant, three are spreading quickly: XBB, which has driven a new wave of infections in Singapore, and BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, which are spreading in Europe and are now responsible for around 11 per cent of cases in the United States.

Available data suggests XBB, which has been spotted in 26 countries, may be the best at evading immunity. In one study by researchers in China, the variant partially evaded antibodies generated by a previous infection with BA.5, an older omicon sub-variant.

‘Significant immune evasion’

Dr Van Kerkhove suggested this could be because it is a recombinant variant. Unlike BQ.1 and BQ1.1, which are descendants of BA.5, XBB is a mash-up of two omicron sub-variants.

“We do know that this recombinant has a significant growth advantage,” she said. “We have one study that is based on a pseudo virus, so not a live virus, that is analysing antibody escape. And it’s showing significant immune evasion.

“This is of concern for us because we need to ensure that the vaccines that are in use worldwide remain effective at preventing severe disease and death.”


Not everyone sees this as necessarily such a big a deal:

“Prof Dale Fisher, a professor in infectious diseases at the National University of Singapore, said the variant is unlikely to trigger a set of new restrictions.

“It seems to have capacity to partially evade the immune capacity to prevent infection and this is linked to a surge in mild cases,” he told the Telegraph. “However other aspects of the immune response less related to antibodies remain strong in preventing severe disease”

and

“Dr Amesh Adalja, of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security in America, added: “It’s important to remember that immunity is not an on or off switch. It’s a spectrum of protection.

“Even if XBB can get around some immunity that’s been provided by prior infections, it will still be unable to cause severe disease because other aspects of immunity such as T-cells are really really good nevertheless… we’re shifting Covid-19 to the outpatient side – to something that doesn’t require hospitalisation.””


…I’m still wearing my mask though. Even outside the home.

[alec]

c-a-r-f-r-e-w - thanks. The variant soup at present is also making it very hard to predict one countries experience to anothers. There is some concern about BQ1.1 in the US though. In New York, case rates seem stable, but hospital admissions are rising sharply, potentially indicating more severe illness, although the case data is not so reliable now and this may be a short term statistical blip.

I'm actually in the process of purchasing a couple of HEPA filters for home and work events. There are some surprisingly cheap but effective models out there.

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

Oct 20, 2022 21:23:46 GMT alec said:

c-a-r-f-r-e-w - thanks. The variant soup at present is also making it very hard to predict one countries experience to anothers. There is some concern about BQ1.1 in the US though. In New York, case rates seem stable, but hospital admissions are rising sharply, potentially indicating more severe illness, although the case data is not so reliable now and this may be a short term statistical blip.

I'm actually in the process of purchasing a couple of HEPA filters for home and work events. There are some surprisingly cheap but effective models out there.

Yeah, shame they didn’t make more of the testing thing, but wrong universe again

[alec]

c-a-r-f-r-e-w - if you're interested, this - www.philips.co.uk/c-p/AC0820_30/800-series-air-purifier?clickref=1011lwfSm5ij&origin=2_uk_uk___1011l59809_____shopping24gmbh_____Cashback%2FLoyalty___pz&utm_source=1011l59809&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=partnerize&utm_content=Cashback%2FLoyalty&utm_term=shopping24gmbh#see-all-benefits

It's remarkably cheap, but good for small rooms and so long as you use the nano filter should give clean air. It's small enough to transport so if you want to visit friends/family etc.

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

Oct 21, 2022 6:00:51 GMT alec said:

c-a-r-f-r-e-w - if you're interested, this - www.philips.co.uk/c-p/AC0820_30/800-series-air-purifier?clickref=1011lwfSm5ij&origin=2_uk_uk___1011l59809_____shopping24gmbh_____Cashback%2FLoyalty___pz&utm_source=1011l59809&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=partnerize&utm_content=Cashback%2FLoyalty&utm_term=shopping24gmbh#see-all-benefits

It's remarkably cheap, but good for small rooms and so long as you use the nano filter should give clean air. It's small enough to transport so if you want to visit friends/family etc.

Thanks for the heads up, I am partial to an air purifier as it happens, living in the city as I do (hence my debates with James the traffic planner on the old board)

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

Statins cool Covid and cut the chance of serious illness

“Drugs prescribed to reduce cholesterol are likely to cut the chances of serious illness and death from coronavirus, a second study in the past year has found.

Research presented in the US this month showed that statins were likely to have lowered the risk of death and severity of Covid-19 in a study of more than 38,000 patients.

Experts said that “while there was no magic bullet to help patients who are very ill with Covid”, statins decrease inflammation, which in turn was seen as likely to have reduced the severity of the effects of the virus.”


Times

[Danny]

Doctor was interviewed this morning on R4 about a new medical trial of 5 million people trying to find early symptoms of diseases. Missed his name, but interviewer welcomed him back as he often spoke about covid.

