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solarbird- My patient caught Covid-19 twice. So long to herd immunity hopes.
- Covid-19 Immunity May Rely on a Microscopic Helper: T Cells
- Trump again says that testing for COVID-19 "creates cases" of COVID-19.
- White House denies attempt to discredit Fauci, while giving what looks like an "oppo dump" - a set of documents designed to discredit a political opponent - to reporters.
- White House seeks to discredit Fauci in memo leaked to reporters
- As reopening plan that calls for face coverings, school board members express resistance
- Anti-Mask Idiots Rally at Florida Restaurant as State Becomes Covid-19 Epicenter
- Mike Pence directly intervened to push CO health agency to weaken their standards, allow #covid19 exposed employees to go back to work at meatpacking plant. Six workers died as a result.
- Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests [EDITOR: _If_ the main immunoresponse is antibodies, which isn't necessarily true.]
- ‘We’re just overwhelmed’: The view from inside California hospitals as COVID-19 surges
- White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Social Media attacks Fauci on Facebook
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My patient caught Covid-19 twice. So long to herd immunity hopes.
Emerging cases of Covid-19 reinfection suggest herd immunity is wishful thinking.
By D. Clay Ackerly
Jul 12, 2020
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/12/21321653/getting-covid-19-twice-reinfection-antibody-herd-immunity
“Wait. I can catch Covid twice?” my 50-year-old patient asked in disbelief. It was the beginning of July, and he had just tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, for a second time — three months after a previous infection.
While there’s still much we don’t understand about immunity to this new illness, a small but growing number of cases like his suggest the answer is “yes.”
Covid-19 may also be much worse the second time around. During his first infection, my patient experienced a mild cough and sore throat. His second infection, in contrast, was marked by a high fever, shortness of breath, and hypoxia, resulting in multiple trips to the hospital.
Recent reports and conversations with physician colleagues suggest my patient is not alone. Two patients in New Jersey, for instance, appear to have contracted Covid-19 a second time almost two months after fully recovering from their first infection. Daniel Griffin, a physician and researcher at Columbia in New York, recently described a case of presumed reinfection on the This Week in Virology podcast.
It is possible, but unlikely, that my patient had a single infection that lasted three months. Some Covid-19 patients (now dubbed “long haulers”) do appear to suffer persistent infections and symptoms.
My patient, however, cleared his infection — he had two negative PCR tests after his first infection — and felt healthy for nearly six weeks.
I believe it is far more likely that my patient fully recovered from his first infection, then caught Covid-19 a second time after being exposed to a young adult family member with the virus. He was unable to get an antibody test after his first infection, so we do not know whether his immune system mounted an effective antibody response or not.
Regardless, the limited research so far on recovered Covid-19 patients shows that not all patients develop antibodies after infection. Some patients, and particularly those who never develop symptoms, mount an antibody response immediately after infection only to have it wane quickly afterward — an issue of increasing scientific concern.
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Covid-19 Immunity May Rely on a Microscopic Helper: T Cells
Researchers have been looking beyond antibodies to understand how immunity to the new virus might work—and how to design a vaccine.
Gregory Barber
07.10.2020
https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-immunity-may-rely-on-a-microscopic-helper-t-cells/
If you want to know if you’ve ever been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the natural thing to do is to get a blood test. These look for antibodies—proteins that signal your body has encountered a virus, and could perhaps be protected from catching it again. But recently, a study published in Nature Medicine introduced a worrying complication. Researchers in Chongqing, China, followed 37 people who had tested positive for the virus but didn’t show symptoms during their illness—in other words, who were asymptomatic—and tested their blood regularly. They found those antibodies didn’t always last for long: In some cases, after two to three months, they were barely detectable. Thought a positive antibody test was your ticket out of this thing? It’s not so simple. Simple, after all, is not a word immunologists would ever use to describe their field.
Marcus Buggert, an immunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, had noticed a similar pattern among patients there: cases where people who tested positive for the virus quickly lost their antibodies or never appeared to muster those forces at all. That wasn’t a big surprise—antibodies had also waned in patients who recovered from SARS. But to Buggert, who studies T cells—part of an orchestra of cells that perform in the body’s immune response—the symphony appeared incomplete. Research from SARS offered hints that, even if antibodies faded, some people retained immune cells that recognized the virus. Sometimes, those responses could last for years. For SARS-CoV-2, similar dimensions of the immune response could have bearing on how immunity works and how to design a vaccine. “Just because you can’t detect antibodies in their blood doesn’t mean there’s no immune response,” Buggert says.
Antibodies are a critical component of immunity—especially the ones that “neutralize” the virus by homing in on the proteins that comprise it. They glom onto their target and prevent the virus from infecting cells. A good vaccine will try to replicate that kind of natural protection. “Neutralizing antibodies are the holy grail,” says Sallie Permar, a vaccine researcher at Duke University. “There are few to no viral vaccines where we’re not shooting for that as an end point.”
