Coronavirus

[Doggydogworld]

Opinion: Rebound after taking Paxlovid is the latest twist in the Covid-19 puzzle

A mostly opinion-piece with few hard numbers, but was still interesting to read (for me).

Also the linked FDA-update:
FDA Updates on Paxlovid for Health Care Providers

Why the heck does he call it a rebound instead of a relapse? Anyway, the 1-2% found in the clinical trial was only those who tested negative then positive, or who showed a period of increasing viral load after end of the treatment. It happened in both the placebo and Paxlovid groups. And most of those people did not have a recurrence of symptoms. The opinion piece says the percentage who have symptom relapse is probably much higher, and I agree. In general Covid seems to be pretty hard to shake.

 

[EVNow]

After nearly 2 1/2 years of near isolation, we finally let our kids start going back to playing with friends & the schools no longer mandate masks.

Last week all of us in the family got colds - I tested negative on home Covid test. But one of the kids tested positive the next day. I guess we all have Covid. Mild symptoms.

Hopefully that will be like my second booster.

Anyway, just saw this. So, may be I shouldn't feel so bad about getting covid.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1525277368838934529

 

[alloverx]

Sorry to hear that and lets hope it stays at cold level.

My friend (average health) is in the Paxlovid relapse camp as he tested positive on day10 after testing negative earlier. He also only has the sniffles.

I assume at some point everyone will get it.
Just need to have the updated vaccines available for the yearly shot.

 

[EVNow]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1525074401854726144

 

[wdolson]

North Korea not doing too well. Went from 0, to 1 to 18000 to 350000 in 24h.

North Korea confirms first COVID death; 350,000 reporting ‘fever’

Experts worry North Korea’s health system will be unable to cope with spread of COVID in an unvaccinated population.

www.aljazeera.com

Zero vaccines there, omicron already widespread. Gonna be many cases at the same time, many severe cases at the same time, many people who will not get the healthcare they need, many who would have survived with healthcare who dies. Expect very high mortality rates there

North Korea also has a population that is weakened from poor diets. That is often a kicker for any pandemic.

It probably contributed to the Plague in Europe. Europe had a population explosion during the Medieval Warming when the food supply increased dramatically due to longer growing seasons. Then when the weather cooled off again the population got very hungry and when the Plague started, it had a lot of weak, hungry people to exploit.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1525074401854726144

I seem to remember some political faction in the US saying that it was a bad thing to have a bureaucrat between a person and their health care provider...

(I hate hypocrisy.)

A few other notes. We did something public for the first time in two years about three weeks ago. We went to a comedy club to see some stand up comics my partner follows. We happened to get seated in a corner without too many people close and kept masks on. Fortunately we didn't get sick. But I noted again that people don't cough in public anymore. In a venue like that before the pandemic somebody would have coughed at some point, but nobody did.

And in an odd bit of data that relates to a discussion a year back (I think). It looks like there may be proof that vaccines cause autism. So of. A comparison study between US and European practice with childhood vaccines has found one variable that is different. The Europeans and Americans use the exact same vaccines, or very similar and childhood autism in Europe is much less common than in the US.

It appears the one variable is acetaminophen/paracetamol (marketed as Tylenol in the US). It's frequently given to American children after their vaccines, but that practice is rare in Europe. The mechanism appears to be an interaction between acetaminophen and at least one of the childhood vaccines that could cause autism in some children. A study was done with rats that appears to support the hypothesis.

Endocannabinoid System Dysregulation from Acetaminophen Use May Lead to Autism Spectrum Disorder: Could Cannabinoid Treatment Be Efficacious?

Effect of early natal supplementation of paracetamol on attenuation of exotoxin/endotoxin induced pyrexia and precipitation of autistic like features in albino rats - PubMed

The anti-vaxxers weren't completely crazy, though they came to the wrong conclusion about the culprit (if these studies pan out).

 

[heltok]

It appears the one variable is acetaminophen/paracetamol (marketed as Tylenol in the US). It's frequently given to American children after their vaccines, but that practice is rare in Europe. The mechanism appears to be an interaction between acetaminophen and at least one of the childhood vaccines that could cause autism in some children. A study was done with rats that appears to support the hypothesis.

Endocannabinoid System Dysregulation from Acetaminophen Use May Lead to Autism Spectrum Disorder: Could Cannabinoid Treatment Be Efficacious?

Effect of early natal supplementation of paracetamol on attenuation of exotoxin/endotoxin induced pyrexia and precipitation of autistic like features in albino rats - PubMed

The anti-vaxxers weren't completely crazy, though they came to the wrong conclusion about the culprit (if these studies pan out).

