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

Some interesting weasel words in that article, for example "In people over age 60 with breakthrough infections, vaccines protected against COVID-19 complications only weakly or not at all" Like I said, some elderly people have less effective immune systems. I'm just reporting something Dr. Griffon said on TWIV. He had a conference call with hundreds of doctors in his and other medical groups taking care over 100,000 patients. When he asked if anybody was seeing patients vaccinated before infection with Long Covid, nobody had. Other orders of infection and vaccination may not be so lucky.

And my statement about older people dying in times past is just a fact, not promoting eldercide. I'm elderly myself!

Your Lancet paper contains it's own limitation:
TWIV virologists believe what PCR is detecting in vaccinated people is mostly broken fragments of dead virus, incapable of causing infection. There are indeed many papers out there in respected journals that equate PCR CT values with live virus shedding. Shame on them! Science finds the truth eventually, and even then that is subject to refinement. "Household spread" is a very low bar: When you live with people, unmasked, and care for the sick without any PPE infection is inevitable, vaccinated or not. These people were getting massive exposures.


You are taking that out of context. I'm not being authoritarian. Just telling the truth. I'm not scolding anybody. Maybe I should have underlined "about not spreading the virus". A lot of different people tell us what to do. You get to choose who to listen to, CDC tells you to mask indoors in crowds. Your governor tells you mask mandates are illegal. Your boss tells you to come to the office where ventilation is minimal. But you could always tell him you either work from home or quit.

Aerosol transmission does occur, but it's rare. And almost always inside in poorly ventilated rooms, in close proximity to infected people. N95 masks will not protect you from that. All they do is prevent your exhaled droplets infecting other people mostly. Vaccines protect you mostly. Antivirals and MABs protect you somewhat if used correctly. Nothing is black and white. Anti-Covid measures are all statistical, not absolute. This is biology, not mechanical design.

I didn’t consider <60 a weasel word. Simply descriptive. In fact, I thought the preprint was very clear about the waning immunity with age. You may be referring to the linked article. A good reason to read the study that’s being reported on.

Agree about N95 masks. One wonders why there not being distributed free to every citizen like other countries have been doing.

Sorry to say but you lost me with aerosol transmission. Aerosol transmission is now widely understood as the main pathway for infection. Anyone living in the north thru winter knows what exhaled breath looks like in the cold. Waaay to much evidence to ignore by now. This debate between the old beards goes back to disease being caused by ‘miasma’ and the emerging field of microbiology. The surface contact goons seem to be ensconced in positions of authority still providing another massive public health failure. Unless you can provide solid evidence of super spreader events caused by surface contacts and/or fomites your missing some key information here.


Are you indicating your you tube channel haven’t understood aerosol transmission of this virus yet?

So the wife got off the phone today with one of our mutual friends. They both tested positive from covid. Guessing Delta though they haven’t been told what strain. According to what they were told, not being told what type of covid hasbeen policy. More likely they aren’t sequencing enough? Dunno.
They figured it was from a club venue they went to in Buffalo.
My radar went off as there cousin was over at my house last week, pulling some white pine off the property for a project he had coming up.
The club venue was not allowing anybody in without proof of vaccination. They thought it would be safe to go and they’ve not been out in two years and hadn’t had a break from work and caring for their very physically handicapped daughter who needs round the clock attention.

So my first thought was ‘why the eff were they in a club in Buffalo?!’. But I know the why.

Second thought was ‘was their cousin with them? ‘

Wife texted and got the answer. Yes he was.

The project he was working on was for a Community Christmas celebration organized by the Rotary. He was a participating craftsman doing live demonstrations of his work, answering people’s questions, doing business.

Wife and I are taking care of both our elderly mothers during this pandemic. Shopping, scheduling, maintaining there homes and cars do they aren’t in harms way by exposure.

I’m not mad at my friends BTW. They thought they were doing everything correct. I believe we’re out of the time frame for symptoms to arrive. I wonder at that Community Christmas event last weekend. It was outdoors so there’s that. We’re in the hot zone of Omicron so we’ve gone back to isolating as much for our parents as for ourselves.

That mask off neoliberal presser with Walensky, Fauci and the other guy, (Neitze or something?) was amazing. A real ‘go F#CK yourself neoliberal moment. They haven’t failed. They can only be failed. Look at their positions and credentials. How could they. And boy did they let people know it.

