The Covid-19 Thread: News, Preparation Tips, Etc

sunshinebeautiful

Well-Known Member
DH trying to convince me that he’s testing negative with a slightly fainter gray line. If you don’t get the hell away from me. :swearing:

View attachment 481809

He need to stop playing. When my boyfriend initially tested positive, his test looked just like this.

Speaking of which, I had covid (for the second time) about 3-4 weeks ago. I have no idea how he did not get it when I got it, especially because he refused to isolate and slept in the same bed with me. Then last weekend he went to his uncle's birthday party.... and by Monday, he is sick. We test. It's covid. I didn't isolate from him, but I did stay at home from work and stayed out of the general public. (I never got sick again.) I assume he had the same variant I did... but it's so weird that he was all laid up next to me.... and then got it weeks later from a social event.
 

Everything Zen

Well-Known Member
^^^^ They’re saying those of us who tend to have allergies and asthma, sick with colds may have previously primed T cell immunity from a broader range of coronaviruses which could confer some protection.



Scientists are narrowing in on why some people keep avoiding Covid. BA.5 could end that luck.


Most people in the U.S have had Covid-19 at least once — likely more than 70% of the country, White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said on Thursday, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


Many have gotten infected multiple times. In a preprint study looking at 257,000 U.S. veterans who'd gotten Covid at least once, 12% had a reinfection by April and around 1% had been infected three times or more.


This raises an obvious question: What is keeping that shrinking minority of people from getting sick?


Disease experts are homing in on a few predictive factors beyond individual behavior, including genetics, T cell immunity and the effects of inflammatory conditions like allergies and asthma.


But even as experts learn more about the reasons people may be better able to avoid Covid, they caution that some of these defenses may not hold up against the latest version of omicron, BA.5, which is remarkably good at spreading and evading vaccine protection.


"It really takes two to tango," said Neville Sanjana, a bioengineer at the New York Genome Center. "If you think about having an infection and any of the bad stuff that happens after that, it really is a product of two different organisms: the virus and the human."


Genetics could decrease the risk of Covid


In 2020, NYU researchers identified a multitude of genes that could impact a person's susceptibility to the coronavirus. In particular, they found that inhibiting certain genes that code for a receptor known as ACE-2, which allows the virus to enter cells, could reduce a person's likelihood of infection.


Sanjana, who conducted that research, estimated that about 100 to 500 genes could influence Covid-19 susceptibility in sites like the lungs or nasal cavity.


Genetics is "likely to be a large contributor" to protection from Covid-19, he said. "I would never say it’s the only contributor."


In July, researchers identified a common genetic factor that could influence the severity of a coronavirus infection. In a study of more than 3,000 people, two genetic variations decreased the expression of a gene called OAS1, which is part of the innate immune response to viral infections. That was associated with an increased risk of Covid-19 hospitalization.


Increasing the gene's expression, then, should have the opposite effect — reducing the risk of severe disease — though it wouldn't necessarily prevent infection altogether.


"It’s very natural to get infected once you are exposed. There’s no magic bullet for that. But after you get infected, how you’re going to respond to this infection, that’s what is going to be affected by your genetic variants," said Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson, the study's lead researcher and chief of the Laboratory of Translational Genomics at the National Cancer Institute.


Still, Benjamin tenOever, a microbiology professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine who helped conduct the 2020 research, said it will be difficult for scientists to pinpoint a particular gene responsible for preventing a Covid infection.


"While there might still be certainly some genetics out there that do render people completely resistant, they’re going to be incredibly hard to find," tenOever said. "People have already been looking intensely for two years with no actual results."


T cells could remember past coronavirus encounters


Aside from this new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, four other coronaviruses commonly infect people, typically causing mild to moderate upper respiratory illnesses like the common cold.


A recent study suggested that repeated exposure to or occasional infections from these common cold coronaviruses may confer some protection from SARS-CoV-2.


The researchers found that T cells, a type of white blood cell that recognizes and fights invaders, seem to recognize SARS-CoV-2 based on past exposure to other coronaviruses. So when a person who has been infected with a common cold coronavirus is later exposed to SARS-CoV-2, they might not get as sick.


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But that T cell memory probably can't prevent Covid entirely.


"While neutralizing antibodies are key to prevent an infection, T cells are key to terminate an infection and to modulate the severity of infection," said Alessandro Sette, the study’s author and a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.


Sette said it's possible that some people's T cells clear the virus so quickly that the person never tests positive for Covid. But researchers aren't yet sure if that's what's happening.


"It’s possible that, despite being negative on the test, it was a very abortive, transient infection that was not detected," Sette said.


