I’m at my company’s terminal and this clown comes walking in to a small workroom without a mask and coughing multiple times. He does not look healthy, but that maybe due to underlying issues of him being old and obese. This is in hotzone Dallas Forth Worth, TX. They say there are tests for Covid, when in reality, Covid is a test for idiocy. Guess its time to go home and sleep in my room in a hotzone house shared by 5 other people. My exposure risks are lower being on the road and sleeping in my truck. Guess it’s time to stock up the truck and make a bunch of money while trucking is still strong.
Well what I had from 25th Dec and ill for three weeks, had buckets of diarrhea for two-three days and I'd never had this with any flu in my life. I am certain it was covid or a close relative personally however tinfoil hat I feel saying it. But from Somalia, probably made a mistake and drank some dispenser soda at the airport or ate a warm peanut I'm sure your precautions were sufficient. The chloroquinine won't help, Brazil is taking buckets of it and they are dropping like flies. Taking the masks and distancing more seriously now they have plateaued infections but like the US its not going down soon. He should however keep taking it for malaria as long as recommended, usually a month. I got malaria switching from doxycycline to Larium and was unlucky. Not fun.
My friend is a Somali native who was there for the last six months, so he probably can safely drink the water. Being on a cramped airplane carries some risk, however. As I mentioned before, my girlfriend and I had flu like symptoms around the same time in mid December. Not serious, but definately the most unusual flu I’ve ever had that featured a fever in the first phase, feeling flu free for a day or so, then experiencing a respiratory phase with a dry cough for two to three weeks. No weakness noted or difficulties thinking(A low bar, I’m sure). However, due to the “official” timeline, it was too early for Texas to be hit by Coronavirus. The conspiracy theorist in me imagined at one point the Coronavirus was deliberately released to wreck havoc upon the economy and financial markets, but it came and went without anyone noticing, requiring a manipulation in social media and maybe more extensive efforts at spreading it or releasing a more potent strain. We have an opportunity to learn some lessons from Covid, such as hardening our civil defense against biological hazards and educating people on best course of action during a virus alert, as may be presented by nature or created by man. Hopefully we ultimately take advantage of this opportunity before a less friendly virus comes on the scene.
Lessons learned last about 15-20 years usually and the H1N1 etc. In Obama's term resulted in changes that should have stopped it this time but Trump was doing his thing with dissolving everything Obama. Well your friend knows malaria so and his gut is accustomed to Somalia. Conspiracy theorising is reasonable up to a point but it just starts to spread damaging anti-knowledge as you know. Sometimes you just have to wait for substantiated information to appear. You should put red and blue filters into your anti-covid goggles, get the Twin Peaks Dr Jacoby/Dr Amp thing going. I wear my steam punk bike glasses with wrap around sides sometimes.
"Natural Herd Immunity is a myth" Covid Antibodies Fade Rapidly, Raising Risk of Lost Immunity https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-fade-rapidly-raising-risk-of-lost-protection Recovering from Covid-19 may not offer much lasting protection from future infections for those with only mild cases, according to a report that suggests caution regarding so-called herd immunity as well as the durability of vaccines. The correspondence in the New England Journal of Medicine outlined research on antibodies taken from the blood of 34 patients who had recovered after suffering mainly mild symptoms that didn’t require intensive care. Just two needed supplemental oxygen and received an HIV medication, and none were on a ventilator or getting Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir. The first analysis was done on antibodies taken an average of 37 days after symptoms began, with a second after about 86 days, or less than three months. The researchers found that antibody levels fell quickly, with a half-life of about 73 days between the two time frames. The loss of antibodies occurred more quickly than with SARS, an earlier type of coronavirus infection. The antibody response is being closely studied by scientists worldwide for indications of how long-lasting immunity may be. While there’s little evidence to suggest reinfections are broadly occurring, health experts have yet to pin down specifics. The latest findings raise concern that protection from reinfection may not last long in those with mild symptoms, which accounts for the majority of cases. Further studies will be needed “to define a quantitative protection threshold and rate of decline of antiviral antibodies beyond 90 days,” according to the researchers led by F. Javier Ibarrondo, from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles. While the protective role of antibodies against infection isn’t fully understood, they are generally considered a good representation of some protection against infection in general, according to the report. A recent study from King’s College London showed that the level of antibodies may drop to a degree that makes them undetectable as soon as three months after infection. However, the body also mounts other forms of immunity responses, including from so-called T-cells, which appear to play a role in protecting against reinfection with Covid-19. In Sweden, the nation’s top health authority said on Tuesday that people who have had the virus are likely to be immune for at least six months after being infected, whether they’ve developed antibodies or not. In new guidance, the Swedish Public Health Agency said it’s now considered safe for individuals who’ve been infected to come into contact with people in high-risk groups. (The last paragraph just goes to prove that the Swedish government contains idiots in their public health department - seeing that it is led by chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell - this is obvious.)
