I believe the number was simply thrown out there to create political energy to spend significant amounts of COVID money now.
This seems like too cynical a take to me.
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This study finds that after adjusting for vaccination and existing immunity omicron appears no less severe than delta:
So in that sense, we have herd immunity already.
That’s old news.
Maybe that’s why the let COVID rip party is okay with banning abortion and contraception, figuring they’re already covered.
From the link:
Findings In this cohort study of 173 health care workers, inpatients, and guardians and 45 participants in a community facility, secondary transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was significantly less common, and viable virus was detected for a shorter duration in fully vaccinated individuals than in partially vaccinated or unvaccinated individuals.
Meaning Fully vaccinated individuals had a shorter duration of viable viral shedding and a lower rate of secondary transmission than partially vaccinated or unvaccinated individuals.”
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Related to the higher COVID mortality rate for POC…
Good grief! the problems with dark skin and pulse oximeters was in the news at the start of the pandemic, and the generic advise to people caring for themselves at home on the UK health service website mentions it. I guess I’m not shocked that doctors are ignoring this, but it ought to be shocking.
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Newer COVID subvariants appear to be able to escape antibody responses in both vaccinated individuals and those previously infected with COVID
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Yeah, there is no hope of herd immunity. But the vaccines are still showing strong efficacy against serious disease, critical disease, and death.
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Agree there’s still good reason to get vaccinated. Any antibody response at all reduces the risk of severe illness.
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I’d say there is no hope of “immediate” herd immunity. Not surprisingly, COVID mutates faster than vaccines can be developed. However, similar to the flu, there is currently work being done on universal COVID vaccines. So we will see.
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tl;dr: Anti-diabetes drug Metformin, not anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin, prevents hospital care & death.
COVID-19 patients were less likely to die or need hospital care if they took the common anti-diabetes drug metformin, according to a long-awaited University of Minnesota study, but not if they took ivermectin.
The results of the ambitious remote clinical trial could steer doctors toward off-label use of one cheap and available drug for the treatment of COVID-19 — just not the one that has drawn the most public attention. Results were presented in a national online lecture on Friday ahead of publication in a medical journal.
“It does appear that metformin substantially reduces the risk of [emergency department] visits, hospitalization or death from COVID-19, and that reduction is significant,” said Dr. Carolyn Bramante, the leader of the U’s COVID-OUT trial, in an interview. The study also examined whether the antidepressant fluvoxamine offered any benefit.
The study of more than 1,300 participants is a third strike against ivermectin, a controversial anti-parasitic drug that also failed to produce a benefit against COVID-19 in large clinical trials in the U.S. and Brazil. However, the finding in the U trial was not statistically significant, meaning that it neither proved that ivermectin worked or didn’t work when taken over three days in a moderate range of dosages.
“All I can say is that, in our study, we did not see any evidence of benefit of ivermectin in those doses,” Bramante said.
Most of the results failed to reach statistical significance in the yearlong trial, which limited enrollment to people who were overweight in order to study the drugs in a known high-risk group for severe COVID-19. The primary goal was to see if patients had lower composite scores after taking the three drugs, alone or in combination, that were based on whether they died, needed hospital care, and suffered abnormally low blood-oxygen levels.
Practical problems got in the way of the composite results, including the use of commercial blood-oxygen monitors that turned out to have unreliable readings. Findings were more clear cut on whether the drugs prevented COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations or ER visits.
Low doses of fluvoxamine showed such little evidence of benefit that the arm of the trial involving that drug was stopped early. Patients taking higher doses of ivermectin were more likely to need hospital care for COVID-19 than those taking lower doses, but results for both were within the statistical possibility of random chance.
All three drugs were selected for the study based on findings early in the pandemic that they could inhibit replication of the coronavirus or the inflammation that causes COVID-19 disease. All three also offered promise as low-cost existing medications with established safety records.
Ivermectin has gained a fervent following based in part on observational clinical successes against COVID-19 reported by a Florida clinical group and its promotion as an alternative by people with vaccine safety concerns.
