A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org
Moved full time to my other account @BE soon as this instance is still having issues.
Joined Nov 2022
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008451
This is a simulation from 2020 about COVID and involves a scenario where there's no immune response.
Ahhh, I hear you! There's definitely something there, although COVID's pretty good at infecting the nose. Use nasal sprays, breathe through your nose, and here's another one to think about on that train of thought.
Enovid is classified as NONS(nitric oxide nasal spray). When you hum, you increase the nitric oxide in your nasal passage naturally.
Good morning! I assume we're talking post-COVID/long COVID care here?
I know of one primary care guide from the BMJ that hits on this off the top of my head that'll give you a good start with references to follow:
https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj-2023-074937
Anecdotally, this comes up fairly frequently in the long COVID groups that I keep an eye on and a name that people bring up from time to time is Patrick McKeown. If you search through YouTube(or whatever YouTube alternative you use) for his name you'll hit on some videos that some people say have been very helpful to them.
Or, "I don't understand how I got COVID. I only take off my mask when I eat inside of restaurants."
I think it's self-delusion, or just an astonishing lack of critical thinking, personally, but I've been told by multiple people that it goes back to the early days of the pandemic where the NYT(I believe David Leonhardt pushed this idea, off the top of my head) published the idea of risk estimations where you kept a bank of points that you used up with each thing you did in public. Eating in restaurants used up some of your points, grocery shopping, etc. The idea being that if you kept your points low enough, somehow you'd be forever safe. A lot of people seem stuck on early 2020 advice.
People really suck at figuring out that doing something that has a, say, 10% chance of going wrong over and over will eventually catch up with you. See: Long COVID.
I mentioned last week that I went to get tires on my car, for the first time in the pandemic(we barely drive anymore), and there was a line out the door of people hacking up a lung and sneezing, so I bailed. I really didn't want to go sit in or around that place for hours, so in desperation I called around and much to my surprise the local Subaru dealer was willing to come pick up our car from the driveway, leave us a loaner, go change the fluids on the car, put on new tires, and they'll be bringing it back and leaving it in the driveway later today.
Honestly, I thought the chances of anyone doing something like that were slim to none, it's not something they advertise that they'll do, but it doesn't hurt to try. Sometimes it works out better than you expected.
Up front I'm going to say I don't know anything about these guys, or their masks. I was looking and noticed they use something called "Polygiene ViralOff" in some of their products, so I thought I'd look into the science of that and maybe it would give me some insight into the company and their values.
Bottom line, I didn't have a ton of luck getting much info on it in a quick search if you don't want to read the rest of my post.
The "Polygiene ViralOff" is, chemically speaking, called "reaction mass of titanium dioxide and silver chloride." The company that makes ViralOff says that it passed testing under ISO18184:2019 for textiles for antiviral activity(https://www.iso.org/standard/71292.html). It appears this standard is undergoing revision and hasn't been accepted by ANSI. Doesn't mean it isn't a good test, but, it's relatively new.
The ViralOff itself appears to have been put up for European approval as an antiviral twice, once in 2020(https://chemycal.com/news/03f4007f-fe40-4be3-8615-a7ca5a672b82/ECHA__Two_Biocidal_substances_under_review) and once in 2023(https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32023D0458). Both times it was rejected because the company putting it up for approval withdrew their interest.
Polygiene's claims on the product are here(https://keelaoutdoors.com/viraloff/) and they make no "health claims" and say "For instance, a face covering will never stop viruses from going through it, but we can ensure viruses don’t live in and on it for long."
Just for completeness' sake, it's also the active ingredient in a brand of cat litter(https://www.amazon.co.uk/Felight-Non-Clumping-Antibacterial-Silverfresh-Technology/dp/B07S3QQXXG?th=1).
I can't find any published data on it, so I really don't know if it works or not. Just be careful explicitly trusting your health with this kind of stuff that doesn't have a bunch of data out there and available.
