Coronavirus

[g0nz0]

Hmm. I wonder if that has anything to do with the vaccine side effect blood clotting.

Hmm. Cytokines are chemical messengers. They are released to tell cells to self destruct when infected, as with covid (and other things). Which is the situation in covid infected lungs. Why do you think the ", postmortem examination of patients with COVID-19 has shown a large accumulation of inflammatory cells in lung tissues including macrophages and T-helper cells.(wikipedia)." Where else do you think the cytokines are coming from?

Theres a gunfight in a bar. Theres the gunmnen. Theres bullet holes. What do you think happened?

Cytokines do not tell cells to self-destruct in the general case (ignoring very specialised cells like mast cells and NK cells here)!!

Cytokines are a general warning signalling system. Part of the novelty of SARS-CoV-2 virus is that it effectively disables the interferon (cytokine) signalling early on in the COVID-19 disease.

Cell death is a very well regulated process, and for what should be obvious good reasons. There are many types of cell death - some are predetermined and orderly (apoptosis), some are traumatic/inflammatory/abrupt (necrosis).

There is a panoply of cell death phenotypes, including:

• Apopotosis is an ongoing cell death process provides for general cell turnover purposes,
• Autophagy removes damaged proteins and dysfunctional organelles by macrophage efferocytosis - mopping up of apoptotic cells and resolving inflammation,
• Necroptosis is an orderly form of necrosis, for when apoptosis signally is disrupted by a virus, and
• Pyroptosis, which occurs to rapidly clear infection but is signalled not by cytokines but by inflmmasones.

There are many other cell death phenotypes which I'm not going to go into here as they are mostly unrelated - such as autosis, ferroptosis (iron-dependent), lysosome-dependent cell death and nanotoxicity, and parthanatos (related to extreme stress, heart disease, stroke, diabetes), etc.

Inflammasones, together with pattern recognition receptors, detect pathogens and host-generated danger messages, to *regulate* cytokine release and cell death. [I think you might be mixing inflammasones and cytokines up?]

What happens in COVID-19 is that alveolar epithelial cells die by apopthosis/pyroptosis not because of cytokines but because of infection. This leads to macrophage activation, which causes pro-inflammatory cytokines to be released.
So, rather than cytokines being "released to tell cells to self destruct when infected", the dying infected cells are actually releasing cytokines which is then causing the inflammation. You had the cart before the horse.

In general, this cytokine release is a good thing. The problem is that with COVID-19 disease the release is too late and too excessive - the damage is mostly done. This combination of late and excessive cytokine release causes severe inflammation in the lungs, leading to a series of adverse outcomes (coronary atery disease, cardiomyopathy, coronary plaque microthrombogenesis), and also to dysfunctional hyper-coagulation.

Early clinical intervention with interferon (such as inhalation of IFN α-2b) may actually be associated with improved outcomes for COVID-19, allowing the immune system to better react earlier, without leading to the cytokine storm.

Interestingly, the cytokine storm is suspected to be one of the main causes of death in the Spanish 'flu also - and was worse with people with health immune systems because of their stronger immune response (and therefore higher increases in cytokine levels).

If you randomly toss a coin but each time its tails you discard that score...then you get an unending line of heads - the survivors.

You don't discard the score - it is evaluated. And the choice of which to discard is based on environmental conditions at the time. Most lineages blunder along an evolutionary path of speciation until they are either overly specialised or no longer adapted for the environment at the time and become extinct.

 

[g0nz0]

They look to demonstrate that opinion what to do about covid is divided on political lines. Which ought to tell everyone that there is no clearly effective way to manage covid. If there was then everyone would have adopted it

People arent idiots, they know lockdown hasnt worked or there wouldnt be any disease by now. The official emphasis on all these measures which dont work has probably undermined the credibility of authorities in now claiming that vaccination will.

People are emphatically idiots!

You can never go wrong by overestimating how stupid political responses to crises are. Political evolution is a different optimisation game to doing the right thing. Just look at Brexit.

 

[Klingsor]

People arent idiots . . .

I assume you haven't spent much time in the U.S. recently.

 

[dandelion]

Tim Spector of the covid tracking phone app has just released a new blog update of their findings.

On the one hand he reports an exponential growth of cases of the Indian variant. But on the other, that these are mostly amongst unvaccinated young people.

