Coronavirus

[Arthur Dent]

I’ve also still got some residual phlegminess going, though I imagine that is at least partially due to the cold weather. This is overwhelming likely to resolve with time.

This disease has been a huge source of anxiety for a couple years now. I don’t think my symptoms were especially concerning on their own, but there’s always that thought that this is something that could go bad which l think leads to some vigilance.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

I’ve also still got some residual phlegminess going, though I imagine that is at least partially due to the cold weather. This is overwhelming likely to resolve with time.

This disease has been a huge source of anxiety for a couple years now. I don’t think my symptoms were especially concerning on their own, but there’s always that thought that this is something that could go bad which l think leads to some vigilance.

We just heard a vaccinated 57 year old cousin of my wife died last week of covid. Such a weird disease how it is nothing in some and deadly in others.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

My coworker, about 60 yo, had a bad case of covid last week. Sounded terrible. Felt terrible.

Her husband got it from her, also about 60 yo, and went to the hospital yesterday. I talked to her this AM. She said the doctor told her if they had waited another couple days to come in, it would have been pretty serious. As is, he expects her husband to make a pretty quick recovery. Hopefully he's right.

Both are vaxxed though idk about boosted.

[mikechamp]

Only time will tell, but this will be an interesting thing to monitor in the years/decades ahead:

How past pandemics may have caused Parkinson's

Surviving a pandemic isn't always the end of the story – some viruses can have health effects that linger on for decades, eventually leading to a range of devastating diseases.

In the 1960s, epidemiologists studying the long-term prognosis of survivors of the 1918 Spanish Influenza began to notice an unusual trend. Those who were born between 1888 and 1924 – meaning they were either infants or in young adulthood at the time of the pandemic – appeared to have been two or three times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease at some point in their life than those born at different times.

It was a striking finding. For while the potential neurological consequences of flu infections have been documented by doctors for centuries – there are medical reports of this which date back to 1385 – the sheer scale of the Spanish Flu, which infected around 500 million people globally, meant scientists could link a heightened risk of disease to the pandemic.

In recent years, an elevated risk of Parkinson's has also been identified in the survivors of outbreaks of HIV, West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis, Coxsackie, Western Equine virus and the Epstein-Barr virus. Neurologists attempting to understand why this happens believe that each of these viruses are capable of crossing into the brain, and in some cases damaging the fragile structures which control the co-ordination of movement, known as the basal ganglia, initiating a process of degeneration which can lead to Parkinson's.

Now scientists are keen to monitor whether the current pandemic will also trigger a higher rate of Parkinson's cases in decades to come. "We don't know but we need to consider that this could become the case," says Patrik Brundin, a Parkinson's researcher at the Van Andel Institute, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "There are several studies highlighting that people who have recovered from Covid often have long-term central nervous system deficits including loss of sense of smell and taste, brain fog, depression, and anxiety. The numbers are troubling."

While Sars-CoV-2 can invade brain tissue, the scientific jury remains open on whether it will contribute to neurodegenerative disease. Coronaviruses are generally known as "hit and run viruses", because they tend to cause fairly short disease, even if this proves deadly in some cases. In contrast, DNA viruses such as Epstein-Barr can linger permanently in the body and are more associated with long-term illness.

But there have been some indications in the past there might be more to coronaviruses than we perhaps suspect. In the 1990s, Canadian neurologist Stanley Fahn published a study which identified antibodies to the coronaviruses that cause the common cold in the cerebrospinal fluid of Parkinson's patients.

Over the past year, scientists like Brundin have been concerned by the emergence of a small handful of case studies describing patients who have developed what doctors term acute Parkinsonism – abnormalities such as tremors, muscle stiffness, and impaired speech – following Covid-19 infection. More research has found that some Covid-19 patients have disruptions in one of the body's most critical systems, known as the kynurenine pathway. This runs from the brain to the gut, and is used to produce a number of crucial amino acids required for brain health. But when it malfunctions, it can lead to the accumulation of toxins which are thought to play a role in Parkinson's disease.

Other neurologists, however, warn it is still far too early to draw any link between Covid-19 and Parkinson's.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2022 ... es-to-come

[GeddyWrox]

My coworker, about 60 yo, had a bad case of covid last week. Sounded terrible. Felt terrible.

Her husband got it from her, also about 60 yo, and went to the hospital yesterday. I talked to her this AM. She said the doctor told her if they had waited another couple days to come in, it would have been pretty serious. As is, he expects her husband to make a pretty quick recovery. Hopefully he's right.

Both are vaxxed though idk about boosted.

