the new "only" Covid thread

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The J&J vaccine is back in the news for getting suspended. I suspect the practical reasons are that we have enough alternatives with no imflammatory side effects. {/speculation]

JR

My own experience with the J&J vax back in June 2021 was not a nice one. Before the needle was even withdrawn, my face turned hot and flushed, and a weird, dizzy, lightheaded, spacey brain fog slammed me. This all happened literally within a few seconds. About 3 days went by before it finally subsided.

Three weeks later I contracted COVID, was extremely sick for over a week, and suffered from long-COVID fatigue and systemic inflammation for about 5 months.
 
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Anyone in for yet another ride ?

The only people who get regularly tested are healthcare workers and hypochondriacs.
It's not just healthcare workers who get tested regularly.

Yet, especially with healthcare workers it makes a lot of sense.

And people with kin or acquaintances who belong to (highly) vulnerable groups are all hypochondriacs ? -- Well... it's this very type of statement...

___
...is there an English translation of the paper...

For anyone who can't read French, I tried Google translate on that paper. Works surprisingly well for it being standardised language -- anyway, it's good enough to get the gist of it.

And the post also came with a neutral short description of what was being linked to...
 
It's published in "Nature Communications":

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30313-8
Mind you, this is the full-blown research paper. Hard to read for laymen. This is a Google translate of the French summary for you:

"This is a very promising world first. A team of UCLouvain scientists has managed to identify the key that allows the covid virus to attack cells. Better, she managed to close the lock in order to block the virus and avoid its interaction with the cell. In other words, to prevent infection. This discovery, published in "Nature Communications", arouses immense hope: that of developing an antiviral that would eradicate the virus in the event of infection or high-risk contact.

Despite the effectiveness of vaccination campaigns, the threat posed by COVID-19 is not yet entirely remote . We are not immune to the appearance of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 and the long-term effectiveness of vaccines remains unknown. In addition, cases of acute infection are still reported. However, to date, no effective treatment exists ."

"For 2 years, the team of David Alsteens , researcher at UCLouvain's Institute of Biomolecular Sciences and Technologies (LIBST ), has been working to understand the mechanisms used by the virus to infect a cell . In a study published in Nature Communications , she investigated the interaction between sialic acids (SA) , kinds of sugar residues present on the surface of cells, and the spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2. She wanted to elucidate its role in the infection process.

We already knew that all cells are decorated with sugar residues. The role of the latter is to promote cell recognition, which in particular allows viruses to more easily identify their targets but also to facilitate their point of attachment to allow them to enter their host cell and thus initiate their infection.

What did UCLouvain scientists discover ? They highlighted a variant of these sugars (9-O-acetylated) interacting more strongly with protein S than the other sugars. Clearly, they found the set of keys that allows viruses to open the cell door . Why a keychain? The virus is made up of a series of spike proteins, sorts of suction cups that allow it to cling to the cell and ultimately enter. The more keys the virus finds, the better the interaction with the cell will be and the bigger the door will open. Hence the importance of finding how the virus manages to multiply the entry keys.

Catch the virus in its own trap​

This is where the second discovery of the UCLouvain team comes in: it has managed to catch the virus in its own trap, preventing it from clinging to its host cell. How ? By blocking the attachment points of the S protein and therefore eliminating any interaction with the cell surface. As if a padlock blocked the lock of the front door of the cell.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the various vaccines have mainly attacked the mutations of SARS-CoV-2, but not the virus as a whole. This UCLouvain discovery has the advantage of acting on the virus, independently of the mutations.

Next? The UCLouvain team will carry out tests on mice in order to apply this blocking of the links of the virus and to observe whether it works on the organism . The results should not be long in coming and should make it possible to develop an antiviral from these sugars, administered by aerosol, in the event of infection or contact at risk.

This discovery is also interesting for the future, to counter other viruses whose attachment factors are similar."

That should be easier to digest for normal folks, like us :)
 
How many asymptomatic people get tested? The only people who get regularly tested are healthcare workers and hypochondriacs.

I am not a health care worker and not a hypochondriac either. So, I am wondering how you are able to reconcile your statement with that.

