The Coronavirus Discussion Thread.

If I was classed as vulnerable, having seen some of the vaccination reactogenicity data for patients on some therapies, I’d be taking whatever was offered by healthcare services, in addition to (or ideally to avoid) the natural inoculations one may receive. Antibody titer and cellular immunity are predictors of protection from morbidity, the balance between the two immune arms has been a big debate over time, notably for Coronaviruses. But vaccines boost antibody titer and we KNOW (from Evusheld trials and others), that antibody neutralising titer provides that protection. I think of the COVID vaccines as “prodrugs” for in vivo antibody production. Anything on the cellular side for immune memory is upside.

Cheers. I’m 5/5 for vaccines so far, and obviously don’t want to miss out on the full set for when Pfizer and Bill Gates switch on the 5G mind control.

My folks still getting jabs. Won’t anyone be stopping my dad going out for a pint, so he gets the jab.

Work colleague is still on part time WFH after getting covid a year ago. Early 40’s and just wiped out. Not touched his bikes since.

My sense of taste came fully back last week, almost exactly 18 months after having covid. I’d been able to taste things okay straight after it, but last week tastes were staying on my tongue for ages, and then it dawned on me that I was able to detect quite subtle flavours in things. It’s almost life tasting things for the first time.

Recovering from my first time. I went down with it 10 days ago, the first 3 days I was delirious, I felt like i was having some sort of out of body experience. Now I just have a bit of a cough and the loss of smell & taste.

I think I caught along with four other mates at a sweaty rock gig last bank holiday weekend.

When I got the positive result I tried to log it in the app, only to be told that on opening the app that it was no longer in use. I then checked how long it had been since my last vaccination.. 15 months.

Anyway, got the all clear last night. Back on the bike this weekend.

I’ve avoided it until, today. Mild symptoms, fever, aches and a slightly tight chest. I’ve been using the train a lot recently, having avoided them for 3 years, that’s where I probably picked it up.

Better half starts a phased return to work on Monday, after almost 2.5 years off with long covid. After some delays I’ve finally had my first covid clinic phonecall and been told I need to restrict myself to <30mins easy cycling or other exercise per day, because I’ve tried to ramp up duration and intensity too quickly, causing cronic fatigue relapses.

Just had the district nurse round to give me my booster dose of Comirnaty BA.4-5, not had the promised 5g upgrade with any of the other boosters so fingers crossed I hit the jackpot this time.

I’ve tried to ramp up duration and intensity too quickly

BPM monitor (just a smart watch will do) and keep that rate low. More useful for gauging an easy ride then going by time spent out. Sell everything to buy an ebike. An hour or two of low peak bpm activity on an ebike can make you feel more alive, and more out there in nature, than half an hour (with hills) on a normal bike, with less fatigue triggering. Especially with an hour’s cake stop in the middle. Trying to get back into cycling (normally) only ever set my other half back. Ebike and carefully watching BPM has been better in every way.

Surprising nobody’s mentioned today’s Telegraph articles regarding the John Hopkins/Lund Uni studies.

Perhaps because I don’t read any newspapers, care to let us know the conclusions?, although I can hazard a guess given the telegraphs previous cherry picking of data.

I suspect as the paper has nothing to do with John Hopkins and was produced by a right wing think tank nobody really gives a toss about regurgitating it.

The Guardian coverage;

It is the reference to Johns Hopkins University that makes this sound particularly authoritative. The School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University is world-renowned, and during the pandemic its Coronavirus Resource Centre was one of the best sources of information about the pandemic.

But the report has not actually been produced by the School of Medicine. It has been published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, the libertarian thinktank best known in the UK for inspiring Liz Truss and some of the ideas in her disastrous mini-budget. The report has been written by three people, one of whom, Steve Hanke, is an academic at Johns Hopkins University. But he is an economics professor, not a public health specialist, and he is described in the IEA report as a well-known currency and commodity trader.

That dick Nick Ferrari was harping on about that “study” done on the data around the lockdown. Stating how important it was and how well respected the IEA is.

He then did admit that it had not been peer reviewed.

FFS.

Surprising nobody’s mentioned today’s Telegraph articles regarding the John Hopkins/Lund Uni studies.

