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Axeman
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17 Nov 2021, 8:15 am

Matrix Glitch wrote:
Axeman wrote:
Matrix Glitch wrote:
From what I've been hearing, both the virus and the vaccine are causing organ damage.


Hearing from where? Where is your evidence that the vaccine is harmful? BTW I'm well aware that the anti vaxx crowd has saturated sites like youtube with lies and false vids featuring internet actors.


I pick up on things here and there surfing the internet.
As for the rest, I'm fully vaccinated. I even asked for a booster.


Here and there on the internet=BS



Matrix Glitch
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17 Nov 2021, 8:43 am

Axeman wrote:
Matrix Glitch wrote:
Axeman wrote:
Matrix Glitch wrote:
From what I've been hearing, both the virus and the vaccine are causing organ damage.


Hearing from where? Where is your evidence that the vaccine is harmful? BTW I'm well aware that the anti vaxx crowd has saturated sites like youtube with lies and false vids featuring internet actors.


I pick up on things here and there surfing the internet.
As for the rest, I'm fully vaccinated. I even asked for a booster.


Here and there on the internet=BS


A lot of things have to be taken with a grain of salt. But getting back to asking me if I had evidence that the vaccine is harmful; I don't personally have any evidence that it is or is not... Do you?



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19 Nov 2021, 9:46 am

Austria imposes full lockdown, Germany may follow as COVID grips Europe

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Austria will become the first country in western Europe to reimpose a full COVID-19 lockdown, it said on Friday as neighbouring Germany warned it may follow suit, sending shivers through financial markets worried about the economic fallout.

A fourth wave of infections has plunged Germany, Europe's largest economy, into a national emergency, Health Minister Jens Spahn said, warning that vaccinations alone will not cut case numbers.

Austria said it would require the whole population to be vaccinated as of February, a decision bound to infuriate many in a country where scepticism about vaccines runs high, encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third-biggest in parliament.

European stocks retreated from record highs while government bond yields, oil prices and the euro tumbled as the spectre of a fresh COVID-linked lockdown in Germany and other parts of Europe cast a fresh shadow over the global economy.

As cases rise again across Europe, a number of governments have started to reimpose limits on activity, ranging from Austria's full lockdown to a partial lockdown in the Netherlands and restrictions on the unvaccinated in parts of Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

While the new measures across Europe are not seen hitting the economy as much as the all-out lockdowns of last year, analysts say they could weigh on the recovery in the last quarter of the year, especially if they hit the retail and hospitality sectors over Christmas.

A full lockdown in Germany would be more serious, however.

COVID-19-?


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21 Nov 2021, 9:05 pm

White tailed deer now found infected with covid.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.co ... index.html


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21 Nov 2021, 9:46 pm

Michigan reports 17,980 new COVID-19 cases in 2 days, highest 7-day average since start of pandemic

Woo! Go Michigan! Breaking records again!! :mrgreen:

Our old record, last November, was just over 10K in a single day...I saw a more recent site that says we had 10,228 on Thursday, and we're only going up from there. Crazy how our 7-day average more than doubled in a single day.

I love trying to decide if we should risk Thanksgiving or not... :roll:


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26 Nov 2021, 4:33 pm

Merck's COVID-19 pill significantly less effective in new analysis

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Merck & Co (MRK.N) said on Friday updated data from its study of its experimental COVID-19 pill showed the drug was significantly less effective in cutting hospitalizations and deaths than previously reported.

The drugmaker said its pill showed a 30% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths, based on data from 1,433 patients. In October, its data showed a roughly 50% efficacy, based on data from 775 patients. The drug, molnupiravir, was developed with partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

The lower efficacy of Merck's drug could have big implications in terms of whether countries continue to buy the pill. Interim data from 1,200 participants in Pfizer Inc's (PFE.N) trial for its experimental pill, Paxlovid, showed an 89% reduction in hopsitalizations and deaths

Merck's shares fell 3.5% to $79.39 in morning trading.

The Merck and Pfizer pills are cheaper to produce and easier to administer than existing treatment options such as antibody therapies from Regeneron (REGN.O) and Eli Lilly (LLY.N), which are mostly administered as intravenous infusions.

The two experimental drugs have different mechanisms of action. Merck's is designed to introduce errors into the genetic code of the virus. Pfizer's drug, part of a class known as protease inhibitors, is designed to block an enzyme the coronavirus needs in order to multiply.


