CORONAVIRUS INFO PROVIDED BY DR. JIM HARRIS – 07/09/2021
FROM THE ATLANTIC
The 3 Simple Rules That Underscore the Danger of Delta
”…While America worries about the fate of states where around 40 percent of people are fully vaccinated, barely 10 percent of the world’s population has achieved that status, including just 1 percent of Africa’s. The coronavirus is now tearing through southern Africa, South America, and Central and Southeast Asia. The year is only half over, but more people have already been infected and killed by the coronavirus in 2021 than in 2020. And new variants are still emerging. Lambda, the latest to be recognized by the WHO, is dominant in Peru and spreading rapidly in South America…This is the first pandemic in history in which scientists are sequencing the genes of a new virus, and tracking its evolution, in real time—that’s why we know about the variants at all. Genomic surveillance can tell which mutations are rising to the fore, and lab experiments can show how these mutations change the virus—that’s how we know which variants are concerning. But even with such work “happening at incredible speed,” Hodcroft told me, “we can’t test every variant that we see.”…We’re unlikely to be as vulnerable as we were at the beginning of the pandemic. The vaccines induce a variety of protective antibodies and immune cells, so it’s hard for a variant virus to evade them all. These defenses also vary from person to person, so even if a virus eludes one person’s set, it might be stymied when it jumps into a new host. “I don’t think there’ll suddenly be a variant that pops up and evades everything, and suddenly our vaccines are useless,” Gupta told me. “It’ll be incremental: With every stepwise change in the virus, a chunk of protection is lost in individuals. And people on the edges—the vulnerable who haven’t mounted a full response—will end up bearing the cost.”
California’s Capitol revives a mask rule after an outbreak infected four fully vaccinated people.
Dollar General: Rural America’s new health hub?
(J. Harris: If Dollar General had vaccine, it could be an excellent vaccination site. I mean it. It might be even better if Ma and Pa kettle gave the shots?
FROM HOPKINS
1. Persistent Symptoms in Adult Patients One Year After COVID-19: A Prospective Cohort Study (Clinical Infectious Diseases)
Long COVID is defined as the persistence of symptoms beyond 3 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection. To better understand the long-term course and etiology of symptoms we analyzed a cohort of COVID-19 patients prospectively. Patients were included at 5 months after acute COVID-19 in this prospective, non-interventional follow-up study. Patients followed until 12 months after COVID-19 symptom onset (n=96, 32.3% hospitalised, 55.2% females) were included in this analysis of symptoms, quality of life (based on a SF-12 survey), laboratory parameters including antinuclear antibodies (ANA), and SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels.
FROM JAMA SOME GOOD NEWS AND GOOD SCIENCE:
SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATIONS:
.”Excessive systemic inflammation and raised IL-6 levels resulting from dysregulated host immune responses1-3 are associated with adverse clinical outcomes in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.4 This led to the design of several randomized clinical trials assessing the efficacy of IL-6 antagonists in patients with COVID-19. The IL-6 antagonists commonly investigated were monoclonal antibodies that bind either to membrane-bound and soluble IL-6 receptors (eg, tocilizumab and sarilumab) or directly to IL-6 (eg, siltuximab)….
SCIENTIFIC FINDINGS:
This prospective meta-analysis of 27 randomized trials included 10 930 patients, of whom 2565 died by 28 days. The 28-day all-cause mortality was lower among patients who received IL-6 antagonists compared with those who received usual care or placebo (summary odds ratio, 0.86). The summary odds ratios for the association of IL-6 antagonist treatment with 28-day all-cause mortality were 0.78 with concomitant administration of corticosteroids vs 1.09 without administration of corticosteroids.
(J. Harris: This is an example of good science. Enough time with Covid has transpired that therapeutic guess work with a kitchen sink full of old time medications is no longer reasonable, no matter what your cousin in Brazil says or what worked for the guy at the grocery store or on the podium.)
AND SO THE WHO SPREADS THE WORD TO USE THE EFFECTIVE DRUGS:
WHO Advises 2 Monoclonal Antibodies for Severe COVID (CIDRAP)
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the use of anti-inflammatory monoclonal antibodies—tocilizumab and sarilumab—alongside corticosteroids for treating patients who have severe or critical COVID-19 infections. In other global developments, some countries including Indonesia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, reported new record daily highs for infections, as COVID-19 cases continued to rise in parts of Europe.
FROM THE MARSHALL-HARRISON COUNTY HEALTH DEPT:
AND LAST BUT NOT LEASED FROM THE ONION:
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