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Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
Hallucigenia
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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451297

Postby Hallucigenia » October 19th, 2021, 2:29 pm

Mike4 wrote:I hear it said once in a while that viruses as they mutate, tend to get more infectious and less dangerous. Is this correct in your opinion Hal?


That's one of those deceptively complicated questions. Anthropomorphising horribly, you have to remember that the virus doesn't really "care" what it does to people. All that matters is that it makes as much virus as possible, and there are various strategies to achieve that.

Infectivity is always good, so there's always a drive to become more infectious. But the best way to be infectious can vary. Delta is more infectious in most environments because it has more viral particles in the upper respiratory tract (RT). But you can imagine that in an environment of heavy testing of swabs of the upper RT, the best way for a virus to propagate might be to become more like B.1.616 which most PCR testing misses because it has almost no viral particles in the upper RT for most of the course of an infection.

And "less dangerous" is even more complicated. Killing a host quickly is almost always bad. But as long as the host lives for long enough to pass on the virus, the virus doesn't much care if the host dies later. Something like HIV is still "dangerous" even 40 years since it emerged in that it still kills untreated people pretty reliably - but not before a good long time for transmission.

The human body seems to be pretty good at clearing up respiratory infections within a week or two, so that's the main window for transmission and human respiratory viruses don't need to worry too much about what happens to their host after that window. So SARS2 is already about as "undangerous" as it needs to be, particularly since the people in developed countries who go on to die are generally ending up in a hospital, usually in intensive care where there's lots of precautions and not much scope for further transmission. That means there's not much pressure on it to become less "dangerous" than it already is and it might take decades to do so, driven by what happens in less-developed countries.

But then with such a small genome, there's always a risk that infectivity and lethality are linked, and if a mutation makes it much more transmissible but a little bit more lethal, then that mutation could still spread in the population.

Hallucigenia
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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451310

Postby Hallucigenia » October 19th, 2021, 2:51 pm

Bouleversee wrote: I was wondering whether the fact that my teenage grandson had succumbed to Covid so soon after his Pfizer jab might be because he had encountered the Delta AY mutant.


Given that AY4.2 is still fairly rare, and doesn't have a huge advantage over delta, Occam's Razor suggests that the variant is not a huge factor in the probability of schoolchildren getting infected, compared to the fact that most of them aren't jabbed, there's no masks in schools, and minimal attention paid to ventilation and air filtration.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451329

Postby Hallucigenia » October 19th, 2021, 3:42 pm

https://www.theoaklandpress.com/2021/10 ... mb-county/

"The number of school-related COVID-19 cases in Macomb County exploded last week, with 484 cases reported to the state of Michigan....Macomb does not have a countywide mask mandate and the county health department earlier this month relaxed quarantine measures...In neighboring Oakland County, which requires masks in all schools and has more stringent quarantine protocols in place, no school cases were reported this week."

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451330

Postby XFool » October 19th, 2021, 3:45 pm

bungeejumper wrote:It might be lackadaisicalness, but there seems to be a fair shot of chaos in the mix as well. My wife (upper 70s) phoned the GP surgery the other week to get a booster appointment. The receptionist checked her computer and gave her a slot at a local clinic, where five GP practices are currently combining their jabbing operations.

So we turned up for the slot on Saturday, and they refused to jab her because it had only been 179 days since her second jab, and they wanted 180. There were dozens of older people being rejected for the same reason, and the mood out there on the pavement was getting rather stroppy. :)

For one thing, it suggested that the famous NHS joined-up thinking wasn't working. :| When the GP's receptionist had booked her in for the appointment, her computer ought to have screamed "no way! Less than 180 days!". But somehow it hadn't. Neither for her, nor apparently for a good many other people on the day. It wasn't so bad for us, of course, because we'd arrived by car, but some of these oldies would have struggled in to the clinic by bus, by hospital minibus, by taxi or by zimmer frame. More than just a tad annoying!

Soooo.... My wife phoned the surgery this morning for another appointment. It was, after all, 182 days since her second jab. But apparently the rules have been changed. She was told that the 180 day minimum between jabs has become 183 days (six months), plus a week. That's 190 days. :|

So what's ten days between friends? Not much, you might suppose, but that's not quite the point when patients are elderly, infirm, in pain or having to make awkward travel arrangements. And if there's one thing that's going to make people doubt the NHS's word, it's turning up in the rain and being sent away again because somebody's IT isn't up to snuff.

Strange. My booster jab went through pretty seamlessly in the same way as the previous two. I didn't once phone anybody - got NHS text to mobile (from GP) with weblink. Went to web page on laptop, booked appointment in medical centre (not my GP). Went there at correct time on right day, got Pfizer booster vaccination (also offered flu, but already done), sat down in chair for 15 minutes. Went home.

(It was raining!)

tjh290633
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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451343

Postby tjh290633 » October 19th, 2021, 4:29 pm

pje16 wrote:The good old common cold is doing the rounds, but in my case its not like the one you normally get
Sore throat 2-3 days
Stuffy nose 2-3 days
hacking cough - so far 4 days
Each symptom has been on it's own
and I have felt ok apart from the symptoms

It's NOT covid it IS a cold
and at over a week now it's annoying

PS My brother, who lives nowhere near me, recently had one for 2 weeks

You know what they say, treat a common cold with the finest medicine available and it is over in 14 days. Left to itself, it will be gone in a fortnight.

TJH

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451345

Postby pje16 » October 19th, 2021, 4:32 pm

Thanks @TJH I don't do a lot of medicine unless vital
time difference is the same and I'm not suffering

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451346

Postby tjh290633 » October 19th, 2021, 4:36 pm

XFool wrote:Strange. My booster jab went through pretty seamlessly in the same way as the previous two. I didn't once phone anybody - got NHS text to mobile (from GP) with weblink. Went to web page on laptop, booked appointment in medical centre (not my GP). Went there at correct time on right day, got Pfizer booster vaccination (also offered flu, but already done), sat down in chair for 15 minutes. Went home.