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26 Nov 2021, 6:22 pm

Even Health-Care Workers With Long COVID Are Being Dismissed

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Before she caught COVID-19 at a wedding in March 2020, the physician associate spent her days diagnosing and treating people; after she was infected, she turned to her own colleagues for that same care. “At first,” she told me, “I felt a kinship with them.” But when her tests started coming back negative, her doctors began telling her that her symptoms—daily migraines, unrelenting vertigo, tinnitus, severe crashes after mild activity—were just in her head.

When she went to the emergency room because half her body had gone numb, the ER doctor offered to book her an appointment with a counselor. Another doctor told her to try removing her IUD, because, she remembers him saying, “hormones do funny things to women.” When she asked her neurologist for more tests, he said that her medical background had already earned her “more testing than I was entitled to,” she told me. Being part of the medical community made her no different from any other patient with long COVID, her eventual diagnosis. Despite being a medical professional, she couldn’t convince her own physicians—people who knew her and worked with her—that something was seriously wrong.

I’ve interviewed more than a dozen similar people—health professionals from the United States and the United Kingdom who have long COVID. Most told me that they were shocked at how quickly they had been dismissed by their peers. When Karen Scott, a Black ob-gyn of 19 years, went to the emergency room with chest pain and a heart rate of 140, her physicians checked whether she was pregnant and tested her for drugs; one asked her if her symptoms were in her head while drawing circles at his temple with an index finger. “When I said I was a physician, they said, ‘Where?’” Scott said. “Their response was She must be lying.

A few of the health-care workers I talked with had more positive experiences, but for telling reasons. Amali Lokugamage, an ob-gyn, had obvious, audible symptoms—hoarseness and slurred speech—so “people believed me,” she said. By contrast, invisible, subjective symptoms such as pain and fatigue (which she also had) are often overlooked

For other medically trained long-haulers, the skepticism of their peers—even now, despite wider acknowledgment of long COVID—has “been absolutely shattering,” says Clare Rayner, an occupational physician who is part of a Facebook group of about 1,400 British long-haulers who work in health care. “That people in their own profession would treat them like this has led to a massive breakdown in trust.” Having dedicated their working lives to medicine, they’ve had to face down the ways its power can be wielded, and grapple with the gaps in their own training.

Medical professionals have a habit of treating themselves. Daria Oller, the physiotherapist, was following her training when, after she got sick with COVID, she pushed herself to exercise. “That’s what we tell people: ‘You have to move; it’s so important to move,’” she told me. “But I kept getting worse, and I wouldn’t acknowledge how poorly I was responding.”

At first, Oller didn’t know what to make of her symptoms. Neither did Darren Brown, also a physiotherapist, who tried to exercise his way out of long COVID, until a gentle bike ride left him bedbound for weeks. He and others told me that nothing in their training had prepared them for the total absence of energy they experienced.

But these problems are familiar to people who have myalgic encephalomyelitis, the debilitating condition that’s also called chronic fatigue syndrome. Physiotherapists with ME/CFS reached out to Oller and Brown and told them that their symptom had a name: post-exertional malaise. It’s the hallmark of ME/CFS and, as that community learned the hard way, if you have it, exercise can make symptoms significantly worse.

Brown, Oller, and other physiotherapists with long COVID co-founded a group called Long Covid Physio to discuss what they’ve had to relearn, and they’re frustrated that others in medicine are still telling them, people whose careers were built around activity as a medical intervention, that long-haulers should just exercise. Ironically, Brown told me, doctors are loath to prescribe exercise for the HIV and cancer patients he regularly treats, when clear evidence shows that it’s safe and effective, but will readily jump on exercise as a treatment for long COVID, when evidence of potential harm exists. “It’s infuriating,” he told me. “There’s no clinical reasoning here.”

Long COVID has forced many of the health-care workers I interviewed to confront their own past. They worried about whether they, too, dismissed patients in need. “There’s been a lot of Did I do this?” Clare Rayner told me, referring to the discussion in her Facebook group.

But that future relies on enough medically trained long-haulers being able to work again. It depends on the health-care system’s ability to accommodate and retain them. Most of all, it hinges on other health-care professionals’ willingness to listen to their long-hauler peers, and respect the expertise that being both physician and patient brings.


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27 Nov 2021, 11:17 pm

Snow leopards die at zoo from covid.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnew ... raska-zoo/


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02 Dec 2021, 5:26 pm

What's behind the 'dire' COVID-19 surge in Michigan

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Michigan is in the midst of its fourth COVID-19 wave -- and there is no end in sight, hospital officials said.

