A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

@scarpino

OK, I think that's fair. Nuance isn't always easy to convey online and I get where you're coming from now. Thank you for clarifying!

@scarpino

Uh, no? I'm not going to lie here. I'm having a hard time figuring out what's good there.

The author of that tweet's actual paper pre-print:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.03.522427v1

"SARS-CoV-2 recombinant subvariant XBB.1.5 is growing rapidly in the United States, carrying an additional Ser486Pro substitution compared to XBB.1 and outcompeting BQ.1.1 and other XBB sublineages. The underlying mechanism for such high transmissibility remains unclear. Here we show that XBB.1.5 exhibits a substantially higher hACE2-binding affinity compared to BQ.1.1 and XBB/XBB.1. Convalescent plasma samples from BA.1, BA.5, and BF.7 breakthrough infection are significantly evaded by both XBB.1 and XBB.1.5, with XBB.1.5 displaying slightly weaker immune evasion capability than XBB.1. Evusheld and Bebtelovimab could not neutralize XBB.1/XBB.1.5, while Sotrovimab remains its weak reactivity and notably, SA55 is still highly effective. The fact that XBB.1 and XBB.1.5 showed comparable antibody evasion but distinct transmissibility suggests enhanced receptor-binding affinity would indeed lead to higher growth advantages. The strong hACE2 binding of XBB.1.5 could also enable its tolerance of further immune escape mutations, which should be closely monitored."

Yunlong Richard Cao goes on to retweet Dr Ding's dire predictions of XBB 1.5.

Then links to a paper:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.27.521986v1

"In vitro experiments revealed that XBB is the most profoundly resistant variant to BA.2/5 breakthrough infection sera ever and is more fusogenic than BA.2.75"

I'm sorry. There's zero positive here.

@jik @augieray @thirzajane

Not to beat this fully to death or anything....but I found an interview with Prof. Barnett that I hadn't seen before from this past summer where he discussed this quite a bit. The host seemed to spend a lot of time trying to get him to say that driving was more dangerous than flying, but, there's some good parts so I'll link to it.

https://www.markgraban.com/mit-professor-arnold-arnie-barnetts-obnoxious-mistake-got-him-a-lot-of-attention/

He talks a bit about how he said that US Airlines wasn't being forthright about the COVID risk on planes. Some of the answer's here:

"Well, part of what I was doing was reacting to what USairlines were saying, and US Airlines do a fabulous job at preventing crashes, but to other sources of risk, I don't think they especially distinguished themselves and United airlines and said that the risk of getting COVID-19 or United flight was, was nearly non-existent quote unquote in Southwest airlines. Not to be out done said that it was virtually non-existent well, it's not non-existent. And what I pointed to in terms of data in that article was the many flights overseas in which we have evidence in the peer reviewed medical literature that an infected person caused COVID to many others on the plane to several others.

Now, not everyone you'll have to be seated pretty close to the infected passenger. It is true that the planes have good air air, air purification systems. So if I'm in seats eight, an and someone is infected in 20 B, it's extremely unlikely. This will affect me. But if the infected person is in 20 B, that's not great news for the person in 28 or 20 C or a 21 B. So I have done calculation, but I cited several instances there. You know, one of the earliest examples was a passenger on a flight from London to Vietnam here on air, via Vietnam era airlines was infected with COVID-19 and of the 12 business class passengers within two rows of her, 11 of them came down with COVID on the flight. Okay. And whereas other business class passengers who are further away from her, the risk was I think one and nine or something."

@jik @augieray @thirzajane

I was last on a flight January of 2020, personally.

The reason I find this discussion so interesting is that the only number I ever see thrown out there by people calculating their own risk of flying is Professor Barnett's model and he himself said there was practically no data behind it.

So, yeah, it doesn't change anything for me, but, a lot of people do probably use the 1/1000 number to decide whether or not to fly still, sadly.

@White_Bite

OMG what a graphic.

I'm so tired of hearing about "lockdowns" in all seriousness. I can only speak to my own experience, but, all it involved here was closing the schools for 3 weeks near the end of the school year and finishing online. Practically no one stopped going to work. Practically no one stopped going to the store.

We stopped going out only to find out on a walk one day where we could see the highway that it was backed up just like any normal work day. Curious, we took a drive around the closest town only to see the stores all jam packed full of maskless people.

Yet, the locals all somehow believe that those magical 3 weeks of closed schools have led to every single bad health outcome for years since.

@techlife

I suspect at this point it's pretty much up to where you live. I've heard the same thing from other people that locally their doctors are listening now instead of immediately sending them for a psych evaluation. Locally here where I live I've heard it's always "That's living with COVID" when ongoing symptoms are brought up and there's nothing done beyond that.

The overall direction, though, seems to be towards the medical establishment taking it more seriously overall, though, which is definitely a good thing.

@augieray @thirzajane @jik

Wow, I did not know the part about the plane in that story.

