Tzen posted:

you got me googling 'santa covid', time: 'past month' and,

lmao

quote:

My husband told me today that he wants a divorce because he no longer can handle being married to someone immunocompromised. I was diagnosed with autoimmune conditions 2 years ago that left me unable to work. I can do minor stuff around the house like cook us meals daily and clean up a bit but my energy maxes out after 2 hours of mild activity during the day, leaving me back in bed trying to catch my breath. We’ve been married for 9.5 years and I couldn’t have children due to my illnesses. In august my husband attended a large wedding and hung around his family who had Covid. He refused to properly isolate around me when he came back and I was infected within a few days. Now it’s been 3 months and Covid literally wrecked what little health I had left. Doctors said it may take months to a year for me to recover from post viral issues. My husband said today that he’s giving me an ultimatum, he said I have 3 months to somehow get better and healthy enough to carry a child or he’s divorcing me. I literally have nowhere to go and cannot work. He has all of our savings under his name. I don’t have money to hire a lawyer. What do I do? Will he have to pay me alimony? I got his the job he has now. He makes $70k a year. He also threatened to take my engagement ring back. Can he do this? We live in NY. I’m literally falling apart and shaking and don’t know what to do.

Steve Yun posted:

Wait till you try spaghetti in a sip mask

toggle posted:

just realised i can now eat in a sip valve + aura by stuffing pretzel sticks through the straw hole. this has completely changed my airplane masking skill set. i will see how this new discovery plays out in 2-3 days, but it was an exciting thing to work out and made the flight a lot more fun.

just an fyi for all of my sip valve brethren out there. pretzel sticks, get into it

Jyrraeth posted:

If you took all those people and compared them to the population of metro areas in Canada, you'd get 3rd or 4th place.

CGI Stardust posted:

candy cigarettes

Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:

would regular cigarettes work too? i have no idea what size those valves are. i realize smoking isn't exactly great for your health, but masks are uncool but smoking makes you cool, so in theory they should cancel out each other and allow a return to Normal while still maintaining covid protection

Woodsy Owl posted:

Scary poo poo. I think we did t have any evidence for transmission via eyeball and now we do.


A half-mask P100 alone hasn't been sufficient all along.

toggle posted:

just realised i can now eat in a sip valve + aura by stuffing pretzel sticks through the straw hole. this has completely changed my airplane masking skill set. i will see how this new discovery plays out in 2-3 days, but it was an exciting thing to work out and made the flight a lot more fun.

just an fyi for all of my sip valve brethren out there. pretzel sticks, get into it

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/07/health/children-covid-vaccination/index.html posted:

‘A vicious cycle’: Low Covid-19 vaccination rates lead to fewer doses at pediatric offices. Now, some parents can’t find it
(..)
During the Covid-19 public health emergency, coronavirus vaccines were purchased by the federal government and distributed to doctor’s offices. The only thing doctors had to worry about was how to store the vaccines, which require ultra-cold storage or refrigeration for up to a month.

Now, doctors must pay for the shots up-front, and low uptake of the updated vaccine has led some pediatricians to skip ordering it, sometimes making shots difficult for parents to find.

As of November 25, less than 3% of children 6 months to 4 years and 10% of children 12 to 17 have received the new shot, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And a weekly survey of parents by the agency finds that 44% say they definitely or probably will not get the shot for their children.

Dr. Jesse Hackell, who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Practice and Ambulatory Medicine, says that when the latest vaccine was released in September, “the people who really wanted it came in early, and they got it.”

But that trend has since petered out, leaving doctors who ordered several doses of the vaccine with no one to administer them to.

According to Hackell, 10 doses of the updated shot can cost doctors up to $1,300. He says many pediatricians are reluctant to buy doses and potentially be at a loss.

“If we give one dose and have to return nine, we’ll get credit for those, but you can only return it after they expire, which is like five months or a year down the line,” he says. “Pediatricians work on very small margins. That kind of time, that kind of money, is not something that we can do easily.”
(..)

Pingui posted:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-12-covid-persistence-sars-cov-lungs-role.html posted:

One to two weeks after contracting COVID, the SARS-CoV-2 virus generally becomes undetectable in the upper respiratory tract. But does that mean that it is no longer present in the body? To find out, a team from the Institut Pasteur specialized in HIV, in collaboration with a French public research institute, the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), conducted a study on lung cells in an animal model.

