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No Excuses

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Posts posted by No Excuses

  1. 17 hours ago, COWBOY-KILLA- said:

     

    @No Excuses Thank you for sharing this really appreciate it. Very interesting. From what I’m understanding, and I am no scientist so please correct me if I’ve err’ed, I think my comment above is supported by this document. Although research in other coronavirus’ suggests it may be so, we still Do not know with any degree of certainty that will be the case with this particular Virus. TBD.

     


    A lot of recent publications have shown that people build up immunity to the novel coronavirus in the short term at least. We see this in the global data as well because reinfection at large enough numbers is not being observed anywhere in the world at the moment.

     

    Ultimately, unless evidendence to the contrary becomes available, there is no data out there that shows humans aren’t building immunity to the virus. The fact that most people recover and that you can detect antibodies against the virus in their plasma tells us that immunity is happening. We are making monoclonal antibody therapies based on the antibodies that are being identified in recovered patients. We are also seeing cellular immunity with virus specific T cells which suggests the immune response is quite robust: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761320301813

     

    How long immunity lasts before reinfection is possible again will unfortunately not become known until we start seeing actual reinfection cases either in the next few months or possibly next year and beyond.

    • Like 2
  2. 1 hour ago, COWBOY-KILLA- said:

    I don’t think full immunity is clear scientifically in anyway in regards to this virus. The whole thing is TBD. Maybe I’ve missed the news but I thought the whole thing is still up in the air. To argue That there is a clear answer yet for this virus is not supported by the data. If it has been reported I’d appreciate seeing it, because I’ve missed it. My understanding of what is out there is that we don’t know yet.


    There are a lot of peer reviewed studies on the immune response to the virus that show people generate antibodies that have a strong response to the virus. 
     

    Here is a review article that summarizes several publications on identified immune responses in recovered patients: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20065771v1.full.pdf

     

    The Vox article is being widely slammed across the scientific community because it’s completely inaccurate in how it portrays the story of the virus and the immune response people generate/herd immunity.

     

    https://mobile.twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1282813721186840576

     

     

    • Like 1
  3. 51 minutes ago, Califan007 said:

    Every month new data on COVID patients paints a more accurate and fuller understanding of how the virus works and how our bodies respond to it. Nobody talked about blood clots in March or April, COVID was seen as a respiratory virus. Now it's seen as much, much, much more.

     

    Not to mention, the article does not, in any way, reach any conclusions other than pointing out signs are there that herd immunity may not be the slam-dunk people are assuming it will be. He's most definitely NOT alone in the scientific community in that belief, and it's nowhere near accurate for you to clam "ther is really not much concern" in the medical community that people will not develop immunity. I won't quote from these articles but you can read them yourself to see that this concern is not limited to this one guy and his one patient...he's just synthesizing the known coronavirus studies, medical reports, and interaction with colleagues into something more personal and relatable, both to him and the readers.

     

    The article doesn't have to "reach any conclusions" for it to be bad journalism. It creates a narrative that is not supported by data. In the middle of a pandemic, that serves no purpose other than scaring people. He's also not synthesizing known coronavirus studies, because there is a good amount of data on people actually generating immunity to the virus, from animal models to actual humans who have been infected.

     

    Telling people right now that "herd immunity is not possible" is god awful messaging. Herd immunity through community transmission is not feasible. Herd immunity through mass vaccinations is possible. Achieving herd immunity through vaccination programs is our only way out of this.

     

    If a bunch of bozos decide to write articles right now, like some of the ones you quoted, you can reasonably expect that some segments of the public will not heed advice when medical professionals start campaigning for mass vaccination programs to achieve herd immunity.

     

    And the question at heart, "can people be reinfected" does have uncertainty. But the uncertainty isn't whether people are getting reinfected right now. Except possibly some outliers (and there's extreme skepticism warranted even for this batch), people are not being reinfected at the moment. Based on our understanding of coronaviruses, natural immunity will go away at some point and reinfection will be possible. We don't know what the point of diminished immunity is for this virus. But it hasn't arrived yet and there is zero reason for any outlet to be pushing questionable narratives, based on little evidence but personal hunches, to a public that is already scared.

  4. 36 minutes ago, Califan007 said:

    (sidenote - the article acknowledges that what its author is concerned about may not be all that unusual an occurrence. Hardly alarmist.)

     

    Here's the article's headline: "My patient caught Covid-19 twice. So long to herd immunity hopes?"

     

    No, is it not "so long to herd immunity" because one patient was reinfected.

     

    Here's the most egregious overstatement in the whole piece:

     

    Quote

    Second, despite scientific hopes for either antibody-mediated or cellular immunity, the severity of my patient’s second bout with Covid-19 suggests that such responses may not be as robust as we hope.

     

    It's complete nonsense and not backed by any robust data. The severity of one patients condition does not indicate that when you don't even have evidence that it is in fact reinfection.

