General Coronavirus (COVID-19) chat

[Agent Sparrow]

But you'd hope that following scientific method would be some sort of inoculation against that.

Around 145.03 pages to go

I think in most cases it does, but perhaps less in the case of some very prominent leads whose research is their baby and/or have put their reputation on the line. There’s examples of this all over academia, for example climate change, Holocaust denial etc. Tbf there’s always an element of being selective about the research you cite in supporting your stance/why you did a certain study and I guess there’s always some potential evidence out there to support even the more opposed stances.

Also in less significant cases, have you seen that Reddit/Twitter thread about scientists sharing what niche arguments absolutely rage in their discipline? It’s hilarious!

 

[two sheds]

Also in less significant cases, have you seen that Reddit/Twitter thread about scientists sharing what niche arguments absolutely rage in their discipline? It’s hilarious!

Would love to see it - can't see on search of "Reddit scientists niche arguments rage in their discipline"

145.94 (got it wrong last time )

 

[Agent Sparrow]

I’ve also been searching for the summary article since writing the above post and still not found it

I think it might possibly be based on picking the more humorous ones out of this thread, but unfortunately there’s a huge bit at the beginning debating the reliability of Chinese research, which might be valid, might be racist, or might be both

 

[Mation]

Good news for red wine drinkers and champagne anarchists!

Frontiers | COVID-19 Risk Appears to Vary Across Different Alcoholic Beverages

Objectives: To evaluate the associations of status, amount, and frequency of alcohol consumption across different alcoholic beverages with coronavirus diseas...

www.frontiersin.org

Conclusions: The COVID-19 risk appears to vary across different alcoholic beverage subtypes, frequency, and amount. Red wine, white wine, and champagne have chances to reduce the risk of COVID-19. Consumption of beer and cider and spirits and heavy drinking are not recommended during the epidemics. Public health guidance should focus on reducing the risk of COVID-19 by advocating healthy lifestyle habits and preferential policies among consumers of beer and cider and spirits.

(My bold.)

Could it be that the reason I avoided testing positive for so long, despite working in a high-risk environment, was not in fact my superior moral fortitude but because I like my red wine?

(I currently have covid.)

Post not prompted by or meant to relate to Agent Sparrow's Reddit discussion post above, which I've only just spotted as I came to post this.

 

[crossthebreeze]

I thought this was all very interesting. Some symptoms are immune based while some are due to the virus causing damage. Explains why some people are now getting (immune based) symptoms without testing positive.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

I thought this was all very interesting. Some symptoms are immune based while some are due to the virus causing damage. Explains why some people are now getting (immune based) symptoms without testing positive.

This was all really interesting - thanks for posting it.

I wonder if this might explain the difference in my definitely COVID experience recently, and my probably COVID experience at the beginning of everything? And whether constant headache counts as an immunity symptom or damage symptom?

 

[Sue]

Good news for red wine drinkers and champagne anarchists!

Frontiers | COVID-19 Risk Appears to Vary Across Different Alcoholic Beverages

Objectives: To evaluate the associations of status, amount, and frequency of alcohol consumption across different alcoholic beverages with coronavirus diseas...

www.frontiersin.org

(My bold.)

Could it be that the reason I avoided testing positive for so long, despite working in a high-risk environment, was not in fact my superior moral fortitude but because I like my red wine?

(I currently have covid.)

So being pissed for most of lockdown was actually a good thing..?

 

[Mation]

So being pissed for most of lockdown was actually a good thing..?

That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it

 

[weepiper]

It's all over and everything is fine now though

 

[l'Otters]

On a busy cross country train yesterday. Most people didn’t have masks on.

For a while I was sat opposite a woman who’d had some accessibility support to get her onto the train. She had a cloth mask on. (I moved across the aislewhen the space opposite her came empty because I was sat 4 to a table seat, opposite someone with long legs and an inability to notice where my feet were - kept knocking my toes )

At some point she asked me about my mask - I had a reusable ffp3 on. I explained a bit about the type of mask, the electrostatic charge for the pm2.5 particles, the need for filtering aerosols vs droplets etc as best I could off the top of my head. Showed her an eBay listing for the kind of mask I had using my phone. She said she was assuming I must be clinically vulnerable like her, I said I’m not I just don’t want to get covid or give it to anyone especially not my mum who I was travelling to go visit. I felt so bad for this woman. She said she’d not been out much for 2 years cos of covid and being ECV. Was going to visit her mum for her mums 96th birthday, first time seeing her in years because of covid… her mum has Alzheimer’s and thus is also clinically vulnerable.