He also reports that symptoms these people are getting have changed, and they are now more like a bad cold. Spector has been following symptom from the start, and was the team which identified loss of taste and smell as the signature symptom for covid. But in these cases it is disappearing and is relegated to the 10th most likely symptom. Top are now headache, sore throat, runny nose and temperature.

ONS this spring tracked antibody levels in the population, including mongst the younger age groups who have not been vaccinated. These peaked at about 1/3 of non vaccinated people showing antibody to covid.

Anyone who had covid last spring would now be testing negative for antibody. It is not unreasonable therefore to add 1/3 this spring to another 1/3 last spring and reach a total around 2/3 now immune because of past infection. This might still be a low estimate.

But it would explain why symptoms have changed. There are few cases at all amongst the people who have both had covid and a vaccination, not surprising. Earlier data suggested having both is more protective than either alone. But the people who are getting cases now are mostly those with natural immunity catching it a second time. And these are presenting as a cold.

Thats excellent news.

Spector also says modelling is still predicting more deaths. It is unfortunately really too early to tell because of the time delay before cases become deaths, so we await events. However all this looks to me as if covid is quite naturally becoming simply another corona cold virus. The normal cycle of repeat mild annual infections is establishing.

 

[Player_01]

"An anti-vaccine Ohio nurse attempted on Tuesday to prove that COVID-19 vaccines make people magnetic, but ― to use a gymnastics term ― she failed to stick the landing.

Registered nurse Joanna Overholt, testifying before the Ohio House health committee about what she said were potential coronavirus vaccine dangers, tried to use her own body as proof.

Overholt said she heard during lunch that vaccines cause magnetism in humans, so she decided to prove her point on herself by attempting to show how a bobby pin and a key would stick to her exposed skin.

Spoiler alert: It didn’t go well.

“Explain to me why the key sticks to me. It sticks to my neck, too,” Overholt said. “So, yeah, if somebody could explain this, that would be great.” The nonmagnetic aluminum key actually fell off her neck as soon as she removed her. hand."

Nurse’s Attempt To Prove Vaccines Make People Magnetic Hilariously Backfires (yahoo.com)

 

[dandelion]

COVID-19 vaccines make people magnetic

Thats an interesting story to post. Did you choose it because it sounds ridiculous and wanted to attack people who oppose current policy by implying they are all as off the wall as this person?

See my post above from Prof Tim Spector, whose groups have led monitoring of covid in the UK, getting their phone app started well before government managed to do anything useful to track the disease. They use a phone app so have always had to rely upon people reporting they are ill, and they have recorded peoples symptoms.

At the moment they are reporting the new wave of covid in the UK is very largely amongst unvaccinated people. Which is all so far so good.

But their finding amongst these people is that the symptoms pattern of covid has changed, and they are reporting now as bad colds.

Thats a fundamental change which implies even wthout vaccination this epidemic is transitioning away from being a killer into being a bad cold.

 

[Industrialsize]

 

[dandelion]

oops-nothing there!]

Its very difficult to reply to points in your posts,because you frequently make none. Instead you like showing posters others have made. I wonder where you get them? And indeed, what is the copyright situation constantly posting swathes of text you didnt write?

The report by Prof Tim Spector of King's covid tracking phone app suggests that non vaccinated people in the UK are now geting symptoms of covid more like an ordinary cold.

if thats so they dont need vaccinations. The US is in all probability just giving away vaccines it has already committed to buying but now finds it doesnt need.

 

[Industrialsize]

Its very difficult to reply to points in your posts,because you frequently make none. Instead you like showing posters others have made. I wonder where you get them? And indeed, what is the copyright situation constantly posting swathes of text you didnt write?

The report by Prof Tim Spector of King's covid tracking phone app suggests that non vaccinated people in the UK are now geting symptoms of covid more like an ordinary cold.

if thats so they dont need vaccinations. The US is in all probability just giving away vaccines it has already committed to buying but now finds it doesnt need.

What I posted is an official statement of the President of the United States. It is not copyrighted and is meant to be disseminated widely. Criticize it all you like. I find it newsworthy in that the United States is donating a half billion doses of vaccine to the world.........