(It was raining!)

I have booked ours today. I tried by phone yesterday, but I got the last appointment of the day, so couldn't book for my wife. Did it online this moning and got the first available date, 13th November, at a pharmacy about 8 miles away which is the nearest on offer (and the most convenient). The local centre was not mentioned, although I understand that they do walk-in injections there.

TJH

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451347

Postby pje16 » October 19th, 2021, 4:44 pm

question for those who have had a booster
has it been at least 6 months since your second one?

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451355

Postby Bouleversee » October 19th, 2021, 4:55 pm

pje16 wrote:question for those who have had a booster
has it been at least 6 months since your second one?

Yes. I had my 2nd on 16 March and booster on 29 Sept. Had a letter or may have been an email from the NHS telling me to book on-line. All very well organised and went very smoothly at a local hospital. Have also had my flu jab at local branch of Lloyds.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451357

Postby pje16 » October 19th, 2021, 4:59 pm

Thanks Bouleversee
my 6 months is up on 23 Oct
my brother went to get his at Tesco and they turned him away as his was 5 months ago

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451372

Postby XFool » October 19th, 2021, 5:51 pm

pje16 wrote:question for those who have had a booster
has it been at least 6 months since your second one?

Yes. End of March, beginning of October.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451380

Postby Lootman » October 19th, 2021, 6:33 pm

pje16 wrote:question for those who have had a booster
has it been at least 6 months since your second one?

Yes, 7 months in fact.

The one thing that was different with the booster jab was that there was no requirement to stay there and be seated for 15 minutes, I was free to leave immediately afterwards and did so.

All three were Pfizer.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451418

Postby Bouleversee » October 19th, 2021, 8:28 pm

I still had to wait 5 mins. before leaving.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451440

Postby XFool » October 19th, 2021, 9:49 pm

Implement ‘plan B’ winter measures now or risk NHS crisis, Johnson warned

The Guardian

Exclusive: NHS Confederation head fears efforts to tackle backlog of 5 million patients will be derailed

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451455

Postby 6Tricia » October 19th, 2021, 10:50 pm

Had my booster yesterday - 6 months and 11 days after the second jab. The vaccination venue was just as busy as on my previous visits, despite the heavy rain. I was asked to wait 15 minutes before leaving, but my wheelchair volunteer said that they really needed the wheelchair so he was quite amenable to getting me back to my waiting taxi right away!

Tricia
No adverse reaction to the 3rd Pfizer jab.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451519

Postby AWOL » October 20th, 2021, 9:25 am

ursaminortaur wrote:
Mike4 wrote:
Hallucigenia wrote:And now AY.4.2, a mutant of delta that is nudging 10% of UK infections, is looking like it could be 10-15% more transmissible than delta....


I hear it said once in a while that viruses as they mutate, tend to get more infectious and less dangerous. Is this correct in your opinion Hal?


Yes, that is of greater evolutionarily advantage than killing the host. The maximum infection population and thus the ideal would be obtained with an infectious agent which spread to everyone and lived in each host until that host died of natural causes. Of course mutations are random so you can get variants which are both more infectous and more deadly but if a further mutation were then to make that variant less deadly it would have longer to spread from an infected host and therefore eventually outcompete that more deadly version.


This is not a theory that is considered proven and there are huge holes in the argument. The reality is that for highly infectious diseases there is no evolutionary penalty to killing a host if they have already infected multiple other hosts. The evolutionary pressure favours changes that increase the spread and the more infections variants will spread further. The consequences for the host only matter up to the point of transmission. Dead bodies could for some diseases be sources of transmission but in our society for a respiratory disease it is unlikely to be significant. So there remains no pressure on this case, and most others, to be more or less lethal.

The most likely reduction in lethality is from changes in the host for example through immunization or exposure to infection.

It is difficult to see evidence in the historic record for generalised loss of pathogenic genes.

For specific coronavirus evidence one should look at the changes to date and those that prevail are about transmission. Sometimes a change that improves transmission can also increase the lethality, this is the the nightmare scenario. So far so good.

In defence of the theory if there was a transmission improving change that resulted in a loss of pathogenicity then that would be expected to prosper.
Last edited by AWOL on October 20th, 2021, 9:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451522

Postby AWOL » October 20th, 2021, 9:28 am


pje16
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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451530

Postby pje16 » October 20th, 2021, 9:47 am

or a shrink :lol:

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451548

Postby Bouleversee » October 20th, 2021, 10:24 am

AWOL wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/19/without-covid-19-jab-reinfection-may-occur-every-16-months-say-scientists

I had been expecting this.


So had I. I was quite surprised to learn that despite confirmation that my grandson has Covid and is isolating in his bedroom, his parents were told they could go back to work and his sister back to school without waiting for test results for themselves.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#451552

Postby servodude » October 20th, 2021, 10:52 am

6Tricia wrote:Tricia
No adverse reaction to the 3rd Pfizer jab.

That's great news Tricia and I hope it continues

I had heard annecdotally that the side effects get worse with progressive doses (but kept my mouth shut)
- it does seem like everyone in our house got worse effects on the second Pfizer

I couldn't move my neck, the better half was in bed for two days
- and on Sunday night our 14yr old climbed in the bed with us a 3am with uncontrollable shivers; after being second jabbed at 2pm (calmed down after an hour but it was very unusual)

Now we're all double dosed and looking forward to visiting the father in law (in Tasmania) as soon as we can!

Stay well
-sd


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