With deaths lagging cases, a lot of those deaths would still be delta, right?
The study found that the infection first appears in the throat and that infectious virus peaks about five days into infection, by which point the nose has a much higher viral load than the throat. The study also suggested that lateral flow tests are a reassuringly reliable indicator of whether infectious virus is present. Swabbing the nose and throat makes it more likely to detect infections during the first few days, the work suggests.
Intriguingly, some of those who did not meet the threshold for being infected also had very low levels of virus detectable in their noses and throats, suggesting that they may have experienced a very short-lived infection that was seen off by immune activity in the lining of the nose and throat.
The study also revealed that of the 18 people who became infected, all had similar viral loads regardless of whether they developed symptoms, underlining the role of asymptomatic transmission.
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Interesting, but how the hell did that get past ethical review? Human challenge trial on 39 unvaxxed makes me super uneasy.
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The study was carried out using a strain of the virus before the Alpha, Delta and Omicron variants emerged.
Maybe it wasn’t a VOI or a VOC - hope they got paid decent money though, eh!
A little more from Reuters…
A trial that deliberately infected people with Covid was found to be safe in healthy young adults, one of the companies running the study said.
The project – run by Open Orphan with Imperial College London , the UK government vaccine taskforce and hVIVO – was the world’s first human challenge trial in which volunteers were deliberately exposed to Covid.
Reuters reports the details:
The data supports the safety of this model which could theoretically provide a “plug and play” platform for testing therapies and vaccines using the original Covid-19 strain as well as variants of the virus, Open Orphan, which carried out the study, said in a statement.
The trial infected 36 healthy male and female volunteers aged 18- to 29 years with the original Sars-CoV-2 strain of the virus and closely monitored them in a controlled quarantined setting. They will be followed up for 12 months after discharge from the quarantine facility.
No serious adverse events occurred, and the human challenge study model was shown to be safe and well tolerated in healthy young adults, the company said.
In other news…
Covid level stops falling in the UK
Covid infections have stopped falling in the UK , with levels holding steady or climbing, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
“As a mom of two kids under five, I’m extremely excited. But as an epidemiologist and public health member, I have a ton of questions,” said Katelyn Jetelina, an infectious disease epidemiologist with UTHealth School of Public Health in Dallas.
Chief among them: “Did they move the sidebars?” She noted that researchers could change what they are examining in the trial — looking at T cell responses or cases and hospitalizations, for instance, instead of neutralizing antibodies.
If regulators are looking at real-world numbers on cases and hospitalizations among the vaccinated and unvaccinated children, she asked, “Do they have enough data?” The clinical trial wasn’t designed to examine these questions, she noted, and there might not be enough participants in the trial to understand the vaccines’ efficacy in those settings.
Should be pointed out the FDA will almost certainly explore all of this. Their hearings on vaxxes have been very thorough so far and far from rubber stamp events.
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Looks like it goes to the end of January so it would seem to mostly Omicron in the back half? It’s the NYT data.
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Find me a woman who can talk to the spirits of the dead. I’ll go to her and find out what’s going to happen.
Samuel 28:7
South African cases have plateaued too, well above pre delta and pre omicron levels. Not ideal, will have to see if this is the Ba.2 wave kicking in, sort of normal course Omicron levels with reinfection vulnerability, or something else. I feel less good about hot vax Spring than I did a week ago.
Deaths never hit prior peaks there at least.
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BBC just released their report on the deliberate infections study
Doesn’t seem to add much but TIL about ‘challenge’ studies and now wonder how much the average dude ‘propels’ out of his / her nose
Each of the volunteers, aged 18-30, had an identical dose of Covid - equivalent to the amount in a single droplet propelled out of somebody’s nose during the peak of their Covid infection - squirted up their nose.
But only half of them became infected.
The three paragraphs you chose to share are a misrepresentation of a ~50 paragraph article that spends only those three paragraphs questioning the approval process and whether these vaccines should be approved for this age group. These three paragraphs represent a view that is scientifically dubious, because it ignores certain facts.
We know the vaccines are safe for kids this age, because there have been phased trials. We know the side effects of the vaccine are way less significant than the effects of covid itself, yes, even on kids.
That is why they are poorly chosen to excerpt and present as the most important or interesting part of the article. Here are three better ones:
Children under five, the last group of Americans still ineligible for vaccines against Covid-19, may soon receive emergency authorization for the shots, but getting all children vaccinated remains a serious challenge in the US.
Pfizer and its German pharmaceutical partner BioNTech announced on Tuesday that they were requesting emergency-use authorization of their vaccine for children aged six months to four years.
The application was submitted at the request of the US Food and Drug Administration, the companies said in a statement – an unusual move by the regulator.
Why did you choose the three you chose?
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Symptoms were mild but some volunteers had a prolonged loss of their sense of smell.
The main finding - that it was safe to perform challenge trials - opens up new avenues of research.
Seriously, what are we doing here.
I mean, there are plenty of people trying to catch it on purpose and having COVID parties. We might as well learn something from their stupidity, and help them accomplish their goal of getting sick. Win-win, right?
I don’t know if you heard, but the original Wuhan strain killed a shitload of people, too.
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Yes, I heard this. I seem to remember posting the odd graph or two. What is the point you are trying to make? Were there many 18-25yr old killed?
Open Orphan (ORPH.L) is running the project, launched last February, with Imperial College London, Britain’s vaccines task force and Orphan’s clinical company hVIVO. read more
Scientists have used human challenge trials for decades to learn more about diseases such as malaria, flu, typhoid and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines against them.
Was Wuhan around in Feb 2021?
Next week should be pretty telling for what’s going on. It does appear that cases are rising in areas with the most BA.2 though, including Guateng which was hard hit by BA.1. So that’s not a great sign.
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You answered a guy pointing out the enormous ethical issues of the study with “Maybe it wasn’t a variant of concern,” as if that would make the study less problematic. That only makes sense as a response if the early strain wasn’t itself a deadly and highly contagious virus.
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Seems like maybe we shouldn’t be deliberately infecting people with strange new diseases.
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The clinical trial was carried out in Feb '21. Clinical trials have been carried out for decades, apparently.
May be there are ethical implications - it is not my trial. Trial was supported by the UK gov, so I’m good with that.
Again, stop this shit.