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Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

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Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#91

Post by PaulKeeble »

dekhn wrote: post #35
dingnuts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when almost everyone has already had the disease and was able to observe what it did to them -- which is the state we're at -- it's pretty hard to say that everyone needs to protect themselves. I know what COVID will do to me, because I had it already. He's not right. I was vaccinated, and the vaccine didn't work (it didn't prevent me from getting ill, get out of here with the 'better outcomes' bullshit, I'm healthy…

I don't think anybody has answered the question "is every COVID infection an individual gets going to give the same level of response"? IE, will you get COVID and then get better, but later get COVID and end up with Long COVID symptoms? Is it random every time you are infected?

At least 3 big studies looking at this, the most recent of them on 150k people, so very robust numbers. Subsequent infections do increasing damage and each infection increases your chance of developing Long Covid and not recovering. People with existing new symptoms after a Covid infection also get worse very often.

Rather than building immunity we are accruing damage and the evidence underpinning it from the VA study and the more recent ones is massive.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#92

Post by Zancarius »

thunkle wrote: post #41
NikolaNovak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort, and yours is no more necessarily right than his :). Some people still wear masks, some people still take booster shots, some people people still wash their hands, some people sneeze into elbows, some people stay inside, etc. Others may not do some or any of those things. "Accept new risk" and "this is the new normal" is as validly execut…

Also. I think it's rational for myself to wear a mask because getting COVID was one of the worst experiences of my life. It's like if I burned my hand on a stove and someone tried to convince me burning your hand on the stove is normal so no need to take precautions.

I suspect there's a lot of individual variation too.

COVID for me was exceptionally mild with the only annoyance being the total lost of smell for ~12 days. Otherwise, the dry cough wasn't any worse than the one I get when my allergies are in full force. Some people are just going to get worse cases and others won't. That's going to impact personal risk assessment.

My mother had an even milder case of COVID than I did (no cough), but RSV almost sent her to the hospital this past Thanksgiving. For all the fixation on COVID we tend to forget that there are other virus that can be lethal to certain demographics (e.g. advancing age).

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#94

Post by landemva »

taeric wrote: post #66

"We further found that levels of exhaled viral RNA increased with self-rated symptom-severity, though individual variation was high." I was curious on how high the variation was, so checked that out. There is a fairly wide swing in measurements. Not clear what that means on things. Would love to see more conversation on that. Most concerning on this, though, is "Levels of exhaled viral RNA did not differ across age,…

> I think the data was clear enough that the vaccines are worth getting

Unlike like measles or polio, these misnamed 'vaccines' don't prevent getting the disease nor transmitting the virus. I think young healthy people should get the disease, recover, develop antibodies, and be done with it. We did this for chicken pox until a couple decades ago.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#95

Post by terminatornet »

op00to wrote: post #73
taeric wrote: post #66

"We further found that levels of exhaled viral RNA increased with self-rated symptom-severity, though individual variation was high." I was curious on how high the variation was, so checked that out. There is a fairly wide swing in measurements. Not clear what that means on things. Would love to see more conversation on that. Most concerning on this, though, is "Levels of exhaled viral RNA did not differ across age,…

If you don’t get Covid because you got the vaccine, that’s a benefit to others.

unfortunately the CDC said early on that if you're vaccinated, you can't spread covid, that's clearly not the case. At this point, the vaccine only seems to prevent severe hospitalization (and that's assuming you still have immunity from your last dose, since it appears your protection wanes to almost nothing after 4-6 months)

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#96

Post by mint2 »

omginternets wrote: post #79
op00to wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t get Covid because you got the vaccine, that’s a benefit to others.

And if the vaccine makes you an asymptomatic carrier, that's a harm to others. I think it's more useful to start with the question of what is actually happening, and examine the consequences from there. Otherwise, we find ourselves arguing in favor of our priors, which helps no one.

This PR article doesn’t do a good job explaining but it seems the severity was treated as an independent variable and controlled for, so with that assumption the article actually does imply vaccinated individuals shed less - yes the same amount when controlled for severity - but the cases are less severe.

Why I say that is because of the two paragraphs:

“”“ Mild and moderately symptomatic patients with COVID still exhale large amounts of virus, though severely symptomatic cases exhale higher levels on average, the study reports.

Vaccinated and unvaccinated patients exhale similar levels of virus over the course of infection, the research shows.”””

