Coronavirus Pandemic

[PFVA]

On other news,around here officially one of the things that went up dramatically was the prescription of antidepressants. That was known already. One of the reasons why they decided to end the confinements besides the economy was the mental health. Lots of people weren't doing well with those.

[Cloudane]

Apparently Meatloaf would do anything for love, but he won't get jabbed or wear a mask. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

[Harlequin]

If you fast for long enough, you definitely won't be troubled by Long Covid any more.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/natura ... da-hazzard

[KlaxonCow]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... e-of-smell

Half of first-wave Covid cases may have lasting harm to sense of smell

Early findings in Swedish study show range of chronic olfactory problems in people infected in 2020
[...]
Nearly half of those who became ill with Covid in the first wave of infections may have long-term and even permanent changes to their sense of smell, according to preliminary research from Sweden.

A sudden loss of smell, or an impaired or distorted perception of odours, emerged as an unusual symptom of Covid early on in the pandemic. While many people swiftly recovered, others found that their sense of smell never quite returned to normal.

To find out how common the impairments might be, scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm ran comprehensive tests on 100 individuals who caught Covid in the first wave of infections that swept through Sweden in spring 2020.

Their early findings show that 18 months after recovering from Covid, very few people – only 4% – had lost their sense of smell entirely, but a third had a reduced ability to detect odours, and nearly half complained of parosmia, where the sense of smell is distorted. Most of those with a reduced sense of smell were unaware of it before they joined the study.

I did caution about this before, regarding the wisdom of "wild herd immunity" plans.

That we didn't know if Covid carries long-term and permanent consequences, and it seems that there's potentially at least one.

For 4% of people, their sense of smell has simply not returned at all. A third of such cases have had their sense of smell reduced, and a half of them have had it permanently distorted.

And these people are from the first wave, so we've had plenty of time for recovery, so there's a chance that this might be permanent and it never corrects itself.

Personally, I never had anosmia - at least to any degree that I noticed - during my bout of Long Covid, so I have perhaps been thankfully spared this problem.

But, like, Long Covid was definitely messing with my blood work and my brain - the brain fog, pins and needles, one bout of heart palpitations - so I have no idea if it's left any permanent scars. I was suffering it from many months, after all.

As I postulated, with the heart palpitations and other circulatory symptoms that come with Covid, does running on "bad blood" for so long leave permanent problems in its wake? Like, are we going to discover, decades from now, that more people die of heart conditions, because Covid actually weakened the heart? I mean, that's just an illustrative example and there's nothing, as yet, to suggest this. But just to give an example of something long-term and permanent that we simply don't know - and won't find out - for a good number of years to come.

The basic problem with the "just a little 'flu" mentality is that, simply, it's just not that. Never has been.

And the first evidence of that is here. People who suffered anosmia in the first wave aren't necessarily recovering from it. Whilst 4% is a small percentage, that's way too big a number when we're talking about the complete loss of one's sense of smell - possibly permanently. Half have some kind of distortion to their sense of smell.

This is a big problem, and it should not be casually dismissed, just because - yes - we're all tired of this shit and would wish it to end sooner. But reality is reality, and if it just won't, then it won't - and wishing otherwise doesn't help matters at all.

And the worry would be that this could just be the first of many longer term problems discovered.


And, again, the biggest problem with "herd immunity" plans is variants can too easily up-end it all in a heartbeat. Our "immunity wall" can be solid for the current strains, but then a variant emerges that's learnt how to dodge it all and walks straight through the "immunity wall" as if it's not even there. All the jabs, all the suffering - rendered meaningless by a few mutations and everyone can end up catching it all over again.

To a degree, that was the bad news of Omicron, as it pretty much did exactly that. The good news, though, was that it was less lethal (though not "non-lethal", as people have still been hospitalised and died).

So the worry is that a future variant also simply walks straight past our "immunity wall" - having learnt a "vaccine escape" trick or two - but proves to be more lethal. Imagine Omicron - how high the surge went - with the same deadliness as previous strains. It would have been a massacre. Exactly at the point where our "herd immunity" leaders were promising a normal Christmas. The fucking idiots.

[gilesgoat]

That we didn't know if Covid carries long-term and permanent consequences, and it seems that there's potentially at least one.

For 4% of people, their sense of smell has simply not returned at all. A third of such cases have had their sense of smell reduced, and a half of them have had it permanently distorted.

I got the feeling that my sense of smell could be still partially distorted .. and/or that I am noticing other smells I never noticed before.

Nothing "huge" but "you got the feeling that something is a bit different".

Tastes luckily all seems OK but I can DEFINITELY said "I had it lost for about 4 days or such" .. and was totally weird ..

[KlaxonCow]

I got the feeling that my sense of smell could be still partially distorted .. and/or that I am noticing other smells I never noticed before.

Let's hope that it's nothing permanent. Also for all these people in the study - maybe it does eventually come back, but 18-24 months is still "recovery".

But the problem here is that it's entirely possible that it does have permanent consequences. Nothing actually prevents that from being potentially true.

