General / Off-Topic The safest place

[Morbad]

Perhaps I should rephrase:

Isn't categorically stating that the cause is a Covid infection a year ago exactly as paranoid and unsubstantiated as categorically stating that the cause is a Covid vaccination a year ago?

Having been infected with COVID-19 infection is a serious risk for clotting issues that increases with the severity of the infection. A SARS-CoV-2 vaccination is an extremely low risk. It's paranoid to fear serious side-effects from any of these vaccines. It's not paranoid to fear long term health issues from even a mild COVID-19 infection.

Declaring the source of the medical issue described to be the result of COVID-19 complications may not have ruled out all other possibilities, but it is backed by available evidence (or at least the lack of evidence for competing hypotheses) and is both sound reasoning and vastly more plausible than thinking it might be due to a past vaccination.

To present them as equivalent is to conflate a virtual impossibility with something, that while not a sure thing, is very likely.

(Also worth noting that blood clot concerns were taken at least seriously enough with the AZ vaccine for it to affect the official vaccination policy, so the milk/hand pain analogy is hardly a fair one)

The problems that would torpedo any vaccine are many orders of magnitude less common than clotting issues resulting from COVID-19 infection. Any remotely credible correlation between a vaccine and a serious medical emergency has to be taken seriously, even if the overwhelming majority of such reports are later found to be extremely rare side-effects, or discovered to have no causal link at all. Unsafe vaccines don't inspire investor confidence or win repeat delivery contracts, after all.

The rate of serious clotting issues from the AstraZeneca vaccine (which isn't even used in Trinidad and Tobago, IIRC) is about 1-per-100k, and that has been more than enough to cause a shift to other vaccines (which have a much lower rate of such issues). It's also in the same ballpark as the rate of deliberate poisoning, and probably not far off the odds of coincidentally developing lactose intolerance that results in inflammation that could cause joint paint that may be noticed first in old wounds...that second estimate is a fairly wild and fanciful guess, but still presents a considerably more plausible scenario than an unspecified SARS-CoV-2 vaccine causing a stroke months after the fact.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Not trying to convince antivaxxers.

After all, somebody has to pay for my next Benz.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Mayo Clinic Podcast, March 12th with Professor Poland quantified relative risks between

• unvacinated Covid case
• vaccinated person who got exposed and infected with Covid

For thromboembolic neurological problems, Covid being 90 days or more in the rearview mirror.

Guess which one was 600 times more?

-other expected sequelae were psychiatric illnesses, and opioid addiction surging incidence of over 36%, but given the existing cognitive deficit in the unvaxxed, this might not entirely be due to the infection.

Source here:

Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ggS0exC-0a4

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

COVID-19: Why adenovirus vaccines may cause rare blood clots

Scientists may have identified the mechanism that triggers rare blood clots in some people who have received the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

www.medicalnewstoday.com

Some further investigation into the "extremely rare clot disorder" (1 in 100,000) linked to adenovirus vaccines, such as AstraZeneca's Covid 19 one, and the Janssen one. Investigators found an interaction with a clotting factor protein called platelet factor 4.

This is the link to the technical paper.

The adenovirus vaccine lowers the platelet count, as they get used up making clots. Turns out this happens with regular adenovirus infection too.
We get those all the time. Mumps is an adenovirus infection. so are colds, sore throats, pink eye, diarrhoea, and lots of other minor common infections. All of them can drop platelet counts.

It's a function of the virus structure, and has nothing to do with vaccine engineering directly. Raises 2 questions.

Why so rare?
IDK. But if it wasn't rare, regular minor ailments would wipe us out. Unexplained strokes and heart attacks might be preceeded by minor virus infections in many cases and we just never knew. Clearly, the virus has to get into the bloodstream, something that happens mostly in more severe cases.

So why does our body do this?
Conventional thinking is that the immune system and the clotting system are 2 different things. Seems this is not correct.

