Just the Facts, the Crown virus.

[doctorb]

If you hear a chuckle, it's the editor in me.  I certainly would love to have every investigation I have accepted for publication have control over all variables. It would be a dream world.  Especially on retrospective (looking in hindsight) studies like this one, it's simply impossible.  Can't go back and see just how many minutes of each meal these patients wore or didn't wear their masks.  They might not even know the type of mask they wore(clothversus paper, how many
ply, nose covered, etc.).  You can only gain from such studies what you can.  And here, indoor dining transmission was key.

[Sedgehammer]

Can someone link to how they proved where they caught it and how it was proven? Thanks

[Gary_C]

Ya, that's a utopia that doesn't exist. However I wonder how long it's going to take before some researcher splices a gene into this virus that makes it fluoresce and watches to see how it is transmitted. Sounds like science fiction but I would never be a doubter in these days. 

[Ianab]

Can someone link to how they proved where they caught it and how it was proven? Thanks

It's not a "proof" because they haven't been able to trace individual cases / transmissions. 
All the study suggests is that people who had been to bars / churches / restaurants had a higher incidence of Covid-19 than people who hadn't visited those places. Visits to Supermarkets, Drs surgeries, and (workplaces with control measures in place) showed no meaningful difference, so those are likely not common transmission points. 
It's not a study of HOW the virus gets transmitted from person to person (there will be other boffins working on that), and they didn't trace who they got it from, just a statistical likelihood of where.
It just points out WHERE it's more commonly transmitted.  And I tend to agree with those findings because locally individual cases and contacts are traced, down to the level of running genetics checks on the virus to track the various mutations. So they can say for certain the Person B, C & D were infected by Person A, and the only time they had contact was a week ago at Venue X 
It takes a lot of the unknowns away, and points to ways of limiting the virus without completely shutting down the economy. 

[Sedgehammer]

So then it's conjecture. Here i thought the way it was being explained that a lot was left out because of 'proof'. Got it. Thanks

[doc henderson]

In the early days they were able to do contact tracing, and some even did dna mapping I think,  now it is too widespread.  the person who brought it into a nursing home, was prob. a caregiver who got it outside, and then passed pills or did vitals.  they would watch and quarantine the contacts.  but we have homes with 75% + rates.  the prison has a big outbreak, and we got 4 from there today, several intubated ect.  So stay out of prison, meat packing plants,  and nursing homes if you can help it!  

[doc henderson]

It is hard to look at a snapshot and figure out the whole movie.  we (the scientific community) have figured out a ton in the 6 to 8 months we have dealt with it.  Some people think we put blood in a machine and it tells us everything.  It only runs the tests that exist and that we order, to attempt to confirm an already suspected dx.  This could have been so much worse.  In 10 years we will no so much more.

[Ianab]

So then it's conjecture.

Slightly better than that. It's a statistical correlation. 


Conjecture is suggesting you simply THINK it's more likely  people catch the virus in a Bar. This says that people that went to bars DID catch the virus more often than people that didn't. 


Here in NZ we KNOW bars (or any other large social gathering) are a good transmission venue because a large transmission cluster was centred around one night out at one particular bar. And the contact tracing / genetic tests show that was the common link to all the early patients in that outbreak.


Exact mechanisms of infection would also be nice to know too, but we know viruses in general can be transmitted by direct contact, breath droplets or surface transfer (like the common cold corona virus is). The control measures to reduce those types of spread are impractical to implement in a crowded bar or busy restaurant, which suggests an explanation for the increased infections. 

[kantuckid]

On the subject of airborne vs. surfaces or food when eating out- If we are to have concerns such as that, I'd rather not eat there anyway!
 Properly done the surfaces have been cleaned well between users and the prep people get health tested and don't pick their nose while they cook for us. From what I read, covid is as easily cleaned from a surface as is most other germ/bacterial cooties.  
Yesterday at my health dept, getting a seasonal flu shot, The nurse conversationally asked me if I'd get a covid-19 vaccine shot as soon as they were available? I said certainly after they were issued to the public. She then said she'd wait until others had done them, then if all seemed OK, she'd do it at that point. 
My private thought was why would I wait? I might not be a 100% person on trusting the government but I'd rather live than die. Sometimes we should roll the dice if no red flags are about. 
On past vaccines- I was in Jr High School when the Salk Polio vaccine came available. We were told to line up in the hall way and got a sugar cube of the good stuff. It's possible my Mom might have been taken a permission slip, but not something I remember. On the TV news I saw a recent discussion that many people were reluctant back then to do the polio vaccine, maybe so but I doubt it? We had classmates who'd died or were crippled by polio so I think most people took that vaccine really serious back then. 
The new seasonal vaccines were quite another story as they often gave you the flu. I got my 1st civilian style and voluntarily and then immediately got a bad flu. The second one ala 1964 @ Ft Leonard Wood, MO and the Army "volunteered" me to get it or else. Yep, I got the flu again and came close to recycling my training and was nearly ready to graduate, plus I was playing baseball for the post team and had to quit that too. It did keep me away from the seasonal vaccine until I felt assured it was improved some years later.
There have always been reticent people for medical things and of course plentiful demos of the Bell Curve in all generations. :D