I would also like to add that it seems that sarscov-2 is partly an attack on the immune system and it seems that people with low levels of Interferon more often ends up getting severe covid. And Interferon is raised with high body temperature. So taking medication to lower the temperature might be contraproductive. See: 5:20 and forward here:

 

[JRP3]

The anti-vaxxers weren't completely crazy, though they came to the wrong conclusion about the culprit (if these studies pan out).

That seems unlikely.

Vaccinated children develop autism at the same rate as unvaccinated children.

Worried About Vaccines? Unvaccinated Children Can Have Autism, Too

Some people still push the false idea that vaccines cause higher rates of autism. This is not true, however.

www.verywellhealth.com

If post vaccination Tylenol were the culprit you'd see a higher incidence in vaccinated children.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

This was my concern with BA.2.12.1 (and BA.4/5. However, note it is occurring in a highly unvaccinated population. It’s pretty clear that unvaccinated folks are worse off with the protection from an infection (unless they get vaccinated afterwards). It would be nice to see the breakdown and get confirmation that this is real. I would guess it is dominated by unvaccinated because at least in San Diego, clearly confirmed cases are dominated by the unvaccinated, more so than prior to widespread RAT at-home testing (vaccinated people aren’t bothering to get an official test it appears).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1525511735591018498

But one of the kids tested positive the next day. I guess we all have Covid. Mild symptoms.

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully you can take another RAT test to get confirmation though I guess it is basically certain, it is nice to have complete confirmation sometimes. False negatives are pretty common early on of course, even for PCR testing.

Likely this infection will be more effective than a second booster, at least in regards to Omicron-like viruses, though there really is not much clear data on that. For very different variants it may be less effective than the OG vaccine.

 

[EVNow]

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully you can take another RAT test to get confirmation though I guess it is basically certain, it is nice to have complete confirmation sometimes. False negatives are pretty common early on of course, even for PCR testing.

iHealth says they have tuned to reduce false positives (so, false negatives are more likely). Anyway, one week and most of the symptoms are gone for everyone. One more week and we can return to "normal". Atleast now when we go out or travel, we won't be as afraid of getting Covid ...

Beginning to feel there is almost no way anyone in US with school age children can avoid Covid ....

 

[madodel]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1525451156910231552

"Our nation is way under-vaccinated, only 100 million Americans are vaccinated and boosted. Also omicron is not providing durable or strong protection. We are incredibly vulnerable to this BA.2.12 wave."​

 

[JRP3]

Got my second booster Friday, went with Pfizer this time instead of my previous Moderna for maybe a slight boost in protection. Sore arm about 6 hours after the shot lasting for over a day and felt tired and achy for about the same period. Feel fine this morning.

 

[wdolson]

That seems unlikely.

Worried About Vaccines? Unvaccinated Children Can Have Autism, Too

Some people still push the false idea that vaccines cause higher rates of autism. This is not true, however.

www.verywellhealth.com

If post vaccination Tylenol were the culprit you'd see a higher incidence in vaccinated children.

It could possibly be the practice of using acetaminophen to reduce fevers in children that triggers it. At least that's what is speculated in the studies. It may not be a common practice in Europe which is why they have less incidence of autism spectrum disorders.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

It could possibly be the practice of using acetaminophen to reduce fevers in children that triggers it. At least that's what is speculated in the studies. It may not be a common practice in Europe which is why they have less incidence of autism spectrum disorders.

I think the point that was being made is that vaccination status does not increase risk of autism. Whether acetaminophen use does is another question which seems worth investigating to see whether the data support it.

You mentioned an “interaction with one of the vaccines.” I didn’t read the paper. But anyway such an interaction would mean that rates would be higher in vaccinated children. But sounds like it’s not, after controlling for acetaminophen use. So nothing to do with the vaccine. That’s not an interaction. Using acetaminophen to reduce fever, caused by vaccination, is not caused by vaccination! It is correlated, presumably.

 

[ohmman]

Using acetaminophen to reduce fever, caused by vaccination, is not caused by vaccination! It is correlated, presumably.

My understanding is that the acetaminophen relationship is from the mother during pregnancy, not the child after birth. At least that’s what the JHU study proposes.

 

[JRP3]

Australia vs US covid response

How Australia Saved Thousands of Lives While COVID Killed 1 Million Americans

MELBOURNE, Australia — If the United States had the same COVID death rate as Australia, about 900,000 lives would have been saved. For many Americans, imagining what might have been will be painful. But especially now, at the milestone of 1 million deaths in the United States, the nations that...

www.yahoo.com

 

[Doggydogworld]

Australia vs US covid response

How Australia Saved Thousands of Lives While COVID Killed 1 Million Americans

MELBOURNE, Australia — If the United States had the same COVID death rate as Australia, about 900,000 lives would have been saved. For many Americans, imagining what might have been will be painful. But especially now, at the milestone of 1 million deaths in the United States, the nations that...

www.yahoo.com

Australia has almost exactly the same cases per million as the US, 254k vs. 251k. They only have 1/10th as many deaths per million, though, at 300 vs. 3068.

