Two European Cases of COVID-19 Reinfection Reported (thehill.com) 69
Two patients were reinfected with the coronavirus in Europe, according to local broadcasters who confirmed the incidents with virologists. The Hill reports: The patients, one from Belgium and the other from the Netherlands, were confirmed to have been reinfected with COVID-19, Reuters reported. Marian Koopmans, a Dutch virologist, confirmed to broadcaster NOS that the patient from the Netherlands was elderly with a compromised immune system, but did not provide more details about the infection. Koopmans told NOS that in order for reinfection, a virus must change its genetic code. She added during the interview with the broadcaster that, given the veracity of the virus, recurrence of infection was to be expected.
The second patient in Belgium was a woman who had contracted COVID-19 first in March and then a second time in June, Reuters reported. The woman, who was reported to be in her 50s, had a low level of coronavirus antibodies in her system, Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst told broadcaster VRT. Like Koopmans, Van Ranst cited a genetic mutation of the virus that may have been the cause for reinfection. And whether or not the recurrence of infection will be more rampant in the community is still uncertain. Yesterday, researchers in Hong Kong reported the area's first confirmed reinfection of the virus, 4 1/2 months after the patient's initial infection.
The second patient in Belgium was a woman who had contracted COVID-19 first in March and then a second time in June, Reuters reported. The woman, who was reported to be in her 50s, had a low level of coronavirus antibodies in her system, Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst told broadcaster VRT. Like Koopmans, Van Ranst cited a genetic mutation of the virus that may have been the cause for reinfection. And whether or not the recurrence of infection will be more rampant in the community is still uncertain. Yesterday, researchers in Hong Kong reported the area's first confirmed reinfection of the virus, 4 1/2 months after the patient's initial infection.
As a wise man once said... (Score:3)
Re:As a wise man once said... (Score:5, Informative)
Reinfections have been going on since this thing started a year ago. It is only now that they are being studied and reported on.
Sure, they probably have and the Chinese and South Koreans reported people who seemed to have recurring episodes. However point to one good paper that actually proved that they were reinfections? I think there's one that does a reasonably good job with 11 people and multiple negative tests between two positive tests (several of the people were medics). Not even that one is close to the level of proof in these new papers where they showed that the original infection was a different mutation line from the repeat infection. The other paper could have been explained away by the virus hiding in some part of the body (like chicken pox hides in nerve cells) and then reappearing.
This is actual science and News for Nerds type stuff.
Re:As a wise man once said... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all, any coronavirus variant sufficiently infectious will become part of our flu season. After the first few years, most will have mild cases as they build up partial immunity.
You say this as if there's some scientific info behind it. Each virus has been different from the other and we don't have precedents. Some coronaviruses are almost impossible to notice. Some have been much more deadly than our current one. Most likely these reinfection are just a rare one off and this doesn't mean much, but it's also completely possible that we will get repeated reinfections with slightly different strains and, like Dengue fever [wikipedia.org] the reinfections will often be worse than the original infection.
The way to deal with this is to admit that, for now, we don't know what this means and that it probably means it's a good idea to concentrate on strategies that get rid of the virus without getting everyone infected.
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Not that unusual, they are fear mongering. You catch the common cold and influenza over and over and over again because they mutate, at last count covid 19 was up to four mutations so technically covid 19.0 covid 19.1 covid 19.2 and covid 19.3. If you had a minor reaction you will have a minor reaction to covid 19.4 or covid 19.5 and on it goes, an endemic mutationg infection, and the vaccine will likely only work for one variations, so when covid 19.6 appears, we can either panic driven by greed obsessed p
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This is what I've been saying to people. They all seem to think they can just wait out the vaccine. But what evidence is there it will work at all? We've been making vaccines for the flu for decades, and there is no end in sight.
The idea that we can all just sit at home doing nothing for a year or two until there is a vaccine to solve everything seems completely misguided to me.
Re: As a wise man once said... (Score:2)
A boned man once said, "This is funner than being wise."
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The UK needs volunteers to test a vaccine. You can volunteer to just get the vaccine or you can volunteer to get it and be deliberately infected with COVID, which is more risky but speeds up approval even more too.
I tried to sign up but pre-existing health conditions excluded me. The sign up link is below.
https://www.nhs.uk/sign-up-to-... [www.nhs.uk]
Another two? (Score:1)
This dupe and the original makes 4 of them.
