[News] Coronavirus

A place to discuss the now-global coronavirus outbreak.

Unrelated but on the opposite end of the spectrum my wife developed an allergy to the sun as well about 12 years ago. Each spring she goes through some mild hives & other discomfort getting her body used to it again. Biology is weird.

That was a side effect of my wife's bariatric surgery. She has to have mega proof sun block or she will get a hives like rash after as little as 15 minutes.

My wife has reached a general plateau of COVID crappiness. I have developed mild symptoms and my daughter has a very slight runny nose. Fun.

Sorry to hear that Mix
Or at least sorry that your family has gotten it that is.

JC wrote:

I know this level of incompetence and inhumanity shouldn't surprise me....

and yet...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the Trump administration was nearing the end of an unprecedented string of executions, 70% of death row inmates were sick with COVID-19. Guards were ill. Traveling prisons staff on the execution team had the virus. So did media witnesses, who may have unknowingly infected others when they returned home because they were never told about the spreading cases.

Records obtained by The Associated Press show employees at the Indiana prison complex where the 13 executions were carried out over six months had contact with inmates and other people infected with the coronavirus, but were able to refuse testing and declined to participate in contact tracing efforts and were still permitted to return to their work assignments.

this bottomless pit sure is bottomless....

After weeks of drama and setbacks, the Australian Open kicks off

The Australian Open organizers expect up to 400,000 fans to attend the tournament this year in a socially distanced manner, around half the number that were at last year's competition.
Experts says that Australia's success in containing the pandemic is partly a product of its geography -- an island nation that can easily close its borders -- but also the result of strong government action that was followed by most citizens.
Brendan Crabb, director and CEO of the Burnet Institute medical research group, said Australia has a population that's more receptive to following health advice than other countries, partly due to a long history of publicly funded health care. While Americans in a number of states protested stay-at-home orders as a breach of their civil liberties, Australians by-and-large followed the advice of the authorities.
Crabb said that while he originally wouldn't have supported holding the Australian Open in the middle of the pandemic, it was possible that the event could now be a "signal to the world" of what was possible when you achieve close to zero coronavirus infections.
"This is huge, I don't mean for Australia, I mean for the philosophy of Covid zero. This is a very sound way to live, it's sound for health, it's sound for your economy and it's also sound to limit the number of mutant viruses (developing)," he said.
"So you've got this showcase event demonstrating to the world how valuable Covid zero is. I think it's mind blowing it's potential."

But what about the economy?!

I was reading that as "turns out the economy can do better when people aren't all dying of a virus, even if it takes a lockdown to get there".

Hang in there Mix. I hope you all recover quickly! I had my second vaccine shot of Moderna. Was down for 2 days. Felt good for one then down again yesterday. Some of my coworkers had bad reactions, but only to the second shot. I would recommend that you plan to be off for 2 days after each shot. Side effects I had were a sore arm and neck, nausea, bad headache, body aches, brain fog, fever.

Thanks, we have both plateaued in symptoms, I think. Hopefully recovering starts soon.

Comments by Fauci with regard to prioritizing first dose to as many people as possible, versus the approved protocol(s).

South Africa has temporarily suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Their fear, based on a very small study, is that it seems not to reduce one's chance of being infected by the variant with the E484K mutation that is now dominant in that country. There's still a good chance that the vaccine does prevent the most severe cases, but to know for sure would take a larger study that includes more vulnerable age groups. They may decide to use this vaccine, but only for the less vulnerable demographics.

It will be interesting to see how long the testing and approval process will be before AstraZeneca and the other manufacturers can start distributing vaccines targeting these new variants.

Agathos wrote:

South Africa has temporarily suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Their fear, based on a very small study, is that it seems not to reduce one's chance of being infected by the variant with the E484K mutation that is now dominant in that country. There's still a good chance that the vaccine does prevent the most severe cases, but to know for sure would take a larger study that includes more vulnerable age groups. They may decide to use this vaccine, but only for the less vulnerable demographics.

It will be interesting to see how long the testing and approval process will be before AstraZeneca and the other manufacturers can start distributing vaccines targeting these new variants.

