Daniel

@RattusFlattus @Biff234523 I n95 masked strictly for the first 3.5 years; but since then now it's been another 3+ years and I've only had 2 infections.

@Biff234523 I’m confused about how regular people are only infected once per year

Something that I’ve noticed within the Covid conscious community is that people tend to vastly overestimate how many SARS2 infections are occurring *outside* of the community In general, it’s about 1 infection per year. 5 cumulative infections at this point, since the start of the pandemic. But I just saw a thread where people were estimating that it’s “3x per year” or “every other month”, and they had a lot of others agreeing with them, too. The obvious issue here, to me, is that many who consider themselves CC might be getting an inflated sense of how well their precautions are actually working. For example, someone who only gets an annual mRNA vaccine and wears a KN95 most of the time, who might have had 2 or 3 infections at this point. I’ve seen that situation more times than I can count at this point. And I’ve often seen sentiment along the lines of “at least it’s only a few, that’s better than most people”. Well, not really! That’s only a couple of infections behind people who are taking no precautions whatsoever, and there are still many people who take no precautions that have only had 2 or 3 infections themselves, since that still easily falls within a normal statistical range. But I’m just now realizing that they don’t understand that, because they think the average person is faring far worse than they actually are. At this point, you should still be expecting zero infections for yourself, or *maybe* 1-2 if you’re in extremely high risk environments, have additional risk factors, etc. If someone is not even managing to have ~5x less infections than the average person, that means their precautions are largely not working. And it’s probably time to start rethinking them and stop listening to the influencers that are promoting them.

@RattusFlattus @Biff234523 People produce antibodies that gives them protection until there is an escape variant or antibody levels wane very low. Natural antibodies are broader and more durable then mRNA antibodies.

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 There's nothing wrong with Rt-pcr. It's both specific and accurate. It just can't tell you the varient unless you design a unique test to capture the specific sequence.

@DannyTheZebra @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 The question should be: Why was there such reliance upon Rt-PCR when better methods were available?

A COVID variant that's better at evading immune responses and resisting antibodies induced by current COVID-19 vaccines may be on the rise. medpagetoday.com/infectiousdise…

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 Because genomic sequencing is used for surveillance, not diagnostic testing. Even for the sirvilence testing it is 2-3 weeks behind. It's not used for point of care or rapid testing.

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 The above labs take PCR samples and give specific sequencing to certain samples. The Watersheads in Kentucy and elsewhere collect batches of samples and can perform sequencing - but in this case it's usually a mix; so they can determine fragments and estimation but not as spec.

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 In your area, the University of Kentucky Genmoics Core Lab uses a Next-Gen Sequencer (NGS) including whole genome sequencing via Illumina NOvaSeq, NextSeq and MiSEQ Platform. Also University of Louisville Sequencing Technology Center. /1

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 Look here's another one at Stanford. The list of places that do surveillance testing is very large. med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/…

@sorri823675 @flaming0fan Deconditioning doesn't explain peoples pulse jumping into tachicardia at 135 beats per minute when they stand up and goto the bathroom; or failing tilt table tests. Long Covid is real; There's also a subset of people that *are* deconditioned; but this is totally seperate.

@flaming0fan It's literally just deconditioning and depression it isn't a real condition

genuine question: is this long covid thing rooted in any research or just anecdotal? these people sound a lot like the antivaxxers of the left

@DonEford I think you are missing the point about the cute little variant names. This is your chance to name BA 3.2 "Gunna do nothing!"

People should be worried about what XFG is going to do next, not whatever BA.3.2 is up to. We've seen BA.3.2 pop onto worldwide wastewater maps and then immediately decline. I assume this will be no different. Hopefully, this is done before the VRBPAC meeting.

@envidreamz ... and I don't neeed to tell you about the Long Covid story after; but the key part is to realize that there were adverse events (that were supressed) & also Covid killed & hurt a lot of people due to acute and long covid. For some the grass is always greener on the other side/3

@envidreamz The best advice I can give is to meet in the middle. The Covid vaccines were even deadly for some. About 35K people died from Immune Thrombocytopenia (ITP). 1/538 adolscent boys developed myocarditis; many more subclinical myocarditis. Meanwhile the virus killed 1.1M/2

This evening my father in law was going on about medical advances and how people are going to live so much longer now than they used to. He looked right at me and asked if I did not think my kid’s generation would be the ones to see those extra decades. I told him “NO!” I said, “I actually think the entire opposite. Because of repeat Covid infections, I believe most of our life expectancies will be drastically reduced. And with my son’s generation it will be even worse.” He did not pause. He launched into a long tirade about how all of this happened to people because of the Covid vaccine. Knowing very damn well I got sick with Long Covid and didn’t take a single Covid vaccine until 2023. He kept calling it the evil shot. He said he was so glad he never backed down and said yes to it. He sounded proud. Victorious even. This is the same man who just finished chemo for prostate cancer last month. My father in law, who in the summer of 2022, caught a “summer flu” and then suffered full body clots and a massive stroke that nearly killed him. I sat there listening and felt the same cold wave I have felt every single day for the last 6+ years. I am a Covid first waver. I was there in the beginning when the world around me was only just beginning to pretend it was all just a bad flu. I got hit hard before much of the world even pretended to know what Long Covid was. And now I am trapped in this bleak endless loop where the people I am supposed to love keep rewriting history right in front of me. They deny the virus and deny the damage. They celebrate their refusal like it was some noble stand while their own bodies fall apart from things they refuse to connect to the ongoing pandemic they pretend never mattered or even happened. Every casual conversation turns into this. The hate in their voices when they talk about the vaccinated. The discrimination they wear like a badge. The way they look at me like I am the crazy one for believing my own eyes and the science that keeps piling up. I cannot escape it. This is my life now. Surrounded by people who would rather die than admit they were wrong and who would rather watch the rest of us pay the price than ever say it out loud. I feel more misunderstood with every passing year, and the most unsettling part is not the loneliness and discrimination itself, but the certainty that it deepens from here… Not just for me, but for ALL of us. The horizon doesn’t brighten, it closes in. And in the end, that quiet, shared descent into darkness may be the ONLY thing that truly binds us all together.

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 Sequencing is done all over the world - at public health agencies including CDC, WHO, University Laboratories, Commercial and Private Labs. It's done domestically and internationally - all around the world!

@DannyTheZebra @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 Where is this done? What labs? Where are these results available?

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 But look! Nextstrain doesn't just track Covid

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 The best place to view the sequencing results is Nextstrain which helps show the full linage tracking. nextstrain.org/ncov/open/glob…

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 The results are available multiple places including the CDC. Scroll down to see the Nowcast chart. cdc.gov/covid/php/vari…

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 Other then the specific Delta PCR, almost all variant tracking is done via sequencing, which is why it's usually 2-3 weeks behind.

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 Again, absolutely no one is claiming that RT-PCR is used for determining variants. You just don't understand what you are saying. There's one exception, a specific PCR test was developed to identify one of the unique epitopes (small sequence of protein sequences) for Delta

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 gavi.org/vaccineswork/e…

@gelafontaine @DrIanWeissman @mryoung151 I mean, you *could* just do your own research to learn what is obvious and well documented, internationally over *decades* for many viruses, not just SARS-COV-2. You're the one who is 'just saying' things that doesn't make sense. cdc.gov/covid/php/vari…