SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Pogue Mahone said:
Alarmist nonsense. For someone that prides himself on having a keen nose for bullshit I’d have thought you’d notice the obvious conflict of interest yer man has when it comes to spreading scary fiction about covid associated cognitive decline.
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Totally agree. Covid can cause brain inflamation and autopsies have revealed some Tau proteins in victims' brains (although no proof that this had anything to do with covid I don't think) so it has the potential to increase the incidence of dementia, or more likley make dementia appear earlier than would otherwise, and almost exclusively in older people. But the tweet in question linked to a single other tweet (not literature) claiming a frend's daughter got early onset demenia at 19 after getting covid 3 times (of course no causal link was established, even assuming it wasn't utter bullshit).

Even if this alarmist bollocks was true (which it almost certainly isn't) what alarms should have been sounded and what actions should those alarms have prompted?
 
This ‘cold’ has been lingering and I lost my sense of smell a few days ago I thought i would test this morning. For the first time ever I’ve got a control line and a test line. The test line is fainter but still apparent. Does this mean I’ve got it but on the way out?
 
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golden_blunder said:
This this coke has been lingering and I lost my sense of smell a few days ago I thought i would test this morning. For the first time ever I’ve got a control line and a test line. The test line is fainter but still apparent. Does this mean I’ve got it but on the way out?
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Addiction is a constant battle, you're never truely free from it.
 
golden_blunder said:
This ‘cold’ has been lingering and I lost my sense of smell a few days ago I thought i would test this morning. For the first time ever I’ve got a control line and a test line. The test line is fainter but still apparent. Does this mean I’ve got it but on the way out?
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The fact that you've had symptoms for a few days means that it is probably fading. The faint line just means it's a positive test, not necessarily where you're at in the infection cycle. You may have had a cold and now you've got COVID - not easy to tell, unless you've been doing daily tests. Sorry. Get well soon.
 
jojojo said:
The fact that you've had symptoms for a few days means that it is probably fading. The faint line just means it's a positive test, not necessarily where you're at in the infection cycle. You may have had a cold and now you've got COVID - not easy to tell, unless you've been doing daily tests. Sorry. Get well soon.
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It took me by surprise, thought it was a heavy cold or at worst , flu. Both my wife and I have had it more or less at the same time but just her symptoms are a day ahead. I really only thought to do a test because I noticed I couldn’t smell anything. Anyways little we can do but wait it out and stay away from the warfarin clinic etc, I was meant to go tomorrow
 
golden_blunder said:
This ‘cold’ has been lingering and I lost my sense of smell a few days ago I thought i would test this morning. For the first time ever I’ve got a control line and a test line. The test line is fainter but still apparent. Does this mean I’ve got it but on the way out?
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When I obvioulsy had covid is was ages after the first symptoms and as I was gradually recovering that the RAT test finally showed faintly positive. Partly that RAT tests are a bit rubbish and I also wondered if the tests worked less well again with omicron.
 
My oxygen reading today is fluctuating between 95-97

normally it’s 99/98

what’s cut off point from being normal to being something you need to monitor closely?
 
As normally you're up around 98/99 then 93/94 is the right time to check with your GP (or 111 in the UK, i don't know if there's something similar where you are).

Chances are they'll say rest, stay hydrated, eat, take paracetamol if you need it and keep monitoring with the oximeter until you are feeling better. Because of the medications you might be taking or other symptoms etc, that advice may be different for you - hence the reason to call them.

92% or lower and you may be having a trip to A&E for a bit of supplementary oxygen, below 90 and you definitely need help.

How are you feeling?
 
jojojo said:
As normally you're up around 98/99 then 93/94 is the right time to check with your GP (or 111 in the UK, i don't know if there's something similar where you are).

Chances are they'll say rest, stay hydrated, eat, take paracetamol if you need it and keep monitoring with the oximeter until you are feeling better. Because of the medications you might be taking or other symptoms etc, that advice may be different for you - hence the reason to call them.

92% or lower and you may be having a trip to A&E for a bit of supplementary oxygen, below 90 and you definitely need help.

