Coronavirus 2020-22

[mangamuscle]

Call me an alarmist, but last year (at least where I live) we had several months where daily deaths and cases were very low, then delta hit and when it seemed that it was under control, then came omicron.

I continue to use a face mask whenever I leave my house, at least in my country it has not been politicized so most people couldn't care less and I couldn't care less what strangers might think. It continues to be required to wear one indoors.

Aren't 2.0 vaccines for coivd19 due to be released by now?

[Key Board]

my work place infection numbers SPIKED very high during Delta and Omicron.
And those were just the ones that were sick enough to get tested

Infection reports are less often nowadays, so maybe enough people have the antibodies now. (vaccinated or infected)

But as doctors say, the infection wave cycles around the globe, immunity wanes, not everyone is equally prepared, and we could get another new variant of concern.

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[Yu Ominae]

Looks like Singapore's dropping the VTLs in Changi Airport by April.

Good to hear.

Hearing about whether I can attend university for Masters is another thing.

[ramlaen]

Really surprised there are no comments about what is going on in China right now.

[Key Board]

Sinovac might be outdated

What’s happening there is very bad because it gives more chances for the virus to mutate and it WILL NOT be just their problem

Doubly bad because some politicians don’t understand object permanency, and just wants to pretend the pandemic is over

Also, additional lockdowns and measures in China will affect the supply line, again.

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[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by ramlaen

Really surprised there are no comments about what is going on in China right now.

Not only in China; here we are well into the 6th wave, the reported number of daily deads is higher than it was last November and yet it feel as if nothing happen.

[Jaden]

More covid than ever in Finland, but people and hospitals have calmed down and are coping with it. May be that the vaccine coverage is good enough. Or maybe it's getting worse, but we're too distracted by war news to notice. It's hard to tell.

Originally Posted by ramlaen

Really surprised there are no comments about what is going on in China right now.

Well, I do prefer the blasé attitude we're having about covid, to whatever the hell the Chinese are doing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shanghai/co...hanghai_adore/

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Well, I do prefer the blasé attitude we're having about covid, to whatever the hell the Chinese are doing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shanghai/co...hanghai_adore/

Those are not the only two options…

[Renegade334]

Welp, my mother just tested positive. The conductor of her church choir attended their Saturday rehearsal even though he already knew, by then, that he wasn't feeling quite well - an attitude that pisses me off, as it is reflective of the "after me, the flood!" mentality I previously mentioned on this thread - and probably infected most people there.

At least she's vaccinated.

No symptoms on my side, but I'm not keeping my fingers crossed about that since we live in the same house and are around each other a lot of the time. Will test myself tomorrow.

P.S. Called it. Five-six members of the choir have chimed in on the group's private Facebook page to confirm that they, too, have COVID. *sigh*
P.P.S. As for the lack of coverage, there's a noticeable burnout over COVID-related news that has been only too willing to swing the spotlight towards the Ukraine crisis, which is engendering a whole new regiment of concerns such as gas and fuel prices, food shortage (as Ukraine was quite an important breadbasket and a producer of fertilizer), etc. Also, the population's higher percentage of vaccinated people (compared to, say, last April) and the milder of symptoms of newer strains like Omicron (compared to the earlier ones) have infused us with a certain blasé "if we catch it, we'll just soldier through it and collect the free compassion points on Facebook/Twitter" attitude that little in common with the the more panic-stricken mentalities from the two previous years. I would even go as far as say there is a subconscious, fatalistic acceptance that COVID will linger on for a long time and could very well become something as recurrent as the seasonal flu---so, yeah, let's just change the channel and look for a more novel tune.

[Yu Ominae]

Well had the big talk on moving to Singapore (minimum one year maybe) to do my Masters. This time, looks like it worked out despite the tension and I'm triple vaxxed.

[ganbaru]

Did anyone managed to find out why the protection offered by the vaccines iare so short? A lot of vaccine need booster after some time, some others need multiple doses to be effective, that is a established fact but why the Covid vaccines offer such short-lived protection?

[Renegade334]

It has to do with the memory retention of the human body's B and T cells, which produce antibodies and spearhead your immune system's response against internal threats.

mRNA vaccines are actually extremely fragile (hence why they must be frozen); it takes very little to dismantle the mRNA (which is suspended inside the carrier fluid, IIRC, within a blob of fat - but don't quote me on this), which contains instructions on how to produce the COVID spike protein. When the vaccine is injected into muscular tissue, the injection site's muscle cells are tricked by the mRNA into temporarily manufacturing the spike proteins, which then go on to trigger a immune response. By the time that happens, the mRNA you were given has been chopped to pieces (after being read) and is being mopped up...and your DNA, your precious DNA, has retained nothing (OTOH, the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines use harmless adenoviruses to inject code into your DNA).

Cue in the memory B cells, which are lymphocytes (found in your spleen and lymph nodes, AKA your germinal centers) that, when presented with antigens, will turn into effector B cells (AKA plasma cells) and produce a large amount of specialized antibodies. These effector B cells and the antibodies will linger inside you for a long time - several months - and in certain cases will even last decades. It's not exactly well-understood why in certain pathologies the protection can last only weeks and in other cases, years, but in COVID's case, it was simply determined that the B cells producing spike protein-hunting antibodies usually last up to six months, at which point a booster is needed to trigger another "educative" immune response.

T-cells are supposed to last even longer, but six months is typically the milestone where your body is in need of a refresher.


As for me, well, I'm just emerging from a bad brush with COVID (passed on to me by my mother). Two days with poor sleep due to fever, followed by two days of little to no sleep due to my nose and throat acting up (my throat was swollen three days into the affair, which had me producing enough saliva to fill whole jerrycans, on top of making the simple act of swallowing a rather painful challenge). Thankfully our family doctor prescribed some azithromycin for relief; I'm not sure how much longer I could have suffered going to the faucet every two minutes, day and night, to expel all that damn saliva and phlegm. Now I'm just dealing with excess mucus in my throat and two daily doses of acetylcysteine.
It is actually time for me to think about getting a booster, since I received my second Moderna dose in early November.

[Jaden]

It's not exactly well-understood why in certain pathologies the protection can last only weeks and in other cases, years, but in COVID's case, it was simply determined that the B cells producing spike protein-hunting antibodies usually last up to six months, at which point a booster is needed to trigger another "educative" immune response.

T-cells are supposed to last even longer, but six months is typically the milestone where your body is in need of a refresher.

I haven't seen any research suggesting that memory cells would be depleted after 6 months, and I wouldn't expect that to happen, especially in people that received 1-2 boosters. So I do want to contest this a little bit...

I think the problem is that in severe cases of COVID (high initial load + susceptible individual) the virus is simply so aggressive that by the time lymphocytes repopulate and antibody levels go up, the damage is already done and recovery takes a long time even if virus is cleared up. But this speculation is further confounded by all the new virus variants, which researchers have a hard time keeping up with.

In that case, the only way to protect against these severe cases is to not rely on immunological memory, but have antibodies in circulation at all times. And this would be the reasoning to have short vaccine intervals for high-risk groups. In the early post-vaccination studies, tracking the antibody levels and their rate of decline was of very high intrest. For other diseases, immunization research hasn't shown such intrest in measuring circulating antibodies. It's a new thing for this pandemic, so that's why I draw this conclusion.

No way to know how long memory lymphocytes last for COVID, since people are still constantly getting a reset from boosters. But just based on textbook immunology, it should be a period measured in years and possibly decades.

[Yu Ominae]

John Daub (American expat living long term in Japan, he's married there with kids) explains on the details with Japan allowing some countries to have tour groups from there (eg gotta be an American/Singaporean/Thai/Australian) before June.

[Last Sinner]

Australia now has the highest infection rate in the world at the moment. Granted, part of the numbers is that we do acknowledge positive RAT tests while other countries don't. But still, the attitude is pathetic. Aside from public transport and any shop that says you have to wear a mask, a clear majority aren't. And this became a real federal election deciding factor tonight. Western Australia, already with a very popular Labor state premier, basically told Morrison and the Liberals to categorically rack off by swinging numerous federal seats normally well in Liberal control to Labor. Eastern states scattered their votes to independents and the Greens instead but still gave Labor some gains. At present, Labor has been declared the election winner and may just crawl over the line for a majority government. (Fyi, Labor is left, Liberal is right in Australia.)

Refusing to obtain any vaccinations until multiple states were under significant threat in 2021 was sadly not even close to the most incompetent/fatal thing Morrison did in the last few years (racking off to Hawaii during the 2020 bushfires, refusing to act about the 2022 New South Wales floods until around 2 weeks after), but his border war with Western Australia was sickening. McGowan standing firm and refusing to open the borders until there was an acceptable vaccination level has proven to be a good measure, but ever since February, their case numbers just keep climbing. I'm close to the only person at work still wearing a mask anymore, but I don't care. The casual chat of a seeming majority of people saying they caught the rona is just not right. I see case numbers getting far worse here. I just hope Albanese can find a way to give people some assistance and that if measures to contain the spread are required again, that they will listen to him.

[mangamuscle]

Well, where I live masks are no longer required by law to use indoors and the net result has been a creeping increment of cases. Add this hellish heat wave where many people will go to the nearest mall to stay fresh and I can see cases doubling soon enough. I don't care if they are reinfections or people that didn't (and now can't) get vaccinated, I am staying under my rock like Patrick Star and comfortably watch the world burn >_<

On a side note, I hope this new hepatitis cases are not linked to long covid (aka prehistorical virus awakened by covid19) because that would mean this pandemic is no longer only targeting "old or unhealthy adults".

[Yu Ominae]

My friend in Canada messaged me about Japan gradually opening up.

[mangamuscle]

and here we go again:

Quick and stealthy ‘Scrabble variants’ are poised to drive a winter Covid-19 surge

https://us.cnn.com/2022/10/20/health...rge/index.html

The question is "how bad is this winter surge going to be?" as in "nope, it is not going to be good".

[ganbaru]

HELL NO To A 'Pandemic Amnesty' For Fauci, Elites | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS08s5crqPY

[Key Board]

government should always be hold accountable

But what happens when massive disinformation has caused people to disagree on what the government did right and what the government did wrong

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