Coronavirus

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Maggy

So the schools stayed open longer than January.

I get his general point though - they're not open in-person for most children.

Though all are open for some children and aiming to deliver online for the rest.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Again, what about Long COVID - you appear to be ignoring this.

I'm more concerned about short COVID at the moment can we sort that out first.

Long COVID is a relative term and covers all people that may have symptoms longer than the expected 2 weeks.

and they estimate 1 in 7 that have symptomatic COVID may experience symptoms for 4 weeks, or 1 in 20 for 8 weeks, or 1 in 45 for 12 weeks or more. it affects 10% of 18-49 years olds rising to 22% in the over 70's and is much more likely to affect you if you are obese.

Many people get over it (as above only 5% of those that are symptomatic have it longer than 12 weeks) and as the virius has only been around 14months those that still have issues it is unknown how long is long or how chronic the syndrome will continue to be................and at least they haven't died from it.

So, I'm not ignoring it, but neither am I going to over egg it either.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/long-covid

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Conservative estimates are that 1 in 3 people that have COVID are asymptomatic, and other findings in controlled groups have found that it can be as much as 80%.

Considering COVID is a novel virus we should have no protection from it so why is not affecting everybody? COVID is just a cousin of many other Coronaviruses our bodies deal with all the time.

It's accepted that T-Cell immunity is a real thing and that anti-bodies that we have established for various flu and common cold viruses also give us a degree of protection.

The cells that produce anti-bodies for Spanish Flu have been found in people 90years after that pandemic and T-Cells for SARS have been found in people 17years after that outbreak.

It's blindingly obvious that those with weaker immune systems and those that are generally unhealthy (older, unfit, obese) are the ones most at risk and vaccinations will help cover them.

and the younger fitter part of the population, in the main, will see it off as they have been doing.

There is every reason to expect us to be out of this much much sooner than later now have a vaccine(s) to cover those at most at risk.



https://www.advisory.com/daily-brief...3/asymptomatic

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52446965

None of this backs up your claims in science.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Quite right. People, even the greatly respected (by me) Pip can be quick to jump on someone. Here comes the barb: you in particular!

In an post in another thread, I linked to the paywalled Torygraph but also provided a quotation from the article to make my point.

And therein lies the difference Seph.

Originally Posted by Hugh

This shared link should be free to read (I’m a subscriber, and can share articles).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...-south-africa/

What you think should be and what is are entirely different.

[papa smurf]

Originally Posted by pip08456

And therein lies the difference Seph.



What you think should be and what is are entirely different.

Indeed, one click at it demands money like a modern day highwayman, 50 p per week i feel faint.

[spiderplant]

Originally Posted by pip08456

A paywalled link, is that the best you can do?

https://www.novavax.com/sites/defaul...avax-Final.pdf
Slide 28

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by jfman

None of this backs up your claims in science.

You are hilarious.

Those links cite scientific studies and research to exactly back up my claims with science. So once again you have posted against something that says the complete opposite to what you want to believe.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Pierre

You are hilarious.

Those links cite scientific studies and research to exactly back up my claims with science. So once again you have posted against something that says the complete opposite to what you want to believe.

A BBC opinion piece interpreting science isn't science. The word variant doesn't appear once in the article so doesn't address the issue. Simply put you've interpreted it to suit the outcome you desire - open everything up.

In the real world however we will not survive by selective interpretation of science to suit political outcomes. I've been consistent about that fact throughout and just as the schools inevitably closed for most pupils in January we now have to face up to the fact population level immunity hardly exists at all for the SA variant.

Originally Posted by jfman

Simply put you've interpreted it to suit the outcome you desire

To quote a former forum member of long ago: “hello pot, this is kettle calling!”

(Anyone else remember Graham? He used to make leather goods and sell them at bondage fairs, and spent hours on here complaining about logical fallacies)

[jfman]

The Guardian of all places have today, helpfully if inadvertently, posted an article that illustrates the difference between science and puff pieces.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ine-confidence

The Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid has barely been out of the news from the moment the race to protect the world’s population from the novel coronavirus began. But not always in a good way.

Talented scientists at the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, led by Prof Sarah Gilbert, were incredibly quick off the mark in developing a potential vaccine, as soon as the virus in Wuhan had been sequenced and made globally available by Chinese scientists on 11 January. They were using an experimental but exciting approach they had tried in Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome), caused by a similar coronavirus.

Some hyperbolic comments in there just to nudge you in the right direction.

University academics cannot run the huge trials needed, in tens of thousands of people in different countries around the world, on their own. They went into partnership in April with AstraZeneca, a large multinational pharma company that – unlike some – was willing to develop and sell the vaccine for no profit for the duration of the pandemic. Oxford made that a precondition, intent on producing a vaccine that could save lives in poor countries and rich alike.

This is fundamentally accurate. Although does go out it's way to naturally make you suspicious of the others. Nasty capitalists.