She asked him about the state of covid now. He said the dangerous disease which we saw at the start of the epidemic no longer exists. Covid now is no more than a flu or other similar diseases we have long been used to.

Its over. People should go back to normal, including the NHS. Its now just an excuse for paid time off work.

[Deleted]

Oct 13, 2022 15:43:40 GMT @isa said:

Anecdotal update on my own Covid experience. Just had a chest x-ray following my recent post-Covid bout of bronchitis, (which persists after two weeks, longer than any previous occasional bout I have experienced).

I asked the radiologists what their own experience was of post-Covid respiratory-type infections. They said that the most recent wave of Covid locally, (i.e. last month or so), there has definitely been an uptick in such infections, so I don't appear to be an isolated case.

For info, following alec 's recent note on the main thread, I was puzzled to note that that encouragement to use hand sanitisers in the hospital was quite prominent. However, I didn't see any notice even suggesting wearing face masks. This seemed completely counterintuitive to me. The strange thing was, everyone I saw was wearing a mask. Bar none.

As alec was kind enough to enquire after my progress on the main thread, l offer some anecdotal thoughts on Covid experience. 

Covid itself arrived suddenly and unexpectedly, ironically a week after my fourth jab. The first few days were quite unpleasant; high temperature, laboured breathing and coughing, exhaustion. Worse than any 'flu' I could remember.

As the days passed, the temperature and cough relented, but even after testing negative for Covid after the initial bout, breathing and energy issues remained as Covid morphed almost imperceptibly into bronchitis. Now, after more than a month since going down with Covid, I have been prescribed antibiotics for the bronchitis. I now have more energy and 'puff' but it has been slow progress.

I am a fairly fit, healthy, non-overweight, fully vaccinated 63 year old, but Covid and the ensuing bronchitis really knocked me sideways and has been very reluctant to let go. I suspect that, without all the vaccinations, I might have been in rather more trouble.

[alec]

Danny - "He said the dangerous disease which we saw at the start of the epidemic no longer exists. Covid now is no more than a flu or other similar diseases we have long been used to.

Its over. People should go back to normal, including the NHS. Its now just an excuse for paid time off work."

You're a gullible twat, aren't you?

There is a great deal of false statements made by medical experts in the west who really should know better, but fortunately there are still many sensible experts out there.

With over 1000 excess deaths per week, both directly from covid and indirectly from it's effects on society, and with declining life expectancy in all age groups because of covid, and with around 5% of the population clinically vulnerable from serious outcomes if they catch covid, no, it's not just like flu.

[alec]

Some rare, genuinely good news here on covid -

In this experiment on mice, researchers created immunity from a nasal spray vaccine that provided neutralising mucosal membrane immunity to not just sars2 (covid) but also sars1. This is another major development towards a sterilizing pan coronavirus vaccine, which is really the path out of the pandemic for us.

The down side - and there always is one - is that, in common with all the covid vaccines, immunity wanes, in this case after around 4 months. That remains one of the mysteries about coronaviruses that researchers cannot explain. The human immune system loses it's immune capacity with this class of virus, whereas with many other infectious agents we can create effectively lifetime immunity. This is why the experts look upon Sars type viruses as particularly worrying.

However, even with this flaw, such vaccines are still our only real chance of ending the pandemic before we see mutation into more pathogenic and immune evasive variants, a clear and present danger for as long as society allows unregulated transmission. If we could develop an easy to deliver nasal spray shot that provides total immunity across all variants for even just 4 months, the option for elimination becomes a real possibility. Just roll out the vaccine to the entire population rapidly, and then test and vaccinate any arrivals, and you have a territory free from covid, and probably also free from any other coronavirus too. This is conceptually perfectly possible, if these new vaccines come to fruition, so yes, significant hope here.

Unfortunately in this country and most other western societies, we are behaving stupidly, with a failure to grasp the collective will that is required to deal with this crisis. Fortunately, not every country in the world follows the west, and many of the Asia countries will jump at such an opportunity, so we should have live examples of what it is like to go back to a time when covid didn't exist. The economic and social benefits that will bring will eventually create the spur for western governments to act, so overall, I remain hopeful, but patient. The world will catch up with the serious thinkers on this eventually.

[leftieliberal]

Some interesting research on organoids (essentially stem cells that have formed pinhead-sized clumps of brain tissue). They have found that the covid-19 virus causes the loss of synapses. theconversation.com/long-covid-how-lost-connections-between-nerve-cells-in-the-brain-may-explain-cognitive-symptoms-192702

If it turns out to be an immune response to the virus, it may be that drugs to block the natural pruning of inactive synapses when given to people suffering from Covid will reduce or remove the effects of long covid. Minocycline seems to have this effect in vitro.

