Coronavirus (2021) thread

[ayrshire_blue]

Firstly, the conclusions being drawn from this study is that the 502.V2 variant would render these vaccines ineffective. This is highly unlikely. It will take a large amount of genetic diversity to completely render the current vaccines useless. Why? Vaccines are polyclonal.

This study didn’t even look at the vaccines. They studied OLD blood sera from NATURAL infection. Therefore they already contained low antibody levels. Why is this an issue? Because everyone knows antibodies from natural infection with COVID are weak and wane in 2-3 months.


Please take note of where the study says that over half of the samples did neutralize due to the fact they had a more robust immune response. Hello? This is what vaccines do? Antibody counts would be sent high? Not to mention the study TOTALLY disregarded B-cells and T-cells.

How are you going to disregard our actual immune systems and their ability to make antibodies for later? Which may I remind you are DRIVEN by vaccines. They teach our bodies to make antibodies for later, not just during active infection (memory T-cells anyone). That’s immunity!

T-cells stimulate B-cells to make antibodies. Antibodies are just your first line of defense which is what is initiated when you get this vaccine. It’s our T-cells that are responsible for long-term immunity. When antibodies diminish after your initial inoculation, your T-cells-will tell your B-cells it’s time to produce more antibodies. As long as your T-cells still recognize this virus and inform your B-cells they need to produce antibodies, the vaccine is still doing its job. Antibodies being built up over and over again is nothing new or unique to this vaccine, this is how vaccines have always worked. This study does not account for this information concerning T-cell immunity AT ALL.

Thanks for this. The point he makes in no.5 I thought was really interesting. If I've read it right, it suggests that people who were severely ill in hospital produced antibodies which *do* work against this particular strain, but those who were mildly ill did not. It made me wonder though, if those who were mildly ill had memory T or B cells from a previous illness so that antibodies weren't actually ever required. If that's the case, it's extremely positive and might be the same for this new strain?

That's if I've deciphered what's been said correctly.

 

[grunge]

I didn’t say it was a random knobber, I just wait for someone on here to decipher it and post the main elements. I don’t do social media, as I’m sure plenty on here don’t either.

fair play, However forums like Bluemoon are social media as well. to me twitter is just another source of info and communication like here.

His posts are a readable breakdown of a paper from south African CDC that is saying in 48% of cases looked at existing antibodies had no effect on the new strain. 90% of cases had had less immune response.

This is from natrual infection rather than vaccines which usually offer a far stronger immunity than natural immunity so while its a concern that this is happening they are saying its not something we should be "horribly freaked out by".

His take on it is it may take the vaccine down from say 95% effective to 70% effective. which is still higher than natural immunity.

 

[MillionMilesAway]

Continuing on the "things aren't as bad as reported" theme - lot's of press this morning about the Imperial REACT study showing the lockdown isn't working, and cases are rising rather than falling.

Here's the report:

https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/85583/2/REACT1_r8a_final.pdf

The study is of randomly sampled people in the population who are tested by PCR. They take a sample over a couple of weeks every so often.

I'd* just like to say that the headlines are absolute and utter cock, and even the study report itself is pretty disappointing from a highly reputable institution.

So, are cases are going up rather than down?

Here's the relevant graph - the red line fitted through the January datapoints is the claimed upward trend.

View attachment 8664

This is bollocks, frankly. The uncertainty on that is such, as you can see from the shaded red area, that the data is also compatible with the falling trend as we see on the daily case data (you'd expect the case data to lag by a few days from the REACT data). Several of the datapoints are outside the confidence interval plotted.

Next up, they also fit the epidemic *between* these sampling intervals into a continuous profile of infected numbers. Relevant graph:
View attachment 8665
If you believe that fit, you need your head examined, frankly. They have a massive upswing right at the end essentially entirely predicated on the single last day of data. The data is useful and interesting in itself, but the attempts to draw strong conclusions from the trend over the past few days are futile and misleading IMO.