Edit: the actual preprint states “ We further found that levels of exhaled viral RNA increased with self-rated symptom-severity” so some of these statements in the PR article and article aren’t all squaring together.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#97

Post by terminatornet »

Scarblac wrote: post #87
thunkle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also. I think it's rational for myself to wear a mask because getting COVID was one of the worst experiences of my life. It's like if I burned my hand on a stove and someone tried to convince me burning your hand on the stove is normal so no need to take precautions.

It was bad for me too. But I assume that the next infection won't be nearly as bad, because of built up immune response, several vaccine injections, and current variants being much milder than the initial one.

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case

> Compared with those infected once, patients who were reinfected showed that they were more prone to complications in various organ systems and more likely to be diagnosed with long COVID than those infected only once. These findings were consistent regardless of vaccination status.

> For those who had COVID-19 two times or more, the data appeared to show a:

> Two times increased risk of death > Three times increased risk of hospitalization > Two times increased risk of long COVID and chronic fatigue > Three times increased risk of heart issues and blood clotting disorders

https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/do-repeat-covid-infections...

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#98

Post by ralferoo »

taeric wrote: post #66

"We further found that levels of exhaled viral RNA increased with self-rated symptom-severity, though individual variation was high." I was curious on how high the variation was, so checked that out. There is a fairly wide swing in measurements. Not clear what that means on things. Would love to see more conversation on that. Most concerning on this, though, is "Levels of exhaled viral RNA did not differ across age,…

> I think the data was clear enough that the vaccines are worth getting. However, this seems to shatter any thoughts folks may have that they are safer to others when they are vaccinated?

That's not the correct conclusion from this statement though. Taking the vaccine increases the likelihood that your immune system will be able to get kill the virus almost immediately after exposure, so that you don't start exhibiting symptoms at all. You can still get COVID and thus exhibit symptoms after being vaccinated, it's just less likely.

However, this statement is concerning those who got infected and then started exhibiting symptoms. Of those, i.e. when your immune system wasn't able to immediately deal with the virus and needs to learn how to do it, the viral load expelled was roughly the same in every case, peaking at 8 days. That's probably not too unexpected really, but it does seem to indicate that the immunity given by the vaccine is probably all or nothing for any particular variant you're exposed to - it either works immediately and stops you getting ill, or the immune system still has to start from scratch in figuring it out.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#99

Post by dekhn »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #91
dekhn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anybody has answered the question "is every COVID infection an individual gets going to give the same level of response"? IE, will you get COVID and then get better, but later get COVID and end up with Long COVID symptoms? Is it random every time you are infected?

At least 3 big studies looking at this, the most recent of them on 150k people, so very robust numbers. Subsequent infections do increasing damage and each infection increases your chance of developing Long Covid and not recovering. People with existing new symptoms after a Covid infection also get worse very often. Rather than building immunity we are accruing damage and the evidence underpinning it from the VA stud…

Well, if that's true, it would be really bad (in a simple model it means basically everybody gets infected repeatedly and gets more and more damage and then most of the population has long covid). I am not hearing much concern this from my larger medical community.

Large numbers in a study is good, but if the study design isn't right, then large numbers won't make up for that. It's absurdly hard to really conclude reliably.

For example, from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/well/live/covid-reinfecti... """For many people who get Covid multiple times, subsequent infections will be as mild as or milder than their first, emerging data shows, likely because of partial immunity from previous infections, vaccination and the fact that the latest circulating variants generally cause less severe symptoms.""" which is much more consistent with my understanding of COVID repeat infections.

If you have a link to the VA study I will look at it.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#100

Post by elil17 »

mrob wrote: post #83
elil17 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It absolutely reduces your ability to take it oxygen easily." This is absolutely false. There is very strong evidence that masks do not effect gas exchange. One example of many: https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/face-masks-may-inc... Masks do make your lung muscles work slightly harder, but there's nothing wrong with that.

This is only talking about low oxygen demand scenarios. "Each participant performed a six-minute walk test" I've personally tested (out of curiosity) bicycling performance while wearing a half-face respirator that's barely noticeable during walking. Both measured speed and subjective difficulty were severely affected during high intensity exercise.

That sounds reasonable, but even then it doesn't mean someone shouldn't wear a mask. Their performance would be decreased, but it doesn't mean that it would be medically dangerous (they would not have low blood oxygenation, for example).
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