Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Forogil]

I know that the following two images also touch on other world events, but I also think they are relevant for this thread.

Compare Trudeau being tough on guns:

with a picture before/after a press-conference regarding EU sanctions against Russia:

Notice that the European-leaders no longer wear masks, whereas Trudeau's group has it; and as in many other similar pictures it's an unexplainable large group of people.

I can understand governments requiring different non-pharmaceutical interventions (like masks) before everyone have had the chance to be fully vaccinated, and/or the health-care system is under pressure (as earlier this year).

But that is no longer the case in N. America and Europe, and thus some European countries have lifted (almost) all such measures now based on decreasing cases, and in comparison Trudeau looks more like security theater. If the goal was actual risk reduction a better way to reduce the risk would be to be alone on the stage - or be spread out even further; as seen in other press conferences, but it would look less impressive.

(Not saying that going back to the French greeting kiss is a good idea - yet.)

[Edge-]

Notice that the European-leaders no longer wear masks, whereas Trudeau's group has it; and as in many other similar pictures it's an unexplainable large group of people.

In this image, which seems to be doing the rounds on Russian language site (not saying it's misinformation, but interesting that I'm finding it more on Russian speaking sites vs. not).

Though this image of the two appears to come from a few days before that -



With people around them...wearing masks.

That being said, I'm on team, "If officials want to wear masks all the time, that's their choice. If they want to continue to try to set a good example for people, cool."

[Forogil]

In this image, which seems to be doing the rounds on Russian language site (not saying it's misinformation, but interesting that I'm finding it more on Russian speaking sites vs. not).

I just picked one at random from the official press archive where you could see faces (and all of them were maskless - no cherry-picking).

Though this image of the two appears to come from a few days before that -



With people around them...wearing masks.

That is a two month old image:
Here it's from April 1st https://abc17news.com/money/cnn-busi...iscuss-russia/
Here the same site used it on March 29: https://balkangreenenergynews.com/eu...gas-purchases/

That being said, I'm on team, "If officials want to wear masks all the time, that's their choice. If they want to continue to try to set a good example for people, cool."

[Deus Mortis]

Damn after all this time I finally got it. Feel fine besides some sinus type pain and a headache. I have had two J&J shots.

[caractacus]

In my area of the the UK mask wearing is down to about 1 in 50 people I would estimate. You can see this reflected in the UK government. I just searched "Prime Minister's question time" in youtube for this week and clicked the first video shown. This is when parliament is most packed, I had a quick scan through and I can count on one hand the amount of people I see wearing masks.

[Iain]

So does malnutrition, of course, but it's far less common than obesity in the US.

Or in the entire world for that matter.

[Twdft]

(Not saying that going back to the French greeting kiss is a good idea - yet.)

If I never have to even shake a hand outside friends&family again I'm happy. Wasn't a fan of that even before covid.

[Flarelaine]

So does malnutrition, of course, but it's far less common than obesity in the US.

Or in the entire world for that matter.

Oh, right, I forgot to get back to this quote.

The funny thing? Obesity is malnutrition. Or mis-nutrition, maybe. Not eating right, in any event. Partly due to habits and traditions, but partly due to empty calories being cheap while proper nutritious food isn't.

[Iain]

That's the subsidies on corn (syrup), wheat and vegetable oils that's making these calories cheap. Nixon introduced these to stave off malnutrition. But now these are killing us.

[Forogil]

Oh, right, I forgot to get back to this quote.

The funny thing? Obesity is malnutrition. Or mis-nutrition, maybe. Not eating right, in any event. Partly due to habits and traditions, but partly due to empty calories being cheap while proper nutritious food isn't.

True, but there's more to it.

Obesity is a form of malnutrition according to WHO: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-s...l/malnutrition - and obesity is linked with worse outcome for covid-19. It could just be eating too much - even of healthy food, and exercising too little, but obesity is also often combined with micro-nutrition deficiency (lack of important vitamins and minerals), and that malnutrition might also cause worse outcome for covid-19 (but just taking vitamins will not make you immune to covid-19).

- - - Updated - - -

If I never have to even shake a hand outside friends&family again I'm happy. Wasn't a fan of that even before covid.

At least it is traditional.

But the weird greetings during covid with touching elbows and foot-shakes will hopefully disappear; just wave if you don't want to get close.