How are you feeling?
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Thanks. This morning I felt like someone was at least leaning on my chest, felt a bit tight. Feeling ok tonight.
Worried about our 7 year old tonight, he’s going thorough fever stage so we’re worried about his temperature as it’s fluctuating. At the moment he’s dosed up on calpol & neurofen. Gonna be a long night I think
 
golden_blunder said:
Thanks. This morning I felt like someone was at least leaning on my chest, felt a bit tight. Feeling ok tonight.
Worried about our 7 year old tonight, he’s going thorough fever stage so we’re worried about his temperature as it’s fluctuating. At the moment he’s dosed up on calpol & neurofen. Gonna be a long night I think
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Best of luck buddy.
 
Does anyone know anyone who was anti-vax based on it being new that would consider getting the jab now?

While some anti-vax subscribed to silly theories, others had a reasonable justification that there hadn't been enough testing.

It's been more than 2 years since covid jabs were administered on a grand scale and by now there's probably a plethora of evidence that it's safe.
 
Wibble said:
No they didn't.
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That was a reasonable justification initially, not anymore, the normal timeframe for vaccine approval was reduced considerably, it used to take the better part of a decade not a few months
 
Red in STL said:
That was a reasonable justification initially, not anymore, the normal timeframe for vaccine approval was reduced considerably, it used to take the better part of a decade not a few months
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No it wasn't. Time was irrelvant. The testing was compacted but the safety of the trials wasn't compromised and merely a function of there being both urgency, a lack of financial contraints and a huge data pool. Very rare side effects only ever come out when used post-approval very widely. So it wasn't a reasonable justification.
 
Wibble said:
No it wasn't. Time was irrelvant. The testing was compacted but the safety of the trials wasn't compromised and merely a function of there being both urgency, a lack of financial contraints and a huge data pool. Very rare side effects only ever come out when used post-approval very widely. So it wasn't a reasonable justification.
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Safety of the trials wasn't compromised - the average Joe in the street didn't/wouldn't know that, all they knew is the normal timeframes were a lor shorter, and a lot of dodgy politicians tell them everything is hunky dory, would you take Donald Trump's or Boris Johnson's word on stuff like this

Me - I took it as soon as I was eligible, but I work in the world of medical publishing and have access to a lot of the world's research so I knew more than most folks did
 
This misconception that mRNA based vaccines were some sort of futuristic, untried technology that sprung up due to COVID is just stupid. It has been studied for decades prior to COVID. Hell, Moderna has been around since 2010! Peoples vaccine hesitancy was completely due to manufactured, politically driven, misinformation.
 
Red in STL said:
Safety of the trials wasn't compromised - the average Joe in the street didn't/wouldn't know that, all they knew is the normal timeframes were a lor shorter, and a lot of dodgy politicians tell them everything is hunky dory, would you take Donald Trump's or Boris Johnson's word on stuff like this

Me - I took it as soon as I was eligible, but I work in the world of medical publishing and have access to a lot of the world's research so I knew more than most folks did
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Reacting supidly to obvious misinformation isn't reasonable imo. Nobody (barring lunatics) worried about taking the flue vaccine despite there being very rare side effects for a miniscue minority.
 
WI_Red said:
This misconception that mRNA based vaccines were some sort of futuristic, untried technology that sprung up due to COVID is just stupid. It has been studied for decades prior to COVID. Hell, Moderna has been around since 2010! Peoples vaccine hesitancy was completely due to manufactured, politically driven, misinformation.
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Agreed.
 
WI_Red said:
This misconception that mRNA based vaccines were some sort of futuristic, untried technology that sprung up due to COVID is just stupid. It has been studied for decades prior to COVID. Hell, Moderna has been around since 2010! Peoples vaccine hesitancy was completely due to manufactured, politically driven, misinformation.
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Even I read this early on.
 
WI_Red said:
This misconception that mRNA based vaccines were some sort of futuristic, untried technology that sprung up due to COVID is just stupid. It has been studied for decades prior to COVID. Hell, Moderna has been around since 2010! Peoples vaccine hesitancy was completely due to manufactured, politically driven, misinformation.
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Yep.
 