Bugger... Hope his pessimism is unfounded but not surprised. I just read that my local hospital which had increased its intensive care capacity from 16 to 77 beds during lockdown is now 100 percent occupied. In Bogota they have stopped admitting anyone under 75 to ICU. Expected but as a hospice volunteer I have a sinking feeling this guys is on the money. I guess vulnerable people could stay on boosters (if they can afford), given the scale of this problem and the resources devoted we may reasonably expect further breakthroughs won't make it last as long as polio. www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-53488142 "Prof Sir John Bell, of the University of Oxford, said he thought it was unlikely that Covid-19 would ever be eliminated despite the positive news announced on Monday that trials by his university had triggered an immune response - an important step in developing a vaccine. "The reality is that this pathogen is here forever, it isn't going anywhere," he told MPs. "Look at how much trouble they've had in eliminating, for example, polio, that eradication programme has been going on for 15 years and they're still not there. "So this is going to come and go, and we're going to get winters where we get a lot of this virus back in action. "
There are now multiple, carefully documented cases of people getting infected with COVID for a second time. So much for "natural herd immunity". Two More People Were Reinfected With Coronavirus After Recovering From First Case, Virologists Say https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlie...from-first-case-virologists-say/#7888cf0716b4 Virologists have confirmed two more patients that have been reinfected with coronavirus after previously recovering from the disease, a day after Hong Kong researchers identified the first documented case of reinfection as the world races to contain the pandemic that has infected millions and killed more than 800,000. (More at above url)
We finally have one city on the face of the earth that may have naturally approached the threshold required for "herd immunity" -- at least from the perspective of slowing the spread of COVID-19. The city of Manaus in Brazil has paid a terrible toll in the path of doing this. Even today they have not been able to bury all the bodies of the dead and coffins litter the landscape near cemeteries. As noted earlier - the proven science states that the spread of a highly infection disease slows when a population reaches a 50% threshold. This level is not "herd immunity" -- it is merely the mathematically and scientifically proven figure where spreads slows. This slowing is also the reason why it is difficult to get a population boosted to the 70% or above level required to fully stop the spread of a highly infectious disease (known as "herd immunity"). More information about the papers and the science behind herd immunity which was "discovered" by investigations of the measles epidemic in the U.S. can be found in this earlier post. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...eden-stands-apart.342513/page-20#post-5100078 Some people have claimed that "natural herd immunity" for COVID can occur at much lower levels that 50% of the population. By the very science that defines "herd immunity" the lowest level where the spread even slows is 50% -- so claims that populations can get herd immunity at 20%, etc. are pure nonsense and not based on science. The city of Manaus in Brazil paid a terrible price to get close to the 50% level needed to slow the growth of COVID-19. They did not do this by intent; they did it because the government in Brazil did nothing to stop the disease. This does however set-up Manaus as an example that can be studied by scientists in regards to herd immunity and COVID -- the problem is finding a medical researcher or scientist which is willing to go there. ================================================================================= A Brazilian city devastated by COVID-19 may have reached herd immunity https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-brazil-city-manaus-herd-immunity Cemeteries in the Brazilian city of Manaus have been overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic. A new study estimates that up to half of the city’s population was infected at the epidemic’s peak, which slowed further spread of the virus but also led to many deaths. The Brazilian city of Manaus was hit hard by COVID-19. At the peak of its epidemic in late spring, the city of over 2 million people had 4.5 times as many deaths as expected for that time of year. Hospitals and cemeteries struggled to keep up, and mass graves were dug to bury the dead. But then, cases and deaths steadily declined, despite a relaxing of social distancing measures. That trajectory has prompted some researchers to suggest that Manaus has reached herd immunity. In a report posted September 21 at medRxiv.org that has yet to be peer reviewed, researchers suggest that herd immunity developed in the city after 44 to 52 percent of the population was infected at the epidemic’s peak, and that slowed subsequent spread of the virus. “These are the highest [infection] levels I’ve seen,” says Elitza Theel, a