Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

Djxfactor511 said:
My wife was a bridesmaid in a wedding this weekend. About 100 people in attendance. I'd guess maybe 15 total wearing masks. I am very concerned that we were exposed. Would not have stayed if we were just normal attendees.

My grandparents have their 60th wedding anniversary celebration this weekend. All precautions will be taken there, but we may not go because of this stupid wedding.
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RenegadeMonster said:
www.boston.com

More COVID cases linked to Maine wedding reception, totaling 53 cases so far

More cases of COVID-19 have been traced back to a recent wedding reception in Maine
www.boston.com

Out of 65 guests at the wedding, 53 have so far tested positive for COVID-19.

That says a lot about how easily it spreads.
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Hope this isn't me in a few days
 
Zoom went down for over 2 and a half hours yesterday morning, as many schools started their first day of virtual learning.

Zoom was not able to handle the network traffic and crashed.
 
The first confirmed case of reinfection of COVID-19 has been confirmed.

In this case, the patient had been reinfected with a recently identified new stand of the virus. This confirms that it is not a reactivation, but rather a new infection of a mutation of the virus.

One question NBC asked a to a medical professional was if this derails any plans for a vaccine. The answer is no. Not at all. But it does help confirm theories that the COVID-19 vaccination will likely have to be yearly like the flu virus. And we could have some hit or miss years if they guess what strands will be dominate.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Zoom went down for over 2 and a half hours yesterday morning, as many schools started their first day of virtual learning.

Zoom was not able to handle the network traffic and crashed.
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Glad they made good use of all that investment money to improve their infrastructure since the money was pouring in and they knew this was coming literally months in advance.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Zoom went down for over 2 and a half hours yesterday morning, as many schools started their first day of virtual learning.

Zoom was not able to handle the network traffic and crashed.
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My wife couldn't get it to work all day but was able to use Google meet.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
The first confirmed case of reinfection of COVID-19 has been confirmed.

In this case, the patient had been reinfected with a recently identified new stand of the virus. This confirms that it is not a reactivation, but rather a new infection of a mutation of the virus.

One question NBC asked a to a medical professional was if this derails any plans for a vaccine. The answer is no. Not at all. But it does help confirm theories that the COVID-19 vaccination will likely have to be yearly like the flu virus. And we could have some hit or miss years if they guess what strands will be dominate.
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a positive part I heard about this case is that although the antibodies didn't inoculate them from a different strain, it did appear to help their immune system handle it better. they were tested this time due to traveling- had no symptoms or illness. those that catch and recover from the virus still might be better equipped for other strains- although, tbd on for how long, and also didn't hear word on the asymptomatic spread possibilities.
 
bfly said:
a positive part I heard about this case is that although the antibodies didn't inoculate them from a different strain, it did appear to help their immune system handle it better. they were tested this time due to traveling- had no symptoms or illness. those that catch and recover from the virus still might be better equipped for other strains- although, tbd on for how long, and also didn't hear word on the asymptomatic spread possibilities.
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I mean, I'm kinda reading that as anyone who survives it the first time will likely survive later strains. So, eventually we see everyone who can't handle it die and after a few generations we have a gene pool that is COVID tolerant. bleak but effective.
 
debianlinux said:
I mean, I'm kinda reading that as anyone who survives it the first time will likely survive later strains. So, eventually we see everyone who can't handle it die and after a few generations we have a gene pool that is COVID tolerant. bleak but effective.
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well, yes. that's why I said a positive "part" and also mentioned asymptomatic spread concerns. my body isn't gonna be up for handling this thing most likely, so I'm not really one of those gunning for herd immunity as a first option.

my parents both had it in June and recovered in under 2 weeks, but my dad said his energy has been cut in half from before he was sick. all of this sucks. just glad to see that if you unfortunately catch one of the mutations a second time around, this confirms that your body might be more up for the challenge.
 
The bad news about reinfection is that "natural" herd immunity would be impossible to achieve. The goal of herd immunity is to build a barrier to protect the most vulnerable in society.

It's great for those being reinfected that the second time around would be mild or asymptomatic, but they would still be infectious - so no natural herd barrier is formed.

It seems more and more that vaccination will be very important in the fight and that in the meantime, the usual precautions must be maintained.

But forget this idea of immunity passports.
 
bfly said:
a positive part I heard about this case is that although the antibodies didn't inoculate them from a different strain, it did appear to help their immune system handle it better. they were tested this time due to traveling- had no symptoms or illness. those that catch and recover from the virus still might be better equipped for other strains- although, tbd on for how long, and also didn't hear word on the asymptomatic spread possibilities.
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Be careful about talking about strains - the virus for the second infection was genetically different, which is what allowed to confirm that there was a 2nd infection via sequencing, but not a new strain per se. Nothing indicated that the variant virus developed the key functional mutations that makes it a new strain.

The 2nd infection occurred likely because the patient did not have neutralizing antibodies from the 1st infection - but the lack of symptoms does point to a successful immune response that kept the virus titres and disease in check in the patient. It will be interesting to see if they can confirm the presence of specific T cells for example.
 
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RenegadeMonster said:
The first confirmed case of reinfection of COVID-19 has been confirmed.

