Coronavirus: COVID-19

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mr.WHO
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Sun, 4. Jul 21, 22:00

Mightysword wrote:
Sun, 4. Jul 21, 20:36
I know that since arrived in the US, I have been eating not even half the amount, but can easily gain weight twice as fast. :evil:

I definitely would be one of those fat people you're referring to if I had not make a hard adjustment about a decade ago. :wink:
I know it's hard to eat healthy and avoid pocessed food and I'm aware that's even harded in US/UK.

However (and it will neatly allow me to get back on COVID topic), I'd like to point that whole side-discussion started by me seing fat (and I mean like visibly 20-30 kg above proper weight) people storming fast foods ordering full set as soon as lockdowns were lifted.

If global pandemic was not enough to reform these people, nothing will.
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Mightysword » Wed, 7. Jul 21, 00:36

And I think it's actually very relevant atm. It goes beyond the long term effect like diabetes or obese, but also immediate effect. We have heard a lot of talk about people with compromise immune system are more vulnerable, and that have aspect we can't and can help with. I had read studies from many years ago that consuming certain amount of sugar can suppress White Blood Cell activities up to 50% for 3-5 hours afterward. So pickup that pepsi or frappuccino from a fast food joint on your way to work in the morning or for lunch basically make you vulnerable for the majority of the working hours! The amount of sugar in a typical frap (in the US) is equal or exceed the weekly intake amount, and stuffs like that are not exactly rare in fast food culture ... or when you mingle at a party.

The phrase "the new normal" is something we had heard before for post COVID, and I wish people will actually pay it mind. One of the thing I know I gonna do is that if I gonna order from thing like a frap (which I allows myself no more than 5 times a year) or any cold+sweet drink, it will be something only for consuming at home after I have no plan of going out for the rest of the day. Instead my goto drink gonna be hot ginger tea. Basically, my winter/flu season routine gonna be adopted for year round, as least for another year.
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Vertigo 7 » Wed, 7. Jul 21, 11:42

Mightysword wrote:
Wed, 7. Jul 21, 00:36
The amount of sugar in a typical frap (in the US) is equal or exceed the weekly intake amount
Oh? kinda funny that the FDA daily added sugar intake value is 50g and a large frappuccino has 49g total sugar. While certainly high, that's hardly exceeding a "weekly intake amount".
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Wed, 7. Jul 21, 12:58

Guys, gentle hint, it is allways good to define clearly what you're talking about, and if citing someone else, to add a quote with a link. And to avoid sarkasm or ambiguity because that's hard to understand in an internet post where there is only writing but other fundamental aspects of communication are missing. Else there is too much interpretational leeway and potential misunderstanding.

Arey you talking about a recommended or an actual amount per unit of time ? Is it a hard limit or a population based risk calculation ? Is it valid for everybody or certain groups of people, like age groups or gender ? Is it generally valid or does it depend on pre-conditions ? What are the consequences if it is exceeded, individual or for the respective population/group ?

My guess is you're talking about a recommended maximum weekly amount of sugar to reduce the risk of diabetes, and it is a statistical figure covering the whole population. That means for an individual that if you stay below, the risk of certain types of diabetes is reduced. But still, and that's the point of the last posts I think, it reduces a statistical risk, but does by no means guarantee that any given individual won't catch malicious diabetes or any metabolic illness if they just stay below the recommendation. There are other factors at play apart from personal eating habits, for instance activity level, genetic disposition, exposure to stress, environmental influence of all kinds and even general personal attitude ... so, all not that simple and reducible to single aspects.

This isn't COVID related, just saying. I can understand that somebody for instance with a genetic disorder or having lived near an industrial plant for a long time and got sick from all the chemicals, pollution and noise level takes offence when they are told that it is all just their own fault and too many sugar drinks.

Or all just playing too much computer games all day long sitting on our behinds :-)

---------------------
Back to COVID. New variants of the virus are causing concerns. To prevent them from happening it is extremely important that the spread is stopped, and this means besides all other precautionary measures vaccinations. So, if you haven't got your shot(s) (I got mine meanwhile, they are at 70% first dose and 50% fully vaccinated people here at the time of writing), do so or catch covid sooner or later.