@onisillos@mstdn.science
Couldn't help but notice another use of the word "unique' in this regard today.
"Conclusions
Studies have confirmed a link between persistence of SARS-CoV-2's antigens and post-acute sequelae of SAR-CoV-2 (PASC). Accordingly, even in this study, the researchers detected potentially immunogenic viral antigens in over 10% of plasma samples from COVID-19 patients during the pandemic era for up to 14 months following index SARS-CoV-2 infection, providing robust evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is a unique RNA virus."
@onisillos@mstdn.science
Since I assume this is a sub-toot of our previous interaction I suspect you think I'd say yes without hesitation, although what I said was that some things about COVID might be called "remarkable" not unique. I'd actually ask you to define "unique" better in this context. Every virus is unique in that it's not exactly the same as other viruses, but I don't think that's what you're getting at.
I guess what I'd say is that while all viruses do what they do, COVID's ace2 affinity, the associated ability to easily travel throughout the endothelial system elsewhere in the body, and ease of transmission/inability to confer lasting immunity mean that it has a "skill set" that makes it efficient at causing repeated damage.
Could it be unique in the way I assume that you mean? Perhaps. Science takes time, and I suspect lots of viruses do more damage than is commonly accepted at the moment. I look at something like yesterday's reporting on COVID and the heart and you have experts saying things like:
"Asked whether this direct infection of vascular plaques was unique to SARS-CoV-2 or whether this may also occur with other viruses, both Giannarelli and Hotez said they believe this may be a specific COVID effect."
That sounds kind of unique, actually.
@onisillos@mstdn.science
What data are you referring to, specifically? I think the point that's being made by others is that if there's very little to no testing, and very little data sharing how can you know? Further, if the data collection and sharing isn't consistent across time, how can you compare the last few years to now?
I know I, personally, don't share any COVID data across the time span you're speaking of because it's apples to oranges in all data sets that I know of.
I appreciate you all sending me in that direction with your helpful replies yesterday! By the end of the day I put together some "light" reading for the scientists in the group chat to look through. I recognize that I've been around long enough, and have enough scientific pull, that they're going to be reserved in their criticisms, and sure enough, there were a couple of "Do you really believe that everything is COVID during the cold and flu season?" and that's fine.
There were also a couple "I'm going to ask my doctor" or "my pediatrician" about this, and that's good. Will any of their doctors know anything about it or just tell them it's crazy? Could go either way, but I did what I could.
Stay safe out there COVID cautious folks! Seems like everyone else is sick and has no clue that they've endangered their health or the health of their loved ones.
I am so sorry. From what I've heard about the only long COVID clinic locally they basically treat everyone as if they were overweight or have an eating disorder and that's it. They give you a nutrition class and give you sheets to count your calories and send you on your way....
We're, unfortunately, a long ways from having functional care for long COVID.
Hello COVID cautious and COVID scientific community. I'm often that person who drops scientific papers in threads, but today I can't find what I'm looking for and I'm hoping one of you has it handy.
I lost my mind for a minute and forgot which meeting I was in this morning and in this general Zoom room where a bunch of people were all complaining about how bad their "seasonal allergies" are at the moment, and how all of their spouses are sick and have pneumonia, and their kids all have fevers and "colds and flus" they started talking about adult-onset allergies. I usually tune out all of the complaining about how sick everyone is. It's a weekly thing in this meeting and frankly I just can't deal with it, but when one person mentioned adult-onset allergies, and they *all* started talking about how they're now allergic to this or that and they never have been before, I made the mistake of un-muting and saying the dreaded word....COVID.
After a bunch of "How dare you say COVID. We don't have COVID!" a couple of people were actually interested in whether COVID can cause adult-onset(or even new allergies in kids...one person said their kid's eaten eggs for breakfast for years and now is allergic to eggs). I distinctly remember new allergies being a thing that came up often in 2020-ish, and not as much recently. A quick search through the scientific papers I cite often didn't come up with any hits.