Metformin was selected through a U analysis that identified cellular targets of the coronavirus and then found drugs that worked on those same targets. The drug’s performance actually improved over time as the pandemic shifted from an alpha coronavirus variant last spring to faster-spreading delta and omicron coronavirus variants this winter.
“That is reassuring. It appears metformin doesn’t lose relevance,” Bramante said, although results among the different variants didn’t reach a level of statistical significance.
Pandemic trends uncertain
Minnesota’s pandemic indicators are mixed regarding next stages of COVID-19. The viral load found in sewage samples declined 11% over the past week at the Metropolitan Wastewater Treatment Plant in St. Paul — after rising slightly the previous two weeks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week also found zero Minnesota counties with high enough COVID-19 levels to recommend public mask-wearing indoors. The entire Twin Cities area dropped from moderate to low risk levels as well.
On the other hand, the wastewater data showed that most COVID-19 in the Twin Cities is now caused by a BA.5 coronavirus subvariant. While the variant has caused lower rates of severe illness than others, it also shows a high breakthrough rate in people with immunity from recent infections and vaccinations. Mayo Clinic’s 14-day forecast suggests infection levels will rise as a result.
“There is the potential that it could become a larger more sustained increase,” said Curtis Storlie, a co-creator of the Mayo COVID-19 model, “but it is also possible that this current rise loses steam in the next couple of weeks and we wait to catch another ‘wave’ in the coming months.”
Health officials are confident that broad immunity levels will continue to reduce the rate of coronavirus infections that produce severe COVID-19. Minnesota also has a growing stockpile of antiviral drugs that didn’t exist last year. The state this week reported an on-hand supply of more than 18,000 courses of Paxlovid, the most effective COVID-19 antiviral drug.
The U’s COVID-OUT trial was selected for the national presentation Friday because of its unique design as a national remote clinical trial studying multiple drugs in combination. Bramante said the research team went to great lengths to immediately ship study drugs to participants with confirmed cases of COVID-19 so they could start taking them as soon as possible.
Patients on average received their study drugs within 24 hours of enrollment, but still weren’t taking them until five days after symptom onset, which could have hindered results.
“Our time to study drug initiation was a little longer than it could be,” Bramante said, “if we were trying to mimic real life as much as possible.”
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But can i buy it at fleet farm?
No, but Menard’s has a whole pallet of them…and this week only, you can get an 11% rebate…also next week & the week after that & the week after that…
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Apparently type A blood is more likely to have worse COVID, and O less likely.
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I haven’t read the underlying study, yet
New study suggests covid increases risks of brain disorders
They found a long term increased risk of brain fog, dementia, epilepsy, and psychosis.
The analysis, conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford and drawing on health records data from more than 1 million people around the world, found that while the risks of many common psychiatric disorders returned to normal within a couple of months, people remained at increased risk for dementia, epilepsy, psychosis and cognitive deficit (or brain fog) two years after contracting covid. Adults appeared to be at particular risk of lasting brain fog, a common complaint among coronavirus
survivors.
For people between the ages of 18 and 64, a particularly significant increased risk was of persistent brain fog, affecting 6.4 percent of people who had had covid compared with 5.5 percent in the control group.
The study found that 4.5 percent of older people developed dementia in the two years after infection, compared with 3.3 percent of the control group. That 1.2-point increase in a diagnosis as damaging as dementia is particularly worrisome, the researchers said.
However, the risk of depression and other mood disorders dropped back to baseline levels within a couple of months.
Six months after infection, children were not found to be at increased risk of mood disorders, although they remained at greater risk of brain fog, insomnia, stroke and epilepsy. None of those effects were permanent for children. With epilepsy, which is extremely rare, the increased risk was larger.
Not really COVID-only, but I’m going to post it here anyway…
text, but pics at the link above
Coating could be a game changer to kill Covid virus, germs in minutes: Study
In our centuries-old struggle against germs, we may soon have a new weapon: the first long-lasting coating that can kill bacteria and viruses in minutes and continue to kill them for months at a time.
