Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Coronavirus: The Plague of The 21st Century?

Sad news: WHO estimates over 200 million people worldwide have suffered from Long Covid symptoms, the most common being exhaustion and cognitive difficulties. Early on, some victims seemed to benefit from vaccination. Pretty soon some studies of monoclonal antibodies for Long Covid may start, but the problem is which monoclonal? We have a battlefield littered with useless monoclonals as they are quite variant-specific.

Active immunity following vaccinations or multiple infections promote some great things like somatic hypermutation and affinity maturation, which make antibodies against every variant possible and antibodies that are 1000s of times better at neutralizing virus respectfully. Passive immunity (monoclonals) do not. Antivirals and monoclonals are wonderful, but they might actually prevent a robust immune response that can give you T and B-cell immunity that can last for many years. (17 years so far for SARS victims who survived.)

Interesting paper on TWIV 902: Some geneticists were looking for particular genes or immunological anomalies that made people more susceptible to serious Covid. They discovered that a fraction of the general population has auto-immune antibodies against certain of their own interferons. Those people had a 188-fold likelihood of serious or lethal Covid if they were under age 70. If they were over 70, that risk was still unchanged but other comorbidities surpassed it. This doesn't seem to hurt them unless they contract a SARS-COV2 infection. And just to be sure the antibodies were not caused by the infection, they looked at samples from before the pandemic: Same percentage had the antibodies. That risk is huge: That means that 187 out of 188 people under age 70 who died or got severe Covid had this condition!

So now we know why some otherwise healthy young and middle-aged people get serious Covid or die, even though they have no identified co-morbidities. This is actually one of the highest co-morbidities and nobody knew about it. Good news: It is possible to test people for it, and it may be possible to treat the condition.

Moderna has a new multi-variant SARS-COV2 mRNA vaccine that generates about 5 times as many antibodies as their original vaccine. It has some Omicron-specific antigens. They think it might be the basis of a yearly vaccine like we get flu shots. Some groups are also working on mRNA flu vaccines, which could be great since the current flu vaccines are not so good.

Not so much corona virus news, but the same team that created the Pfizer mRNA vaccine has created a promising anticancer mRNA vaccine. Another group has created a monoclonal antibody against rectal cancer. In a small trial, 12 out of 12 stage II or III cancer victims were in total remission a year after receiving the MAB treatment. No sign they ever had the tumors! The researchers had planned surgery and chemo after seeing if the MAB shrunk their tumors. Those treatments were unnecessary since all the cancer was gone.

I took ONE dose, and threw it away.

Interesting how the numbers work out: Very early in the pandemic, researchers, doctors, and public health workers all agreed that a Covid infection was about 1% lethal. About 1/3 of the US population has never been vaccinated, so that would be 110 million people. Let's just say about 100 million at some risk because the young very seldom get a symptomatic infection. 1% of that would be 1 million dead, which just happens to be the current mortality count.

Coincidence? I don't think so. It could be been a lot less if more of us got vaccinated.

A significant handful died before the vaccination was available and before Biden called out the fecking National Guard to get vaccines into as many arms as possible...

And ran up against a strange bipartisan resistance to getting vaccinated...

I only say bi-partisan because I feel like traditional "anti-vaxxers" are a sort of new-age entitled lefty crowd who probably vote for Democrats. Black resistance and vaccine suspicion crossed party lines too.

I think what was the most amazing thing to watch was the way this pandemic reaction played out exactly like the one a century ago. Human nature doesn't change.

I wonder if that pandemic had anything to do with the ensuing economic collapse that led to the Great Depression...and the Second World War?

Care to suss out the percentage of anti-vaxxers and their political leans?
I think there's more than a few studies that point out the difference between New Age Jenny McCarthy/Wellness Community anti-vaxxers and the Trumpy crowd.

The chart may be a revelation.


The most astounding part is that the lefty bunch decreased in size while the Trumpy bunch increased by nearly 50 percent.

Bipartisan?
Yeah, like the Jan 6 committee is bipartisan.

PS: And that chart is from 2021, shall we check the most recent charts? Trumpy anti-vaxxers may have DOUBLED at this point, except hundreds of thousands of them are DEAD.

That's exactly what I said.


A few crossed party lines, but not enough to make it genuinely bipartisan.

Interesting Research Letter in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). This was in a large study of folks that compared the number of SARS-COV2 vaccinations with the occurrence of Long Covid:


CI is confidence interval. You can just look at the percentages for the "average" number of people with Long Covid.

Conclusion is simple: Get at least the three vaccinations. Don't be an idiot. Long Covid sucks.

I got my three, but unless there is another truly dangerous wave I probably won't get another.

It's almost two years now since I've been inside a store or restaurant. If I had to be around people I'd likely get another. I sit home, walk the dog, and play shuffleboard. Not much chance of me picking it up on a daily basis.