But antibody levels are only part of the immunity story. While antibodies may wane past the limit of detection, that doesn’t mean they go away entirely. And even a very low level could be protective. “What‘s important when you’ve been exposed to the virus is how quickly you can ramp up those antibodies,” Permar says. That involves a whole army of cells, which store knowledge of each new pathogen they encounter. There are B cells, which help coax those virus-specific antibodies into existence, plus killer T cells, which can learn to obliterate infected cells. Helper T cells help orchestrate the whole process. “You have multiple arms of the immune response,” says Donna Farber, an immunologist at Columbia University who studies respiratory viruses. “It’s like the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force.” If one branch stands down, the body hasn’t necessarily lost its germ-fighting capacity.
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Daniel Dale
twitter.com/ddale8
13 July 2020
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1282754254613237761
Asked if he acknowledges that the virus is actually spreading in the US, Trump does not. Instead, he repeats his dishonest nonsense that "when you test, you create cases. So we've created cases."
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Josh Lederman
twitter.com/JoshNBCNews
July 12, 2020
https://twitter.com/JoshNBCNews/status/1282371485051629568
NEW: The White House today is actively seeking to discredit Dr. Fauci, with a White House official telling me that "several White House officials" are concerned about how often he's been "wrong"
[NEXT]
https://twitter.com/JoshNBCNews/status/1282371680405458945
As twitter.com/washingtonpost first reported, a White House also provided a long list of past Fauci comments that did not age well, in what bears striking resemblance to an oppo dump
[SEE ALSO:
Fauci is sidelined by the White House as he steps up blunt talk on pandemic
Trump hasn’t consulted with the scientist since early June, telling Hannity ‘he’s ‘a nice man but he’s made a lot of mistakes.’
11 July 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/11/fauci-trump-coronavirus/
]
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White House seeks to discredit Fauci in memo leaked to reporters
Administration sources say he's sometimes referred to as "Dr. Gloom and Doom."
By Katherine Faulders
and John Santucci
July 13, 2020
https://abcnews.go.com/US/white-house-seeks-discredit-fauci-memo-leaked-reporters/story
The White House has taken the unusual step of attacking a member of its coronavirus task force, by providing a document to several media outlets that contains a list of comments made by Dr. Anthony Fauci in an effort to damage his reputation.
The comments were first reported by the Washington Post.
The news of the document comes as two senior level White House sources tell ABC News that Fauci has at times been referred to among aides to President Donald Trump as "Dr. Gloom and Doom."
The document, obtained by ABC News from sources who confirmed the effort to discredit Fauci, says in part that "several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things."
The document goes on to list examples of what the White House views as Fauci contradicting himself.
One example in the short document is a comment made by Fauci on NBC's Today Show in late February that "at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you're doing on a day-by-day basis."
However, that was not the full statement Fauci made during the interview.
"Right now the risk is still low, but this could change," Fauci also told the Today Show at the time. "When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread."
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As reopening plan that calls for face coverings, school board members express resistance
Seth Klamann
Jul 12, 2020
https://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/health/as-reopening-plan-that-calls-for-face-coverings-school-board-members-express-resistance/article_0b67f362-9532-5832-a1fe-ef8662e55431.html
As part of its plan to reopen schools this fall, the Natrona County School District will require staff and students to wear masks when they’re within 6 feet of each other. But members of the school board expressed resistance to face coverings this past week, echoing past comments from some trustees contesting the need for measures to slow the spread of a virus that’s killed more than 130,000 Americans.
“We’ve had 21 deaths in Wyoming. Most of those were people with pre-existing conditions or in old folks homes,” trustee Kevin Christopherson said during the board’s Wednesday night meeting. “They were going to die. They just died sooner.”
“Except for the jogger in Cheyenne who died, who’s my age and had no other health problems,” replied Dr. Mark Dowell, the Natrona County health officer and an infectious disease expert who’s been treating coronavirus patients here.
“Yeah, I mean, things happen,” Christopherson said. “We’ve had 41 highway deaths this year. And I bet you you’re still driving. I know I am. I’m still driving 84 miles an hour.”
“That’s apples and oranges,” fellow trustee Dana Howie said.
As with the virus, there are laws intended to limit fatalities: car safety requirements, laws mandating passengers wear seat belts and obey speed limits, and police and highway patrolmen deployed to enforce those requirements.
“The other thing, I hate to put it this way — you cannot take risks for the population,” Dr. Ghazi Ghanem, Dowell’s infectious disease partner and another health officer, told Christopherson. “We’re entrusted with the health of the public. If I myself can just feel like, ‘Yeah, it’s OK to take a risk for myself,’ if I go and give it to you as a patient, you’re not going to appreciate that. ... It’s a risk for the public that I don’t think we can just accept.”
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Anti-Mask Idiots Rally at Florida Restaurant as State Becomes Covid-19 Epicenter
Matt Novak
13 July 2020
https://gizmodo.com/anti-mask-idiots-rally-at-florida-restaurant-as-state-b-1844359920
Anti-mask advocates rallied over the weekend at a restaurant in Florida, the current covid-19 capital of the world, insisting that no one should wear a mask to fight the spread of the deadly disease. The rally proves yet again that no amount of infection or death will convince some people to do the right thing and just wear a damn mask, which has been shown to dramatically slow the spread of coronavirus.