clinical microbiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who wasn’t involved in the study. That high infection rate may very well have impacted the trajectory of the epidemic. “That is how herd immunity works,” she says. “But it comes at a high cost … their death rate was very high.” Herd immunity occurs when enough people become immune to an infectious disease, either through infection or a vaccine, causing an epidemic to slow down as the pathogen is starved of susceptible hosts (SN: 3/24/20). Scientists are still working out what the herd immunity threshold would be for COVID-19; most estimates are around 40 to 60 percent of a population. The precise threshold likely varies from region to region, but virtually all of the globe remains well below this threshold, experts say. Most of the United States remains in the single digits, though around 20 percent of the population in parts of New York City may have already contracted the virus. To investigate whether herd immunity developed in Manaus, researchers from Brazil and the United Kingdom turned to blood donations, looking for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Blood donations aren’t a random sample of the population. They tend to come from healthy, asymptomatic adults, and so could miss infections in older people who may be more vulnerable to infection, as well as in kids. Still, the donations offer a way to measure seroprevalence, the proportion of a population that’s been exposed to a virus and has developed antibodies against it. Researchers tested about 800 to 1,000 blood donations each month from February to August, and attempted to control for potential confounding factors, such as the sensitivity of different tests and the fact that antibodies can wane over time (SN: 4/28/20). They also tested blood donations from São Paolo, another Brazilian city. “This is one of the best papers that I’ve seen that really does try to account waning antibody levels over time” and other factors, Theel says. In Manaus, the prevalence of antibodies to the coronavirus in blood donors hovered below 1 percent early on in the pandemic, the team found. In April, it rose to 4.8 percent and then rocketed to 44.2 percent in May and reached a peak of 51.8 percent in June, a trajectory that roughly followed the curve of accumulating deaths. After that peak, seroprevalence fell, reaching 30 percent in August, a consequence of both waning antibody levels in people already infected and lower transmission rates, the researchers say. While social distancing measures probably helped slow the spread of the virus, the team argues that high population immunity played a bigger role in curbing the epidemic. As of August, the researchers estimate 66 percent of the population had been infected. Whether the city will avoid another outbreak remains to be seen, and will depend in part on how long protective immunity lasts. The researchers warn that their findings can’t be directly translated to other cites because of differences in factors such as demographics, behavior and adherence to social distancing measures. Why Manaus reached herd immunity when other cities haven’t remains unclear. São Paolo for instance, a bustling city of over 12 million, never topped 14 percent seroprevalence despite both cities implementing similar social distancing measures, the analyzed blood donations show. The study authors point to Manaus’ lower socioeconomic conditions, more crowded housing and reliance on boat travel, as factors that could have accelerated the spread of the virus there. The researchers estimate close to 4,000 people died from COVID-19 in Manaus, a high death toll for a city where only 6 percent of the population is over 60. The city had an infection fatality rate between 0.17 and 0.28 percent, the study suggests. The costs of reaching herd immunity via infection in other cities, especially where there are more older people could be much, much higher. Estimates of São Paolo’s infection fatality rate range as high as 0.72 percent. Overall, Manaus’ experience reveals “that an unmitigated outbreak will lead to very significant morbidity and mortality,” says Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, “which is basically what we’ve been saying since February.”
I'd note that the OP hasn't posted since mid-July suggesting that he or someone close to him got Covid with more serious implications then a common cold. We had "Max E" being his usual aggressive self months ago until he experienced the darker side of Covid in some way. That's perhaps the nature of Covid for many Americans, especially the deniers. It's not an issue until it is, and if it hits them it leads to some serious rethinking of their beliefs. The sad part is 205K and counting Americans had to die in the meantime and at least half of them it was totally unnecessary. A couple of weeks ago one medical expert who seemed quite credible suggested around 500K Americans are experiencing a serious chronic health conditions due to Covid on top of all the deaths. The deniers continue on like nothing is happening. I see a few of them in Toronto and it's like they are in a different world, flaunting the law. Mostly people in their 20s.