Coronavirus, Monkeypox, and Other Contagious Diseases

[LFC]

About a month old but here's a study on the aftereffects of people who had COVID infections. It's not good.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed, it has become clear that many survivors — even those who had mild cases — continue to manage a variety of health problems long after the initial infection should have resolved. In what is believed to be the largest comprehensive study of long COVID-19 to date, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showed that COVID-19 survivors — including those not sick enough to be hospitalized — have an increased risk of death in the six months following diagnosis with the virus.

The researchers also have catalogued the numerous diseases associated with COVID-19, providing a big-picture overview of the long-term complications of COVID-19 and revealing the massive burden this disease is likely to place on the world’s population in the coming years.

The study, involving more than 87,000 COVID-19 patients and nearly 5 million control patients in a federal database, appears online April 22 in the journal Nature.

“Our study demonstrates that up to six months after diagnosis, the risk of death following even a mild case of COVID-19 is not trivial and increases with disease severity,” said senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, an assistant professor of medicine. “It is not an exaggeration to say that long COVID-19 — the long-term health consequences of COVID-19 — is America’s next big health crisis. Given that more than 30 million Americans have been infected with this virus, and given that the burden of long COVID-19 is substantial, the lingering effects of this disease will reverberate for many years and even decades. Physicians must be vigilant in evaluating people who have had COVID-19. These patients will need integrated, multidisciplinary care.”

In the new study, the researchers were able to calculate the potential scale of the problems first glimpsed from anecdotal accounts and smaller studies that hinted at the wide-ranging side effects of surviving COVID-19, from breathing problems and irregular heart rhythms to mental health issues and hair loss.

“This study differs from others that have looked at long COVID-19 because, rather than focusing on just the neurologic or cardiovascular complications, for example, we took a broad view and used the vast databases of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to comprehensively catalog all diseases that may be attributable to COVID-19,” said Al-Aly, also director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center and chief of the Research and Education Service at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.

The investigators showed that, after surviving the initial infection (beyond the first 30 days of illness), COVID-19 survivors had an almost 60% increased risk of death over the following six months compared with the general population. At the six-month mark, excess deaths among all COVID-19 survivors were estimated at eight people per 1,000 patients. Among patients who were ill enough to be hospitalized with COVID-19 and who survived beyond the first 30 days of illness, there were 29 excess deaths per 1,000 patients over the following six months.

“These later deaths due to long-term complications of the infection are not necessarily recorded as deaths due to COVID-19,” Al-Aly said. “As far as total pandemic death toll, these numbers suggest that the deaths we’re counting due to the immediate viral infection are only the tip of the iceberg.”

The breadth of conditions likely caused by COVID listed in the article is pretty bad as well.

[LFC]

More on Republicans being the number one group refusing to get vaccinated.

According to a new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, those who identified as Republican were the least likely to say they’d already gotten the vaccine — just 45 percent of GOP-identifying respondents said they’d received the shot. And 41 percent of Republican respondents said they had no plan to get the vaccine.

That’s a striking contrast with Democrats and even independents. Just 4 percent of Democrats said they wouldn’t get vaccinate and 27 percent of independents indicated the same. The new poll was conducted between May 4 and 10 with a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percentage points.

As NPR’s coverage of the new poll points out, supply is not the issue. The White House said just this afternoon that President Biden will soon announce that 20 million surplus doses of the vaccine will be sent overseas by the end of June.

About 59 percent of adults in the United States say they’ve been vaccinated and 14 percent have plans to do so, according to the new poll. And as demand for the shot decreases — many public health officials across the country have indicated a slow-down in demand for vaccine appointments — state and local government officials are trying to come up with unique ways to, essentially, bribe folks into getting vaccinated.

[LFC]

A bit of good news.

The Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines should remain highly effective against two coronavirus variants first identified in India, according to new research carried out by US scientists.

The lab-based study was carried out by the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Langone Center and is considered preliminary because it has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

"What we found is that the vaccine's antibodies are a little bit weaker against the variants, but not enough that we think it would have much of an effect on the protective ability of the vaccines," senior author Nathaniel "Ned" Landau told AFP on Monday.

