Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

Mariner said:
It remains to be seen just now many reinfections we'll get from the South African and similar South American variants. We also need to know if reinfections are likely to be milder than the original which would be logical for most infections, but perhaps not for this novel virus.
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I'm not counting on this.

It would be great if that turned out to be the case. The assumption is that you have some antibodies and an immune system exposed to the virus so it would be more responsive to another infection.

But the other part of it is, what if you have lung scarring and other organs which suffer tissue damage? Then a reinfection might make you more vulnerable to absorbing oxygen as efficiently. There haven't been studies but anecdotes of doctors who see really scarred up chest x-rays, worse than so-called "smoker's lung," from people who had mild or even asymptomatic infections.

There's just too much unknown now. People say the vaccines might reduce infections to asymptomatic cases. But even then you may have suffered some changes internally. That's why even after vaccination, it might be wise to avoid infections, even if vaccines do succeed in preventing you from being hospitalized or getting severely ill or worse.
 
Well, for the serious cases, yes. However, most people will only have either asymptomatic or mild disease so scarring of the lungs or any other organ damage is unlikely to be an issue with the vast, vast majority of cases. If you're unlucky enough to be quite ill the first time around (more likely if you're older) and you get it badly again, then touch luck.

What we really need to know is if those who were asymptomatic or had very mild symptoms the first time around are likely to suffer more serious symptoms should they be reinfected with older or newer variants.

Obviously, it goes without saying that you'd hope that those who had bad infection first time around had less serious cases in the event of any reinfections!
 
wco81 said:
There's just too much unknown now. People say the vaccines might reduce infections to asymptomatic cases. But even then you may have suffered some changes internally. That's why even after vaccination, it might be wise to avoid infections, even if vaccines do succeed in preventing you from being hospitalized or getting severely ill or worse.
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How to avoid them if you can't know you were infected in asymptomatic cases unless you get tested every so often? But even then tests might be unreliable.
 
Israel was over 10k cases on 1/20/21. It was just under 5100 on 1/29/21.

Hope that's an indication the vaccination deployment is working and their case numbers keep getting pushed a lot lower.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/

If you look at that chart, the surge was around the end of the year and beginning of the New Year. Supposedly a lot of Israelis visited the UAE over the Holidays, the first time they're able to because of a recent peace pact between Israel and the UAE. However, the UAE was letting people visit and party with very few restrictions. So cases surged in Israel supposedly, with a lot of people bringing back the UK variant. Because a lot of UK citizens also visited the UAE. Since then the UK have stopped some flights to Dubai and other places in the UAE.

We have to monitor whether their case rates continues to trend downwards.
 
Well, the South African variant seems to be spreading within the community in the UK:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55889391

Not an enormous surprise, but obviously not welcome news. I'd imagine it will be discovered elsewhere in Europe in due course as well. It will be interesting to see the speed of spread and whether it is able to outcompete the UK variant already running rampant over here. We know the SA variant can evade antibodies from the general strains against which the vaccines are quite effective, but I wonder if a past UK variant infection would provide protection against the SA variant? If so, it might be that it doesn't spread as quickly over here as it obviously has in South Africa. I don't think I've read any research checking this out. Probably too soon for this sort of research to be available though I'm sure somebody will be looking into it.
 
Nesh said:
Normal life will not return ‘until 2024’ if virus does not disappear globally

https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/31/norm...a1SDRw4wxOfA-ukjAdeHc0106ToSuw6BU?ito=cbshare

How do we expect a virus that works like a flu ever disappear globally?
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Well it doesn't mutate as fast as the flu virus. BTW, flu infections are way down, because the measures to fight covid seem to work on the influenza.

That and probably very much reduced travel between the northern and southern hemispheres, which is how the flu spreads, going from winter season in one hemisphere to the other.

We won't be able to eradicate it unfortunately. There are still people who dismiss it and it could be harbored in animals, where it would jump right back to humans in possibly more dangerous variants.

We have to hope vaccines reduces the spread as well as deaths, because having high transmission rates is allowing it to mutate more frequently.
 
wco81 said:
Well it doesn't mutate as fast as the flu virus. BTW, flu infections are way down, because the measures to fight covid seem to work on the influenza.

That and probably very much reduced travel between the northern and southern hemispheres, which is how the flu spreads, going from winter season in one hemisphere to the other.

We won't be able to eradicate it unfortunately. There are still people who dismiss it and it could be harbored in animals, where it would jump right back to humans in possibly more dangerous variants.

We have to hope vaccines reduces the spread as well as deaths, because having high transmission rates is allowing it to mutate more frequently.
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So in general are two things that make the numbers of influenza/flu less.
One are extreme measures that disrupt society/normal life and second the extreme overlap between the two diseases.The former is not normal, the latter just replaces or hides one disease below the other
We will have to learn to live with it until the end of time, so instead of relying just on vaccines and imposing limitations that would have existed only in dictatorships, we should enhance public medicare and rely on a healthier life style to enable normal living.
 
