I never knew that someone could have 'Super Anti-bodies". He unknowingly had Covid-19. Now his blood contains rare antibodies. "The truth is I could come up with no real answers other than perhaps God has a plan for me," said John Hollis. "Or maybe I'm just lucky as hell." https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/he-unknowingly-had-covid-19-now-his-blood-contains-rare-n1254232 With his roommate in dire health from the coronavirus last spring, it did not take much for John Hollis to believe he would also contract the highly infectious, deadly disease. He was so concerned about what could happen that he penned a letter to his teenage son, Davis, in case "things went downhill fast," Hollis said. It turned out that Hollis unknowingly already had Covid-19 and may have unwittingly infected his roommate. Hollis, the communications manager at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, learned in July that he fell into a rare category of people whose blood could help scientists understand Covid-19 and potentially treat those who fall ill. Covid-19, it seems, cannot harm him, said Dr. Lance Liotta, a George Mason University pathologist and bioengineer who is leading the school's clinical trials on antibodies. Hollis, 54, a former journalist, learned that his blood is fortified with so-called super antibodies — antibodies that neutralize the virus, which, even when diluted 10,000 times, still resists Covid-19, Liotta said. It is a medical phenomenon found in less than 5 percent of the population who have contracted the coronavirus, a study indicates, making Hollis and his blood valuable resources in identifying potential treatments for Covid-19, Liotta said. "Through John and others, we have been propelled into exciting new science," Liotta said. "Learning about his antibodies offers us new ways to fight Covid." In short, using Hollis' antibodies — the Y-shaped proteins in blood used by the immune system to identify and fight bacteria and viruses — Liotta and his team will, as part of their trials, "understand exponentially better how to kill the coronavirus and mass produce antibodies like John's" for the general population to protect it from the virus, like the drug Regeneron, which President Donald Trump took after he announced in early October that he had tested positive. "If that sounds crazy to you, imagine how it feels to me," said Hollis, a former sports journalist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. More than 20 million people in the United States have contracted the deadly virus as vaccines slowly become available. But treatment for the virus is still necessary, which makes Hollis' "super" antibodies inestimably important. His story began after he took his son, Davis, on a trip to Europe in early March. Not long after they returned from London and Paris and just before flights into the United States were grounded, Hollis experienced congestion, which he associated with the normal sinus issues that come with that time of the year for him. The symptoms passed quickly, but his roommate, who did not want to be named, became devastatingly ill with Covid-19 for a month. Fearing for his friend, Hollis stood by his door early every morning and listened for movement to ensure that he was still alive. Hollis consistently wiped down the townhouse they shared and confined himself to his bedroom. "He was scared to death," said Hollis' closest friend, Kevin W. Tydings, a lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina. "I called him just about every day for two weeks, checking on him. I was worried for him. He figured he would get it. But to his credit, he manned up and stayed there, because he didn't want to go out and give it to someone else." He was especially worried about his son. Hollis said he was "petrified" that Davis may have contracted Covid-19 on their trip. He was also scared that he could die from the virus and miss seeing his son grow into a man. "I was at a strange peace with whatever happened to me but saddened by the prospect of perhaps not living to see my son hit those major life milestones, such as graduating from high school, college and getting married and becoming a father himself," Hollis said. "April 8, I sat down and wrote a letter to my son, for him to have if I wasn't here. I wrote the first sentence, and I cried. I read it every month, and I cry right away. ... I'm just grateful I didn't have to give it to him." But Hollis did not fall noticeably ill. In mid-July, he volunteered to participate in a coronavirus study on campus, enthusiastically backed by new George Mason University President Gregory Washington and led by Liotta, a former deputy director of the National Institutes of Health. Soon after, Liotta called Hollis one night to tell him that he harbored "super" antibodies. Hollis said he remembered feeling "utter shock." "Here I was, scared for my roommate and fearful that I would contract Covid," he said. "Instead, I had had it already and likely gave it to him. He got a bad deal. I feel so badly for him. And I can't get it? I'm impervious to it? My antibodies can help modern science? It was a lot to process." George Mason University is one of 13 NIH-sponsored Biosafety-Level 3 Biomedical Research Laboratories that have the facilities to handle live Covid-19 samples. Liotta and his team were able to pinpoint when Hollis had the virus. Hollis was relieved that his son did not contract it. "He's in excellent health," Hollis said. Since August, Hollis has given blood and saliva samples about every two weeks for lab testing and experiments. Liotta said that the levels of Hollis' antibodies not only have sustained, but they they have also proven effective in killing six different