On variants:
https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-s ... 9-vaccines

And there's quite some work being done and published addressing questions and aspects of variants.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by CBJ » Wed, 7. Jul 21, 13:40

BaronVerde wrote:
Wed, 7. Jul 21, 12:58
Back to COVID. New variants of the virus are causing concerns. To prevent them from happening it is extremely important that the spread is stopped, and this means besides all other precautionary measures vaccinations.
I'm not quite sure how the UK's new policy, namely lifting pretty much all restrictions while we have high rates of infection, fits in with this eminently sensible advice. They've not made it entirely explicit, but the reasoning seems to be something along the lines of letting the infections run riot now while the vaccinations that have been given are still reasonably effective and reduce rates of serious illness and death, thereby hopefully avoiding a winter surge when flu will probably add to the chaos, while at the same time getting closer to herd immunity by having more people with resistance due to having had the virus relatively mildly. This seems like a rather high-risk strategy, given the chances of variants "escaping" the vaccine and resistance from having had the virus before, and I'm not looking forward to the prospect of being one of the lab rats in this experiment.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Wed, 7. Jul 21, 14:01

IMO, UK approach seems to indicate they are simply running out of the money, so they cannot sustain lockdowns any longer.

I expect more and more Western countries to get to that point - UK was just first because their economy got hit the earlies and hardest.

EDIT:
BTW I think it's only England that is reopening - the rest of UK is not.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by red assassin » Wed, 7. Jul 21, 14:14

CBJ wrote:
Wed, 7. Jul 21, 13:40
I'm not quite sure how the UK's new policy, namely lifting pretty much all restrictions while we have high rates of infection, fits in with this eminently sensible advice. They've not made it entirely explicit, but the reasoning seems to be something along the lines of letting the infections run riot now while the vaccinations that have been given are still reasonably effective and reduce rates of serious illness and death, thereby hopefully avoiding a winter surge when flu will probably add to the chaos, while at the same time getting closer to herd immunity by having more people with resistance due to having had the virus relatively mildly. This seems like a rather high-risk strategy, given the chances of variants "escaping" the vaccine and resistance from having had the virus before, and I'm not looking forward to the prospect of being one of the lab rats in this experiment.
Yes, it seems that on the basis that a) everybody in an elevated risk group has had both doses; b) over 85% of adults have had at least one dose; c) deaths and hospitalisations are staying low, they've decided they can get away with caving to all the pressure to reopen rather than extending subsidies for the extra month or two it would take to largely finish the vaccination drive. As you say, this seems like a foolish strategy on the basis that if you were going to produce an immune-dodging variant, exposing millions of vaccinated people to hundreds of thousands of infected people would be how you'd do it. I'm sure if immunity-evading strains are a possibility they'll be produced one way or another regardless of what we do - if you think the situation is bad here, the US is doing it all so much worse, for example! (Middling vaccination rates + basically no restrictions + hundreds of millions of people.) And I'm sure other countries will do the same before this is all over. But if we largely wipe out Covid in the country, we might have a hope of controlling a somewhat immune-evasive variant imported by isolated cases from overseas, whereas if one emerges here in the middle of thousands of other cases it could spread significantly before we realised.

I also note that the number of hospitalisations is starting to rise noticeably again, though still far lower than when we had this many cases previously.
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by CBJ » Wed, 7. Jul 21, 19:22

mr.WHO wrote:
Wed, 7. Jul 21, 14:01
IMO, UK approach seems to indicate they are simply running out of the money, so they cannot sustain lockdowns any longer.

I expect more and more Western countries to get to that point - UK was just first because their economy got hit the earlies and hardest.
Yeah, no. This is more about Boris running out patience than it is about money. There've been plenty of reports that he's been blustering and impatient with the whole situation behind the scenes throughout, even when he got the virus himself.

A more likely scenario is that the scientists advising him made the mistake of mentioning how bad things could get if there was a new wave of infections in the winter, and that a possible-but-risky alternative would be to get it over and done with now. He would have jumped on that immediately, because it suits him both personally and politically.
mr.WHO wrote:
Wed, 7. Jul 21, 14:01
BTW I think it's only England that is reopening - the rest of UK is not.
You're right, but the rest will have little choice but to follow.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Thu, 8. Jul 21, 11:27

I won't comment on politician's motivations for fear of violating forum rule 3 :twisted:

There are warning signs from medical science that the way of opening up at this point is too dangerous.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanc ... 0/fulltext

The say:
[...] Instead, the government should delay complete re-opening until everyone, including adolescents, have been offered vaccination and uptake is high, [...]

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Sat, 10. Jul 21, 10:32

Reality is on the side of those demanding caution.

