Corona-zona

  Health officials have  announced the discovery of three cases of measles in Maricopa County. "One case is an adult and the other two are in minors. One case was hospitalized. All three are unvaccinated, and they are all recovering." This isn't exactly shocking. Back in 2015 the CDC said Arizona had the worst vaccination rate of any state in the country. I can't find any more recent state ranking data, but this story says the rate continues to decline and now stands at around 90% in Arizona. That's 8% below the level necessary for population immunity. This development comes in the wake of the pandemic. Anti-vaxxers have treated it as a golden opportunity to grow their brand , leading to  increased sales of their quack cures and remedies.   Now, more parents are holding back on vaccinations of any kind. Jason Terk, MD, a pediatrician practicing in Keller, Texas said : “It’s becoming much more challenging for me to convince people to get their kids vaccinated...

I have yet to be infected with SARS-CoV-2—as far as I know, at least not to the point that I became ill. I am knocking on wood as I write this.  Why have I not become infected? I know lots of other people who are not COVIDiots and take precautions. They are fully vaccinated and boosted (as am I). Still they've gotten infected, some of them more than once.  What is going on with us " NOVIDS ," then? Scientists are wondering this too, and over the past week this has been the subject of several articles I've run across.  This one says scientists are starting to close in on some explanations for why an estimated 30% of people in this country have never gotten COVID-19. One possibility is lucky genetic breaks. A study a couple of years ago identified a whole slew of genetic markers associated with people who've not become ill with COVID-19. Many of these are associated with "up-regulation of cholesterol biosynthesis" and "sequestration of ACE2 receptor...

  A couple of months ago, I blogged about the possibility of an endless wash-rinse-repeat cycle of COVID-19 infections. It's possible because of the rate at which the virus is mutating, the genetic space it has left to mutate, and the fact that the mutations seem to be in the direction of greater contagiousness and immune evasion. That is a depressing prospect even if there is no particular reason to fear reinfection except  inconvenience. But this week I have seen a couple of articles that paint a darker picture. One article  on a Canadian independent journalism site invoked the possibility of a "forever plague." They cited cases where people have been reinfected within 23 days .  A CNN story summarized findings of a  VA study  (preprint) looking at cases of reinfections in five million participants. It showed that  compared with those with just one Covid-19 infection, those with two or more documented infections had more than twice the risk of dyin...

  As you probably know, SARS-CoV-2 has a wide range of severity levels. Some never get it despite exposure and lack of vaccination. Some people get asymptomatic cases, some get mild cases, and some get quite severe cases. Scientists are trying to work out explanations for these things. Two recent stories summarize this work. First, there is work on the never-COVID people.  This NPR story talks about research exploring two reasons why some people never get the virus even though they are chronically exposed. One study showed that exposure to other coronaviruses—the kinds that can cause common colds—might prime the immune system to fend-off SARS-CoV-2. It looked at the blood of about 60 health care workers at a hospital who were repeatedly exposed to the virus (before vaccines were available) but never fell ill. Analysis of their blood showed the presence of an immune cell called a cross-reactive t-cell. Workers who did become ill did not have these cells. Since SARS-CoV-2 is a...

  A couple of days ago Nature Medicine published results of a " challenge study " where they deliberately infected healthy people with the OG strain of SARS-CoV-2. The purpose of the study was to learn more about the course of an infection with the virus. Researchers recruited 36 volunteers aged between 18 and 30, who had no known risk factors for severe disease. There was extensive informed consent to make sure participants knew what they were getting into. They also had supplies of antibody treatments available in case anyone got seriously ill. Participants were then given a tiny drop of fluid containing the virus—an amount comparable to what you might get from an aerosol droplet expelled by an infected person. They were then monitored around the clock for two weeks in a hospital setting. The results are very interesting. None of the participants developed severe disease, and only half of them even became infected. So either getting infected once exposed is a 50/50 propos...

  You can get COVID-19 and the seasonal flu at the same time. This has been known for some time. In fact, my brother-in-law got the combo back in 2020. But suddenly it's all over the news. Scientific American called it "a great example of how misinformation blooms." They point out that coverage exploded when an Israeli newspaper gave it a catchy name: Flurona.  I don't know, I rather like Fluvid. Though I must admit, Flurona does potentiate low-effort parody covers of My Sharona by The Knack: When you gonna give it to me, give it to me? It is just a matter of time Flurona? Is it just destiny, destiny? Or is it just a game in my mind, Flurona? In any case, the media is, predictably, now freaking out about it. The Daily Beast called it  a "a new nightmare to keep us awake at night." Is it? There is no evidence that it is. Sources I've read say dual infection is possible because both are respiratory diseases and both are transmitted via inhalation of ae...

  A study recently published by researchers at the University of Arizona and SUNY Stonybrook has found that patients with severe COVID-19 also have high levels of an enzyme found in snake venom. The compound is called secreted phospholipase A2 Group IIA. In deceased COVID-19 patients, its concentration is 9.6 times higher that in patients with mild COVID-19, and five times higher than in patients with a severe case, according to the study . One of the study's authors, Dr. Floyd Hilton, says the enzyme is naturally present in our bodies in low concentrations and plays some role in preventing bacterial infections. For unknown reasons, it increases with COVID-19, and in severe cases this is leads to disintegration of organ tissue: These high levels of this enzyme are looking at those tissues in the organs and saying, "you look like a bacteria, let's shred your membranes. Let's put these organs out of their misery." Phospholipase A2 is a  common component  of the ven...

Yesterday Wired magazine released an excellent  long-form article on how WHO and CDC were dragged kicking and screaming into an admission that they had been wrong about the main transmission mechanism for SARS-CoV-2, and why it took so long to get it right. You may recall that about a year ago, we were being told to keep 6 feet away from other people and wash hands frequently. That's because they thought the main way the virus spread was through respiratory droplets, a.k.a. fomites .  The theory was that an infected person would cough or sneeze, this would release large respiratory droplets that if you were too close, could land in your mouth or nose or eyes—the origin of the six foot rule. They could also land and persist for some time on surfaces, which you could touch and transfer the virus to those same openings.   Believing this was the main infection route, people were washing packages and vegetables from the grocery store in bleach.  There were shortage...

  Everybody has heard that diabetes is a risk factor for COVID-19. Diabetics are not more likely to get the disease, but they are more likely to develop a serious case if they're infected. But some researchers are seeing evidence that the direction may go both ways. In other words, a COVID-19 infection may cause diabetes in previously unafflicted individuals.   One study Published in Nature in January, suggests there is a 50%-75% "excess burden" of diabetes on the healthcare system for people who have been in the ICU with COVID-19. The hypothesis is that COVID-19 may damage our insulin-producing cells. Some researchers are skeptical  of the idea that COVID-19 causes diabetes. The problem is that these studies are observational rather than experimental, and sometimes the observations disagree.  So for example, a multicenter regional study conducted in the United Kingdom and published in Diabetes Care in August showed that, compared with a typical, pre-pande...