The results show not only that SARS-CoV-2 is found in the lungs of certain individuals for up to 18 months after infection but also that its persistence appears to be linked to a failure of innate immunity (the first line of defense against pathogens). This research was published in the journal Nature Immunology.

Some viruses persist in the body in a discreet and undetectable manner after causing an infection. They remain in what is known as 'viral reservoirs.' This is the case for HIV, which remains latent in certain immune cells and can reactivate at any time. It could also be the case for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.

At least, that is the hypothesis put forward by a team of scientists from the Institut Pasteur in 2021, and which has now been confirmed in a preclinical model of a non-human primate. "We observed that inflammation persisted for long periods in primates that had been infected by SARS-CoV-2. We, therefore, suspected that it could be due to the presence of the virus in the body," explains Michaela Müller-Trutwin, Head of the Institut Pasteur's HIV, Inflammation and Persistence Unit.

To study the persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, scientists at the Institut Pasteur, in collaboration with the CEA's IDMIT (Infectious Disease Models for Innovative Therapies) center, analyzed biological samples from animal models that had been infected by the virus. Initial results from the study indicate that viruses were found in the lungs of some individuals 6 to 18 months after infection, even though the virus was undetectable in the upper respiratory tract or blood.

Another finding was that the amount of persistent virus in the lungs was lower for the omicron strain than for the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. "We were really surprised to find viruses in certain immune cells—alveolar macrophages—after such a long period and when regular PCR tests were negative," points out Nicolas Huot, first author of the study and researcher in the Institut Pasteur's HIV, Inflammation, and Persistence Unit. "What's more, we cultured these viruses and were able to observe, using the tools we developed to study HIV, that they were still capable of replicating."

To understand the role of innate immunity in controlling these viral reservoirs, the scientists then turned their attention to NK (natural killer) cells. "The cellular response of innate immunity, which is the body's first line of defense, has been little studied in SARS-CoV-2 infections until now," says Michaela Müller-Trutwin. "Yet it has long been known that NK cells play an important role in controlling viral infections."

The study shows that in some animals, macrophages infected with SARS-CoV-2 become resistant to destruction by NK cells, while in others, NK cells are able to adapt to infection (known as adaptive NK cells) and destroy resistant cells; in this case, macrophages.

The study has, therefore, shed light on a mechanism that may explain the presence of 'viral reservoirs': while individuals with little or no long-term virus had adaptive NK cell production, individuals with higher levels of the virus had not only an absence of adaptive NK cells but also a reduction in NK cell activity.

Innate immunity, therefore, appears to play a role in the control of persistent SARS-CoV-2 viruses. "We will be embarking on a study of a cohort infected with SARS-CoV-2 at the start of the pandemic to find out whether the viral reservoirs and mechanisms identified are related to cases of long COVID. But the results here already represent an important step in understanding the nature of viral reservoirs and the mechanisms that regulate viral persistence," says Michaela Müller-Trutwin.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-12-08/u-s-covid-19-hospitalizations-rise-as-new-variant-spreads posted:

U.S. COVID-19 Hospitalizations Rise as New Variant Spreads
A new omicron subvariant, JN.1 – a sublineage of BA.2.86, or ‘pirola’ – was responsible for more than 1 in 5 new coronavirus infections in recent weeks, according to CDC estimates.

COVID-19 hospitalizations have been on the rise in the U.S. for the past month while a new coronavirus variant spreads.

Weekly COVID-19 hospitalizations increased more than 17% last week, with more than 22,500 new hospital admissions reported, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(..)

The CDC said in a report published Friday that COVID-19, flu and RSV activity are all elevated, but the agency added that hospital bed occupancy remains stable nationally.

“The amount of respiratory illness (fever plus cough or sore throat) causing people to seek healthcare is elevated or increasing across most areas of the country,” the CDC said.

When it comes to the coronavirus, emergency department visits are highest among infants and older adults, according to the agency.

The U.S. has recently seen the emergence of a new omicron subvariant called JN.1, which is a sublineage of BA.2.86, or “pirola.” According to CDC estimates, JN.1 was responsible for more than 21% of new infections in recent weeks.

