Both of my kids were born in Europe and both received the BCG vaccine.
We are very sure my son had COVID19 several weeks back. Coughing and fever, not flu because I took him to be tested. There was no way to get a COVID19 test a few weeks ago unless you were hospitalized or met specific criteria. Doc said assume it’s COVID19. He felt unwell for a short time, only about four days. I then came down with what felt like a bad cold, which lingered for a couple of weeks. No shortness of breath for either of us. I have no idea where I would have picked up a cold, if that’s all it was, given that I rarely go out and I wear masks, gloves and scrupulously wipe down things and wash hands.
I have just heard of the possible BCG connection. Wondering if it helps explain why my son, if he had COVID19, had no breathing issues. But it could also be due to the silent pneumonia mentioned in the NYTimes article. Anyway, my son is totally fine now.
BCG vaccine, perhaps others as well, may strengthen a person’s own immune system to fight the virus, but it doesn’t make the person immune to the virus.
Not sure what benefit it brings studying the effect of other vaccines, polio, rubella, etc. They are widely used vaccines and people getting sick probably were vaccinated with them. If they do any good, sick people already got help and still as sick as they are. Do they think a booster will help?
Anyone with inside info about Belgium? (Friends, family, or colleagues there?)
They’re at the top of the per capita death rate so I keep expecting to see something about what’s going on there, but so far, next to nothing. It’s all Italy, France, and UK for Europe. Is it due to a more elderly population? Population density? Healthcare issues? In the US we rarely hear about Belgium and that’s with one of my personal main news source being BBC.
If there is a deadlier strain, they would be among the places that have it. NY beats them and NJ is essentially tied, but they top the list worldwide (outside of San Marino with their 34,000 people and 40 deaths).
ETA Nevermind - just found my answer on Politico. It’s reporting. Which way is right or wrong is debatable (not on here, of course), but that seems to be the consensus. Puzzle solved! (I needed better terms for my google search yesterday!)
MMR including rubella is universal in the US except for anti vaccine people. These are live virus.
OPV (oral) is no longer used in the US, although older people may have gotten it for polio vaccination. IPV (inactivated / injected) is used instead for polio vaccination. Only the OPV is live virus.
When we first started to get news and data from China about this virus, DH and I had the following conversation:
Since then, living in the current epicenter of America’s epidemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about two points:
Viruses cause a wide range of symptoms.
People’s immune systems vary widely.
For an example of point 1, I could choose from lots of viruses, but I’ll pick MERS because it’s another coronavirus. Like the Covid virus, MERS has a range of effects, from no symptoms at all, to mild respiratory illness, to multi-organ failure and death. Symptoms include fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, chest pain, body aches, sore throat, malaise, headache, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. Types of complications include pulmonary, renal, hematological, gastrointestinal and neurological. All this is caused by the same virus. Mistakes (mutations) happen when the virus replicates, but different mistakes are not causing differences in disease—the variety of disease was present from the start.
As for point 2, our immune systems also vary widely. For example, 50-80% of adults are infected with HSV-1, which causes cold sores, but some have no symptoms, some have an initial outbreak and then nothing, and others suffer frequent cold sores. Due to variations in their immune systems, some people have deadly allergies and others develop autoimmune diseases, while the majority of the population is fine. In a reversal, most people exposed to HIV will get very sick without treatment, but about 10% of people are immune—they carry a genetic mutation (known as CCR5-delta 32) that prevents the virus from entering their cells. It makes sense that individual immune systems respond differently to infection, including with SARS-CoV-1 (the Covid virus).
I wanted to post this because I’m not a virologist or an immunologist, so when Covid happened, I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about how/why the same virus could cause a wide range of symptoms and effects. Now that I’ve been learning about it, I see that it’s not remarkable or even unusual.
I found this quote in an article about asymptomatic and mild cases of Ebola:
There was a preprint article today that showed there were healthy people who had anti SARS-Cov-2 T-cells (cells that can fight off the virus). These same people also tested negative for the virus antibodies with the hypothesis being that there may be some existing and temporary cross-immunity from other coronaviruses (common colds) and that the presence of these T-cells predicted the course of the disease (they also tested individuals with coronavirus–most had the corresponding T-cells, but the most severely ill did not).
CCR5-Δ32 is only that common in some European populations. Also, having one of that mutation confers only partial resistance to HIV. Having two of that mutation, which confers high resistance to HIV, is found in about 1% of those same European populations. Having CCR5-Δ32 may worsen outcomes for other infections, like West Nile virus.
Define older. My kids range from 10 to 30. My older kids received OPV. My younger kids IPV. I’m not positive when the switch happened, I’m guessing between the older 4 and young 4, so somewhere around 20 yrs or so.
ERs are starting to report an uptick in the number of patients coming in–not new Coronavirus cases which appear to have leveled off in many areas-- but the more typical patients, particularly those with social/psychiatrist issues. (Know in the ED as “frequent flyers”.)
However many patients are still actively refusing to come into the ER despite having potentially life-threatening injuries/conditions. (Like an older woman who fell and broken her hip. When EMS arrived, she allowed them to assess her but refused transport to the ER for treatment & surgery. Since she was alert and competent, EMS and the supervising ER doc had no choice but to leave her where she was, despite the fact she lived alone and couldn’t stand or walk)
But for the most part, ERs are still reporting lower volumes, but high acuity in patients coming in.
Thanks, @ucbalumnus . I knew this was more prevalent in certain populations, but I didn’t know about 1 mutation providing partial immunity etc. I should have done more research! This does confirm that immune reaction to disease can vary due to varied genetics.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/public/index.html says that OPV stopped being used in the US in 2000 (previously, both were used). While OPV is cheaper and easier to give (and may give a better immune response in the gut which is the usual entry point for wild polio infection), it has the rare risk of back-mutating into a virulent strain of polio.
My kids range from 10 to 30. My older kids received OPV. My younger kids IPV. I’m not positive when the switch happened, I’m guessing between the older 4 and young 4, so somewhere around 20 yrs or so.