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So now what (Score:2)
For a lot of these news stories I try to keep in mind that since we are talking about known infection numbers in the millions, population ~ 8 billion, there is pretty much at least someone somewhere who will get something unique happening to them. Aka people get struck twice by lightening, attacked by sharks,win lotteries all the time and yet those events are statistically extremely rare. So not freaking out yet.
But as a thought experiment, what would it mean for governments if basically there become doz
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But as a thought experiment, what would it mean for governments if basically there become dozens of mutations, rolling waves of infections, and so forth. Basically like a much deadlier flu The plan thus far has been flatten the curve, keep rates down by distancing and masks, wait for the vaccine. If the vaccine is far, far less effective for stopping the spread than hoped not sure how we go from here. Keeping people in the status-quo for a year is rough, and folks like myself are really hanging onto the the idea of a light at the end of the tunnel.
Would that be a " tremendous ultraviolet or just very powerful light" at the end of the tunnel?
Color me unsurprised (Score:2)
This is really just Virology 101. People are reinfected often with slightly mutated strains of the flu and the common cold.
This corona virus is the uncommon cold, but the great threat it poses as a novel virus passes as soon as much of the population has been exposed to it.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll mean large changes to society one way or another. We can "let 'er rip", which means a _lot_ of dead people. Mostly the elderly. Dropping life expectancy substantially. We can do the half measures we have now indefinitely, maybe changing up society so people wear masks at the first sign of a cough. But that'll just slow down the deaths.
Or we can completely change our approach to public health, devoting vastly more resources to it ala the Moon Landing. But that means taxes. On the Rich, since in our current economy they're the only ones with any money. And it means paying people to stay home when quarantine time hits. That'd be a huge sea change in how we view human life. For thousands of years "If you don't work, you die" was the motto. But if you're carrying around a deadly virus it's the opposite for you and everyone around you.
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--
www.fark.com/politics
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I agree...there is plenty of government money out there. We should use it to remake our failing society. There is no longer a reason for people to work. We can just have the government pay us to stay home. Bernie understood this.
Bernie communicated his views clearly. The place you get your news from... didn't.
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Hi OMB! :)
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Maybe we could make the multi-billionaires actually pay their taxes? Or, I don't know, do something crazy like cut the military budget by a tiny fraction and use that money to help the citizens at home.
I know, I'll prepare for my lynching over such a stupid suggestion.
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And unfortunately, you can slow the spread to avoid overwhelming medical facilities, but but you cannot prevent it from winding its nefarious way through the populace.
Mostly the elderly. Dropping life expectancy substantially.
Doing the maths, it looks a great deal like the deaths of youngest would impact life expectancy more negatively. But then, numbers are the last thing close to perfect that we know of.
Most 1st world nations have aging populations (Score:2)
Also, do you just auto post crap on all COVID 19 forums without reading even TFT ("The fucking Title") much less TFS ("The fucking summary") much less TFA?
It's entirely possible that thanks to different strains we can't reach natural herd immun
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The long term side effects of the virus for survivors appear pretty bad, e.g. in about 10 years there's going to be a spike in heart attacks & strokes.
You are hallucinating. Again. [SLAP SLAP rsilvergun face] NO ONE has had long term side effects from COVID. [SLAP SLAP] You are a systems support drone. You are NOT a medical professional with a crystal ball. [SLAP SLAP]
Snap out of it, man! Here, have some seltzer and a moist towelette.
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If you can be reinfected by slightly different strains then the thing you're getting at (Herd Immunity) isn't possible.
You're ignoring the complexity of a virus to actually mutate into a significantly different strain that is able to re-infect a person and have the same impact. COVID-19 has had a few mutations already but not with necessarily disastrous results. E.g. The mutation most are concerned about is D614G of SARS-COV-2. This mutation has made the virus more transmittable, equally aggressive on the body but critical to this discussion does not re-infect people who previously were infected by SARS-COV-2. Likewise a mu
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This is neither unusual nor shocking (Score:5, Interesting)
>"Two patients were reinfected with the coronavirus in Europe"
As I said before, on a recent thread, we ALL know (or should know) that there are a certain percent of people who can/will get sick with the same virus more than once. It happens with regular flu, with colds, even with things people are vaccinated against. Not everyone's immune systems are the same. This doesn't surprise or shock me at all. In fact, I would think if we DON'T find any cases of reinfection, the data were somehow flawed.
