Covid: Lucky 13

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Berzerker

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https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/coronavirus-12-dont-abandon-hope.674257/

Lucky only because Omicron might produce herd immunity for us


prof robert clancy on infection and immunity

so getting covid does train the immune system more thoroughly than the vaccines


wrt delta the vaccines were inferior to natural immunity from earlier waves and didn't really improve upon a prior infection. So we coerced people into vaccines they didn't need.

The thing is age and sex are risk factors, and most people have one of those.

Slightly more seriously, all males have a risk factor. Children have a risk factor, as do older people. Add obesity, steroid use, cancer, heart disease, being immunocompromised etc. and I reakon there are few people that do not have any of the features that have been associated with worse outcomes.

True, but people still need baselines to assess risk. A 15 year old boy without comorbidities needs to know the mortality rate using his group as a baseline, not sick old people, he needs to know how many boys without known comorbidities died from covid.

I am very surprised to learn men in my age group dont actually die from covid that often, maybe 1 every other day in a population of millions. I still want to see how they fared and what % ended up staying in a hospital or on a ventilator ofc.
 
I really can't understand why there are people still talking about herd immunity when it has become clear that immunity doesn't even last 6 months. People are already becoming reinfected with Omicron! Denmark and yes France seems to be getting into yet another wave.

@El_Machinae you might perhaps subscribe to this.
 
So we coerced people into vaccines they didn't need.
Speaking as someone who's had Covid, and has had the vaccine, the vaccine doses seem to have helped with "long Covid" symptoms I've been displaying (for close to two years now). Nothing else has helped, exercise, healthy eating, sleeping (two kids under five, but as healthy as I can manage), etc, et al.

It would be neat if you could stop talking for people who have had Covid. Please stop using us as a prop in your ideological ranting against vaccine uptake.
 
the vaccine doses seem to have helped with "long Covid" symptoms I've been displaying
I had not heard about that, but it seems to be a thing:

As many as 30 to 40% of those [with long covid] who get the vaccine have reported improvements to their symptoms.​
 
I really can't understand why there are people still talking about herd immunity when it has become clear that immunity doesn't even last 6 months. People are already becoming reinfected with Omicron! Denmark and yes France seems to be getting into yet another wave.

But less and less people are suffering badly.
In that sense, we have "herd immunity" for the common cold. Everyone gets it, hardly anyone dies from it. And we're on the way to there.
 
It would be neat if you could stop talking for people who have had Covid. Please stop using us as a prop in your ideological ranting against vaccine uptake.
His whole claim is bollocks.

wrt delta the vaccines were inferior to natural immunity from earlier waves and didn't really improve upon a prior infection. So we coerced people into vaccines they didn't need.
The vaccines were inferior to natural immunity but vaccines do improve upon a prior infection.

https://www.reuters.com/business/he...vaccination-during-delta-surge-us-2022-01-19/

Jan 19 (Reuters) - People who had previously been infected with COVID-19 were better protected against the Delta variant than those who were vaccinated alone, suggesting that natural immunity was a more potent shield than vaccines against that variant, California and New York health officials reported on Wednesday.

Protection against Delta was highest, however, among people who were both vaccinated and had survived a previous COVID infection, and lowest among those who had never been infected or vaccinated, the study found.
 
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Sars-CoV-2 spike protein activates human endogenous retroviruses in blood cells

Retrotransposons derive from human endogenous retrovirus (HERVs) but typically have lost their signature long terminal repeat sequences at the beginning and ends of their genes.

On Tuesday, a real zinger was dropped onto the medRxiv preprint server that could potentially explain many of the commonly observed pathogenic features of SARS-CoV-2. The authors provide solid evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein activates the envelope (ENV) protein encoded by HERV-W in blood cells, which is in turn directly responsible for many pathological features of the disease.

Researchers had previously observed a correlation in the expression of HERV-W ENV protein in T lymphocytes with severe respiratory distress in SARS-CoV-2 patients. However, the exact mechanisms involved were not clear. Now, the real culprit in HERV-W activation has been discovered. Researchers added a recombinant trimeric spike protein without stabilizing mutations to cultured peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from SARS-CoV-2 patients. They found immediate and significant upregulation of the RNAs for the ENV protein from both HERV-W and HERV-K. Curiously, only the RNAs for HERV-W resulted in subsequent ENV protein expression.

A key finding in these studies is that not all COVID patients had significant HERV-W ENV activation; only 20 or 30 percent of them did. This finding likely reflects an underlying genetic susceptibility among the infected that absolutely needs to be defined and taken into account, particularly if HERV-W is going to be used as a general marker for disease severity, or as a therapeutic target for a humanized monoclonal antibody therapy, as is now envisioned. For example, activation of a soluble hexameric form of HERV-W was found in multiple sclerosis, and is earmarked as potentially druggable option.