The World Health Organization classifies JN.1 as a variant of interest given its large number of mutations. But it evaluates the public health risk of both BA.2.86 and JN.1 as low.

While vaccines are expected to work on both strains, only 16% of U.S. adults have rolled up their sleeves for the latest COVID-19 shot, according to national survey data.

Pingui posted:

News article on this study:

As a reminder it is a macaque study and the viral doses used were excessive (though from a purely statistical standpoint, I feel confident that quite a few people have been exposed to very high doses). It is nevertheless interesting and it is worth considering what this looks like in a) a human population, b) what it looks like past people trying to minimize exposure (in effect upping the dose, relative to earlier) and c) what bespoke direction viral lung reservoirs will take in humans after 18 months (contingent on being present).

"COVID-19: The persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in the lungs and the role of innate immunity"

quote:

Another finding was that the amount of persistent virus in the lungs was lower for the omicron strain than for the original SARS-CoV-2 strain.

https://time.com/6343427/does-covid-19-make-you-more-likely-to-get-sick/ posted:

Getting Sick All the Time? Don’t (Necessarily) Blame COVID-19

Respiratory disease season is in full swing, with influenza, RSV, and COVID-19 case counts rising in various parts of the U.S. Hospitals in some states are also reporting upticks in pediatric pneumonia diagnoses, which experts say seems to be unrelated to the recent spike of pneumonias reported in China.

On the heels of last year’s severe flu and RSV reason, all this contagion has some people wondering if SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may be to blame. Some studies suggest the virus leaves its mark on the immune system even after an acute illness passes, raising an important question: does having COVID-19 increase your risk of getting sick from other viruses in the future?

“Any time that we get an infection, it changes us,” says Dr. David Smith, chief of infectious diseases and global public health at UC San Diego Health. “It changes our B cells, which make antibodies, and it changes our T cells, which do cellular functions to clear out infections.”

Sometimes, these changes can be long-lasting. After a case of chickenpox, for example, the body typically builds lifelong immunity that prevents future bouts of the illness. But other viruses have more insidious effects. Measles essentially forces the body to re-learn how to fend off other infections, research shows, while HIV leaves people severely immunocompromised.

SARS-CoV-2 seems to fall somewhere between those two poles, though Smith emphasizes that research is ongoing. Reinfections are not only possible but common, ruling out the idea of widespread lifelong immunity—but there also isn’t currently evidence to suggest COVID-19 is causing population-wide immune deficiency, says Sheena Cruickshank, a professor of immunology at the University of Manchester in the U.K.

Some studies do, however, suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infections—particularly severe ones—can trigger changes to the immune system, including reductions in the number and performance of T cells; disruptions to B cells; deficiencies in dendritic cells, which regulate the immune response; and altered gene expression linked to increased inflammation. Some of these changes seem to last months after a serious case of COVID-19.

Scary as those findings sound, however, “you may see a gazillion changes, but you don’t know which of those changes may be relevant to future function,” says John Tsang, a professor of immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine. In other words: changes to specific immune cells don’t necessarily mean that the whole system, or even part of it, will stop working.

It’s normal for immune markers to “ebb and flow” after an infection, Cruickshank adds, and even changes that sound bad won’t necessarily have long-lasting implications. “Studies that have looked more long-term have shown that, for most people, the immune response bounces back to normal and restores,” Cruickshank says. In one study co-authored by Tsang, men who recovered from mild COVID-19 actually mounted stronger immune responses to flu vaccines than men who had never had COVID-19, which could be beneficial. (Tsang and his co-authors didn’t observe the same trend in women.)

There are exceptions, though. People who have severe cases of COVID-19 may experience lasting health problems, either from the virus itself or from certain drugs used to treat serious COVID-19, such as steroids and immune-system modulators, Smith says. Many scientists also think that chronic Long COVID symptoms could be a sign of immune dysfunction, and recent research suggests people with Long COVID are more likely to get reinfected by SARS-CoV-2 than people who fully recover.

For people who had mild cases and no long-lasting symptoms, though, Tsang says the scientific literature does not support the idea of widespread immunosuppression after COVID-19. So why does it seem that people are getting sick more often now than before the pandemic?