At the very least, he said, T cells from past Covid infections or vaccines should continue to offer some protection against coronavirus variants, including BA.5.


Allergies may result in a little extra protection


Although asthma was considered a potential risk factor for severe Covid earlier in the pandemic, more recent research suggests that low-grade inflammation from conditions like allergies or asthma may have a protective benefit.


"You’ll hear these stories about some individuals getting sick and having full-blown symptoms of Covid, and having slept beside their partner for an entire week during that period without having given it to them. People think that they must have some genetic resistance to it, [but] a big part of that could be if the partner beside them in any way has a higher than normal inflammatory response going on their lungs," tenOever said.


A May study found that having a food allergy halved the risk of a coronavirus infection among nearly 1,400 U.S. households. Asthma didn't lower people's risk of infection in the study, but it didn't raise it, either.


One theory, according to the researchers, is that people with food allergies express fewer ACE2 receptors on the surface of their airway cells, making it harder for the virus to enter.


"Because there are fewer receptors, you will have either a much lower grade infection or just be less likely to even become infected," said Tina Hartert, a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine who co-led that research.


The study took place from May 2020 to February 2021, before the omicron variant emerged. But Hartert said BA.5 likely wouldn't eliminate cross-protection from allergies.


"If something like allergic inflammation is protective, I think it would be true for all variants," Hartert said. "The degree to which it could be protective could certainly differ."


Avoiding infection is more challenging with BA.5


For many, the first explanation that springs to mind when thinking about Covid avoidance is one's personal level of caution. tenOever believes that individual behavior, more than genetics or T cells, is the key factor. He and his family in New York City are among those who've never had Covid, which he attributes to precautions like staying home and wearing masks.


"I don’t think for a second that we have anything special in our genetics that makes us resistant," he said.


It's now common knowledge that Covid was easier to avoid before omicron, back when a small percentage of infected people were responsible for the majority of the virus's spread. A 2020 study, for example, found that 10–20% of infected people accounted for 80% of transmission.


But omicron and its subvariants have made any social interaction riskier for everyone involved.


"It's probably far more of an equal playing field with the omicron variants than it ever was for the earlier variants," tenOever said.


BA.5 in particular has increased the odds that people who've avoided Covid thus far will get sick. President Joe Biden is a prime example: He tested positive for the first time this week.


But even so, Jha said on Thursday, "I don’t believe that every American will be infected."
 
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dancinstallion

Well-Known Member
Covid-19? Not Me!

Meet the covid super-dodgers​

The no-covid club gets more exclusive every day. And some members have no idea how they’re still there.

July 21, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Joe and Susannah Altman are serious poker players. Sometimes, when they play in tournaments, they’ll place what’s called a “Last Longer” bet with friends who see which of them can outlast the others. The pandemic kept the Altmans, both 58, away from the in-person tables for over a year — Susannah has lupus, and at the time, they were caring for a friend with cancer — but they came out of lockdown a little over a year ago, after getting vaccinated, and since then have had some close calls. The Las Vegas couple dined with friends who subsequently tested positive. Joe spent a day with their 25-year-old son, only to have that son be diagnosed with covid 48 hours later. Just last month, Susannah went to lunch with four friends, two of whom tested positive days later.

“Joe and I feel like we’re still in the Last Longer with covid,” Susannah said in a recent phone interview.
She said she figures it’s only a matter of time before she gets knocked out. That’s the way the game goes.

“At some point,” she says, “there’s only one person left.”

There are no winners in a pandemic. That said, if you’ve made it to the summer of 2022 without yet testing positive for the coronavirus, you might feel entitled to some bragging rights. Who’s still in the game at this point? Not Anthony S. Fauci. Not President Biden, who tested positive this week. Not Denzel Washington, Camila Cabello or Lionel Messi. Not your friend who’s even more cautious than you but who finally caught it last week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that nearly 60 percent of Americans had contracted the virus at some point — and that was as of the end of February, before the extremely contagious BA.4 and BA.5 variants became rampant.


“I’ve always been doing strikeouts, and I don’t think that anyone else is doing them as much as I am,” said Luke Martin, a 30-year-old film producer, from his apartment in Brooklyn.
And what’s a strikeout?
“That’s when you take a hit of weed, hold it in while you rip a shot and then chug a beer before exhaling.” (Note: Do not do this, for any reason.)
Martin does comedy in his spare time and was joking — mostly. He did start doing strikeouts on Zoom calls with old college buddies at the onset of the pandemic shutdown and continued even when the world reopened. One by one, the people in Martin’s orbit fell ill with covid. But not him. Coincidence?

