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*** OFFICIAL *** COVID-19 CoronaVirus Thread. Fresh epidemic fears as child pneumonia cases surge in Europe after China outbreak. NOW in USA (19 Viewers)

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I don't expect my GP to know everything but I do expect after 2 years for him to have a more definitive answer.

Brutal honesty: Just collecting Internet anecdotes over the past 2+ years ... but it's apparent that too many doctors, nurse practitioners, and nurses know little about COVID in general and COVID vaccinations in particular. If personally invested in learning more and staying on top of COVID, medical training can be invaluable in parsing dense, not-for-laymen information. The flip side, though: If you're a medical provider and you decided early on that COVID was overblown ... that stance tends to get baked in and you'll err on the side of fewer vaccinations (i.e. dissuade patients from boosters) and fewer non-pharmaceutical interventions.


Corollary: It's very easy -- if you care to -- to find a doctor who'll pretty much tell you what you want to hear about COVID. Not saying that anyone here doctor-shopped to specifically find cavalier-about-COVID doctors. Just saying that it's not remarkable that many healthcare providers have turned out to not be particularly gung-ho about addressing COVID.

When i had covid and spoke to a doctor when i rebounded, the doctor told me that though i was symptomatic, if i didnt have a fever i was fine to go out maskless because "you cant be contagious if you dont have a fever". I asked even if im testing positive on an antigen test? And they said that i would test positive on an antigen for 90 days. I said, are you sure you dont mean PCR and the doctor said, no both i will test positive on for 90 days. So if i dont have a fever i am good to go. This was when i was in the thick of my covid symptoms. But really im not surprised by the ignorance of general covid information.
That is insane. You’d think all the years of medical school and experience treating people would wash away all that stupid, but I guess there’s just no helping some.
 
I don't expect my GP to know everything but I do expect after 2 years for him to have a more definitive answer.

Brutal honesty: Just collecting Internet anecdotes over the past 2+ years ... but it's apparent that too many doctors, nurse practitioners, and nurses know little about COVID in general and COVID vaccinations in particular. If personally invested in learning more and staying on top of COVID, medical training can be invaluable in parsing dense, not-for-laymen information. The flip side, though: If you're a medical provider and you decided early on that COVID was overblown ... that stance tends to get baked in and you'll err on the side of fewer vaccinations (i.e. dissuade patients from boosters) and fewer non-pharmaceutical interventions.


Corollary: It's very easy -- if you care to -- to find a doctor who'll pretty much tell you what you want to hear about COVID. Not saying that anyone here doctor-shopped to specifically find cavalier-about-COVID doctors. Just saying that it's not remarkable that many healthcare providers have turned out to not be particularly gung-ho about addressing COVID.

When i had covid and spoke to a doctor when i rebounded, the doctor told me that though i was symptomatic, if i didnt have a fever i was fine to go out maskless because "you cant be contagious if you dont have a fever". I asked even if im testing positive on an antigen test? And they said that i would test positive on an antigen for 90 days. I said, are you sure you dont mean PCR and the doctor said, no both i will test positive on for 90 days. So if i dont have a fever i am good to go. This was when i was in the thick of my covid symptoms. But really im not surprised by the ignorance of general covid information.
That is insane. You’d think all the years of medical school and experience treating people would wash away all that stupid, but I guess there’s just no helping some.
No infectious disease has been politicized like this before. At least in most of our lifetimes. That is almost assuredly the reasoning.
 
But if you really are looking to take the useless garbage, then this is for you:

 
Not my kid’s class, but after just one week of school there was a kindergarten teacher and aid who both tested positive. My friend’s son caught it from them and spread it to the whole house.
 
Pretty sure I had covid last week. Had same exact symptoms my son a month ago. Didn't have any tests to be sure.

Numbers here are still dropping, pretty close to pre omnicron.
 
There's bivalent shots available at local independent pharmacies near me, I'm waiting for some minor congestion to clear before getting mine.
 

and what stands out to me...her thoughts on treating this like the flu right now:

SARS-CoV-2 is mutating 4 times faster than the flu. It’s not seasonal nor annual. It’s not mutating in a ladder like form. And we do not have global surveillance systems in place. We expect and hope that COVID-19 will eventually be like the flu but to assume that has already happened is premature. I also think it is a gamble, as the virus continues to surprise us. To pivot the public—again—is risky.
 
well, um, this could thwart the progress of the pan-vaccines and nasal vaccines... MFers!


Pfizer is playing this wrong.

New-vaccine researchers can (and probably will) simply partner with a third party (e.g. a national drugstore chain) to administer mRNA vaccines to their control-group participants. There are plenty of Walgreens and CVS locations nationwide.