[Danny]

Oct 28, 2022 6:55:44 GMT alec said:

The down side - and there always is one - is that, in common with all the covid vaccines, immunity wanes, in this case after around 4 months. That remains one of the mysteries about coronaviruses that researchers cannot explain. The human immune system loses it's immune capacity with this class of virus, whereas with many other infectious agents we can create effectively lifetime immunity. This is why the experts look upon Sars type viruses as particularly worrying. {/quote] Not sure its such a mystery. The big obvious problem is the high rate of mutation of covid. We have achieved herd immunity successively to the past strains. They havnt come back, therfore we are immune to them. It all worked as it should. The bottom line seems to be vaccines are brilliant against immutable organisms. Not against ones which can change. Fundamentally vccines just cannot work so well against this sort of illness.

Worse from the vaccine makers persepctive, there are clear logical reasons why it is better for us to be regulary reinfected, before too many mutations have taken place. These organisms become more dangerous the longer passes before reinfection. It is better to be regularly reinfctd, and surprise surprise, thats eactly what the human immune system is set up to allow to happen. After an infection we gradually throttle back our immuniy to allow a reinfection to take place. Each winter we down regulated our immunity as day length shortens, we get less vitamin D, and its probably the best time of year for a historic pattern human population to get a wave of illness. The harvest is already in and food stocks are high for the winter. So the problem is, vaccines only work by activating the immune system, but it is designed to allow repeat infetions. QED, vaccinations cannot eradicate covid.

However, even with this flaw, such vaccines are still our only real chance of ending the pandemic before we see mutation into more pathogenic and immune evasive variants,

Not at all. We are safest with regular reinfections. All thsi shielding people encourages longer between cases and more dangerous ones when they arrive. the reason covid was dangerous at all was because we had no recent experience of that subtype of corona virus.

a clear and present danger for as long as society allows unregulated transmission. If we could develop an easy to deliver nasal spray shot that provides total immunity across all variants for even just 4 months, the option for elimination becomes a real possibility.

It really does not. Smallpox was only eradicated by the existence of permanent long lasting lvaccines, and rapid interventions when an outbreak occurred. The first doesnt exist for covid, and there isnt likely to be much will for the second in many countries because it really isnt a very dangerous disease once you have got used to it. If you want to worry about something, worry about the real and prsent danger of the Russian army.

[alec]

Paper on variant development here -

What is surprising experts isn't that this evolution is happening, but rather that the speed of development of covid is remarkable. That's the result of unfettered transmission, which was the risk many of us warned about when we talked about how you can't vaccinate your way out of a pandemic way back before we actually had any vaccines.

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

COVID vaccine hoarding might have cost more than a million lives
Low- and middle-income nations would have had lower death rates if vaccines had been shared more equitably.

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03529-3

[alec]

Thread on brain damage from covid here -

[alec]

And here is a good thread from Prof Pagel looking at the issues faced by the 3.6m people in the clinically extremely vulnerable category -

This is a sizeable minority that is being willfully treated in a thoroughly exclusionary manner by government and society as a whole.

[Danny]

Nov 4, 2022 16:05:55 GMT alec said:

Just putting a thread discussing the brain damage found in 28 mild covid patients (as evidenced by detailed brain scans) over on the covid thread. Important to note that these were not random patients, but were patients referred to a specialist unit after suffering post covid 'brain fog'. However, they were compared to a matched cohort of non covid patients, none of whom displayed the symptoms. The scans showed extensive damage in the right temporal lobe, which is important for memory and non verbal processing. Knowing whether people have this type of cognitive damage will become increasingly important, both for future healthcare management and also workplace safety. As the authors says - "you wouldn’t want someone piloting a plane with these findings".

The study writeup linked from the tweet you posted doesnt mention any control group. The link i found in the tweet to an actual study is link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00259-022-05753-5 . That might be the wrong one, but it doesnt mention any kind of population comparison? I would remind you of a study of long covid symptoms a while back, which found they were nearly as likely amongst people who had never reported having covid as amongst those who had. It was all because covid patients as a group were being studied and any kind of disease identified, but that wasnt necessarily caused by covid at all.

As you state this was a study of people demonstrating long term symptoms after being ill with covid. So its in the first instance about studying them and finding what was wrong with them. It makes no pretense to decide how often these symptoms occurred after a covid infection, it just looked at people who had them. We could do a study of people dying from mad cow disease and conclude its nasty, but it would be ridiculous to fear it. You will recall there was a scare about this some years ago and as such people stopped eating beef. Neglecting that said beef had first become contaminated years previously going into the food chain, so if it was harmful then the harm was already done. In reality now after some decades have passed, we can conclude there was never a threat even though at the time actual hospitalised cases were discovered. What we can conclude from this study is that people already diagnosed as having long covid...were confirmed as having long covid. (but the definition of long covid doesnt exclude that something other than covid was the real cause of the symptoms)