The thought to have is "but for the grace of god, go I" regarding those 4% of people for whom their sense of smell has gone completely, and it's possible that it'll never come back.

That's not a small thing - that's not "just a little 'flu" - to actually permanently lose one of your senses.

We do need to take this seriously. Cases do matter. An economy can - and will - recover, and we know we can keep it limping on. But the dead don't come back. So can we get these things seen from the correct perspective, with the right priorities?

[KlaxonCow]

Omicron has already mutated into what's dubbed "Omicron BA.2" or "Stealth Omicron":

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 99247.html

‘Stealth Omicron’: Everything we know about new ‘under investigation’ Covid-19 strain BA.2

It’s harder to detect than original Omicron and may be even faster at spreading but, say scientists, is probably no more dangerous
[...]
Health chiefs have revealed they are officially monitoring a new version of Covid-19 – which has been nicknamed “stealth Omicron”.

The UK Health Security Agency has marked BA.2 a “variant under investigation” – one level below a “variant of concern” – after early data suggested it may be both more transmissible and better able to evade vaccines than previous strains of the killer virus.

It is a sub-lineage of the original Omicron – BA.1 – but appears to have certain differences that may make it both faster at spreading and harder to detect.

According to the World Health Organisation, it is now probably outpacing the earlier strain with some 8,000 cases identified in more than 40 countries, including the US, India, Germany and Australia.

In the UK, some 426 cases have been detected since the new lineage was first designated in December.
[...]
The scientist, from Imperial College London, told the Daily Mail: “Very early observations from India and Denmark suggest there is no dramatic difference in severity.”

So, this sub-variant has even more transmissibility but it does not yet appear to be any more lethal than the original Omicron, on early data.

It's been dubbed "stealth Omicron" because, with the original Omicron, it lacked a spike gene that made it easy to detect that variant from Delta with PCR tests. But this new sub-variant doesn't have that, so more tests and gene sequencing is needed to discern this new sub-variant (and therefore the 426 cases found in the UK are probably only a fraction of the real number of cases, because there's no quick test for it and folks might think they have original Omicron ("BA.1") but it's actually "BA.2").

It's "a variant under investigation" and not a "variant of concern" yet, as there's not enough data to really know what's what. But it does seem to have even greater transmissibility than Omicron - which, of course, was already massively more transmissible than Delta and the original strain - and, unfortunately, signs that it has learnt some more "vaccine escape" tricks in the meantime.

So, yeah, triple jabbed? Might not be good enough for this new one (because, indeed, the high transmissibility - seen in Denmark, where it's now about 20% of cases there - suggests that it's not really bothered by our current "immunity wall", if it's reaching such numbers so rapidly).

The worry is that the Omicron surge could - thanks to this sub-variant, if it picks up and starts replacing the original Omicron - end up being a "double-bumped camel" sort of a wave.

[Cloudane]

I'm actually doing intermittent fasting myself, the 16/8 type where you have 16 hours fasting and an 8 hour eating window (generally, for me, an eating/drinking window of 6:30pm-2:30am but I don't tend to use the last hour or two during the week). Finding it absolutely fine, felt hungry for the first couple of days and then my rhythm adjusted. I'm trying to lose some excess weight and it's made calorie control MUCH easier than eating all day and trying to shave calories off various meals.

The point of course is you should still make sure you're getting the right nutrition and it should not be about starving yourself (and most certainly not listening to some kind of dogma that forces you to go down to 50lbs and die). And it's really not for everyone - all that's recommended to drink during the fasting window is water (I drink black unsweetened coffee, but no more than before starting it) and not everyone can tolerate that. It's a good excuse to say no to the office cake though. Oh and I can say, black coffee soon teaches you how terrible instant coffee is (inb4 Giles steps in to say that's obvious ) and is normally disguised by milk.

Checked on the NHS site, reasonable fasting is safe and healthy. Indeed many religions have practiced various forms of it often more severe since the year dot and it's not been a problem for them.
There's not enough evidence gathered yet for clinical recommendations, but basically at worst (assuming you don't go silly with it and can manage basic nutrition) it does no harm and makes calorie controlled weight loss easier to manage. At best it may help prevent or reduce issues like type 2 diabetes by lowering insulin levels and increasing insulin sensitivity, help prevent cancer and mitigate ageing through triggering autophagy etc. And indeed, maybe help if covid rears its ugly head. As I see it, if it does no harm and helps me in some provable way (weight loss) then the rest is a bonus that we are just awaiting a little more evidence for before making cast iron claims.

An indirect benefit is it's helping me to drink more water, which is always good for you. How's it helping? Well, drinking water keeps hunger pangs at bay - in fact, often you're actually just thirsty

[Dio]

For the last year or so I've been trying to extend the gap in which I don't eat to at least 12 hours most days and 16 a few times a week.

Mostly this has been through finding out that my body is muscle/cardio limited and can still go at pretty much full rate (165bpm for an hour) on an empty stomach, so on the days I go to the gym in the morning I skip breakfast. While that on its own doesn't make much difference to my weight, I think it does seem to come off a little more reliably when I get everything together, probably because I'm forcing my system to throttle up my fat metabolism (it can't have any choice when I'm doing 1200+ calories in an hour or so with no food in my system, there isn't that much glycogen in there).