For decades, these two systems were thought to act independently, but this concept has recently been challenged. Emerging evidence suggests that the boundaries between coagulation and immune defense are actually not as clear-cut as originally supposed. A new concept of involvement of immune cells in hemostasis, termed immunothrombosis, has been recently proposed, which assumes a function of innate immune cells in thrombosis (3). On the other hand, an important role of platelets in immune response becomes more and more apparent (4–7).

Frontiers | Platelets and Infection – An Emerging Role of Platelets in Viral Infection

Platelets are anucleate blood cells that play a crucial role in the maintenance of hemostasis. While platelet activation and elevated platelet counts (thromb...

www.frontiersin.org

We may not be able to divorce clotting abnormalities from immune function. They seem to have coevolved. This might explain some of the cancer related clots we see. Reduced/altered immune function causes both.

Finally- should EVERYBODY anticoagulate?

Whatever you do, don't ask drug companies that question.

It would reduce the likelihood of some problems, but cause a bunch of others. The answer WAS no. We tried that with aspirin, to lower heart attacks, and the overall death rate went up.
If Earth's population is now either vaccinated, infected with coronavirus, or both, maybe that math has now changed? I don't have the answer.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Not trying to convince antivaxxers.

After all, somebody has to pay for my next Benz.

Hmm okay. The bar for being labelled an antivaxxer continues to lower it seems.

 

[Stigbob]

They've lifted the mask rules today. Vast majority still wearing them thankfully.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Dramatic story in AP about a heart attack following infection:

Scientists: COVID-19 may cause greater damage to the heart

BRANDON, Fla. (AP) — The pain in his chest was sudden, heavy. Juan Sosa was at home doing pushups in the bedroom where he had isolated himself for almost two weeks after testing positive for COVID-19.

apnews.com

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Well, one RL anecdote: I am getting medical appointments more easily now. The load on the system may have gone down. Another effect is that there might be a wave of persons leaving healthcare now that hung on just for the crisis. It took two hours to have bloods drawn on me, until staff could be found, last appointment.

Six tubes of draw is no fun...

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

I think they need to push this spring booster now because a lot of old ppl are getting sick and they can't shake it off which is clogging the hospitals.
It seems weeks late already over here.
It's not just the old but they are accounting for more now when it was getting worse before they were a factor.
We're over 500 without extra help, been that way for weeks. That's bad.
People are dying because the system can't cater for those awaiting treatment for other things, which aren't recorded..
Cases have dropped but hospital or care home cases have not.
Seems sensible to make it happen, so why isn't it happening?

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

LONDON (AP) — The prevalence of COVID-19 in the U.K. has reached record levels, with about 1 in 13 people estimated to be infected with the virus in the past week, according to the latest figures from Britain’s official statistics agency.

Omicron BA2 is about as infectious as measles. It's impractical to attempt physical countermeasures now.
Following widespread infection, there's a collapse like this:

It just suddenly falls off a cliff. No new countermeasures, no new vaccine, nothing. That drop is the visible indicator of evolutionary pressure: failure of the virus to change into something that can penetrate host immunity now will be its demise.

Why is the pattern different in the UK?

Edit: literally as I am typing...

XE Variant: New COVID Strain May be More Contagious Than BA.2 Subvariant, WHO Says

The more contagious omicron subvariant, BA.2, has become the dominant COVID-19 strain in the U.S., but international health experts are putting an increased focus on a new variant that may even be more contagious.

www.nbcchicago.com

Breaking across multiple news sources. Hundreds of reported cases.

 

[metatheurgist]

Who'd have thought letting the virus run wild would create worse variants?

 

[Stigbob]

Why is the pattern different in the UK?

Bad timing.

All restrictions/testing were dropped against scientific advice as cases were going up whilst the government were being investigated (and subsequently fined) for ignoring their own covid rules. Perfect storm of them throwing away the moral authority just as they needed it then deciding lives were less important than saving face.

Staff are dropping like flies (but surviving thanks to the vaccines) in terms of crews down it's currently as bad as pre-vaccine.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Just in time for XE, all local restrictions are being lifted tomorrow because everyone wants Covid 19 to be "over" - it's not trendy.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Unfortunately, the next big event seems to have drained all attention from the pandemic.