What Pfizer (and Moderna) should be doing is buying into these new vaccine efforts. Partner up with some of these smaller companies doing, say, nasal vaccine research. Provide funding for this new research in exchange for a portion of the potential profits later. The Operation Warp Speed money should mean that, for Pfizer and Moderna, a little extra risk is worth taking now for a likely big payoff later.
 
At the risk of importing a slap-fight ...

Did yesterday's "I got the BA.5 booster" thread in the FFA really get deep-sixed?

Not sure - with apologies to @Zasada, I don't think a separate thread was totally necessary but it also wasn't necessary for the folks taking a dump in the thread. I think discussing the new boosters in here is good.

Yeah I was excited to get the booster, and surprised that I missed the news. Figured I could do a PSA for others who were in the same boat as me.

I thought about getting sucked-in to the dumping in that thread (by explaining my rationale), but figured it wasn't worth it. It would have just driven more dumping.

:shrug:
 
At the risk of importing a slap-fight ...

Did yesterday's "I got the BA.5 booster" thread in the FFA really get deep-sixed?

Not sure - with apologies to @Zasada, I don't think a separate thread was totally necessary but it also wasn't necessary for the folks taking a dump in the thread. I think discussing the new boosters in here is good.

Yeah I was excited to get the booster, and surprised that I missed the news. Figured I could do a PSA for others who were in the same boat as me.

I thought about getting sucked-in to the dumping in that thread (by explaining my rationale), but figured it wasn't worth it. It would have just driven more dumping.

:shrug:

All good and honestly another thread is no big deal - people aren't starting a lot nowadays anyway. I appreciate the posts about the updated booster as I wasn't aware of it or it coming out except through the threads here. Scheduled mine for Friday along with my flu shot. Good luck!
 
My kids all had colds over the weekend and this week, and now I have some version of it as well. No fever (and not Covid), but not feeling great. Do I need to cancel my booster for tomorrow?
 
further data on Paxlovid seems to prove the earlier theories:

he goes into greater detail, but the tl;dr quote:
And yet droves are taking Paxlovid precisely on the hopes that it hastens symptom resolution. Others are taking Paxlovid hoping to decrease the risk of Long Covid. There is no evidence that Paxlovid either improves symptoms or prevents Long Covid.

and it DOES still provide great results for unvaccinated individuals
 
If this holds it could mean that antibody treatments become an effective tool along with the vaccines.

Layman's thought:

You know how the mRNA vaccines contain instructions for our cells to make SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins? And then a healthy immune system reacts by creating antibodies against those spike proteins?

I am curious as to whether an mRNA vaccine can elicit our cells to directly make antibodies? And if so, can it be the two promising antibodies that your link mentions? An antibody is probably a much more structurally complex than the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, so there's probably a reason this wouldn't work.
 
further data on Paxlovid seems to prove the earlier theories:

he goes into greater detail, but the tl;dr quote:
And yet droves are taking Paxlovid precisely on the hopes that it hastens symptom resolution. Others are taking Paxlovid hoping to decrease the risk of Long Covid. There is no evidence that Paxlovid either improves symptoms or prevents Long Covid.

and it DOES still provide great results for unvaccinated individuals
Interesting article thanks for sharing. For me when i took it it seemed to get rid of all symptoms(like immediately) then delay the bigger symptoms. I have no way of knowing if they would have been worse without it or if it simply delayed the inevitable.
 
If this holds it could mean that antibody treatments become an effective tool along with the vaccines.

Layman's thought:

You know how the mRNA vaccines contain instructions for our cells to make SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins? And then a healthy immune system reacts by creating antibodies against those spike proteins?

I am curious as to whether an mRNA vaccine can elicit our cells to directly make antibodies? And if so, can it be the two promising antibodies that your link mentions? An antibody is probably a much more structurally complex than the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, so there's probably a reason this wouldn't work.
I'm not sure we'd want to do that. The thymus has an incredibly complex series of events it goes through to ensure the t-cells it produces are not harmful to the body. I don't think we want human intervention in that process. It's much safer to create the protein and let the immune system do its thing.
 
My kids all had colds over the weekend and this week, and now I have some version of it as well. No fever (and not Covid), but not feeling great. Do I need to cancel my booster for tomorrow?
I am waiting for the little bit of congestion I have to clear before getting my booster.
 
My kids all had colds over the weekend and this week, and now I have some version of it as well. No fever (and not Covid), but not feeling great. Do I need to cancel my booster for tomorrow?

