COVID topic vol 2

[Ego]

New Zealand PM vows to keep borders closed through 2021 until 100% vaccination.

Meanwhile, New Zealand



With the duration of protection and the lag in vaccination (ie. the date of first person vaccination to date of last person vaccinated), will herd immunity ever be achieved?

[UK-with-kids]

A programme of door-to-door testing has started in certain areas of England where cases of the South African variant have been found. Police and others are literally knocking on your front door and asking you to take a test on the spot.

The authorities are at the same time insisting that the vaccines are effective against this new variant. But they must be worried about something. Although how they expect to stop it spreading is beyond me.

ETA: It's apparently as a result of 11 community transmission cases of unknown source. They are trying to test 80,000 people to stamp it out.

[CS]

@CS Would there not though be a collective benefit, as they are less likely to clog up hospitals (in every sense of the term) ?

I think I'm running out of patience, lol. You're right. I'm crabby about having to get a shot after people who are at risk because of their own choices.

@UK-with-kids
That is slightly terrifying. Wonder what they are not saying? That is an unbelievable effort.
--

I don't know if any posted this here but these guys claim to have helped long haulers get over it with simple vitamins.

The group treating this mechanism utilizes:
Nicotinic acid aka Niacin (most important and not nicotinamide or other forms) — 100mg
Vitamin C aka Ascorbic Acid — 1500mg
Vitamin D — 3000iu
Zinc — 15mg
Selenium — 50mcg
Quercetin — 500mg

Their research, COVID-19: NAD+ deficiency may predispose the aged, obese and type2 diabetics to mortality through its effect on SIRT1 activity, has received an excellent response and seems to be validated in mice, relevant abnormalities found in ferrets and the mechanism echoed by other researchers. Dysfunction of relevant systems are found in COVID19 and correlated with inflammatory markers. Clinical trials are under way to treat the same mechanism using more exotic and commercial compounds than the simple ones used with success in their case.

According to this theory, cofactors coupled to the oxidation/NAD+ cascade are critical to outcomes and this is seen in the observation that low selenium levels correlated to poor outcomes in China. Observations of high blood sugar being a predictor of death in COVID19 patients, regardless of diebetic status validate metabolic changes being a major risk factor of COVID19 according to NAD+ theory. Activation of the same kynurenine pathways predicted in NAD+ theory of COVID19 correlate to blood sugar deregulation.

Unrelated to the core mechanism, a recent publication in the journal Nature, stated: “vitamin B3 (niacin or nicotinamide) is highly effective in preventing lung tissue damage. It might be a wise approach to supply this food supplement to the COVID-19 patients.” A recent bioinformatics analysis also indicated niacin should be studied as a treatment for COVID19. A forward looking pre-print indicates nicotinic acid may act as a one of a kind bioenergetic “pump” of inflammatory molecules out of cells, critical for COVID19. Niacin has been seen to easily cure systematic NAD+ deficiency in clinical research. In 2010, this exact biochemical cascade surrounding NAD+ has been speculated as an HIV cascade in the paper, “The oxidative stress-induced niacin sink (OSINS) model for HIV pathogenesis”. Interestingly, the well respected Open Medicine Foundation collaborated with bioinformatics companies and scientists from leading universities to develop the Metabolic Trap theory of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME which looks to be a leading theory based on the same mechanisms presented here.

Honestly, much of the article goes over my head, but it sounds reasonable. Someone with more biology here might be able to vet it better. Regardless, the vitamins themselves are cheap and easily had so I got some. It is shocking how hard it is to find Nicotinic acid versus the other forms.

https://nkalex.medium.com/the-team-of-f ... 9852f1101d

[UK-with-kids]

Russia's Sputnik V vaccine has 92% efficacy in trial
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55900622

It has also been deemed to be safe - and offer complete protection against hospitalisation and death.

In a comment published alongside the Lancet paper, Profs Ian Jones and Polly Roy said: "The development of the Sputnik V vaccine has been criticised for unseemly haste, corner cutting, and an absence of transparency.

Dr Julian Tang, a clinical virologist at the University of Leicester, said: "Despite the earlier misgivings about the way this Russian Sputnik V vaccine was rolled out more widely - ahead of sufficient Phase 3 trial data - this approach has been justified to some extent now.

"Such pandemic-related vaccine rollout compromises have, to be fair, been adopted in the UK vaccination programme also - with the extended intervals between the first and second doses.

"So we should be more careful about being overly critical about other countries' vaccine designs."

[fiby41]

@ducknald_don ah, ok. Its being called Covishield here.

[Ego]

https://youtu.be/iSkbd6hRkXo

[CS]

Wow, that film was really good. She is going places.

[white belt]

Has anyone come across any good analysis about the vaccine data coming out of Israel?

