Corona Virus: How Are We Doing?

[fossyant]

Almost back to normal, just a bit of congestion. The vaccines have done their job as it wasn't any worse than any run of the mill cold.

Just take it easy as it was about 8-10 days before I felt bad - just more a bad cold and lost of taste and feeling of congestion in upper chest. I then got hit when about 4 bad days, then tested negative, so carried on WFH for another week. I was off the bike for about 8 weeks as the chest still felt very tight. Eased up quickly once back riding but that first week back was a struggle.

 

[Ajax Bay]

NEJM: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2118946
“Among persons who had been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 (regardless of whether they had received any dose of vaccine or whether they had received one dose before or after infection), protection against reinfection decreased as the time increased since the last immunity-conferring event. However, this protection was [still] higher than that conferred after the same time had elapsed since receipt of the second dose of the vaccine among previously uninfected persons.”
Clinical Infectious Diseases https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1
"This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant."
PNAS https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204336119
". . the immune response to a vaccine will, by necessity, target an earlier strain of the pathogen than would the immune response to a contemporaneous natural infection. This difference in strain targeting will mean that immune evasion by the virus will likely be more advanced against immunity conveyed by a vaccine than against immunity conveyed by natural infection."

@roubaixtuesday Please note I'm not suggesting that over 50s and others vulnerable should say ' oh, I've had COVID; no need for another booster' anymore than people should say: 'I had flu last year, no need for a flu jab' (see the bad flu season in the graph below). I was offering the positive to those who've recently caught it (up): their natural immunity (NB with the up-to-date variant-version) will wane more slowly and last longer than those boosted (most eligible people last autumn).
I think that the lower age limit should be aligned with the flu jab (60): the risk to healthy 50-somethings is rather low, very few are being hospitalised, and the vaccine provides minimal protection against infection (but does give good protection (reinforcing in almost all cases pre-infection (natural) immunity).
From a health economics PoV, the cost of each Moderna jab is small compared to a week in hospital for one in a hundred.
Flu wave was worse in Jan/Feb 2019 than this last one, but far more hospitalization still caused this Jan by COVID-19 (than 'the flu')

 

[roubaixtuesday]

NEJM: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2118946
“Among persons who had been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 (regardless of whether they had received any dose of vaccine or whether they had received one dose before or after infection), protection against reinfection decreased as the time increased since the last immunity-conferring event. However, this protection was [still] higher than that conferred after the same time had elapsed since receipt of the second dose of the vaccine among previously uninfected persons.”
Clinical Infectious Diseases https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1
"This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant."
PNAS https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204336119
". . the immune response to a vaccine will, by necessity, target an earlier strain of the pathogen than would the immune response to a contemporaneous natural infection. This difference in strain targeting will mean that immune evasion by the virus will likely be more advanced against immunity conveyed by a vaccine than against immunity conveyed by natural infection."

@roubaixtuesday Please note I'm not suggesting that over 50s and others vulnerable should say ' oh, I've had COVID; no need for another booster' anymore than people should say: 'I had flu last year, no need for a flu jab' (see the bad flu season in the graph below). I was offering the positive to those who've recently caught it (up): their natural immunity (NB with the up-to-date variant-version) will wane more slowly and last longer than those boosted (most eligible people last autumn).
I think that the lower age limit should be aligned with the flu jab (60): the risk to healthy 50-somethings is rather low, very few are being hospitalised, and the vaccine provides minimal protection against infection (but does give good protection (reinforcing in almost all cases pre-infection (natural) immunity).
From a health economics PoV, the cost of each Moderna jab is small compared to a week in hospital for one in a hundred.
Flu wave was worse in Jan/Feb 2019 than this last one, but far more hospitalization still caused this Jan by COVID-19 (than 'the flu')
View attachment 677882

Thank you.

I'm not convinced there is consensus on the waning issue. Here's a nature news summary of recent research https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00124-y

You can also note the very strong caveats on potential confounding in the papers you reference, and there are complications as to whether immunity against infection or protection against severe disease is being discussed.

I'd like to see a review article or advice from a professional body rather than individual studies before holding any clear views. Such may exist already - I'm no expert. I'd welcome a pointer to such if you're aware of it.

I would not offer any views on who should be advised to take booster jabs; my prejudice is that these jabs are very safe indeed, and all boosts to immunity are good. I'm 53 and would certainly take another booster next year if offered. It seems that different countries are taking different approaches, which in itself suggests it's perhaps not definitive where the risk benefit lies.

 

[Ajax Bay]

Scanned the Nature article review - which as I read it does not refute my assertion.
I think there is considerable public messaging concern that if natural (and likely recent version) infection offers better protection which wanes slower than vaccine (and 'we' tell the population unshrouded by science), a lower percentage of people will come and take the vaccine.
And this means all these papers have to steer and confuscate this maelstrom.
Like you I am by no means an expert (though I have a son in this actual business who tries to deter me from wasting time being interested (he fails!)). I too shall take a vaccine in each arm in the autumn, on current plans.
I recently had tea with an ex-colleague who set up a very large 'spill-over' mortuary in April 2020, expecting hundreds of bodies. Mercifully, none arrived as the death rate dropped like a stone in May and the 'normal' mechanisms coped.

