Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 197

The leftovers from the weekend are up next.

An interesting paper from Germany, finding that most of the population there has been both vaxed and infected, with the majority of the people having had at least three immune-response-provoking events.  Notwithstanding that, protection against another infection is low, but protection against serious disease is high.  Just like with all the other seasonal coronaviruses.  (Medrxiv Paper)

One disturbing facet of treatment of dementia patients even in the pre-epidemic era was the increasing use of potent antipsychotic drugs to essentially turn them into completely doped up sheep, who cause no trouble for staff.  These drugs have major side effects, including an increase in strokes and heart attacks and they cause greater mortality among the elderly.  This paper looked at whether the use of such drugs increased during the epidemic, as staffing issues became more acute, and the patients were more isolated than usual, as idiots like Little Timmy Walz banned visitors.  The study is from Wales, where some of the same cruelty was practiced and finds that there was a small, but meaningful, increase in the use of antipsychotics for dementia patients during 2020.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Suddenly it is okay to say that prior infection gives us as good or better protection against a subsequent infection as does any number of vax does.  How many times must we point out that the body is pretty smart and knows how to generate an effective response against a pathogen, one that is proportional to the threat presented.  Here is another study, which tries to make it sound like vax is better, although acknowledging that natural immunity is good.  The reality is that the data shows that prior infection alone provided far better protection than vax alone.  Hybrid immunity again appears slightly better.   (JID Study)

CV-19 apparently is associated with some increased risk of certain conditions following an acute infection.  In research that looked at a very large number of patients for up to 180 days post-infection using electronic medical records, the risk of pulmonary embolism and certain abdominal issues was higher in those who had been infected than those who hadn’t.  A variety of other issues had some level of association with infection and the nature and frequency of the issues varied across variant types.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This was a longitudinal cohort study from Switzerland which followed people with varying infection and vax statuses.  At the start of the study, 98% of persons had some immune response to CV-19.  Notwithstanding this, a substantial fraction had a subsequent exposure that generated an additional immune response.  Intriguingly, certain T cell response can distinguish between a prior infection and a vax response.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Prisons have been fertile ground for CV-19 research.  In this paper, the researchers again confirmed findings from other studies that while both prior infection and vax can offer some effectiveness against subsequent infection, prior infection protection is stronger and more durable.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Another very recent study about China, which using survey methods estimates that at the end of 2022 and start of 2023, 90% of Chinese were vaxed, but an incredible 80% had been infected in the last 30 days.  A simply astounding wave when the government gave up on suppression, and while there certainly were lots of deaths and hospitalizations, no collapse of the health care system or other country occurred.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Here is another stupid meta-review of studies on vax and booster effectiveness against Omicron.  Stupid because the follow-up period in most of the studies is basically 60 days or a little longer.  Far too short.  So the boosters appear effective against serious disease for some time, but even in this short follow-up, not against infection.  Wait for 6 months, it will be essentially zero.  And even worse, no attempt to account for prior infection, which has to be adjusted for in any serious study.  (Medrxiv Paper)