COVID-19 News and Discussions

[raklian]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 140850.htm

Older people who were infected with COVID-19 show a substantially higher risk -- as much as 50% to 80% higher than a control group -- of developing Alzheimer's disease within a year, according to a study of more than 6 million patients 65 and older.

Frightening.

[wjfox]

The study used data from before vaccinations though.

[weatheriscool]

RNA-editing tool a fast, sensitive test for COVID-19
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-rna-editi ... ovid-.html
by Rice University

An engineered CRISPR-based method that finds RNA from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, promises to make testing for that and other diseases fast and easy.

Collaborators at Rice University and the University of Connecticut further engineered the RNA-editing CRISPR-Cas13 system to boost their power for detecting minute amounts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in biological samples without the time-consuming RNA extraction and amplification step necessary in gold-standard PCR testing.

The new platform was highly successful compared to PCR, finding 10 out of 11 positives and no false positives for the virus in tests on clinical samples directly from nasal swabs. The researchers showed their technique finds signs of SARS-CoV-2 in attomolar (10-18) concentrations.

The study led by chemical and biomolecular engineer Xue Sherry Gao at Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering and postdoctoral researchers Jie Yang of Rice and Yang Song of Connecticut appears in Nature Chemical Biology.

[weatheriscool]

Canada drops coronavirus rules for travelers
Source: Washington Post

Traveling to Canada is about to get a lot easier. Starting Oct. 1, the country is dropping all coronavirus entry and travel restrictions. That means visitors will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination, get tested, submit health information through an official online site, report symptoms, isolate or quarantine, or wear a mask on planes or trains.

Rules for cruise travelers are also being lifted, meaning passengers won’t need to test negative before boarding a ship, be vaccinated or use the online public health reporting system. Public health authorities said several factors led to the end of pandemic-era rules, including high vaccination rates; low hospitalization and death rates; new vaccine boosters; and models that indicate the country has passed the peak of infections from the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.

“Since the start, our Government has taken the necessary steps to keep Canadians safe in the face of a global pandemic,” Marco Mendicino, minister of public safety, said in a statement. “COVID-19 border measures were always meant to be temporary and we are making adjustments based on the current situation because that’s what Canadians expect.”

The country stopped requiring vaccinated travelers to show proof of a negative test in April, but kept the vaccine mandate in place. Visitors could still be selected for testing upon arrival. Canada follows countries around the world that have ended border restrictions. In Europe, for example, destinations including France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Germany dropped entry rules earlier this year. The United States still requires international tourists to be vaccinated.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2 ... gn=wp_main

[wjfox]

Big COVID-19 waves may be coming, new Omicron strains suggest

Emerging subvariants have hit on a combination of mutations that makes them more immune evasive than ever

27 Sep 20225:00 PM

Nearly 3 years into the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 faces a formidable challenge: finding new ways around the immunity humans have built up through vaccines and countless infections. Worrisome new data show it is up to the challenge. Several new and highly immune-evasive strains of the virus have caught scientists’ attention in recent weeks; one or more may well cause big, new COVID-19 waves this fall and winter.

“We can say with certainty that something is coming. Probably multiple things are coming,” says Cornelius Roemer, who studies viral evolution at the University of Basel. Whether they will also lead to many hospitalizations and deaths is the big question.

“It’s not surprising that we’re seeing changes that yet again help the virus to evade immune responses,” says molecular epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft of the University of Bern, who notes that SARS-CoV-2 faces “the same challenge that things like the common cold and influenza face every year—how to make a comeback.”

The strains that look poised to drive the latest comeback are all subvariants of Omicron, which swept the globe over the past year. Several derived from BA.2, a strain that succeeded the initial BA.1 strain of Omicron but then was itself outcompeted in most places by BA.5, which has dominated in recent months. One of these, BA.2.75.2, seems to be spreading quickly in India, Singapore, and parts of Europe. Other new immune-evading strains have evolved from BA.5, including BQ.1.1, which has been spotted in multiple countries around the globe.

Despite their different origins, several of the new strains have chanced upon a similar combination of mutations to help scale the wall of immunity—a striking example of convergent evolution. They all have changes at half a dozen key points in the viral genome that influence how well neutralizing antibodies from vaccination or previous infection bind to the virus, says evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.

https://www.science.org/content/article ... ns-suggest

[erowind]

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[caltrek]

She Says Her Passion is Teaching. Congress Called Her the Meatpacking Industry’s ‘go-to fixer.’
by Mindy Brashears
September 28, 2022

From the Introduction:

(Investigate Midwest) During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the meatpacking industry mobilized to keep plants open, even as its workers fell ill. It claimed a meat shortage was on the way, and it pushed for legal cover.