Are you relying on home tests to determine that its not COVID or did you get PCR?
People still do PCRs? I actually have a couple at-home PCRs that I can use before getting the shot.
 
I'm not sure we'd want to do that. The thymus has an incredibly complex series of events it goes through to ensure the t-cells it produces are not harmful to the body. I don't think we want human intervention in that process. It's much safer to create the protein and let the immune system do its thing.

... the next best thing, then, would be mRNA containing instructions for boutique protein structures that would elicit exactly those two antibodies (they have names - TAU-2212 and TAU-2303). It could even be proteins that haven't yet been detected on an actual SARS-CoV-2 virion.
 
The thymus has an incredibly complex series of events it goes through to ensure the t-cells it produces are not harmful to the body. I don't think we want human intervention in that process.
Thinking on this some: Monoclonal antibodies used for COVID treatments (the various "-mab"s) aren't processed through the thymus. What would be the difference?

IOW, if the thought is that mRNA-created antibodies might be treated as foreign cells by our immune system ... what keeps that from happening with existing monoclonal antibody treatments?
 
I am curious as to whether an mRNA vaccine can elicit our cells to directly make antibodies? And if so, can it be the two promising antibodies that your link mentions? An antibody is probably a much more structurally complex than the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, so there's probably a reason this wouldn't work.

Looking into the bolded: Antibodies are more complex than the spike protein, but by much less than I thought. The theoretical molecular weight for the spike protein is just under 80 kilodaltons (kDa), while that of a monoclonal antibody is around 150 kDa.
 
(NOTE: Recent figures in the Worldometers graphs can get large adjustments as much as two weeks after they first drop. Accordingly, I've waited ten days to let the last-week Monday (August 29) numbers settle in. They will likely rise slightly by next week's update.)



Updating numbers to see where things have been standing recently from a top-of-the-mountain view. All figures below are 7-day averages from Worldometers U.S. graphs here. In the United States:

CASES ON THU 09/08/2022
Thu 01/13/2022 - 826,760 <--OMICRON SURGE 2022 HIGH
Tue 02/01/2022 - 425,029
Thu 02/17/2022 - 116,616
Mon 02/28/2022 - 62,205
Mon 03/14/2022 - 32,900
Sat 04/02/2022 - 27,313 <--2022 LOW
Mon 04/18/2022 - 40,892
Mon 05/02/2022 - 63,279
Mon 05/16/2022 - 100,359
Mon 05/30/2022 - 110,505
Mon 06/13/2022 - 107,785
Mon 06/27/2022 - 113,557
Mon 07/11/2022 - 120,686
Fri 07/15/2022 - 133,047 <-- SPRING/SUMMER SURGE HIGH
Mon 07/18/2022 - 132,635
Sun 07/24/2022 - 132,199
Mon 08/01/2022 - 125,348
Mon 08/08/2022 - 112,032
Mon 08/15/2022 - 102,485
Mon 08/22/2022 - 93,832
Mon 08/29/2022 - 89,486 (est ~80,000 on 9/1/2022)
Tue 09/06/2022 - 64,766 <--provisional count


DEATHS ON THU 09/08/2022
Sun 01/29/2022 - 2,822 <--OMICRON SURGE 2022 HIGH
Fri 02/18/2022 - 2,190
Mon 02/28/2022 - 1,740
Mon 03/14/2022 - 1,105
Mon 03/28/2022 - 623
Mon 04/11/2022 - 487
Mon 05/02/2022 - 338
Sat 05/14/2022 - 284 <--2022 LOW
Mon 05/16/2022 - 289
Mon 06/06/2022 - 341
Mon 06/20/2022 - 318
Mon 07/04/2022 - 369
Mon 07/11/2022 - 396
Mon 07/18/2022 - 422
Mon 07/25/2022 - 444
Mon 08/01/2022 - 452
Mon 08/08/2022 - 504
Thu 08/11/2022 - 511 <--SPRING/SUMMER SURGE HIGH
Mon 08/15/2022 - 487
Mon 08/22/2022 - 460
Sun 08/28/2022 - 428
Mon 08/29/2022 - 424 estimated (349 on Thu 9/1/2022)
Tue 08/30/2022 - 419
Mon 09/05/2022 - 312 <--provisional count



CASES: 7-day average of confirmed COVID cases in the U.S. peaked at 825,929 on 1/13/2022, and was provisionally 89,486 on 8/29/2022. Starting from a peak on July 15, 2022, the 7-day case numbers has continued to decline for eight weeks now. There are signs that the decline may begin to accelerate.