Yes, definitely. That is definitely a coincidence.
But among covid-deniers — the always-testing-negative ones, not the conspiracy theory crew — theories about the reasons for their good fortune abound.

“I must have superhuman immunity or something,” mused Kathi Moss, a 63-year-old pediatric nurse from Southfield, Mich.
Scientists have found no conclusive evidence of innate genetic immunity. “It would be extremely unlikely that any innate immune system properties could protect against all infections,” said Eleanor Murray, an epidemiologist and professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. But Moss’s ability to duck the virus — to her knowledge, we should add; a disclaimer that applies to all these folks, since in theory they could have had asymptomatic cases at some point — does cry out for an explanation. Consider that she’s a pediatric nurse who has been staring covid in the face (while fully masked) for 2½ years now. And that she rode in a car with her ex-husband, with the windows up, three days before he tested positive. And that a woman at the camp where she works every summer gave Moss a henna tattoo one day and reported a positive coronavirus result the next.

Moss’s mysterious good fortune has not made her less worried about contracting the virus. She wants to stay in the game as long as she can, because she knows it’s not a game at all. What Moss fears the most is the potential long-term effects of covid. “I just keep thinking, ‘I don’t want it. I just don’t want this disease,’ ” she said.

Sustained vigilance may be the sensible approach. But not-partying like it’s 2020 is only getting lonelier.
S.F. said her household has avoided covid because she feels uniquely vulnerable, not invulnerable. The 40-year-old mother of two, who lives outside Boston, asked to be identified only by her initials because she thinks continuing to practice conservative mitigation strategies could make her a target for online abuse. She has been especially worried about her 4½-year-old daughter, who was born prematurely. And now that everyone seems to have let their guard down, protecting that child feels harder than ever. No one else is masking at the playground. It’s tricky to explain to friends that they are only comfortable gathering outdoors and still prefer to practice social distancing. “I feel like I’m forced to choose between my kids’ socialization and their safety,” S.F. said.

Lucas Rivas has immunocompromised parents, so he’s tried to be as safe as possible. He’s also a 27-year-old who wants to have a social life, but who has passed on more nights out than he cares to remember.

“All these people my age were living their lives and, you know, I was really kind of living in fear of it because I knew how prevalent it was,” said Rivas, who managed to avoid testing positive despite working as a medical assistant at an urgent-care clinic in Littleton, Colo. “It’s hard to walk out of the office and forget what you see there and go socialize and be in big groups and things like that.”
Over the July Fourth weekend, he couldn’t take it anymore. When a friend asked to meet at a bar, he agreed.

He had one drink, then another.
He sang karaoke with one woman, then kissed another.
He tested positive for the virus two days later.
“I was starting to think that maybe I couldn’t get it,” Rivas said from isolation, “and I was instantly proven wrong.”
He felt stupid, reckless, “like I wasted two years of heavy precautions.”

That kind of self-imposed guilt drives Katrine Wallace crazy. Wallace is an epidemiologist, but lately she has begun to serve as a de facto counselor/confessor for the covid-sick, comforting people who, like Rivas, have been devastated to see their streaks come to an end.
“There’s a lot of people who feel like they failed,” said Wallace, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health. “ ‘I’ve been so good for so long’ — I hear that every day.” She assures those people that they’re not bad — it’s the new variants that are bad. “They have done really well if they are just getting it now,” Wallace said.

In those moments, she tries to avoid mentioning that she herself has not yet tested positive. No need to rub it in.
Tony Freeman feels certain he’s going to get knocked out of the game by fall. Freeman, 63, is an actor who has been in the cast of “The Lion King” since it debuted on Broadway more than 20 years ago. In the past five years, he’s been a standby, ready to take over if another actor gets sick. Which has been just fine, especially this past year, when he’s been able to sit backstage, safely tucked behind a mask. But recently he was asked to take over the role of Timon, the meerkat, for four months on a national tour. The part has him “Hakuna Matata”-ing eight times a week while the unmasked masses cackle and cough and loudly prove to their neighbors that they know all the lyrics. (Bunch of hyenas.)

It means no worries. . . ? Nah, not anymore. Freeman no longer likes his odds of getting through the rest of the pandemic unscathed. “I don’t think there’s anything special about my body,” he said. “If you saw it, you would agree.” Cast members test six days a week, and he’s just waiting for a second line to appear.

Pessimism is one way of protecting yourself. Everybody is in the game until they’re not. And bragging that you’ve dodged covid for 2½ years seems akin to chanting “Bloody Mary” three times while looking in a mirror. You don’t really want to tempt fate. Though maybe you can’t help yourself — whatever the consequences.
“As of today, I have finally tested positive for the iconic COVID-19 virus,” Luke Martin — he of the “strikeouts” — announced in an email to The Washington Post shortly after boasting about not having caught it yet.

