COVID-19: Vaccine/antidote and testing procedures Megathread [Mod Warning - Post #1]

Thierry12

Flappidyflap wrote: »

Hi all.
Just looking for opinions/ some clarity before I chase up again tomorrow.
My 2 1/2 year old started with a cough today. No fever seems fine but obviously I was ohh no.
Rang GP he was like as no fever and not travelled to Spain or the like it just be a virus and to keep eye on her. The end.
I was a bit OK as she really isn't that sick at all in normal terms she would have been in creche today. But I asked what do I do can I just go about my business now as he doesn't think its covid to shops playground etc (I wouldn't bring a coughing child anywhere). He said he didn't have all the answers but if I wanted a test for her I should request it. I don't particularly want to have to covid test a 2 year old.
But confused. I know nearly 99% of all tests are negative anyway so chances are it's a cold but presumed I'd get much more clear advice. Feel like hypochondriac mother but the workers in the creche with the outbreak 1 had sore throat other runny nose. No fever.

I would get the test done

My 3 year old got tested before, painful for a few minutes but was fine after that

You don't want the guilt of infecting others

Flappidyflap

It was a strange sort of confirmation bias. The thoughts of getting a test so when the Dr didn't say needed 1 I thought maybe I don't need to try manage this on my own with her. But then the responsible human in me says what if....

Did you do a drive through test? How did you get the 3 year old to comply my little 1 hates the doctors

Hmmzis

is_that_so wrote: »

Not COVID but good news on a cold vaccine for about 2024.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2251437-vaccine-for-major-common-cold-virus-could-be-ready-for-use-by-2024/

This is fantastic news! RSV is an absolute b!%&$ to vaccinate against. It uses two separate spikes for cell receptor binding and membrane fusion with one of them being very mutation tollerant making it hard to get a decent nAB response. It also has the nasty habit of messing with the CD8+ T cell maturation process so one doesn't get lasting protection that way from a wild type infection. Newborns can have a very hard time with this one, not making the vaccine efforts any simpler.

ACitizenErased

How Munster's pharmaceutical industry is responding to the global race for a Covid-19 vaccine
https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/economy/arid-40030775.html

timsey tiger

Thierry12 wrote: »

My bad

It is a good read, scary stuff

I didn't think it was a good read. the reporter clearly didn't have a clue what herd immunity means.

For that you have to roll time forward say 4 months and then figure out how likely a covid 19 outbreak would be in the long stay prison population.

Beasty

Threads merged

Hmmzis

Nanoparticle vaccine candidate from Seattle.

https://www.researchhub.com/paper/822471/summary#paper

Exceptionally high nAB responses, even from a single dose, the booster just puts the response into the stratosphere. Even the live attenuated version from South Korea didn't come anywhere close to those values.

The drawback with this approach is the non-existent T cell response. Though for HPV a similar approach works absolute wonders (it's 100% effective and seems to last well past 10 years from a single dose).

Stark

Ooh, nanoparticles. And Bill Gates still stuck in the 90s with his microchips.

is_that_so

So it's the 1918 epidemic again but some thoughts on the role of bacteria in killing people then and now and how we might plan for future pandemics.

The 1918 pandemic is considered to be – and clearly is – something unique, and it’s widely understood to be the most lethal natural event that has occurred in recent human history,” Brundage says.

But to reassess this conclusion, he and co-author Dennis Shanks, of the Australian Army Malaria Institute in Enoggera, Queensland, scoured literature and medical records from 1918 and 1919.

The more they investigated, the more bacteria emerged as the true killers, an idea now supported by most influenza experts.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14458-bacteria-were-the-real-killers-in-1918-flu-pandemic/

ACitizenErased

Early Spread of COVID-19 Appears Far Greater Than Initially Reported

Patients with undiagnosed flu symptoms who actually had COVID-19 last winter were among thousands of undetected early cases of the disease at the beginning of this year. In a new paper in The Lancet's open-access journal EClinicalMedicine, epidemiological researchers from The University of Texas at Austin estimated COVID-19 to be far more widespread in Wuhan, China, and Seattle, Washington, weeks ahead of lockdown measures in each city.

https://cns.utexas.edu/news/early-spread-of-covid-19-appears-far-greater-than-initially-reported

ACitizenErased

New study into seroprevalence in England has come back at 6% with an estimated 3.36 million infections.