DEATHS: 7-day average of confirmed COVID cases in the U.S. peaked at 2,756 on 1/29/2022, and is estimated** at about 424 on 8/29/2022. The 7-day average deaths on 8/11/2022 is the new spring/summer high, now adjusted to 511. A decline in deaths continues to show in the data. There is a fair chance that the Monday 9/5 number will remain below 400 even after adjustments, which will be something of a milestone.



For comparison: Low-water marks in the U.S. from summer 2021, 7-day averages after the initial thrust of vaccinations and before summer 2021's Delta surge.

CASES: 12,265 on 6/21/2021
DEATHS: 245 on 7/8/2021



** Worldometers' graph, for today, skips a number for 8/29/2022. The 424 is derived by splitting the difference between 8/28/2022 and 8/30/2022.
 
The thymus has an incredibly complex series of events it goes through to ensure the t-cells it produces are not harmful to the body. I don't think we want human intervention in that process.
Thinking on this some: Monoclonal antibodies used for COVID treatments (the various "-mab"s) aren't processed through the thymus. What would be the difference?

IOW, if the thought is that mRNA-created antibodies might be treated as foreign cells by our immune system ... what keeps that from happening with existing monoclonal antibody treatments?
Monoclonal antibodies have a specific instruction to look for a specific protein. Let me put my concern in nerdy application terms. If a person wants to update their personal information with their employer, we ask them to go to their HR portal and do the appropriate updates, right? We don't expect them to dig into the tons of different "behind the scenes" tables in the different databases where the data is stored and provide manual SQL statements hoping that they get things updated everywhere they need to get them updated. Your first comment I responded to, is a lot more like going into all the different tables and going to the screen is a lot more like introducing the protein. What you asked could likely be done, but there would be a TON of "updates" to do it correctly and a lot of trial/error to understand if it was done correctly. The more instruction that needs to be provided by a vaccine, the more risk we could make a mistake.

Hopefully the babble makes sense.
 
Hopefully the babble makes sense.

Check this out -- apparently, it doesn't have to be a human thymus. A mouse thymus will do the job as well.

I learned something today: I all thought all the -mab treatments were synthetic and essentially Tinkertoyed in a lab. Similar to the way the mRNA vaccines' RNA packages are assembled.

Instead, the -mabs are true biological products that require living beings (apparently mammals or whatever else has a thymus?) to produce them. One production method which people have heard about is harvesting convalescent plasma from people who've recovered from COVID. I'll bet a lot of the public is not hip to the little mouse-borne antibody factories that have been used since what? - the mid-2000s or so.

I love the names of the proprietary manufacturing platforms: Xenomouse. OmniRat. Kymouse. Sounds like Pokemon.

EDIT: "The thymus is present in all jawed vertebrates." Might be able to have fish-manufactured monoclonal antibodies. Interesting.
 
Hopefully the babble makes sense.

Check this out -- apparently, it doesn't have to be a human thymus. A mouse thymus will do the job as well.

I learned something today: I all thought all the -mab treatments were synthetic and essentially Tinkertoyed in a lab. Similar to the way the mRNA vaccines' RNA packages are assembled.

Instead, the -mabs are true biological products that require living beings (apparently mammals or whatever else has a thymus?) to produce them. One production method which people have heard about is harvesting convalescent plasma from people who've recovered from COVID. I'll bet a lot of the public is not hip to the little mouse-borne antibody factories that have been used since what? - the mid-2000s or so.

I love the names of the proprietary manufacturing platforms: Xenomouse. OmniRat. Kymouse. Sounds like Pokemon.

EDIT: "The thymus is present in all jawed vertebrates." Might be able to have fish-manufactured monoclonal antibodies. Interesting.
Correct....the antibodies are actual antibodies, just produced in someone/something other than the host. They are "living" things that were produced in AN immune system somewhere. Mice have very similar immune and cardiovascular systems to humans that's why so much research is done using them.
 
My family of four is going tomorrow for our bivalent boosters.

No one else in the household was eligible ... but I was able to get a second booster (4th shot of original formula) in mid-May. I've been considering delaying my bivalent booster until late October so that the BA.5 protection isn't waning so much by Christmas & New Year's. Of course, right now I'm running off of a four-month old booster ... so maybe it doesn't matter all that much.
 
Dang. Walgreens was packed with new COVID booster folks. I guess it’s been that way since it became available on Wednesday.
 
Dang. Walgreens was packed with new COVID booster folks. I guess it’s been that way since it became available on Wednesday.

I just canceled mine. Not feeling great still here. But now I travel to NYC next week and DC the following week. I was hoping to have the beginnings of that extra protection prior to all of the travel, meetings, and meals. Now I probably will wait a week after I am back from the second trip to make sure I don't have covid (let's hope) before getting the shot.
 