Most MSM coverage I've seen in the USA seems pretty positive, talking about how the mass vaccination campaign has driven down cases and hospitalizations. What I haven't seen much coverage on is the fact that Israel had half of their population get one dose and nearly a quarter of their population get 2 doses just to put a peak in for COVID cases. Some back of the envelope math would mean that the USA would require 150 million people with one dose and 60-65 million people with a 2nd dose before we start to see a bend in the curve. At current rate of vaccinations (1.36 million per day over past week) we're looking at another 2 months at least in the USA until we could approach the percentages that Israel required to change the trajectory of COVID cases.

The other interesting question is what is going to happen when vaccinated (or unvaccinated) people go out and start partying again? We've seen the same thing play out in nearly every area of the USA. Restrictions go in to stop spread, cases are reduced 2 weeks later, restrictions are lifted and people go back to normal life, cases spike 2 weeks later and restrictions return. I mean I get that not everyone can be vaccinated, but just thinking about myself, it is likely my patience for social distancing is going to go way down once I'm completely vaccinated. I suspect that for most young people it's going to be the same (or they just never cared about the virus anyway).

[nomadscientist]

It takes 2-3 weeks for the vaccine to become effective (and then below peak effectiveness), another week or so for infections to be detected, another two weeks or so for them to be crystalized as deaths.

So the relevant figure is number of vaccinated people maybe 5 weeks ago, which was only about 10% (first dose) even in Israel: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

The effectiveness of the vaccine in those 10% will ~double in the next >4 weeks and the number of people vaccinated at some level of effectiveness will increase to ~55%. At this point fatal covid should become negligible except in anti-vaxxers and R0 should drop significantly even without behavior changes.

Israel had a big outbreak concurrent with the beginning of the vaccination program that was probably controlled mainly by behavior changes. The key evidence for vaccine efficacy is that hospitalizations and deaths have disproportionately dropped among the old, who were prioritized to receive vaccines: https://twitter.com/segal_eran/status/1 ... 5684869121

[Ego]

It is interesting that the UK and South Africa, countries with two of the most stringent lockdowns in the world, spawned new variants that show increased transmission.

We've got an endemic virus working to infect every human in its path. A slight mutation increases infectivity. Lockdowns make transmission more difficult so nature selects for the most infectious variant. That version spreads. Natural selection at work.

For now "the experts" are saying there is no evidence of increased virulence. What poorly designed half-measure would we have to employ to create a more virulent version?

[ducknald_don]

It is interesting that the UK and South Africa, countries with two of the most stringent lockdowns in the world, spawned new variants that show increased transmission.

My understanding is the UK has been doing a lot of sequencing of the virus as it spreads, half of all sequencing in the world. This might well explain why it was spotted in the UK first.

[nomadscientist]

Western half-measures do look like the social equivalent of a patient who only takes half his antibiotic dose for half the prescribed time period, leading to the development of resistant strains. Not proof that such a mechanism exists. But it may turn out that the Western measures kill more people than they save.

[Ego]

This from Oxford where the ChAdOx1 vaccine was created.



https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-02-07-ch ... -infection#

Researchers from the University of Witwatersrand and others in South Africa and the University of Oxford, UK found that viral neutralisation by sera induced by the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 coronavirus vaccine against the B.1.351 coronavirus variant were substantially reduced when compared with the original strain of the coronavirus

[Viktor K]

“Going through the five phases of grief, we need to come to the acceptance phase that our lives are not going to be the same,” said Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I don’t think the world has really absorbed the fact that these are long-term changes.”

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/as-va ... 1612693803

[Ego]

@Viktor, Covid Derangement Syndrome, eh?

Guilty as charged. Also previously guilty of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

[ZAFCorrection]

People can say what they want, but if the threat of covid reduces to something on the order of the flu, adherence to social distancing will become a shibboleth rendered null by a trillion excuses and rationalizations. Gavin Newsom gets a lot of shit, but he was just leading the charge. That can be taken as either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your position.

[Freedom_2018]

For what it's worth, saw a movie (The Little Things) in a movie theater today. Hadn't been in one for a year and a half. Felt like some semblance of normalcy.

Thanks to Covid and Super Bowl, the place was completely empty except for one other couple sitting far away. We wore masks throughout the movie, they ate popcorn.

[nomadscientist]

Exchanging everything that makes life worth living for ~3 months of additional life expectancy in your 80s would be the logical end point of the US healthcare philosophy.

[Ego]

Thoroughly confused.

New data shows B117 has a 35-40% increased transmission rate.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21251159v1

And it now shows increased virulence. I've read estimates up to 30% more deadly.

It is spreading across the US right now.

And yet we are reopening?

Any theories on why?

[7Wannabe5]

Most health care workers have been given vaccine option and people who continue to take reasonable precautions don’t care what happens to people who don’t take reasonable precautions.

Since the South African variant seems to be likely to infect even those who previously were infected with original strain, the haul just got even longer.