It is pretty easy to do contact tracing on an island with access through the port and an airfield (plus a few marinas for small boats). Opening up and doing sports events and party business had the direct effect of explosive growth of covid cases, from 0 to >70 in just a few days.

In Spanish: https://elapuron.com/noticias/sociedad/ ... s-activos/

tl,dr: All cases were imported by a few persons, and spread explosively in single events. Good thing is, more than half of the population is vaccinated. There are currently no cases in hospital, they are all just confined to their four walls.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by exogenesis » Sat, 10. Jul 21, 18:49

Since this forum is the font of all knowledge about Coronavirus :) ...

I was thinking I may have had 'symptomless' Covid (50% sure, had mild symptoms for about a year after the start of it),
so presumably my body still has antibodies, or at least did have for some time.

Just got a Pfizer jab, somewhat (very) late for my age (60),
- I think it's the synthetic RNA version (not AstroZen modified virus)

Got it done since I was somewhat worried about the Delta variant surge,
& the possible (read - definite) spreading effect of 'rules relaxation', return to work, etc (UK)
(we're already at 50% of the daily cases of the worst previous 'wave',
no indication of slowing, although hospitalisations are low - due to vaccinations, or affectd ages spread ?).

So question is, if I'm correct about having had Covid,
- and the body still has antibodies,
does the jab actually have any beneficial effect ?

Reading around the info is somewhat conflicting, to say the least.

I can see the 'get a jab' anyway philosophy, for 'social safety', is reasonable,

Was just wondering what does the body do in response to the jab if antibodies are already there ?
Or maybe we just don't know (yet).

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Sat, 10. Jul 21, 19:04

There is most certainly nobody in here who could give you a qualified answer that you can't find when searching on your own. I know there are quite a few papers and articles that deal with this, quite a few meaning too many for me to give a good overview without sacrificing too much time. I believe though, the tenor is that it is crucial to get vaccinated even if you had COVID because it is unclear how fast the immunity vanishes. The time frame to wait depends on the type of vaccine, I think. (see for instance: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... s/faq.html) (*).

For more detail, I would definitely ask a real medical doctor if unsure. Maybe you should/could have made an antibody test before the vaccination. I can only say that here they vaccinate without ado and questions over previous symptoms or any counter indications, and there are allways a bunch of doctors and tens of nurses around when they have the mass vaccination events.

And "thank you pilot, you made the right decision" 8)

(*) Thank you dear search engine bubble that always redirects to those 'murricans :|

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Tamina » Sat, 10. Jul 21, 20:51

An infection is often regarded to be equal to one jab, I will refer to both with "dose".

The time between the doses is a minimum time. Getting your second dose before the minimum time expires has no to nearly no effect, depending on the vaccine. That means you will need a third one if this is the case.
Getting your second dose any time after the minimum time has expired, even years for most vaccines, has no bad effects except you staying unnecessarily vulnerable for this time. The reason is, that your body needs time to prepare for possible further infections in the future and after that a friendly reminder to strenghten it further.

Your body will always have antibodies of various types after an infection, like memory B cells, sometimes granting you a lifetime immunity. You could have done an antibody test before vaccination to see if you got infected before and then wait for another 4 weeks to take your ""second"" dose in the form of getting vaccinated. Of course only if all of this is within the bureaucratic rules of your country.

The vaccines for Corona are all tested and authorized for a specific amount of time and doses, and while there is good reason to believe that they are not any different, it is not scientifically tested, peer reviewed and what else. Which is also the reason why Johnson&Johnson is the only vaccine that needs "only one jab". Not because it is super effective or high quality - it is about as effective as one dose of Pfizer or Astra - but because J&J made trials for one dose and only got those authorized by national drug administrations.

I have to ask though, does it really matter? Neither you nor anyone else really knows when or even if you got infected and the only reasonable thing is to assume you didn't, or this possibly second dose was within the minimum time, and just take your second jab.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by exogenesis » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 00:34

I guess that means that if your body recently 'dealt' with covid naturally (& then have a jab soon after),
that the 2nd jab is even more important, to make sure you get full protection.


Not sure if I'm reading what I want into this article about 'are vaccinations effective against new covid strains',
but it more than implies that even after an infection, just the 1st jab is really important,
Individuals with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection also showed a marked increase in NAb titers against the three VOCs after one dose of either vaccine
(VOC = variant of concern, NAb = 'neutralising antibodies')

More than that, they seem to be saying that these NAb s that may act effectively against new variants,
are much stronger in people previously infected, c.f. those not, & just having 1 or 2 jabs.

