CORONAVIRUS INFO PROVIDED BY DR. JIM HARRIS – 4/6/2022

Why haven’t Covid cases started rising again in the U.S.?

”…Of all the variants, only the original Omicron was so contagious that it spread around the world in predictable ways, he said. Other versions of the virus have surged and receded in mysterious ways, much as a forest fire can die out without burning down an entire forest…”

J. Harris: NOW READ FOLLOWING ARTICLE — WE ARE GETTING SOMEWHERE

FROM SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (READABLE AND UNDERSTANDABLE AND IMPORTANT!)

What We Know About Omicron’s BA.2 Variant So Far

”…But infectivity and immune escape are also deeply intertwined, and determining their respective roles in viral spread is exceedingly challenging. That is especially true at this current stage of the pandemic. Dozens of vaccines have been deployed against SARS-CoV-2, and numerous forms of the virus have swept the globe. Infections and vaccines are contributing to immunity through a dizzying array of combinations, and “this is all getting messier and messier for the scientific community to tease out…COVID cases in this country have dropped by 35 percent in recent weeks, even as BA.2 has become the dominant strain. Parts of the U.S., including some northeastern states, are seeing an uptick in SARS-CoV-2 infections. But whether a national surge will follow is unknown. “We’re in a gray area right now…BA.2 has spiked in European countries and the U.K. largely as a result of easing COVID restrictions. “Governments in those countries, particularly in the U.K., said that ‘Covid is over; let’s party,’” he says. “That’s all a highly transmissible variant needs…”

FROM HOPKINS

SARS-CoV-2 Historical Global Testing and Genomic Variability (BMC Infectious Diseases) The world has been dealing with the SARS-COV-2 pandemic since December 2019 and a lot of effort has focused on tracking the spread of the virus by gathering information regarding testing statistics and generating viral genomic sequences. Unfortunately, there is neither a single comprehensive resource with global historical testing data nor a centralized database with summary statistics of the identified genomic variants.

FROM MIT

A battle is raging over long covid in children

”…the symptoms of long covid in children vary greatly. We don’t know how many children are affected, and we don’t know which symptoms came from infections and which might have resulted indirectly from the pandemic. Scientists can’t even agree over what it means for children to have long covid…Estimates of the prevalence can swing between 1.8% and 87% of children, depending on the study. As a result, some researchers warn parents to protect their children from a poorly understood syndrome that may affect them for the rest of their lives, while others say the risks have been overstated. … analysis suggests that around 25% of children who contract the virus will have at least one symptom four weeks after their infection…The team’s latest published work found little difference in [ENGLISH] the prevalence of any lasting symptoms between children who tested positive versus children who tested negative: two-thirds for positive versus just over half for negative. Both groups experienced similar symptoms; headaches and tiredness were especially common…[IPHONE] Reports by parents on behalf of 1,734 children found that just 4% of infected children still had symptoms 28 days after the start of their illness. …Once the children who had asymptomatic infections, who wouldn’t have taken a test at all, are factored in, the percentage of infected children who develop long covid is likely to be significantly lower than even 2%…In unpublished work,[USA} they examined 500 different outcomes for kids who had contracted the virus versus those who didn’t. Common symptoms post-infection included changes to smell and taste, hair loss, and chest pain. Fatigue was almost as common in the kids who hadn’t had covid as those who had…“The point is that the pandemic has been terrible for children,…With school disruptions, family disruptions, educational disruptions … it’s been terrible for all children, irrespective of whether they personally contracted SARS-CoV-2 or got covid-19.” The phenomenon has been described as “long pandemic syndrome,” …Based on the data

[AN ENGLISH STATISTICIAN] believes that long covid affects somewhere between 10% and 20% of children who contract the virus, which includes those who don’t develop covid-19 symptoms…[ANOTHER EXPERT] thinks the figure is around 7%.

(J. Harris: So vaccination is the best defense the kids have.)

FROM NEJM via NYT:

A second booster helped protect older people from Omicron infection, but waned quickly, an Israeli study says.(PFIZER)

”… the booster’s effectiveness against infection in particular wanes after just four weeks and almost disappears after eight weeks. Protection against severe illness did not ebb in the six weeks after the extra dose, but the follow-up period was too short to determine whether a second booster provided better long-term protection against severe disease than a single booster…The study focused on adults ages 60 and older, and did not provide data on the effectiveness of a second booster in younger populations…[HOWEVER]

A previous study from Israel, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, found that older adults who received a second booster were 78 percent less likely to die of Covid-19 than those who had received just one booster shot… The study focused on adults ages 60 and older, and did not provide data on the effectiveness of a second booster in younger populations…”

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