The COVID-19 Science and Medicine Question Thread

so if I donate my blood and it goes to some denyer, will they be vaccinated from the china virus ? (asking somewhat sarcastically...)

so if I donate my blood and it goes to some denyer, will they be vaccinated from the china virus ? (asking somewhat sarcastically...)

Highly doubtful that a unit of packed cells or plasma would have enough antibodies to confer immunity so you can rest assured that the denier would probably be unsuccessful in fighting off a COVID from your antibodies. Of course that being said, there are many other important and life-saving reasons to donate blood.

We all weigh the risk then take the leap or don’t

Amen.......Vaccine is not for everyone BUT if you are not taking it just to be contrarian.....well....thats just assinine!

Regarding covalescent plasma, it didnt work as expected. Several issues most notably, it was given to the sickest patients and didnt initiate the immune response. Many studies will be coming out regarding the efficacy of the treatment and much of it is disappointing.

Haven't heard that one. How long after the second shot did he lose his taste of sugar?

It happened last week. So about a month

[HEADING=1]Vaccine link probed after heart reaction in teens[/HEADING]
Studies have found a possible link between Pfizer and heart inflammation. It's stuff like this that proves we are all taking a chance when we get it. I took it and did fine, but not my kids who are in their late 20s. But according to officials it's nothing to worry about. Yet when I read the statement, it's obvious it's being played down.

*The boys, ages 14 to 19, received Pfizer shots in April or May and developed chest pain within a few days. Tests showed a type of heart muscle inflammation called myocarditis.

None were critically ill. All were healthy enough to be sent home after two to six days in the hospital and are “doing pretty well,’’ said Dr. Preeti Jaggi, an Emory University infectious disease specialist who co-authored the report*

That is a scary statement. They're doing "pretty well" doesn't sound very assuring. What does that mean? It's also happening in other countries.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone but from Taking it. Like everyone I'm just looking for answers.

It happened last week. So about a month

May or may not be linked to the vaccine...

[HEADING=1]Vaccine link probed after heart reaction in teens[/HEADING]
Studies have found a possible link between Pfizer and heart inflammation. It's stuff like this that proves we are all taking a chance when we get it. I took it and did fine, but not my kids who are in their late 20s. But according to officials it's nothing to worry about. Yet when I read the statement, it's obvious it's being played down.

*The boys, ages 14 to 19, received Pfizer shots in April or May and developed chest pain within a few days. Tests showed a type of heart muscle inflammation called myocarditis.

None were critically ill. All were healthy enough to be sent home after two to six days in the hospital and are “doing pretty well,’’ said Dr. Preeti Jaggi, an Emory University infectious disease specialist who co-authored the report*

That is a scary statement. They're doing "pretty well" doesn't sound very assuring. What does that mean? It's also happening in other countries.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone but from Taking it. Like everyone I'm just looking for answers.

That is the problem

wide spread use of something that may or may not have serious complication

May or may not be linked to the vaccine...

Kinda like it may or may not have come from a bat.

Follow the science

you still don't think this virus release was either accidental or deliberate ?

you still don't think this virus release was either accidental or deliberate ?

No hard data either way, nor solid data linking it to a bat, so don't know.

I always thought that the transmissibility out of the box was very unusual...

[URL unfurl="true"]https://nypost.com/2021/06/06/damning-science-shows-covid-19-likely-engineered-in-lab/[/URL]

Very interesting science stuff about the Alpha COVID-19 variant: [How the ‘Alpha’ Coronavirus Variant Became So Powerful]("https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/health/covid-alpha-uk-variant.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage")

[HEADING=2]How the ‘Alpha’ Coronavirus Variant Became So Powerful[/HEADING]
A new study suggests how the variant first identified in Britain hides from the human immune system. Its stealth may be part of its success.

In December, British researchers discovered that [a new variant ]('https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/health/coronavirus-mutations-B117-variant.html')was sweeping through their country. When it arrived in other countries, the variant, now known as Alpha, tended to become more common in its new homes as well. By April, it had become [the dominant variant]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/us/politics/coronavirus-variants-cdc.html') in the United States, and it has remained so [ever since]('https://outbreak.info/situation-reports?pango=B.1.1.7&loc=USA&selected=USA').

Alpha’s swift success has left scientists wondering how the variant conquered the world. A [new study]('https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.06.446826v1') points to one secret to its success: Alpha disables the first line of immune defense in our bodies, giving the variant more time to multiply.