It should also be noted that in the UK, where the AZ vaccine has - so far - been predominately used across the over 65 age group (nearly all over over 70s here have now been vaccinated with the initial dose) there has been no sign of any reduced efficacy in that age group.

The caution against using it in the over 65 age group is based on lack of participants in that age group during the clinical trials- not that there's any evidence it doesn't protect that age group, just that there isn't much evidence it does - although the UK's progress is rapidly providing that. The University of Oxford is conducting that study and the results should be out in the next couple of weeks.

Sorbicol wrote:

It should also be noted that in the UK, where the AZ vaccine has - so far - been predominately used across the over 65 age group (nearly all over over 70s here have now been vaccinated with the initial dose) there has been no sign of any reduced efficacy in that age group.

The concern in South Africa is not so much, "is the AZ vaccine less effective for over 65s?" as it is, "given that the vaccine may not have prevented mild covid at all in our generally healthy trial participants, is there a risk that some cases could become severe cases if we stay with this vaccine for the entire population?"

The reason SA officials don't take much comfort from the UK experience is in the difference between the B.1.351 variant which has taken over in South Africa and the B.1.1.7 variant from the UK. There is some (unreviewed preprint) laboratory evidence that B.1.351 is more resistant to current vaccines than B.1.1.7 is, and that the E484K mutation is responsible for much of that advantage. Which is why everyone was watching that SA trial, even though it was on such a small scale. It was the first test of the AZ vaccine in a population that is fighting a variant with the E484K mutation.

The South Africa variant has only caused mild-to-moderate cases in vaccinated individuals, and if that continues to be the case, then that could be fine. But if we're talking millions or eventually billions of people, that's a lot of times to roll the dice. Hence the questions, how often do you retool your vaccine when new variants emerge, and how much testing does each retooling need?

Agathos wrote:

Hence the questions, how often do you retool your vaccine when new variants emerge, and how much testing does each retooling need?

It strikes me as a bit of "the perfect being the enemy of the good". If a vaccine offers even a reasonable amount of protection and assists with developing immunity, then it's sure as hell better than nothing. Easy for me to say as the guy not footing the bill, I guess.

Coldstream wrote:
Agathos wrote:

Hence the questions, how often do you retool your vaccine when new variants emerge, and how much testing does each retooling need?

It strikes me as a bit of "the perfect being the enemy of the good". If a vaccine offers even a reasonable amount of protection and assists with developing immunity, then it's sure as hell better than nothing. Easy for me to say as the guy not footing the bill, I guess.

I think of the Corona-19 vaccine like the flu vaccine. There will be variants and a new one is issued every year.

Kiri wrote:
Coldstream wrote:
Agathos wrote:

Hence the questions, how often do you retool your vaccine when new variants emerge, and how much testing does each retooling need?

It strikes me as a bit of "the perfect being the enemy of the good". If a vaccine offers even a reasonable amount of protection and assists with developing immunity, then it's sure as hell better than nothing. Easy for me to say as the guy not footing the bill, I guess.

I think of the Corona-19 vaccine like the flu vaccine. There will be variants and a new one is issued every year.

I suspect that you're right. Of course, we've lived with the coronavirus family for a very long time, and this just happens to be a particularly nasty new variant. It's going to be interesting to see how the balance falls out between the virus mutating sufficiently to evade established immunity and the ongoing efforts to immunize everyone.

What we've seen so far is genetic drift, with very minor changes. It's getting everyone riled up, but it's closely analogous to how influenza shifts on a yearly basis, thus requiring a new vaccine. I don't know whether the shift will be of sufficient magnitude that a new yearly vaccine will indeed become necessary, but I do think that once we're past the novel phase our encounter--and barring a sudden genetic shift, which is unlikely--we'll see a very real decrease in how much the disease prevalence affects society.

Coldstream wrote:

What we've seen so far is genetic drift, with very minor changes. It's getting everyone riled up, but it's closely analogous to how influenza shifts on a yearly basis, thus requiring a new vaccine. I don't know whether the shift will be of sufficient magnitude that a new yearly vaccine will indeed become necessary, but I do think that once we're past the novel phase our encounter--and barring a sudden genetic shift, which is unlikely--we'll see a very real decrease in how much the disease prevalence affects society.