Finally, some views from someone better qualified than me. Those who don't like Twitter can ignore!



I think the most pessimistic possible interpretation of this data is that it's too noisy to draw any clear conclusion on trends since lockdown.

*At this point I should of course acknowledge that they're obviously far more qualified than I am, and you should take my opinions with due scepticism as a result.

Thanks, I've not seen that Imperial thig.

My understanding of your commentary reduced to an idiot level version is
"there's a 2 week gap in data and it's not safe to assume that it's broadly a straight line; instead. there might be a peak in the middle of that gap, but it's too soon to tell. Having a big gap in a short overall range makes conclusions uncertain"

Is that fair?

 

[Del_Bosque]

 

[gazinho]

Mrs Gaz been pinged off that test and trace app saying she's got to stay at home for 10 days, just spoke to my next door neighbour (from a distance) and it's them who have tested positive. Mrs Gaz hasn't been out anywhere so it's 100% because they've tested positive, not sure covid can travel through walls but I think our bedroom is next to theirs so their phone must be near her phone at night.

Any thoughts on whether you lot think she should isolate or not?

 

[inchy14]

Mrs Gaz been pinged off that test and trace app saying she's got to stay at home for 10 days, just spoke to my next door neighbour (from a distance) and it's them who have tested positive. Mrs Gaz hasn't been out anywhere so it's 100% because they've tested positive, not sure covid can travel through walls but I think our bedroom is next to theirs so their phone must be near her phone at night.

Any thoughts on whether you lot think she should isolate or not?

I wouldn’t personally mate.

 

[M18CTID]

I agree mate. Greater adherence to the current rules would probably make the biggest difference to get us through the worst if this wave until the population is vaccinated.

Hopefully, the number of cases are now falling but it’s unlikely (IMHO) that the official Covid case figures adequately reflect the prevalence of Covid in the working population, especially when 40% to 50% of infected people are asymptomatic or have very mild systems where the person doesn’t realise they need to be tested. That is exacerbated when people who know they have Covid don’t let work colleagues or friends know about it.

I am confident that we will get out of this through vaccination and we will be in a far better place after Easter, but we will be looking at a lot more damage in the meantime if a significant minority ignore the rules or they aren’t straight with contacts at work and elsewhere.

Just heard that out of the 6 of us who got it, 1 is now in hospital with breathing difficulties. He was complaining of a possible chest infection last week (before any of us knew we had it), and it’s escalated from there. He’s asthmatic too which compounds it. It all goes back to the prick who never gave us the heads up at the start of last week regarding what was wrong with him. I’m just hoping our colleague gets through it and nobody else gets it as bad as that. I’m only a few days into my symptoms so nowhere near out of the woods yet.

 

[Del_Bosque]

Worst decision of the Pandemic?

 

[Tim of the Oak]

Just heard that out of the 6 of us who got it, 1 is now in hospital with breathing difficulties. He was complaining of a possible chest infection last week (before any of us knew we had it), and it’s escalated from there. He’s asthmatic too which compounds it. It all goes back to the prick who never gave us the heads up at the start of last week regarding what was wrong with him. I’m just hoping our colleague gets through it and nobody else gets it as bad as that. I’m only a few days into my symptoms so nowhere near out of the woods yet.

Hope you and your colleague get through this OK. Not as bad but I do volunteer gardening on Friday’s. There’s a lad whose down on his luck there so I gave him a windows phone when his phone was broke. When he caught the virus he didn’t let me know even though we’re in regular contact on WhattsApps for banter. He did let somebody who coordinates the group know tbf so I did hear second hand. He’s a nice guy but when he was asked by the doctors to give plasma he wouldn’t go to do it. He went down in my estimations.

 

[gazinho]

I wouldn’t personally mate.

That's what ive told her but she's a bit of a shitbag, Ive not got the app so haven't had anything saying I need to isolate but I don't think I would be doing so if I did