“It’s very impressive,” said Dr. Maudry Laurent-Rolle, a physician and virologist at the Yale School of Medicine who was not involved in the new study. “Any successful virus has to get beyond that first defense system. The more successful it is at doing that, the better off the virus is.”

The report was posted online on Monday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal.

Alpha has 23 mutations that set it apart from other coronaviruses. When the variant started to surge in Britain, researchers began inspecting these genetic tweaks to look for explanations as to why it was spreading faster than other variants.

A lot of researchers focused their attention on the nine mutations that alter the so-called spike protein that covers the coronavirus and allows it to invade cells. One of those mutations helps the virus bind more tightly to cells, potentially improving its chances of a successful infection.

But other scientists have focused on how Alpha affects the human immune response. Gregory Towers, a virologist at the University College London, and his colleagues grew coronaviruses in human lung cells, comparing Alpha-infected cells with those infected with earlier variants of the coronavirus.

They found that lung cells with Alpha made drastically less interferon, a protein that switches on a host of immune defenses. They also found that in the Alpha cells, the defensive genes normally switched on by interferon were quieter than in cells infected with other variants.

Somehow, the immune system’s most important alarm bells were barely ringing in the presence of the Alpha variant. “It’s making itself more invisible,” Dr. Towers said.

To investigate how Alpha achieved this invisibility, the researchers looked at how the coronavirus replicated inside of infected cells. They found that Alpha-infected cells make a lot of extra copies — some 80 times more than other versions of the virus — of a gene called Orf9b.

“It’s off the chart,” said Nevan Krogan, a molecular biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-author of the new study.

In [previous research]('https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6521/eabe9403'), Dr. Krogan and his colleagues had found that Orf9b makes a viral protein that locks onto a human protein called Tom70. And it just so happens that Tom70 is essential for a cell’s release of interferon in the face of an invading virus.

Putting all of the evidence together, Dr. Krogan and his colleagues argue that the Alpha variant carries a mutation that forces the production of a lot more Orf9b proteins. Those proteins swarm the human Tom70 proteins, dampening the production of interferon and a full immune response. The virus, protected from attack, has better odds of making copies of itself.

An infected cell can gradually remove the Orf9b proteins from its Tom70 molecules, however. By about 12 hours after infection, the alarm system starts coming back online. And because of that immune response, Dr. Towers said, “all hell breaks loose.”

Dr. Towers speculated that when the delayed immune response finally happens, people infected with Alpha have a more robust reaction than they would with other variants, coughing and shedding virus-laden mucus from not only their mouths, but also their noses — making Alpha even better at spreading.

“What they’re showing makes sense,” Dr. Laurent-Rolle said. But she would like to see more lines of evidence in support of their conclusion. For example, the scientists did not run a standard test to measure the number of Orf9b proteins.

“That’s one thing that could be concerning,” she said. Dr. Krogan said he and his colleagues were developing that test now.

Dr. Krogan’s team has also started similar experiments on other variants, including the variant first identified in South Africa, known as Beta, and the one first identified in India, known as Delta. The preliminary results surprised them.

Both Beta and Delta drive down interferon in infected cells. But there’s no sign that they do so by flooding the cells with Orf9b proteins. They may have independently evolved their own tricks for manipulating our immune system.

“They’re all turning down the immune response in different ways,” Dr. Krogan said.

Cecile King, an immunologist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, who was not involved in the study, said that understanding how the virus was evolving these escapes would help scientists design better vaccines for Covid-19.

The current crop of vaccines direct the immune system to recognize spike proteins. But studies on people who recover naturally from Covid-19 have shown that their immune systems learn to recognize other viral proteins, including Orf9b.

A number of researchers are putting together combinations of coronavirus proteins into new vaccines. But they need to take caution, because some of the proteins may actually dampen immunity.

“It’s quite a tricky enterprise, but becoming more possible as we learn more,” Dr. King said.

We have been blessed by 3 very effective vaccines. There have been some failures, and here's the newest. The interesting part is that it seems to be the 1st failure using the mRNA technology, like Pfizer and Moderna. The disconcerting part is that most of the infections were from variants...

[HEADING=2]CureVac’s Covid-19 Vaccine Disappoints in Clinical Trial[/HEADING]
A preliminary analysis showed that CureVac’s mRNA vaccine had an efficacy of just 47 percent. “This is pretty devastating for them,” one expert said.