The anti-mask rally took place on Saturday at 33 & Melt, a bar and restaurant in Windermere, Florida that’s owned by Carrie Hudson, an activist who believes the coronavirus pandemic is little more than media-driven hype. Reuters and Canada’s Global News both published videos of the demonstration on YouTube, which shows county officials speaking with Hudson about the county’s mandatory mask order.
Florida reported over 15,000 new cases of the disease on Sunday, the highest one-day total of any state in the country, surpassing New York’s record tally of over 12,000 infections in 24 hours, reached in April. The U.S. has identified more than 3.3 million cases and over 135,000 deaths since the pandemic began.
Hudson, who reportedly offered 100 free meals to people who visited the restaurant without a mask, was backed up by protesters who clearly savored the publicity. They did not appear to be very smart, and echoed the same kind of arguments President Donald Trump has spouted about the pandemic since January.
Trump finally wore a mask in public over the weekend, arguably the lowest bar a world leader can pass as thousands still die in his country every week from a preventable disaster. But Trump has notably returned to retweeting anti-science bullshit, like a tweet from Chuck Woolery this morning that accuses the CDC and media of “lying” about the pandemic.
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#Resist Trump's USDA
twitter.com/altusda
13 July 2020
https://twitter.com/altusda/status/1282768783967387654
So for those keeping track at home, Mike Pence *directly* intervened to push the CO health agency to weaken their standards and allow #covid19 exposed employees to go back to work at an infected meatpacking plant. Six workers died at that plant.
[QUOTED TWEET]
#Resist Trump's USDA
twitter.com/altusda
13 July 2020
https://twitter.com/altusda/status/1282767470663737346
Wow: “JBS was in touch with the VP [Pence] who had Director Redfield call..They want us to use the CDC’s critical infrastructure guidance, (sending asymptomatic people back to work even if we suspect exposure but they have no symptoms) even with the outbreak at present level"
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Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests [EDITOR: _If_ the main immunoresponse is antibodies, which isn't necessarily true.]
Exclusive: King’s College London team found steep drops in patients’ antibody levels three months after infection
12 July 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/12/immunity-to-covid-19-could-be-lost-in-months-uk-study-suggests
People who have recovered from Covid-19 may lose their immunity to the disease within months, according to research suggesting the virus could reinfect people year after year, like common colds.
In the first longitudinal study of its kind, scientists analysed the immune response of more than 90 patients and healthcare workers at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS foundation trust and found levels of antibodies that can destroy the virus peaked about three weeks after the onset of symptoms then swiftly declined.
Blood tests revealed that while 60% of people marshalled a “potent” antibody response at the height of their battle with the virus, only 17% retained the same potency three months later. Antibody levels fell as much as 23-fold over the period. In some cases, they became undetectable.
“People are producing a reasonable antibody response to the virus, but it’s waning over a short period of time and depending on how high your peak is, that determines how long the antibodies are staying around,” said Dr Katie Doores, lead author on the study at King’s College London.
The study has implications for the development of a vaccine, and for the pursuit of “herd immunity” in the community over time.
The immune system has multiple ways to fight the coronavirus but if antibodies are the main line of defence, the findings suggested people could become reinfected in seasonal waves and that vaccines may not protect them for long.
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‘We’re just overwhelmed’: The view from inside California hospitals as COVID-19 surges
July 13, 2020
By Soumya Karlamangla
Los Angeles Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/were-just-overwhelmed-the-view-from-inside-hospitals-as-coronavirus-surge-hits/
For months, California hospitals avoided the dreaded surge in coronavirus patients that threatened to overwhelm wards and stretch thin staff and supplies. But now, with coronavirus hospitalizations in the state at an all-time high, doctors and nurses at some hospitals say the nightmare has arrived.
Hospitals up and down the state report that their beds are filling up fast, staffers are tiring and medications used to treat coronavirus patients are running low. The surge has hit California unevenly, with some facilities reporting their numbers staying flat in recent weeks, while others have risen sharply.
“We’re getting to the point where we’re just overwhelmed — emotionally, physically exhausted. We don’t have enough workers for all these patients; we’re working extra shifts,” said Mary Lynn Briggs, an intensive care unit nurse at Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield. “I’m expecting things to go from bad to worse over at least the next couple of weeks.”
The months since March allowed hospitals time to prepare for such a surge. Doctors learned more about how to treat COVID-19 patients, hospital administrators obtained more protective gear, and staffers know more about how the coronavirus is transmitted and how to protect themselves.
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Jake Tapper
twitter.com/jaketapper
13 July 2020
https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1282870795925159938
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Social Media posts cartoon and message on FB attacking the nation’s leading infectious disease expert for telling the truth about this deadly pandemic.
https://facebook.com/1440616002820798/posts/2641476589401394/?d=n
[EMBEDDED IMAGE OF (ultra-rightist) BEN GARRISON EDITORIAL CARTOON]