 

[dandelion]

I find it newsworthy in that the United States is donating a half billion doses of vaccine to the world.........

Well I think the UK is trying to sell its spare vaccines 'at cost', so I guess the US is doing better than that.

 

[g0nz0]

The report by Prof Tim Spector of King's covid tracking phone app suggests that non vaccinated people in the UK are now geting symptoms of covid more like an ordinary cold.

if thats so they dont need vaccinations. The US is in all probability just giving away vaccines it has already committed to buying but now finds it doesnt need.

Hopefully those trends hold. The average age of illness is generally decreasing across the western world as populations become vaccinated, and the outcomes are significantly improving. All evidence that the vaccines are working well.

The problem now will be vaccine equity. Nobody is out of this pandemic until we're all out of this pandemic. The virus is free to evolve rapidly in burgeoning hot-spots around the globe, so it is of critical importance that global replication transmission is suppressed.

The US is pledging to give away vaccines in an attempt to reclaim a role of global leadership - basically Biden having to do a clean-up-the-mess job following the Trumpy go-it-alone approach of vaccine nationalism (along with the UK) up to now.

Did the UK outsmart the EU over AstraZeneca vaccines?

"The EU is probably the third largest producer of vaccines, after the US and China, but has exported 77 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to numerous countries and to Covax, the vaccine scheme for developing countries, to which it is the largest supplier.

"The western European vaccine-producing countries have also agreed to supply the rest of their production to the EU as a whole to be made available on a per capita basis to all member states. They are adopting a policy of sharing with non-producing countries globally, and with their neighbours, which of course means less for themselves.

"This is seen as utter foolishness, and failure, by the UK government. Its measure of success is how much its gets for people in the UK.

"On the other hand, the EU hopes to reach a herd immunity level of vaccination in the summer, probably only a month or two after the UK. It will have done so while showing some sense of global responsibility."​

At least the US is starting to turn a corner. Boris Johnson's recent perfidious call to the G7 to "vaccinate the world" did more than raise a few eyebrows globally. London has yet to publicly disclose how many vaccine doses it has sent abroad.

 

[dandelion]

The average age of illness is generally decreasing across the western world as populations become vaccinated, and the outcomes are significantly improving. All evidence that the vaccines are working well.

King's app is reporting that the rate of infection amongst vaccinated people is about 20% that amongst unvaccinated. Which actually isnt all that good in terms of effectiveness of the vaccine. last I looked about half the Uk population has had two doses, but there might be some scope for improving if all do. Nonetheless, antibody levels rise for 1-2 months, but then fall steadily after dosing. At this level of infection after vaccination, I am deeply skeptical it will be possible to eradicate covid. In the longer term doing so would likely require at least one annual vaccination, maybe two.

The most interesting aspect is the change in symptoms to milder disease. specially since this has also happened in unvaccinated people. They are unvaccinated, but ONS found 30% of them had antibody this spring, and it is likely a similar number did so last spring. So something like 2/3 of unvaccinated people will by now have natural post infection immunity anyway.

 

[b.c.]

"An anti-vaccine Ohio nurse attempted on Tuesday to prove that COVID-19 vaccines make people magnetic, but ― to use a gymnastics term ― she failed to stick the landing.

Registered nurse Joanna Overholt, testifying before the Ohio House health committee about what she said were potential coronavirus vaccine dangers, tried to use her own body as proof.

Overholt said she heard during lunch that vaccines cause magnetism in humans, so she decided to prove her point on herself by attempting to show how a bobby pin and a key would stick to her exposed skin.

Spoiler alert: It didn’t go well.

“Explain to me why the key sticks to me. It sticks to my neck, too,” Overholt said. “So, yeah, if somebody could explain this, that would be great.” The nonmagnetic aluminum key actually fell off her neck as soon as she removed her. hand."

Nurse’s Attempt To Prove Vaccines Make People Magnetic Hilariously Backfires (yahoo.com)

Like I keep saying... BIZARRO WORLD:

GOP strategist brutally sums up Trump's losing war with Dr. Fauci in nine simple words: "Dr. Fauci still has his job, Donald Trump doesn't" - Raw Story

Republicans "forget" that Trump fired embedded CDC observer in China months before the outbreak

Lindsey Graham’s New Spin On Trump’s COVID-19 Failings Is Too Much For Folks Online | HuffPost

Masks could have stopped the pandemic—if Trump hadn't made them a partisan litmus test

Texas governor slammed for 'grotesque hypocrisy' after banning businesses from asking for 'vaccine info'
.