The marriage of academic scientists and big pharma is not always an easy one. University researchers are often the inventors of vaccines and drugs against diseases, but usually the pharmaceutical company that buys up the rights takes almost complete control of the subsequent development. Time was pressing, however, and when AstraZeneca signed up in April, Oxford had already started trials.

The first hitch, which nobody could have foreseen, came in mid-September, when AstraZeneca paused its global trials because a volunteer had become ill. Later it emerged that there had been three cases of transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, of which only one could possibly have been linked to the vaccine. But while trials quickly re-started in the UK, they were paused for seven weeks in the US while regulators asked for more information. US media said AstraZeneca had not told the regulators promptly enough about the cases, a claim the company denied.

Scientists don't foresee that in huge clinical trials using random sets of people from the population that some of them will fall ill for various reasons? Hmmm.

The second hitch was in November, when the interim results of the phase 3 trials were announced. Efficacy was around 70%, so lower than Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna, which both scored 95%, but that was not the issue that exercised people – it was the strange finding that efficacy rose to 90% in people given a half dose followed by a whole dose of vaccine.

t was, said Sir Mene Pangalos of AstraZeneca, “serendipity”. In an early trial run by Oxford researchers in the UK, supplies of the prototype vaccine had been delivered that were not the expected strength and some volunteers ended up with a half dose. It was squared with the UK regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority, which allowed both dosing regimes to continue.

But when the MHRA approved the vaccine in late December, it turned out that it was not the dosing regime that improved efficacy. It was the increased gap between the vaccines, said the regulator. Some people had received their second dose up to 12 weeks after the first, instead of four. A longer gap led to a better immune response. That laid the groundwork for the government decision to delay second doses for everyone in the UK, using any vaccine. But for many commentators, it looked messy.

A convenient outcome, but odd that the scientists developing the vaccine themselves hadn't noticed this of course.

Odd to call the scientific regulators of other countries 'commentators' rather than 'regulators', 'scientists' or 'authorities'.

The big row, however, was about the data in older people, who are most at risk from Covid, and it is not yet resolved. The Oxford researchers running the earliest trials had not wanted to recruit people over the age of 65, at higher risk from Covid, until they were certain the vaccine worked well and was safe for younger people. That meant when it came to filing for approval with regulators, there was little data on the older age group.

While noble intentions are noted here how did other vaccine manufacturers get around this?

Neither the European Medicines Agency nor the Food and Drug Administration in the US was happy. The FDA is waiting for data from a 30,000-volunteer trial in the US before deciding whether to approve the vaccine. The German government’s scientific advisers were highly critical. The EMA gave the vaccine emergency approval, but a number of countries, including France and Germany, have decided not to give it to older people.

The latest blow to the vaccine’s public image has been the small trial in just over 2,000 people under age 40 in South Africa. It found “minimal protection” – later said to be 10% – against mild to moderate disease caused by the variant. South Africa announced it was pausing its rollout of the vaccine and will give it to 100,000 people step by step, watching to see if anyone ends up in hospital.

No one was severely ill, hospitalised or died, but the worry is that these were younger people, so less likely to get seriously ill. Oxford/AstraZeneca point to all the trial data showing that nobody has been seriously ill after getting their vaccine (or any of the others) and experts believe the protection is still there against the variant. Once more, however, confidence in the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is likely to take a knock, whether or not it is justified.

Good news to start with - bad news in the middle - but we will finish off by repeating the good news from the start just to reassure you.

We've also invoked nameless, faceless "experts" for further reassurance despite the absence of data.

There's some news in here, and it broadly reflects reality. However there's an awful lot of spin and PR.

[daveeb]

Originally Posted by Chris

To quote a former forum member of long ago: “hello pot, this is kettle calling!”

(Anyone else remember Graham? He used to make leather goods and sell them at bondage fairs, and spent hours on here complaining about logical fallacies)

He's probably tied up with other things these days

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by jfman

A BBC opinion piece interpreting science isn't science.

These links are all scientific papers from the articles I posted

Feel free to read them.

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S...674(20)30610-3

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6512/89

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...196-1/fulltext

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....24.20042382v1

https://www.nature.com/articles/natu...=www.bbc.co.uk

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z

[jfman]

Do any of them assess new variants? If not then I'll politely decline as it's a waste of my time. None hold more weight than the placebo group in a clinical trial referenced earlier.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by jfman

Do any of them assess new variants? If not then I'll politely decline as it's a waste of my time. None hold more weight than the placebo group in a clinical trial referenced earlier.

What has new variant got to do with T-Cell/ B-Cell natural immunity to COVID gained by exposure to other Coronaviruses?

Any variant of COVID is still just another Coronavirus so the logic will still apply.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Pierre

What has new variant got to do with T-Cell/ B-Cell natural immunity to COVID gained by exposure to other Coronaviruses?

Any variant of COVID is still just another Coronavirus so the logic will still apply.

Speculative at best.