Other than Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, perhaps no other person was more central to the (U.S. Departement of Agirculture’s)…effort to keep plants operating than FSIS’s head, Mindy Brashears.

One Tyson Foods executive said, if its plants continued to face pressure to shut down, “we may need to get Mindy involved.” Brashears “hasn’t lost a battle for us,” another industry executive said in an internal email. In short, she was the meat industry’s “go-to fixer,” a Congressional subcommittee concluded in a May report.

Like other top USDA officials, Brashears has remained largely silent about the USDA’s efforts to keep meatpacking plants running. Through his current employer the University of Georgia System, Perdue has declined several opportunities to speak with Investigate Midwest about his time at the USDA.
But in exclusive interviews with Investigate Midwest, Brashears, 52, defended her actions.

Read more here: https://investigatemidwest.org/2022/09 ... to-fixer/

[caltrek]

Long COVID Is Still Raising More Questions Than Answers, Say Researchers
by Isabelle Tourne
October 2, 2022

Introduction:

(Science Alert) Millions of people around the world are believed to suffer from long COVID yet little remains known about the condition – though research has recently proposed several theories for its cause.

Between 10 to 20 percent of people who contract coronavirus are estimated to have long COVID symptoms – most commonly fatigue, breathlessness, and a lack of mental clarity dubbed brain fog – months after recovering from the disease.

The US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) estimates that nearly 145 million people worldwide had at least one of those symptoms in 2020 and 2021.

In Europe alone, 17 million people had a long COVID symptom at least three months after infection during that time, according to IHME modeling for the World Health Organization (WHO) published earlier this month.

These millions "cannot continue to suffer in silence", WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said, calling for the world to act quickly to learn more about the condition.

Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/long-covi ... searchers

[Time_Traveller]

COVID inquiry 'won't drag on for decades', bereaved families promised

Tuesday 4 October 2022

The head of the COVID inquiry has said one word - "loss" - sums up the pandemic, as she promised bereaved families the investigation into the UK's preparedness and response to the outbreak "would not drag on for decades".

Former Court of Appeal judge Baroness Heather Hallett said those who have suffered will be at the "heart" of the independent public inquiry, and pledged she would conduct a "thorough" and "fair" hearing.

Just before a minute's silence was held for those who lost their lives, she said: "There's one word that sums up the pandemic for so many, and that is the word 'loss'."

She opened the inquiry in London saying she was "determined" that it "would not drag on for decades", but insisted it would still be "as thorough as possible" and that the bereaved would be "properly consulted".

The inquiry would analyse how the pandemic unfolded - and would determine whether the "level of loss was inevitable or whether things could have been done better", she said.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-inquir ... d-12711834

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Fauci Indicates Another COVID-19 Variant Could Emerge this Winter
by Sareen Habeshian and Erin Doherty
October 4, 2022

Introduction:

(Axios) NIAID director Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that "we should not be surprised" if a new COVID-19 variant emerges this winter.

Driving the news: "We should anticipate that we very well may get another variant that would emerge that would elude the immune response that we've gotten from infection and/or from vaccination," Fauci said during an event with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.

• Fauci said it we're currently moving "in the right direction,"

But, but, but: "We are entering into the winter months, where no matter what the respiratory disease is, there's always a risk of an uptick."

Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/10/04/fauci ... nter-2022

[caltrek]

COVID Boosters Could Save 90,000 Lives, $56.5 Billion
by Tina Reed
October 5, 2022

Introduction:

(Axios) About 90,000 lives would be saved and more than 936,000 hospitalizations could be prevented if 80% of Americans eligible for the latest COVID-19 boosters get vaccinated by year's end, according to a new paper from The Commonwealth Fund and Yale School of Public Health.

The big picture: Even matching 2020–2021 flu vaccine levels of closer to 50%–55% could save about 75,000 lives and prevent about 745,000 hospitalizations.

Why it matters: The U.S. is on track for a far lower rate. Only 36% of adults older than 50 have gotten second boosters.

• "If vaccination continued at its current pace through the end of March 2023, a potential winter surge in COVID-19 infections could result in a peak of around 16,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths per day by March 2023," the researchers said.

Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/10/05/covid-boosters-study

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Repurposing Existing Drugs to Fight New COVID-19 Variants
October 6, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) EAST LANSING, Mich. – MSU researchers are using big data and AI to identify current drugs that could be applied to treat new COVID-19 variants.

