COVID 19 GLOBAL

[lazarus]

On 10/24/2022 at 6:06 PM, fforest said:

Just file covid with the silly moon landings and 911 story and forget about it....

 

[bob lt]

I'm booked for covid booster November 5th, also  flu jab at the same time. 

Just had shingles jab, now only need to book pneumonia jab.

Will feel like a pin cushion. 

[fforest]

10 hours ago, lazarus said:

 

Edited October 30, 2022 by fforest

[Phantom51red]

10 hours ago, bob lt said:

I'm booked for covid booster November 5th, also  flu jab at the same time. 

Just had shingles jab, now only need to book pneumonia jab.

Will feel like a pin cushion. 

Same here got the email to make appointment,tho im not taking it this time,only took it originally to get back to thailand and needed for work aswell a year ago,needs must,now dont see the point,out of touch with the whole covid news and have been for months.

[boydeste]

11 hours ago, bob lt said:

I'm booked for covid booster November 5th, also  flu jab at the same time. 

Just had shingles jab, now only need to book pneumonia jab.

Will feel like a pin cushion. 

Hope there are no fireworks. 😅

[maipenrai]

I've got a couple of friends who have caught covid recently, one for the second time, and other local online acquaintances who describe their experiences and it really seems to have a wide variety of effects on different people - just like flu, really, when you think about it; I've had four shots now and I doubt I will bother with any more, especially since you don't need them to travel anymore. I've also had flu shots and shingles in the last year and figure I'm pretty well up to date. 

[fforest]

3 hours ago, maipenrai said:

I've got a couple of friends who have caught covid recently, one for the second time, and other local online acquaintances who describe their experiences and it really seems to have a wide variety of effects on different people - just like flu, really, when you think about it; I've had four shots now and I doubt I will bother with any more, especially since you don't need them to travel anymore. I've also had flu shots and shingles in the last year and figure I'm pretty well up to date. 

Its interesting how the C vaxes have lost popularity even with the faithful.....Once the T.V dropped the 24/7/365 coverage....Interest seems to have gone way way down...

[john luke]

The vaccine is a lot lower profile, certainly in UK, than it was perhaps twelve months ago.  I recently visited Singapore; as a country it appeared to have opened up more slowly than Thailand and mask use was compulsory in many public areas including the underground light rail system.  

 Today's covid is different and not as aggressive as the original covid.  

People will make their own decisions regarding vaccination; I had my Dual-variant Covid vaccine booster before I returned to Thailand.

[Bazle]

I learned yesterday that a friend-of-a-friend in the UK, aged mid-60s, average health, non-smoker, had a stroke the day after he had the latest Covid jab.

Re-affirms my conclusion it is best avoided.

[fforest]

1 hour ago, Bazle said:

I learned yesterday that a friend-of-a-friend in the UK, aged mid-60s, average health, non-smoker, had a stroke the day after he had the latest Covid jab.

Re-affirms my conclusion it is best avoided.

God only knows what they put in the Covid vaxes....But they might put MSG in the vaxes....

 

I personally avoid MSG when ever possible which is not easy when just about every food manufacturer on the face of this earth sneak this crap (that gives me a headache) into most foods..... 

 

To much MSG (glutimate) can absolutely set of a  brainstorm leading to a stroke...

 

https://sites.bu.edu/ombs/2019/04/16/glutamate-excitotoxicity-and-ischemic-stroke/

Apr 16, 2562 BE — Despite glutamate's importance in our everyday lives, too much glutamate can actually kill neurons, leading to stroke and death.

https://www.health.mil/Military-Health-Topics/Health-Readiness/Immunization-Healthcare/Clinical-Consultation-Services/Vaccine-Components

• Monosodium glutamate (MSG), a stabilizer that protects vaccines from heat, light, humidity or acidity while they are stored.

[fforest]

Some people are way more sensitive to MSG than others...Its said that 25% of the population experiences negative effects from MSG..

A vax with MSG could just be to much for some people..

 

[fygjam]

1 hour ago, fforest said:

God only knows what they put in the Covid vaxes....But they might put MSG in the vaxes....

By looking up the website of any regulatory authority which approved the vaccines you can find out exactly what is in the vaccines. No God required.

I know what is in both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and there isn't any MSG.