Yes, there are of course hypochondriacs who would add this to their list of itchy habits. But there are just as many hypochondriacs as there are conspiracy theorists who added this Covid thing into their list of shadows to chase.

I would think that you and 57sputnik would be way above this but so far these statements give me the impression of contrary.

Regular self testing is not all about being hypochondriac or living in fear. It is about being responsible.

As you know I am just recovering from Covid and I know exactly who I got it from. A friend who turned up at the workshop coughing his guts out and spluttering, saying how ill he was the week before. Out of politeness I could not tell him to go away. I love him truly as he is my friend, but he f**ked up almost three weeks of my life.

There may certainly be no reason why anybody without a symptom should test. In fact self testing or isolating is no longer a requirement in the UK. But if you have Covid like symptomps, let alone gut coughing and spluttering, then regular testing will save wasting other people's precious times at the minimum.
 
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The trend of breakthrough infections as it relates to death doesn't seem to be heading in the right direction? I had to use wayback but I remembered it being lower in the beginning of the year when watching Virginia's data because they were one of the first to track bt.....I remember it was like 2%. Which was, at the time, in line with the national rate from CDC but I can't find the CDC page anymore where they show the numbers. Only comparison charts to unvaccinated.. BT deaths getting close to 4% now.? Attaching last October and now from Virginia's data... Last October, bt death rate was under a percent.
Which also means all the unvaccinated numbers should be pretty bad. ? Not sure what to make of what this could mean? Especially with more vaccinated possibly becoming infected?
 

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Anyone in for yet another ride ?
It's not just healthcare workers who get tested regularly.

Yet, especially with healthcare workers it makes a lot of sense.

And people with kin or acquaintances who belong to (highly) vulnerable groups are all hypochondriacs ? -- Well... it's this very type of statement...

I stand by my statement. I also have friends and family in the high and very high risk group. They are not paranoid and going in for regular testing. I've had several friends and family who had symptoms and went for testing in the past 2-3 months. Several had Covid, were sick for a few days, isolated, and recovered. No hospitalizations and no deaths. It isn't normal to live in constant fear of death.

___


For anyone who can't read French, I tried Google translate on that paper. Works surprisingly well for it being standardised language -- anyway, it's good enough to get the gist of it.
Would prefer an actual human translation as AI often makes odd and confusing substitutions that change the meaning in subtle but important ways.

And the post also came with a neutral short description of what was being linked to...
I didn't ask for a summary. I asked for a translation of the actual paper. The summary had very little information about the actual mechanism of the treatment.
 
It's published in "Nature Communications":

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30313-8
Mind you, this is the full-blown research paper. Hard to read for laymen.
Thanks. While I am not a medical professional I have degrees in engineering and have spent decades reading highly technical papers of various kinds. This is what I was looking for.

This is a Google translate of the French summary for you:
The summary has too few specifics to make any judgement about the treatment.

This discovery is also interesting for the future, to counter other viruses whose attachment factors are similar."
Don't other anti-viral drugs try to do similar things to interfere with viral-cellular interaction?

That should be easier to digest for normal folks, like us :)
I'm abby-normal.
 
I am not a health care worker and not a hypochondriac either. So, I am wondering how you are able to reconcile your statement with that.
Are you getting tested weekly or similar? Why?

Yes, there are of course hypochondriacs who would add this to their list of itchy habits. But there are just as many hypochondriacs as there are conspiracy theorists who added this Covid thing into their list of shadows to chase.
I'm merely an observant skeptic. One wonders why all empirical early treatment regimes developed in the US and elsewhere were largely suppressed in the media and even professional journals despite having adequate data. Why is it medically ethical to tell people who contracted the disease in 2020 to go home and wait until their symptoms were severe? By then it was nearly always too late to treat adequately. By mid-summer of 2020 many ad-hoc medical teams from all over the world had developed helpful protocols to treat early phases of the disease and prevent many hospitalizations and deaths, yet these were all called disinformation here in the US. A rational person would question that, wouldn't they?

I would think that you and 57sputnik would be way above this but so far these statements give me the impression of contrary.