[Deleted]

"One of us always tells the truth; the other always lies. You can ask us each one question. How do you figure out if we’re anti-maskers or vaccinated?”

[LFC]

The right-wing continues to melt down over reality. Here are some things I "learned" recently.

Vaccines are going to kill people within 3 years and the unvaccinated will inherit the earth.

A TX state senator who pushed the hydroxychloroquine wants to force employers to accept the unvaccinated as employees. So much for at will employment.

A LA state representative says people are dying from the vaccine.

And then there's Laura Ingraham at Faux News screeching that the evil of using an "experimental" vaccine on children is going to cost Democrats votes.

[HockeyDon]

May 18, 2021 20:04:23 GMT LFC said:

The right-wing continues to melt down over reality. Here are some things I "learned" recently.

Vaccines are going to kill people within 3 years and the unvaccinated will inherit the earth.

A TX state senator who pushed the hydroxychloroquine wants to force employers to accept the unvaccinated as employees. So much for at will employment.

A LA state representative says people are dying from the vaccine.

And then there's Laura Ingraham at Faux News screeching that the evil of using an "experimental" vaccine on children is going to cost Democrats votes.

My sister-in-law falls into that first and third category.

My wife recently became very upset after speaking with her sister and hearing all the insanity. SIL actually recommended drinking a small amount of TURPENTINE mixed with water every day to counteract the vaccine!

My mind, it is boggled.

[Traveler]

Yup, them rural counties are already getting nailed more than the blue counties. 

Over the past week, those seven states reported per capita case rates that were about 10% lower on average than those states that haven't yet vaccinated as many adults, according to JHU data -- an average of about 66 new cases per 100,000 people, compared to about 73 cases per 100,000 people.


And the gap in case rates widens along with disparities in vaccination rates.


Ten states have vaccinated less than half of their adult residents with at least one dose, and their average per capita case rate was about 19% higher than those seven states that have already reached the Biden administration's goal.


The 10 states that have vaccinated less than half of their adult residents -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming -- reported an average of more than 78 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week.

Let 'em die.  

[AnBr]

[Deleted]

Love me a big bowl of Pho! I can smell the aroma wafting from the giant bowl.

[Traveler]

Here is a pretty damning take on the lab origin from the NYT Covid reporter.    Very long, but well worth the read.  The Chinese are coming across as pretty despicable on how they handled the breakout, let alone being the likely source.  

[LFC]

May 25, 2021 12:19:53 GMT Traveler said:

Here is a pretty damning take on the lab origin from the NYT Covid reporter.    Very long, but well worth the read.  The Chinese are coming across as pretty despicable on how they handled the breakout, let alone being the likely source.  

I don't think it says that at all, just that there is increasing evidence (though not yet hard evidence) the lab could be the source. The author noted this on evidence of animal based infection as well:

The hardest evidence that it was an animal is still what it was early last year: On January 1, right after the market was closed down, and then again on January 12, Huazhong Agricultural University and Dr. Shi’s Institute gathered almost 600 samples from the block-long warren of shuttered stalls.

Of those swabs, about six percent were positive for the virus, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency. Most came from the western end, where the wildlife was sold. And most, Dr. Shi said, were from spots near or below floor level — the handles of roll down steel shutters and the drains over the floor gutters.

Finding virus in six percent of surface samples was more than might be expected even in a hospital during flu season, Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary geneticist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle who does flu studies told me last year.

And the most logical explanation for finding that much virus on the floor and in the drains, he speculated, was not coughing humans. It was the blood of a butchered animal being sloshed around as the market was hosed out.

This part cuts to the heart of the Faux News screeching that Dr. Fauci authorized money to go into dangerous virus research in Wuhan that nobody knew about, something that always struck me as bullshit. If Trump could have destroyed Fauci's reputation with even incidental funding of a closely related project he would have.

Also, I was offended by some aspects, such as his attacks on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci of the National Institutes of Health and Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, both of whom I have known for years; I know both are dedicated to saving lives, and they have always told me the truth — or what they honestly believed to be the truth at the time, because evidence sometimes changes. They are now both getting death threats, and that is repulsive.

The N.I.H.-funded EcoHealth Alliance does not do dangerous lab research; it doesn’t even have a lab. It hunts for dangerous viruses in the field; its zoologists teach people how to safely gather samples from bats, birds, chimpanzees and other creatures fortified with claws, teeth, beaks, muscles and pathogens.

That’s work I consider as essential as staffing the radar stations that watch for missiles coming over the North Pole. The Trump administration was insane to cut off funding for it. You need to know what’s coming at you. Actually cooking up novel threats is a different matter, of which more below.

All in all this article is definitely worth the read. Lots of good and real info without the sensationalism.

[pnwguy]

May 24, 2021 14:22:32 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

Love me a big bowl of Pho! I can smell the aroma wafting from the giant bowl.

Me too.  Hundreds of Vietnamese were re-settled in Portland after the war, and we have Pho restaurants aplenty here.  It's my go-to comfort food when I have a head cold.  

[LFC]

This is a nice milestone. Now if the MAGAts who refuse to be vaccinated and refuse to wear masks would just die of COVID we could have a much safer country.

The U.S. is set to reach a critical milestone in its COVID-19 vaccination efforts on Tuesday.

A White House official stated on background that 50 percent of American adults will be fully vaccinated on Tuesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 61.5 percent of American adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and that nearly 40 percent of the total population is fully vaccinated.

On May 4, President Joe Biden set a new goal for 70 percent of the adult population to receive at least one shot by July 4 and to have 160 million adults vaccinated by then.

[Deleted]

May 25, 2021 17:23:54 GMT pnwguy said:

May 24, 2021 14:22:32 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

Love me a big bowl of Pho! I can smell the aroma wafting from the giant bowl.

Me too.  Hundreds of Vietnamese were re-settled in Portland after the war, and we have Pho restaurants aplenty here.  It's my go-to comfort food when I have a head cold.  

You're killing me. Where I live, if one doesn't like BBQ one's in tough luck. The Vietnamese, and every other "ethnic" restaurant in town aren't something to rave about. 

The best Vietnamese I have had was in Las Vegas. On another day I might say it was in the Bay area. NYC, Washington DC were great too but it's been a few years since I have been to those restaurants. Memory has faded a bit. The best Korean was in NYC, hands down. Surprisingly, I have had plenty of surprisingly good Thai in many cities. Alas, where I live, it's overpriced shit.

[Traveler]

May 25, 2021 17:24:38 GMT LFC said:

This is a nice milestone. Now if the MAGAts who refuse to be vaccinated and refuse to wear masks would just die of COVID we could have a much safer country.

The U.S. is set to reach a critical milestone in its COVID-19 vaccination efforts on Tuesday.

A White House official stated on background that 50 percent of American adults will be fully vaccinated on Tuesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 61.5 percent of American adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and that nearly 40 percent of the total population is fully vaccinated.

On May 4, President Joe Biden set a new goal for 70 percent of the adult population to receive at least one shot by July 4 and to have 160 million adults vaccinated by then.

This is a great illustration of exactly how bad it still is for the unvaccinated.   

The country’s declining covid-19 case rates present an unrealistically optimistic perspective for half of the nation — the half that is still not vaccinated.

As more people receive vaccines, covid-19 cases are occurring mostly in the increasingly narrow slice of the unprotected population. So The Washington Post adjusted its case, death and hospitalization rates to account for that — and found that in some places, the virus continues to rage among those who haven’t received a shot.
[...]
Washington state has been publicizing the extreme threat of hospitalization for unvaccinated people. It said unvaccinated seniors are 11 times as likely to get hospitalized than seniors who got the shot. For unvaccinated people age 45 to 64, the chance of covid-19 hospitalization is 18 times higher.