But which HERV-W, exactly? Over 1 percent of our genomes are HERV-W remnants, more than all our protein-coding regions put together. In fact, there are at least 13 HERV-W loci with full-length ENV genes in the human genome. One of these, which hails from chromosome region 7q21.2, has an uninterrupted open reading frame for a complete HERV-W ENV protein. This protein, Syncytin-1, figures famously and essentially in normal placental development. To complicate things, MS now seems to have many eclectic potential origins. Researchers revealed this week, to considerable acclaim, that infection with Epstein-Barr virus is an important upstream, or downstream, or perhaps altogether independent trigger for MS.

In heart tissue samples from COVID-19 patients, HERV-W ENV was mainly found in endothelial cells from numerous small blood vessels and in the pericardial fatty tissue. The endothelial nature of HERV-W ENV positive cells was confirmed in this case with CD31 staining. Ominously, significant HERV-W ENV in patients was found in blood clots, nasal mucosa and also in the central nervous system, particularly in microglial cells, even when SARS-CoV-2 could not be detected in those tissues. The authors note that SARS-CoV-2 induced HERV-W ENV expression in human lymphoid cells, cells that neither express the canonical ACE2 receptor, nor the TMPRSS2 protease. This suggests other routes for the virus into these cells. One recent clue to other candidate mechanisms might come from alternative receptors like ASGR1, which is highly expressed in liver cells.
 
Opinion: Pro-lifers, RIP. The pro-death movement is born.

The weekend began with the March for Life. It ended with a march for death.

Anti-vaccine activists decided to piggyback on Friday’s annual antiabortion march in the capital by having a “Defeat the Mandates” rally on Sunday. Combined, the two groups of (mostly) conservative activists engaged in a demonstration of mass inconsistency. Friday’s crowd invoked the mantra of the pro-life movement: “A child, not a choice.” Sunday’s proclaimed the mantra of the abortion rights movement to oppose vaccines: “My body, my choice.”

Friday’s crowd endorsed the most obtrusive of big-government mandates, laws telling women they can’t make their own reproductive decisions. Sunday’s argued that health decisions must be made by patient and doctor, not government. Friday’s crowd pleaded for the lives of the most vulnerable. Sunday’s demanded the right to infect the most vulnerable by eschewing vaccines and masks in shared spaces. It was enough to make one wonder: Does taking ivermectin cause people to lose their sense of irony?

The crowds weren’t the same but, collectively, the two rallies captured the hypocrisy of the right at this moment: Protect the unborn, but feel free to infect — and perhaps kill — innocent people already born, including, er, pregnant women. And yet both movements claim to be operating under the authority of “God’s mandate” and “God’s law,” as the anti-vaccine speakers repeatedly put it. God works in mysterious ways, indeed. In a rare moment of self-awareness at the anti-vaccine rally, JP Sears, the event’s emcee, quipped that because of his belief in natural immunity to the coronavirus, “I kind of feel like a flat-Earther.”

In a sense, the dual events showed the changing nature of the political right. The March for Life, in its 49th year, is where the right has been; the march for death shows where it is going. The former, held potentially on the cusp of the long-sought overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, was a joyful assembly; the latter was paranoid and rage-filled.

The well-curated March for Life program avoided harsh language about “baby killers” in favor of calls for compassion. “Every life is worthy of our prayer and our protection, whether in the womb or in the world,” the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elpidophoros said before his opening prayer. “We can and we must make the case for life both born and unborn, by our example of unconditional love. … We march with compassion, we march with empathy, with love, with our arms extended to embrace all.”

Unconditional love? Embrace all? The angry speakers at the march for death didn’t sign up for that. They railed against medical boards, peer-reviewed journals, vaccine and antiviral manufacturers, expertise of any kind. They declaimed enemies seen and unseen trying to deny them their freedom. “There are powerful forces against us,” Richard Urso, an ophthalmologist, warned the crowd. “Does anybody trust the news media?”

“No!” the crowd roared.
“Anybody trust the CDC and FDA?”
“No!”
“Do you trust Fauci?”
“No!”

Pierre Kory, a doctor who promotes the horse dewormer ivermectin for covid-19, added that the sinister “they” are also “killing us with censorship and propaganda” and “manipulating the minds of millions.” Dr. Kory’s prescription: “We must live free or we will die.”
The speakers took turns releasing medical disinformation.

One suggested breathing exercises to combat covid-19. Another repeated false claims that vaccines cause autism. “The vaccines are killing 15 people for every person it might save,” proclaimed entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, contrary to the facts. “We will kill 100 kids for every child we might save.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. misinformed the crowd that “if you take the vaccine, you have a 21 percent increased chance of dying over the next six months.”

