Nothing new here for most of us, but probably good agitprop to share around. Aspen Daily News so plenty of the right vibes for libs, imo.

From a CBS news reporter, recieved via email

https://tinalexander.github.io/notes/2024/05#cdc-spokesperson-on-end-of-the-bridge-access-program

There is an early indication that KP.2 is causing trouble in the UK. Here is positivity over the pandemic using PCR for the area.

The US is just slightly behind the UK in the rise of dominance of it.

As a general thumb rule, I’ve noticed that hospitalizations tend to start rising rapidly when a variant reaches about the 40% mark of all variants in a country, so it will be interesting to watch what happens when the UK crosses that threshold. Currently the downward trend in COVID hospitalizations seems to have hit a plateau, suggesting that this estimate may prove to be correct again.

But that gradual return to barefaced life never reached left-leaning protests, where face masks are widely used and encouraged.

Part of the reason, say organizers, remains an attempt to make a point about exposure to COVID-19 and other health risks, which some in the left-wing protest movements believe remain dire. And part is the threat of a different kind of exposure — from being captured by facial recognition technology or becoming doxxed (their personal information being shared online) by counter-protesters.

“To us, the optics are communicating that we deny the Biden administration’s narrative about COVID — that it’s no longer a big deal,” said Olan Mijana, a spokesman for the March on DNC 2024 coalition. “It’s about collective safety, and it’s also about connecting this COVID neglect to the very issues that we’re march

@BigBoyKarlLiebknecht@hexbear.net posted this site over in the news comm the other day and I thought it had some pretty good takes.

Contents:
-H5N1
COVID Topics:
-Group A Strep
-Psitticosis
-Disability

In a nutshell, we showed that over-the-counter cheap generic antibiotic neomycin can be repurposed in nasal formulation to prevent & treat infection, block transmission, and reduce disease burden against a wide array of viruses. Since this is a host-directed strategy and virus-agnostic, it holds promise as a prophylactic strategy against any viral threat.

The advice in the screencapped thread was to apply a little with a q-tip to the inside of the nostrils.

There is no info on any dangers of doing this very often, but if you can't avoid a high-risk environment it's worth trying.

Here's a thread about the study. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1782535781338222960.html

here's the study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5918160/

He said he doesn't get sick because his body is free of toxins. Lol eat my balls.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2315391

yo? let's fucking go?

the text of the article:

Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.

Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly.

The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating in the U.S.

This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus. The vaccine, how it works, and a demonstration of its efficacy in mice is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad,” said UCR virologist and paper author Rong Hai. “It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.”

Traditionally, vaccines contain either a dead or modified, live version of a virus. The body’s immune system recognizes a protein in the virus and mounts an immune response. This response produces T-cells that attack the virus and stop it from spreading. It also produces “memory” B-cells that train your immune system to protect you from future attacks.

The new vaccine also uses a live, modified version of a virus. However, it does not rely on the vaccinated body having this traditional immune response or immune active proteins — which is the reason it can be used by babies whose immune systems are underdeveloped, or people suffering from a disease that overtaxes their immune system. Instead, this relies on small, silencing RNA molecules.

“A host — a person, a mouse, anyone infected— will produce small interfering RNAs as an immune response to viral infection. These RNAi then knock down the virus,” said Shouwei Ding, distinguished professor of microbiology at UCR, and lead paper author.

The reason viruses successfully cause disease is because they produce proteins that block a host’s RNAi response. “If we make a mutant virus that cannot produce the protein to suppress our RNAi, we can weaken the virus. It can replicate to some level, but then loses the battle to the host RNAi response,” Ding said. “A virus weakened in this way can be used as a vaccine for boosting our RNAi immune system.”

When the researchers tested this strategy with a mouse virus called Nodamura, they did it with mutant mice lacking T and B cells. With one vaccine injection, they found the mice were protected from a lethal dose of the unmodified virus for at least 90 days. Note that some studies show nine mouse days are roughly equivalent to one human year.

There are few vaccines suitable for use in babies younger than six months old. However, even newborn mice produce small RNAi molecules, which is why the vaccine protected them as well. UC Riverside has now been issued a US patent on this RNAi vaccine technology.