[Flarelaine]

That's the subsidies on corn (syrup), wheat and vegetable oils that's making these calories cheap. Nixon introduced these to stave off malnutrition. But now these are killing us.

I'm glad to live on the side of the pond where the rules are slightly better on what can be legally sold as food.

[Rasulis]

That's the subsidies on corn (syrup), wheat and vegetable oils that's making these calories cheap. Nixon introduced these to stave off malnutrition. But now these are killing us.

Manufacturers putting sugar, corn syrup, etc. into everything is a problem. The other problem is the lack of access to healthy foods - fresh fruits and vegetables. Four western states (California, Washington, Arizona and Oregon) in 2019 accounted for over 80% of fresh fruits and vegetable production in the US. In winter, California and Yuma, AZ are responsible for close to 100% of US supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. Prices of fresh fruits and vegetable get higher the further away they have to be transported from the source. Especially now with truck shortage and record diesel fuel price.

This is interesting. Between 2010 and 2019, CA share of US production of fruits and vegetables grew from 51% to 68.9%. The other states dropped. Florida share dropped from 19% to 6.02%. Washington dropped from 10% to 8%. Oregon from 3% to 1.54%. New York from 3% to 1.19%.

US Vegetables and Fruits Production (USDA, 2019)

[PhaelixWW]

Deadline: “Battle Of Omicron” Being Won By New BA.4 And BA.5 Variants As Overlapping Covid Waves Hit US"

Estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today indicate that the share of cases tied to Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5 increased 79% in the past week. That means, even as the more transmissible BA.2.12.1 Omicron subvariant became officially dominant in the U.S. last week, it’s already being pushed out by newcomers BA.4 and BA.5. The result would seem to be overlapping waves of Omicron.

While BA.2.12.1 gained an advantage by being more transmissible than BA.2 before it, the two newer variants are said to be making inroads at least in part because of their abilities to reinfect.

“We now report findings from a systematic antigenic analysis of these surging Omicron subvariants,” says a recent paper published to the BioRxiv preprint server. “BA.2.12.1 is only modestly (1.8-fold) more resistant to sera from vaccinated and boosted individuals than BA.2. On the other hand, BA.4/5 is substantially (4.2-fold) more resistant and thus more likely to lead to vaccine breakthrough infections.”

If true, that means the new variants have a much larger population that they can potentially access via breakthrough infections, where previous variants like BA.2.12.1 produced far fewer breakthrough infections.

The result has been what epidemiologist and biostatistician Dr. Katelyn Jetelina — who blogs under the moniker Your Local Epidemiologist — calls the “battle of Omicron.”

“After our first massive BA.1 wave,” Dr. Jetelina wrote today in her email newsletter, “BA.2 tried to take hold only to be overtaken by BA.2.12.1. Now, BA.4 and BA.5 are gaining traction very quickly and seem to be easily outcompeting the rest. Given recent lab studies, though, this isn’t a surprise. BA.4/5 are particularly good at escaping antibodies and reinfecting people previously infected with Omicron, as well as boosted individuals.”

The CDC data released today show BA.4 and BA.5, which are folded into the B.1.1.529 designation but likely make up the vast majority of the new cases in that grouping, still with a modest 6.1% share of new cases analyzed at the end of last week. Compare that to 59% for BA.2.12.1 and 6.1% doesn’t seem like much, but the fact that BA.4 and BA.5 are making inroads at all is remarkable.



Even as BA.2.12.1 continues to expand, the new South African variants are slowing its spread. While BA.2.12.1 accounts for 59% of variants identified, that’s only up from 52% last week, a roughly 7% increase overall. As previously mentioned, BA.4 and BA.5 increased 79%, from 3.4% to 6.1%.

Like BA.2.12.1 before them, the new Omicron strains have taken root more rapidly some parts of the U.S. than others. While BA.2.12.1 spread quickly first the Northeast, it’s now the Midwest — specifically Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri — that are feeling the brunt of BA.4 and BA.5.

While the national share of cases attributed those variants is 6.1% this week, in that four-state region it’s 12.4%. The area seeing the smallest share of the new strains is the region of the Northeast that’s been hit hardest by BA.2.12.1: New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

“Once BA.4/5 account for the majority of cases in the U.S., we should expect another (or extended) case surge,” wrote Dr. Jetelina this week. So as the BA.2.12.1 wave seems to be cresting, with a 7-day national average 106,000 new cases on May 21 per the CDC and hospitalizations potentially peaking this week, a new wave is building right behind it, which likely means a much higher trough after BA.2.12.1 and a rise from there.

