For the people who think it’s just ‘a cold’, then I’m very pleased for you.
But it hasn’t been ‘just a cold’ for the few I know that have ‘long covid’. A family member is still quite poorly after months, he’s young too and things aren’t showing signs of getting any better. He can’t even get his leg over a bike to do a short, easy ride. It breaks my heart.

Two months after covid, Mrs TiRed still has a cough and has developed alopecia areata. Has been reported previously post covid in people who has pre-existing alopecia. Off to a conference on covid tomorrow. Definitely not over.

What does the conference cover? Increased clotting risks after infection? Immune resistance in new (sub) variants? Hep infection post multiple Covid infection in kids? I have no idea what to make of any of those, and there seems to be very little discussion of them in places that use plain language for us non-medical folk.

It’s a Royal Society meeting on modelling the epidemic. Much of the basic science is addressed at other disease specific meetings like ATS (American Thoracic Society), CROI (Infectious diseases) and plenty of others.

https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2022/06/ramp/

You can register for online attendance still, I believe. It’ll probably be geeky and won’t cover any of your areas. Paediatrics is particularly notable I think.

Pro riders “dropping like flies” this week in Tour De France warmup races, with 14 days to go until the big one starts.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/multiple-covid-19-cases-emerge-at-tour-de-suisse-and-tour-of-slovenia/

I’m not a Tour rider, but it’s finally caught up with me.

Felt a bit rough yesterday in the office, but put it down to doing my first ever 10 mile TT on Tuesday night.

Woke up this morning feeling a bit achey and tired, and full of coughs and sneezes. Positive line came up on the test pretty instantly, so doing some simple work stuff at home and having an early finish.

MrsMC tested negative for work on Tuesday, daughter has tested negative today, so hopefully we will all avoid each other enough to stop it spreading.
Bugger

Latest World Beating ‘Getting all the Big Calls Right’ Vaccine Rollout analysis:

The true story of the UK's vaccine rollout is hiding in plain sight:

1. In 2020 the UK approved and procured 40M doses of Pfizer and 100M of AZ all under EU rules.

2. From 7th December 2020 until 7th April 21, the UK did indeed have the fastest rollout in Europe.

But then… https://t.co/YGMlHQ5bzG

— Jim Grace (@mac_puck) June 27, 2022

Please don’t turn this into a Boris/Brexit thread
I won’t comment further and open a political debate

Sorry – there was a bit of crossover there, probably would have been better in one of the others.

I think we are about to be in for a shock in case numbers. After a long weekend in Barcelona albeit including masks on planes and in shops, I was shocked at how crowded the airports were – not just passport control but throughout. And behold, of the 5 of us that went 2 have tested positive this morning.

Seems the new Omicron variant spreads like wildfire.

Definitely loads of it about, but still a bit of a lottery – I tested positive last Thursday, so far rest of the household are OK 🤞

Eldest attended his university college ball last Wednesday – several hundred students doing everything but distance – but also seems to be unscathed.

Daughter is about to hit a run of potentially risky events in the next 6 weeks, some of them abroad, be amazed and delighted if she manages unscathed.

I have the sore throat / runny nose thing that I’d normally associate with some sort of “cold”. Despite twice testing negative for Covid I’m going to assume the tests are shit and behave as if they were positive anyway.

I think I have had worse hayfever. Luckily it was just a small infrequent cough but took a week before being negative. I’m in the at risk group too.
OH’s works party in spain seems to have resulted in a covid outbreak at her work. Most only found out because they’ve tested so a lot of superspreading now (if you’re not symptomatic chances are you wont test). Seems to be a lot more superspreaders with this latest variant so going to be a big wave so to speak.

My youngest (15) has just received their booster yesterday. I have no idea what the plan is for vaccinations going forward from here… are we just accepting waning and doing little about it for the majority of us… just topping up the elderly and those apparently more at risk? Vaccinations is something we’ve mostly got right up to now (ignoring the nonsense about conflating that with Brexit by a government looking hard for benefits of that process)… without anyone holding the governments feet to the fire… will they consider it job done mass vaccination wise?

MoreCashThanDash
Full Member
I’m not a Tour rider, but it’s finally caught up with me.

Only just read this. Get well soon matey and fingers crossed the rest of your family dodge it.

I have no idea what the plan is for vaccinations going forward from here… are we just accepting waning and doing little about it for the majority of us… just topping up the elderly and those apparently more at risk?

My wife just had her 4th vaccination yesterday (recovering cancer patient).

Hope that goes well. I also know people receiving and expecting further boosters for age or medical reasons, I was just wondering out loud about what we’ll be doing/offering the rest of the population, as existing protection wanes and new variants continue to show up.

I should have had my 4th by now but was saving it for autumn as I have no idea what the government is planning. Should just be included as a flu shot. Hope so and a lot cheaper than lockdowns.

My booster was in November so at it’s limit now and covid really wasnt anything to write home about for me.

There is supposedly an Omicron-specific jab coming for the autumn, but I think the strategy will depend on what type is floating around at that point. We seem to have had multiple waves of Omicron variants now, so who knows what the cumulative level of population immunity will be in terms of serious disease/hospitalisation? Omicron seems to have this remarkable ability to present with ever more transmissible variants, so would a resurgence of Delta be able to outcompete it?

