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Coronavirus

scaramanga said:
That's how antibodies always work - there have been a few taking advantage of the publicity a report on declining antibodies creates but it's not news and it shouldn't be scary.

I detail how the body deals with fighting a virus earlier in this thread and it's the best way it's been explained to me. Think of a virus as a particular type of enemy tank for which we have no useful method of attack. Once we encounter it, we develop a new type of shell that can destroy the tank and start manufacturing them in large quantities. We win the war and the tanks go away. Over time, we allow the supply of shells (antibodies) to decline as we don't want all of our munitions dumps full of shells we're not using. We do, however keep the machines and moulds (B cells) for quickly remaking a supply of those shells should we ever spot that type of tank on the horizon.

A test for antibodies doesn't really tell us much - antibodies decline over time as otherwise (again, explained to me by someone who does this for a living) our blood would just be a gloop of antibodies. Testing for the B and T cells will tell us much more - that's what makes us immune over the longer term, and there's no good reason to think this virus is any different.

I'd like to be clear, I'm very much in support of mass vaccination - it's absolutely vital the the health of any population to have a strong vaccination programme in place. In the absence of vaccinations, "natural" immunity (quoted because vaccinated immunity is also natural) is the only other form of long term protection.
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DTA said:
That is a good way to explain it. What would you say is the reason for the few cases of re-infection?
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People really do need to understand what @scaramanga points out regarding immunity. I'm surprised this far along this hasn't been communicated or individuals haven't picked up on it themselves.

Millions have had the infection and you hope the low re-infection rate is because immunity is strong (I think someone linked to research into lasting immunity from SARS)

Adding to Scaras point about re-infection, we'd need to know the method used to confirm the first infection as some have been noted to be unreliable ie false positive.
 
djp82 said:
These sorts of treatment are equally if not more important than vaccine. I hope more company’s are trying to develop therapeutics moving forward. As we see with flu , even after elderly get the jab they can still get flu so I’m assuming Covid will be the same/Similar.

So the more tools we have to treat it the better.
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Flu jabs are created each year with what you c.ould call 'educated guesswork' , trying to predict the prevalent strains. Quite simply an old person might catch a strain that wasn't in that years jab or a new strain that has 'drifted' .

There is less problem with Covid as the drift is slow and the jab this time round might not need re-doing every year BUT that will depend on the depth of immune response...and only time will tell.
 
attending a funeral over Zoom, watching just 2 people allowed to the crematorium to pay respects whilst speaking through full PPE, Mask, Visor... it's not a way to go for anyone. So many people deserve better than to die alone without their loved ones, and then without their loved ones to even grieve appropriately by seeing them off...
 
ricky2tricky4city said:
Flu jabs are created each year with what you c.ould call 'educated guesswork' , trying to predict the prevalent strains. Quite simply an old person might catch a strain that wasn't in that years jab or a new strain that has 'drifted' .

There is less problem with Covid as the drift is slow and the jab this time round might not need re-doing every year BUT that will depend on the depth of immune response...and only time will tell.
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This is it , as much as a vaccine roll out is positive. We don’t know if it will be or how effective yet .
 
Danishfurniturelover said:
After a PM by someone I came into this thread after giving it a wide berth for a bit. Yep the vaccines is the one area we appear to be doing well at at the moment.

Also all the posters that criticised Trump for calling this the Chinese virus will they do the same to Merkel for calling this the English virus now.

I get some on here are tinkled that the tories are in power. I did not vote for them and wont next time out either. But I truly believe the is such blind hatred of them that people lose all sense of perspective.

You see something similar in America where presumably racism has disappeared like it did when the previous democratic president was in power.
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It’s a reasonable point on the face of it.

I think a main difference would be that Chinese Americans faced racist abuse in the States after Trump called it that.

I’d guess the race element between Germans and Brits is largely removed.
 
Diamond Lights said:
attending a funeral over Zoom, watching just 2 people allowed to the crematorium to pay respects whilst speaking through full PPE, Mask, Visor... it's not a way to go for anyone. So many people deserve better than to die alone without their loved ones, and then without their loved ones to even grieve appropriately by seeing them off...
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I’m sorry to hear that. v tough times.

May I ask, was this in the UK? Have the funeral rules been changed? It was still 30 people last time I checked.
 
Diamond Lights said:
attending a funeral over Zoom, watching just 2 people allowed to the crematorium to pay respects whilst speaking through full PPE, Mask, Visor... it's not a way to go for anyone. So many people deserve better than to die alone without their loved ones, and then without their loved ones to even grieve appropriately by seeing them off...
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That's awful.
I hope your wife is Ok (assuming this was her relative's funeral?).
 
Diamond Lights said:
as i keep saying, we won't simply go back to normality once we've vaccinated the old biddies in February or March, or even a little later:

Reported now Sir Simon Stevens, NHS England Chief Exec: It’s worth remembering that this affects all ages - a quarter of the Covid admissions to hospital right now are for people aged under 55.
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Do you mind!!! lol....here in Wales im hoping ill get my jab in late February/March,then hopefully the only people allowed at Wembley in April be the ones who've had the jab......kid free final....happy days !!!!
 
a spur from swansea said:
Do you mind!!! lol....here in Wales im hoping ill get my jab in late February/March,then hopefully the only people allowed at Wembley in April be the ones who've had the jab......kid free final....happy days !!!!
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I hate to be a party-pooper but the vaccine alone has no chance of getting us out of this. And anyone expecting aything approaching normality before midsummer (at the very earliest) is probably going to be very disappointed.
 
Mikey10 said:
I hate to be a party-pooper but the vaccine alone has no chance of getting us out of this. And anyone expecting aything approaching normality before midsummer (at the very earliest) is probably going to be very disappointed.
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What else is there other than the vaccine?
 
Hotshot-Tottenham said:
I’m sorry to hear that. v tough times.

May I ask, was this in the UK? Have the funeral rules been changed? It was still 30 people last time I checked.
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This was in South Africa. Had COVID not been here we would have 100% flown in. Just a sad state of affairs though, loved ones passing in the hospital on their own.
Glenda's Legs said:
That's awful.
I hope your wife is Ok (assuming this was her relative's funeral?).
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Thans Glenda, yes it was. Her cousin has developed pneumonia but now has an ICU bed so fingers crossed can recover, not sure the family can handle something happening to him following her aunt.
 
scaramanga said:
How does that get us out of it?
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in conjunction with a vaccine, it might.

There are going to be a lot of people around without vaccinations for a relatively long time. How long does the vaccine last? Who knows. How long does natural immunity last? Who knows? The virus will continue to circulate. There will be outbreaks, and new strains. We will need to contain and squash those outbreaks (a la NZ, China, Taiwan etc) for some time to come, I’d imagine.
 
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