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Sars-CoV-2 is more like a subtype of an Influenza-XYZ-Virus. And I think, that this is why you cannot compare it with the flu. In one winter you can have a bad flu season, caused by a new H1N1 variant, for the next winter the most people will be protected against this variant, but possibly not against a new H3Nx variant or a new subtype variant of the Influenza-B-virus etc.

But yes, Sars-Cov-2 doesn't mutate as fast as the flu viruses. Everybody speaks about the new, more infectious and dangerous UK/Brasil/South Africa variants, but there was a Singapore less infectious variant of the Sars-CoV-2 and it died out, because it could not prevail other over more infectious variants.
 
Arnold Beckenbauer said:
Sars-CoV-2 is more like a subtype of an Influenza-XYZ-Virus. And I think, that this is why you cannot compare it with the flu. In one winter you can have a bad flu season, caused by a new H1N1 variant, for the next winter the most people will be protected against this variant, but possibly not against a new H3Nx variant or a new subtype variant of the Influenza-B-virus etc.

But yes, Sars-Cov-2 doesn't mutate as fast as the flu viruses. Everybody speaks about the new, more infectious and dangerous UK/Brasil/South Africa variants, but there was a Singapore less infectious variant of the Sars-CoV-2 and it died out, because it could not prevail other over more infectious variants.
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Just to nitpick:
COVID-19 is from the Orthocoronavirinae family of virus (Common Cold, SARS, MERS, COVID-19)
Influenza is from the Orthomyxoviridae family of virus (Influenza A+B+C+D)

Influenza and COVID-19 are NOT the same, neither in family nor in indicium.
 
Besides the taxonomic definition, it spreads more easily and is more lethal. The incubation makes it especially dangerous, because of asymptomatic spread.

That isn't to say coronaviruses are inherently more effective at transmission. The original SARS didn't spread like this thing so it kind of died off before we had to develop vaccines or antivirals.

Viruses can also be deadly. Spanish flu of 1917-18 appears to have a much higher R0. Either the or public health knowledge and measures were nowhere near where they are today.

Covid in the early 20th century might have done much greater damage.
 
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Nesh said:
We will have to learn to live with it until the end of time, so instead of relying just on vaccines and imposing limitations that would have existed only in dictatorships, we should enhance public medicare and rely on a healthier life style to enable normal living.
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Countries with a much better public health system and with healthier life style than the poor USA (for instance most countries in Western Europe) were hit quite hard. Lockdowns and masks were the only viable ways to slow down propagation. Now that we have vaccine I hope lockdowns will be less needed.

Of course one could say that we should let darwinism take its toll and clean up the weaks. Let's get rid of all vaccination and get back to our caves!
 
A 36-year old Venezuelan woman tests positive for covid in mid-December.

She tells her family that she has the flu. Husband is 33, a 17-year old daughter, and 4-year old twins.

By end of January, every member of the family has died.

https://www.newsweek.com/family-dies-woman-hides-positive-covid-test-1566735

So much for children can't get sick from covid.

She must have been shedding a lot of virus in December.
 
Not a usual spread of outcome for the disease. I've read reports of one half of a family dying, probably due to some sort of genetic auto-immune issue, but somebody generally survives. Who knows, perhaps there was a mutation which made the virus more lethal in this case, but it didn't spread further as they were isolating? With so many millions of people infected, there are going to be some extreme outliers.
 
Could be that once the parents got sick, they weren't able to take care of the kids, particularly the 4-year olds.

Could have been something simple like giving them Tylenol if they had fever. Or getting them to the hospital once they started to have labored breathing or coughing.

This is a smaller city in Venezuela, which is having all kinds of economic problems so maybe they didn't have access to health care.

But the article says that the country has only had over 1000 deaths, though that data may be unreliable.
 
Laurent06 said:
Countries with a much better public health system and with healthier life style than the poor USA (for instance most countries in Western Europe) were hit quite hard. Lockdowns and masks were the only viable ways to slow down propagation. Now that we have vaccine I hope lockdowns will be less needed.
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They will need to rethink their health care system. Relying on vaccines wont suffice for a lot of reasons. One is the mutation of the virus.
Secondly, another virus may appear in the future.
In the UK they run simulations of a supposed epidemic years ago and they saw that their health care system wouldnt be able to keep up.
They shelved the results instead of doing something for a possible future thread.
Now they are paying the price.

Of course one could say that we should let darwinism take its toll and clean up the weaks. Let's get rid of all vaccination and get back to our caves!
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Considering how the US embraced Nazis in it's own homeland after the WW2 and how they are excusing exploitation with the argument that the rich are there because they are smarter and better, I wouldnt have been surprised.
Eugenics runs through the mentality of the right wing American. Just like the Nazis.
 
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