     

    Here's another completely factless statement.

     

    Quote

    With no certainty of personal immunity

     

    There is absolutely certainty of some personal immunity. How long that immunity lasts is a valid question, but with millions of cases around the world there has been no significant observation of reinfection anywhere.

     

    We've already had reports of "reinfection" from South Korea that later turned out to be prolonged infections, with the exact signature of the one patient outlined in this article. Recovery and then a second bout of illness.

     

    Amongst millions of people, you might end up in a situation where some don't even mount a short term immune response. Is it responsible to publish op-eds about these people, calling into question the broader idea of herd immunity or even personal immunity? Absolutely not.

     

    The entire article is a masterclass on terrible scientific journalism. You take an almost irrelevant sample size, develop a narrative and push it under the cover of "broader scientific concern". Yes there is concern on the length of immunity, and it will inform how vaccination is considered. No, there is really not much concern in the scientific community that people will not develop immunity to the virus. We already know they do, it's the in global data where reinfection is not observed. When that starts to change, we'll see it in epidemiological data, not in a handful of cases that are extreme outliers.

    • Thanks 1
  5. 5 minutes ago, Springfield said:

    So if immunity starts to fade within weeks then whats the point of a vaccine?

     

    You can generate a stronger immune response from vaccines than you normally might through infection with a live virus. 
     

    I remain skeptical of studies that suggest immunity may be gone in a few weeks by just looking at antibody levels. The body will generate multiple antibodies against the virus, some that will decrease over time faster than others. It’s entirely unclear if the antibodies that produce the strongest  response against the virus are actually decreasing in significant enough numbers within a few weeks of time. 
     

    And most studies also don’t account for the role of T cells, which we know also mount a long term immune response to the virus. The immune system has an array of tools it uses to fight it.
     

    Ultimately, the strongest data we need to see on immunity will come from within communities where the virus continues to circulate. We are yet to see a strong signature of reinfection anywhere in the world. 

    On 7/13/2020 at 10:04 AM, The Evil Genius said:

    US stats still show covid19 mortality rate at 4%. Not sure why anyone would think its 1%.

     

    137k deaths out of 3.37 mil cases. 

     

    That's 40x the mortality rate of the normal flu btw.


    It is based on serological surveys. For instance, spread in NYC itself possibly infected 20% of its population. We know quite well that cases are likely undercounted by about 4x.

    • Thanks 1
  6. On 7/12/2020 at 1:01 PM, Califan007 said:

     

    I didn't see anything wrong with the article. It balanced the knowns, unknowns, and speculations and labeled each as such. It mentions a lot of qualifiers and even says re-infections are not unusual.

     

     


    The article takes a sample size of mostly one patient and one doctor and attempts to portray a phenomena that is simply not being observed almost anywhere in the world right now. You can’t question the concept of herd immunity or the biological immune response to the virus because one person may have been reinfected (it’s not even confirmed). 
     

    The virus is so widespread around the world that if reinfection was a serious phenomena, we would see clear data on it. There were some early reports out of South Korea about this which turned out to be just prolonged illnesses. And there is a good amount of data out there that the immune system does launch a robust response against the novel coronavirus with signatures of potential long-term immunity. I saw this absent in the article.

     

    And even if the article is going to mention “well some viral illnesses are prone to reinfection in short periods of time”, it’s probably good to also mention that the closest analog to the current virus, the 2002 SARS coronavirus produced immunity that lasted years in most patients. 


    Getting the right information to the public on immunity matters because as soon as a vaccine is released, you don’t want people thinking “well I read articles that said herd immunity isn’t possible and the immune response is weak”. It’s not a balanced article, it’s pure and simple fear mongering disguised as journalism.

     

     

    • Like 2
  7. 1 hour ago, Cooked Crack said:

     

     


    I really dislike articles like this because they identify a phenomena without any clear context of its probability. I highly doubt reinfection in a short time span is a real possibility for the vast vast majority of humans. Finding a handful of cases isn’t surprising because some people will have biological quirks that are very rare but might make them more susceptible to reinfection. 
     

    Vox does really bad science journalism.

    • Like 4
  8. 2 hours ago, nonniey said:

    If this is turns out to be the case then it implies a vaccine will be ineffective (not sure if they have ever developed an effective vaccine for any other corona virus type).

     

    Antibody levels in recovered COVID-19 patients decline quickly: research.

     

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-antibody-idUSKBN23T1CJ


    This indicates nothing of that sort. The bodies immune response is quite varied and never reliant on just one type of antibody or immune cell.

     

    We don’t have a coronavirus vaccine because we’ve never needed one before. But in the family of viruses, they are a fairly simple target for vaccines because of their high genomic stability and low mutation rates.

  9. You would think baseball would be the one sport that has the easiest path to reopening. Completely outdoor sport, typically half empty stadiums where people are social distancing anyways. Not many drunk buffoons screaming or yelling like at football games. 

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