Reached by phone, Martin said he wasn’t sure where he picked up the virus, but he has a theory on why it came for him now. He hasn’t done a strikeout in two weeks — ironically, he was trying to be healthier.
On Day One of his diagnosis, Martin reported feeling mostly okay, just a little tired and a lot disappointed.
“I made it loud and clear to all my circles that I hadn’t gotten it,” he said. “Now, the king has fallen.”
Last week, Joe Altman of Las Vegas took a calculated risk and competed at the World Series of Poker. He survived round after round, finally finishing 31st out of almost 8,700 players. He wasn’t the last one standing, but still — not a bad run.
Then three days after he busted out of the tournament, he busted out with a little dry cough. Susannah made him take a coronavirus test; the second line was faint but visible. Her own case was confirmed three days later.
“We’re out of the Last Longer,” Susannah said by phone. She wasn’t surprised. That’s just how the game goes.

This is a developing story. Any subjects interviewed about not testing positive for covid might well, at this very moment, be testing positive for covid.
They knew this might jinx it.


Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...vkL5v_qsDz6Xzc8YPztezj0tqc5Qo1lPiP_29GnGPUHfM

Super dodgers or superspreaders like typhoid Mary? Every one they have come close to have or caught covid. I don't trust them. :drunk:
 

ScorpioBeauty09

Well-Known Member
COVID keeps getting closer. Sometimes I wonder how DH, myself, and my family have avoided it.

DH and I are having a wedding ceremony tomorrow to honor his culture. It's at a large outside park, with plenty of space for people to spread out and we're telling everyone to wear masks. People still largely wear masks in the Bay Area but I notice the numbers going down. Last week we find out the couple who's been helping us prepare and play a big role in some of the rituals contracted COVID along with their two toddler daughters and in-laws. Luckily neither DH nor I had seen them in person for at least 3-4 weeks and they are not coming tomorrow.

On Monday my youngest sister went to a funeral for a college classmate who died in a car accident. She gets picked up by a friend. I find out later that the friend's sister currently has COVID and is isolating. Her friend said he didn't realize COVID was still a thing and didn't mention it to my sister until they'd been in each other's company for hours. Luckily she's testing negative. She had contact with my dad who was going to be tested anyway for surgical clearance and that was negative.

And last night my BFF texted me that her sister's (who lives with her and her mom) boyfriend has COVID. My friend's sister was out of state on a work trip when he contracted it and she's repeatedly tested negative.
We had the ceremony last week and it went well knock on wood Praise God. No rumblings of anyone with COVID19 symptoms. Everybody except for one person was masked. We were outside and spread out as much as we could, plus with the dancing people were moving around a lot.
 

Lylddlebit

Well-Known Member
Super dodgers or superspreaders like typhoid Mary? Every one they have come close to have or caught covid. I don't trust them. :drunk:


The potential of that isn't lost on me. However since so many nurses on here where able to take precaution to avoid catching it much longer than their exposure...I think it is more likely that steps for mitigation are effective they just have a shelf life as exposure increases. If a super dodger exists I would love for my household to be blessed with that gift lol.
 

Lylddlebit

Well-Known Member
Strong work USA :nono:

I was trying to see if I could get the dashboard to break down the deaths and infections by partially vaccinated, fully vaccinated, boosted and vaccine free. I haven't found it just yet on this dashboard but I may be filtering wrong. I am also finding different counties showing "suppressed" on their county websites when it comes to reporting deaths for covid most recently :confused:. I am observing the most people get covid between March and now than during the whole pandemic but don't know anyone personally who has been hospitalized or died due to covid in this season which is not what I expected. I will keep looking at the data though. I like to see the trends by vaccine status and past exposures.
 

vevster

Well-Known Member
I think my approach works and the vaccines make you more prone to catching it instead of less! Let me not even start on garbage like Paxlovid!!!!

A colleage just called out today (vaxxed and boosted) saying she is sick and going for a covid test.

This is like the 3rd time she has been sick since Oct! A young woman!
 

lavaflow99

In search of the next vacation
Do vaccines make people more prone to catching it or are people letting their guard down because they’re vaccinated and incorrectly assume Covid isn’t a threat?
Probably plays a role. Some folks think they are now invincible with the vaccines so their virus avoiding practices such as the masks and social distancing goes away. Or those who got the vaccines who believe incorrectly that the vaccine prevents you from getting COVID.

Or since they know they know they will get less sick with the vaccine on board so folks are more willing to risk it.
 