In this case, the patient had been reinfected with a recently identified new stand of the virus. This confirms that it is not a reactivation, but rather a new infection of a mutation of the virus.

One question NBC asked a to a medical professional was if this derails any plans for a vaccine. The answer is no. Not at all. But it does help confirm theories that the COVID-19 vaccination will likely have to be yearly like the flu virus. And we could have some hit or miss years if they guess what strands will be dominate.
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Just to be clear, vaccination may have to be yearly for COVID-19, but for a different reason than the flu.

For the flu, immunity is very long lasting. But the flu mutates in its key envelope proteins to outsmart our immune system and so you need to design a new vaccine against the new envelope and provide that yearly to fight the new strain variants.

For SARS-CoV-2 (and the other common coronaviruses), it doesn't mutate so fast. But they seem to outsmart the immune system in a different way - they do not generate a long lasting immunity, which allows them to reinfect without modifying their key envelope proteins that much. So if that's the case for coronavirus vaccines as well (we know very little about coronavirus vaccines so far though), you may have to use yearly vaccinations (or at some frequency) as a boost to regenerate antibodies.
 
Turbo said:
Be careful about talking about strains - the virus for the second infection was genetically different, which is what allowed to confirm that there was a 2nd infection via sequencing, but not a new strain per se. Nothing indicated that the variant virus developed the key functional mutations that makes it a new strain.

The 2nd infection occurred likely because the patient did not have neutralizing antibodies from the 1st infection - but the lack of symptoms does point to a successful immune response that kept the virus titres and disease in check in the patient. It will be interesting to see if they can confirm the presence of specific T cells for example.
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good to know, I was using strains based on the reports about the case.
Physicians at first thought he might be a persistent carrier of the virus, the study’s authors write, but they sequenced the genome of his first and second infections to show the virus strains were different, indicating he had been reinfected.
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bfly said:
good to know, I was using strains based on the reports about the case.
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It's not incorrect to refer to them as different strains. Technically any genetic variant can be considered to be a different "strain" - but you have to be careful because it doesn't necessarily mean that the new "strain" is functionally different from the original one. It's a bit of a wishy washy term. With influenza, when you talk about different strains, you usually mean there were significant antigenic changes to the surface proteins (which means different antibodies/vaccines may be needed to combat it).

In this case, I wanted to be sure that it was understood that the 2nd "strain" didn't infect because antibodies from the 1st infection didn't work - scientists seem to think that coronavirus neutralising antibodies don't stay around for very long, and that seems to be the case for SARS-CoV-2 as well (the length of time probably varies between individuals and depending on how severe the 1st infection is).

Basically, the 2nd infection for this case is not because of genetic changes that circumvented antibodies from the 1st infection but because there were no neutralising antibodies remaining from the first infection. The immune system did do something though because the second infection was asymptomatic. It will be interesting to find out what happened.
 
Just saw a report on the local news that teachers in Boston / The Boston Teachers union says teachers will not show up to classes next week if the school district does not switch from a hybrid learning model in the fall to all remote. They are saying the school buildings are not safe and not enough measures have been taken to make them save for in person classes.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Just saw a report on the local news that teachers in Boston / The Boston Teachers union says teachers will not show up to classes next week if the school district does not switch from a hybrid learning model in the fall to all remote. They are saying the school buildings are not safe and not enough measures have been taken to make them save for in person classes.
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According to my Trumpian coworker these teachers just got used to working from home (as if) at the end of last year and taking this stance not out of self preservation but out of laziness.
 
debianlinux said:
According to my Trumpian coworker these teachers just got used to working from home (as if) at the end of last year and taking this stance not out of self preservation but out of laziness.
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That does not surprise me coming from a Trumpian. They have no understanding of the situation because they likely don't believe there is even a situation. This is just the flu after all right?

The main concern with the school buildings is that they are old and do not have good air circulation. On top of that no hospital grade air filters have been installed like every office building has done as a precaution.

I'm not sure what kind of system the Boston schools use, but if it's similar to the school I went too there is no air circulation. No air conditioning. Just in classroom headers with a fan. No air filtration. No circulating the air outside of the classroom. And if the heat was not on the heating units and their fans are off. Opening the windows was the only way to get fresh air into the classrooms.

There are concerns about not enough disinfecting as well. Essentially they are only focusing on social distancing by having half the students at home learning remotely so they can spread kids out more in the classrooms.
 
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RenegadeMonster said:
That does not surprise me coming from a Trumpian. They have no understanding of the situation because they likely don't believe there is even a situation. This is just the flu after all right?

The main concern with the school buildings is that they are old and do not have good air circulation. On top of that no hospital grade air filters have been installed like every office building has done as a precaution.

I'm not sure what kind of system the Boston schools use, but if it's similar to the school I went too there is no air circulation. No air conditioning. Just in classroom headers with a fan. No air filtration. No circulating the air outside of the classroom. And if the heat was not on the heating units and their fans are off. Opening the windows was the only way to get fresh air into the classrooms.

There are concerns about not enough disinfecting as well. Essentially they are only focusing on social distancing by having half the students at home learning remotely so they can spread kids out more in the classrooms.
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While in Boston I used the YMCA on Huntington. It's an amazing old building but it's terrible as a gym for all the reasons you just listed. I can imagine how many buildings are in exactly the same state.
 
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