BA.4 was first identified on January 10, 2022 in cases sequenced in South Africa, per Outbreak.info. That country was likewise the first to identify BA.5 on February 26. It took some time for the new variants to take hold, with daily recorded cases in South Africa averaging about 12,000 through early April.

BA.2 — including BA.2.12.1 — accounted for nearly all of South Africa’s daily cases at the end of February. By the end of April, however, BA.4 and BA.5 were found in 90% of all positive test samples analyzed in that nation. Of those, 70% were BA.4 and 22% were BA.5, according to CovSpectrum.org which sources data from GSAID.

In Europe, the South African variants have hit Portugal hard. They were first detected in that nation the week of April 3. In the roughly eight weeks since then, BA.5 has come to account for 87% of new cases, the country’s National Institute of Health reported today.

Why BA.4 came to dominate in South Africa and BA.5 took over in Portugal is still an open question. For an overview of how each of those variants have fared in different countries, click here.

In the U.S., it’s hard to tell which will win out. It’s still early days and many variant trackers do not break them out separately. In fact, as lab testing becomes less prevalent and local surveillance budgets are cut, it’s increasingly difficult to detect new strains.

California, for instance, doesn’t even separate the newer Omicron variants from the older ones. Instead, its reporting page lumps them all in together under the heading “Omicron,” and that category has completely dominated the chart since January 20, offering little new data. But there are some hints.

The the California Department of Public Health confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that one case of BA.4 was identified in March and one case of BA.5 was documented in April.

When contacted by Deadline last week, California’s public health department said in a statement, “CDPH is not currently producing internal growth or variant proportion estimates for BA.4 or BA.5 due to their relative rarity at the moment and the high number of circulating subvariants in competition with BA.4 and BA.5.”

The statement went on, “Per CDPH data, B.1.1.529 (as categorized by CDC Nowcast to include BA.1, BA.3, BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants) make up 1.5% of circulating variants in CA in the month of May.”

But the CDC data reported today puts the share of those variants in the category “B.1.1.529” at 6.6% (see map above). While still proportionally small as a share of the whole, the category is up an eye-popping 440%.

News reports have BA.4 and BA.5 showing up around the state in the Bay Area last week. A cluster of potential cases was also identified recently in Yolo County, near Sacramento. Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said earlier this month that they had been identified in L.A., as well. So while the state doesn’t have the data on these variants, local health officials do have some visibility into their spread, and the evidence seems to point to increasingly rapid, overlapping waves of new variants.

As Ferrer said on Tuesday, “Within weeks of one variant of concern dominating, there are reports from other parts of the country or other parts of the world of other either subtypes or different strains, and this has been especially true with Omicron.”

[DarkAmbient]

An estimated 2 million people in the UK are suffering from long covid

The condition is estimated to be adversely affecting the day-to-day activities of 1.4 million people - around seven in 10 of those who reported having it.

A total of 398,000 - one in five - say their ability to undertake day-to-day activities has been "limited a lot", the ONS found.

They added that the rates of long COVID were highest among women, those aged 35 to 69 years, people living in more deprived areas, those working in social care, teaching and education or health care, and those with other health conditions or disabilities.

Fatigue continues to be the most common symptom - experienced by 55% of those with self-reported long COVID - followed by 32% with shortness of breath, 23% with a cough and 23% with muscle ache.

[PhaelixWW]

An estimated 2 million people in the UK are suffering from long covid

I count myself lucky that the only discernible long COVID symptom I've experienced is a loss of taste that lasts for a few days to a week every few months or so.

Then again, I'm a lifelong insomniac with chronic sinus congestion, so I'm not sure I'd even notice half of those other symptoms against the background noise.

[Zantos]

Maybe I am missing it, but thus far, I haven't really found any info on when or if to get a second booster shot unless you're immune compromised or over 50. Even from the CDC. Are they suggesting that if you get 1 booster shot you're fine? Kind of odd.

As for the surge, that is to be expected when its no longer being taken seriously by most.

