COVID-19 News and Discussions

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Time_Traveller
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‘Government Just Made it Worse’
23 February 2023

New research will reveal fresh evidence of the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on disabled people from black and ethnic minority communities.

Byline Times has seen initial findings from the national Commission on COVID-19, Disablism, and Systemic Racism, which reflect the harmful effect of the Government’s neglect of social care and its confused approaches to navigating the Coronavirus.

The commission’s forthcoming report, to be published by the summer, incorporates six months of evidence-gathering among disabled people, families, carers and social care staff. The commission is led by Voluntary Organisations Disability Group and chaired by Disability Rights UK chief executive Kamran Mallick.

“The pandemic highlighted the inequality that already existed, and the decisions the Government made just made those worse,” Mallick said.

As this newspaper has reported previously, Government inaction or indecision included an initial failure to vaccinate learning disabled people, despite their greater risk of death from the virus; and support staff going without personal protective equipment.
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/23/gove ... -revealed/
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caltrek
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Long-term Intermittent Fasting Reduces COVID-19 Heart Failure Complications and Death in Patients with Previous Heart Disease
March 6, 2023

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Intermittent fasting, especially when done over the course of decades, can have positive effects on metabolic and cardiovascular health. Now, a new study by researchers at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City finds that it may also add an extra layer of protection from heart-related COVID-19 complications in people who had already sought cardiac care.

“We already know that regular fasting over long periods of time can lead to overall health improvements. Here we found that it may also lead to better outcomes in COVID-19 patients who required a cardiac catheterization,” said Benjamin Horne, PhD, director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at the Intermountain Health. “Fasting won’t necessarily stop a cardiac event from happening, but it may prevent someone from developing heart failure after.”

In the study, Intermountain researchers examined patients who enrolled in the INSPIRE registry, a voluntary registry at Intermountain Health, who were also undergoing cardiac catheterization from February 2013 to March 2020.

Of that group, 464 patients had been diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 6, 2020, and April 8, 2022, of those, 135 reported that they fasted routinely — on average for 42.7 years.

Researchers found that those who practiced regular fasting had a lower rate of heart failure-related hospitalization, complications, and death than COVID-19 positive patients in the study who did not fast.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/981252
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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I still somehow haven't gotten covid to my knowledge. I could be asymptomatic I guess, but after seeing other people my age who are even more healthy experience really awful symptoms I kinda doubt it. Masks work folks.
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erowind wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 10:13 am I still somehow haven't gotten covid to my knowledge. I could be asymptomatic I guess, but after seeing other people my age who are even more healthy experience really awful symptoms I kinda doubt it.
Same here.

erowind wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 10:13 am Masks work folks.
Not just those leaky surgical masks, but properly fitting N95, or even better N99/FFP3.
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raklian
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erowind wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 10:13 am I still somehow haven't gotten covid to my knowledge. I could be asymptomatic I guess, but after seeing other people my age who are even more healthy experience really awful symptoms I kinda doubt it. Masks work folks.
I'm in the same boat. I don't think I've caught it yet. I've been pretty meticulous about my preventative strategy. I truly hope it stays that way, at least until we have a much better understanding of Covid and its long term effects.
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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Three Years Into Covid Pandemic, World Leaders Say 'Never Again' to Vaccine Apartheid
by Brett Wilkins
March 10, 2023
Around 200 current and former world leaders, Nobel laureates, health and faith leaders, and activists this week marked the third anniversary of the World Health Organization's Covid-19 pandemic declaration by taking aim at the "vaccine apartheid" that according to one advocacy group was responsible for one death every 24 seconds during the outbreak's first year alone.

A letter led by the People's Vaccine Alliance notes that three years have passed since "the World Health Organization (WHO) first characterized Covid-19 as a pandemic" on March 11, 2020 and implores governments to "never again" allow nationalism and capitalist greed to supersede human needs."

"We have seen extraordinary feats of scientific innovation and an enormous mobilization of public resources to develop effective vaccines, tests, and treatments," the letter continues. "But we have also seen a global response held back by profiteering and nationalism."

