We're Doomed

[kander]

And what about the "typhoid mary" types. those individuals who become carriers with no symptoms. Dealing with them till there is a vaccine will exasperate the situation. Some of these people will be nearly impossible to contract trace and random infections will pop up as if by magic.

[Guest]

And what about the "typhoid mary" types.

I believe it's called Contact Tracing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_tracing

All it takes is a simple little test. And yet, 'tis amazing how hard that turned out to be, eh?

[Durian Fiend]

quote:

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Originally posted by ironyak

Durian Fiend - Most experts believe a person should have immunity for at least a year or two after getting infected.

Given all the unknowns, things are not really looking that simple...

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It's the best current guess though.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opini...unity.html

[ironyak]

Durian Fiend - It's the best current guess though.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opini...unity.html

Again, context and complexity instead of single-sentence take aways? (grab-and-go still requires some chewing and digestion?

"Then again, another recent study (also not yet peer-reviewed) suggests that not every case of infection may be contributing to herd immunity. Of 175 Chinese patients with mild symptoms of Covid-19, 70 percent developed strong antibody responses, but about 25 percent developed a low response and about 5 percent developed no detectable response at all. Mild illness, in other words, might not always build up protection. Similarly, it will be important to study the immune responses of people with asymptomatic cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection to determine whether symptoms, and their severity, predict whether a person becomes immune."

[Durian Fiend]

OK, here's something to chew on from the article:

"..With time, other aspects of immunity will become clearer as well. Experimental and statistical evidence suggests that infection with one coronavirus can offer some degree of immunity against distinct but related coronaviruses. Whether some people are at greater or lesser risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 because of a prior history of exposure to coronaviruses is an open question.

And then there is the question of immune enhancement: Through a variety of mechanisms, immunity to a coronavirus can in some instances exacerbate an infection rather than prevent or mitigate it. This troublesome phenomenon is best known in another group of viruses, the flaviviruses, and may explain why administering a vaccine against dengue fever, a flavivirus infection, can sometimes make the disease worse..."

[ironyak]

Agreed, lots to chew on, but if I had to summarize the article it would be with this fill in the blank:

____ "is an open question."

[geochem]

quote:

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Originally posted by Durian Fiend

OK, here's something to chew on from the article:

And then there is the question of immune enhancement: Through a variety of mechanisms, immunity to a coronavirus can in some instances exacerbate an infection rather than prevent or mitigate it. This troublesome phenomenon is best known in another group of viruses, the flaviviruses, and may explain why administering a vaccine against dengue fever, a flavivirus infection, can sometimes make the disease worse..."

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Chew on indeed... with the major effort to develop a vaccine, it would definitely suck if the vaccine did make it worse for anyone subsequently infected... I wasn't aware of such a phenomenon...

[geochem]

Maybe the Hilo side of the island isn't doomed after all: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10...420-022445

This article describes mechanisms whereby moderate temperatures and moderate to slightly elevated humidities seem to reduce the susceptibility of infection to the COVID-19 type viruses. It's pretty technical - but worth wading through it - it deals with environmental factors, nutrition, and immune response to viral threats.

[ironyak]

Food Basket programs have been in high gear lately. Here's a story about Kona side, but the car line in Pahoa yesterday waiting for food distribution stretched from the community center down to about the dump road at one point.

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/202...a-airport/

[Durian Fiend]

Perhaps we are doomed. So many asymptomatic people moving about that it seems inevitable we all will be eventually exposed.

https://www.boston25news.com/news/cdc-re...OiE25KpZG8