@scarpino

I'm honestly unaware of a study showing good results if you could share. These are what I'm going off of:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02162-x

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(22)01531-8.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867422015318%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

@techlife

I agree completely. My only fear on that front is that there was a lot of spending on research in 2020 and even 2021, but that tailed off a lot in 2022. A lot of science funding seems to be trending away, so hopefully there's still enough good science happening around it for those positives to come out.

@techlife

I sincerely hope that a "positive" to come out of all of this(if you can call it that...) would be the ME/CFS community getting some relief. Fingers crossed on that front!

@jik @thirzajane @augieray

I want to preface this with a disclaimer of sorts. We're splitting hairs...if someone next to you(or near you) on the flight has COVID and you're not wearing a mask you're probably going to get it. Despite our disagreements about the minutiae of flying I'm pretty sure we all agree on that and wish there were better data.

So, I came to a different conclusion than you did, now having read it, from that very small sample size!

It's actually way *less* safe than the model that everyone uses showing a 1/1000 chance of contracting COVID on a plane. This study is suggesting transmission during the flight(when HEPA filtration should be a thing) across 4 rows, and with mask and glove wearing:

"passengers A, B, D, F, and G self-reported mask and glove use while on the airplane but passengers C and E did not"

That insinuates that even wearing a mask you could be infected on a flight from at least 4 rows away. As you pointed out, 18 hours is a long time to wear a mask without taking it off to eat or drink, so it's likely that they did take their masks off at some point, even briefly.

I keyed in on the 2 hour refueling stop in which no one left the plane.

"No passengers entered or exited the aircraft during the 2-hour refueling period in Kuala Lumpur."

I assume that's like sitting on the runway in which the HEPA filters aren't running? But I honestly don't know, so I'm going to leave that aside for the moment in my analysis.

One limitation is that I don't see a discussion of the time the plane spent on the runway, was it delayed and sat for a while, etc. I think that would have been a great data point as that's almost certainly the most dangerous time for a more "normal" shorter flight. But, again, we're talking a study on a single flight with 86 passengers and 7 positive tests. It's the definition of small sample size.

@techlife

I suspect part of the problem is that we need a better definition. We have the study on the four major types of long COVID now:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02116-3

As you pointed out we have a growing body of evidence of viral persistence. But we also have evidence of other things going on such as reactivation of other dormant viruses:

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20221116/SARS-CoV-2-infection-triggers-reactivation-of-latent-viruses-in-people-with-chronic-fatigue-syndrome.aspx

And just plain old damage and inflammation from what is a vascular disease. When you mess with the blood vessels that will affect your entire body(obviously):

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41401-022-00998-0

Personally, I had a really bad case of Mono when I was 20 that took me years to get over. Long before COVID was a thing I often looked back on that and wondered if I ever fully recovered. I'm not at all eager to risk bringing that back now that I'm much older and theoretically not able to handle it as well.

Anyway, TLDR; I'm betting years from now we'll all accept that the reason there's multiple, distinct types of long COVID is because there's multiple, distinct causes.

@ceoln

To me the most interesting one will be today. If they don't elect McCarthy straight off in the first vote we'll see if anyone wants to push it through the weekend or if they're all so eager to get on their flights home that they'll get along for one vote and willingly adjourn for the weekend.

@thirzajane @jik @augieray

Small sample, but looks like a cool little study. I've never seen that one before. Gave it a quick scan, but I plan on reading it more thoroughly later today. Thanks for sharing it!

@ceoln

I believe this is because they have to have a vote to adjourn and they haven't always had enough votes(simple majority) for that. So, at the beginning of the day the clerk presides as Speaker and calls a vote as long as there's a quorum present.

If after a vote in which they fail to elect a Speaker they don't adjourn, and people leave anyway, then they could conceivably hold a vote in which now the number to win is lower because the people who aren't there are non-voters. Depending on who left that could give the Speaker job to Jeffries. Obviously the Republicans won't leave and risk that, and Democrats will keep voting hoping that Republicans tire of it and leave.

So, anyway, they continue to vote until there's a majority who agree to adjourn until the next day, then the clerk starts the whole process over. It's essentially stuck in a loop until a Speaker is elected who can make the next procedural moves about how this Congressional session will function.

@tasket @MiaLis79

The best possible outcome here is they all get so worked up they spill the dirt they have on each other and all end up in jail.

@nazgul @jik @augieray

Yuck! That's not healthy outside of COVID, but, I kind of wished we used rebreathed air percent instead of CO2 just to make it a little more personal.

At 2,400 ppm CO2 somewhere around 5.5% of the molecules in the air are freshly out of someone else's lungs(with a few assumptions made).

@PapyrusBrigade @Billius27@mstdn.ca

Take it easy and get lots of rest. Get well soon!

@jik @augieray

Given the fact that a lot of people would like to have hard numbers on the risk of flying, I would place the chances of it being the airlines that won't play ball at pretty close to 100%, personally.

@NurseStacey @GottaLaff

I will almost guarantee the people of and around Pensacola, whom he represents, largely love this. It's about "proving" the government doesn't work so it should either go away or leave the south alone. Has been for 160 years or so.