Compressing the trial timetable during a pandemic proved to be easy. Lots of money, lots of stages running in parallel that would normally be done consecutively (because each stage costs more money and resources - and in normal times each stage needs its own business justification).

Manufacturing plants and new distribution systems were being built before they even knew if the vaccine was working. Lots of volunteers for testing, lots of COVID around to see if the vaccine was effective in practice. Things that can only really happen in a pandemic with the normal financial constraints turned off.

That said, clinical trials are imperfect things. They test tens of thousands of people in a trial, even in huge trials like these were. You know after the trial that there are no common adverse reactions, you know there are no common serious side-effects.

You don't know if there are rarer serious reactions that only affect some groups of people or ones are so uncommon that you're unlikely to see them during the trial. That's when the data from millions of people comes into play - and that's why the vaccines continue to be monitored by the regulators as they roll out to millions and then billions of people.

In other words, I've never had much sympathy for anyone who thinks the clinical trials were bodged or curtailed - they either didn't understand (in which case it was worth trying to explain it) or they were lying. I did have a certain amount of sympathy for the, "you go first," group who wanted to wait for other people around them to get theirs before joining them.

These days the ones keeping this antivax stuff alive are either making money/political capital from it or they've been brainwashed. That said - there are now so few people who haven't had exposure to COVID and/or been vaccinated, that I'm not so worried by the unwilling ones anymore. I'm very worried about the misinformation and grifter lobby who are robbing people now and will do more damage in the future - on multiple diseases, not just COVID, and on multiple vaccine types not just the mRNA ones.
 
Nothing to add other than to moan that I've got this fecker again, roughly same time as last year, and it's even less fun. Meant to have been on annual leave this week but had a hacking cough and foggy brain since Tuesday. Finally tested positive today and my damn bones ache. Hoping work will let me put this down as sick leave and I'll get those annual leave days back as I've basically not left one room all week.
 
Just got my 5th shot, 6 months after getting covid. The first 2 were AZ, the second 2 were Pfizer and the last one Phizer +Omicron. Ever other time I got mild flu symptoms for 24 hrs but this time nothing barring a slight soreness at the injection site.
 
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Wibble said:
Just got my 5th shot, 6 months after getting covid. The first 2 were AZ, the second 2 were Pfizer and the last one Phizer +Omicron. Ever other time I got mild glue symptoms for 24 hrs but this time nothing barring a slight soreness at the Injection site.
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Evo stik?
 
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Unless he has lost the plot maybe he simply is pandering to the antivax audience. Over 4 million in income is nice.
 
This was the first week that I worked as a clinical doctor without mask. It feels so strange, after three years. I feel a tiny lingering anxiety getting very close to patients, not Covid specific. It just seems wrong.

I welcome seeing people faces though.
 
Wibble said:
What happened to John Campbell? At the beginning of the pandemic he seemed very rational and a good communicator. But he seems to have gone full covidiot since, misrepresenting and/or misinterpreting information/data all over the place.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Campbell_(YouTuber)
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He was one of the first persons I used to understand Covid (other than this thread) and never thought he was too bright in the basic sciences required, seemed to lack some depth. But he was tireless in compiling up-to-date information, which made him very useful. Haven't heard him in three years, so have no idea how he changed.
 
Wibble said:
What happened to John Campbell? At the beginning of the pandemic he seemed very rational and a good communicator. But he seems to have gone full covidiot since, misrepresenting and/or misinterpreting information/data all over the place.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Campbell_(YouTuber)
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At some point in time, I'm sure he made the suggestion that he had ivermectin in his cupboard in case he caught covid. At that point I stopped taking him seriously. Checked back a couple of times and he's gone batshit crazy. He even had Russell Brand on at one point.
 
Wibble said:
What happened to John Campbell? At the beginning of the pandemic he seemed very rational and a good communicator. But he seems to have gone full covidiot since, misrepresenting and/or misinterpreting information/data all over the place.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Campbell_(YouTuber)
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Found his niche. Jump in veiwership from a few of thousand veiws for his educational videos to some over a million views for his Covid update videos suggest maybe that has something to do with it?
 
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