There’s always the chance that COVID-19 is causing immune changes that haven’t shown up in the research yet, says Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist who devoted a recent edition of her newsletter to COVID-19’s impact on the immune system. But she feels it’s likelier that people are simply more attuned to any respiratory symptoms they experience than they were a few years ago. [ed. this annoys me as it is entirely down to US surveillance being dog poo poo; this is evidently not true elsewhere as I can tell you straight away that the marked mortality increase in RSV cases in Denmark isn't down to being ~more attuned~]

It’s also possible, Tsang adds, that the same revved-up immune response that COVID-19 survivors in his study mounted in response to the flu vaccine leads some people to experience more severe symptoms of common illnesses. “We may feel a bit sicker because of the inflammatory response,” Tsang says, “but it’s not because our system now no longer responds to an infection.”

Several years of decreased exposure to pathogens due to masking and social distancing may also have changed disease-transmission patterns, Cruickshank says. Children who were born during the pandemic may not have been exposed to germs they typically would have encountered as babies, leaving them to catch those bugs for the first time as toddlers or young kids. And even adults who'd had multiple prior brushes with common cold or flu viruses may now be faced with new strains of those viruses, to which their bodies are less familiar, Cruickshank says.

None of this is to say that COVID-19 is harmless. It is still a leading cause of death in the U.S.; Long COVID remains a serious risk; and there’s evidence that even seemingly mild infections can affect the heart, brain, and other organs [ed. could this maybe possibly make people sicker, more often, entirely on its own do you think??]. Avoiding the SARS-CoV-2 virus is still the safest move for your health—regardless of how it affects your risk of getting sick in the future.

deadwing posted:

Mild!

Platystemon posted:

I went to /r/legaladvice to pull up the post about schools not letting kids walk to school.

This is on the front page: Husbands leaving me for becoming immunocompromised and getting long covid (self.legaladvice)

God willing, she gets all the alimony.


There is an unrelated second post on the front page about new parents in financial peril because their son had jaundice in his second day of life and they went to the “wrong” hospital as far as insurance is concerned.

Very normal world!

Tzen posted:

you got me googling 'santa covid', time: 'past month' and,

lmao

quote:

I have chronic fatigue from long covid and I wonder if anyone has any ideas about this:

The fatigue comes mostly from physical exertion, but it can also come from [edit: mental] exertion. If you do too much on a particular day, you can end up tired out for a week.

Normal stimulants might or might not help with the mental fatigue, but they make the physical fatigue worse by enabling and encouraging movement.

I wonder if a substance exists that helps with the mental fatigue without being true stimulant. Is this something better to ask over in r/nootropics?

I should probably experiment with modafinil first, as long as it doesn't encourage physical movement it might be helpful. Although studies show that alone it isn't, intentional energy management is essential for dealing with this disease - and maybe it could enable that.

RandomBlue posted:

we uh... killed some santas

NeonPunk posted:

Yikes. JN.1 looks to be the next biggest baddest one out there.

fosborb posted:

i have no idea what the implications of a 3mm reduction in retinal thickness, etc, are

Platystemon posted:

I went to /r/legaladvice to pull up the post about schools not letting kids walk to school.

This is on the front page: Husbands leaving me for becoming immunocompromised and getting long covid (self.legaladvice)

There is an unrelated second post on the front page about new parents in financial peril because their son had jaundice in his second day of life and they went to the “wrong” hospital as far as insurance is concerned.

Very normal world!

Cabbages and Kings posted:

these are from https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/article-abstract/417489




I believe "3mm" relates to where the measurement was taken as that is much thicker than any ocular tissue. Not an expert here, lol, and I am waiting patiently for bots to deliver the fulltext of the new article to me.

Pingui posted:

TIME posted:

Getting Sick All the Time?

Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:

good god, just how mild can it get? is there even a limit to this mildness?

Parity warning posted:

nope

Rescue Toaster posted:

It is such a weird contrast. I literally haven't had so much as a cold in over 4 years. I had a sore throat for a couple days that turned out to just be allergies. It's crazy.

RandomBlue posted:

we uh... killed some santas

Chamale posted:

Mall Santa remains the deadliest legal profession in the US by a wide margin, easily outstripping lumberjacks, teachers, and active duty military.