In 2013, the same research team published a paper showing that flu infections also induce us to produce RNAi molecules. “That’s why our next step is to use this same concept to generate a flu vaccine, so infants can be protected. If we are successful, they’ll no longer have to depend on their mothers’ antibodies,” Ding said.

Their flu vaccine will also likely be delivered in the form of a spray, as many people have an aversion to needles. “Respiratory infections move through the nose, so a spray might be an easier delivery system,” Hai said.

Additionally, the researchers say there is little chance of a virus mutating to avoid this vaccination strategy. “Viruses may mutate in regions not targeted by traditional vaccines. However, we are targeting their whole genome with thousands of small RNAs. They cannot escape this,” Hai said.

Ultimately, the researchers believe they can ‘cut and paste’ this strategy to make a one-and-done vaccine for any number of viruses.

“There are several well-known human pathogens; dengue, SARS, COVID. They all have similar viral functions,” Ding said. “This should be applicable to these viruses in an easy transfer of knowledge.

lol, so obviously if there's another pandemic the US is fucked, but that's not what I'm sharing this for. Here's the interesting stuff:

Faust: And in terms of long COVID, everyone always asks about this, there's a lot of funding. Where do you see this headed in the next few years?

Bertagnolli: It's a terrible, terrible condition. Post-infectious, chronic post-infectious syndromes have been around as long as there've been viruses in humans and it is a really, really terrible affliction when someone develops one of these conditions. COVID has introduced a whole new level of this in our society. The fundamental biology that's been conducted by the long COVID research team is really fascinating but also sobering. The agent can live for a long time in tissues. It can surround nerve cells, probably likely one of the ways that it produces some of its terrible symptoms such as the dysautonomia. And we have no effective way of eradicating it. Not yet.

One thing that's important though that's come out of several meta-analyses is there is a way to prevent it. And the way to prevent it is vaccination, and multiple vaccination is better than single to prevent long COVID.

Faust: I just want to follow up on something you said a moment ago about where this virus can be found in tissues. Are you suggesting that long COVID is actually, the mechanism of that, is persistent live virus in humans?

Bertagnolli: We see evidence of persistent live virus in humans in various tissue reservoirs, including surrounding nerves, the brain, the GI [gastrointestinal] tract, to the lung.

Faust: OK. And you're saying this goes beyond the PCR's [polymerase chain reaction test] ability to get it in a regular swab so that we are missing chronic cases of SARS‑CoV‑2?

Bertagnolli: Correct. The virus can persist in tissues for months, perhaps even years.

Faust: OK. I think that's certainly one theory, but I'm not sure that that's settled. Is that fair? I mean, there's one thing between people who are autopsy, they died of viral sepsis, as opposed to people walking around. Is there a distinction there?

Bertagnolli: Our emerging data shows that the virus can persist into tissues in the long term, and I think that's really critical because it does help us think about possible ways to combat it, one being better antivirals. I think there's a lot of focus on developing new antivirals as a possible way of preventing long COVID, and the other might be more aggressive treatment with antiviral therapy upon initial diagnosis.

Faust: If that's the case, then it could be reactivated just like herpes is and shingles. Are we going to start seeing people get COVID not from infection, but from themselves in reactivation?

Bertagnolli: I don't believe I've seen or heard of any instance of that, and I don't think you can ever assume that one virus is going to act like another. Certainly every virus that we know of seems to have a different effect in the body long term.

Fun, fun, fun!

Research published today in Lancet Infectious Disease and supported by PolyBio Research Foundation provides the strongest evidence yet that the COVID virus can persist for months or years after infection. The findings, published by a UC San Francisco/Harvard Medical School team, found that proteins created by the virus were still present for up to 14 months in a quarter of people tested. This demonstrates SARS-CoV-2 viral persistence as an urgent area of research underlying a breadth of chronic disease after COVID.

“The fact that every new SARS-CoV-2 infection has the potential to become chronic is perhaps the single most concerning aspect of this virus” says Dr. Amy Proal, President of PolyBio. “We have compelling data that viral persistence is much more common than recognized which could have major health implications.”