Cases and hospitalizations are rivaling levels seen in earlier parts of the pandemic, when vaccines weren't widely available. The surge also comes at a time when non-COVID-19-related patients are being admitted, flu cases are emerging and health systems are understaffed, Brian Peters, CEO of the Michigan Health & Hospital Association, told ABC News.

Unvaccinated people continue to make up the majority of those infected with COVID-19, including severe cases of the infection. Roughly around three-quarters of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths were in unvaccinated people from Oct. 21 to Nov. 19, according to state data.

Around 45% of the state remains unvaccinated, according to federal data.

"The situation right here in Michigan is as dire as it has ever been since the start of this pandemic," Peters said.

Michigan reported a nearly 20% positivity rate in the past week, and every county is currently at the state's highest risk level for transmission.

Though the duration of this surge, and the speed with which cases have "skyrocketed" in the past three weeks, is alarming, Dr. Darryl Elmouchi, president of Spectrum Health West Michigan, which operates 14 hospitals, told ABC News.

"If you look at most other states, and all the surges we've had, usually you start at a low point and you go up really quickly, and then you come down pretty quickly," he said. "What happened for us is we went up gradually enough, but we went up high enough, with [positivity rates] in the teens, that when we shot up, we shot up from that baseline."

"This has far surpassed anything we've seen before -- both in how long it's been going on, and now its seemingly never-ending peak," he added. "We just don't know when the end will be, and we're very worried it will have a very long tail."

Michigan reported its second-highest number of COVID-19 cases and case rates in the past week, according to the state's latest weekly coronavirus report, released Tuesday. That follows records set in both cases and case rates the previous week. Hospitalized COVID-19 patients also increased 13% during the past week, the report found.


ABC Live Updates
Quote:
The U.K. reported 53,495 new cases on Thursday – the highest single-day rise since July 17, British health officials said.

Hospitalizations in the U.K. are down 6.5% over the last week while deaths are down 3% over the last week, officials said.

Over 80% of the 12-and-over population is fully vaccinated.


N.Y. Hospitals Fill as State Sees Most Covid Cases Since January
Quote:
New York state reported 11,300 new Covid-19 cases, the most since January, as dozens of hospitals neared capacity.

Total patients hospitalized for the virus have climbed by more than 1,000 in a month, reaching 3,093 on Wednesday. As of Thursday, 56 hospitals in the state had a bed capacity of 10% or less, including Albany Medical Center Hospital, Mercy Hospital of Buffalo, Long Island Jewish Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, according to the state health department.

Hospital admissions are higher in 39 states, stressing the U.S. health-care system. The seven-day average of hospital admissions with confirmed Covid-19 has climbed 18% in the past two weeks to 6,691, the highest since Oct. 13, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data.

New York’s surge is the worst in Western New York and the Finger Lakes, which both have positive test rates of more than 10%. New York City, which has fared the best so far, saw its rate jump above 2% on Thursday.

We’re not anywhere near where we were in 2020, but we never want to get anywhere close,” Hochul said.

As of Thursday, 66.7% of all New Yorkers are fully vaccinated.


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SabbraCadabra
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02 Dec 2021, 8:16 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Quote:
Michigan is in the midst of its fourth COVID-19 wave -- and there is no end in sight, hospital officials said.

I wouldn't say "no end in sight". Looks like we peaked on Nov 19th, and it's slowly going back down. Last year's peak was Nov. 21st.
If this pattern continues, we'll probably have another wave come April.
"What's behind the surge?" Well, obviously there's no mask mandates anymore, and nobody wants to vaccinate. No real mystery. Kids are catching it at school and bringing it home. Seems like every other week, another school is closing. Etc. etc.

It was crazy how fast we peaked though...we went from like 3600 (average) to 7600 almost overnight. I don't know what the actual numbers are, because they only show "7-day average" now, but I know we smashed our previous record of 10K.

But yeah, hospitals are locking everything down again.


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03 Dec 2021, 7:29 pm

COVID-19 Risks During Pregnancy

Although the overall risk are low:

People who are pregnant or were recently pregnant are at an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 when compared to those who are not pregnant.

People with COVID-19 during pregnancy are also at increased risk for preterm birth (delivering the baby earlier than 37 weeks) and stillbirth and might be at increased risk for other pregnancy complications.

