Coronavirus: COVID-19

[Cpt.Jericho]

Almost 50% of COVID patients released from hospital report long covid smptoms after 1 year, like general fatigue, muscle weakness, headaches, shortness of breath. Some symptoms actually increae and worsen over time.

The study is about less than 1300 people being discharged between Jan. to May 2020 in China. And of those about 50% report said long term symptoms.
What I couldn't find was the number of total covid patients in that area and period to put those 50% of less than 1300 into any context considering the risk of actually getting long covid.

[BaronVerde]

The study is about less than 1300 people being discharged between Jan. to May 2020 in China. And of those about 50% report said long term symptoms.
What I couldn't find was the number of total covid patients in that area and period to put those 50% of less than 1300 into any context considering the risk of actually getting long covid.

The number is the sample size, people released from a specific Wuhan hospital (not all over China) who were willing to participate in the study and show up for two visits and be selected for for a physical examination to determine the severity of certain symptoms, e.g. lung function, endurance, physical strength, as well as partcipate in questionnaires. Of these, ~50% have long covid symptoms with varying degree.

The study does not say anything about absolute numbers of COVID cases in the Wuhan area, nor does it claim that these are all of the patients that were released from the hospital. It says 2469 COVID-19 patients were released in total in the time frame. It doesn't put released patients in relation to those that isolated at home and recovered without being hospitalized, or those parts of the population that didn't fall sick with COVID at all. But it describes in detail number and severity of long covid symptoms in the sample, and the differences to the control group after 12 months.

Using patients from a single hospital and locality reduces bias that might be introduced from varying quality of treatment, and possibly bias from social stratification (speculation mine).

The primary aim of this study was to comprehensively compare health consequences of COVID-19 patients who have been discharged from hospital between 6 months and 12 months after symptom onset. The secondary aim was to determine whether COVID-19 survivors had returned to a baseline health status 1 year after symptom onset compared with non-COVID-19 controls.

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Out of memory, the risk of having long covid after falling sick was mentioned in other places before, and said to be ~15% of all COVID cases. But that general number doesn't include a detailed view on age, risk groups, any preconditions, etc. One would have to look that up elsewhere ...

And of course people being released from hospital after a COVID treatment are certainly in a worse shape than the average cases that never got hospitalized, no question.

[Cpt.Jericho]

The study does not say anything about absolute numbers of COVID cases in the Wuhan area, nor does it claim that these are all of the patients that were released from the hospital.[...]

Then why did you say that almost 50% of released patients suffer from long covid?

Almost 50% of COVID patients released from hospital report long covid smptoms after 1 year, like general fatigue, muscle weakness, headaches, shortness of breath. Some symptoms actually increae and worsen over time.

If i didn't knew any better, I would call that fearmongering.

[BaronVerde]

Then why did you say that almost 50% of released patients suffer from long covid?

Trivially, because the absolute number of COVID cases is not equal to the number of patients released from a COVID-treatment in hospital, the latter being far less than the former and their cases more severe than the population average. Thought that was intuitively clear and not in need of specific mention ...

The study says they are the first with such a large sample and control group, being statistically more relevant than similar work published before. We'll probably read more about long covid (COVID-19 hasn't been around for that long yet) as time goes by.

[Cpt.Jericho]

The absolute number of cases is not trivial when you're trying risk assessment.

[pjknibbs]

Using patients from a single hospital and locality reduces bias that might be introduced from varying quality of treatment, and possibly bias from social stratification (speculation mine).

I would say it's the opposite? This one hospital they chose for the study might be particularly crap at treating Covid. The whole point of doing a study like this over multiple hospitals is to average out fluctuations in individual treatment regimes.

[BaronVerde]

Hm, at least it makes people in here think about COVID outcomes, gooood

It fits right in. It is not isolated, other studies about released COVID patients come to similar conclusions, like for instance https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33172844/.

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Some thoughts on the origin and spread of SARS-COV-2:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6558/968

Like others before and based on available evidence they assume that the virus was lilely introduced to the Wuhan market through the cold chain of dead animal transport.

Humans are now the dominant SARS-CoV-2 host species. The danger is that SARS-CoV-2 could spread from humans to other animal species, [...] Humanity must work together beyond country borders to amplify surveillance for coronaviruses at the human–animal interface to minimize the threat of both established and evolving variants evading vaccines and to stop future spillover events.

The warning here is that the evolving viruses spread back from humans into animal populations, possibly evolving further, spreading back to humans in new forms and through the food chain and evading vaccine efforts.

Or, in short, it is not a joke.

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Edit: There's more interesting news today:

Having had and recovered from a SARS-COV-2 infection offers better protection against the Delta-variant than 2 doses of the Pfizer/Biontec vaccine alone. This means that the immune system's response is more effective from a previous infection than from a vaccination. This is a qualitative argument, natural immunity is better, not an argument against vaccinations, which are effective against Delta, just only to a lesser degree.