So you're significantly 'stronger' for having been infected (& not die) & jabbed, than just being vaccinated alone ?
Furthermore, less than 10% of these vaccinated healthcare workers were found to have NAbs against both the *VOCs*
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210 ... CoV-2.aspx

Again, some statements in this article seem slightly conflicting to me c.f. other articles, but can't argue with scientific study results :)

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 02:15

That news-medical.net doesn't look like a proper journal to me. Possible pseudoscience and fake news, e.g.:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210 ... study.aspx

Edit, maybe my impression is wrong for the news item (it is not a study, it doesn't even cite the work it mentions) in the post above me. Found a proper publication that was linked in there, but it is not related to the news item:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanm ... 9/fulltext

It states
[...] This underscores the importance of vaccination to boost neutralising antibody breadth to VOCs, and also provides support for the hypothesis that repeated immunisations will boost protective immunity in individuals without prior SARS-CoV-2 exposure.[...]
(VOCs are Variants Of Concern, a somewhat badly defined magic term for ... COVID variants, https://www.who.int/en/activities/track ... -variants/)
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by exogenesis » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 02:33

Really ? you think this is propaganda of some sort ?

Seems a whole lot of effort to go to,
have to wonder what's the gain for them in doing that, 'faking' scientific data.

Where's the line between fake & 'not-proper' ?

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 03:16

Generally, if it doesn't cite correctly that's frequently a sign that something is fishy. For instance, the article mentions work of others in a general way ("studies have shown ...") but doesn't actually cite those, who, when, where published. Also, the article titled "Vaccinating is pointless for the ones who had covid" is most certainly pseudoscience, that was the main hint that made me warn.

I personally am unable to properly judge a medical publication (my strength lies in geoscience, actually). I usuaklly rely on the journal and their reputation. Artcicles in one of the well reputed sources like Sciencemag, Nature, Elsevier, Medical journals like The Lancet, official (inter-)national health offices and organisations, then chances are it's not nonsense. Marginal outlets are often too much information, they may cover fringe cases, or nbring in new ideas that may add to a discussion among experts, but aren't necessarily good for public consumption, yet :-)

There's much noise around covid. And fake news is an industry ...

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by exogenesis » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 12:40

tbh I think you're being somewhat over-zealous in throwing doubt on the information in
*the review article I actually linked*
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210 ... CoV-2.aspx

Guess it's better to be more cautious than gullible, but attempting to damn the article
'cos you disliked the 'tone', & you found a linked paper that you didn't like the title of,
seems a bit OTT.

The actual title was
'Vaccination after prior infection elicits broadly neutralizing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2'

The article honestly states:
*Important notice
medrxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore,
should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior,
or treated as established information.
I really wish we wouldn't use the expression 'fake news' for this kind of data,
there's too much association with the shenanigans of Mr-Orange :roll:
Unfortunately it's become a meme that's self-sustaining / self-reinforcing.
It implies some sort of deliberate mis-leading is going on, which I don't think is the case here.

The main point was that there are indications that a pre-infection gives a significantly better
protection against covid variants, than just vaccinations alone - which is just observed information.

However I can't image anyone recommending deliberately infecting people in advance :o
(except, early on in the pandemic it seemed maybe the UK gov. was exploring the idea of relying on 'herd immunity')

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BaronVerde » Sun, 11. Jul 21, 14:41

Pre print servers are not for public consumption. The papers in there are not reviewed (maybe not yet, one must check individually if they were actually submitted at a well reputed journal for review) and don't necessarily reflect a majority view of the scientific community. "medical-news.net", apparently coming out of now-where recently, seems to me as being such a case of fake news alongside with possible serious work, which makes it even more difficult to judge for the likes of us :-)

My suggestion would be for COVID related info, that may impact individual health as well as that of the ones we live with, to stick with official sources and published, peer reviewed work and leave marginal work and pre-prints aside, just to not accidentally expose us to a bias or work that carries an agenda in it.

I am not criticising anyone personally, I am in no position to do so, just trying to generally avoid being misinformed. Would be my suggestion :-)

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by mr.WHO » Mon, 12. Jul 21, 16:15

Interesting news in my Country - aparently 30-40% of deaths were people with diabetes (and in vast majority of cases it was type 2 and only rarely type 1).

It seems that Type 2 diabetes deaths were most of old people, but it seems the primary cause of severe COVID reaction was the diabetes weakening the inmune system rather than old age.

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