If I’d had any unopened spare masks with me I’d have given one to her. But I’ve got a box at my mums and a box at home now and hadn’t had any reason to pack any spares. Maybe I should start carrying an unopened spare one from now on.

She was sat opposite a guy with no mask on for the first half hour of joining the train. Her mask was a cloth one the kind with no wire at the top so tend leak around the top edge.

Fucking hate this country so much.

 

[BigMoaner]

Covid: Thousands of vaccinators get permanent NHS roles

The 11,483 people who have taken permanent NHS England jobs include former gym managers and air crew.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[two sheds]

Interesting research on people with asthma getting some protection against coronavirus.

Here’s why people with allergic asthma are at lower COVID-19 risk

A protein called IL-13 mounts defenses that include virus-trapping mucus and armor that shields airway cells from infection.

www.sciencenews.org

Gives a suggested mechanism, but does end with a warning:

Unfortunately, the extra protection doesn’t mean that people with allergic asthma don’t have to be concerned about getting COVID-19, Dickey says. “People with asthma have had very bad outcomes. This is not a virus you want to take chances with,” he says. But it’s OK to bask on the bright side a little. “It’s not fun to have asthma, so you have to be grateful for every rare occasion where it does something useful.”

Alongside some steroid inhalers helping to stop people getting covid symptoms, eg brown inhaler: Beclometasone inhaler: steroid medicine used for asthma and COPD, Asthma drug may reduce risk of severe Covid if taken early – study

plus montelukast Montelukast in hospitalized patients diagnosed with COVID-19 - PubMed

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Hospitals are still struggling - my Dad had to wait over 7 hours in an ambulance last night, and is still just parked in a bed in a corridor waiting for them to decide what to do with him. Fucking ridiculous waste of resources.

 

[miss direct]

I have been feeling utterly awful for the last two days. Runny nose, sneezing, cough, achy, sore throat. This came on on the last day of a trip away (and in particular, during a really cold long bus journey with the air con cranked up.) I've taken three lateral flow tests and all negative so far. Really struggling to work. I have to wear a mask to teach anyway, but it's horrid with a runny nose and having to sneeze. Not sure what to do

 

[LDC]

Hospitals are still struggling - my Dad had to wait over 7 hours in an ambulance last night, and is still just parked in a bed in a corridor waiting for them to decide what to do with him. Fucking ridiculous waste of resources.

Acute medicine is fucked. Totally fucked. Actually primary care is as well tbh.

 

[zahir]

Thread arguing that the hepatitis cases in children are probably due to covid.

 

[2hats]

(Imperial/Cedars-Sinai) A hypothesis that cases of acute hepatitis in children may be arising from SARS-CoV-2 viral persistence in the gastrointestinal tract leading to repeated release of viral proteins across the intestinal epithelium. In particular, superantigenic protein fragments of spike*, resembling staphylococcal enterotoxin B, may give rise to broad and non-specific T-cell activation with adenovirus perhaps sensitising the host to those superantigens.
DOI: 10.1016/S2468-1253(22)00166-2.

There is an energy allocation trade-off argument that young children can be more susceptible to this scenario; essentially because their body tends to tolerate disease and prioritises growth over immune defence, unless the pathogen represents a serious threat to survival and fitness.

Brief overview thread from one of the authors.


* See, eg, TWiV #815 for a background discussion regarding superantigenic properties of fragments of SARS-CoV-2 spike.

 

[elbows]

They had a national Covid art work monument thing in Bedworth that was ceremonially burnt at the weekend.

 

[Cloo]

Crap, my mum's finally got it. And just before going to Glyndebourne & then Slovakia too

I asked gsv to check himself as he's had a nasty cold for a few days and we'd seen my parents at the weekend, but he's clear - I thought it prob wasn't covid as very sinusy.

Mum is vulnerable but but not 'OMG she'll be a goner if she gets it' vulnerable, so hope she will be OK. It'll mostly suck because of her ME, which means viruses always knock her out.