It’s written by three IEA* economists who have made plain their opposition to lockdowns throughout. So the conclusions are not entirely surprising. As far as I can tell, it has not been published, or even peer reviewed. The Telegraph really is a joke these days, almost wholly an IEA mouthpiece.

*The IEA brought you the equally impressive Truss economic plan. Sunday Telegraph editor Allister Heath had this tweet for the ages.

Why the critics of Liz Truss are wrong to underestimate her https://t.co/97C6crKzjm

— Allister Heath (@AllisterHeath) September 8, 2022

@kelvin Thanks for sharing your family experiences, hope your other half is enjoying the ebike and is improving mentally and physically from long covid, plus being able to ride to places previously possible under their own steam.

I’ve tried to ramp up duration and intensity too quickly

My ramp up has been walking further and faster. Cycling and heaven forbid actual training is not on.

Lockdown saved as few as 1,700 lives in England and Wales in spring 2020,

https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/a-literature-review-and-meta-analysis-of-the-effects-of-lockdowns

What was the upper 95% confidence limit, rather than the lower one? An apparent reduction in deaths of 2%. I’m not buying it. Deaths in April 2020 were more than double their normal rate. Twice as many people were dying as typically would be expected to die in the month of April, and this fell about four weeks after lockdown was imposed – and it wasn’t immunity… Because when conditions were relaxed in the autumn, well, deaths increased again four weeks later. This was very deterministic. Peak death in the UK was in fact Jan 2021, but April 2020 was very close.

The area under the death rate curve in the UK for winter 2020-21 compared with the rest of Europe was an Extra 30k deaths, and that was simply for “saving Christmas”.

I don’t think they were aiming for a balanced epidemiological view, somehow.

That dick Nick Ferrari was harping on about that “study” done on the data around the lockdown. Stating how important it was and how well respected the IEA is.

Ah that’s it, I caught the tail end of that discussion as a caller mentioned the IEA and I switched off, nice try montgomery but next time choose your gurus wisely instead of regurgitating utter bile infested click bait

I expect the guru Dr John Campbell will be all over that study today with another grift video released, I would comment but he doesn’t like to be corrected in his comment section as all my very fair, polite and correct rebuttals regarding his cherry picking of data is removed

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65975154

looks like a graph of political “bent” !

Yeah, the parallels are pretty clear.

Thats an excellent article though, the other graphs make good comparisons.

Made me realise how lucky we were that gambling early on the vaccines paid off. How much was a gamble and how much was the government following advice to go with vaccines like we did will hopefully come out in the inquiry.

Just had an interesting experience at work. Colleague and myself spent about 30 seconds in the same room as someone else who, it turned out, had COVID. Three days later we’re both sick as dogs. Almost identical incubation time and identical symptoms. Both triple vaccinated and had it before.

So it’s still going around and is particularly virulent.

30 seconds? What were you doing with the person to both get an infectious dose in just 30 seconds?

SIL currently off sick, quite poorly with it. Works in a Nursing home and picked it up from a colleague. She’s too ill to work, but would be expected back in if feeling OK, but carrying it.

I suppose it’s another way of popping of clients ! (shows how wrong this is).

30 seconds? What were you doing with the person to both get an infectious dose in just 30 seconds?

Literally just stood in the same room. In a way it’s impressive how virulent it is.

Within 2 metres?

2 metres may be safe in open air @ernielynch but in an enclosed space masks are required as the atmosphere can fill with virus quite quickly.

We’re forgetting our basic precautions about ventilation and masks in enclosed spaces. (Collective “we/our” not sarcastic versions intended).

I’m back to mask wearing (FFP3) when buying fuel as people are neglecting the space requirements when queueing to pay.

So it’s still going around and is particularly virulent.

Winter in Oz and we have a dementia ward full of it in the hospital I’m currently working at. Masks are back in fashion.

it’s impressive how virulent it is.

Technically it’s infectiousness, virulence is how you are feeling now having caught it, and having been triple vaccinated to mute some of that virulence. There is also chickenpox circulating at high levels and Mrs TiRed has shingles at the moment. And there is a measles epidemic in London. Respiratory viruses are very infectious. COVID taught us that but we forget very quickly! If you’ve seen the air quality reports, you’d wear an FP3 mask on the underground anyway. Few do so, and I try and avoid it!