However, with an estimated 18 million adults and 5.8 million children suffering from Long COVID, government investment is also needed. SARS-CoV-2 has even been found in the lymph nodes of children months after COVID, suggesting persistent infection can begin early in life.

long suspected and showed up in research before, but here's more proof this is a thing.

Nearly all people in the study were not vaccinated, and generally the sicker they were the more likely they had viral persistance.

WELL FUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOU PLAGUE RAT

"I don't believe in murder so I should be able to endanger anyone I want teehee!"

I HATE THESE SELFISH PRICKS

https://twitter.com/wsbgnl/status/1776748045977489508/photo/1

Thanks @sovietknuckles@hexbear.net for an explanation of how to get to the data:

Direct link (from https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/resp-net/dashboard.html)

To get the same visualization in the screenshot:

• Change Weely Rates to Cumulative Rates
• Change season to Select all
• Change pathogen to Combined only

Whenever people and the mainstream media talk about "The trauma of COVID" they always mean the lockdowns and not the... you know... millions of deaths.

Well I have trauma about the deaths. I have trauma about the way our society was manipulated into sacrificing a huge chunk of the population with a smile and a wave, and how we just don't talk about it.

This same society still expects you to be horrified by the violence of 9/11 or whatever when the US alone was experiencing a 9/11 level of death every day and the disease is still killing, we just don't bother recording the spread anymore. What the fuck is wrong with people?!

I literally get (for lack of a better word) triggered when people talk about how hard it was to have to have to wear a mask or to not get a haircut or some selfish bullshit. Or when they act as though their kids remote learning for a while ruined them or something. It's all so petty. They just don't give a shit. They'd kill millions for a haircut. It makes my heart sink, my eyes glaze and I start dissociating.

Imagine if this was the blitzkrieg, and instead of going to bomb shelters people were just like "I'm sick of hearing about these bombings, I'm just going to pretend they're not happening and leave it up to fate." And then the bomb shelters are all closed and even the people who still wanted to take shelter are left to fend for themselves. What madness would have that been if they had done that during WW2? Dragging people into the street to be bombed?

I don't care if you were sick of lockdowns or restrictions! Fighting a pandemic should have been like fighting a war, we should have been doing everything we could to survive!

I am scared of these people. These brainwashed puppets. These eugenicists. If they can do this, well... it makes me feel surrounded by monsters. Like I can't trust anyone.

I've been wearing CVS' small surgical mask with an adjustable cloth mask on top bc it's what I had available. but I;m getting anxious with the amount of exposure I'm forced to have recently, so I want to upgrade when I get paid. I've had 3M Aura Particulate Respirator 9205+ (is this the same thing as n95?) in my bookmarks for a long time, are they good and do they fit small people? what else should I consider? I would prefer something reusable/low waste but effectiveness is a bigger priority... i am too fried to research what works and what does not and to what degree especially with all the covid misinformation out there so thank yall knowledgeable people in advance

Independently, advocates, researchers, and clinicians also reported seeing an increase in the number of people who have developed long COVID after a second or third infection.

John Baratta, MD, who runs the COVID Recovery Clinic at the University of North Carolina, said the increase is related to a higher rate of acute cases in the fall and winter of 2023.

In January, the percentage of North Carolinians reporting ever having had long COVD jumped from 12.5% to 20.2% in January and fell to 16.8% in February.

At the same time, many cases are either undetected or unreported by people who tested positive for COVID-19 at home or are not aware they have had it.

Hannah Davis, a member of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, also linked the increase in long COVID to the wave of new infections at the end of 2023 and the start of 2024.

"It's absolutely real," she said via email. "There have been many new cases in the past few months, and we see those new folks in our communities as well."

After there was a lull in cases last spring/summer, a lot of covid minimizers claimed long covid isn't a big deal anymore because there were less new cases. Immunity wall or whatever. Turns out cases start increasing again when there is a major covid wave. No one could have forseen...

The best we can say is that some people who get long covid will feel better within a year, and all current data points to covid having cumulative risk. Everytime you get covid, your risk of long term symptoms goes up.

Four years late. They knew it was airborne at the start and it took them four years to release this info. They could have prioritized upgrading indoor air in busy public places, but nah, better to just throw money at millionaires and hope something sticks. They opened up schools which were unsafe (rich schools had air filtration installed so the important people were protected) and they did it specifically to spread the disease after the vaccines were available, chasing the "herd immunity" fantasy. Maybe that's not working out as well as they thought it would?