The conservative activists made common cause not just with the liberal Kennedy gadfly but with the Nation of Islam and one of the outspoken antisemites in its leadership, Rizza Islam. “You used the Black community yet again to push poison,” he said of those who promoted the lifesaving vaccines. “You pimped the Black community and played everyone else.” Islam passed on Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s vaccine view, too: “If you attempt to force this on us, we will take this as a declaration of war.”

Anti-vaccine leader Del Bigtree rounded out the proceedings by calling for Nuremberg trials for crimes against humanity. “Mark my words: We will hold Tony Fauci accountable, we will hold Deborah Birx accountable, we will hold Joe Biden accountable, but unlike the Nuremberg trials … we are going to come after the press.”

So this new incarnation of the right, after it’s done exercising its absolute right to spread illness and death, will prosecute — and execute — scientists, political opponents and journalists?

Pro-lifers, RIP. The pro-death movement is born.
 
What about the governments and its advisers who proclaimed that vaccines would be the salvation and therefore there was no need to eliminate sars-cov2. We should instead "live with it". And so we've been dying with it as it continues wave after wave.

They are as pro-death as the other ones saying also that we must "live with it", the only difference is that the first offer a palliative in the vaccines, the later don't.

Both are death cults that embrace letting diseases run wild through the population, because stopping it would require a transfer of wealth downwards for a change.

But less and less people are suffering badly.
In that sense, we have "herd immunity" for the common cold. Everyone gets it, hardly anyone dies from it. And we're on the way to there.

They are not dying fast. Sars-cov2 still causes damage to blood vessels and organs.And that damage accumulates. And the virus can evolve for the worse. This is disaster in the making.
 
What about the governments and its advisers who proclaimed that vaccines would be the salvation and therefore there was no need to eliminate sars-cov2. We should instead "live with it".
1) What's this about no need to eliminate the virus? That's the whole point of the vaccination programmes.
2) ‘Live with the virus’ doesn't mean we should live with it for all eternity. See The_J's post right above, assuming you can stand expert advice.
 
Speaking as someone who's had Covid, and has had the vaccine, the vaccine doses seem to have helped with "long Covid" symptoms I've been displaying (for close to two years now). Nothing else has helped, exercise, healthy eating, sleeping (two kids under five, but as healthy as I can manage), etc, et al.

It would be neat if you could stop talking for people who have had Covid. Please stop using us as a prop in your ideological ranting against vaccine uptake.

The powers that be coerced millions of covid survivors into vaccines they didn't want or need and you're upset with me for complaining. They dont need me speaking for them, thousands have been fired for refusing the vaccine. Front lines workers who already got covid were told to take the jab or take a hike.
I think thats a really shoddy thing to do to them and I'm happy to say so. I dont expect mandate supporters to agree, I expect them to get mad.
 
The powers that be coerced millions of covid survivors into vaccines they didn't want or need and you're upset with me for complaining. They dont need me speaking for them, thousands have been fired for refusing the vaccine. Front lines workers who already got covid were told to take the jab or take a hike.
I think thats a really shoddy thing to do to them and I'm happy to say so. I dont expect mandate supporters to agree, I expect them to get mad.
"people were fired" is not the same as "a vaccine they don't need". They're different arguments, to which people will respond differently.

Not that you said anything about folks getting fired in your opening post. That's something you've raised just now, as a brand-new set of goalposts (for this thread).

So, back to not needing the vaccine. The vaccines demonstrably improve a number of factors around Covid, even with the Omicron strain. Ergo, it is beneficial to. There is "a" need presuming your goal is to remain healthy, unless you've been misinformed or otherwise manipulated. "not getting ill" is advisable behaviour for most people under the age of retirement for work or education, and increasingly for people over the age of retirement due to their age.

Now, previously, you could claim that that's only relevant if you catch Covid. But your entire angle about vaccines and Omicron focus on how contagious it is (and it is). Which means the need for mitigating the severity of the virus and any subsequent side-effects is comparably higher. Which is what the vaccines help with. Factually. By the evidence.

And yes, I know, you only care about the lethality of any given strain and you don't give a hoot otherwise. If people are merely ill, or left with a hacking cough that persists for literally years, you ignore their existence completely. I know I'm not going to convince you of anything, or change your position one iota. And yet, your constant nonsense still needs challenging.
 
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Hardly ever a virus evolves for the worse.
Most evidence points to the opposite. And we see that happen right now.
With some luck, in a year Covid will just be another cold.

Was the delta version of covid worse than the original version, or was it not?
 
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