Ik heb hier nooit Nederlandse cijfers over gezien. Maar het kan bijna niet anders dan dat ook in Nederland patienten Covid oplopen in het ziekenhuis en daardoor overlijden.
Bij de Australische NOS mag wel gezegd worden dat FFP2/FFP3 veel beter werkt dan andere mondkapjes.
"As one study found, well-fitted N95 respirators are 75 times more effective than surgical masks when both an infectious person and a susceptible person wear them."
Ook mag hard op gezegd worden dat Covid geen griepje is.
"Of course, evidence clearly shows COVID is nothing like a cold, particularly for hospital patients who are at higher risk of severe illness and death. .. more than one in 10 confirmed or suspected to have died as a result of their infection. "
🇳🇱
@ABScientist The bulk of cases can feel very cold like actually. But you are of course perfectly correct in saying that the more severe cases are not at all like a cold and can get quite serious.
I know it is scary to realise that Covid is probably taking away your health at each (re)infection, but it does not help to simply give up and accept the damage it does.
If everyone does a bit of extra effort to prevent infections, it is better for everyone, because there is so much less virus going around.
I have had 7 pcr-confirmed COVID=19 infections so far. For what its worth I have never noticed even the slightest hint at a long term effect personally.
In fact over that time period my vitals have greatly improved as I have become more active.
Have you had tests of your cardiovascular system? How is your blood pressure? Your blood sugar levels? Cholesterol levels?
Maybe there are genes that protect against the damage from Covid. On a population level, the damage is clear in many studies.
It looks like women are much more at risk of long term symptoms from Covid, which creates quite an unequal society (which was already biased against women).
There is no doubt that we have seen vascular damage in COVID patients. I am not claiming the vascular damage thing doesnt happen.
The current body of studies is enough to make one wonder about it and want to investigate it. The body of evidence is far too early however to state it as fact, thats all, or much about it.
My guess, the vascular damage is real, but only occurs in special cases (such as having specific bad genes, or pre-existing damage) or in particularly severe infections. But in the overwhelming majority of minor infections in healthy people I suspect it does not lasting cardiovascular damage.
It would explain a lot of what is being seen in the body of literature IMO.
Regardless I do suspect it is a real element of this virus, just one that isnt a significant concern in the less severe and healthier cases.
Which means we have now divided the population into people with the right genes and the unlucky ones.
The ones with the right genes can happily live their lives. The unlucky ones have to stay home and be bullied for wearing a mask.
Until the next pandemic and we will do the gene selection once again. And it could be that an entirely new set of genes could become important.
I mean the gene lottery determining how fragile your immune system is nothing new, and hardly anything unique to COVID (aside from COVID just being a nastier bug than many).
But now we have a virus that goes around in huge waves. In the last wave around 40% of the Dutch and 60% of the Danish population is estimated to have become infected. There are around 5 waves per year.
For flu, there is one wave per year, meaning that vulnerable people can live their lives fairly normally for the rest of the year.
Clearly these vulnerable are not needed in the workforce either, because we do not want to do anything to protect them.
As a COVID-19 research scientist your preaching to the choir man. No doubt.
I wouldnt say we are doing nothing though to protect these vulnerable people. I mean a **lot** was done, entier economies were shut down, vaccines developed, mask mandates had been issues, people went to extraordinary lengths to address it. You can argue they can do more, sure, you can always do more.
As for what we can do to protect them, I can think of a few things but not that much. Allow more remote work, better filtration systems in building with higher overall air flow, staying home when your sick... a few good things can be done but even then there isnt much else that is reasonable I can think of to do.
Plus good quality masks in healthcare settings (and dentists), and at least part of the public transportation (e.g., a section of the trains). A bit like smoking and non-smoking sections previously.
I think that some of the flights should be made masks-only, so that you have a choice whether or not to breathe in other people's germs while travelling.
Society is now completely biased towards people whose bodies can handle multiple infections per year.