By no means this invalidates vaccinations and is not an invitation to 'infection parties', people will die then ! The study just points out the "benefit of natural immunity, but doesn’t take into account what this virus does to the body to get to that point".

According to the study, the best protection against Delta was a previous infection plus 1 shot of the vaccine.

Source:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08 ... on-parties

[exogenesis]

...

Edit: There's more interesting news today:

Having had and recovered from a SARS-COV-2 infection offers better protection against the Delta-variant than 2 doses of the Pfizer/Biontec vaccine alone. This means that the immune system's response is more effective from a previous infection than from a vaccination. This is a qualitative argument, natural immunity is better, not an argument against vaccinations, which are effective against Delta, just only to a lesser degree.

By no means this invalidates vaccinations and is not an invitation to 'infection parties', people will die then ! The study just points out the "benefit of natural immunity, but doesn’t take into account what this virus does to the body to get to that point".

According to the study, the best protection against Delta was a previous infection plus 1 shot of the vaccine.

Source:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08 ... on-parties

This result is similar to what I was posting about a month & a half ago in this thread,
but you didn't like it due to the source

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=421591&start=1860#p5069380

We do seem to get a better immune 'setup' from a real infection, versus (just) vaccinations.

[BaronVerde]

Sure I'm aware of the former discussion and my warning not to take isolated preprints for real findings, and I stand to it. But I also helped you out with a link to a proper publication supporting your point better than the "news-medical" news item back then.

With all the COVID noise and politics involved, as consumers, we can't really judge if an unreviewed preprint or news item actually holds information based on proper work if it is not from a discipline we have deeper knowledge in. Unrelated, I've recently had one paper that confused gravity waves (waves at the interface between fluids of different densities) and gravitational waves (disturbances in space time). Came out they wanted to sell seismometers with some science babble

Anyway, I concede that there's a factual basis for a previous infection + single shot being more effective against the delta-variant than just vaccination - if the previously infected person lives up to see it and doesn't suffer from long term complications. So "Don't try this at home !"

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Without global vaccinations the pandemic could actually run out of hand.

As illustrated by the rapid spread and high transmissibility of the ‘delta’ variant, SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary potential is a major potential obstacle for control.

Sauce:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/ ... ce.abj7364

[Incubi]

pfizer Has FDA approval as of last week. And now that we are getting better from Covid and some of us are better, we now have all the answers we need to get vaccinated. My daughter got her first shot two days ago. Hopefully by the end of the month we will all have the vaccine. Now that pfizer has full FDA approval there should be an increase on Americans getting the vaccine. I know the so called antivaxxers are still gong to be an issue, but to be honest these seem to be the same people who were anti maskers and who refused to even believe that this was real. I am of the opinion that our antivaxxers are just extreme conspiracy theorist. I do not believe that the majority of people who have not been vaccinated yet are antivaxxers. Antivaxxers just are the loudest people, and we know how that goes. Between the misinformation and lack of FDA approval and confusion over the differences between vaccines and the political front, you don't have to be an antivaxxer to be hesitant for the shot.

I hope that this all changes now, with how hard we all got hit in the early August, and FDA approval, I have hopes that things will get a bit better with more vaccinated people in America. Releasing a Vaccine without FDA approval is one of the mistakes our government did that lead to the current chaos. The Emergency Use Authorization for Vaccines wasn't covered very well, especially in a world where your lucky if people read more than the first 20 words after the title. And that is the result of low attention spans and a justifiable loss of trust in journalism. Educating people in ways that they will listen is a forgotten art. So hopefully this can be discussed with a little less self righteousness.

[Ch_R0me]

Meanwhile in my country (Poland):

So far the new case daily are oscillating around 200 (which is fairly good, especially that we're still waiting for a 3rd wave). It was expected between August and September, yet it doesn't happen (thank goodness). Yet, I'm planning a late vacation in October, and probably this would be it (conditions would be favourable + at that time, the first wave was starting).

I was infected in March (UK Alpha strain), during rise of the second wave, yet I've managed to get through it with body weakness and loss of taste and smell. After a week being officially recovered, I've managed to regain my senses, at least partially.
In the end of May, decided to take in the J&J's One-Shot vaccine, since I'm after infection after all. The only complication was a severe feel of cold (most probably due to high fever) and inability to breath for a few minutes due to intensive cold. Afterwards, it was better.

In the end in Poland, there are still populations who would pray for health than vaccinate, treating those as satan's work (especially in East and South's mountainous areas), and listening to antivaxxers idiotisms. The plans are to restrict some freedoms for un-vaccinated, but of course people are incensed about that.