Regular self testing is not all about being hypochondriac or living in fear. It is about being responsible.
How is it being responsible? The virus is endemic now. It was always going to be.

As you know I am just recovering from Covid and I know exactly who I got it from. A friend who turned up at the workshop coughing his guts out and spluttering, saying how ill he was the week before. Out of politeness I could not tell him to go away. I love him truly as he is my friend, but he f**ked up almost three weeks of my life.
Sorry you were sick. In 2006 I had pneumonia which I almost certainly contracted from the guy in the neighboring cubicle who came to work for several weeks coughing, sneezing, and spitting into his trash can at work (I kid you not). Had chest x-rays to confirm and was out of work for a week and not back to normal for a couple more. I still have some damage in that lung. Life has risks.

There may certainly be no reason why anybody without a symptom should test. In fact self testing or isolating is no longer a requirement in the UK. But if you have Covid like symptomps, let alone gut coughing and spluttering, then regular testing will save wasting other people's precious times at the minimum.
Sure, especially if you are around people who are in the high risk group. But that was not what we were discussing which was "regular testing." Read what I wrote. A responsible person will stay home and avoid contact with others when they are sick with anything semi-serious. This should be the norm even without Covid.
 
I hear what you are saying, but I have no interest in getting invoved in argy-bargy side of things. What the officials in charge did or not.

My interest is in your statement " The only people who get regularly tested are healthcare workers and hypochondriacs.".

So, I am asking you again, I am not a health worker or a hypochondriac. So, how do you come to the conclusion that I am one of the latter?
 
Meanwhile in the news this week:
Bill Gates, Stephen Colbert and the local MLB baseball team all tested positive for COVID.
 
I hear what you are saying, but I have no interest in getting invoved in argy-bargy side of things. What the officials in charge did or not.

My interest is in your statement " The only people who get regularly tested are healthcare workers and hypochondriacs.".

So, I am asking you again, I am not a health worker or a hypochondriac. So, how do you come to the conclusion that I am one of the latter?
Only you can answer why you think you need regular testing if you aren't suffering symptoms or in healthcare. I know some employers outside of healthcare also "require" regular testing. My former employer tried to force that. Thankfully I was already well-along in my retirement plans and just ignored their garbage until I quit.

I see no logic in "it's the responsible thing to do," especially now.
 
The trend of breakthrough infections as it relates to death doesn't seem to be heading in the right direction?
I think isolated blank numbers like that, no matter what part of the world they come from, don't really tells us much. It would be more informative to look at trends in age group distribution. -- And maybe also rough estimates on real infection spread and on how many people went thru an omicron (second set of numbers, as opposed to delta or whatever in first set) infection with very mild symptoms (some not officially recorded) and even more so entirely unnoticed infections (not recorded ever). -- Omicron was a shift in paradigm.

---
Unluckily, there are still quite a number of people who can get seriously ill: the old; the vulnerable; non-responders to vaccine; but also younger people in 30s to 50s, of whom some get severely ill (for these latter, even after two years plus it is still somewhat difficult to predict who exactly are the unlucky ones).

Also I'd count anybody who developed some kind of symptom from vaccination (whether Moderna arm, fits of fever, or more acute but generally treatable symptoms) among the vulnerable. Simply cos it's very likely medically that they would have been knocked off their feet completely, or worse, had they come in contact with the virus first (this especially prior to Omicron).

---
Personally, I had no symptoms whatsoever from any of the three Covid vaccinations so far. I went to bed early -- that's it. Maybe I was lucky ? Who knows. But what I do know for sure is that I simply do not have time to spare (work-related and private) to go thru a three-week Covid infection and recovery, or worse. Maybe that makes me lucky too ?
 
Also I'd count anybody who developed some kind of symptom from vaccination (whether Moderna arm, fits of fever, or more acute but generally treatable symptoms) among the vulnerable. Simply cos it's very likely medically that they would have been knocked off their feet completely, or worse, had they come in contact with the virus first (this especially prior to Omicron).

I had COVID in December 2020, with very mild symptoms that lasted about 4 days total. By the 10 day mark, my taste and smell had returned 100%. I've literally had colds that were worse.