I am ok with giving the people to have an option to wear a mask or not and they can divide accordingly. I wouldnt reserve space up front as it may cause one group to be preferred over the other, but i do like the idea of saying masked people sill in starting from one end, unmasked from the other. Meet at the middle.
Planes id be more reluctant to do it that way, but id be ok with it if again it was divided front to back or something sure.
We now leave it up to people to choose whether to mask or not.
This means that vulnerable people are forced to try and protect themselves as much as possible against germs breathed out by others.
And there is huge social pressure to unmask, because you basically signal to others that you are vulnerable, which often leads to bullying.
Indeed I have. Blood pressure has significantly improved since pre-covid, blood sugars as well, much improved. Cholesterol levels remain the same, neither good nor bad.
Sounds like you may be lucky and have the right genes.
I wonder whether we need these people in the future when lots of people can no longer work due to poor health.
Its a bit more complicated than that. If we had said "flu" then yes, for sure. But a cold isnt caused by a specific class of viruses or even one.It is a set of symptoms.
A cold is essentially infalamation of the mucosa membranes that is **not** caused by a specific virus or class of viruses. It is a set of symptoms that many different viruses all cause.
So its a bit more nuanced than that because literally what we call the common cold comes from damn near anything, including coronaviruses.
That is correct.
Wikipedia has a nice list of infections that cause a flu-like syndrome.
HIV is also on the list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_infectious_diseases_causing_flu-like_syndrome
Cold-like is literally a cold.
You need to understand infection diseases are **not** defined by the viruses that cause them (usually) they are defined by how they present. You diagnose a cold by your symptoms, if you have the symtpoms you have a cold, that is true no matter what virus happens to be causing it. In fact a cold is causes by so many different viruses that it doesnt even stick to a single family... You can literally have one of any of a thousand different viruses and they are all colds, not just cold-like but actual colds.
But would you classify HIV as a flu, just because it give flu-like symptoms (initially)?
Many virus infections have delayed health effects. Post-polio, brain inflammation years after measles, HPV-cancer, EBV-MS.
But we seem to have a tendency only to look at the acute stage.
No you are talking about flus now, not colds. Flus are caused by specific viruses within a specific class (Influenza)... Colds are not, colds (not cold-like, actual colds) are caused by at least 4 different families of viruses all with many hundreds of strains.
"Stage 1: Acute HIV Infection
Within 2 to 4 weeks after infection with HIV, about two-thirds of people will have a flu-like illness. This is the body’s natural response to HIV infection."
So one-thirds does not have any symptoms at all.
https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/about-hiv-and-aids/symptoms-of-hiv/
Ok, and, you arent talking about colds, you are talking about flus... flus are defined by the =viruses that cause them, Colds are not.. its like saying "SARS-2 causes inflamation" and then saying "No it doesnt it causes COVID!".. the response is nonsensical as it can cause a lot of things...
@freemo @ABScientist I should have been more accurate. "Colds" don't exist. Infections that seem to confine themselves to the respiratory system do, and covid isn't one of them
Oh, well in that case your just wrong. Colds obviously do exist. They are caused by infections in the respiratory system for sure. But they very muich exist.
@freemo @ABScientist I've gotten us lost down a useless semantic rabbit hole. The reply of yours I originally replied to was perfectly accurate upon second reading
It is a vascular disease that spreads through the air. It damages the inner lining of your blood vessels. As a consequence it can damage many organs: Gut, brain, heart, kidneys.
Very much unlike the common cold. Much more like the flu, which has been downplayed a lot as well.
Calling it a vascular disease is **way** to premature. There is preliminary evidence suggesting this is a reasonable take, but nothing remotely approaching a point where we can or should be saying such things like their facts.. there is a LOT of researc h to be done before we can say that is a fact.
And yea, as I said, it is very much different from the common cold in its more extreme cases for sure, no doubt there.
@freemo @ABScientist cold-like still isn't a cold. The symptoms your immune system produces are not the same as what the virus is doing inside your body. It's very common for acute HIV symptoms, for instance, to present as a cold