I guess the key measurement will be the rise in hospitalisations for the current wave given that immunity is waning a little from the previous boosters.

My booster was last June. sadly the attention span of both Boris and the media has moved on.

Wow. Mine was November and I’m thinking the efficacy of that will be diminishing daily.

Latest research in the Lancet looked at vaccine protection over time.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00146-3/fulltext

The evidence suggests that the thing you really want, protection against serious illness/hospitalisation etc, is not falling off a cliff even after several months.

So hopefully although you may be more likely to get infected, be symptomatic, you are not necessarily more likely to need medical intervention after the same period post-vaccine.

Bloody hell, round two for me!

Got me yesterday, post a ride felt like I’d ridden 200 miles on mtb not 40 and low and behold cough, hot and cold shuffle and a positive test. Oh well .. had done well to avoid it for so long I guess.

I have the sore throat / runny nose thing that I’d normally associate with some sort of “cold”. Despite twice testing negative for Covid I’m going to assume the tests are shit and behave as if they were positive anyway

Yeah that was me last week! Felt very similar to when I had covid before, plus I’d been in contact with someone who tested positive, so I self isolated

Just had my last ONS swab test and came back negative. Last month my last blood test produced a higher antibody result. My booster was just before Christmas.

And another first-timer here!

Stayed entirely COVID free until my first work trip to Germany in over two years last weekend.

Back home late Friday night (feeling pretty normal) and then full-on flu-like symptoms by Saturday morning.

I blame the 6 hour wait I had in Schiphol – despite finding a quiet empty corner away from people to plonk myself in.

Feeling much better already, but still producing very angry-looking test results!

A Life Scientific on Radio4 this morning was with Landray, so lots on the Recovery trials… (warning, also contains Morris Dancing content)…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0018ns0

It’s hit the Lister household after getting this far without it.
All my fault; I either got it in a very hot and crowded gig in Bristol or from hospital when I was having my shoulder put back in the right place.
Tested positive on the Saturday afternoon but today has been really bad; just no energy and snoozing all the time. Taste and smell have gone completely.
MrsL also has it and is wiped out but so far both teenagers are clear. I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time though…

We’ll see a wave of BA4/5. Hospitalisation rate is about 1% of cases, which is at least 5x lower than previously. How much of that is strain, and how much is immunity, is moot. The covid dashboard will soon be updated only weekly, living with covid, but you can see the rise in admissions and on a log scale, it’s about the same rate as omicron. 1000 admissions per day currently.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=England

Argh this bloody cough!!!

Wales me up. 4/5am. Dry, tickly and bloody annoying. Even more so to my poor wife who’s telling me I need to go see a gp today. No arguments.

Trouble is, I’m in Paris so it’ll just be a random doc I’ve never met. We’re not back home until Sept. What’s a GP likely to offer, on a one-off appt?

What’s the GP going to say, there isn’t any GP prescribed treatment, unless you’ve got serious symptoms (then it’s hospital time) stay home and don’t risk infecting more people.

Infecting more people with my cough? Err… OK. This has been going on for a few weeks now. What people seem to be suggesting as “long” covid.

(not covid +ve by the way) More residual symptom than current diagnosis.

“We’ll see a wave of BA4/5. Hospitalisation rate is about 1% of cases,”

is that 1% of reported cases or 1% of the weekly ONS survey cases?
there must be plenty of unreported and unknown cases out there with little or no symptoms.

I was on a shoot on Friday and the set stylist had covid twice, both times with zero symptoms and only picked up by testing by the production company before a shoot commences.

‘there’s a lot of it about’ as they say..

is that 1% of reported cases or 1% of the weekly ONS survey cases?

I think (delays in reporting are more confusing than ever) hospitalisations are running at about 7% of reported cases… but as you say, the reported cases figure isn’t as meaningful as it was while we were testing far more.

I still think this will lead to additional complications for those elderly with complex health issues. MIL caught it about 3 months ago, recovered OK, but then had recurring issues with pneumonia – mild, but enough for trips to hospital and anti-biotics which ‘didn’t agree with her’ – it got progressively worse until a month ago where we had to decide to stop invasive treatment (IV anti-biotics, saline and blood transfusion). She passed a week later (horrendous watching her slowly die).

I think it’s still serious enough to be a big problem for those suffering CV illness already, and it’s not going away.

If you look at hospitalisation rates on travelling tabby it looks like a wave is coming. Particularly Scotland. New variant combined with complete relaxation of restrictions/ inhibitions?

Really sorry to hear that fossy. Thoughts with you and yours.

@fossy

Really sorry to hear that my friend.

Resigned to the fact that whilst Covid is still so prevalent that I’ll be wearing masks, limiting my interactions for the foreseeable now. Recently a simple UTI put mum in a bad place so goodness knows what Covid could do. I’m utterly exhausted by it all now.

My condolences Fossy.

So, I had a small tickly cough yesterday that’s developed into a proper tickly cough, mild head and neck ache, and my lungs have a very slight dull aches to them today. I have an resting HR of 63 – up from 47 – over the last few days However, I’ve tested negative.

I’m praying this doesn’t end my MTB race entry on Sunday, so far I’m 1 for 3 and some hard training this year could be about to go down the tubes. Still, that’s a first world issue.