SARS II: Respiratory Boogaloo

I actually met him once.

Headline redundancy aside, India's really fucked.

Seriously surprised that Trump didn't suggest this treatment last year.

India’s top medical association warns over ‘health risks’ of using cow dung as Covid treatment

CDC: Fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks indoors or outdoors or social distance (in most situations).

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heal...requirements-fully-vaccinated-people-n1267249

This sort of cuts the legs off one of the major complaints of anti-vaxxers. "Why bother getting the vax if literally nothing changes if we do?" I've heard that one quite a bit.

All they have to do if anyone asks is lie and say they have been vaccinated. Unless of course, they're just looking for an excuse to be dicks and want to tell everyone that they aren't vaccinated because....reasons.... Considering how many of them pick unnecessary fights over such things I wouldn't be surprised if... well you know...

I’m surprised they’re not also warning about drinking cow piss.

It won’t cure COVID, but I bet it helps a ton with social distancing.

There's no money in it.

Take that, bible-thumpers!

Judge orders Church of God doors locked for defying pandemic health rules

Not only did the judge order the doors locked, but he fined the church $35,000, the pastor $10,000 and the assistant pastor $3,000.

Follow up to my post above:

What do you call it when a church is fined thousands of dollars and ordered to have its doors shut?

Just had an email from school to say my daughter’s class bubble has popped because of a staff member testing positive on a LFT. No school tomorrow. If it is confirmed by PCR thats 10 days isolation for her and 10 days of me not being able to go out to work. Again.

I am absolutely chuffing DONE with this coronavirus crap.

Damn you guys have been HAMMERED from day #1 of the covid. I don't know how you keep sane to be honest.

I know I’m hoping that it’s a false positive on the staff member’s LFT so the class opens back up on Tuesday. It’s only been a month and a half since we last had to do a 10 day stretch, I’m not ready for us to be cooped up again

Researchers think that they've found a way to create a vaccine that'll work against all the variants.

I heard a researcher talking about this technique on a podcast and he said that it could lead to a universal coronavirus vaccine, not just for the ones mentioned in the article, but all of them. Including the ones that cause the common cold. You'd get one, maybe two, does of the vaccine and never have to worry about ever getting infected by a coronavirus again.

I’m skeptical this approach can work as well as the vaccines against Spike. You only have free-floating N after infection. So your T-cells could maybe follow the N gradient back to the infected cells more easily so it can kill them, potentially cutting off the production of new virus sooner (good) but would be totally ineffective against whole virus (bad).

It’s a similar problem to targeting the influenza virus’s N (neuraminidase for flu, not nucleocapsid) protein. It’s easy enough to make antibodies against a fairly well-conserved N (within families eg H1N1 vs H3N2), but H physically gets in the way of antibodies binding to it, and H is the slick mofo that keeps mutating every year. For coronaviruses, N is well-shielded (probably better than flu) by Spike.

Still, this is useful knowledge to have. Maybe it can cut down the severity of the diseases somewhat, give the body more time to develop antibodies naturally.

Also worth noting that only about 14% of common colds are coronavirus.

Yep. I brought this up last year too and Mr facepalm, facepalmed my post.

More.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

It might be that they're thinking of a combo vaccine, where both the spike and the N are targeted. That way you could wallop the versions with the spike easily enough, and those that had a different spike, but the same N could get knocked down before they could cause serious harm.

Looks like India's back on hard lockdown, according to my friend in Kolkata

Yikes.

At least India seems to have (maybe???) turned a corner. I know there's question about how complete their COVID19 case / death statistics really are.

David Montgomery is great and none of you other states better steal him.

Does anyone have any thoughts on when this is going to end?

Kiddo’s teacher tested positive, subsequently three of the children out of a class of 29 have had positive pcrs. None of them are ill beyond earache or head cold though according to the parents. It just makes me wonder if all this isolation business is a little bit like a sledgehammer to crack a nut now I understand that there are variants and it can be incredibly nasty for some people but at what point does the balance tip?

I suppose I’m just frustrated with the constant upheaval and the squeeze it’s putting on everyone.

Four kids got covid at my school. All siblings. Results in 75 kids being sent home for a week to quarantine.

Erotic

That's awful. It's a nightmare for their education and a nightmare for families trying to juggle everything.

I think I'm quite placid person, in normal circumstances all I want to do is keep my head down, crack on with my life and mind my own business. I'm starting to feel quite militant about restrictions and isolation periods though, especially where school is concerned. Of course I don't want anyone to get seriously ill or hospitals overwhelmed, but this level of control over our lives is starting to make me jittery.

If they have positive PCR tests, they have it. If they have it, they can transmit it. The kids themselves might not show major symptoms. If the parents are in the 20-30 range, they'll probably be OK. But every single one can infect anyone they meet. And that could be several folk who WILL get bad symptoms or fucking die.

Until the vaccine rollout is done, this level of control is needed, unless you'd rather stare a family in the face and tell them granny isn't coming back because you could have done something and didn't.

I KNOW it is stressful. At least you have family around to be stressed WITH. I don't see people for days because I live alone. But better isolation than kill someone.

As for the education, I know it's worrying. But we let Boris be PM, ffs.