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

I read something similar few months ago, but I know Novavax hasn't even been authorised for use in the UK yet, even though we were supposedly going to be manufacturing it.

I wonder if it is limitations of quantity of the adjuvant available which means this is the 'forgotten' vaccine? They also need the adjuvant for the malaria vaccine which has been developed and is pretty effective.

Here in the UK, the NHS is on the brink of collapse yet again during the third wave of infections this year. When the 'experts' minimising the virus told us Covid would become seasonal, I assume they weren't trying to tell us we'd have four or more damaging waves of infection each year?
 
A "conservative" estimate of the number of people unable to work because of long covid.

As the number of people with post-COVID symptoms soars, researchers and the government are trying to get a handle on how big an impact long COVID is having on the U.S. workforce. It's a pressing question, given the fragile state of the economy. For more than a year, employers have faced staffing problems, with jobs going unfilled month after month.

Now, millions of people may be sidelined from their jobs due to long COVID. Katie Bach, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, drew on survey data from the Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the Lancet to come up with what she says is a conservative estimate: 4 million full-time equivalent workers out of work because of long COVID.

"That is just a shocking number," says Bach. "That's 2.4% of the U.S. working population."
Click to expand...

 
Good overview of Long Covid in late summer 2022.

arstechnica.com

How long will it take to understand long COVID?

Researchers have proposed a variety of theories to explain symptoms of COVID long-haulers.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

There are an estimated 8 to 23 million Americans who remain ill months or years after a covid infection. One million are unable to work because their symptoms are so debilitating

75% of the people with Long Covid never were hospitalized. In fact, some people who had severe infections, with clear signs of organ damage, are able to rehabilitate. Many develop Long Covid after second or third infections.

What's more difficult to ascertain are those whose results appear normal in some tests. Theories of causes range from organ damage from the virus, micro blood clots clogging up parts of the body, preventing oxygen from reaching certain tissue, to remnants of the virus being strewn all over, including fat tissue, organs, brain, to autoimmune disease being triggered by covid infection.

In early 2021, NIH launched a Recover initiative to research Long Covid but trials haven't reported results yet. They may start trials with new treatments by the end of this year.

Mixed results on some treatments, with vaccines helping some, Paxlovid helping others. Some doctors have tried to remove micro blood clots and have seen limited results but not in a formal trial setting.

This past year of Omicron has seen lower hospitalization and death rates so people are "living" with the virus more and more. Unless new dominant variants cause more severe infections and deaths, the focus will shift to dealing with Long Covid, as opposed to avoiding severe Covid infections and death.
 
I'm sitting here waiting for another home test result. Yesterday I took 2 and both times after 15 minutes had a translucent line which I'm not sure if that counts or not. :/
 
Unless your body is magically producing the antigen on its own (it isn't!), you've got Covid again. When I had Covid in late January/early February (most likely Omicron BA.1 at that point in time), I tested very faintly positive for about 3 days. No symptoms to speak of other than slight lethargy on the day I first tested positive and that may have been partly psychosomatic.

The lateral flow tests (called RAT in some countries) are very useful for ascertaining if you have Covid due to the high specificity. Not very useful for ascertaining if you don't have Covid due to the lower sensitivity.

I was ill the other week, certain it must be Covid again - aches, chills, headaches. Continued to test negative for a week until I began to feel better and I'm confident I didn't have Covid again as nobody else in the household showed any symptoms. Also, members of my extended family had suffered similar illness in recent weeks and had also tested negative.

However, whichever virus this was has certainly lingered and I'm still not on top form with a recurring cough. Something my young son and daughter have had for weeks also. My guess is that this a different virus (perhaps a coronavirus of some sort) which I've encountered for the first time in years due to the anti-Covid measures in place.

A pan-coronavirus vaccine would certainly be a nice thing to have, that's for sure!
 
I had COVID in late June, I'm still not right. My fatigue levels having been making work quite a challenge. I wouldn't say it's physically too debilitating, but it's certainly had an impact (I struggle to concentrate for more than an hour or so) and is different from before.

On the plus side I did get a text message from the NHS offering boosters this autumn, so that's good.
 
One of the theories about Long Covid is that it could reactivate certain viruses.

Or your immune system is exhausted from fighting off covid that you are more vulnerable to other pathogens.

Certainly the case with some patients who had lung infections and were prescribed antibiotics because bacteria drafted in the wake created by covid.
 