 

[b.c.]

MEANWHILE IN CORONAVIRUS NEWS:

States Biden Won Are Leading On Vaccines. Trump States Lag​

U.S. To Buy 500 Million Vaccines To Donate To Other Countries | HuffPost
Delta Variant On The Rise In U.S., Prompting New Warnings To Get COVID-19 Vaccination | HuffPost
COVID-19 Delta Variant is Twice As Infective and Present in the USA
CDC plans "emergency meeting" on rare heart inflammation following COVID-19 vaccines - CBS News

 

[dandelion]

Interesting info in the latest UK ONS roundup of covid information from their prevalence studies and national statistics.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) roundup - Office for National Statistics

If you look at their graph of covid and non covid deaths, about half way down their page, it also shows the average annual mortality for the 5 years before covid. On the basis of excess deaths, about 40,000 of the 130,000 covid deaths would have been expected to have happend anyway.

Excess deaths have been negative form all causes since March this year, and negative for causes except covid since November last year. (ie fewer deaths than usual) About half the total of deaths atrributable to covid since November would have been exepected to occur from some other cause in an averge year.

The only time non covid deaths was above the annual average was in April 2020 at the height of the first outbreak in the UK. Presumably these deaths are due to an inability to treat people with other conditions at that time because of the covid surge. Although it may be due to government closing hospitals to general admissions even though they werent full.

 

[Industrialsize]

 

[phonehome]

View attachment 36405661

Actually TWO more things

They are Republicans and in "red states"

 

[dandelion]

Virtually all hospitalised covid patients have one thing in common: theyre unvaccinated]

Ah but how many are there and how ill? In the UK we now have the Indian variant rising steadily. Been going more than a month now. Hospital cases still negligible and deaths negligible.

Most case are amongst unvaccinated people, as you say. But what is really interesting is that now the symptoms of covid in the general popualtin have changed and are being reported as only a bad cold.

That rather implies those invaccinated people are immune anyway, because they are no longer getting any more ill than if they caught one of the other corona cold viruses which have been endemic for maybe centuries.

ONS reported 1/3 of unvaccintaed people in the UK had covi antibodies this spring. Those only last for maybe 6-10 months, so anyone who caight covid last year wouldnt show them. So adding together this year and last, thats 2/3 of the population immune. And antibody is likely an under estimate because the body makes a stronger tcell response. Covid ended naturally before vaccination could have much effect.

Add all that to the fact excess deaths in the UK is now negative - so the total of deaths caused by covid is falling not rising (these are people who would have died in that time from something else anyway). And its all looking good.

Just think how many people have had the last year of their life ruined by being locked indoors and not being able to see family. Thats a lot more than died from covid.

 

[Klingsor]

Most case are amongst unvaccinated people, as you say. But what is really interesting is that now the symptoms of covid in the general popualtin have changed and are being reported as only a bad cold.

Not the guy whose place at work I took the past couple of weeks. He's out of the hospital, off oxygen, and back on the job now, but still suffering asthma-like symptoms that, so far as the doctors know, may persist for months--that is, if he ever fully recovers.

Anecdotal, I know. But also close enough to home to make me that much more glad I'm vaccinated.

 

[dandelion]

Not the guy whose place at work I took the past couple of weeks.

Well I cant comment on what is happening in the US, and I think even whats happening in one state isnt necessarily saying much about a different state. Thats a continent and it takes an appreciable time for a wave of disease to cross it.

However, if cases in unvaccinated people the UK are now reporting with the symptoms of a bad cold instead of the original symptoms of covid...that sounds to me like very good news.

The new Indian strain which is responsible seems to have been just as virulent as any other in India, so no reason to think it has become mild. So its the people.

The impliction is that unvaccinated people in the UK are now sufficiently immune that covid has been reduced to the level of a cold.

Which is not amazing, since other corona viruses circulate freely and cause colds. We are just immune to them, thats all. But we could have reached this same situation last year with no more deaths. Just restrictions eased 9 months ago.

See Prof Tim Spector's report of latest findings.