 

[mx wcfc]

After swerving it for two and a half years, I've finally got it. Just back from a festival, and there are others on the FB group saying the same thing.

I'm fine atm. Just the irritating cough. It's my M-i-L that's the worry. She's 90 and lives here. I've given her food today. B@gger.

I'm just frantically contacting everyone now - I've posted it on FB (as have others) , so hopefully people will be aware. Emailed a mate who doesn't do FB etc.

On the bright side, it means I don't have to go into the office on Thursday, or to a work function that evening, which means my mohawk doesn't have to go yet!

 

[existentialist]

Jesus, this is as bad as it's ever been, in terms of people unexpectedly being exposed.

 

[l'Otters]

Yeah quite a few people I know got it in the last week

 

[Cloo]

gsv has it now - I thought he might have it much worse than me, but he's had a bit of a rest he's feeling OK and thinks maybe just bike riding in the heat really brought the feeling shonky on. Rest of us are clear for now, but I'm not suprised he's Patient Zero as he had a week of heavy socialising and office working with colleagues over from abroad (not that their being from abroad is the issue - the heavy working and socialising I mean!)

 

[ska invita]

Is this Indie hyperbole? i cant open their articles

‘Stealthy’ new Covid variant can reinfect you every month

‘Even having had Omicron, we’re not well protected from further infections,’ said Prof Danny Altmann

www.independent.co.uk

 

[2hats]

Is this Indie hyperbole? i cant open their articles

‘Stealthy’ new Covid variant can reinfect you every month

‘Even having had Omicron, we’re not well protected from further infections,’ said Prof Danny Altmann

www.independent.co.uk

It's referring to the study highlighted here. Read the linked overview for a summary.

 

[prunus]

Is this Indie hyperbole? i cant open their articles

‘Stealthy’ new Covid variant can reinfect you every month

‘Even having had Omicron, we’re not well protected from further infections,’ said Prof Danny Altmann

www.independent.co.uk

No way to know really. We'll find out...

You can use 'reader view' or similar to read Indie articles btw

 

[elbows]

Is this Indie hyperbole? i cant open their articles

‘Stealthy’ new Covid variant can reinfect you every month

‘Even having had Omicron, we’re not well protected from further infections,’ said Prof Danny Altmann

www.independent.co.uk

Its got plenty of links to the actual science in it.

Its compatible with what was already being learnt about Omicron in general, not just the latest version of it.

A picture is indeed emerging on Omicron infections not being a good booster of immunity against future infection against Omicron.

The headline is the most hyperbolic thing about it, continuing a trend of referring to Omicron as stealthy or sneaky, although the evidence suggests that some of this terminology may actually be well deserved. However since various forms of population protection and disease surveillance have been dropped during the same period that featured the arrival of Omicron, when it comes to the application of that terminology to aspects that are not directly related to peoples immune systems, the picture is less to do with the virus being 'sneaky and stealthy' and more to do with people and regimes turning a blind eye to its presence and implications.
.
As for why this new information is considered alarming, its because it rather pisses on previous expectations and policies that used concepts like herd immunity, and then later 'endemic equilibrium' & settling down to seasonal patters etc as a justification for policies that let it rip. It upsets establishment expecations as to the frequency and scale of disruption that the virus is still capable of causing.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

119 is a bit useless now. I've got a medical procedure on Wednesday and was told I had to take an LFT and report the results to 119 - after listening to endless automated options I finally reached the option to talk to someone and was told "sorry, we're too busy, try calling again later" before it hung up on me.

I don't even know whether they're going to accept a reported result from a non-NHS (i.e. paid) LFT as it doesn't have a tracking code on it.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

119 is a bit useless now. I've got a medical procedure on Wednesday and was told I had to take an LFT and report the results to 119 - after listening to endless automated options I finally reached the option to talk to someone and was told "sorry, we're too busy, try calling again later" before it hung up on me.

I don't even know whether they're going to accept a reported result from a non-NHS (i.e. paid) LFT as it doesn't have a tracking code on it.

If you have a medical procedure in hospital you can order tests from NHS test and trace.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

If you have a medical procedure in hospital you can order tests from NHS test and trace.

Yeah, that's only if you're being admitted though - I just have a gastroscopy appointment at a clinic.