[PhaelixWW]

Maybe I am missing it, but thus far, I haven't really found any info on when or if to get a second booster shot unless you're immune compromised or over 50. Even from the CDC. Are they suggesting that if you get 1 booster shot you're fine? Kind of odd.

Why is it odd?

- - - Updated - - -

More importantly, cases aren't really surging right now. They wouldn't want to start doing boosters now and then to have that immunity start to wane when there's a later surge. Right now, they're considering authorizing a second booster for the fall, to help combat the inevitable fall/winter surge.

[PACOX]

Maybe I am missing it, but thus far, I haven't really found any info on when or if to get a second booster shot unless you're immune compromised or over 50. Even from the CDC. Are they suggesting that if you get 1 booster shot you're fine? Kind of odd.

As for the surge, that is to be expected when its no longer being taken seriously by most.

Guidelines are to wait until the Fall if you can (translation, they are still live testing the intricacies of the vaccine) . Get your flu/covid shot at the same time. Cut down the risk of your body getting too dependent on the the shot (its not known if the getting too many shots targeted at might leave you vulnerable to others - in layman terms), hold out for possible reformulations aimed at new variants (increasing possibility of this), you'll be able to take advantage of the heightened protection in the middle of illness season.

Professionals are trying to hold off till September/October.

[Rasulis]

Guidelines are to wait until the Fall if you can (translation, they are still live testing the intricacies of the vaccine) . Get your flu/covid shot at the same time. Cut down the risk of your body getting too dependent on the the shot (its not known if the getting too many shots targeted at might leave you vulnerable to others - in layman terms), hold out for possible reformulations aimed at new variants (increasing possibility of this), you'll be able to take advantage of the heightened protection in the middle of illness season.

Professionals are trying to hold off till September/October.

There are a couple of preliminary studies on the 2nd booster out there.

One from Israel - Short term, relative effectiveness of four doses versus three doses of BNT162b2 vaccine in people aged 60 years and older in Israel: retrospective, test negative, case-control study

Bottom line is that the second booster ability to ward off infections dropped off quickly. However, the second booster effectiveness against serious illness increased within the span of 10 weeks.

Another study from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital - SARS-CoV-2 antigen exposure history shapes phenotypes and specificity of memory CD8+ T cells

Repeated SARS-CoV-2 antigen exposure does not lead to an exhausted T cell phenotype

Repeated or chronic antigen exposure leads to T cell exhaustion in multiple experimental models27. Several publications have linked T cell exhaustion to an impaired SARS-CoV-2 cellular response40,41,42. While our epitope-specific data similarly included a cluster with high expression of classical exhaustion markers (cluster 7, EM-Ex; Fig. 3c), including CTLA-4, PD-1, TOX and TIGIT, this cluster was present in multiple donors (26/51) across all groups, including vax2-only (Extended Data Fig. 6a,b). In concordance with previous reports22,41, this ‘exhausted cluster’ was extremely clonal in composition (Extended Data Fig. 7a), with more than 70% of the cluster repertoire occupied by just ten clones (Fig. 3h). We also observed that the number of cells in the ‘exhausted cluster’ within a donor strongly correlated with the number of cells in the cluster of cycling cells (Fig. 3i). Thus, the presence of the exhausted cluster is connected to both clonal expansion and cell proliferation, suggesting that donors who have such cells are still in the active rather than memory state of the CD8+ T cell response. To test this, we looked at the distribution of cells among clusters at two available time points after infection (Fig. 1b; donors R1–R30, average time between time points was 75.5 d, range 40–126 d). The number of cells in cluster 7 declined with time (Extended Data Fig. 7b,c), indicating that this ‘exhausted’ subset is both common among mild infections yet transient and, importantly, that the presence of these cells is not sufficient to cause notable pathology. Rather, the exhaustion phenotype appears primarily correlated with time since antigen exposure.

[PACOX]

There are a couple of preliminary studies on the 2nd booster out there.

One from Israel - Short term, relative effectiveness of four doses versus three doses of BNT162b2 vaccine in people aged 60 years and older in Israel: retrospective, test negative, case-control study

Bottom line is that the second booster ability to ward off infections dropped off quickly. However, the second booster effectiveness against serious illness increased within the span of 10 weeks.

Another study from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital - SARS-CoV-2 antigen exposure history shapes phenotypes and specificity of memory CD8+ T cells

Thats exactly what I was thinking of, thanks for the links.