This group is mostly scientists, and so a peer-reviewed article would probably go over better. I could guide them through auto-immune disorders and get there, but a paper specifically about new allergies would be best.
Is this paper out there? Or just a bunch of anecdotal evidence?
Everyone feels the need to "both sides" everything these days.
In my neck of the woods I've found that the real MAGA true believers are usually upper middle class and furious that they're "still" in the middle class. They believe that they deserve to be better off than they are and are almost always racist to the point that they yearn to be able to have enough to separate themselves from "others."
In actuality, they *should* be mad at the oligarchy that's always "above" them, that's the class they want to be in and can never achieve, but instead they're wrapped up in being mad at people who don't look like them or share their self-described "conservative"(read: mostly racist) beliefs.
It's hard to sound the alarm and get ignored. Before I was a COVID-alarm-sounder I spent half my life as an environmental scientist at a national lab. Realizing doom is likely by itself is tough, but being ignored by 90% of society multiplies how tough it is.
Turn on Apple Music this morning and it recommends a recording of a concert. Cool. Turn it on. Realize I was *at* this concert...by song 2 realize it was ~30 years ago. Holy crap I'm getting old.
I never cease to be amazed at the fact that so few people even seem to realize that long COVID is a thing. I'm even more amazed when doctors don't. Honestly, I'm not sure why this gets to me every time at this point, but it still does.
Some of you may remember me talking about my wife's boss previously. She's had COVID at least 7 times and finally started to think that, just maybe, her "bizarre autoimmune disorder" that her doctors couldn't figure out could be COVID related.
So, today her and my wife are chatting on Zoom about things and my wife mentions that we're growing lion's mane and red reishi mushrooms in the forest. Her boss laughs and asks if she can get some because she's been spending "tons" on reishi and lion's mane supplements to "try to remember things again."
This leads down a discussion where my wife gently asks her if she's talked with her doctors about long COVID. She says "Yes! I remembered you talked about that, and I saw some headline about it, so I asked my GP. He said that's when you have COVID symptoms for more than 12 weeks. Since I'm not coughing(she is....but let's ignore that for a moment) and I can breathe well he said it's not long COVID."
Audible sigh from my wife....and she moved on. She saw me go through this with one of my friends last year when his doctor very literally laughed in his face after I convinced him to ask about whether his sudden onset of debilitating arthritis a couple of months after a COVID infection could be COVID related. It poisoned the water between us, because clearly at that point he believed his doctor and thought I was a conspiracy theorist for talking him into bringing it up.
The education on this sucks so much that you can't even help people when you really want to.
Really interesting paper. Thanks for sharing! Here's a link directly to the published paper:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)01034-6
I found this part interesting in the STAT article because it seems to explain so many of the diverse symptoms that don't seem linked at first:
“Low serotonin levels weaken vagus nerve signaling, the gut-brain connection that could explain neurocognitive problems that are one hallmark of long Covid. Serotonin signaling can also affect blood clotting, the GI tract, and the central nervous system, making it one of the most important neurotransmitters in the body, not just in the brain where it can be involved in anxiety and depression. The more long Covid symptoms patients had, the lower their peripheral serotonin levels, the study found.”
What you said about masking to only prevent your own spread of COVID really applied to cloth masks, mostly. While one-way masking isn't as great as everyone wearing a mask, a good, well fitting mask will prevent most transmission. A lot of people are still hung up on the idea that "masks don't work" because they're using data and info from cloth masks.
I know that's the title of the news article you linked, and I've seen it elsewhere already, but that's not actually what they awarded money for.
"$8.5 million to CastleVax for a vector-based intranasal vaccine candidate.
$10 million to Codagenix for a live-attenuated intranasal vaccine candidate."
Out of the $500 mill that's all that's going towards nasal vaccines.
Moved full time to my other account @BE soon as this instance is still having issues.
Joined Nov 2022