[CureVac’s Covid-19 Vaccine Disappoints in Clinical Trial]("https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/health/covid-vaccine-curevac.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage")

The German company [CureVac]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/health/curevac-vaccine.html') [delivered]('https://www.curevac.com/en/2021/06/16/curevac-provides-update-on-phase-2b-3-trial-of-first-generation-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-cvncov/') disappointing preliminary results on Wednesday from a clinical trial of its Covid-19 [vaccine]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/health/curevac-vaccine.html'), dimming hopes that it could help [fill the world’s great need]('https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html').

The [trial]('https://www.curevac.com/en/2021/06/16/curevac-provides-update-on-phase-2b-3-trial-of-first-generation-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-cvncov/'), which included 40,000 volunteers in Latin America and Europe, estimated that CureVac’s mRNA vaccine had an efficacy of just 47 percent, among the lowest reported so far from any Covid-19 vaccine maker. The trial will continue as researchers monitor volunteers for new cases of Covid-19, with a final analysis expected in two to three weeks.

“We’re going to full speed for the final readout,” Franz-Werner Haas, CureVac’s chief executive, said in an interview. “We are still planning for filing for approval.”

The company plans to apply for authorization initially to the European Medicines Agency. The European Union reached an agreement last year to purchase 405 million doses of the vaccine if the agency authorizes it.

Independent experts, however, said it would be difficult for CureVac to recover. Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, said that the vaccine’s efficacy rate might improve somewhat by the end of the trial. But because most of the data is already in, it’s unlikely the vaccine will turn out to be highly protective. “It’s not going to change dramatically,” she said.

And with an efficacy rate that low — far lower than the roughly 95 percent of competing mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — the results do not bode well for CureVac’s shots getting adopted.

“This is pretty devastating for them,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a vaccine supply expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think tank in Washington.

The news was disappointing to experts who had hoped the company could provide vaccines for low- and middle-income countries that don’t have nearly enough. CureVac had some advantages over the other mRNA vaccines, such as keeping stable for months in a refrigerator. What’s more, compared with its competitors, CureVac’s vaccine used fewer mRNA molecules per jab, lowering its cost.

The trial results released on Wednesday were based on data from 135 volunteers who got sick with Covid-19. An independent panel compared the number of sick people who had received a placebo with those who had received the vaccine. Although the vaccine did seem to offer some protection, the statistical difference between the two groups was not stark, working out to an efficacy rate of 47 percent.

Annual [flu shots]('https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm'), by comparison, can reach 40 to 60 percent effectiveness. Both the World Health Organization and the Food and Drug Administration set a threshold of 50 percent efficacy to consider Covid-19 vaccines for emergency authorization. If CureVac were to stay at 47 percent in the final analysis, it would fail to meet that standard.

The results caught scientists by surprise. The vaccine is made from engineered mRNA, the same technology used by the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. And CureVac’s shots yielded promising results in animal experiments and early clinical trials.

“This one’s a bit of a head-scratcher,” Dr. Dean said.

Dr. Haas blamed the disappointing results on the high number of virus variants in the countries where the vaccine was tested. Out of 124 of the Covid-19 cases that the company’s scientists genetically sequenced, only one was caused by the original version of the coronavirus.

No science here...

No science here

No science here...

nice to see...............

Each morning I take a look at the Virginia Department of Health tracking website ( [here]('https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/covid-19-in-virginia/') ) which keeps track of new infections, hospitalizations & deaths as a result of COVID. It tracks by county & is updated by 10 am every morning.

Infections, hospitalizations & deaths have been dropping dramatically over the last week or two. For the last 4 days or so all categories have shown zero for each of those categories. Prior to the last 4 days or so - numbers have never been more than 1 for the first two categories & 0 for deaths.

Took a look this morning on % of people either fully vaccinated or having received at least one dose of the vaccine (which down here seems to primarily be the Pfizer vaccine).

It shows for my county (Accomack):
39.3% fully vaccinated
45.8% with at least one shot
85.1% with some sort of vaccination in total

Think we're achieving or about to achieve "herd immunity status".

Thank you Pfizer, the Scientists, Mr. Trump (because he deserves some credit) & those who chose to vaccinate,

Everything is fully open.

(y)

Didn’t check newyorkistan for a day or three but daily deaths from the virus here had dropped to single digits for a couple of weeks if one can believe anything cuomo’s minions report.

[USER=57]@wader[/USER] you can't look at the single shot numbers in terms of herd immunity, only the fully-vaccinated ones. Therefore at 39.3% full-vaccinated, you a good ways off from that 70-80% number...