As for mutations- that ALSO happens with most viruses. Again, if that didn't happen at all with COVID-19, I would be surprised. And, typically, mutated viruses are more quickly identified and suppressed by an immune system that has already seen a very similar virus. In fact, one theory as to why so many (more than a third) of people who are positive for COVID-19 and never show any symptoms might be because they have prior exposure to other, non-COVID-19 corona viruses. It even makes one wonder if someone could attain some level of immunity or benefit from intentional infection with a more common and less dangerous corona cold/flu virus (of course, that has separate ethical and clinical risks).
Re: This is neither unusual nor shocking (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is virology and biology we know about makes it virtually impossible to get reinfected with the same strain.
Possible causes:
Fast mutations, which means any sense of a developed vaccine is moot and this thing will be like the flu.
Misdiagnosis, high amounts of false positives in current testing or simply doctors shuffling everything remotely resembling symptoms under COVID for financial or insurance reimbursement reasons.
My kids pediatrician and for myself an urgent care did something similar, they
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My kids pediatrician and for myself an urgent care did something similar, they just coded COVID symptoms so we didnâ(TM)t have to pay the copay respectively had workers comp pay for the visit.
So you're going with "Insurance fraud like when we colluded with our healthcare providers to deliberately misdiagnose our condition to defraud our insurance" and claim ignorance of the 178,000+ deaths due to COVID-19.
Bold move.
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In fact, one theory as to why so many (more than a third) of people who are positive for COVID-19 and never show any symptoms might be because they have prior exposure to other, non-COVID-19 corona viruses.
If this were true then old folks would have a better chance since they have experienced a wider range of virus exposures having been around longer....
Re:This is neither unusual nor shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, one theory as to why so many (more than a third) of people who are positive for COVID-19 and never show any symptoms might be because they have prior exposure to other, non-COVID-19 corona viruses.
If this were true then old folks would have a better chance since they have experienced a wider range of virus exposures having been around longer....
Only if you ignore every other factor that contributes to vulnerability in the elderly, such as weakened immune systems and other health complications.
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>"If this were true then old folks would have a better chance since they have experienced a wider range of virus exposures having been around longer...."
Well, no, because there is a time limit to all "immunity", it fades over time (which can vary wildly from virus to virus and by individual). It is probably far less likely the elderly would have been exposed to other (or as many other) corona viruses in the preceding months and years than younger people. Younger people travel much more, get out much m
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It might not be shocking to rational people, but it does make for shocking headlines. Shocking headlines lead to page views, which leads to ad revenue.
So when they say a mutation must occur... (Score:3)
When they say "in order for reinfection, a virus must change its genetic code" what are they saying exactly?
That we can't verify an infection is a reinfection with absolute certainty unless the code changes?
Or, that we have compelling evidence that people can only be reinfected with mutated strains, that a person cannot get infected simply because their immune response faded?
Or, that we suspect that this virus behaves like most others and immunity is usually relatively long lived and we're just educated-guessing here?
It's a very unclear statement.
I doubt it's the second one, given how little data we have. One could extrapolate from previous viruses, but that extrapolation comes with the caveat that different viruses behave differently.
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Or that the testing is very prone to false positives.
That depends highly on the type of test. The RT-PCR tests most commonly used have almost no false positives unless there are serious quality control issues in the lab. Competent labs include a known negative sample in each batch to prevent contamination in the lab from producing false positive results. RT-PCR false-negative rates are much worse which is why confirming tests are advised.
Antibody tests are the ones with a high potential for false positives. Usually only 5% or so but when you are using the
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BS. 5 months ago tests were only given to those displaying symptoms because "the RT-PCR test did not work if you were not sick". Now, suddenly, it works. How did this happen?
RT-PCR is a highly inaccurate method of detecting infection because it DOES NOT DETECT VIRAL INFECTION. PCR detects a "likely presence" of the DNA fragment it is looking for (RT-PCR tags the RNA sequence rather than the DNA sequence and then uses the same PCR amplification procedure to "guess" the amount of the tagged RNA fragment).
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Perhaps partly off-topic, but through quality control work two labs recently discovered a problem with an RT-PCR test kit by BGI Biotechnology (Wuhan) Co. Ltd. In total from March to mid August, it's likely that the test kit resulted in a few thousand false positive results. This is only a small fraction of all the positive results, but still. The false positives corresponded to cases with mild or no symptoms, and it was reported that some kind of artifact appeared in the test kit when it was used, resultin
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Why keep posting as AC? You do nothing to correct the supposed lies, what I said was true, the RT-PCR test will detect many coronavirus as well as flu as a positive for COVID-19
"veracity", really? (Score:1)
I think that might have been a speech to text error.