Having certain underlying medical conditions, and other factors, can further increase the risk for developing severe COVID-19 illness during or recently after pregnancy (for at least 42 days following end of pregnancy).



Rates of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations by vaccination status
COVID-NET is a population-based surveillance system that collects data on laboratory-confirmed COVID-19-associated hospitalizations among children and adults through a network of over 250 acute-care hospitals in 14 states. Additional data on vaccination status for individual cases are collected in 13 of the 14 states.

This page displays several figures showing weekly, population-based rates of COVID-19 associated hospitalizations among people who were fully vaccinated and those unvaccinated, according to their age group. Figures show hospitalization rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated people according to their week of hospital admission. Hospitalization rates for all adults ages 18 years and older are age-adjusted. Rates for specific age groups are not adjusted for age.

These data were posted on December 2nd, 2021 and reflect hospitalizations through October 30, 2021. COVID-NET hospitalizations data are preliminary and subject to change as more data become available. Data will be updated monthly.


For all adults aged 18 years and older, the cumulative COVID-19-associated hospitalization rate was about 8 times higher in unvaccinated persons.

Although weekly rates can vary, the cumulative rate of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in unvaccinated adolescents ages 12-17 years was about 12 times higher than fully vaccinated adolescents aged 12-17 years.

Although weekly rates can vary, the cumulative rate of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations
in unvaccinated adults ages 18-49 years was about 13 times higher than fully vaccinated adults aged 18-49 years.

Although weekly rates can vary widely, the cumulative rate of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in unvaccinated adults ages 50-64 years was about 11 times higher than fully vaccinated adults aged 50-64 years.

Although weekly rates can vary widely, the cumulative rate of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in unvaccinated adults ages 65 years and older was about 6 times higher than fully vaccinated adults ages 65 years and older.


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03 Dec 2021, 11:27 pm

Oregon working to put indoor mask rule in place indefinitely

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Oregon is one of only a handful of states that still has an indoor mask mandate, and now the state is working to make that rule permanent.

The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) convened a Rules Advisory Committee (RAC) on Thursday. The RAC provided feedback on the indoor mask rule. The point of the committee is to suggest what should and shouldn't be included in the ruling and discuss the impact it will have on the public.

Community stakeholders, including those from the hospitality and faith sectors, joined in the meeting. People from the Seventh Day Adventists Church, the High Desert Museum, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and McMenamins were a part of the conversation.

This is the first step in making the rule permanent.

Dr. Paul Cieslak, the medical director for communicable diseases and immunizations with OHA, says making the rule permanent doesn't mean it'll be in place forever.

Permanent means indefinite. It doesn’t necessarily mean permanent," Dr. Cieslak said. "We can repeal it as well, but we are only allowed to have a temporary rule for 180 days, and anything that goes beyond 180 days, we cannot extend it."

Making the rule permanent allows the state to keep the mandate in place.

??????????


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04 Dec 2021, 11:22 am

Severe Covid-19 Doubles Risk Of Death In The Year After Illness, Study Finds

Survivors of severe Covid-19 are more than twice as likely to die over the following year than those who experienced milder symptoms or remained uninfected, according to new research published in Frontiers in Medicine, suggesting serious infections may cause significant damage to long-term health and underscoring the protection offered by vaccines.


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05 Dec 2021, 11:55 am

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie ... ee-of-harm

Article locked behind paywall:

Quote:
Why some COVID-19 infections may be free of symptoms but not free of harm

Scientists are studying the potential consequences
of asymptomatic COVID-19 and how many people may suffer long term health
problems.

ByAmy McKeever

Published September 1, 2021

• 12 min read

Eric Topol was worried when he first saw images of the lungs of people who had
been infected with COVID-19 aboard the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship that was
quarantined off the coast of Japan in the earliest weeks of the pandemic.

A study of 104 passengers found that 76 of them had COVID but were
asymptomatic. Of that group, CT scans showed that 54
percent had lung abnormalities
—patchy gray spots known as ground glass
opacities that signal fluid build-up in the lungs.

These CT scans were “disturbing,” wrote Topol, founder and director of the
Scripps Research Translational Institute, with co-author Daniel Oran in a
narrative review of asymptomatic disease
published in the Annals of
Internal Medicine
. “If confirmed, this finding suggests that the absence of
symptoms might not necessarily mean the absence of harm.”