Finding new ways to treat the novel coronavirus and its ever-changing variants has been a challenge for researchers, especially when the traditional drug development and discovery process can take years. A Michigan State University researcher and his team are taking a hi-tech approach to determine whether drugs already on the market can pull double duty in treating new COVID variants.

“The COVID-19 virus is a challenge because it continues to evolve,” said Bin Chen, an associate professor in the College of Human Medicine. “By using artificial intelligence and really large data sets, we can repurpose old drugs for new uses.”

Chen built an international team of researchers with expertise on topics ranging from biology to computer science to tackle this challenge. First, Chen and his team turned to publicly available databases to mine for the unique coronavirus gene expression signatures from 1,700 host transcriptomic profiles that came from patient tissues, cell cultures and mouse models. These signatures revealed the biology shared by COVID-19 and its variants.

With the virus’s signature and knowing which genes need to be suppressed and which genes need to be activated, the team was able to use a computer program to screen a drug library consisting of FDA-approved or investigational drugs to find candidates that could correct the expression of signature genes and further inhibit the coronavirus from replicating. Chen and his team discovered one novel candidate, IMD-0354, a drug that passed phase I clinical trials for the treatment of atopic dermatitis. A group in Korea later observed that it was 90-fold more effective against six COVID-19 variants than remdesivir, the first drug approved to treat COVID-19. The team further found that IMD-0354 inhibited the virus from copying itself by boosting the immune response pathways in the host cells. Based on the information learned, the researchers studied a prodrug of IMD-0354 called IMD-1041. A prodrug is an inactive substance that is metabolized within the body to create an active drug.

Read more of the EurekAlert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967161

To read a technical presentation on the research findings: https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext ... 2)01340-2

[caltrek]

Study Gives Estimated Global Proportions of Individuals with Persistent Fatigue, Cognitive, and Respiratory Symptom Clusters After COVID-19
October 10, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) About The Study: In this modeling study with data for 1.2 million individuals (from 22 countries) who had symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection in 2020 and 2021 and survived the acute phase, an estimated 6.2% experienced at least one of the three Long COVID symptom clusters (persistent fatigue with bodily pain or mood swings; cognitive problems; or ongoing respiratory problems) three months after acute infection onset. The risk of Long COVID was greater in females and in those who needed hospitalization for the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly among those needing intensive care unit care.

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967296

Read a full presentation of study results as published in the JAMA Network here (some technical terms related to statistics included in this discussion): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/ ... rm=101022

[caltrek]

Misrepresentation and Nonadherence Regarding COVID-19 Public Health Measures
October 10, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) In this national survey study of 1,733 U.S. adults, nearly half of participants reported misrepresentation and/or nonadherence regarding COVID-19 public health measures. The most common reasons included wanting life to feel normal and wanting to exercise personal freedom. Future work is needed to examine strategies for communicating the consequences of misrepresentation and nonadherence and to address contributing factors.

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967252

Read a full presentation of study results as published in the JAMA Network here (some technical terms related to statistics included in this discussion): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman ... rm=101022

[raklian]

Evidence suggests pandemic came from nature, not a lab, panel says

https://www.science.org/content/article ... panel-says

The acrimonious debate over the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic flared up again this week with a report from an expert panel concluding that SARS-CoV-2 likely spread naturally in a zoonotic jump from an animal to humans—without help from a lab.

“Our paper recognizes that there are different possible origins, but the evidence towards zoonosis is overwhelming,” says co-author Danielle Anderson, a virologist at the University of Melbourne. The report, which includes an analysis that found the peer-reviewed literature overwhelmingly supports the zoonotic hypotheses, appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on 10 October.

[caltrek]

Misrepresentation and Nonadherence Regarding COVID-19 Public Health Measures
October 10, 2022

...
Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967252

Read a full presentation of study results as published in the JAMA Network here (some technical terms related to statistics included in this discussion): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman ... rm=101022

More on that:

[R8Z]

Presented without comments.

[caltrek]

Which States in the U.S. Have the Most Long COVID Patients
by Tina Reed
October 14, 2022

Introduction:

(Axios) Nearly a third of Americans who know they've had COVID say they've also experienced the often disabling aftereffects known as long COVID, according to recent CDC data.

Driving the news: The rate of those reporting long COVID symptoms was highest in West Virginia (49%), compared to the state with the lowest rate of people reporting long COVID: Vermont (22%).

Be smart: A study published this week in JA
MA Network Open found long COVID could set individuals back the equivalent of a decades' worth of aerobic fitness, the Washington Post reported.

See here for interesting interactive map of the United States comparing rates of long COVID: https://www.axios.com/2022/10/14/long- ... tates-map