strains of the coronavirus. Liotta's team found seven other people with "super" antibodies for the clinical trial. Hollis is different from the others in that his antibodies have maintained at least 90 percent of their strength nine months after he had the coronavirus. Most similar antibodies dissipate in 60 to 90 days, Liotta said. Furthermore, Liotta said, Hollis' "super" antibodies will help in the next phase of the clinical trial — testing it in those who have taken the vaccine to make sure their antibodies have been elevated through the injection. "It's all very exciting," he said. "And it's all because of our patients like John." Other public health officials are excited, too, like Dr. Pierre Vigilance, an adjunct professor of health policy and management at George Washington University School of Public Health, who is founder and principal at HealthUp Strategic Advisors. Vigilance, who led the local emergency response efforts to the H1N1 outbreak in the Washington, D.C., area in 2009, said he understands Liotta's excitement. "Think about a key and a lock," Vigilance said. "Viruses have a key to our cells. That coronavirus key is the spiked protein, which can pick the lock and get into our cells. It's very effective at doing that. An antibody is like chewing gum that hardens around the key. The key won't go in the lock. So it prevents viruses from getting into cells. "'Super' antibodies are more effective at stopping the viruses from getting into our cells," he added. "About 75 percent of coronavirus patients have binding antibodies, which do not neutralize the virus. Less than 5 percent of coronavirus patients have the 'super' antibodies, making them super important to replicate and use in therapeutic modality. The fact that so few people make these kinds of antibodies means that it's important to learn how to harvest and how to replicate that." Hollis remains astounded by the discovery, but he still wears a mask and practices social distancing. The gravity of his situation has also weighed on him for months. "To say this whole surreal experience has been tough to digest is an understatement," he said. "Dr. Liotta and his team are amazing. On the one hand, I am eternally grateful and feel blessed beyond measure to still be healthy and somehow have this rare natural protection against a deadly virus that is now killing more than 3,000 Americans a day and adversely affecting everybody, but especially African Americans and others of color. "But, on the other hand, you need only turn on the TV or glance at any newspaper to see the large swath of death and misery from all around the globe as a result of the virus. It makes me ask: 'Why me? Why have I been spared when so many others weren't?'" He said he has stayed up late nights since July pondering his experience. "The truth is I could come up with no real answers other than perhaps God has a plan for me," he said. "Or maybe I'm just lucky as hell. "Either way, I do know that I've long preached to my son that we all share a responsibility to make the world a better place than it was when we arrived. Never in a million years could I have envisioned this being how I might help do just that."
Someone mentioned earlier that the U.S. was behind in COVID sequencing.... here is an article about this. U.S. races to catch up with other countries in COVID sequencing research https://news.yahoo.com/u-races-catch-other-countries-225118889.html Medical experts have warned for months that the U.S. is falling far behind other countries in research on the evolution of the coronavirus, in both speed and comprehensiveness of approach. In early December, the discovery of a faster-spreading variant of COVID-19 in the U.K. lent urgency to the need for genetic sequencing that will help determine whether treatment regimens and vaccines remain effective against new mutations of the virus. In the U.S., the first case of the U.K. variant B.1.17 was discovered in Colorado in December, and since then, at least 15 states have identified cases of the strain. Public health experts say it was already likely spreading here unseen, a casualty of the country's delayed COVID-19 sequencing campaign, and warned that other new homegrown variants could also be mutating without anyone's knowledge. The U.S. is estimated to lag behind more than 30 nations in its sequencing effort, according to an analysis by the Broad Institute, from the global GISAID Initiative database. But Colorado, where the first case of the faster-spreading U.K. variant was found in the U.S., is rushing to reverse this trend. The state has expanded its public health staff and equipment to speed its efforts. Its labs have identified the genetic sequencing of 1,400 samples so far and aim to sequence some 200 samples a week. The process of sequencing involves extracting and analyzing the unique genetic information in a virus sample to look for mutations. These findings help public health researchers track the spread of particular variants of the disease. While mutations are common and often harmless, the B.1.17 variant appears to spread more easily than previous strains. Both Pfizer and Moderna have said they believe their vaccines will still be effective against it. Even before the Colorado case was identified, the state's health department laboratories were running diagnostic tests that could immediately flag potential samples with one of the U.K. variant's characteristic mutations. It was also training staff on new procedures to speed the search for the fast-moving bug. Emily Travanty, scientific director with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said it "was truly a bit of luck" that the sample of the first U.K. case in the U.S. came into her lab. "We don't have all of the samples in the whole state of Colorado, so that the sample came here to us and that we were on the lookout for it was sort of a bit of luck," Travanty said. Some states have struggled to follow suit. The surge in coronavirus cases has forced labs to choose between diagnostic testing of the local population and sequencing the virus, a resource-intensive process that can last for days. "More than anything else, the sequencing has come down to staffing," said Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious diseases at the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL). She said APHL has heard from labs frustrated with "incredibly tight" supplies used both for sequencing and other laboratory work. Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles were among those to abandon their sequencing work last year, amid a COVID spike in Southern California. "We just didn't have the capacity," Omai Garner, director of clinical microbiology in the UCLA Health System, told CBS News. "The people I would use for that sequencing are the same that were doing the diagnostic testing," added Garner. As the Trump administration comes to an end, senior Biden transition officials say stepping up sequencing work will be a key priority in the funds requested from Congress as part of the president-elect's COVID-19 rescue proposal. In November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it was expanding its own capacity to collect and sequence coronavirus samples from health authorities around the country. Samples sent to CDC labs identified the first cases of B.1.1.7 in several states, including Texas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, state public health officials tell CBS News. This month, Illumina and LabCorp both announced new CDC contracts to sequence samples of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Illumina has since identified 51 of the first 54 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant in the country. The CDC also announced in December it was releasing some $15 million in funding to support local sequencing efforts through the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC) program, which has trickled out to some public health labs on the front lines of the pandemic. A spokesperson for the Massachusetts State Public Health Laboratory said the agency had received $3.4 million in ELC funds, which had gone to new staff, equipment, and supplies. In Utah, officials said CARES Act funding and an ELC grant of some $176,000 had helped the state boost sequencing capacity to some 3,000 samples a day. And in Arkansas, a spokesperson said their ELC money was expected to be "coming soon." "They, like us, are ramping up," Travanty said of the CDC. She says CDC has now doubled the number of samples it has requested from states for its strain surveillance program.
One in eight recovered COVID patients die from another illness within five months https://nypost.com/2021/01/18/1-in-8-recovered-covid-19-patients-die-within-5-months-study/ Almost a third of recovered COVID-19 patients end up back in the hospital within five months — and up to one in eight die of complications from the illness, according to a report out of the UK. Researchers at the UK’s Leicester University and the Office for National Statistics found that out of 47,780 people discharged from the hospital, 29.4 percent were readmitted within 140 days, the Telegraph reported. Of the total, 12.3 percent succumbed to the illness, it added. Many people who suffer long-lasting effects of the coronavirus develop heart problems, diabetes and chronic liver and kidney conditions, according to the report. “People seem to be going home, getting long-term effects, coming back in and dying. We see nearly 30 percent have been readmitted, and that’s a lot of people. The numbers are so large,” study author Kamlesh Khunti said. “The message here is we really need to prepare for long COVID. It’s a mammoth task to follow up with these patients and the NHS is really pushed at the moment, but some sort of monitoring needs to be arranged,” added Khunti, a professor of primary care diabetes and vascular medicine at Leicester University. The study — which Khunti described as the largest of people discharged from a hospital after being admitted with COVID-19 — found that survivors were nearly 3½ times more likely to be readmitted, and die, in 140 days than other outpatients. Khunti said the researchers were surprised that many people were readmitted with a new diagnosis, adding that it was important to make sure people were placed on protective therapies, including statins and aspirin. “We don’t know if it’s because COVID destroyed the beta cells which make insulin and you get Type 1 diabetes, or whether it causes insulin resistance, and you develop Type 2, but we are seeing these surprising new diagnoses of diabetes,” he said. “We’ve seen studies where survivors have had MRS scans and they’ve cardiac problems and liver problems,” Khunti added. “These people urgently require follow-up and the need to be on things like aspirin and statins.” The new study was published on a pre-print server and has not yet been peer reviewed
I read this story online too. Interesting because recovering from a Covid-19 infection...obviously wrecks havoc on the body in which some eventually weaken and develop other illnesses that requires hospitalization again... Some just don't make it. wrbtrader
If the below illustration doesn't prove to you that the policies wrt covid have been extremely politically biased, you are a dumb ass.
You do realize that the economy in New York has been opened for months since the early fall. That’s when the cases started to rise in the second wave.