[KlaxonCow]

Reading a Sky New article, they had an interactive map of Omicron infections:



I've taken a screenshot of this because, what jumped out at me, is that you can actually see, by the colours on the map, where the English / Welsh / Scottish borders are, just from the colours (also, that Northern Ireland really isn't doing well at the moment.)

And this is normalised to "infections per 100,000 people", so this isn't just because England has more people and bigger cities - the colours are relative to population size.

The one variable that we know is different is that Wales and Scotland kept masks and social distancing, while Boris declared "Freedom Day", and is again returning to "remove all restrictions" once more (while the devolved regions remain more cautious in gradually lifting things, as the actual numbers merit), as a nice popular distraction from all his rule-breaking and lying - to please Tory backbenchers that he needs to vote for him.

It's significant enough of a difference that you can actually directly see it, to be able to identify England's borders, solely by the colours on the map.

[rowan]

Whilst it is likely there is some correlation to policy, it would be wrong to assume all is.

this is normalised to "infections per 100,000 people", so this isn't just because England has more people and bigger cities - the colours are relative to population size.

Yes but still, 100000 people living in a city are going to have a lot more instances of social interaction than 100000 people spread out across the highlands.
Population size alone is a fairly rough attribute to normalise to for comparison.

[zip accident]

Whilst it is likely there is some correlation to policy, it would be wrong to assume all is.

this is normalised to "infections per 100,000 people", so this isn't just because England has more people and bigger cities - the colours are relative to population size.

Yes but still, 100000 people living in a city are going to have a lot more instances of social interaction than 100000 people spread out across the highlands.
Population size alone is a fairly rough attribute to normalise to for comparison.

This would make sense if cities were showing up as centres of infection, I can't see Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh or Glasgow as dots on that map (<edit> or for that matter London, which I previously assumed), and they're big enough that they should dominate their regions. On the other hand NI is mostly fields, and it's saturated.

[KlaxonCow]

Yes but still, 100000 people living in a city are going to have a lot more instances of social interaction than 100000 people spread out across the highlands.

Yes, and that's why, in Wales, the darkest patches are in South Wales, as that's where the population is concentrated.

But, like, that says that England should be more cautious, not less. More rural areas do, indeed, have a touch of "natural protection" to them for people being more spaced out.

I want you to look more closely at that map.

Look at the border with Wales, for example - is there really that much difference in "rural vs. urban" terms between either side of the Welsh Marches? Like, is Shropshire or Herefordshire full of bustling metropolises, compared to Powys next door? Look up to Scotland. Is Northumberland and Cumbria so vastly different to Dumfries and Galloway or the Scottish Borders?

Sure, if we were talking London versus mid-Wales, or Birmingham versus the Orkneys. But there's not some vast difference where, on one side of the Welsh Marches, it's fields and sheep, then the other side we've got the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Indeed, without suitable signage, you'd never know you're crossing a border.

The colours on the map are exactly cutting out the shape of Wales, England and Scotland. The perfect silhouettes.

Drakeford and Sturgeon have similar policies because they're following the scientific advice. Which all UK nations receive. But Drakeford's right to criticise Boris for deviating from that advice for political reasons. To please the Tory backbenchers, upon whom his survival as PM is likely to depend. To distract attention away from his birthday party, by telling people what they want to hear "it's all over" and not the actual truth.


The Zoe Covid Study has noted that Omicron has "bounced back":

https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/omicron-bounces-back

The numbers have gone up 10% since last week.

No, this is not disastrous yet. But Zoe are attributing this to kids going back to school and the rise of the sub-variant BA.2, and that the relaxing of restrictions does bring an uptick, but this is happening sooner than expected. BA.2 is even more transmissible than BA.1.

I get that folks want this to be over - of course they do - and so might be tempted by Boris's optimistic message. But this is one more instance where he's lying - like the "normal Christmas" he promised, like how restrictions would never be brought back after "Freedom Day", etc.

[zip accident]

Yes but still, 100000 people living in a city are going to have a lot more instances of social interaction than 100000 people spread out across the highlands.

Yes, and that's why, in Wales, the darkest patches are in South Wales, as that's where the population is concentrated.

No, that's bollocks.

London is lighter than the surrounding fields. Glasgow and Manchester are as light as the surrounding fields. It just isn't true by the data.

[Dio]

I think the argument that Scotland is doing better could have some merit with respect to Scotland, where clearly Glasgow and Edinburgh aren't showing any significant increase in rates, unlike Cardiff.

But it's hard to untangle from the more general data. As throughout the pandemic England clearly has large variations by region as infection ebbs and flows in different areas, and it's not totally implausible that Scotland could be just at the bottom of a lull right now.. Scotland has also had higher rates than the UK at many points in the pandemic and all-time infection rates are not broadly lower than the UK.

Overall, the performance in Scotland has not been perceived by my colleagues there as dramatically better than the UK, even though they seem to generally lean towards tighter restrictions than average.