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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2020 6:07 pm 
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An interesting test of the effectiveness of masks.

And just in passing, when folks who were infected got followup tests on their heart, 80% had noticeable inflammation of the organ. It did not matter how apparently severe the infection was, either. This virus isn't whistling Dixie.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2020 1:55 pm 
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We now have an official case of reinfection with Covid 19. Yay us. This one is apparently 4 months after the first infection, and at some 9 months into the epidemic. So we may see more of this on an official basis.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2020 2:15 pm 
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According to the CDC, as of three days ago there were 245,000 excess deaths in the US during the Covid-19 epidemic. Now to be kindly they put in a figure of 185 thousand as the lowest reasonable estimate of excess deaths; but to put that in a bit of perspective it is (a) lower than the confirmed deaths to Covid infections, and (b) it's just as likely that the actual total is over 300 thousand as under 190 thousand. Long story short, a quarter of a million Americans have died of and/or because of SARS-Cov-2 by August 28.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 2:15 pm 
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Apparently when it's not being used to deal with itches, hydrocortisone can save Covid patients. A study performed with dexamethasone (a very similar steroid) revealed that using either on the sickest of patients will cut the death rate 20% (32% versus 40%). From a cost point of view, that's just this side of discovering that aspirin would do the trick; which means that pretty much anyone can benefit (assuming they can afford the hospital in the first place).

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2020 10:32 pm 
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Because things were just too simple so far: an American got a second Covid infection a month after the first cleared up, and the symptoms were rather worse. Poo happens, but this doesn't simplify coming up with a vaccine any.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2020 1:39 pm 
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An AI has learned how to tell if you have a Covid infection by listening to you cough. Rather less invasive than a swab up the nose, isn't it?

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2020 7:27 am 
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As you've probably heard, Pfizer has announced a vaccine to Sars-Cov-2. Barring anything going significantly wrong, it looks like it would eventually bring the pandemic under control; and the price is fairly reasonable (about 40 dollars US for the two doses together). Leaving aside that they felt the need to make the point that this wasn't done in league with any governments, it does seem to be another successful application of genetic engineering.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 8:14 am 
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Weremensh wrote:

We've been testing for Covid by having people hork up spit into a cup for months, dunno why the US is still firmly on the stick up the nose track. The AI's cool, but probably would only get approval for initial screening and not diagnosis.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 8:26 am 
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Weremensh wrote:
As you've probably heard, Pfizer has announced a vaccine to Sars-Cov-2. Barring anything going significantly wrong, it looks like it would eventually bring the pandemic under control; and the price is fairly reasonable (about 40 dollars US for the two doses together). Leaving aside that they felt the need to make the point that this wasn't done in league with any governments, it does seem to be another successful application of genetic engineering.

By now there appears to be three vaccine candidates close to being approved. The Pfizer one is 95-ish% effective but has to be kept in super deep freeze, the Moderna one is about as effective but can be kept at regular refrigerator temperatures, and the Oxford one, which is only about 60-ish% effective if used as intended but is way cheaper at less than $5 a pop and can be kept in the fridge.

One weird twist though, the Oxford scientists accidentally screwed up and gave a subset of their trial subjects a half sized first dose, which seems to have increased the efficacy of the vaccine to 90%. (Instead of genetically engineering their vaccine from scratch, they bolted n-SARS-CoV2 bits onto a chimpanzee adenovirus, which uh...carries the risk of your immune system attacking the chimp bug and destroying the vaccine in the process before it learns to recognize the Covid-flags. So the smaller first dose might have made it more effective in sneaking past the initial rejection response.) But they have to do more trials to confirm if this is actually a thing. If so, then their vaccine would give the most bang for buck.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2020 5:13 pm 
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Today i was tested negative. (There is a voluntary mass test in Vienna happening right now)

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2020 9:47 pm 
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Yay! Unfortunately it's the worst it has ever been in California. People got complacent because there was a downward trend and now infections are shooting through the roof.


:-(

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2020 7:50 pm 
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Here in NYC the mayor announced that we should probably be preparing for another lock down. That's on top of highly probable significant cut backs in service on mass transit (budget and ridership problems, don't you know). This might be an entertaining early winter around here.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2020 9:58 pm 
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Now among the countries where the new variant of Covid has been detected: the US. It was just found in Colorado. The odds that it got there first and very recently? Not all that great.

Well, it's nice that this new variant waited until the vaccine was making the scene before turning up. Still, it's going to be interesting until enough folks get their shots to make a serious dent in the local epidemics.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 9:18 pm 
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The Imperial College of Medicine on the new strain. Some important takeaways: it's got a rather higher R number and is much better at infecting children than the old strains (though not as good at infecting the elderly, who can fall back on the old strains in a pinch).

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 4:05 pm 
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A British study on immunity after a Covid infection finds at least five months of partial protection. There is no absolute immunity, but there seems to be an 83% lower chance of catching the disease again for that period. Which would mean one in six can catch it again right away, and of those folks in the study several were contagious.

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