Continual shots would seem to be the only precaution, as mask wearing seems to be fading.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

BA2 outbreak centred locally. 50% total cases nationwide are from our county.
We don't have any projections for BA2, too new. However the USA does:

Dr. Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute, said the numbers will likely keep growing until the surge reaches about a quarter the height of the last “monstrous” one. BA.2 may well have the same effect in the U.S. as it did in Israel, where it created a “bump” in the chart measuring cases, he said.

Could be worse, I guess.

The new subvariants continue to iterate infectivity, making each one the newest "most infectious respiratory pathogen" ever recorded. WHO is up to BA.5 now ( Botswana & South Africa), but sublineages from BA2 are also branching out in NYC. China is trying to contain this to zero, so heh, good luck with that.

New data on vaccines and myocarditis:

Now, an analysis of 22 studies with hundreds of millions of vaccine doses administered between them shows heart inflammation is no more common after a covid-19 jab than it is after vaccines that protect against some other infections, such as smallpox or influenza – and in some cases the risk may be lower.

The study, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, found 18 cases of heart inflammation occur per 1 million covid-19 vaccine doses, compared with 56 cases per 1 million doses of non-covid vaccinations. The rate of heart inflammation was even found to be “significantly higher” after a smallpox jab than a covid-19 vaccine.

New problems post Covid continue to emerge. There are recorded cases of hepatitis in children. Sudden onset blindness following retinal vein thrombosis.

There's a preliminary study out of USA suggesting that simple aspirin might work as a treatment for severe Covid.

Aspirin Use Is Associated With Decreased Mechanical... : Anesthesia & Analgesia

dmission, and in-hospital mortality. METHODS: A retrospective, observational cohort study of adult patients admitted with COVID-19 to multiple hospitals in the United States between March 2020 and July 2020 was performed. The primary outcome was the need for mechanical ventilation. Secondary...

journals.lww.com

WHO is set to update the horrendous numbers out of India, raising the death toll by 4 million people. The total recorded count is around 6 million as of now, so this increases the estimated deaths by a whopping 2/3. By far and away this pandemic is worse than the 1918 one - consider what the death toll would be with us trying to use 1918 tech to fight it.

 

[Zieman]

WHO is set to update the horrendous numbers out of India, raising the death toll by 4 million people. The total recorded count is around 6 million as of now, so this increases the estimated deaths by a whopping 2/3. By far and away this pandemic is worse than the 1918 one - consider what the death toll would be with us trying to use 1918 tech to fight it.

Just trying to get this into perspective, is the relative death toll also exceeding 1918-20 numbers? World population was quite a bit smaller 100 years ago.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Just for fun, my gaming group got together two weeks ago.

Two of the eight of us developed bronchitis, and we're all boosted. I also got a sinus infection. No fevers or sore throats.

So much for the brave new world. I'm on amoxicillin, plus all the expectorants, ibuprofen, hydration, etc.

Is RL envious of Frontier's QA?

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

The hepatitis outbreak in children is expanding.

Originally, it seemed Covid related. Now it seems uncertain what the cause is.
Majority of cases were in the UK, but it's now spreading in multiple European countries.

April 25, 2022 – At least 169 severe hepatitis cases have been identified in children in an outbreak that involves 12 countries, the World Health Organization announced on Saturday.

Among the cases, at least one child has died and 17 have required liver transplants. The children have been between 1 month and 16 years old.

Children of this age are unvaccinated vs Covid. So it isn't a side effect. No adults involved so far, suggesting acquired life immunity blocks the agent, likely to be some background pathogen.

In the US, there's a report out of Alabama:

New adenovirus strain potentially linked to pediatric hepatitis outbreak in Alabama

Based on information out of UAB and the ADPH, the CDC issued a health alert encouraging providers presented with pediatric patients with hepatitis of an unknown origin to screen for the adenovirus-41 strain.

www.uab.edu

It's possible that an adenovirus has mutated and might be the cause in Europe/UK too.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

My right lung refuses to come up out of my mouth....

Could be worse. The other one with bronchitis is coughing up green...

 

[metatheurgist]

Ouch, get better soon.