Developed by a team of University of Michigan engineers and immunologists, it proved deadly to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), E. coli, MRSA and a variety of other pathogens.
It killed 99.9% of microbes even after months of repeated cleaning, abrasion and other punishment on real-world surfaces like keyboards, cell phone screens and chicken-slathered cutting boards.
The coating could be a game changer in traditionally germ-laden public spaces like airports and hospitals, according to Anish Tuteja, a professor of material science and engineering at U-M and co-corresponding author of the paper published in Matter.
“We’ve never had a good way to keep constantly-touched surfaces like airport touch screens clean,” he said. “Disinfectant cleaners can kill germs in only a minute or two but they dissipate quickly and leave surfaces vulnerable to reinfection. We do have long-lasting antibacterial surfaces based on metals like copper and zinc, but they take hours to kill bacteria. This coating offers the best of both worlds.”
The coating, which is clear and can be brushed or sprayed on, gets its durability and germ-killing power by combining tried-and-true ingredients in a new way. It uses antimicrobial molecules derived from tea tree oil and cinnamon oil, both used for centuries as safe and effective germ killers that work in under two minutes. The coating’s durability comes from polyurethane, a tough, varnish-like sealer that’s commonly used on surfaces like floors and furniture.
“The antimicrobials we tested are classified as ‘generally regarded as safe’ by the FDA, and some have even been approved as food additives,” Tuteja said. “Polyurethane is a safe and very commonly used coating. But we did do toxicity testing just to be sure, and we found that our particular combination of ingredients is even safer than many of today’s antimicrobials.”
The results of the study’s durability tests suggest that the coating could keep killing germs for six months or longer before its oil begins to evaporate and reduce its disinfectant power. But even then, Tuteja says it can be recharged by wiping it with fresh oil; the new oil is reabsorbed by the surface, starting the cycle again.
Tuteja estimates that the technology could be commercially available within a year; it has been licensed to Hygratek, a spinoff company that Tuteja founded with assistance from U-M Innovation Partnerships.
The key challenge was to combine the oil and polyurethane in a way that let the oil molecules do their germ-killing work while preventing them from evaporating quickly. The research team – including associate professor of materials science and engineering and biomedical engineering Geeta Mehta, a co-corresponding author; and materials science and engineering PhD students Abhishek Dhyani and Taylor Repetto, co-first authors – found a possible solution in cross-linking, a well-known process that uses heating to link materials together at the molecular level. The smaller oil molecules readily combined with the cross-linking polymer molecules, forming a stable matrix.
But to kill germs, the oil molecules need to penetrate their cell walls, which they can’t do if they’re tightly tethered into the matrix. Eventually, they found a middle ground by partially cross-linking the materials – enough to keep some of the oil molecules free to do their work, but keeping others bound tightly to the polyurethane.
“There was some trial and error, but we eventually found that cross-linking only some of the oil did what we needed,” Tuteja said. “The free oil tends to stay with the oil that’s cross-linked into the matrix, helping the coating last longer.”
Once the basic recipe was set, the researchers set about finding a combination of active ingredients that would kill a wide variety of the germs that trouble humans most. To identify a representative sample of microbes, they worked with co-corresponding authors Christiane E. Wobus, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology, and J. Scott VanEpps, an associate professor of emergency medicine, both at the U-M Medical School. Ultimately, they found a precise balance of antimicrobial molecules that were effective, safe and inexpensive.
Tuteja emphasizes that they’re not locked into one specific formula; the team’s understanding of individual ingredients’ properties enables them to tweak the formula for specific applications or rebalance the antimicrobial agents to kill specific germs.
“It’s never our goal just to develop a one-off coating, but instead to develop a library of underlying material properties to draw from,” Tuteja said. “If we can understand those properties, then we can develop coatings to meet the needs of specific applications.”
It makes me wonder if using this is going to give rise to “superbugs” like those with antibiotic-resistance.
Coating works in the air? TIL.
It might help prevent the spread of monkeypox. That can be spread via fomites. If it lives up to it’s hype, it could be a game changer for food safety.
Not gonna do squat re covid, though.
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