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Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of July 4
This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
Connecticut Patient Had COVID for 471 Days, Evolved 3 New Lineages: Study: The Connecticut cancer patient continuously tested positive for COVID-19 at high levels and appeared to evolve multiple new lineages of the virus
Some extra bad news came from a paper late last month (still in preprint, but the authors are very notable). Research is beginning to get published about multiple covid infections, and early indications look like that damage to the body is cumulative. Reinfection brings greater chance of issues and ultimately death, contrary to other diseases where antibodies generally provide additional protection from further infections. Coupled with the insane increase in immunity escape BA.5 brings, reinfection is possible every 2 to 3 weeks.
Eric Topol has a concerning article about it here.
Yeah, I've been following this type of research relatively closely, and honestly it makes a lot of sense to me. A single COVID infection can often leave you with one or more new medical conditions or exacerbate existing ones, and you might not know at first whether that's happened. COVID hits those of us who have other conditions harder, so anyone who's had COVID once is potentially now in that higher risk group to some degree.
Not good news, indeed!
Totally makes sense that damage would be cumulative if you accept the mainstream hypothesis that the majority of long-term sequelae are the product of microthrombi. However, given that they’re using purely observational data, there’s some guaranteed heavy sampling bias happening here. The more severe someone’s case is, the more likely it is to get documented.
I say this not as a criticism or dismissal of the paper, but rather to contextualize it; just take the precise magnitude of the effects they’re reporting with a grain of salt.
We could have universal COVID vaccines very soon — if we urgently reform the process (Patrick Collision)
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COVID State of Affairs: July 7 (Your Local Epidemiologist)
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