The United States has recorded nearly 40 million COVID-19 infections since
the beginning of the pandemic. One recent study estimated that a staggering 35
percent of all COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic
. “That’s why it’s
important to know if this is a vulnerability,” Topol says.

But Topol says he hasn’t seen any further studies investigating lung
abnormalities in asymptomatic people in the more than a year and a half since
the Diamond Princess cases were first documented. “It’s like we just gave up on
it.”

He argues that asymptomatic disease hasn’t gotten the attention it should
amid the race to treat severe disease and develop vaccines to prevent it. As a
result, scientists are still largely in the dark about the potential
consequences of asymptomatic infections—or how many people are suffering those
consequences.

One stumbling block that scientists worry could keep them from truly
understanding the scope of the problem is that it’s incredibly challenging to
pinpoint how many people had asymptomatic infections. “There’s probably a pool
of people out there who had asymptomatic disease but were never tested so they
don’t know they had COVID at that time,” says Ann Parker, assistant professor
of medicine at Johns Hopkins and a specialist in post-acute
COVID-19 care
.

Still, there is some evidence that asymptomatic disease can cause
serious harm among some people—including blood clots, heart damage, a
mysterious inflammatory disorder, and long COVID, the syndrome marked by a
range of symptoms from breathing difficulties to brain fog that linger after an
infection. Here’s a look at what scientists know so far about the effects of
asymptomatic COVID-19 and what they’re still trying to figure out.

Heart inflammation and blood clots

Just as imaging scans have revealed damage to the lungs of asymptomatic
individuals, chest scans have also shown abnormalities in the hearts and blood
of people with asymptomatic infections—including blood clots and inflammation.

Thrombosis Journal and other publications have described several cases of blood clots in the kidneys, lungs, and brains of people who
hadn’t had any symptoms. When these gel-like clumps get stuck in a vein, they
prevent an organ from getting the blood it needs to function—which can lead to
seizures, strokes, heart attacks, and death.

There have been relatively few of these case reports—and it’s unclear
whether some patients might have had other underlying issues that could have
caused a clot. But the Washington State researchers who reported on one case of
renal blood clot write that it “suggests that unexplained thrombus in otherwise
asymptomatic patients can be a direct result of COVID-19 infection, and serves
as a call to action for emergency department clinicians to treat unexplained
thrombotic events as evidence of COVID-19.”

Meanwhile, studies also suggest that asymptomatic infections could be
causing harm to the heart. In May, cardiac MRI scans of 1,600 college athletes
who had tested positive for COVID-19 revealed evidence of myocarditis, or inflammation of the
heart muscle, in 37 people—28 of whom hadn’t had any symptoms, says Saurabh
Rajpal, a cardiovascular disease specialist at the Ohio State University and
lead author on the study.

Myocarditis can cause symptoms such as chest pain, palpitations, and
fainting—but sometimes it doesn’t produce any symptoms at all. Rajpal says that
while the athletes in the study were asymptomatic, “the changes on the MRI were
similar to or almost the same as those who had clinical or symptomatic
myocarditis.”

Although these chest scans are worrisome, Rajpal says that scientists don’t
know yet what they ultimately mean for the health of asymptomatic patients.
It’s possible that myocarditis might resolve over time—perhaps even before
patients know they had it—or it could develop into a more serious long-term
health issue. Long-term studies are necessary to suss that out.

The athletes’ heart inflammation might also be completely unrelated to their
COVID-19 infection. Scientists would need to compare the scans with a set taken
just before an individual was infected with COVID-19. So that, Rajpal says,
will still need to be teased out.

Long COVID

Additionally, people with asymptomatic infections are at risk of becoming
so-called COVID-19 long-haulers, a syndrome whose definition has been hard to
pin down as it can include any combination of diverse and often overlapping
symptoms such as pain, breathing difficulties, fatigue, brain fog, dizziness,
sleep disturbance, and hypertension.

“There’s a myth out there that it only occurs with severe COVID, and
obviously it occurs far more frequently in mild COVID,” Topol says.

Linda Geng, co-director of Stanford Health Care’s Post-Acute COVID-19
Syndrome Clinic, agrees. “There is actually not a great predictive factor about
the severity of your illness in the acute phase and whether you will get long
COVID,” she says. “And long COVID can be quite debilitating, and we don’t know
the endpoint for those who are suffering from it.”

