Covid-19 pandemic

[anton pulisov]

Not my field. It is my cousin's though (she's a biochemist), and I've spent the last few days meeting up with her and her family (outside, socially distanced, blah di blah). She is quite optimistic, and specifically mentioned that the lack of antibodies in a system doesn't necessarily mean a lack of immunity. But I can't remember the exact details now, sorry (wine with BBQ for dinner!).

Makes sense I suppose. If we were constantly making antibodies for every kind of virus we have ever had then our immune systems would become very tired. I suppose the immune system keeps a Covid-19 antibody recipe book at the ready and produces when needed. At least, if I was designing an immune system from scratch, that's how I'd do it. Why salt the roads all year long when there's no need in summer.

[Balderdasha]

Syria has more than 800 confirmed cases.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Yeah, I'm definitely not one of OTF's scientists, but I did read this article, written by professors of immunobiology, that convinced me that disappearing antibodies aren't necessarily the problem one might think they'd be:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/o...nion&smtyp=cur

It was an interesting read and just about graspable for those of us with a non-science background. The central thrust seems to be that we shouldn't fear a lack of efficacy in any vaccine because of the situation regarding rapidly diminishing antibody levels, which is good news but not something that I really feared, or had even considered. My worries were more about antibody protection ahead of any sort of vaccine development, but that issue was at least partially addressed with the comments about B and T cells.

One thing that did leap out at me, though, was this:

For measles, which is highly contagious, more than 90 percent of a population must be immunized in order for unvaccinated individuals to also be protected. For Covid-19, the estimated figure — which is unsettled, understandably — ranges between43 percent and 66 percent.

I sense that anti-vaccination sentiment is going to be a major hurdle to overcome in the next few years, assuming successful development of said protection. My son has been away for the last month or so, moving into his new university accommodation with his friends, and came home yesterday for a couple of weeks. Apparently of the five others, four are anti-vaxxers! These are 18- and 19-years olds! I hope to goodness that this is an unrepresentative sample of the general population.

[Sporting]

My son has been away for the last month or so, moving into his new university accommodation with his friends, and came home yesterday for a couple of weeks. Apparently of the five others, four are anti-vaxxers! These are 18- and 19-years olds! I hope to goodness that this is an unrepresentative sample of the general population.

This is extraordinarily disturbing and sad.

[gjw100]

Possibly a little Draconian, but there's a strong argument for making such vaccines mandatory unless there are exceptional circumstances, with such things as passport applications/renewals, and maybe even driving licences (just two examples of state-controlled documentation) being conditional upon production of a vaccine certificate or similar. (Apologies if this has been discussed previously here, but I haven't kept up with this thread as assiduously as I ought to have).

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I wouldn't blame the next generation for seeing very little disbenefit in as many of my generation and older dying off as soon as possible. I don't blame them, as neither do I.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I wouldn't blame the next generation for seeing very little disbenefit in as many of my generation and older dying off as soon as possible. I don't blame them, as neither do I.

Wasn't the virus given the rather unpleasant moniker the "Boomer Remover"?

[Patrick Thistle]

I sense that anti-vaccination sentiment is going to be a major hurdle to overcome in the next few years, assuming successful development of said protection. My son has been away for the last month or so, moving into his new university accommodation with his friends, and came home yesterday for a couple of weeks. Apparently of the five others, four are anti-vaxxers! These are 18- and 19-years olds! I hope to goodness that this is an unrepresentative sample of the general population.

They'll change their minds when a classmate dies of meningitis.

[Diable Rouge]

Another pub in Aberdeen closes due to Covid cases, with 13 out of 23 recorded today in Scotland occurring in Grampian.

[Janik]

Makes sense I suppose. If we were constantly making antibodies for every kind of virus we have ever had then our immune systems would become very tired. I suppose the immune system keeps a Covid-19 antibody recipe book at the ready and produces when needed. At least, if I was designing an immune system from scratch, that's how I'd do it. Why salt the roads all year long when there's no need in summer.

I think it runs something like you will only have antibodies present for a disease on recent exposure, i.e. there was a need. But not producing antibodies doesn't mean the coding to do so has been lost. If that is right (I've still not read the right documents!) it implies the suppression efforts have been good and the virus is now not generally circulating so the sort of low level exposure, well below a viral load that could cause a detectable infection, isn't happening currently (as an aside - it's hard to know exactly how many have breathed in a few virons somewhere along the line, but it very conceivably could be nearly everyone by now).
I think the best analogy is the memory, both human or computer. Recent events and significant events are stored in the 'front' of the memory/RAM and are sitting there waiting to be accessed at the drop of a hat. Other stuff from gets shuffled into a long-term store. It's still there, still accessible, but retrieval is slower and harder. And some things in the long-term store get overwritten as the capacity isn't infinite and it appears they no longer need to be kept.