Bottom Line: "Long COVID" is verified. 76% of patients who leave hospitals have "Long COVID" after six months. The long term effects of COVID are a significant medical and public policy issue. Most hospitalized COVID-19 patients still have symptoms after 6 months Researchers found that more than three-quarters of a cohort of COVID-19 patients still had at least one symptom 6 months after they were discharged from the hospital. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ar...9-patients-still-have-symptoms-after-6-months In their study, the researchers found that 76% of COVID-19 patients from a hospital in Wuhan, China, were still not symptom-free at a 6-month follow-up. The research, which appears in the journal The Lancet, identifies the most common symptoms that the study participants continued to experience. It also highlights the possible effects of COVID-19 on the participants’ cardiopulmonary health and identifies potential risk factors associated with the long-term effects of COVID-19. Long COVID COVID-19, the disease at the heart of the global pandemic, has a variety of symptoms, the most common being fever, a dry cough, and fatigue. It can range considerably in severity, with some people not noticing that they have the disease and others requiring hospital admission and mechanical ventilation. To date, data show that COVID-19 is responsible for more than 1.9 million deaths. While the immediate symptoms and disease progression of COVID-19 have been well-documented, the longer term effects of COVID-19 have received less attention. Mounting anecdotal evidence and observational reports have indicated that many people continue to experience symptoms related to COVID-19 long after they have officially recovered. Dubbed “long COVID,” symptoms that people frequently report experiencing include fatigue, coughing, muscle aches, chest pain, heart palpitations, and rashes. The researchers behind the present article wanted to get a better understanding of just how prevalent these symptoms are and the associated risk factors that make a person more likely to experience them months after discharge. 1,733 participants With these aims in mind, the researchers conducted a study involving 1,733 patients who had been discharged from a hospital in Wuhan, China, between January 7 and May 29, 2020, after receiving a COVID-19 diagnosis. The participants had a follow-up appointment an average of 186 days after their discharge. During the appointment, each individual had a face-to-face interview with a doctor to determine what symptoms they were still experiencing. They also underwent laboratory tests, a physical examination, and a 6-minute walking test. In addition, a subset of 349 participants completed a lung function test, and 94 individuals who had received antibody tests when their infection was most severe had a follow-up antibody test. 76% still experienced a symptom The researchers found that 76% of the participants were still experiencing at least one symptom of COVID-19 at their follow-up appointment. The most common symptom was muscle weakness or fatigue, which affected 63% of the study participants. The authors report that 26% of the participants had difficulty sleeping, and 23% had anxiety or depression. Of those who completed the lung function test, the researchers found a correlation between the severity of the person’s initial COVID-19 infection and their lung function at the follow-up. As many as 56% of the people who required ventilation at the hospital experienced a reduced flow of oxygen to the bloodstream at their follow-up. Of those who did not require oxygen, this affected 22%. There was also a correlation between disease severity and the results of the 6-minute walking test: 29% of people who required ventilation performed below the lower normal range limit compared with 24% of those who did not require oxygen. In a sample of 822 of the participants, 13% had worse kidney functioning than when they were in the hospital. Finally, when they looked at the data from the 94 people who had an antibody test, the researchers found that the number of people testing positive for neutralizing antibodies dropped from 96.2% to 58.5%. The average levels of neutralizing antibodies had also dropped — by 47%. Corresponding author Prof. Bin Cao — from the National Center for Respiratory Medicine, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, and Capital Medical University, Beijing, China — notes, “ecause COVID-19 is such a new disease, we are only beginning to understand some of its long-term effects on patients’ health.” “Our analysis indicates that most patients continue to live with at least some of the effects of the virus after leaving hospital and highlights a need for postdischarge care, particularly for those who experience severe infections.” – Prof. Bin Cao “Our work also underscores the importance of conducting longer follow-up studies in larger populations in order to understand the full spectrum of effects that COVID-19 can have on people,” Prof. Cao adds. Study limitations The research had some limitations. Firstly, the sample size of those who had antibody level tests was small, so further research is necessary to confirm these findings. Also, the lung function and exercise capacity of the participants were unknown prior to their infection, making it impossible to confirm that COVID-19 was the cause of the issues related to these factors. Finally, the study does not show whether the symptoms had remained consistent or whether they had only appeared or worsened after the infection. Nonetheless, the research is the biggest study of its kind to date, and it supports anecdotal and observational evidence that the medical community needs to take the longer term effects of COVID-19 seriously.