While I shy away from criticizing media in general due to it being such a loaded topic, I do get frustrated with the way reporting has overall lacked nuance when reporting the evolution of the virus. Nothing in the manner in which it has mutated (such a scary word!) has been terribly unusual. One could even argue that given the number of global cases the virus has overall been remarkably stable.

imbiginjapan wrote:

One could even argue that given the number of global cases the virus has overall been remarkably stable.

It is remarkably stable, and for a well understood reason.

Coronaviruses are also one of the few RNA viruses with a genomic proofreading mechanism — which keeps the virus from accumulating mutations that could weaken it. That ability might be why common antivirals such as ribavirin, which can thwart viruses such as hepatitis C, have failed to subdue SARS-CoV-2. The drugs weaken viruses by inducing mutations. But in the coronaviruses, the proofreader can weed out those changes.

Mutations can have their advantages for viruses. Influenza mutates up to three times more often than coronaviruses do, a pace that enables it to evolve quickly and sidestep vaccines.

So compared to influenza, it's a rock. Which is great: maybe we won't see the annual game of whack-a-mole that we play with the influenza vaccine. But it also makes me all the more impatient to head off those few variants that are out there, because it feels like we're so close.

That also implies that we might not need yearly COVID shots if we can get the thing tamped down to a small number of total cases. That also depends, of course, on how long our immune systems keep recognizing it, which I don't think anyone knows yet.

Malor wrote:

That also implies that we might not need yearly COVID shots if we can get the thing tamped down to a small number of total cases. That also depends, of course, on how long our immune systems keep recognizing it, which I don't think anyone knows yet.

Sure, however I don't think there's any particular reason to think that we'll lose immunity. Out of an abundance of caution I think it's reasonable right now to assume that immunity will wane, but I'm not sure that the evidence really supports such short-term immunity overall. The CDC's recent recommendation that immunized individuals be excused from quarantine after exposure if vaccinated in the last 3 months is an example of this. Likely, immunity won't fade, but let's assume it does until we can demonstrate otherwise.

There have been a few cases of reinfection, but AFAIK only a few, so it appears that immunity probably lasts at least a year for most people. If we can get a year of immunity, then our existing flu-shot regimen can be expanded just a little bit and keep everyone covered. If it's longer, then it might be more like the TDAP vaccine, the once-per-decade shot.

As long, anyway, as we can keep the mutation rate minimized by reducing the number of cases.

It appears that COVID was a problem in 9th century England.

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/x5bQYxb/0-AEBE5-E6-312-A-4113-90-C6-4-F70864306-E2.jpg)

"Look at that, you assholes, even the god damn Vikings knew that it had to cover your nose!"

Awesome. It just went on and on.

Speaking of xkcd, I need this on tshirt
IMAGE(https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/normal_conversation.png)

Ugh.

Got my second vaccine dose yesterday. Currently at home with a101 fever, chills, headache, and haven't slept. At least 10 other people in my office who got the second shot yesterday are also out with the same symptoms.

My cousin who lives in NoVA also got her second shot yesterday. She is fine and currently at work.

Well, at least you know it's working, right?

Dezlen wrote:

Got my second vaccine dose yesterday. Currently at home with a101 fever, chills, headache, and haven't slept. At least 10 other people in my office who got the second shot yesterday are also out with the same symptoms.

My cousin who lives in NoVA also got her second shot yesterday. She is fine and currently at work.

Solid immune reaction. Frankly, I was a little more concerned that I didn't have more severe symptoms other than some soreness and fatigue.

I wonder if there is any correlation with post vax symptoms and the asymptomatic population?

Also, are you type A blood? With the virus hitting that population more I am curious if I will have a harder reaction as well.

Best of luck and enjoy some soup!

Has anyone come across data comparing rates and severity of side effects of the Pfizer vaccine vs Moderna? Trying to convince a family member there's no significant difference and so it's not worth the time it will take to find a place that gives the Moderna vaccine.