Octopus Overlords

A new CDC analysis estimates that at least three out of every five Americans have antibodies that indicate a prior COVID-19 infection. Prior to the omicron-fueled surge in cases from December 2021 to February 2022, only an estimated one-third of people in the U.S. were estimated to have a prior infection.
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About 58% of adults had detectable antibodies as of February -- but that rose to nearly 75% among children and teens under 17.

More than two years into this pandemic, we finally have an antiviral treatment that works pretty darn well. Paxlovid cuts a vulnerable adult’s chances of hospitalization or death from COVID by nearly 90 percent if taken in the first few days of an infection. For adults without risk-heightening factors, it reduces that likelihood by 70 percent. Also, it might make your mouth taste like absolute garbage the whole time you’re taking the pills.

In Pfizer’s clinical trials, about 5.6 percent of patients reported an “altered sense of taste,” called dysgeusia in the medical literature. A Pfizer spokesperson assured me that “most events were mild” and “very few patients discontinued study as a result”; the outer packaging of the drug doesn’t mention it at all, and the patient fact sheet breezes past it. But Paxlovid-takers told me it’s absolutely dysgeusting.

The bad taste may come on shortly after people take their first set of pills. (If prescribed Paxlovid, you’re supposed to take three pills, twice daily, for five days.) For a 36-year-old dog walker in Washington, D.C., named sangam 'alopeke (who styles their name without capital letters), the effect emerged within about an hour of the first dose. Lindsay Wright, a 40-year-old creative director in Winnipeg, Canada, said she noticed it after 90 minutes. Sheila Borkar, a 30-year-old transportation engineer who also lives in Washington, took a pill before bed and woke up to the taste.

“I imagine this is what grapefruit juice mixed with soap would taste like,” Anna Valdez, a nursing professor in Sonoma Valley, California, told me. (We communicated over Twitter direct messages because Valdez had lost her voice from COVID.) “It is horrible and does not go away.” Borkar was reminded of acid reflux. “This didn’t taste like food,” she said. “It didn’t quite taste poisonous, but it definitely tasted like something that should not be consumed.” Her friend Jeffrey Holliday, a 33-year-old business analyst, told me, “It tasted like I chewed a bunch of vitamins.”

The relentless evolution of the COVID-causing coronavirus has taken a bit of the shine off the vaccines developed during the first year of the pandemic. Versions of the virus that now dominate circulation—Omicron and its subvariants—are more transmissible and adept at evading the body’s immune defenses than its original form. The current shots to the arm can still prevent serious illness, but their ability to ward off infection completely has been diminished. And part of the reason may be the location of the jabs, which some scientists now want to change.

To block infections entirely, scientists want to deliver inoculations to the site where the virus first makes contact: the nose. People could simply spray the vaccines up their nostrils at home, making the preparation much easier to administer. There are eight of these nasal vaccines in clinical development now and three in phase 3 clinical trials, where they are being tested in large groups of people. But making these vaccines has proven to be slow going because of the challenges of creating formulations for this unfamiliar route that are both safe and effective.

What could be most important about nasal vaccines is their ability to awaken a powerful bodily defender known as mucosal immunity, something largely untapped by the standard shots. The mucosal system relies on specialized cells and antibodies within the mucus-rich lining of the nose and other parts of our airways, as well as the gut. These elements move fast and arrive first, stopping the virus, SARS-CoV-2, before it can create a deep infection. “We are dealing with a different threat than we were in 2020,” says Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. “If we want to contain the spread of the virus, the only way to do that is through mucosal immunity.”

Zaxxon wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 3:03 pm Kids 5-11 are about to get boosted. Crickets for any vaccine for the under-5 crowd, still.

Smoove_B wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 11:04 am She signed off on it hours after the panel recommended it...

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Vaccine makers Pfizer and BioNTech said they will complete their submission for emergency use authorization of their Covid-19 vaccine for children under the age of 5 this week after a study of a third dose found it improves the efficacy of the vaccine.

The companies said that, with three doses, the vaccine performed about as well in young children as it does in adults. The vaccine was well tolerated, induced a strong immune response and was 80.3% effective at preventing Covid infections at a time when the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was circulating.

“The study suggests that a low 3-[microgram] dose of our vaccine … provides young children with a high level of protection against the recent Covid-19 strains,” Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech, said in a statement.

YellowKing wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 7:26 pm Well after 2+ years the Covid finally hit our house.

My daughter had a seizure today at school and fell flat on her face, busting her jaw up. Got her home, she was running a fever. Tested her and she was positive. Doc thinks COVID triggered the seizure (she has a history of them, albeit very infrequent - it's been 2 years since her last one).

Of course it happened right before we were headed out of town on vacation, but I'm glad we caught it before we left.

Kraken wrote:Glad YellowPrincess is OK and I hope the virus doesn't romp through your family.

Kraken wrote:Glad YellowPrincess is OK and I hope the virus doesn't romp through your family.

Zaxxon wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 4:38 pm June 15 FDA review meeting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/23/kids-co ... dlers.html

So hopefully by end of June...