The guidance emphasizes the importance of bringing in fresh outdoor air and ensuring that air conditioning and heating systems are operating properly, preferably with filters rated MERV-13 or higher. It also describes other steps that can be added, including air circulation, proper exhaust venting, air cleaners, and ultraviolet air treatment.

So HEPA filters, far-uvc, CR-Boxes are all a good idea. Small anecdote, but I have a couple CR-Boxes I set up and ran them when someone in my house was sick, and it never spread to me. A very rare occurance pre-pandemic.

Some co-workers and I have been advocating for proper air filtration for years now, and have basically been treated like kooks because the CDC has dragged their feet on this. Maybe now they'll listen to us?

noice

According to JPWeiland's twitter account:

🔸270,000 new infections/day 🔸~2.75 avg total infections per capita across the US 🔸1 in every 124 people currently infected

This is considered low? lol, we're fucked.

Covid wastewater levels where I am dropped to the lowest recorded since they started keeping track just about a year ago, and still we had a couple people get covid where I work last week, so it's still going around depsite that. Your town may vary. Still, it seems like it will be a little less precarious for the next couple months for what that is worth.

Mucosal vaccines go directly into the mucosal tissue where infection begins – for example, intranasally or via tablets. If they could induce strong enough mucosal immunity, such vaccines could reduce the risk of infection and transmission. That’s often called “sterilizing” immunity.

Development of these vaccines has just received a massive boost. A global consortium is being funded to develop and then run human challenge trials of intranasal or inhaled vaccines in a program called MusiCC. A human challenge trial – where participants are quarantined and deliberately infected in that controlled environment – could find out quickly and definitively establish whether or not particular vaccines can prevent infection and transmission. If very effective vaccines are tested in this program, it would vault them rapidly through development stages that could otherwise take years.

As well, the US Government’s Project NextGen is calling for interest in developing and/or supporting oral Covid vaccines. This pair of new initiatives kick off this month’s update.

There is also some news from clinical trials for 2 intranasal vaccines, as well as development news on 2 vaccines in the “variant-proof” category, and several preclinical studies.

That document is from the end of the public health emergency but wow I didn't realize

COVID-19 hospital admissions

All hospitals are required to report data through the end of April 2024

uhh not feeling so good atm

This is a pretty good video on the latest research on long covid.

Some takeaways:

CDC estimates 40 million people had long covid, and 15 million still do. 5 million people dropped out of the workforce because of it.

While studies on long covid can have huge lists of potential problems, they all fall into three main groups., the first two are better to be considered post-covid conditions and not necessarily long covid, because they are detectible. (I don't know if these distinctions apply to the 40 million people who had long covid, or if the CDC lumps them all together.)

1. Detectable organ or tissue damage
2. New chronic illness after infection (diabetes, stroke, etc)
3. Mystery symptoms!

The mystery symptoms are what they consider long covid. There are no simple tests anyone can do to confirm you have long covid. There is research into possible causes like microclots, autoimmunity, etc... but it's still in early stages.

Even though they don't know what exactly causes long covid there are two signs that seem to always show up:

1. Neurologic Inflammation (decreases blood supply to the brain). It can extend down to peripheral nerves and disrupt your heart rate and other fun stuff.
2. Exercise causes extreme fatigue due to poor oxygen utilization. It's there, in the blood, but for some reason it's not being absorbed or transfered to where it needs to be. Since the oxygen is not reaching the parts of the body it needs to.

The only good news is that it seems like 60% of people get better after 1-1.5 years. We've all got enough savings to cover a years and a half worth of expenses if we get unlucky and get bopped with long covid, right?

What frightens me are the potential blood clots. Didn't Michael Brooks die due to a freak blood clot in his lungs or something in 2020? Didn't Matt Christman have a stroke last year? Those both may have been unrelated to covid (maybe matt was just doing coke), who knows, but isn't it a bit unusual for young people to get blood clots out of nowhere? When shit like this happens it's usually several weeks to months past the acute stage, so it's likely overlooked in a lot of cases and chalked up to "sometimes bodies just do that ".