Perhaps 'ferocity' is what was said.
So much for herd immunity (Score:3)
Look at the posts around March/April, see how many people were saying "just get this over with" and "herd immunity", as if it was obvious that once you got infected and recovered, it won't be a problem anymore.
Look at the posts here, see how many people now say it is "obvious" that some people would get re-infected? How many of them said the same back in March and April?
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3 People out of 22 million confirmed cases. From Serology tests we know it probably more between 100 to 220 million cases.
Yes, its obvious and they are outliers.
Nothing to see here, please move alone... for now.
Coronavirus protective immunity is shortlasting (Score:3)
We know that people get reinfected with "common cold" coronaviruses regularly. In a study that monitored 10 subjects over a time span of 35 years, the median reinfection time was about 2 years, frequent reinfections happened at 12 months postinfection, and "[i]n a few cases, reinfections occurred as early as 6 months (two times for HCoV229E and one time for HCoVOC43) and 9 months (two times for HCoVNL63)."
https://www.medrxiv.org/conten... [medrxiv.org]
We still don't know much about SARS-CoV-2, but it is likely that it will have similar reinfection patterns at least in those individuals who had a mild decease (usually, more severe infections produce strong, durable immune responses).
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If natural immunity from a previous infection is short lived, then the question is whether the effects of subsequent infections are severe or mild. If there is partial resistance due to a previous infection, then perhaps the worst effects, such as multiple organ failure, would be avoided. These worst effects appear to be due to an immune system malfunction when confronted with a novel threat. If the threat is no longer "novel", maybe the immune response will be more "reasonable". Just guessing here. I am no
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We know that people get reinfected with "common cold" coronaviruses regularly.
Please learn the difference between "common cold coronaviruses" and specific viruses with specific characteristics.
We still don't know much about SARS-CoV-2
We know a shitton about it. For example we know the current dominant strain is already a genetic mutation from the previous one that hit Wuhan, and that re-infection of the original strain as well as this first mutation is not possible. We also know there are several other genetic mutations which have amounted to nothing due to not being easily transmittable or aggressive.
Each strain of a virus
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Please learn the difference between "common cold coronaviruses" and specific viruses with specific characteristics.
There are 4 specific viruses known as HCoVNL63, HCoV229E, HCoVOC43, and HCoVHKU1, which are commonly referred as "common cold" coronaviruses. So it looks like that you don't know what you are talking about here.
We know a shitton about it. For example we know the current dominant strain is already a genetic mutation from the previous one that hit Wuhan, and that re-infection of the original strain as well as this first mutation is not possible. We also know there are several other genetic mutations which have amounted to nothing due to not being easily transmittable or aggressive.
LOL... Is this the Dunning–Kruger effect?
First of all, there are many mutations of SARS-CoV-2, which are wildly spread. Most naturally occurring mutations have no functional consequence for the virus, i.e. they do not affect virulence, pathogenicity, or immunogenicity. Therefore, they are cons
Re: Coronavirus protective immunity is shortlastin (Score:2)
"a mild decease"
Is that a zombie you're talking about ?
is this news? (Score:2)
So why make 'news' of the COVID case?
Simply make hydroxychloroquine available, plus zinc, and administer early in the development of the disease.
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The common cold can reinfect you. So why make 'news' of the COVID case? Simply make hydroxychloroquine available, plus zinc, and administer early in the development of the disease.
Because then we'd be stuck with Trump for another 4 years. </sarc>
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Reinfection with Covid-19 is news because so many people die from it. People generally do not die from the common cold.
No the code doesn't have to mutate (Score:2)
"Koopmans told NOS that in order for reinfection, a virus must change its genetic code."
This is utterly wrong. We get reinfected with stuff all the time. If we have active antibodies for it, our body fights it off quickly and we likely don't notice. This happens for many of the childhood vaccine diseases we have (Measles and Polio in particular).
If we don't have active antibodies for a virus we've been infected with before (including via vaccine), then our bodies have to find the right b-cell and activate
Chicken pox reinfection (Score:2)
And there are cases of people getting the chicken pox twice.
Does that mean we all need to worry about getting the chicken pox again?
I think not.