The biology of coronavirus COVID-19 - including research and treatments

Scientists find gene that doubles risk of dying from Covid
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/me...-from-covid/ar-AAQjY34?ocid=ASUDHP&li=AAnZ9Ug

Could this explain a lot? (my bolding):
A single gene has been identified by Oxford scientists that doubles a person’s risk of dying from Covid-19.

The gene, called LZTFL1, is relatively common in people of European ancestry, affecting around one in six people.

However, it is extremely prevalent in south-east Asians and is the dominant form of the gene, present in more than 60 per cent of the population.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11...id-pill-trial-89-per-cent-effective/100600146

Multiple news sources are reporting that Pfizer has a pill that drops severe Covid by 89% and death by maybe 100%.

This is a press release from what I can see, and far too early to be sure, but if it pans out, is replicated and approved, then its a game changer. Australia has preordered 300,000 courses on the strength of the evidence, pending approval.

I have not read the entire thread but went back to late October and did not see this reported here.

This is the Pfizer announcement: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-r...l-covid-19-oral-antiviral-treatment-candidate

Far too early to see if it stops long Covid, and if it does then whether or not this is useful in ME.
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-5916515

I hope that this discovery contributes to better survival chances. However I fear it will be a long long while before it would ever be put to life saving use.

It was known by our Northwestern European government that some people were more vulnerable to this virus than others early on in this pandemic.

This knowledge only seems to of encouraged our gov to remove the protections that they reluctantly and belatedly implemented under public pressure.

This scientific discovery offers confirmation that most of the individuals in charge of government have a far better odds of “beating the virus”, could I fear have the opposite effect to encouraging further protections for those of us more likely to “succumb“.

It is not genes that places some in front line services without protections. Nor genes that encourage spread of deadly virus by denial of sick pay and other means of economic survival to vast numbers of the population.

Hopefully we are about to see change as public expectations are raised.

Hopefully life saving drugs are going to arrive despite previous reluctance to acknowledge any need of them.
 
Seems that the vaccines were less effective than thought (or at least what I hoped for).

Flanders is one of the regions with the highest vaccination rate (+ 90% of the adult population) but we also have the highest rise in COVID-19 infections. Our intensive care units are being flooded with COVID-19 cases once again, and only ca. half of those are unvaccinated.
 
Michiel Tack said:
Seems that the vaccines were less effective than thought (or at least what I hoped for).

Flanders is one of the regions with the highest vaccination rate (+ 90% of the adult population) but we also have the highest rise in COVID-19 infections. Our intensive care units are being flooded with COVID-19 cases once again, and only ca. half of those are unvaccinated.
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Yes, is not just "Belgium", but the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway etc, all reaching new highs in new cases per day.

I think the problem is partly behavioural - people have been told for the last year and a half that as soon as a large majority of adults have been vaccinated, everything will go back to normal and it is only unvaccinated people that need to fear infection.
 
Michiel Tack said:
Seems that the vaccines were less effective than thought (or at least what I hoped for).

Flanders is one of the regions with the highest vaccination rate (+ 90% of the adult population) but we also have the highest rise in COVID-19 infections. Our intensive care units are being flooded with COVID-19 cases once again, and only ca. half of those are unvaccinated.
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I wonder how long since they were vaccinated. According to some figures I heard, boosters are vital, as protection against symptomatic infection drops from about 90% to 40% after 6 months.
 
Many vulnerable groups are also the ones who have the lowest response to the vaccine becasue their immune system is not very good.

It is obvious the vaccine is working because the absolute number of infections now is higher than last year at this time when we went into lockdown, but as you say, the precautions put in place have been lifted. My son is due to return to the office to work in January for the first time, for instance.

I get annoyed at the papers for following the government line and talking about everything heading towards normal again.

They keep talking about Spanish Flu going but do not mention that the first years was worse than the first and the third was very bad until Summer came in when flu usually dies back anyway. They do not mention that TB became manageable after then because most patients were dead and whole villages had been wiped out.

In 1920 it took days to get from one place to another but now it is down to hours. Even in my memory, buses had no door and were cold, draughty and ventilated. Windows did not fit well and temperatures were much lower indoors. People were stronger because the most liable to illness did not survive, chronic illness and extreme old age were rare. Poverty and bad housing did not help but overall conditions were so different from today it is not possible to say things will be fine because it was okay then.
 
Mithriel said:
In 1920 it took days to get from one place to another but now it is down to hours.
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This is why we need better pathogen detection and reporting systems. By we I mean every single country. We cannot react fast enough in the current situation. Before we even start to see a threat its global. Countries with lots of airports, ports, and border roads are especially vulnerable.

Mithriel said:
everything heading towards normal again.
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Normal right now is the next Covid wave. Even countries that used to do well are at risk, Australia for example because we are opening our borders and decreasing quarantine requirements. People who expect normal are also not wearing masks and other measures as much as we might hope, further increasing risk.

I get the impression that many people are only reading headlines and not paying attention.

There is a real risk this virus might become endemic. Normal will mean new waves every year if that happens.
 
Snow Leopard said:
I'm going to guess without seeing the Tweet that this is from the UK. They're still going on with the infection=herd immunity nonsense. When in reality the whole point is to have less people being infected and circulating the virus in the first place.
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Yes.
The scientific illiteracy continues.


From todays NYT

"As England settles into a disquieting new normal of more than 40,000 new cases of Covid-19 a day and around a thousand fatalities each week, Neil Ferguson, a top government scientific adviser, has revived the debate over herd immunity, claiming that the country is close to the threshold at which most of the population is protected against the coronavirus.

The high caseloads may leave the country well placed to resist the fresh wave of infections sweeping across continental Europe, he said, in part because so many Britons had been infected since the lockdown was lifted in July, giving the population as a whole greater immunity.

Ferguson's comments are likely to raise new questions about Britain’s decision to tolerate a widely circulating virus and a steady death toll as the price of a return to economic normalcy. Other public health experts are skeptical of the herd immunity theory, which, they say, does not consider factors like new variants or waning protection from vaccines."
 
Amw66 said:
The high caseloads may leave the country well placed to resist the fresh wave of infections sweeping across continental Europe, he said, in part because so many Britons had been infected since the lockdown was lifted in July, giving the population as a whole greater immunity.
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It's absurd that this late into it, there is still a majority of physicians who still cling to the idea that people can't get infected more than once, or that subsequent infections would be rare and guaranteed to be benign. Or pretend to, I can't tell at this point. The entire premise of herd immunity rests on this, it's obviously false, and still the ideology remains because it's based on belief. Pure hopium.

Medicine and failing to accept the implications of the germ theory of disease, name a more iconic duo.
 
Amw66 said:
Ferguson's comments are likely to raise new questions about Britain’s decision to tolerate a widely circulating virus and a steady death toll as the price of a return to economic normalcy. Other public health experts are skeptical of the herd immunity theory, which, they say, does not consider factors like new variants or waning protection from vaccines."
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That would be ... new variants like this one?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/foodanddr...over-new-covid-variant/vi-AAR8Hc8?ocid=ASUDHP
 
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