A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

@augieray

"CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) are preferred immune cells for targeting cancer."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30520029/

"A dysfunctional state of the T cell arises when the host is challenged with a persistent viral infection, which is known as T cell exhaustion."

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/vim.2022.0002

"Notably, T-cells are dysregulated in severe COVID-19 patients...
...
"Severe COVID-19 patients show the reduction of all lymphocyte subsets including CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells, NK cells, and B cells..."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7648511/

From before the pandemic, even.

"CD8 T-cell exhaustion has been argued to be an evolutionary adaptation to prevent immunopathology. To test this argument, we repeated our calculations in the absence of exhaustion. In contrast to the maximum seen above, we found that pathology now monotonically increased with viral inoculum and effector pool sizes, demonstrating that exhaustion curtails pathology associated with high viremia and enables host survival. The price, however, is viral persistence."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1902178116

"From what is discussed above, it can be concluded that the infiltration and activity of CD8+ T cells can be used as a biomarker of response in cancer patients with SARS-CoV-2-induced diseases, and their dysfunctionality is a dominant reason for a more severe condition. Persistent infection and sustained stimulation are factors associated with the exhaustive state in CD8+ T cells."

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.864298/full

People have been warning us for 3 years that cancers would *eventually* become more frequent when T cells couldn't destroy early stage cancer cells as effectively anymore, and that the progression and mortality of cancers would go up. They said this would take years to be evident. That's been met with "Well they haven't yet!" by all sorts of minimizers.

@shonin@mastodon.world

About to embark on exactly this project myself in the next few weeks. Yours came out looking good!

@bbiiirdbPhD

I was thinking about heart damage earlier this week as the third person I know told me that their kid had MIS-C and ended up in the hospital. All three believe their kids are totally fine now, but while doing a little research into it I found out there's a clinical trial ongoing specifically to look at heart damage in kids who had MIS-C.

"When children are diagnosed with MIS-C, they may have decreased heart function (meaning how the heart squeezes), enlargement of the coronary arteries (the blood vessels that bring oxygenated blood to the heart) and heart rhythm problems. However, we do not know the long-term effects of MIS-C on the heart or other organ systems."

https://www.nemours.org/pediatric-research/clinicaltrials/cardiac-1666307.html

The clinical trial is ongoing and not due for a report until 2026.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05287412

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34418362/

But by all means people, just let your kids get infected over and over for the next 3 years until we hear back on that one...

@CaramelizedShallots @yaneerbaryam @whn

It's interesting you ask that, because the official White House readout of the October Summit for Indoor Air Quality doesn't give any direct quotes, and I was looking for them earlier today.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/10/12/readout-of-the-white-house-summit-on-improving-indoor-air-quality/

I found this, which appears to be a full accounting of his speech, but I don't know anything about the website/source.

https://www.viewmyair.com/ThewhitehouseIAQsummit

@auscandoc @emeritrix @TRyanGregory @trendless

Right. "Area under the curve" is too complex for many, unfortunately.

@wiebepaul @MaryAustinBooks

Very true. Just look at all of the ink spilled over contaminated eye drops that have now killed 3 people versus excess mortality in excess of 750 people per day in the US across all of 2022.

@CastlTrAstonDrs@med-mastodon.com

If you stop and think about it, it's really just more magical thinking to even begin to believe that "science" would know everything about SARS-CoV-2 and have answers all of 3 years into this.

I know too many otherwise smart engineers and scientists who really, truly believe that they don't have to worry about COVID or climate change because *other* really smart engineers and scientists will make it all go away soon.

@auscandoc @emeritrix @TRyanGregory @trendless

When this was pointed out to an in-law of mine recently the completely sincere reply was "We flattened the curve just like we were supposed to so now it's officially over." Apparently this is a talking point somewhere out there amongst the minimizers, supposedly backed up by the upcoming end of emergency declaration by Biden.

@skrishna

It does sound like they'll be more available someday, but many instances already have that ability. You could change instances if it were really worth it to you. I have the ability and don't use it, so I guess it really depends on your usage.

@yaneerbaryam @whn

Excellent article, we need to normalize clean air just like we have clean water, and @neroden is awesome.

But what am I to make of Dr. Jha at this point, who apparently believes in indoor air quality, but not masks? Feels like there's some special interests at play here.

@StillIRise1963 @trueslicky

Jehovah's Witnesses, I believe, but being able to list some off is way outside of my knowledge base.