Antibody prevalence for SARS-CoV-2 following the peak of the pandemic in England: REACT2 study in 100,000 adults

Completed questionnaires were available for 109,076 participants, yielding 5,544 IgG positive results and adjusted (for test performance), re-weighted (for sampling) prevalence of 6.0% (95% CI: 5.8, 6.1). Highest prevalence was in London (13.0% [12.3, 13.6]), among people of Black or Asian (mainly South Asian) ethnicity (17.3% [15.8, 19.1] and 11.9% [11.0, 12.8] respectively) and those aged 18-24 years (7.9% [7.3, 8.5]). Care home workers with client-facing roles had adjusted odds ratio of 3.1 (2.5, 3.8) compared with non-essential workers. One third (32.2%, [31.0-33.4]) of antibody positive individuals reported no symptoms. Among symptomatic cases, the majority (78.8%) reported symptoms during the peak of the epidemic in England in March (31.3%) and April (47.5%) 2020. We estimate that 3.36 million (3.21, 3.51) people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 in England to end June 2020, with an overall infection fatality ratio of 0.90% (0.86, 0.94).

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/institute-of-global-health-innovation/Ward-et-al-120820.pdf

ACitizenErased

Antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 — sustained after all?

Recent studies have indicated that antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 drop significantly within 2 months. In this preprint, Wu et al. analysed antibody responses in 349 individuals who were among the first to become infected with SARS-CoV-2. All antiviral antibody titres significantly increased in the first weeks after disease onset, followed by a contraction phase, where IgM became undetectable at around week 10–13. Importantly, although Spike-targeted IgG (IgG-S) declined over time, it remained detectable at relatively high levels until the end of the 6-month study period. IgG-S titres correlated closely with neutralizing capacity, although exact correlates of protection for SARS-CoV-2 are still elusive. These results suggest that antibody responses in symptomatic patients with COVID-19 follow a prototypical progression and result in a sustained memory response, suggesting long-term protective immunity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00423-9

Thierry12

ACitizenErased wrote: »

New study into seroprevalence in England has come back at 6% with an estimated 3.36 million infections.

Antibody prevalence for SARS-CoV-2 following the peak of the pandemic in England: REACT2 study in 100,000 adults

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/institute-of-global-health-innovation/Ward-et-al-120820.pdf

Can't wait to see T spot covid testing that's coming soon

Will be shocking the amount that had covid imo

Those " lunatics " with man flu in December/Jan won't be lunatics anymore

It's been so obvious

Cordell

Stark wrote: »

Ooh, nanoparticles. And Bill Gates still stuck in the 90s with his microchips.

And the russians in their glorious space age 60s, they will deliver valves via...you know how.

hmmm

ACitizenErased wrote: »

New study into seroprevalence in England has come back at 6% with an estimated 3.36 million infections.

IFR of 0.90% is towards the top-end of recent estimates, but this looks like a superb large-scale study. And before anyone starts on "open up everything!" this is in a functioning health system which has not been over-loaded.

Martina1991

Thierry12 wrote:

Can't wait to see T spot covid testing that's coming soon

As in the T spot testing that's used for TB.

Whats your source that its "coming soon".

darjeeling

hmmm wrote: »

IFR of 0.90% is towards the top-end of recent estimates, but this looks like a superb large-scale study. And before anyone starts on "open up everything!" this is in a functioning health system which has not been over-loaded.

The IFR in England may be inflated due to the very high numbers of outbreaks in nursing homes. 44% of care homes had reported outbreaks by July 23rd (data here) and so I would think that that exposure in nursing homes exceeded that in the general population.

Contrast that with somewhere like Iceland, where there have been 10 deaths from just under 2000 cases for a CFR of 0.5%. I've only seen one major nursing home outbreak reported, and incidence among the elderly was around half that in working age adults. The general population survey showed that more than half of infections were going undetected, so the IFR in Iceland looks to be around 0.2% at the highest.

darjeeling

darjeeling wrote: »

The IFR in England may be inflated due to the very high numbers of outbreaks in nursing homes. 44% of care homes had reported outbreaks by July 23rd (data here) and so I would think that that exposure in nursing homes exceeded that in the general population.

Contrast that with somewhere like Iceland, where there have been 10 deaths from just under 2000 cases for a CFR of 0.5%. I've only seen one major nursing home outbreak reported, and incidence among the elderly was around half that in working age adults. The general population survey showed that more than half of infections were going undetected, so the IFR in Iceland looks to be around 0.2% at the highest.

... and an even more striking example of how covid affects different age groups is Singapore, where there have been 52k cases in dorm residents, migrant workers who are mostly men aged ~20 to 40s. Some detailed data on this group of people would be very valuable, but it's already possible to make some inferences.

There has not been a single death officially ascribed to covid in the dorm residents, though there are six deaths due to cardiovascular events, so a CFR between 0% and 0.01% for this group.

Hospital admissions are only reported for the entire population and not specifically for dorm residents, but it's still possible to see some trends. National ICU bed occupancy peaked at 32 when under 2% of the cases in dorm workers had been detected and has been falling ever since, so it seems that almost none of the dorm residents were treated in intensive care. Similarly, 70% of the cases in dorm residents were detected after the peak in general hospital ward numbers (~1700 patients) so it looks as if relatively few were admitted to hospital.

Atlantic Dawn

Below the ton, doing good.

bettyoleary

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Below the ton, doing good.