US has one of the worst cumulative covid death rates in the world. For comparison, Japan, with a much higher concentration of people over 65 years of age, had 1/9 the death rate of the US>

Now let’s turn to cumulative fatalities in the two countries. There’s a huge, nearly 9-fold difference, per capita. Using today’s Covid-19 Dashboard, there are cumulatively 45,533 deaths in Japan and 1,062,560 American deaths. That translates to 1 in 2,758 people in Japan compared with 1 in 315 Americans dying of Covid.
Click to expand...

erictopol.substack.com

The marked contrast in pandemic outcomes between Japan and the United States

Facts, data, and analytics about biomedical matters.
erictopol.substack.com erictopol.substack.com

So here's a hint at some of the differences, early and pervasive masking, avoiding crowded public venues (the 3 Cs) and then big differences in vaccination rate, especially with boosters.

once vaccines became available, Japan got their population with the primary series to 83% rapidly, even after getting a late start by many months compared with the United States, which has peaked at 68%. That’s a big gap.


But that gap got much worse when it came to boosters. 95% of Japanese eligible compared with 40.8% of Americans have had a booster shot. Of note, that 95% in Japan pertains to the whole population. In the United States the per cent of people age 65+ who have had 2 boosters is currently only 42%. I’ve previously reviewed the important lifesaving impact of 2 boosters among people age 65+ from 5 independent studies during Omicron waves throughout the world.
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Japan probably doesn't have Russian and GOP disinformation being spread through media and social media. Or maybe they don't have as many gullible people out there.

US distribution of Paxlovid is also low.

Paxlovid is only being given to less than 25% of the eligible (age 50+), and less people age 80+ are getting Paxlovid than those age 45. The reasons that doctors are not prescribing it —worried about interactions for a 5-day course and rebound—are not substantiated.
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wco81 said:
So here's a hint at some of the differences, early and pervasive masking, avoiding crowded public venues (the 3 Cs) and then big differences in vaccination rate, especially with boosters.
Click to expand...
Those, and of course:
Only 3.6 percent of Japanese have a body mass index (BMI) over 30, which is the international standard for obesity, whereas 32.0 percent of Americans do.
www.cdc.gov

Obesity, Race/Ethnicity, and COVID-19

Having obesity increases risk of severe illness from COVID-19.
www.cdc.gov www.cdc.gov
 
Both my parents (75 years old) currently have Covid. Thankfully, neither seems to be too unwell so far. They were eligible to get their additional booster (bi-valent with original Wuhan spike + BA.1 here in the UK) but couldn't arrange it as our local doctors surgery wasn't offering it when they asked. Would probably have stopped them catching it. We think my clinically vulnerable brother-in-law has managed to avoid catching it from them (he wasn't able to arrange a booster either), despite the fact he spent a fair bit of time with my parents over week before they tested positive. Unfortunately, he's quite ill with some other bug going around at present (he's been testing negative for Covid using LFTs for several days of illness).

Unfortunately, it is looking as though the sheer weight of numbers of infections will make October and November very bad in terms of hospitalisations and therefore deaths especially as the population isn't boosted near the same levels it was back in the Omicron wave. Many months after a booster for the majority of us. The big worry is the collection of new recombinant variants which is now spreading rapidly, which seem to have convergently evolved similar spike mutations which will mean it is going to be very difficult to avoid infection. Even so-called 'hybrid' immunity of a combination of vaccination and past infection probably won't help too much in stopping you catching BQ.1, BQ1.1, BN.1, BF.1 etc etc etc because the spike mutations mean that the antibodies from past infection and vaccination are escaped to a greater degree. Will hopefully be able to keep hospitalisation levels down below catastrophic levels, but it remains to be seen if the already strained healthcare systems will be able to cope. A lot depends on whether the effects are more like Omicron with little lung damage or more like Delta.

These variants are just approaching the level where they are becoming dominant over BA.5, BA2.75 etc here in the UK, but are apparently already dominant in places like Austria where hospitalisations are rocketing up faster than during previous waves:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1579183686683328513

It will only be a week or two before we know if this pattern is going to be replicated elsewhere. Hospitalisations have been increasing over 30% a week in the UK, though much of this is due to transmission within hospitals due to lack of testing and dropping of restrictions! Of course, these new escape variants aren't dominant here yet.

