Thank you so much for posting these studies.
Me, too. And aftereffects can be delayed (can be 3 months afterwards). There is probably going to be an epidemic of secondary diseases and conditions after covid19. In retrospect, all the vilification of masking and distancing will seem ridiculous.
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Well-stated! It would seem that this is far less important as compared to the mental health/learning concerns for children and young people. I donât think it is less important.
I thought of anti maskers and vaxxers when I saw a CNN segment on Ukrainians who call their Russian relatives and tell them their cities are being destroyed. The relatives literally say, âOh, thatâs ridiculous! Russia wouldnât target civilians! Donât stay in the dark in the basement!â So basically, donât live in fear! Had a familiar ring to it. 
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On a positive note, my fear and coping capabilities learned over these past years from Covid are helping me with my fears and coping capabilities today of WWIII.
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I have no idea why the news doesnât carry more about the damage being seen in post Covid folks. Itâs enough that at the hospital when new patients come in for X (not related to current Covid), the first question my guy tells me they ask is if theyâve ever had Covid. He is at a research hospital, so I donât know if thatâs happening everywhere, but it should be. X can be heart issues, stroke, brain issues, kidney issues, and now allergies and auto-immune are becoming suspect.
There have always been new X issues going to doctors since the beginning of medicine, but now theyâre seeing a large correlation of those with no problems before (new patients with X) coming in having had Covid sometime in the past. It will be interesting to see study results, whenever they release them, that show percentage differences. Then it might make the news.
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I wonder how many people really have no idea if they had or didnât have COVID. One could be oblivious to an infection either because it was asymptomatic or because one didnât test and only guesses yes/no.
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They donât just go off of the personâs word. They automatically test for it now too. Itâs just quicker for them to (possibly) know when they ask, but they follow up for the âtrueâ answer similar to how they would do if suspecting diabetes or something.
These folks are coming into the hospital or medical system with a major problem and the doctors/system is trying to collect data to see if thereâs a correlation, along with treating the condition. All my guy knows so far is itâs really common to see a correlation when someone new comes in, esp if blood clots are involved. If his experiences are true elsewhere, it should make the news once they have enough data. If it were to end up being statistically insignificant I doubt it will ever make the news. It will surprise him though.
Yes, asymptomatic or symptomatic resembling something else (cold, flu, etc.) could be an unnoticed COVID-19 infection. But also, there may be some people who believe that they had COVID-19 when they had something else.
So if past COVID-19 infection is a question, a nucleocapsid antibody test would be needed, unless the patient had prior medical records showing a positive COVID-19 test. However, if the patient had been vaccinated in another country with an inactivated virus vaccine, a nucleocapsid antibody test would show positive due to that type of vaccine.
itâs gut-wrenching whatâs going on in ukraine. no words about that.
but when it comes to covid in general, my thoughts comparing it to basements remind me of all the times iâve sat in a basement during tornado warnings; and while still windy and raining, iâve come upstairs to start cleaning up the damage once the worst is past. Covid is still around, but time to mitigate all the damage.
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It was my understanding that even the nucleocapsid antibodies only hang around for so longâŠmaybe as long as the vaccine antibodies? Hence the reinfections after original native infection.
If folks had COVID a year ago and are now showing signs of issues which seem âout of placeâ for that particular patientâŠare we able to determine if they did indeed have a native infection?
Vaccine researchers found that spike antibodies did the best job at neutralizing the virus, so vaccines (other than inactivated whole virus vaccines) targeted the spike protein.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext
An interesting article regarding the excess deaths during the pandemic (number still increasing since this study stops at end of 2021). In summary, global excess deaths during the pandemic were estimated to be three times higher than reported deaths due to Covid. There are no interpretations that are available to us at the moment but my guess is that this is due to a combination of under reporting of Covid deaths globally and deaths due to delayed medical treatment and care and other factors. Interestingly, Australia and New Zealand have negative excess deaths during the pandemic period studied (in other words the expected deaths based on statistical trends in those countries are lower than expected during the pandemic). These two countries were very aggressive in their pandemic responses (and also islands which severely limited travel) which leads me to believe that their âdraconianâ measures saved lots of lives.
The average age of death during the pandemic in all countries still trends to the much older population. I hope we allow scientists of all disciplines to do the work necessary to work with the data we are gathering to help guide us with sound public health advice now and in the future.
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I meant using antibodies as a test to see if someone had COVIDâŠ
Yes, nucleocapsid antibodies may fade, so such a test may be more likely to give a false negative longer after an actual infection.
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New Zealandâs strategy was to have very strict lockdowns to get to zero domestic transmission, but end domestic restrictions when there was no domestic transmission (but go back into lockdown when imported cases produced domestic transmission). It seemed to work well at keeping the burden of disease down while also keeping the lockdown burden down.
In contrast, the US endured lockdown burden most of the time while also being not very ineffective at keeping the disease burden down.
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I am not at all involved in the research, I just hear about it, but itâs typical if they canât tell whether someone is in category A or B itâs noted separately rather than putting data into a category. I suspect a positive test in the past would qualify someone as positive. For those who think they had it (due to symptoms) prior to testing being available, if there are no antibodies confirming a positive case, they would be in the third âcanât tellâ class.
I wondered about that! As long as there is doubt as to whether or not someone had covid, I am concerned that long covid will be minimized. And, since women get long covid more often than men, that will be reason to further minimize it.
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Page describing how the virus can mutate in the future and what societal reaction may be:
| Description | + Evasion of Immunity | + Virulence | + Transmissibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sharpshooter | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Escape Artist | Yes | No | No |
| Brute | No | Yes | No |
| Sprinter | No | No | Yes |
Sharpshooter would be the most serious, somewhat like setting the world back to the pre-vaccine days. Escape Artist and Brute could overload the health care system. Sprinter may go unnoticed, but could be a prelude to something worse.
But the page does not really say much about variants that increase two (rather than one or three) of the traits. Omicron was like a combination of Escape Artist, Sprinter, and anti-Brute â + Evasion of Immunity, - Virulence, + Transmissibility.