Studies attempting to assess how many asymptomatic infections account for
long COVID symptoms have varied. FAIR Health, a national healthcare nonprofit,
found from an analysis of healthcare claims that about a fifth of asymptomatic patients went on to become
long-haulers
. Another study, which is under peer review, used data from the
University of California’s electronic health records and estimated that number could be as high as 32 percent.

Melissa Pinto, a co-author of the latter study and associate professor in
the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing at University of California Irvine,
says the researchers examined healthcare records of people who tested positive
for COVID-19 but hadn’t reported symptoms at the time of infection—only to come
in later with symptoms associated with long COVID-19. To ensure they were
identifying long-haulers, the researchers screened out anyone with a
preexisting illness that could explain their later symptoms.

“This is not from another chronic disease,” she says. “These are new
symptoms.”

But it’s unclear how accurate any of these estimates might be. Pinto says
that some long-haulers are wary of seeking care after having their symptoms
dismissed by physicians who weren’t familiar with long COVID-19 syndrome.
That’s why she believes that the rates of asymptomatic infections among
long-haulers are an underestimate.

Anecdotally, Geng and Parker both say that while they’ve seen plenty of
patients with mild symptoms that initially went unrecognized, they’ve had
little experience treating patients who were truly asymptomatic.

“We saw many patients who didn’t think they had symptoms except in
retrospect because they found out that they had tested positive,” Geng says.
“Because they’ve had these long unexplained symptoms of what’s presumed to be
long COVID, they think, well, maybe that wasn’t allergies.”

But she thinks that most people who were truly asymptomatic are unlikely to
have gotten tested and therefore wouldn’t think to consult a specialist in
post-COVID-19 care if they started experiencing unexplained symptoms like brain
fog and dizziness.

Parker says that ultimately physicians are still trying to understand the
broad symptoms seen in long-haulers. “When a patient comes to see us, we do a
very thorough evaluation because we still don’t know exactly what to attribute
to COVID and what might be a pre-existing underlying syndrome,” she says. “The
last thing I want to have happen is to say to a patient, yes, this is because
you had COVID and miss something else that we could have addressed.”

Mysterious inflammation in children

Physicians have also seen troubling clinical manifestations of asymptomatic
COVID-19 in children. Early in the pandemic, reports emerged of a rare and mysterious inflammatory syndrome
similar to Kawasaki disease that typically sets in weeks after an initial
infection.

“Six weeks down the line these people, especially children, will develop
inflammation throughout their body,” Rajpal says.

The condition—now called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C—typically
causes fever, rash, abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea. It can have harmful
effects on multiple organs, from hearts that have trouble pumping blood to
lungs that are scarred. It is typically seen among children under 14, although adults have also been diagnosed with this syndrome.

MIS-C is incredibly rare. Kanwal Farooqi, assistant professor of pediatrics
at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, says that
less than one percent of pediatric COVID-19 patients present with some type of
critical disease—and MIS-C is just one of them. However, asymptomatic
infections do play a role in the syndrome: A recent study of 1,075 children who
had been diagnosed with MIS-C showed that three-quarters had originally been asymptomatic.

But there’s reason to hope that this syndrome might not cause long-term
effects in patients, symptomatic or otherwise. Farooqi was the lead author on a
recent study of 45 pediatric patients showing that their heart problems—which
ranged from leaky valves to enlarged coronary arteries—mostly resolved within six months.

“That is reassuring,” Farooqi says. Still, she recommends administering
follow-up MRI scans even to patients whose heart troubles seem to have resolved
to make sure there’s no longer-term damage, such as scarring. She also says
that it’s “really reasonable” to be cautious about asymptomatic infections and
encourages parents to have their child evaluated if they have any persistent
symptoms even if the original infection was mild or asymptomatic.

“What’s important is that we can’t right now say that there are no
consequences,” she says.

Calls for more studies

Scientists caution that there’s still so much we don’t know about the potential
harm of asymptomatic infections. Many have called for more rigorous studies to
get to the bottom of the long-term effects of asymptomatic disease, why those
effects occur, and how to treat them.

Rajpal points out that his study was only possible because the Big 10
athletic conference requires athletes to get tested every few days. Regular
testing is key for uncovering asymptomatic cases, he says, which means that
most data on asymptomatic disease is likely to come from healthcare workers,
athletes, and other workplaces with strict testing protocols.

It’s also unclear what could be causing these lingering side effects.
Scientists hypothesize that it could be an inflammatory response of the body’s
immune system that persists long after an infection has been cleared. Others
suggest there could be remnants of the virus lingering in the body that
continue to trigger an immune reaction months after the COVID-19 infection
peaked.