(For Never Again Twitter site:

https://twitter.com/peoplesvaccine/stat ... partheid)

The signers asserted:

We are hopeful that an end to the acute stage of the Covid-19 pandemic may be in sight. Thus, the world is at a critical juncture. Decisions made now will determine how the world prepares for and responds to future global health crises. World leaders must reflect on mistakes made in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic so that they are never repeated.
Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/vaccine-apartheid
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caltrek
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New Study from Japan Shows SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB.1.5 Variant Is Highly Transmissible and Infectious
March 15, 2023

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) COVID-19 has caused significant global panic after its rapid emergence more than 3 years ago. Although we now have highly effective vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, scientists continue to study emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants in order to safeguard public health and devise global preventive strategies against emerging variants. A team led by Japanese researchers has recently discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB.1.5 variant, prevalent in the Western hemisphere, has high transmissibility and infectivity.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been responsible for millions of deaths worldwide. Although scientists have designed novel vaccines to counter COVID-19, they are constantly on the lookout for emerging variants that can bypass vaccine resistance and potentially jeopardize global public health. A team led by Japanese researchers has recently been successful in characterizing the new SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB.1.5 variant, which was first detected in October 2022. Their findings were published on January 31, 2023 in volume 23 of The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Says senior author Prof. Kei Sato from the Division of Systems Virology, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan, “Because the Omicron XBB.1.5 variant can spread more rapidly than previous variants and has a potential to cause the next epidemic surge, we should carefully monitor it to safeguard public health.”

While studying emerging variants of the SARs-CoV-2 Omicron lineage, the research team made a startling discovery: the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB.1.5 variant has a novel mutation in the spike (S) protein—the protein that anchors the virus firmly to the human angiotensin converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) receptor, thus facilitating the invasion of human cells. The serine-to-proline amino acid mutation noted at residue no. 486 in the S protein is virologically concerning because of a variety of reasons.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/982316
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COVID-19 Could Be Robbing People of Their Ability to Recognize Faces
by Tessa Koumoundouros
March 15, 2023

Introduction:
(Science Alert) When Annie reunited with her family for the first time a few months after being ill with COVID-19, it was clear the disease was not yet done with her.

"My dad's voice came out of a stranger's face," Annie told the researchers investigating her case.

Annie (a pseudonym to protect her privacy) had normal facial recognition before she was diagnosed with COVID-19 in March 2020. A few days later she started to recover, only to relapse after several months. Now her case study suggests we can add 'face blindness' (prosopagnosia) to a long and growing list of brain problems caused by the disease.

The new study surveyed more than 50 other patients struggling with long COVID and most were finding it harder to identifying familiar faces, since their infections.

"Faces are like water in my head," Annie explained, describing how trying to remember a face is now like being asked to replicate a Chinese character after one viewing when you're unfamiliar with the language.
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/covid-19- ... ze-faces
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The Reality Gap

John Snow Project Editorial
21 March 2023

The failure to recognise the ongoing severity of COVID-19 is creating a reality gap that is being filled by groups peddling misinformation.

On 30 November 2022, a UK scientific team published a pre-print on the correlates of protection against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. In it they said:
“Although there are societal impacts and risks to some individuals associated with ongoing transmission, breakthrough infection could be an efficient immune-boosting mechanism for subgroups of the population, including younger healthy adults, who have low risks of adverse consequences from infection.”
This is dangerously misleading.

It is in fact difficult to know which subgroups of the population have low risks of adverse consequences from breakthrough infection or reinfection, nor is it established that such subgroups exist, to begin with. People of all ages can develop debilitating Long COVID following SARS-CoV-2 infection, even after vaccination. Current evidence suggests infected adults and children are at greater risk of new onset diabetes, adults are at increased risk of cardiac problems and the long-term impact on children’s cardio-vascular health is uncertain10. In addition, people can experience kidney injury, liver damage, erectile dysfunction, hearing loss, immune dysfunction, brain and memory dysfunction, ocular damage and dermatological complications. In fact there are few organs that SARS-CoV-2 can’t harm, largely because COVID-19 is a vascular disease with immune-mediated severity impacting multiple organs. SARS-CoV-2 is an airborne virus that is transmitted via the respiratory system, but the disease it causes is not localized to the respiratory tract with its multi-organ, multi-system impacts stemming from its vascular nature, the associated immune perturbation, and other systemic effects.

Children, the subgroup that is widely believed to be least at risk from SARS-CoV-2 infections, also experiences harm. A large Danish study of children showed the highest risk of Long COVID is in those aged <5 years, who are not eligible for vaccination in that country36. Other countries like the UK and Australia also deny vaccination for children <5 years unless severely immunocompromised.

Read more: https://johnsnowproject.org/insights/the-reality-gap/
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