If you are interested, the XBB variant family is now almost fixed in populations, this is a recombinant mutant that has gained fitness (transmission) from two omicron strains merging together rather than by singe mutations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.27.521986v1 . There are of course lots of sub variants jostling for position in the fitness stakes, but the virus has definitely gone down one evolutionary pathway (for now). Treatments seem to be holding up well against XBB variants.

Within 2 metres?

Nope. Imagine a room the size of an average classroom with me standing by the door and the person with Covid sitting by the opposite wall.

It’s not just direct contact though, if they’ve been in the room for a while and there is air movement then presumably there would be a viral load in every cu.m. of air, not just the bit immediately being expired by the donor.

As others have said we are forgetting quickly how these things can flare up.

What symptons are people exhibiting recently? I ask because approx a month ago i suffered about a weeks worth of diarrhoea, splitting headache and a very sore neck along with the fatigue and a few of my colleagues based all over the UK had identical symptoms.

BPM monitor (just a smart watch will do) and keep that rate low. More useful for gauging an easy ride then going by time spent out. Sell everything to buy an ebike. An hour or two of low peak bpm activity on an ebike can make you feel more alive, and more out there in nature, than half an hour (with hills) on a normal bike, with less fatigue triggering. Especially with an hour’s cake stop in the middle.

Agreed – another happy long COVID ebike user here! With it on full power, I can toddle along for about 40 mins (carefully  keeping heart rate down to about 110, which can be tricky on hills), stop for an hour and come 40 mins home, and although I then need an hour’s lie down, I’m ok the next day!

It really has been an absolute godsend for the mental health. A second dose of COVID in march kept me off the ebike for about 4 months unfortunately, but I’m back at it now. Definitely recommended.

On the long Covid point, what’s the latest understanding on this? Knowing of a few people through my partner who have had their lives severely limited by it for many months, it doesn’t feel as if it’s been given the column inches it deserves. However is that because the likelihood of getting long Covid following Covid is so rare (if vaccinated?) and so not deemed a big enough issue even though it can have a debilitating effect if you do get it?

Five characteristic symptoms; shortness of breath, fatigue, brain fog, loss of smell, muscle ache. Lots of hypotheses including effects of micro blood clots from first and possible ongoing infection. Nothing conclusive. And you are correct that vaccination and presence of preexisting antibodies reduces infection severity (but probably has modest protection from infection itself). I manage three symptoms daily (fatigue, loss of smell and muscle ache). Fatigue with a secondary infection (like a cold) is crushing. Exercise does not induce shortness of breath, but occasional chest pain. I have managed a 100km ride with a stop for cake (which I previously would never do). Racing? I wish. Training would be the next step in any recovery.

On the positive side, each infection seems worse than the previous, and I’ve had COVID four times (at least).

I think it seems less prevalent since the vaccine rollout.

These days you just get a bit of a shrug. Last time I spoke to the Long COVID clinic (Sep 2022) they just offered a referral to the local M.E. counselling program, and said there was nothing else on offer.

If you go on Reddit, you’ll find any number of people trying increasingly complex and medicalised remedies out of desperation. You can go a long way down a rabbit hole there. Which I haven’t really found helpful.

What symptons are people exhibiting recently?

Mine started with a sore throat, headache and itchy red eyes. Progressed within 12 hours to cough and fever (which I think is the bit that makes you feel awful), with some mild fatigue and muscle aches in my neck and upper arms. And my stomach feels like I’ve eaten something a bit off.

Controlled fairly well with paracetamol.

Here’s the best explanation I’ve seen to date why some people took the vaccine and some of us didn’t:

This guy nails it

Hello newly registered free member. Some interesting first posts on various contentious topics.

Others – I wouldn’t bother opening his link, it’s a bloke making sheep noises; clearly another interested in rational debate. Save your time and do something nice for someone instead.

Hello newly registered free member. Some interesting first posts on various contentious topics.

Climate change denial? Tick.

Uses the phrase ‘sanctimonious champagne socialists’? Tick.

Links to antivax idiots being antivax idiots for YouTube hits? Tick.

Has a semi-plausible token post about road tyres, though, so at least they’re trying – a bit.

3/10.

Just use of the phrase ‘sheeple’ to go for a full house. Or have they done it already? I only skim-read the drivel, TBH. It’s nothing different from what a million other attention-seekers have plastered over Twitter and FaceAche for the last god knows how many years.