I have to admit I was expecting a wave of infections, but this is getting me quite worried.
 
wco81 said:
US has one of the worst cumulative covid death rates in the world. For comparison, Japan, with a much higher concentration of people over 65 years of age, had 1/9 the death rate of the US>



erictopol.substack.com

The marked contrast in pandemic outcomes between Japan and the United States

Facts, data, and analytics about biomedical matters.
erictopol.substack.com erictopol.substack.com

So here's a hint at some of the differences, early and pervasive masking, avoiding crowded public venues (the 3 Cs) and then big differences in vaccination rate, especially with boosters.



Japan probably doesn't have Russian and GOP disinformation being spread through media and social media. Or maybe they don't have as many gullible people out there.

US distribution of Paxlovid is also low.
Click to expand...

Obesity has proven to be one of the most consequential factors to determine how bad a reaction one has to covid (not the only one, of course).

Geographically, the regions with most mortality seem to correlate closely woth places withmore obesity.
 
www.bbc.com

Infectious Covid virus can stay on some groceries for days

Scientists did the study for the government to better understand possible exposure to shoppers.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
This research gives us additional insight into the stability of coronavirus on the surfaces of a variety of foods and confirms that assumptions we made in the early stages of the pandemic were appropriate, and that the probability that you can catch Covid via food is very low."


Food tests
The team examined a range of temperatures and humidity levels to mimic typical storage conditions, measuring the rate of inactivation of the virus, and found:

Fresh fruit and veg
The virus appears to last longer on produce with uneven surfaces - broccoli and raspberries - than on smooth skinned ones such as apples (although some chilled fresh peppers had detectable virus a week later).

Apples contain natural chemicals in their skin that may start to break down the Covid virus within minutes or hours, the scientists say.

Baked goods
Pastries such as pain au chocolat appeared to have little virus after a few hours - perhaps because they are coated in a fine layer of egg wash during baking, say the FSA scientists. Eggs contain arachidonic acid which might have an antiviral effect.

Deli items
Cheese and cold meat, with a high protein and fat content, appear to allow the virus to survive for days - possibly a week.

Drinks and ready meal containers
Covid can survive for up to a week on plastic surfaces. For cartons, it could be several days. For aluminium cans, it is probably only hours, say the researchers.
Click to expand...
 
So, now China has apparently dropped their zero-Covid policy. Given that a very large proportion of their elderly population aren't fully vaccinated or boosted, there may be trouble ahead. Especially as the country has refused to take the more effective Western vaccines, preferring the Chinese-developed ones.

We've seen what happened when Omicron hit Hong Kong, which had a similar vaccination profile (but a stronger health system than mainland China). It seems likely that we'll be seeing many thousands of deaths from Covid a day in China before too long. I hope the authorities over there have a good plan to deal with a massive surge in infections.

Let's also hope that no scarier variants emerge during the hundreds of millions of infections which are likely to take place over there in coming months...
 
Hospitalizations are starting to trend upwards at a steep ascent again. (Mod-edit) In the US.

We're not at Omicron wave levels yet but it's still early, with cold weather, holiday gatherings, low booster rates, people mostly having given up attempts to mitigate.

Things are once again going in the wrong direction in the United States. Hospitalizations have jumped by 25% in recent days, along with ICUs, test positivity, wastewater surveillance virus levels, and even cases, which have been grossly under-diagnosed because of home rapid antigen testing or no testing.
Click to expand...

erictopol.substack.com

The new Covid wave

It's across most of the planet now. Delving into why, what to expect, and what we can do about it.
erictopol.substack.com erictopol.substack.com

BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are getting their turns. Europe and Asia are also seeing sharp upward trends in hospital admissions. China is also easing restrictions, with a more vulnerable population.
 
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We're just beginning another upswing in infections here in the UK. Most observers were expecting a big peak with BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 during November, but this hasn't materialised yet. Take-up for boosters for over-50s was pretty good which perhaps explains this to some degree. However, it has also been unseasonably mild since the summer and we're facing our first cold snap this week so it is probable that we'll see an acceleration in the rate of increase pretty soon.

Response times for ambulances are terrible at the moment despite the fact that we've been in a 'trough' in the infection rate as our health service continues to collapse. A surge in infections would cause serious problems, not just because of the Covid cases themselves but because of the people suffering as they can't get treatment following heart attacks/strokes etc. Our useless government is doing nothing to deal with this. Nurses and many other healthcare workers are also about to go on strike for the first time after receiving further below-inflation pay offers (to go with the real-term cuts faced since 2010). That's not going to help, but can't really blame them.
 
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