Never addressing structural issues or institutional rot. The ‘othering’ is really gaining steam.

The event might have been outdoors, but I bet there were organizational group meetings indoors. So they may have thought they were being careful, but they weren't. It happens. Most people don't have a clue how to keep from spreading a virus. They do five things right, and completely miss the sixth. They probably assumed their friends at those meetings "were clean", and the general public at the event was "suspect". That's a very common assumption.

I know from personal experience: I spent some time doing experimental surgery and working in operating rooms in my youth, so I have very good training in maintenance of sterile technique. My wife is a Veterinarian, and her sterile technique has always been a bit haphazard. I think the difference in our training is because lawsuits for nosocomial infections of people are much more expensive and have more serious career repercussions, than such infections of pets. That difference continues to this day, decades later. I am much more careful, quarantining packages and mail, etc. She goes shopping at Costco and buys stuff we can't quarantine or wash.

Not really necessary, since the original mRNA vaccines prevent serious illness and death very well, against Omicron as well as every variant so far. But it would be nice to have antibodies against each variant to prevent even a new variant "cold". The problem with this idea is, when they have to go through all the trials to get it approved, another variant will pop up that isn't on the "soccer ball". More fit variants spread very quickly, so their emergence will probably always beat any new vaccine version's trials and approval.

What does work is activated T-cells, that will attack any possible variant and keep the virus numbers down until the B-cells can start cranking out variant-specific antibodies. Anybody with two vaccinations or an infection followed by a vaccination, and a competent immune system, already has that capability.

There is also some work being done to make monoclonal antibodies against invariant portions of the virus, common across all variants. If that works well, somebody will make a vaccine that invokes those antibodies. That would be a universal vaccine against every variant and all future variants. SARS1 and MERS, too.

Here’s some nerd-splaining of the old beards debate on fomites vs. aerosol infection route and it’s relevance to the covids:

“ Such entrenched confusion between these concepts is the root of the neglect of the airborne route of infection in guidelines, despite the mounting casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, similar to the recommendations from the late 1800s, guidance continues to be based largely on empirically observed infection mainly among close contacts, rather than a mechanistic understanding of where, how long and in which environments pathogen-laden droplets can remain airborne and infectious.”

How did we get here

Chalk it up to overspecialization or turf ware fare, mebbe?

Last I looked, we lopped off the average lifespan of the U.S. by a year or two. Let’s hope the latest wiz bang shot comes into being soon and can be distributed thru a creaky and uneven distribution system in time to make up for a lousy job of public health mitigation strategies and an incompetent politics.

The smart set are using CO2 meters to assess a rooms condition indirectly in order to make the decisions if wether it’s worth entering or not, if it can be avoided. Those millions stuck in buildings with low air refresh rates don’t really have a choice. Viral payload is thought to effect severity, IIRC.

Again, I don’t believe the CDC has a scientific based theory of disease spread. Another public health failure, IMO.

In the last two days, we have both Molnupiravir and Paxlovid approved with EUAs. Their use IS restricted, but fairly sensible. Instead of saying they are only to be used for very sick people (when they would be useless) the FDA has said they should be used for patients who are at high risk for serious disease or death. That would mean mostly the unvaxxed with comorbidities, but vaccinated elders with comorbidities should be able to get them too. They do have to be given as early as possible after exposure, preferably before the patient's oxygen saturation begins to drop. (But I doubt any anti-vaxxers will seek treatment soon enough for these drugs to be used.)

Interesting they approved them so close together. I've heard we could see resistance to antivirals within a few months. This why two or more drugs should be used together: If a virus develops resistance to one of the drugs, the other drug kills it. IE. if resistance develops in 1 out of thousand uses, then resistance to both should be 1 out of a million. Fortunately, these two drugs have completely different modes of operation, so they could be used together. Remdesivir actually has yet another mode, so all three could be used together if necessary. And Paxlovid will always be given with ritonavir, another antiviral drug.

But anybody getting them would be vaxxed as soon as they began treatment, so they would have some protection when the drugs stop. Otherwise they could get infected very quickly, like in days. Or maybe they could get an appropriate MAB, so they would have a few months of protection before needing vaccination.

Getting vaccinated and getting your Vitamin D level up is far far cheaper, and more effective a solution in the long run.

Not surprising. Paxlovid tests as MUCH more effective. If I was going to get an antiviral, I would much prefer it. It also seems much safer.