 

[lazarus]

[Horizondave]

13 hours ago, Bazle said:

I learned yesterday that a friend-of-a-friend in the UK, aged mid-60s, average health, non-smoker, had a stroke the day after he had the latest Covid jab.

Re-affirms my conclusion it is best avoided.

Well, I am aged mid 60s, average health, non-smoker and I didn't have a stroke the day after my latest Covid jab but this doesn't make news. 

Need to know more about the reasons why your friend had a stroke as many people have strokes every day in the UK, could be a complete coincidence and not related to the jab at all.

Of course, like any vaccine, tablet or drug there are those who will not benefit or have a negative reaction. From my knowledge of the Covid vaccine the likelihood of a serious negative reaction is infinitesimal compared to the positive benefits passed to millions who have had the jab.

There are probably many other vaccines and drugs that have far higher incidences of negative reaction but are still readily available for use every day, very little outcry there.

[Nightcrawler]

On 10/31/2022 at 5:07 AM, Bazle said:

I learned yesterday that a friend-of-a-friend in the UK, aged mid-60s, average health, non-smoker, had a stroke the day after he had the latest Covid jab.

Re-affirms my conclusion it is best avoided.

Sorry to hear that. Of course it could also be pure coincidence though if you balance it up with how many people you know who have recieved the vaccination and haven't had a stroke. 

I am over 60, a smoker and not particularly in great health and have not suffered a stroke (yet touch wood). Then again, I have not had Covid either. 

That said  since the more recent symptoms of the later strains of Covid are considerably milder⁰   I can understand why some may not wish to get the latest booster. Delta was the killer  especially amongst the more clinically vulnerable. 

The difference between then and now is that Covid is more endemic than pandemic.  Now that vaccinations are less or almost non mandatory in civil life, then the antivax movement is virtually silent now and have moved on to other things to worry about. 

These days it's far more of a choice  although at the same time, I think those who get the virus are less concerned about passing it on to others. That's why I had the booster.

The vaccines don't necessarily stop you catch Covid, but are meant to reduce the severity of symptoms, especially in the more clinically vulnerable.

That's just my take on things. 

 

[lazarus]

Just had my Moderna Bivalent Booster #2 + a flu shot two hours ago. Dose #3 (of the 4) was about a year ago.

So far still alive. Cleared my schedule for tomorrow just in case I'm feelin' it. Based on side effects from the past three I anticipate some heart flutters for a month or more. That's life in the vax lane.

So far no Covid for me (that I know of), and I plan to keep it that way. Haven't been sick at all for the past three years...healthiest period of my entire life. Access to good health care and the willingness to use it goes a long way (in my book).

Of course though...I think it's all a conspiracy! 🤡

. . .

New Covid Boosters Aren’t Better Than Old Ones, Study Finds
> Results show the new shots perform similarly to past ones
> Moderna, Pfizer boosters aim to protect against new variants

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-25/new-boosters-from-moderna-and-pfizer-aren-t-better-than-old-ones-study-shows

[lazarus]

2 hours ago, Nightcrawler said:

The difference between then and now is that Covid is more endemic than pandemic.  Now that vaccinations are less or almost non mandatory in civil life, then the antivax movement is virtually silent now and have moved on to other things to worry about. 

These days it's far more of a choice  although at the same time, I think those who get the virus are less concerned about passing it on to others. That's why I had the booster.

Exactly.

. . .

Too funny...

Yes, people are lying about their COVID symptoms. Here’s how to deal with it

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/pandemicproblems/article/covid-symptoms-17539720.php

Welcome to Pandemic Problems, an advice column that aims to help Bay Area residents solve their pandemic and post-pandemic conundrums — personal, practical or professional. As COVID evolves into an endemic disease, we know readers are trying to navigate the “new normal.” Send your questions and issues to:  [email protected].

[lazarus]

Info... (for the interested)

The current crop of immunity-dodging offshoots of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is unprecedented in its diversity, making it harder to predict coming waves of infection.

COVID ‘variant soup’ is making winter surges hard to predict
Descendants of Omicron are proliferating worldwide — and the same mutations are coming up again and again.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03445-6?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=0942c5f980-briefing-dy-20221102&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-0942c5f980-47091900

 

[fforest]

4 hours ago, lazarus said:

Info... (for the interested)

The current crop of immunity-dodging offshoots of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is unprecedented in its diversity, making it harder to predict coming waves of infection.