“This is all unchartered, unproven, just a lot of theories,” Topol says.

Yet even if asymptomatic infections aren’t linked in high rates to death and
hospitalization, Pinto and others say it’s important to keep in mind that long
COVID-19 symptoms can be debilitating to a patient’s quality of life.

“Even if people survive, we don’t want them to be having a lifelong chronic
disease,” Pinto says. “We don’t know what this does to the body, so it’s not
something that I would want to take my chances with.”

The bottom line

With so much we don’t know about the long-term effects of asymptomatic
COVID-19, scientists insist it’s better to err on the side of caution.

“The full impact can take years to show,” Rajpal says. Although the chances
are slim that an individual with asymptomatic infection will have a really bad
outcome, he points out that the continuing high rate of infections means that
more people are going to suffer.

“Even rare things can affect a lot of people,” he says. “From a public
health perspective if you can reduce the number of people that get this
infection, you will reduce the number of people who get severe outcomes.”

Parker agrees, adding that it’s particularly important to prevent infection
now as the more transmissible Delta variant drives surges in cases and
hospitalizations across the country.

“We have had an amazing breakthrough in terms of the rapid development of
effective and safe vaccines,” she says. Although Parker and other scientists
remain uncertain of the health effects of asymptomatic COVID-19, “we do know
that vaccinations are safe and effective and available.”


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05 Dec 2021, 8:42 pm

Thanks for the article, the most informative on this subject I have seen.

Long COVID and other Post Covid maladies are rarely if ever taken into account when government and individual decisions on how much mitigation to use are made. I am vaccinated and boosted so my risk for hospitalization and death are very low. Usually that would mean little or no mitigation “just like the flu”. COVID is anything but usual. Is there any other disease where 32 percent of the people who are asymptomatic have long term after effects?


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06 Dec 2021, 4:11 pm

WHO strongly advises against convalescent plasma for treating Covid patients

Quote:
The WHO’s Guideline Development group found that “there was no clear benefit for critical outcomes such as mortality and mechanical ventilation.”

Convalescent plasma therapy gives Covid patients a transfusion of blood plasma from someone who has recovered from the virus in the hope the donor’s antibodies will help fight the infection.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration scaled back its convalescent plasma emergency use authorization in February.


New York City Announces First-In-The-Nation Vaccine Mandate For Private Companies
Quote:
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced what he called a first-in-the-nation vaccine mandate for private companies Monday.

He said the combination of the Omicron variant and holiday gatherings forced him to take “bold” steps. He’s giving businesses just three weeks to make sure their workers are vaccinated

De Blasio said the city will release specific rules on Dec. 15, before the mandate takes effect Dec. 27. He said it will apply to in-person employees, but would not provide any details about enforcement. He also said there will not be a weekly testing option.

New York City previously imposed vaccine mandates for city workers, but this will be the first-of-its-kind for the private sector — impacting 184,000 businesses. So far, 94% of municipal employees have gotten their shots, officials said.

Some are raising questions about whether it will slow the return to Manhattan’s Central Business District, which is crucial to the city’s economy.

“In the Bronx, with 15% unemployment, 28% of residents will no longer be able to work on Dec. 27, including 44% of Black young adults, as a result of de Blasio’s vaccine mandate for the private sector,” Staten Island Councilman, the incoming Republican minority leader, Joe Borelli tweeted.

The mayor said he spoke with Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier in the morning and briefed Mayor-elect Eric Adams last Friday. The mandate takes effect just days before de Blasio leaves office.

“[Eric Adams] has always said he understands right now there are urgent threats facing our city and the mayor’s job is to protect New Yorkers. That’s my responsibility up until the very last minute,” said de Blasio.

“The mayor-elect will evaluate this mandate and other COVID strategies when he is in office and make determinations based on science, efficacy and the advice of health professionals,” Adams told CBS2 in a statement.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who is also running for governor, said she supports a “vaccine mandate with a testing option.”

Meanwhile, Borelli is promising to sue to stop the mandate. The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce said it could mean layoffs this holiday season, and the Partnership for New York City’s Kathryn Wylde told Kramer she wonders if de Blasio is politicizing COVID as he is almost out the door, and because he wants to run for governor.

Randy Peters, the head of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, called the new mandate “virtually unenforceable.”


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman