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

Arnie Pye said:
If you go to this page : https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ and scroll down the page there is an option to enter your postcode and find out some data for your local area.
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Wonko said:
So my area is at 220 per 100,000 (week prior to 1st July, basically 2 weeks out of date).

The last figure i had was about a month ago, where it was 70.

So a fair increase, in roughly 3 weeks.

None of which is being publicised.

Over the entire first lockdown the rate per 100,000 was around 30 here.

Vaccines didn't exist then, now they are, so I am reading, largely ineffective.

Another couple of successful mutations and with the public health policy we currently have......things may get entertaining.
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But those figures dont represent the number of infections, they represent the number of positive tests - which of course is dependent on howmany tests are taken.

Its why the ONS figures are more reliable, because they are based on the same number of tests across the population.
The local figures will be a massive understatement, because lots of people who have few/no symptoms will not be testing, loads of people who have positive LFTs wont bother going online to report it.

I know it's irritating because of course the 1 in 25 figure this wk is an average across heavily populated high spread areas & rural backwaters, but there is no way the local figs are accurate, when testing costs money & its promoted. The local figs dropped off a cliff after testing stopped being free.

As you say
 
JemPD said:
But those figures dont represent the number of infections, they represent the number of positive tests - which of course is dependent on howmany tests are taken.

Its why the ONS figures are more reliable, because they are based on the same number of tests across the population.
The local figures will be a massive understatement, because lots of people who have few/no symptoms will not be testing, loads of people who have positive LFTs wont bother going online to report it.

I know it's irritating because of course the 1 in 25 figure this wk is an average across heavily populated high spread areas & rural backwaters, but there is no way the local figs are accurate, when testing costs money & its promoted. The local figs dropped off a cliff after testing stopped being free.

As you say
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Yes, I still use the covid Zoe app to check local & national rates.

https://health-study.joinzoe.com/data

I think it’s the most accurate we are going to get tbh, even if it’s not fully accurate. (Until the ONS data comes out).

They estimate 344,507 new infections every day atm. You can check local prevalence rates too.

my local area estimate is ~58,000 active cases per million.
 
Wonko said:
So my area is at 220 per 100,000 (week prior to 1st July, basically 2 weeks out of date).

The last figure i had was about a month ago, where it was 70.

So a fair increase, in roughly 3 weeks.

None of which is being publicised.

Over the entire first lockdown the rate per 100,000 was around 30 here.

Vaccines didn't exist then, now they are, so I am reading, largely ineffective.

Another couple of successful mutations and with the public health policy we currently have......things may get entertaining.
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388 / 100,000 in my neck of the woods ( and that's with schools on summer break)
 
Now that the big vaccine manufacturers are developing omicron specific vaccines I am curious to know what happens next.

At the moment the variant vaccine under trial is for omicron ba1/2 which is now not in circulation that much. So it remains to be seen if that vaccine ever gets approved.


A variant vaccine for ba.4/5 will likely be available in autumn but what are the chances that that is still the most prevalent strain then?

Will we always be one step behind or could the rate of mutations slow enough that a variant vaccine will cover the current most prevalent strain.
And if so, would that help reduce coronavirus in circulation for a much longer period or is it likely that even then a new mutation will cause a widespread rise in cases again.
 
BurnA said:
At the moment the variant vaccine under trial is for omicron ba1/2 which is now not in circulation that much.
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I think I've only seen BA.1 vaccines (planned for Europe, probably Canada) and BA.4/5 vaccines (USA). but BA.2 would probably make more sense because BA.2.75, which as the code indicates is a descendant of BA.2, could potentially be the next variant. It's showing faster growth than BA.5 in India so far and seems to be spreading in other Asian countries and at least detected in much of the world now. Could be the next wave, maybe peaking in October. Or it could be something else entirely.
 
The biggest issue moving forward will probably be vaccine uptake. Regardless of how it performs, it's been non-stop messaging for at least the last year that the pandemic is over, why would most people get more vaccines when it's over?

It's said in epidemiology that during an epidemic it's massively important to tell the blunt, simple truth. Everyone did exactly the opposite. Future epidemics will be unmanageable because so many people won't listen to a damn thing and they will be right about that, the messaging from public health authorities has been mostly made out of the cornerstone of modern propaganda: multiple competing versions of the truth, with shared roots but often mutually exclusive. The end result is that no one believes that truth exists anymore.

Medicine needs a massive Moonshot-scale effort pushing infectious disease medicine forward. Instead we had complete BS like behavioral pseudoscientists trying to "nudge" people into doing the right thing and making avoiding imagined fear and panic their #1 priority. And absurd mysticism that more or less promotes the idea that infections are actually good and everyone should be infected as many times by as many pathogens as possible outside of a tiny few.

If monkeypox requires a vaccine, it's going to be disastrous. Any future pandemic that requires vaccines will be unmanageable, medicine poisoned their own well by overhyping them as the silver bullet that will fix both the pandemic and Long Covid, the idea of reassuring people with lies has nullified essentially all the tools we have to deal with this, vaccines included. Inadequate tools, that must be utilized smartly, and were instead wasted on hopium and getting people to consume and go back to their offices.

Trying to solve 21st century problems with a weird mix of 19th and 20th century ideas works about as well as thoughts and prayers work on natural disasters.
 
This was published in Dec 2020.

Note: CHOP = Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Title : CHOP Researchers Find Elevated Biomarker Related to Blood Vessel Damage in All Children with SARS-CoV-2 Regardless of Disease Severity

Link : https://www.chop.edu/news/chop-rese...d-blood-vessel-damage-all-children-sars-cov-2

Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have found elevated levels of a biomarker related to blood vessel damage in children with SARS-CoV-2 infection, even if the children had minimal or no symptoms of COVID-19. They also found that a high proportion of children with SARS-CoV-2 infection met clinical and diagnostic criteria for thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA). TMA is a syndrome that involves clotting in the small blood vessels and has been identified as a potential cause for severe manifestations of COVID-19 in adults.
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The article is based on a research paper which is freely available :

Title : Evidence of thrombotic microangiopathy in children with SARS-CoV-2 across the spectrum of clinical presentations

Link : https://ashpublications.org/bloodad...nce-of-thrombotic-microangiopathy-in-children
 
Art Vandelay said:
"Most people infected with omicron variant ‘didn’t know they had it,’ study finds"
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What a misleading headline.

Whether people report having a history of COVID during the context of donating blood is not at all generalise to the general population. Not only is this an ecological fallacy (the sample does not represent the general population in ways that cannot be corrected by statistical correction of demographics), they fail to realise that people do not answer questionnaires accurately - many people with mild symptoms who did not get tested will simply say they didn't have COVID, else they're worried that they won't be allowed to donate blood.

The lack of insight of journalists and the people who wrote up the study is baffling.
 
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BA.2.75.2 variant is worrying experts. Here’s why

According to the report, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the emerging mutation was “suspicious” and could become a variant of concern in the fall.

It's evolving similarly to BA.5, which is the dominant strain behind 83% of reported infections in the U.S., as per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
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One preprint study, published in mid-September, found that the mutation exhibited a tendency to extensively escape neutralizing antibody treatments authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, except for one — bebtelovimab.

But the findings of another study published in the New England Journal of Medicine were more encouraging. Bebtelovimab was also reported to work against the variant as well as other antiviral treatments like remdesivir, molnupiravir and Paxlovid.
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Swansea Bay Health News: Hospital team discovers why a routine treatment for severe Covid-19 can fail

Researchers in Swansea have made a breakthrough in understanding one of the most damaging consequences of Covid-19. They have confirmed significant findings in how the virus alters the body’s blood clotting process, which means current treatments can fail.

The team at the Welsh Centre for Emergency Medicine Research, based at Morriston Hospital, found evidence that standard blood-thinning drugs are less effective in patients with severe Covid.
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The centre, based in Morriston’s Emergency Department, was founded and is led by Professor Adrian Evans.

Professor Evans said: “We have shown that Covid-19 can lead to the formation of an abnormally strong clot despite full anticoagulation treatment in many cases.
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The findings have been presented at the International Symposium for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine in Brussels by Dr Oliver Watson and Dr Matthew Howard, clinical research fellows working at the centre.

Dr Watson said the research found that patients who died due to Covid-19 or required an admission to ICU had a compromised ability to break down clots compared to patients with a less severe infection.
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“This effect can lead to microscopic blood clots forming in organs of the body leading to the multi-organ failure which is the cause of death in many Covid patients,” he said.

Using a technique known as fractal dimension analysis, which the centre developed in collaboration with Swansea University College of Engineering and Medicine, the team found that anticoagulant drugs used to prevent blood clots are less effective in Covid than in other infections.