COVID ‘variant soup’ is making winter surges hard to predict
Descendants of Omicron are proliferating worldwide — and the same mutations are coming up again and again.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03445-6?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=0942c5f980-briefing-dy-20221102&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-0942c5f980-47091900

 

making it harder to predict coming waves of infection.

Nope...Not hard to predict at all......2118-2120 should be the next wave..I bet it's already in the planning stages...

[fygjam]

[lazarus]

7 hours ago, fforest said:

making it harder to predict coming waves of infection.

Nope...Not hard to predict at all......2118-2120 should be the next wave..I bet it's already in the planning stages...

Just eat your variant soup and you'll be just fine. 

[KhunDon]

fforest, the chef has made some soup especially for you. 
Dig in. 🤪

[Zeb]

If you’ve had COVID-19, watch out for stroke symptoms

Several studies now show an elevated risk of heart problems during and after an infection with SARS-CoV-2.

Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at the Yale School of Medicine, says he worries about two kinds of long COVID.

There’s the obvious version, in which people suffer prolonged virus symptoms such as fatigue, and a stealthier version, in which people recover, yet carry an added risk of blood clots and strokes.

He doesn’t want to panic people – most will probably be fine. But new studies confirm that some will develop an elevated risk of blood clots, strokes or heart attacks.

Given that most people have had COVID-19 by now, everyone should be more vigilant about the early warning signs, such as chest pain, unusual swelling, numbness or weakness, or sudden changes in balance, speech or vision.

Scary reports started to surface in the spring of 2020 of young people suffering deadly strokes during or right after a COVID-19 infection.

Doctors were starting to suspect COVID-19 was not just a respiratory disease but a blood vessel disease. Larger studies now back up their suspicions and showed that COVID-19 infections elevated everyone’s risk. That explained why younger people who should have had almost no risk were showing up with strokes, but they were just the tip of the iceberg. Patients who already smoked or had high blood pressure or diabetes went from high risk to even higher.

One recent study, published in the journal Heart – associated with the British Medical Journal – tracked 54,000 people in the UK for four and a half months. It concluded that those who’d been infected were 2.7 times more likely to develop venous thromboembolism – a dangerous type of blood clot – than those who had never been infected.

The study also showed that those who got infected but were not sick enough to be hospitalised were still 10 times more likely to die of any cause during the study period than their uninfected counterparts. People who’d been hospitalised for COVID-19 were about 100 times more likely to die during the study period.

Another new study published in Neurosurgery focused on the period when people were actively infected. It concluded that COVID-19 infection was associated with strokes, and that strokes that occurred in infected people were likely to be more severe and harder to treat with surgery.

Krumholz, who I met before the pandemic through his work on improving the way doctors conduct and evaluate studies, said they still didn’t have enough data to know how much these risks were mitigated by vaccination, or how long the elevated risk lasted. He said the medical community had long known that viruses could leave lingering effects, but until this pandemic, it had never been studied so thoroughly.

A consensus is forming that the lasting damage is caused by inflammation – a necessary part of our immune defence system, but one that can cause harm if it remains in high gear.

Playing Russian roulette
Not everyone who gets COVID-19 will suffer serious blood vessel inflammation, but the disease is still something of a roll of the dice – or, as physician Ziyad Al-Aly puts it, Russian roulette. That doesn’t mean people should despair or panic. Early treatment can save lives, which is why doctors urge people who’ve been infected not to ignore any warning sign, even if they weren’t previously at any known risk.

Al-Aly, who works at the Veterans Affairs St Louis Health Care System, was one of the first doctors to jump into studying long COVID and, more generally, the aftermath of infection. “Something about SARS-CoV-2 increases propensity to damaging the lining of the blood vessels and increases the probability of blood clotting,” he said.

“What makes this such a dangerous disease is mainly that it attacks these vessels,” said Pascal Jabbour, a neurosurgeon at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia. The disease can lead to inflammation in blood vessels all over the body, he said, including the gut, causing a condition called bowel ischemia. It’s also at the root of a circulatory problem known as COVID toes.

Jabbour is lead author of the Neurosurgery paper. I’d interviewed in the spring of 2020, after he’d led one of a handful of small studies showing preliminary but worrisome connections between strokes and COVID-19.