MamaBear2012

Well-Known Member
My inlaws are visiting. They aren't vaccinated. They did a whole lot of talking about how Covid wasn't real and all of that kind of stuff towards the beginning of the pandemic. How it was just like a bad cold...all of the usual rhetoric. Until...they got Covid. That was probably 6 or 7 months ago.

Today, one of my nephews asked my SIL to smell something. Why did she say, "I can't smell anything. I haven't been able to smell anything since having Covid." :oops:
 

Evolving78

Well-Known Member
My inlaws are visiting. They aren't vaccinated. They did a whole lot of talking about how Covid wasn't real and all of that kind of stuff towards the beginning of the pandemic. How it was just like a bad cold...all of the usual rhetoric. Until...they got Covid. That was probably 6 or 7 months ago.

Today, one of my nephews asked my SIL to smell something. Why did she say, "I can't smell anything. I haven't been able to smell anything since having Covid." :oops:
Girl! Imma pray for you. That relative that came to visit me got Covid! I knew that person was going to be a problem. Thankfully we stayed masked up around that person, didn’t hang around too long, and tested negative. I tried to keep that person away for two years!
 

Black Ambrosia

Well-Known Member
Found out today that my sister and BIL tested positive for covid over the weekend. This is especially concerning since she has cancer. Thankfully her symptoms are mild. My BIL has been achy and his blood pressure was all over the place. I think he's been on paxlovid for a couple of days. My sister got the ok to take it today from her doctor. There was some concern about taking it with her cancer meds but they were already making some changes to her treatment so they worked it out. I'm talking to her about other stuff she can do but I'm hopeful this will be mild and pass quickly.

They have no idea where they got it. Their sons are both negative and they don't go anywhere out of concern for her health.
 

Peppermynt

Defying Gravity
My girlfriend who had a break through case in early August is STILL recovering. Her heart and lungs are not back to normal. She just finished 9 weeks of rehab therapy and they said she needs more but there’s a waiting list so she’s not sure when she can get it scheduled. Thank goodness she has good insurance and is able to be out on disability right now. She’s super depressed. :cry3:
My friend has Covid again. :cry3::cry3::cry3: She tested positive this morning.

She caught it from her husband who had gone out and eaten with some friends. He was masked but had to unmask to eat. The rest is history.

She is LIVID. And experiencing severe symptoms right now.

We're tired y'all. Someone please make it stop.
 

Everything Zen

Well-Known Member
So Lollapalooza teamed up with Hulu to live stream the festival and I’m watching this mess during Lil’ Baby :rolleyes: set. We are living with Omicron BA.4 and now Monkeypox on the rise- essentially 2 pandemics at the same time.

- packed to pre-pandemic levels
- ain’t none of these :censored: wearing masks

I don’t care whoever y’all Sky Zaddy is we need to get back to church:

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snoop

Well-Known Member

Risk of shingles rises after COVID-19 infection: study​


Adults over 50 who have had COVID-19 are more likely to experience a shingles outbreak, according to new research.

A study published in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases last month looked at data from 400,000 people who had been infected with COVID-19 and 1.6 million who had not. It found adults over 50 who have had COVID-19 are 15 per cent more likely to develop shingles within six months. The risk grows to 21 per cent for those who have been hospitalized with COVID-19.

Full story here
 

yamilee21

Well-Known Member

Risk of shingles rises after COVID-19 infection: study​


Adults over 50 who have had COVID-19 are more likely to experience a shingles outbreak, according to new research.

A study published in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases last month looked at data from 400,000 people who had been infected with COVID-19 and 1.6 million who had not. It found adults over 50 who have had COVID-19 are 15 per cent more likely to develop shingles within six months. The risk grows to 21 per cent for those who have been hospitalized with COVID-19.

Full story here
A friend’s family all had Covid recently, but her spouse also developed shingles at the same time… as if Covid wasn’t already a miserable experience by itself. :nono: Meanwhile, so many are nonchalant about catching it… “it’s just a cold” … yet new complications are continuously being found.
 

ScorpioBeauty09

Well-Known Member
Do vaccines make people more prone to catching it or are people letting their guard down because they’re vaccinated and incorrectly assume Covid isn’t a threat?
My father's got heart issues, we're hoping for a transplant and one of his doctors had to postpone their appointment because he tested positive for COVID19. My father is a retired surgeon and his doctor told him he was vaxed/boosted and admitted he did away with masks and social distancing. He's the same age as my dad so he's in his mid-60s. This doctor works at one of the most prestigious hospitals on the west coast. He's better now but he wasn't doing well for a while and said he regrets letting his guard down. Many people still wear masks in public where we live so he must've been pretty reckless.
 
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