 

[KnittyNorah]

Well, I've gone over over three years - sharing a house with someone who got C-19 twice during 2020 - attending frequent (ophthalmic) hospital clinics during 2020, having surgery during 2020 - and gradually going out and about more and more after vaccination in early 2021, and never tested +ve for C-19 nor had any symptoms at all - apart from, in hindsight, what might have been a brief attack of 'covid toes' in Nov 2020.
For just over a year now I've been part of a clinical trial of bivalent vaccine and have been having frequent blood draws, PCRs and LFTs. No +ves and no symptoms.
As usual in February I started with the tree pollen hayfever. I was LFTing weekly at the request of the trials team due to the sneezing, runny nose etc which escape my maintenance dose of antihistamines when the pollen counts are high. This last week has been bad, sneeze, runny nose, blow it, sneeze again ... Tested on Wednesday after a very sneezy couple of days and -ve as usual. On Friday I had a slight headache; I am not a headachey person. Took 2 paracetamol and felt fine all day. Woke up this am with a mild headache again and when I did my usual morning sneeze-and-blow routine, it was ... different. Different enough that I did an LFT.
Positive! Not strongly positive, just a faintly-pink line after a full 30 minutes, but positive.
Took another 2 paracetamol and have felt fine all day. Fiddled around in the house and back garden, read a couple of library books and scrubbed some tiling in the bathroom.
Did another LFT tonight. The line was so faint and so slow in appearing that if I hadn't had the +ve this morning, I wouldn't have bothered staring at it and holding it in a better light in order to see the line.
I feel fine, will be interesting to see if it's still +ve tomorrow.

My final appointment with the clinical trials team is on April 11th so they'll at long last have something to look at in my 'symptoms diary' which I've been assiduously filling in, for over a year now, with 'No' and 'Not Applicable' by the hundreds of entries - until yesterday!

 

[Drago]

Neither Mrs D or I have ever, to our knowledge, had the covid.

Mini D tested positive but had zero symptoms. We had to isolate her because of the risk to Mrs D, and she was ever so grown up about it for a 10 year old. She was surprisingly happy to stay in her room on her electronics gadgets for 5 days and use the main bathroom while we stuck to our tiny en suite.

 

[KnittyNorah]

I'm -ve on LFT this morning - and that's in a good light at a southern window.
No recurrence of the mild headache either.

Essentially, then, an (almost) asymptomatic, very short-lived infection. I think that if I hadn't been in the middle of a hay-fever flareup, this would have gone essentially unnoticed. It was only a very slight 'difference' in the sneeze-runnynose-sneeze-blow morning routine which raised my suspicions to the level of thinking it might be worth doing an extra LFT. The headache alone, I would've put down to slight dehydration - that's the usual cause of my (rare) headaches.

 

[fossyant]

We had it in the house again last month - two definate positives (son daughter) and Mrsf coughing badly, but didn't test. I avoided it fortunately.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Neither Mrs D or I have ever, to our knowledge, had the covid.

Mini D tested positive but had zero symptoms. We had to isolate her because of the risk to Mrs D, and she was ever so grown up about it for a 10 year old. She was surprisingly happy to stay in her room on her electronics gadgets for 5 days and use the main bathroom while we stuck to our tiny en suite.

Same here.

Everyone else in the village seems to have had it at some stage.

We are fully vaccinated and have always mixed as per Gov' instructions.

No idea why we have never succumbed.

Maybe we are more sociopathic than we think we are. 😁

 

[All uphill]

Ms AU and I have not yet had it, so far as we know. We are returning to pre- covid activities which are bringing us back into contact with people.

Our son is about 90% recovered from long covid after getting the virus in early 2020. He lost his job and home, but has been working pt for a year now and living with us.

 

[markemark]

I’ve heard that around 80% of the U.K. has had covid at some point. That means that 96% of couples have had at least one of them infected and 99.84% of families of 4 have had a least one person infected, assuming equal distribution of infection.

 

[KnittyNorah]

Same here.

Everyone else in the village seems to have had it at some stage.

We are fully vaccinated and have always mixed as per Gov' instructions.

No idea why we have never succumbed.

Maybe we are more sociopathic than we think we are. 😁

From my experience - which is similar to yours - I have previously thought, with a reasonable degree of certainty (barring the Covid Toes incident) 'I have never succumbed' - although I confess I have wondered about asymptomatic infections.

However, as I have been doing regular LFTs throughout - since they became available - and even since they were not freely available, as part of the clinical trial I'm on - I sort-of assumed that they would be very likely to have picked up anything that I'd 'not noticed'.

Apparently not, given that I was -ve on Wednesday LFT, +ve on Saturday and -ve again by today (Sunday). I think I can, probably, maybe, state that there's a good chance I would've been +ve on Friday and perhaps on Thursday evening. But that makes 2 or 2.5 days of 'positivity' on test and anything other than ridiculously-frequent testing could well have missed that. In fact WOULD have missed it if I hadn't been in the middle of a hay-fever flare-up so I was extra-aware of a 'difference' in the quality of the snot produced ...

 

[craigwend]

Long Covid Experience from BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65058119

 

[Alex321]

I’ve heard that around 80% of the U.K. has had covid at some point. That means that 96% of couples have had at least one of them infected and 99.84% of families of 4 have had a least one person infected, assuming equal distribution of infection.

It won't be equally distributed though. Most families where any get it, all will have done It will be fairly unusual to successfully isolate the first to get it before they pass it on. Not very unusual, but enough to skew the distribution quite a bit.

 

[gbb]

Still never (knowingly) had covid, not even suspected i may have a light dose...but I'm generally healthy anyway, always was.
We wonder if my wife has long covid, she's had covid at least twice, once making her fairly unwell, but she's never really got her vigour back considering she used to be very active and busy, she's been fairly quiet and relatively inactive now for months, maybe even a year....compared to her old self.
One of our son's(38) has never had the vaccine, never will, but I don't think he has had covid either.

I tend to think my body has a good immune system, I rarely get ill, ( barring occasional colds and flu maybe 4 times in 64 years ) every reason to think a percentage of the population will be similar in physiology (assuming im right of course)