Actually, the study found that half the people referred to it as suspected of brain impairment, had no detectable brain impairment. so whatever was wrong with them, this study of brains could not detect it. It is of course the case that all sorts of other factors can cause brain fog, such as drugs or illness in other organs. Or simply a negative placebo effect, that because people believe they have an illness they feel ill. Yep, thats a real thing, whether a positive or negative placebo effect you can think yourself into feeling well or ill, and with such small numbers tested it wouldnt be at all impossible to have generated these numbers. Fascinating program yesterday on R4 about mass hysteria, where people got carted off to hospital sick because they thought they were just exposed to poison gas, yet there never was any poison gas. Suggestion was enought to have them passing out, getting sick, clammy, etc.

The study observes its findings of exactly what is anomalous in these people differ from findings by another study. They note this, but really only suggest covid consequences are likely to be variable, as explanation. Another explanation would be simple random variation in a small highly selective study of people definitely exhibiting symptoms, but which might have various unidentified causes apart from covid. This could be evidence the real cause was not covid at all because the physiological effects are different.

On the whole they reckon the anomalies they found in half the patients, are consistent with the reporterd brain fog symptoms. Which doesnt say much except half didnt have them, and the rest had a physiological confirmation of their perceived symptoms, but that didnt demonstrate why.

They say a larger study might confirm their results. Or of course, disprove it. But they think a larger study is needed. They reckon the procedure reassured patients, whether they were told they had no anomalies and so were reassured, or whether they were told they did and so had a cause which would be addressed.

Ok..I read the real study rather than the tweet description. Its mostly a sensible medical report of findings, which concludes...more work needed. Why are you being so alarmist?

[alec]

Here is an article from Prof Sheena Cruickshank, discussing the hope for nasal spray vaccines - theconversation.com/covid-inhalable-and-nasal-vaccines-could-offer-more-durable-protection-than-regular-shots-193576

It's clear that we need much better vaccines for covid, but there are real signs of hope that this is the way forward. Separately, Prof Eric Topol has been regularly tweeting about potential candidate mechanisms for pan-coronavirus immunity, with several candidates now showing promise. These would potentially cover all covid variants as well as Sars1, MERS and other less deadly coronaviruses, all in a single shot. If these can be delivered as nasal sprays, and the promise of persistent immunity comes through, then a much brighter future could be out there for us.

Here is the Chinese pre print with results from their trial of the nasal vaccine, now being rolled out in China - www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.26.22278072v1.full.pdf

It's a pre print, so should be treated with some caution, and while it claims that the groups given the spray after a double shot initial course of conventional jabs had up to 30 times the antibody protection than those having a third booster jab, this was in comparison to the Sinovac vaccine, which is somewhat less effective than the jabs in use here. Nonetheless, this is promising - in particular the finding of much longer lasting immunity.

[Danny]

Nov 7, 2022 23:10:00 GMT alec said:

It's clear that we need much better vaccines for covid,

Could you explain why?

Yes, I get that older people (as a simple example) are susceptible to serious effects from covid and so a vaccine may be adviseable. However, I'm less clear how much better any vaccine could be in the face of a constanctly mutating threat. Thats rather the prroblem, it doesnt need to just protect against last year's version but next years. It has to somehow provide forward protection.

Our immune systems performs this functin by gradually throttling back out immunity until we catch a mutable disease again. After it has only undergone minor changes and before it becomes dangerous. We catch it repeatedly and update against changes before they become cumulatively dangerous.

The risk comes if a disease is almost eradictaed, and then comes back to a population which has not adapted to the cumulative changes. Keeping it bubbling along quietly with regula rreinfections causing minor illness works better.

How do you propose to provide people with future proofed protection better than the natural way?

[alec]

Danny - "Could you explain why?

Yes, I get that older people (as a simple example) are susceptible to serious effects from covid and so a vaccine may be adviseable. However, I'm less clear how much better any vaccine could be in the face of a constanctly mutating threat."

That's because you are stupid, and steadfastly refusing to read and learn.

Go do some research (proper research, not what you think is research) on what the experts are terming a 'pan-coronavirus' vaccine which I referred to.

Once you've done that, you'll understand why just asking the question you asked above is another expression of your immature lack of knowledge.

The rest of your post is garbage as well. You constantly express useless certainties about a subject that you know nothing of, yet you seem so certain about.

Here's a thing about viruses to think about; along with the papers I linked on here a while ago claiming that smallpox spent several centuries being harmless before mutating into a horrific killer that we never developed population level immunity to, you should go away and have a wee think about bird flu. H5N8 has been circulating freely since around 1983, and guess what - birds aren't immune. Since 2020 it has become notably more severe.

Simple things like this - facts, as we call them - rather scotch your childish theories about immunity and how viruses interact with the immune system.