Dang. Walgreens was packed with new COVID booster folks. I guess it’s been that way since it became available on Wednesday.

I just canceled mine. Not feeling great still here. But now I travel to NYC next week and DC the following week. I was hoping to have the beginnings of that extra protection prior to all of the travel, meetings, and meals. Now I probably will wait a week after I am back from the second trip to make sure I don't have covid (let's hope) before getting the shot.
Plenty of places to get it in NYC if you wanted to get it here.
 
Dang. Walgreens was packed with new COVID booster folks. I guess it’s been that way since it became available on Wednesday.

I just canceled mine. Not feeling great still here. But now I travel to NYC next week and DC the following week. I was hoping to have the beginnings of that extra protection prior to all of the travel, meetings, and meals. Now I probably will wait a week after I am back from the second trip to make sure I don't have covid (let's hope) before getting the shot.
Plenty of places to get it in NYC if you wanted to get it here.

I have been knocked out for 24+ hours after each shot so far. So I need to get it when I can be down for a day and not in meetings.
 
Dang. Walgreens was packed with new COVID booster folks. I guess it’s been that way since it became available on Wednesday.

I just canceled mine. Not feeling great still here. But now I travel to NYC next week and DC the following week. I was hoping to have the beginnings of that extra protection prior to all of the travel, meetings, and meals. Now I probably will wait a week after I am back from the second trip to make sure I don't have covid (let's hope) before getting the shot.
Plenty of places to get it in NYC if you wanted to get it here.

I have been knocked out for 24+ hours after each shot so far. So I need to get it when I can be down for a day and not in meetings.
Bummer. Only the first shot made my arm very sore. The rest were mild to nada.
 
Dang. Walgreens was packed with new COVID booster folks. I guess it’s been that way since it became available on Wednesday.

I just canceled mine. Not feeling great still here. But now I travel to NYC next week and DC the following week. I was hoping to have the beginnings of that extra protection prior to all of the travel, meetings, and meals. Now I probably will wait a week after I am back from the second trip to make sure I don't have covid (let's hope) before getting the shot.
Plenty of places to get it in NYC if you wanted to get it here.

I have been knocked out for 24+ hours after each shot so far. So I need to get it when I can be down for a day and not in meetings.
Bummer. Only the first shot made my arm very sore. The rest were mild to nada.
Just curious, was this similar (or identical) to the reaction you fellas got from your last shot?
 
I was wiped out for all 3 of my shots...... each one was actually a little worse than the previous ... Moderna fwiw

its honestly why im debating the new booster. I was down half a day, 1.5 days, then almost 2......
 
I’ve only had this injection for 2+ hours, but I can say shot 2 and booster 1 (didn’t get 2) were little to no pain in arm nor immediate injection site.

ETA: Even shot 1 was way less painful than a tetanus shot imo. All Pfizer.
 
Dang. Walgreens was packed with new COVID booster folks. I guess it’s been that way since it became available on Wednesday.

I just canceled mine. Not feeling great still here. But now I travel to NYC next week and DC the following week. I was hoping to have the beginnings of that extra protection prior to all of the travel, meetings, and meals. Now I probably will wait a week after I am back from the second trip to make sure I don't have covid (let's hope) before getting the shot.
Plenty of places to get it in NYC if you wanted to get it here.

I have been knocked out for 24+ hours after each shot so far. So I need to get it when I can be down for a day and not in meetings.
ah ok. For me only the first two shots(moderna) hit me. The 3rd and 4th didnt really do much other than my arm hurt. But i know it depends on the person.
 
Got my booster and flu shots yesterday at CVS. Had an appointment at Rite Aid but when I got there they were like 'Sorry, we didn't get our shipment'. Drove by CVS on the way back home and saw on their sign they were promoting having boosters. Checked with them to confirm they had the updated one and a flu shot and got it as a walk in there. Arm is a bit sore today, but nothing horrible. I know it is somewhat controversial to some people but all I know is I've lost some people that were close to me and it wasn't to the covid vaccine. It was to the actual covid covid. I was vaccinated and boosted at the end of Oct. 2021. When Omicron hit almost everyone around me has had covid at some point including my wife, but I've managed to avoid it unless I was just one of the lucky asymptomatic ones. When she had it I tested regularly that week as I was also helping out getting my father to and from cancer treatments. Regardless, I know the vaccine and booster seems to have helped me out so I'm sticking with what has worked so far. Sign me up for the jab juice. (y)
 
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