COVID-19 (2): Turns out it's going to be pretty bad actually

Story on local news about 22 deaths at one NJ nursing home

It’s not far from you - 83rd and Metcalf or so.

I don’t think so.

I mean it sucks in that if a vaccine isn’t possible or too short lived that this will go on until it makes it’s rounds. Which means a high death rate because it’s going to kill at the current rate (1% maybe?) across a large percent of the earths population. But most likely for people who have had it, there will be immune system “memory” of some sort so that subsequent infections will likely be fought off more easily and eventually this just becomes another seasonal cold virus.

And maybe we find some treatments so that it’s not so deadly even the first time through.

All of the patients had recently recovered from mild symptoms of the disease and most of those with low antibody levels were young. The researchers excluded patients who had been admitted to intensive care units because many of them already had antibodies from donated blood plasma.

So not great obviously, but if it’s only the mild cases exhibiting this, maybe (hopefully) it’s just a situation where some people will have to get it twice before they build up the antibodies. Still terrible for herd immunity though.

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I think everywhere with an outbreak has implemented at least some degree of preventative measures, though. Would want an epidemiologist’s opinion or failing that, at least a statistician’s, but I think this might not have gone on long enough for that to become clear.

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The motor lodge is gone. I’m not sure if there are still any signs up indicating the name of the neighborhood. Both were still there when I was a kid and still lived in KC until the mid-90s.

It appears the White Haven has been whitewashed.

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There are new vaccine strategies all the time. I can personally attest that the adjuvant in the new shingles vaccine pissed off my immune system. Felt like crap for two days, both doses but should be with the trade off of great immunity. Good summary here:

Would be interesting if low infection= weak sickness but also weak immunity. Hopefully reinfection provoked a stronger immune memory but still helps to keep it from being too serious. (All speculation on my part)

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https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1247683043097112577

I’m so tired.

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I don’t know enough immunology to know this, but an alternative hypothesis might be that the low level antibodies happen to be more efficacious than those in people with higher levels? Not everybody’s antibodies are the same. Your cells do shitloads of random mutation that would be horrifying for your longevity in any other context, but they are just scanning a large protein space looking at quasi random for anything that literally sticks to the antigen in question. If they find something, it gets logged and maintained. Really, really sticky antibodies should be more effective at lower levels than mediocre ones, but perhaps it just isn’t normal for people to produce something like the minimum number of antibodies to get the job done?

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https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1247607265978449925

You’d think the Honey Monster would resign and Dominic Cumrag would just quietly go away, butnah. Knighthoods, probably.

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Oh hey the Chernobyl exclusion zone is on fire. Good good good.

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Didn’t know you were old. Couldn’t really get past the 4th sentence. So sorry. It’s painful to just hear about that happening.

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Fun fact: “Chernobyl” means “Wormwood”, which is the name of the star prophesied in Revelation to fall to Earth and turn one third of the seas to blood!

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Yep. Somehow it will simultaneously true the libs caused us to overreact, and Trump saved a million lives.

just amazing

It would probably be bad for the other 6 billion people too.

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I do remember reading some things to the effect that the virus kind of sneaks into your lungs and by the time your immune system really realizes what is going on the virus has attached to your ace-2 receptors (or w/e) and replicated itself all over the place.

Like a retail chain gobbled up by private equity, stripped for parts, and left to die, your infected cells spew out virus particles until they burn themselves out and expire. As fragments of disintegrated cells spread through your bloodstream, your immune system finally senses that something is wrong. White blood cells detect the fragments of dead cells and release chemicals called cytokines that serve as an alarm signal, activating other parts of the immune system to swing into action. When responding immune cells identify a cell that has become infected, they attack and destroy it. Within your body, a microscopic Battle of the Somme is raging with your immune system leveling its Big Berthas on both the enemy trenches and its own troops. As the carnage mounts, the body’s temperature rises and the infected area becomes inflamed.

Could make sense that for people with mild cases, their existing defenses fought it off before getting to that point. Could also explain why old people had higher levels of antibodies.

Also as mentioned in the article - the population to begin with was self-selected for being mild cases - since a lot fo the severe cases got antibody plasma. So maybe it’s more like 1/6th of the full population of people who got sick.

Although that could suggest that asymptomatic people never develop anitbodies - which would suuuuuuck. Tons of Typhoid Marys running around.

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It turns a third of the waters bitter, rather than to blood.

I looked into this once. The Greek word translated as Wormwood is apsinthos (thought to mean simply “bitter”, and some Bibles translate the word as “Bitterness”) and chornobyl is the Ukranian word for mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) rather than wormwood (Artemisia absinthium). It is pretty close though.

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