Yikes! Thrombocytopenia was terrifying enough with a beloved little dog. I’m glad your daughter recovered and has had no further troubles. They told us our dog, who had a severe case, had a 50/50 chance of recurrence but she has also been fine ever since. She’s 14 years old now.
For reference, normal platelet count is between 150,000 to 450,000. With ITP, the platelet count is less than 100,000. Children with ITP often have a platelet count of less than 10,000.
My D’s platelet count was 10,000.
Hoping the J & J concern turns out to be very very rare indeed.
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@nrdsb4 My good friend had chronic ITP (levels low but not dangerously low) for maybe 20 years. Not known cause. She just had to watch it once a while. No other health problems. Her levels went almost to normal (100plus but not 150 yet) in the last few years, again cause unknown. She had the J&J vaccine more than a month ago and it had no effect on her levels. She was alarmed by the news and just had a test.
This was an interesting read about suicide stats during the pandemic. For the communities it’s affected worse, it’s sad. I can’t help but wonder how much economic ups/downs correlated. That data might come out at a later date:
Vaccines that introduce the spike protein into our body to elicit virus-neutralizing antibodies are currently being developed. In this article, we note that human host cells sensitively respond to the spike protein to elicit cell signaling. Thus, it is important to be aware that the spike protein produced by the new COVID-19 vaccines may also affect the host cells. We should monitor the long-term consequences of these vaccines carefully, especially when they are administered to otherwise healthy individuals. Further investigations on the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on human cells and appropriate experimental animal models are warranted.
I hope Moderna and Pfizer already dealt with this issue. I’m not as concerned for myself because I’m older but for all the young healthy people that are being encouraged or required to get the vaccine.
Of course, then someone worried about those theoretical risks of spike protein vaccines would also need to be worried about the same risks (multiplied many times) of the actual replicating virus with those spike proteins.
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True, but the conclusion of the study is that introducing the spike protein into the body via the vaccine may trigger the same damage that the virus itself triggers…in effect the vaccine isn’t better than the virus. And could that damage be worse than the virus would trigger, especially in young people, when specifically reference pulmonary arterial hypertension, which is incurable and terminal. I’m not saying don’t get vaccinated. What I am saying is that I hope that these types of possible biological interactions linked to the spike protein, without the entire virus, have been studied enough in connection with the vaccine. Otherwise we are trading one pandemic for another…and a few years from now we will have a lot of other illnesses caused by the vaccine. mRNA has been studied a lot, Covid 19 has been studied for just over a year. Something worth considering. And since debate about the vaccine safety is pretty much forbidden we will have to wait and see.
ETA: my whole family has been vaccinated. I’m just hoping the long term effects aren’t problematic. It’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle for us.
The vaccine is better in that we don’t have oodles of deaths from it, or long haulers, as we do with Covid, itself. Getting Covid is not better, avoiding it would be.
The only alternative at the moment for people to avoid potential consequences is to live like a hermit forever.
Reading the paper really shows just how evil Covid is though - and makes me worry even more about my long hauler son wondering what Covid has done to his insides (sigh).
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Some new info on long covid/post infection outcomes, with links to data/studies:
One of the referenced papers is at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03553-9_reference.pdf , comparing a VHA users who had COVID-19 to all VHA users (typical age in the 60s).
Even non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients had substantially higher hazard ratios for many conditions after 30 days after recovery (figure 3), though it was even worse for those who were hospitalized.
About the Indian variant and how effective the vaccines might be.
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Good article. Not too alarmist or totally reassuring—nuanced. Thanks!
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https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/variant-surveillance/variant-info.html has tables showing characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest and concern.
Note that many of them (but not B.1.1.7) have “Reduced neutralization by convalescent and post-vaccination sera”, although vaccines still significantly reduce sickness from them.
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Study of 1407 COVID-19 patients (positive test by PCR) in the UC health system with respect to long hauler symptoms (past day 60):
The paper says that “in the current study we report that 27% of community dwellers reported symptoms after 60 days.” The study also found that female and White people were overrepresented among long-haulers versus the overall group (note: the largest race/ethnicity in the overall group was Hispanic at a little more than half). Age demographics did not appear to be that different for long-haulers versus the overall group.
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Moderna announced 96% effectiveness in a vaccine trial for age 12-17:
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Sat through the livestream of the CDC meeting today. Not only did they vote to approve the vaccine for 12-15 but changed recommendations so you can get other vaccines at same time. No more 14 day waiting period. They also discussed many studies that indicate that the MnRA vaccines are highly effective ( around 90 percent) in preventing any infection at all. Although these are preprint the similar numbers from many different studies was said to be an indication that these figures would hold.
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That’s great about not waiting 14 days after other vaccines. It affects my sister who is living in Eastern Europe with two kids in the 12-15 range and a lot of vaccines needed. Thank you for reporting!
Thanks! I sat parts of the original meeting to approve J&J and then also the meeting to remove its restriction, and they were quite interesting! Although it was a unanimous vote to approve J&J the first time, it was NOT a unanimous vote to remove its restriction. And the discussion around those nay votes (which were actually not votes to continue the restriction, but rather a way of signaling uneasiness with how warnings would be communicated) was very interesting. Both days I believe there were some recusals.