Coronamonomania Thrives in Darkness, Part 79

A little slow on the updates, not that there isn’t research and data, just have a lot of business going on that interferes with this hobby.  I would like to note my ongoing wonder and awe at the enormous power of masks.  At least in Minnesota, mask wearing has declined by at least 90% and shockingly, there is absolutely no impact on cases, even taking vaccination into account.  Does make me think that maybe the masks were actually facilitating spread.

Here is some ghoulish research.  The researchers reported on autopsies of persons who supposedly died of CV-19.  (Medrxiv Paper)   While evidence of CV-19 was found in almost every organ, no evidence of pathological changes was found outside of the lungs.  So take all the nonsense about massive damage from CV-19 in various organs with a grain of salt; as you would expect, it damages the lungs and that is about it.

I am pretty much done with variant terrorism, all the misleading information about how they are more transmissible, cause more serious disease, are more dangerous to children, will evade vaccines, etc.  Minnesota’s officials have pushed this terrorism, but you can see in the numbers that there is zero impact.  Here is another piece of research finding that T cell response to the variants is preserved even though they may not recognize some of the mutated sequences.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This study was undertaken among staff at the Cleveland Clinic to compare immune response after infection and after vaccination.  (Medrxiv Paper)   The authors compared infections in previously infected but not vaccinated, vaccinated, and not infected/not vaccinated groups.  There were no infections in the previously infected but not vaccinated group, suggesting marginal benefit of vaccination for this group.  The authors suggested that they did not need vaccination and vaccines should be prioritized to those not previously infected.

Another reason why cycle numbers should have been and should be reported.  This study shows that analyzing the population distribution of viral load can help you follow the epidemic’s course.  Obviously, more high viral load people likely means more cases coming, as they are more infectious.  (Science Article)

People think that we have to have a specific immune response to CV-19 to fight it, but humans have general immune defenses against pathogens that also fight CV-19 and that likely account for the range of infection likelihood and seriousness of disease.  We have molecules capable or recognizing certain biochemical sequences as likely belonging to pathogens and which engage the body in defending against them.  That topic is explored in this paper.  (Medrxiv Paper)

What matters after vaccination is not antibody production but memory B cells.  This research confirms that especially after two doses of mRNA vaccines there is strong production of these memory cells.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This study finds that vaccination may be of limited benefit to nursing home residents who had previously been infected.  The researchers found a limited antibody response in these individuals, particularly to variants of concern.  Residents who were previously infected had a much stronger response to vaccination, comparable to that in nursing home staff.  But again, for whatever reason, only antibodies were examined, not the totality of the immune response.  (Medrxiv Paper)

More vitamin D research.  (Medrxiv Paper)   Persons who had lower pre-infection levels of vitamin D were more likely to have serious CV-19 illness.