@CharityFeb @StillIRise1963

I appreciate that and I was talking about religious and philosophical exemptions for exactly that reason. Medical exemptions and other biological reasons are a whole different ballgame.

I'll tell a little personal story here. My very good friend was apparently nearly killed by the whooping cough vaccine as a kid, according to his doctor. He never finished the course of it and then actually got whooping cough as a teenager.

The world's a wild place full of uncertainty no matter how we wish to control it.

@CharityFeb @StillIRise1963

I get where you're coming from. Nothing is 100% safe and this whole vaccination thing is a culture war phenomenon at this point. Every state has medical exemptions for immunization exactly because nothing is 100% safe for everyone. You'll get no argument on that idea from me. Nothing's all good or all bad, there's always nuance, and people who sell certainty are full of it.

@StillIRise1963

I appreciate that and I always appreciate interacting with you because I've found you to have a deep respect for the facts in any given situation.

It's turned out quite well for my kids, I have to say. They're excelling in a different environment and I wouldn't have it any other way at this point.

@StillIRise1963

I should probably just avoid this whole subject, but, I'm a sucker. For the record, I'm fully vaccinated since birth and so are my children.

For obvious reasons this is becoming more political, but, until very recently it was usually hippies, or people who lived a "natural" life who objected to vaccines. We all went to school with people who were not immunized, we just didn't know it for the most part. Outbreaks were usually kept relatively small because vaccination rates were generally above 90 or 95%. Because we all went to school with those people, we all work with people who have no vaccinations now. It's just now they're making it another culture war cudgel.

Anyway, most states(looks like 44) still have religious exemption laws on the books about this and 15 with philosophical belief exemptions. That's less than there were before as some states have been repealing them in recent years. I remember, for example, California was one of the states that had a few breakouts due to a lot of personal exemptions 10 years ago and ended up repealing that part of their law in 2016.

The problem really is that they're being overused now, to the point that vaccinations for incoming kids in many school districts(including the one we live in now) are falling below 90%. I made the decision to pull my kids out said school district and I imagine a lot of people are going to have to make that decision in the future as vaccination rates continue to decline.

https://www.ncsl.org/health/states-with-religious-and-philosophical-exemptions-from-school-immunization-requirements

@alienskyler

Early in the pandemic we ordered a produce box. Here's a paraphrase of the actual chat conversation I had with them after we received the box:

Me - Hello. Your service says all of the packaging is recyclable, but our local recycling center wouldn't take it. Do you happen to know of anywhere we could take it, or do you have a list of places that take it?

Them - No, but it's possibly recyclable.

Me - You said "possibly." Can you recycle it where you are?

Them - No.

Me - Do you know of anywhere, at all, that will actually take this packaging, anywhere in the country?

Them - No, but it could theoretically be recycled.

@glaist@mstdn.im @hesgen

Of course, there's already some storage "farms" using them, which gets you around the home by home reuse problems. They're not keeping up with the rate of scrapping yet, either.

https://www.axios.com/2023/02/07/electric-car-batteries-solar-power-storage

@glaist@mstdn.im @hesgen

There's absolutely people out there who can do it. I just see it, currently, as a two fold problem.

One, once it's been "scrapped" for a car, I don't know of any process in which it can be OK'd to put in a house with a mortgage and insurance. That's policy/paperwork stuff that theoretically can sorted if there were a push to do so. But, today, you're, right off the bat, limited to off-grid and DIY types at the moment.

Two, for those people, it's a lot more comfortable to work with a 48V system than 480V. You make a mistake with 48V, it hurts. You make a mistake with 480V and you're dead.

Further evidence that clearing COVID from your nose and nasopharynx has little to do with actually clearing the virus from your system.

"We found that SARS-CoV-2 RNA persists longer and in higher abundance in saliva than in nasal swabs, even beyond 14 days."

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282708

@pixplz

All I know for my local school district, for example, is that they claimed about $36 million as a "federal cash advance" in March of 2021 and gave themselves until November of 2024 to tell us how they used it.

A portion of it could be used for "learning loss" and of course that's a big one for the people who claim that three weeks out of school in 2020 have irreparably harmed the local kids. So, of course, they used the maximum amount allowed, which ended up being about $8 million, for tutoring and whatnot.

I can't find anything on the other $28 million to this point. This is from a school district that spent years telling us how urgently they needed to upgrade the leaky central ventilation systems in the local schools. A district in which, when my wife was in the classroom, the air conditioning system continually dripped water onto the ceiling of her classroom and she spent years in a constantly moldy room. Apparently there's no urgency to actually fix that when the money comes from the federal government.