Any word on the treatment that stopped the worst of the progression? Curious because of the news that the monoclonal antibodies don't seem to work well against omicron.

[GeddyWrox]

On my phone so not going to include quotes but the was a great write up about the ongoing studies of our immune response to the various covid variants.

What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00214-3

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

On my phone so not going to include quotes but the was a great write up about the ongoing studies of our immune response to the various covid variants.

What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00214-3

Haven’t heard much bc of the snowstorm. Will answer when I know more.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I hate covid.

Had a close friend with 3 kids tell me his wife was preggers nye. Congrats on the sex. He had covid we were on the phone. Said his wife got vaxxed a week or so before bc she heard it was safer for the baby.

Of course she had a miscarriage. Which is obviously physically always and often mentally stressful. She blames herself doubly 1 for having a miscarriage and 2 for getting the vax.

I mean, probably not the cause. But good luck explaining that to an emotional person.

[mikechamp]

A couple of studies to monitor as they have yet to go through peer review. I specifically call your attention to the first section of the article, as some on this board have cited lingering effects from their bout of COVID.

Risk of new heart problems jumps after COVID; mRNA shot side effects no different for cancer patients

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review.

Risk of new heart problems much higher after COVID recovery

Long after recovery from COVID-19, people face significantly higher risks for new heart problems, a large study has found.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs compared rates of new cardiovascular problems in 153,760 individuals infected with the coronavirus before vaccines were available, 5.6 million people who did not catch the virus, and another 5.9 million people whose data was collected before the pandemic. An average of one year after their recovery from the acute phase of the infection, the COVID-19 survivors had a 63% higher risk for heart attack, a 69% higher risk for problematic irregular heart rhythm, a 52% higher risk of stroke, a 72% higher risk of heart failure, and a nearly three times higher risk of a potentially fatal blood clot in the lungs compared with the other two groups, according to a report published on Monday in Nature Medicine. The elevated risks among former COVID-19 patients were evident in young and old, Blacks and whites, males and females, people with and without diabetes and with and without kidney disease, as well as smokers and nonsmokers, said Ziyad Al-Aly of the VA St. Louis Health Care System and Washington University in St. Louis.

The risks were high even in people who had mild COVID-19 and did not need to be hospitalized for it, he noted in a Twitter thread. "It really spared no one," Al-Aly told Reuters. "People with COVID-19 should pay attention to their health and seek medical care if they experience symptoms like chest pain, chest pressure, palpitation, swelling in the legs, etc."

mRNA vaccine side effects no worse in cancer patients

COVID-19 vaccines using mRNA technology do not produce any extra short-term side effects in cancer patients, a new study suggests.

Omicron's route into cells helps explain symptom profile

The Omicron variant's method of infecting cells is different from the mechanism most often used by earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, which could help explain Omicron's milder symptom profile, a study published in Nature suggests.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/risk-heart-p ... 45088.html

[mikechamp]

Heads up! New variant gaining in prominence:

Omicron subvariant BA.2 is rising. What do we know about it?

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and just when new cases and hospitalizations in the U.S. are on the decline, an Omicron subvariant called BA.2 is gaining significant traction in some parts of the world.

While the original Omicron variant, first detected in South Africa in late November, is still responsible for the majority of new cases in most countries, BA.2 has rapidly spread in places such as South Africa, India, England and Denmark, where it is now dominant. In the U.S., Omicron BA.2 is circulating at a low level, accounting for less than 4 percent of new coronavirus cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But some experts believe it is just a matter of time until the subvariant takes over and becomes dominant.

“Anytime a variant is more transmissible, even if it’s a little more transmissible, it seems to have taken on that dominance,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Yahoo News. “So Delta was much more transmissible than Alpha. It took over. Then Omicron was four times more transmissible than Delta. It took over. If the BA.2 is more transmissible than BA.1, it'll take over,” she said.

According to public health experts in both Denmark and the U.K., the variant appears to be between 30 and 34 percent more infectious than the currently dominant BA.1 form. A recent Danish study also found that BA.2 was relatively better than BA.1 at infecting vaccinated people, which indicates the subvariant has greater "immune-evasive properties." But, underscoring the value of vaccines, the researchers found that vaccinated people were still less likely to get infected and transmit either the BA.1 or BA.2 subvariant compared with unvaccinated people.

The good news is that there are no indications so far that BA.2 causes more severe disease. In addition, Gandhi says it’s a good sign that the subvariant hasn’t accelerated the pandemic in Denmark and the U.K. “Cases still were able to go down there, despite BA.2 coming into their regions,” Gandhi told Yahoo News.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/omicron-subv ... 26165.html