Let 'em enjoy long covid if they survive.   Why the CDC didn't emphasize masks not needed for unvaccinated is beyond me.  Plus not setting a central clearing house for vaccination certificates?  That is inexcusable.  I don't want federal regs.  I just want verifiable proof so travel, lodging and dining can be safer. 


I am getting kind of pissed at Biden's choices so far.  Contradictory messages at best.  Him wearing a mask outside?  What does that say?  No wonder folks are confused.  

[Traveler]

May 25, 2021 16:46:47 GMT LFC said:

May 25, 2021 12:19:53 GMT Traveler said:

Here is a pretty damning take on the lab origin from the NYT Covid reporter.    Very long, but well worth the read.  The Chinese are coming across as pretty despicable on how they handled the breakout, let alone being the likely source.  

I don't think it says that at all, just that there is increasing evidence (though not yet hard evidence) the lab could be the source. The author noted this on evidence of animal based infection as well:

All in all this article is definitely worth the read. Lots of good and real info without the sensationalism.

As for being the likely source, that may overstate the case. But absent ANY evidence to the contrary, Occam's razor is looking sharp.  I couldn't read the WSJ article about the 3 scientists from the lab that got Covid symptoms in November 2019.  BSL-2 is awfully lax.  

[LFC]

May 25, 2021 19:05:27 GMT Traveler said:

 BSL-2 is awfully lax.  

The piece I think you posted earlier on that and BactPhD's response scared the f***ing shit out of me. The wild sources are scary enough and have taken plenty of lives in the past. But monkeying around with dangerous viruses without following tight protocols is unconscionable ... but unfortunately very human.

[goldenvalley]

I wonder how this will get played in right wing media. "Trump was right!" My response is "So what?" At the time it didn't matter whether it escaped from a lab or not. US citizens were sick and dying from it. What the Administration needed to talk about was the need for medical care and all that entails, on how to stop or reduce the spread...you know, the immediate stuff that has direct impact on US lives that he avoided talking about at all costs.

[LFC]

Vox has a piece titled Why the CDC’s mask guidelines are scientifically sound — if you actually read them. The problem we have in this country is the number of people who demand things be made to fit their 10 second attention spans.

After a year of public health guidance to wear masks whenever we are out in public, taking them off after being vaccinated may feel ... weird. The trauma of the pandemic has etched a new set of social norms deep within many minds. And central to those norms is mask-wearing.

So it’s understandable that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s surprise announcement last week that it had changed its masking guidelines for fully vaccinated people feels like whiplash. The CDC now says those who are fully vaccinated (or two weeks after their final dose of the vaccine) can “resume activities without wearing masks or physically distancing” in places that allow it. (The CDC also stresses extra caution, and a consultation with a physician, for those vaccinated who have weakened immune systems or are on immune-system-suppressing drugs.)

There are a lot of fair arguments circulating that these guidelines were issued prematurely and lacking some nuance. And it’s hard to know how unvaccinated people, and those who never intend to be vaccinated, will respond, particularly as local communities and businesses grow laxer when it comes to enforcing masking. The guidelines also neglect the reality that the absolute risk for Covid-19 infections among the vaccinated is dependent on the level of Covid-19 spread in a community. Plus, there’s still uncertainty about what to do about children under the age of 12, who currently cannot be vaccinated.

These arguments are worthy of discussion. But they also can distract us from something important at the core of the CDC’s guidelines: There’s good science to indicate that, in an ideal world where everyone does follow these guidelines, fully vaccinated people really can feel comfortable taking their masks off. These vaccines are really good. They prevent disease, infection, and transmission the majority of the time. And the best thing an individual can do to help end the pandemic is to get vaccinated.

“The return to normal activities is safe for vaccinated people, there is no debate about this fact,” Jeffrey Duchin, a physician with the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told reporters in a news briefing on Thursday. “However, the announcement led to widespread confusion and frustration because it was unexpected and needed context.”

Before we get to the confusion, let’s talk about why scientists and the CDC are so confident that most fully vaccinated people can go maskless.

[Traveler]

Turns out that reference to the sick epidemiologists was right. 