I just really hope that those "fools" wouldn't prevent me from spending vacation elsewhere and regenerate my mind for a while...

[BaronVerde]

The pandemic has caused a significant drop in birth rate in some high income countries, from ~5% in Austria to ~11% in Portugal and Spain. Otoh for some countries, like Germany, Netherlands, others, the data signals a slight increase in birth rate. So for Europe, there seems to be a north-south slope.

There may, though, be a rebound looming

Source:
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/36/e2105709118

[Ezarkal]

The pandemic has caused a significant drop in birth rate in some high income countries, from ~5% in Austria to ~11% in Portugal and Spain.

It's funny, here in Quebec we're having a babyboom that can be associated to the lockdown. The joke is in 13 years we'll be able to call these kids the "quaranteens".

[Cpt.Jericho]

The pandemic isn't over and you start making jokes? There's still millions of people going to die according to science.
Well, at least the richest don't have to fear any significant losses. While water always slowly flows downwards, money is racing upwards.

[Ezarkal]

The pandemic isn't over and you start making jokes? There's still millions of people going to die according to science.
Well, at least the richest don't have to fear any significant losses. While water always slowly flows downwards, money is racing upwards.

Don't get me wrong. The pandemic is a tragedy, and I consider myself extremely lucky to live in a place where we managed to contain it as much as we did. I do realize we have vaccine, a working economy and a government which actually acted to protect it's people. I'm fully aware most places in the world have it much much harder than us (which is a euphemism if there was ever one), and it will keep going on for quite a while. I'm certainly not laughing at that, except in certain context and in the most sardonic way. And I'm fully aware we, the lucky ones, have a part to do to help the not-so-lucky ones who are currently living in misery.


A birth, however, is a happy event. (At least, one should hope so.) So a babyboom means a bunch of happy events for a lot of people. And looking at the bright side of things, I will certainly joke about happy events without restraint.

[Hank001]

My score at present is 5 (that's right) Five vaccinations and 0 antibodies. I'm in the US Veterans Administration health care system and am undergoing Monoclonal Antibodies treatment. Surviving a bone cancer left me with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in my right shoulder and arm. That and treatments for ARMD (Macular Degeneration) means I'm about as immuno compromised as it gets.

That having been put forward, my advice is in two important parts: Step 1; to get vaccinated and once you are go to Step 2 (Which most people miss); get checked for Covid antibodies to see if the vaccinations took effect!

Too many people my age (65) I've seen catching Covid 19 did Step 1 and not Step 2.

[felter]

So I got my letter in, giving me an appointment for a booster jab. Now if you were to ask me to set up some place that is the most inconvenient place for someone to go, I would do it at the place they wanted me to go to for me, it would be over a 10-mile round trip by foot as the only way I would have been able to get there is by walking as I have no car. So they give you a phone number to use to rearrange your appointment. OMG what a farce that is the first thing they tell you is to use the internet, and they throw a long web address at you, so the letter tells you to phone, the phone tells you to use the internet and guess what, the website tells you to phone to rearrange an appointment and even if you do try and use the website it gets to a point where it wants to know what injection you are trying to arrange with two options there is no booster option, Meanwhile trying to use the phone is a joke as it's an options but whoever set it up made a total and utter mess of it when I got to the third option I had absolutely no idea what the hell the message was going on about and that was as far as I got.

Luckily for me anyway I knew they had a vaccine drop in just up the road, and I was passing that way to get my prescription, so I did that I just dropped in and got my booster, I was telling them about it and of course they said they had heard it over and over from many different people. Whoever organised this mess should not be allowed to do anything like this again, I mean, it is so bad it's unbelievable.

I'm not finished. I look after my mother, she is 89, and she got her appointment today for hers, and it is even worse she has to go even further than I was going to have to go but for her she could get a bus, here's the thing, I did say she was 89 she can barely walk to the end of the street if she goes anywhere she has a little buggy, but she can't take it on the bus, and we sold the car so how the hell is she meant to get there. When I mentioned that to the guy that was giving mines, he told me she is supposed to be getting it at home, someone is supposed to come to her. Remember I tried to use the phone and the internet to solve my simple problem without success, how are we meant to take care of hers.

It is a total and utter shambles, and whoever is in charge of all of this should be ashamed of their selves.

[Hank001]

felter,,

You just met the nasty realities behind a Covid response that's became so politicized that the only real procedures being followed are being made up at the local level and nobody involved wants to really face making them public for fear of an ugly backlash.

[CBJ]

You may be confusing felter's UK situation with what's happening in the US. There is very little "ugly backlash" in the UK to sensible measures being put in place, and relatively little politicisation of the issue either. His frustration is with the bureaucratic incompetence.

[Hank001]

Thank you CJB I was.

My apologies to felter.