Have you done self assessment? Bcos we all know you are greedy and the biggest cowards. If you get sick you will be the first to run to hospital and if you have family with their entitlement too.

Atlantic Dawn

bettyoleary wrote: »

Have you done self assessment? Bcos we all know you are greedy and the biggest cowards. If you get sick you will be the first to run to hospital and if you have family with their entitlement too.

Are you on your special meds?

Thierry12

Martina1991 wrote: »

As in the T spot testing that's used for TB.

Whats your source that its "coming soon".

Yes

Tests are research use only for now, they will come

Santy2015

Sky news have the Russian vaccine down as licensed on their vaccine hub
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-tracking-every-global-effort-to-find-a-covid-19-vaccine-12030675

niallo27

JNJ hope to release their vaccine for emergency use in January or February. They have already ramped up production to produce 1 billion vaccines. They are hoping to have interim results from their phase 2 human trials next month.

Gael23

niallo27 wrote: »

JNJ hope to release their vaccine for emergency use in January or February. They have already ramped up production to produce 1 billion vaccines. They are hoping to have interim results from their phase 2 human trials next month.

I’ll be opting for the Oxford one if I have a choice

niallo27

Gael23 wrote: »

I’ll be opting for the Oxford one if I have a choice

Will they be able to ramp up as fast though. The FDA will keep them straight anyway.

darjeeling

Time to bang this drum again, as there are a couple of new good videos to link.

The testing model for dealing with the coronavirus epidemic used in most countries, including here, is wrong.

We are trying to use a hypersensitive, low availability, delayed-reporting clinical test as a public health surveillance tool.
The result is that we cannot test enough people to prevent outbreaks, and so we have to continue to assume that everyone is infectious.
This denies us the confidence to relax our social distancing measures, casting doubt over reopening of schools, colleges, and businesses in the entertainment and hospitality sectors.

A much more appropriate test model would be mass, repeat use of cheap, mass-produced, self-administered, instant result tests that work similarly to a home pregnancy test.
We could have developed, validated and approved these months ago.

For an overview, there's now a dedicated website: https://www.rapidtests.org/

Here's Harvard's Prof Michael Mina again, this time talking about why the regulatory framework in the USA is not appropriate for approving a public health screening test because it insists on applying standards appropriate to a clinical setting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP-MHKU_cQE

And here's the head of a small biotech company that has been working on developing a home use test.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKM4MIrfr4k

The exact way in which these tests would be used would depend on emerging data
They could be used to test the whole population as part of a strategy for suppressing the virus across the entire population.
Or they could be used to ring fence nursing homes and hospitals while spread of the virus in wider society is tolerated if the health risks are judged low enough.
I'm not advocating for either approach, just saying that, until we have a vaccine, more testing remains the key to controlling this epidemic while allowing people to meet again safely.

GPoint

https://www.newstalk.com/news/luke-oneill-no-way-id-take-russias-coronavirus-vaccine-correct-safety-testing-1060367

Professor Luke O'Neill says there's 'no way' he would take Russia's supposed coronavirus vaccine until it has gone through rigorous safety testing.

Why so much prejudice? Supposed vaccine? At least Russia is able to produce their own vaccine. This country is hoping to be given one.

hmmm

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00423-9

"Recent studies have indicated that antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 drop significantly within 2 months. In this preprint, Wu et al. analysed antibody responses in 349 individuals who were among the first to become infected with SARS-CoV-2. All antiviral antibody titres significantly increased in the first weeks after disease onset, followed by a contraction phase, where IgM became undetectable at around week 10–13. Importantly, although Spike-targeted IgG (IgG-S) declined over time, it remained detectable at relatively high levels until the end of the 6-month study period. IgG-S titres correlated closely with neutralizing capacity, although exact correlates of protection for SARS-CoV-2 are still elusive. These results suggest that antibody responses in symptomatic patients with COVID-19 follow a prototypical progression and result in a sustained memory response, suggesting long-term protective immunity."

hmmm

Some of this are just words to me, but it must bode well for vaccines.
https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-57112/v1_stamped.pdf

"we performed a
30 longitudinal assessment of individuals recovered from mildly symptomatic COVID-19 to
31 determine if they develop and sustain immunological memory against the virus. We found
32 that recovered individuals developed SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG antibody and neutralizing
33 plasma, as well as virus-specific memory B and T cells that not only persisted, but in some
34 cases increased numerically over three months following symptom onset. Furthermore, the
35 SARS-CoV-2-specific memory lymphocytes exhibited characteristics associated with potent
36 antiviral immunity: memory T cells secreted IFN-γ and expanded upon antigen re37 encounter, while memory B cells expressed receptors capable of neutralizing virus when
38 expressed as antibodies. These findings demonstrate that mild COVID-19 elicits memory
39 lymphocytes that persist and display functional hallmarks associated with antiviral
40 protective immunity."