The announcement comes after a US intelligence report found several researchers at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized -- a new detail that fueled further debate about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

It goes on to say both hypotheses are still viable, but this sure tilts Occam's Razor.  China can resolve this easily.  Show us the records.  If they don't, we should hammer them mercilessly. Sorry, but given the BS the Chinese fling, it's about time they got it back, and but good.  Xi is not happy with Biden, and this won't help.  

I am growing to despise their leadership.  Whose nationalism btw is enthusiastically embraced by most of the citizens.  Talk about classic inferiority complex.  Not good, considering I spent years there trying to help them.  And got shafted for my efforts.  Now their biggest steel SOE is back asking us to help their water resources group. Normally we would jump at such a chance.  But my partners and I consider that a lost cause.

[Traveler]

Turns out that the second shot delay substantially increases resistance.   

A delay in getting the second shot not only allows the existing supply of shots to be more widely distributed, it boosts their protective power by giving the immune system more time to respond to the first inoculation. Levels of antibodies produced to fight off the virus are 20% to 300% higher when the follow-up vaccine comes later, new research shows.

Here is the original study.  

[goldenvalley]

The Australian state of Victoria is imposing a week long lock down due to a COVID surge.

Authorities have so far found 26 cases, and identified 150 sites where people may have been exposed to the virus.

There is growing anxiety over the outbreak which reminds many locals of a devastating second wave that swept the state last year.

Victoria's acting Premier James Merlino said the outbreak involved a highly contagious strain of the virus, the B.1.617 variant. A returned traveller was infected with the strain, which Mr Merlino said was spreading "faster than we have ever recorded".

There seems to be contact tracing going on.

Cases have been found across the state with links to a large number of venues, including packed football games at stadiums in Melbourne.

"With 10,000 primary and secondary contacts of cases, with more than 150 exposure sites right around the state of Victoria, we need to act now," Mr Merlino said.
"If we wait too long, this thing will get away from us."

What about vaccinations? 

Australia has staved off widespread transmission of the virus through strict border controls, snap lockdowns and quarantine measures.

It has also been slow to vaccinate its population, and the latest outbreak has prompted renewed calls for Australians to get their jab.

The country's Covid immunisation rollout has been beset with delays due to supply and logistical problems, as well as rising hesitancy to get the jab among some groups. So far, less than 10% of the population has been vaccinated.

At least the US is doing better than that with vaccinations. 

[LFC]

The owner of Fiddlehead Knucklehead Cafe is at it again.

Customers at one Northern California cafe were taken aback Monday morning after they got a glimpse of the new store policy that greeted them at the door.

“$5 FEE ADDED TO ORDERS PLACED WHILE WEARING A FACE MASK,” read the poster on the glass window at Fiddlehead’s Cafe in Mendocino. A second sign with the same memo was located by the register.

Just below the large print were two additional notes on the poster that warned guests if they were "caught bragging" about their vaccines “an additional $5 fee” would be added to their bill. The sign claims the fees will be donated to local charities assisting domestic abuse victims. (Previously, Fiddlehead’s Cafe had a second sign on its storefront that’s circulated on social media and read “Get your free COVID-19 vaccine card here!” The sign has since been removed.)

Owner Chris Castleman, who isn't new to sharing his political views, says that some customers have paid the $5 fee, while others have been outraged. Castleman blamed this outrage not on his mask fee but on the charitable component.

“I’ve been told this whole time that wearing a mask is a small price to pay,” Castleman said. “Some people get shocked by the sign but to see them turn around and get disgusted ... when they’re asked to pay $5 [for charity], it’s not in their wheelhouse. It’s not something they’re choosing to do.”

Sure thing, stupid. It's not that you're a f***ing irresponsible, selfish, anti-science moron bent on endangering the lives of residents all for your own personal comfort. It's that they don't like charity. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

[Traveler]

Getting back to the bug, this is some encouraging news.

People who recover from mild COVID-19 have bone-marrow cells that can churn out antibodies for decades, though viral variants could dampen some of the protection they offer.

[AnBr]