“So the blood thinning medications were not having the intended therapeutic effect of breaking the clots down,” added Dr Watson.
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See also this thread
 
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SNT Gatchaman said:
Using a technique known as fractal dimension analysis
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Some papers about fractal dimension from this team and related —

Fractal dimension: a novel clot microstructure biomarker use in ST elevation myocardial infarction patients (2015)
Fractal dimension (df) as a new structural biomarker of clot microstructure in different stages of lung cancer (2015)
Effects of exercise intensity on clot microstructure and mechanical properties in healthy individuals (2016)
Characterisation of clot microstructure properties in stable coronary artery disease (2017)

Most are pay-walled, but noting the large uptick in post-Covid thromboembolic events, here are the concluding remarks from the exercise paper (note the dreaded graded exercise therapy appearing!) —

Given the benefits associated with exercise, its use is readily advocated as a recreational activity and in the rehabilitation of patients with vascular inflammatory disease ... The current study provides new evidence that exercise induces transient hypercoagulability and quantifiable increases in clot structure which appear to be balanced by fibrinolysis in a primarily male population of healthy individuals. Increased coagulation potential and decreased fibrinolysis have been reported in those with vascular disease, indicating that this equilibrium may be displaced in these individuals, as a result of endothelial damage and plaque formation.
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Exercise-induced hypercoagulability may therefore lead to formation of pathological clots with highly dense structures, increasing the risk of thromboembolic events in these individuals. The threshold at which the equilibrium between the haemostatics pathways shift and the extent to which df is increased before increasing the risk of thromboembolic events is not yet known. It would therefore be beneficial to assess clot microstructure using the measures investigated in the current study in a population of patients with diagnosed vascular disorders or cardiac history who are participating in exercise rehabilitation programmes.
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In conclusion, the current study provides new and important information on clot microstructure and mechanical strength in participants of a graded exercise programme in healthy individuals (primarily male) with normal endothelium and haemostasis, demonstrating the ability of df to quantify these changes in a highly sensitive manner in which conventional haematological markers were unable to. Further studies will be required in order to investigate the role of df in quantifying exercise-induced changes to clot microstructure in a more heterogeneous population and patients with underlying vascular disease, further investigating its reproducibility and application in clinical care.
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Amw66 said:
A few HIV similarities panning out .
HIV can make some infections lethal, so similar comprised immunity may have far wider effects

Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x?s=09

Thread on this paper here:
Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection, 2021, Phetsouphanh et al
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The TL;DR I got of this study is naive T and B cells are low for at least 8 months. The 8 months is just the cut-off of the study. So it has to be taken with the same framing as Long Covid lasting up to X months because this is when the study ended.

Which would be a good explanation for all the other infections going around. At least it's consistent with the evidence.

But I guess medical authorities are OK going with blatant nonsense about immunity debt, or lockdowns that were basically endless and as bad as non-stop shelling in a war zone, when people were not able to move one inch for fear of... something. Has to do with dogs and walking around barefoot, if I understand correctly. It's hard to understand disinformation correctly, it's not really meant to make sense.

Then again maybe there's no problem with low levels of adaptive immune cells for likely up to a year in some people. Just like maybe it's best for people, especially children, to be infected by as many pathogenic microbes as possible. It's very likely not, but it makes for a very poor excuse as long as everyone complies with lying because it sounds more soothing than the truth.
 
rvallee said:
The TL;DR I got of this study is naive T and B cells are low for at least 8 months. The 8 months is just the cut-off of the study. So it has to be taken with the same framing as Long Covid lasting up to X months because this is when the study ended.

Which would be a good explanation for all the other infections going around. At least it's consistent with the evidence.

But I guess medical authorities are OK going with blatant nonsense about immunity debt, or lockdowns that were basically endless and as bad as non-stop shelling in a war zone, when people were not able to move one inch for fear of... something. Has to do with dogs and walking around barefoot, if I understand correctly. It's hard to understand disinformation correctly, it's not really meant to make sense.

Then again maybe there's no problem with low levels of adaptive immune cells for likely up to a year in some people. Just like maybe it's best for people, especially children, to be infected by as many pathogenic microbes as possible. It's very likely not, but it makes for a very poor excuse as long as everyone complies with lying to everyone because it sounds more soothing than the truth.
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From memory ( so could be extremely dodgy) there are infections ( fungal?) which HIV has no resistance to.
Get one and you' re scuppered .
I may need to Google later X
 
Amw66 said:
From memory ( so could be extremely dodgy) there are infections ( fungal?) which HIV has no resistance to.
Get one and you' re scuppered .
I may need to Google later X
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This only happens if you have AIDS--that is, your infection is so advanced that your immune system is seriously weakened. At the point, people start getting opportunistic infections or cancers that are rare in healthy people. But if you're on antivirals that work, you're fine. Generally, there's so little virus in your body that you're not even contagious anymore (at least via sex).
 
RedFox said:
This only happens if you have AIDS--that is, your infection is so advanced that your immune system is seriously weakened. At the point, people start getting opportunistic infections or cancers that are rare in healthy people. But if you're on antivirals that work, you're fine. Generally, there's so little virus in your body that you're not even contagious anymore (at least via sex).
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It's fungal infections I was thinking of - anti fungals for some reason seem less well known.I don't think you need to have full blown AIDS for these to be problematic .


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090615185424.htm
 
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