A full border closure followed.

Just like us! Except we only stopped people coming in from China, not Europe or anywhere else. And we only stopped Chinese people from coming in, since "Wuhan flu" can't travel on white people. Yet despite all our efforts, the virus somehow found its way in /s

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

It’s not that I don’t believe this article - the performance of the Omicron vaccine suggests this could be true, and characteristics of the virus may give this result. However, this story does not provide supporting data for the claims.

I would like to know how well boosting plus prior infection with Omicron protect against infection by Omicron sub variants, as compared to unvaccinated with prior Omicron infection.

Seems like that is the relevant data point. Anyone seen such data? They link a paper in the story which does not provide the relevant information (studies reinfections by Omicron after infection by other variants, showing low efficacy - interesting, suggestive, but not useful!).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1526226681702367232

Has potential to be very disruptive on an ongoing basis if true. Need to figure out exactly what is happening and why. I do mostly trust the virologists here, but there’s not much supporting evidence. And how common will infections by BA.2.12.1/BA.4/BA.5 be? Is it something special about them that allowed them to escape, but after infection you’re protected? Or are all Omicron variants consistently able to escape immunity? No data.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Yes, I also gave a lot of weight to those low ICU numbers. The January peaks in 2021 and 2022 had similar ICU count vs deaths/day ratios, so why would the relationship break down a few months later?

Maybe it's just a very long tail, as you say. ICU held pretty steady for almost 2 months starting mid-March of 2021, yet deaths dropped from ~1000 to ~600/day. That doesn't fit with a fixed one week lag time or even a simple normal distribution.

Deaths are trending down again. I definitely don’t think 220 deaths a day is in the cards in the next month now, given the passage of time and increasing case counts, presumably with some more deaths to follow. However, ICU numbers remain low, increasingly slowly. So I guess we’ll see. Direct ratio of this number as compared to prior numbers would suggest we should end up with deaths in the 100-200 range. I don’t really expect that, as I said, but I also don’t understand why not. I don’t understand what is going on with the ICU numbers.

 

[dhanson865]

This is how many lives could have been saved with COVID vaccinations in each state

A large share of the nearly 1 million people who died of COVID in the U.S. may have lived if they'd gotten vaccinated. A new analysis shows how many lives could have been saved across the country.

www.npr.org

and of course TN has to be 2nd highest in absolute numbers and 3rd highest per capita.

 

[Jeff N]

It’s not that I don’t believe this article - the performance of the Omicron vaccine suggests this could be true, and characteristics of the virus may give this result. However, this story does not provide supporting data for the claims……

….Need to figure out exactly what is happening and why. I do mostly trust the virologists here, but there’s not much supporting evidence. And how common will infections by BA.2.12.1/BA.4/BA.5 be? Is it something special about them that allowed them to escape, but after infection you’re protected? Or are all Omicron variants consistently able to escape immunity? No data.

I think I’ve seen other papers, not mentioned in the article, that also implied better immune protection against BA.2 from combining vaccination with an Omicron (BA.1) infection than unvaccinated with only a prior BA.1 infection.

It looks to me like infection with BA.2.12.1/BA.4/BA.5 will be pretty common in the coming next several months. Hopefully, we will get some new test data soon on how well Moderna’s bivalent Wuhan/BA.1 vaccine protects against BA.2 and BA.2.12.1.

As far as I know, there is nothing special about these variants that allow them to escape immunity generally. Rather, it’s all about how they can resist immunity from antibodies generated as a result of infection with other prior specific variants. I don’t think this is explained at all well in the article. And, yet again, the article says nothing about T-cell immunity and it’s presumed role in helping protect against severe disease. Or that the T-cell immune mechanisms detect virus proteins differently than antibodies and are less prone to mutational escape which is probably why protection against severe disease holds up well even as protection against reinfection falters.

Antibody immunity generated by infection or vaccination against the early Wuhan has been pretty good against most variants but is just okay against the Omicron variants. I assume that’s because these are all descendants of the Wuhan virus and are “close enough” while infection with one descendent may result in weaker protection against future infection by another descendent because the two descendants are more different from each other than each of them is to their Wuhan virus ancestor.

Finally, all of these variants are behaving similarly to the other 4 Coronaviruses that give people “common cold” symptoms in that you can be reinfected with the same variant after about 6 to 9 months.