[doc henderson]

it is easier to refuse a vaccine when the disease is not prevalent.  I had the small pox vaccine, that is not needed anymore.  we have come a long ways and have gained experience by having to make a new vaccine every year for influenza.  they try to predict the most likely type based what is happening in the rest of the world.  A virus is a packet of dna or rna.  it is not live.  a vaccine is an attenuated virus (altered or missing stuff it needs to cause serious disease)  It is used to make your body have a response via the immune system, but cannot replicate and produce severe disease.  the symptoms we have from a viral infection like a cold, is from our body's immune system.  it uses what we call inflammation to kill the infected cells and stop a virus.    we make antibodies and have t cells, some with long memories that stand ready to fight the next time.  many viruses we only get once.  if they mutate wildly, then you need a new vaccine each year, or get the actual virus each year.  with chicken pox. you get it once, and a mom used to take her kids to the house of a kid with it, to get it young and get it over with.  you can get shingles later in life (when the immunity fades a bit) but it is not the same disease or symptoms.  so here we are.  maybe better to just get it over with, vs mitigate so the hospitals do not need to lock doors, or have national guard troops blocking doors. this could have been so much worse.

[doc henderson]

most viruses need a mucus membrane like inside your mouth or nose, or an eyeball.  Most can live  awhile on a surface.  most would be made inactive by heat or solvents like alcohol that destroy the finer structures of proteins.  so if you touch a surface, you prob. need to rub you eye, or poss. use you hands to put something in your mouth. if you swallowed all the virus it would be killed in your stomach by acid.  but if they stay on your cheek, they can be incorporated into cells and start replicating.  to go from 1 virus to a million, takes time and that is why you may not have symptoms for 11 days.  if you a have a big viral load exposure, prob. get symptoms sooner.  It takes your body time to realize you have a foreign invader and do something about it.  most symptoms like fever, runny nose, muscle aches, sob from pneumonitis, are all from inflammation from your own immune system.   so some symptoms after a vaccine indicates a good immune response.  if you have cancer and are on chemo (immuno-suppressant)  you may not have many symptoms, and may not have as big a fever.  this is why ibuprofen helps symptoms as an anti-inflammatory.

[customsawyer]

So my question is, if you've had the virus do you then have the antibodies so you won't catch it again?

[Don P]

Kind of off topic but kantuckid's and Doc's comments brought it to mind.
When europeans arrived we brought with us a novel virus to this continent, smallpox. When Lewis and Clark started their voyage of discovery Jefferson had them take a crude new cowpox vaccine to hopefully innoculate the tribes they encountered along their way. Unfortunately the vaccine was ruined before they left St Louis so they weren't able to vaccinate. By the time a vaccine was available it was mistrusted by them and with a change in government policy towards them largely withheld. Within 35 years of the Mandan graciously hosting the explorers 90% of that tribe had been wiped out by the infection from subsequent exposure to the virus. The story was the same for all the Native Americans. If a vaccine is available it is much better than that early crude but effective one was. Those who were vaccinated, including the president, survived.

The conspiracy theory part of me wonders who benefits if we are convinced to mistrust a vaccine.

[Sedgehammer]

So my question is, if you've had the virus do you then have the antibodies so you won't catch it again?

so far yes, just unknown how long they last. there are a few people to have contracted it twice, but that is extremely rare thus far.

[doc henderson]

again we will know in 10 years which vaccine confers protective, and long lasting immunity.  I hope it is a one and done.  the length of our immunity may relate to the disease severity.  so an antiviral medication that stops the entry into the cell, may blunt any immune response we derive, making it potentially weaker and or shorter lived.  this is how rhogam works, by taking out any foreign RBCs during pregnancy, so you do not develop antibodies in response, and threaten a future pregnancy/fetuses.  this virus elicits a complex immune response with both short and longer term host response/complications.  

[doc henderson]

each vaccine may have better or worse responses, depending on what antigens (parts that look like the virus) they use ect.  some may have side effects like Gillian Barret or transverse myelitis.  vaccines all have some potential harm, but is generally far outweighed by the benefits.  or we would not use it.  the rush on this is the concern, in the the roll out to the public may be where we uncover unforeseen complications.  many of the "complications"  sited by the anti-vaccine folks, occur at the same rate in vaccinated and non-vaccinated people.  so had we had a vaccine, and it would have killed or damaged 200 people, it would be better to have saved 210,000 folks as an example.