When I contracted Delta last year (3 weeks after receiving the J&J vaccine), as I'd noted in my earlier post I was very sick for an extended period and then had long-COVID symptoms for months. I contracted Omicron in January and was the sickest I've been in decades, despite it being "COVID-Lite" for most people. I now have post-COVID multisystem inflammatory syndrome, which is not anything nice.

Did the multiple COVID infections each do its own damage that built upon the last one cumulatively and synergistically? Did each somehow further sensitize me to the effects of COVID instead of natural immunity making me less sensitive? Was the vaccine a contributor instead of a defender?

This virus is so bizarrely random in its effects among different people, that a definitive answer will probably evade medical science for a long time yet. Hopefully, a bona fide preventive cure will not.
 
Only you can answer why you think you need regular testing if you aren't suffering symptoms or in healthcare. I know some employers outside of healthcare also "require" regular testing. My former employer tried to force that. Thankfully I was already well-along in my retirement plans and just ignored their garbage until I quit.

I see no logic in "it's the responsible thing to do," especially now.
No. Don't twist and turn. You have to answer because you are the one alleging it, not me.

So, I will ask you once more. What makes you think testing regularly would make me a hypochondriac?
 
Also I'd count anybody who developed some kind of symptom from vaccination (whether Moderna arm, fits of fever, or more acute but generally treatable symptoms) among the vulnerable. Simply cos it's very likely medically that they would have been knocked off their feet completely, or worse, had they come in contact with the virus first (this especially prior to Omicron).
I suffered from "Moderna arm" but don't read anything significant into it...

The reported J&J inflammation seems like it could be problematic. Now we have the luxury of multiple decent (?) covid vaccinations, so we can just back burner vaccines with potential flaws.

Other nations do not have that luxury. Some speculate that China's outbreaks/lockdowns are responsible in part from lower efficacy vaccines.

JR
 
This virus is so bizarrely random in its effects among different people,
Thanks for sharing. I really appreciate. Bizzare indeed that J&J.

Thought I had caught Omicron myself about a month ago. So I went for a test -- negative, below detection level. I had 2xPfizer followed by Moderna. But some kind of acute symptoms, so I went to the hospital. They checked me thoroughly and asked me to stay cos I needed treatment immediately (not oxygen, not Covid), but could have been. Anyway, release after five days. What a waste of time! But it was really necessary, so happy that I went. Luckily I had a computer with me and at least could do a tiny bit of work. Anyway, they had tested for Covid again -- negative. No Covid or below detection level -- twice.

Friend of mine, somewhat younger than me, had Covid last year, unvaccinated -- 'moderate' symptoms (in Japan that means hospitalization and oxygen treatment for a couple of days). After that experience, he convinced his wife, as well as his entire large family in his home country, to get vaccinated immediately. Then his family here caught Omicron about two months ago, brought home by one of his kids from the nursery. Yet he and his wife didn't develop a cough or a fever -- tested, but below detection level.

We met again, for an open-air riverside BBQ, shortly after they had all officially cleared. My hospital stay was exactly two weeks later, after one week of worsening symptoms. I tend to think though that it is not related -- just correlation.
 
No. Don't twist and turn. You have to answer because you are the one alleging it, not me.

So, I will ask you once more. What makes you think testing regularly would make me a hypochondriac?
I told you what I think. It is my current opinion. I am free to think as I please, as are you. I'm open to you changing my mind by providing some other reason that hadn't occurred to me which is why I had asked if you had some risk factors or other issue. It's none of my business if you don't want to share. I understand that as well.
 
I told you what I think. It is my current opinion. I am free to think as I please, as are you. I'm open to you changing my mind by providing some other reason that hadn't occurred to me which is why I had asked if you had some risk factors or other issue. It's none of my business if you don't want to share. I understand that as well.
Really?

So you have an opinion on a clinical diagnosis that you have no qualifications to make.

That tells me everything about your level of intelligence on this argument.

Although I was not agreeing with you, I thought you were giving a good fight against Cyrano in his argument. But with above, it all turned out to be a noise coming out of an empty tin. What a disappointment.

I am done here.
 
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