[The Red Max]

Another pub in Aberdeen closes due to Covid cases, with 13 out of 23 recorded today in Scotland occurring in Grampian.

Yes, but unfortunately it's a bit more complicated than that.
The Siberia Vodka bar has taken the decision to shut it's doors after they were contacted by a customer who has tested +ve for Covid, but the pub the hasn't been contacted by the city council or NHS Test and Protect, so far at least.
The owner of a group of local pubs has taken the decision to close all 7 of his outlets after one of them (Soul Bar on Union Street) was widely shamed on local social media for the crowds outside, which was amplified by the local MSP and drew comments from the First Minister at yesterday's press briefing. Allegedly, one of the cases from cluster of 32 at the Hawthorn Bar also visited Soul the same evening, which isn't unexpected as they're only about half a mile from one another. Soul Bar is a busy venue, so this could potentially spiral.
So far there have been over 120 contacts traced through the system, but there will be many more.

I have it on impeccable authority that the source of the Hawthorn cluster was a waitress serving in the restaurant. My neice used to work there, but fortunately stopped back in January.

Lots of other city centre venues are posting on social media that they are closing for 'deep cleaning' in an effort to reassure customers, but I think Aberdeen could be heading for a local lockdown very soon.

15 out of 23 new cases in Scotland today are here in Grampian, thankfully it's a 19th consecutive day without a death.
270 patients are in hospital with a confirmed case, up 5 from yesterday, with 4 being treated in intensive care - up by 1.

My wife says she's never leaving the house again.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/cliffordlevy/status/1290670735225225219

[Patrick Thistle]

Sometimes I wonder whether we should be archiving this thread as a kind of "people's record" of the pandemic.

1 death in Wales today and 22 new cases.

[Patrick Thistle]

Meanwhile there's footage of Trump being told that 1,000 Americans are dying of Covid every day and he shrugs and says "It is what it is".

[Lang Spoon]

That's like when they whack Tommy in Goodfellas.

[ursus arctos]

Same interview where he reiterates his well wishes for Maxwell while having nothing to say about John Lewis other than that Lewis didn't attend the inauguration.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Footage here of the very stable genius not having a great grasp of the issues or the facts:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-19-death-toll

I was about to take the piss out of his comment at 0:15 in the video that some US number is "lower than the world", but it struck me that it just might be (albeit it probably wasn't) a per capita number he was referring to, so the case is not 100 per cent proven that that particular comment was moronic.

[Ginger Yellow]

I was about to take the piss out of his comment at 0:15 in the video that some US number is "lower than the world", but it struck me that it just might be (albeit it probably wasn't) a per capita number he was referring to, so the case is not 100 per cent proven that that particular comment was moronic.

Judging from the piece of paper he was looking at, it's probably the global average of deaths per cases, with the line on the chart marked "world". Not moronic as such, other than his insistence on that metric being moronic (especially when he's also complaining that the case count is artificially high).

[Diable Rouge]

45 cases (that average again) in Ireland, with no deaths - 77% of cases under-45, and a similar percentage are male. 40 out of the 45 cases are in Dublin or Kildare, with the Laois cluster seemingly fully tracked:

https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/...sday-4-august/

[Jimski]

I wish they'd put Devi Sridhar in charge. Well worth a watch.

https://twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1275891802449547264

[ad hoc]

I'm not sure if it was this thread where I mentioned my neighbours who believe the virus is a hoax created so that Angela Merkel can put a chip in us. Well today we asked them if they'd mind going to the corner shop for us to get sunflower oil and toilet paper. They kindly agreed but insisted that we interact with them (including handing over money and shopping) at a distance of around 3m. In masks.

So the hoax thing is clearly still under some consideration

[Nefertiti2]

I'm not sure if it was this thread where I mentioned my neighbours who believe the virus is a hoax created so that Angela Merkel can put a chip in us. Well today we asked them if they'd mind going to the corner shop for us to get sunflower oil and toilet paper. They kindly agreed but insisted that we interact with them (including handing over money and shopping) at a distance of around 3m. In masks.

So the hoax thing is clearly still under some consideration

Maybe they were worried you were going to put a chip in them and wanted to keep out of reach.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Good point Nef...

[Balderdasha]

700,000+ deaths from Covid-19 worldwide.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Huge increase in Spanish cases today. Starting to approach the levels last seen during the Springtime peaks.