[doc henderson]

@customsawyer we think the antibodies are protective, since we can take plasma from a post infected person, and use it to treat a newly infected person.  no one knows how long it lasts.  and if you were just barely sick, and given the antibody treatment, your own body may not mount a good response and therefore not protect you in the future.  your body should continue to make the antibody if you had the disease, and hopefully from the "mock" disease produced by a vaccine.  antibodies given by someone elses plasma prob. only last for days.  A tetanus shot takes time to develop an immune response.  so the booster you get with a wound it for down the road.  if you had not been immunized for 10 years prior to an injury, you get the booster, but you also get a shot of pre made antibody.  we usually have memory cells that wait for the next time we see the disease.  some viruses mutate enough, that we start over each year.  Rabies is an example of a disease that we would not have the opportunity to get a second time.  anti-venom is another example of a medication to stop the effects of deadly snake venom.  most medications that the name ends in ab, is usually and antibody made or collected to combat a disease.

[Gary_C]

With all this recent talk of herd immunity and antibodies there is another type of immunity that is recently receiving attention and may explain why people have different immune responses to Covid-19. It's called T-cell immunity and there is growing evidence that some people may acquire some long lasting Covid-19 immunity from previous exposure to other coronavirus. (SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the virus that causes the Covid-19 infection)
Immune T Cells May Offer Lasting Protection Against COVID-19

SARS-CoV-2 belongs to a large family of coronaviruses, six of which were previously known to infect humans. Four of them are responsible for the common cold. The other two are more dangerous: SARS-CoV-1, the virus responsible for the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which ended in 2004; and MERS-CoV, the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012.
All six previously known coronaviruses spark production of both antibodies and memory T cells. In addition, studies of immunity to SARS-CoV-1 have shown that T cells stick around for many years longer than acquired antibodies. So, Bertoletti's team set out to gain a better understanding of T cell immunity against the novel coronavirus.
Finally, Bertoletti's team looked for such T cells in blood samples from 37 healthy individuals with no history of either COVID-19 or SARS. To their surprise, more than half had T cells that recognize one or more of the SARS-CoV-2 proteins under study here. It's still not clear if this acquired immunity stems from previous infection with coronaviruses that cause the common cold or perhaps from exposure to other as-yet unknown coronaviruses. 

Scientist have generally believed there was no cross immunity with virus  but that belief may be proved wrong. If you want to read more, there is the link and in the link I posted there is a link to the article that was posted in Nature magazine. 

[Hilltop366]

I was listening to a CBC radio science show this past Thursday about the use of chemical flame retardant that is/was used on fires and on products such as clothes and furniture and it's effect on the immune system.

Reachers found that there seemed to be a direct relation of the amount of these chemicals found in a persons blood and the level of immune response. They would give a person a vaccine and then test their blood for antibodies over a period of time, the normal response would be a graph line of a sharp increase of antibodies followed by gradual decline but as the amount of flame retardant in a persons blood increased the level of antibodies decreased resulting in a flatter graph showing a lower initial response and quicker decline.

This was also mentioned as another possible reason for strikingly different response to a corona19  infection from one seemingly healthy person to the next as well as different levels of immunity post infection.

[doc henderson]

It may be why children, who get about 100 first time viral infection in the first 5 years of life, do better with this infection.  being in the same family, there will be like antigens as well as others that are differant.  all we care about is the immune system gets alerted and takes out the virus, and or infected cells.  people get colds later in life and boost the immunity they developed as children.  it is why many pediatricians feel they are super immune,  good looking, and smell nice!  

[Don P]

Yaay, my clients tested negative. Masks off in the house, I can go downstairs and have dinner with my bride tonite.

[Raider Bill]

@Sedgehammer and @Raider Bill, A place to pump gas and go in and get coffee and munchies. Been calling them gas bars for 40 years in Canada. :D

Guess that's easier to say than convenience store. :D :D

[Sedgehammer]

My mom died Friday afternoon, not from covid. She was 80. Smoked a lot till about 8 years ago, Had a triple by-pass 7, never felt right afterwards. The funeral home is telling us the state (wi) is telling them that they can't have a funeral, as there's a local outbreak, but of course when pressed on numbers, they won't say.

[doc henderson]

Very sorry to hear that Sedge.

[Sedgehammer]

Thanks Doc. We knew it was coming, but at least we don't think she suffered. My brother in law came home from work and he found her slumped over in her chair. Tried CPR and called 911, but she had gone already.