His newer research looks at 575 stroke patients – some with COVID-19 and some without. They found those with COVID-19 fared worse and were harder to treat with surgery aimed at opening blocked vessels. The infected group included younger, healthier people than the group of uninfected stroke patients, which is what you’d expect to see if infections were raising risk across the board.

‘You can’t imagine the attacks I got’

Some in the infected group had mild infections, and a few didn’t know they had COVID-19 until they showed up at the hospital with a stroke, Jabbour said. This further complicates the already complex task of tallying COVID-19 deaths. Should people who appear to have had died of a stroke and tested positive be counted as dying with COVID-19, or from COVID-19?

Even something as neutral as heart disease risk is politicised when it intersects with the pandemic. “You can’t imagine the attacks I got,” said Jabbour, after he appeared on CNN in 2020 discussing his early observations and study results. That polarisation has only deepened. Some people refuse to believe that COVID-19 can have lasting effects, and others are posting scare stories that the continued harsh lockdowns in China are part of a plan to triumph over the West as widespread long COVID collapses its workforce.

The reality is some people have been devastated by COVID-19, even as most fully recover. It takes time, good studies and a lot of cases to get an understanding of the after-effects of infection, and that information is coming from countries that have seen the most cases.

The take-home message is that even if you feel fine, a past COVID-19 infection is a cardiovascular risk factor, a little like elevated cholesterol. It’s not a reason to despair, but it’s a very good reason to be vigilant.

Faye Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering science. She is host of the Follow the Science podcast.

Bloomberg Opinion

 

https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/health-and-wellness/if-you-ve-had-covid-19-watch-out-for-stroke-symptoms-20221104-p5bvlp

 

 

[forcebwithu]

It's about time the Chinese citizens pushed back against the zero Covid nonsense.

Residents ‘revolt’ over oppressive Covid lockdowns in China’s Guangzhou

Residents under Covid lockdown in China’s southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou have torn down barriers meant to confine them to their homes, taking to the streets in defiance of strictly enforced local orders, according to video and images circulating on social media.

Some of the images show large crowds cheering and surging across toppled barriers and filling streets after dark in the city’s Haizhu district, which has been under an increasingly restrictive lockdown since November 5, as the epicenter of the city’s ongoing Covid outbreak.

The clanging sound of metal barriers falling reverberates across the neighborhood and mingles with cheers in the footage, in scenes multiple social media users said took place late Monday evening on district streets.

In one video, Covid workers in protective medical wear can be seen standing on the sidelines as barriers fall, while trying to speak with people on the streets. “They’re revolting,” a woman’s voice is heard saying in the background of one of the videos. CNN has geolocated the images to Haizhu district, but could not independently confirm them.
...

 

[lazarus]

Skip by this post if you have little interest in science, immunology and/or public health...

. . .

BQ and XBB subvariants have “alarming antibody evasion” properties, study finds

The emerging coronavirus omicron BQ and XBB subvariants, which are rapidly expanding in the U.S., have additional spike mutations that may give them altered antibody evasion properties, according to a preprint study (see below) by researchers at Columbia University. The authors found that neutralization of BQ.1, BQ.1.1, XBB, and XBB.1 by sera from vaccines and infected persons was markedly impaired, including sera from individuals who received the updated bivalent booster shot. Compared to the ancestral strain of the virus, they found that the new subvariants were “barely susceptible to neutralization” by sera from vaccinated individuals with or without prior infection. Treatment options were also impacted.

“A panel of monoclonal antibodies capable of neutralizing the original omicron variant, including those with emergency use authorization, were largely inactive against these new subvariants,” they wrote, adding that the spike mutations that conferred antibody resistance were individually studied and structurally explained. They said that the new strains have “alarming antibody evasion” properties: “Taken together, our findings indicate that BQ and XBB subvariants present serious threats to the efficacy of current COVID-19 vaccines, render inactive all authorized monoclonal antibodies, and may have gained dominance in the population because of their advantage in evading antibodies.”

source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/COVID-in-California-live-updates-17621730.php

. . .

Paper: 
Alarming antibody evasion properties of rising SARS-CoV-2: BQ and XBB subvariants 
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517532v1.full.pdf

Edited December 1, 2022 by lazarus
. . .