The effect of false negative PCR tests would only be to inflate the number of people in the PCR-negative control group reporting symptoms. The data from the ONS research was that among those PCR positive, 14% report symptoms at 12 weeks, 8 times greater than the PCR negative control group. So that already implies that most of that 14% is real and caused by the virus, false negative PCR tests don’t have any impact on that headline.
I’m not sure if this has been peer-reviewed yet, but it sounds interesting.
“We found that exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein alone was enough to change baseline gene expression in airway cells,” said Nicholas Evans, student at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Centre in the US.
Cross-linking to this post in the main CV breaking news thread:
Study on penile erection dystunction after Covid.
https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/naok95/covid19_found_in_penile_tissue_could_contribute/
First comment in the thread by ramasamymd claims to be a senior author on the study and mentions a couple other resources.
Where else but Miami would we be studying whether COVID is also an STD? Of course it’s Miami!!1?1!!
I love living here; it’s just not a place; it’s a never-ending always-sordid adventure.
Once all the maskholes have caught COVID and been rendered ED, they’ll really be up for some CT buffoonery. And highly frustrated. I predict fireworks.
[quoting a quote within @Heffalump_and_Roo 's comment]
That seems like a ridiculous claim to me, unless you’re having sex through a hole in a wall.
??
That looks like a piece of this quote.
That looks like it says that it’s not sexually transmitted from men who have recovered from Covid. Not sure why you truncated that.
I suppose @Riemann is suggesting that two people breathing hard, probably in each other’s faces, might, just might, be at some risk of transmitting COVID between them if either of them had an active infection.
Wasn’t there some country that opened the brothels but required the use of glory holes?
This article caught my eye and I think this thread is the best place to put it. The article has a direct link to the not yet peer reviewed study.
" An HIV-positive woman with a persistent coronavirus infection that lasted 216 days straight had the virus mutate within her over 30 times, according to new [research]"
I find it vaguely comforting that the virus re-invented some of the same variants we are seeing elsewhere. Maybe it doesn’t have a ton of possible variability? Am I being too optimistic?
Most of the named variants of SARS-CoV-2 refer to alterations in the spike (S) protein because that is what controls the infectiousness of the virion, e.g. its ability to bind to the ACE2 receptor (the receptor binding domain) and mediate cell membrane fusion, which is what both vaccine development and most therapeutic research is focused on. The S-protein sequence is only 1273 amino acids long, and only a tiny fraction of the possible permutations will result in a viable protein, so it is unsurprising to see the same genetic variants spontaneously emerging, and in fact it is statistically inevitable given how many total infected cells there are.
There are also the E, M, and N genes that code their respective structural proteins but they aren’t likely to make a substantial change to viral replication or infectiousness; however, a change to the ORF region that produces proteases and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase could potentially alter the replication rate and pathogenesis of the infected cell, and in fact most alterations occur in the ORF region because it is the largest part of the viral genome, coding for 29 individual proteins, and if the virus were to suddenly become far more virulent along the lines of SARS-CoV(-1) or MERS-CoV it would most likely be in that region.
Stranger
Sort of parallel evolution, I suppose. It is interesting how this virus is teaching us so much about biology and medicine. As @Stranger_On_A_Train explains, I guess selective pressure regarding interactions will only give you so many competitive mutants in the receptor binding motif (which isn’t that large). Then there’s the hinge for hiding from antibodies and membrane fusion. Plus, the epitopes that antibodies recognize are also limited. I suspect that there isn’t that much diversity in antibodies that can successfully neutralize the virus.
No, there’s not. Last fall I audited an MIT course on Covid, and one of the lectures was about the development of the artificial antibodies that they gave to president trump. (It was broadcast a few days before trump was publicly diagnosed with covid, so it was an extremely timely lecture.) They had studied the antibody response of several people who recovered from covid, and when they looked at the antibodies in serum samples that were especially good at neutralizing the virus, all of those samples had the same four antibodies. (two of when went into the cocktail.)
Very interesting!
The latest from the BBC on Long Covid:
“But to fully understand the subtleties of this complex condition, it is necessary to consider long Covid as encompassing two very disparate patient groups – those who were admitted to hospital and those who weren’t – each with different underlying causes.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210609-how-long-will-long-covid-last
I have noticed an interesting shift in attitude among younger cohorts here in the UK recently. Their concerns about catching Covid seem to be moving from worrying about death, hospitalisation or serious illness if infected, towards worrying about possible long Covid. This is in part down to the increased levels of vaccination in the population but also there appears to be an increasing amount of anecdotal information relating to ongoing symptoms. This is of course before the effects of Omicron become visible in this context.
I can’t find any reliable up to date data on the prevalence of long Covid, and definitely not age-stratified. The last articles I could find showed rates of around 2% in infected populations as a whole. Does anyone have any good quality data on this, particularly analysing age as a factor?
Huh, that’s been the focus of my younger friends for most of the pandemic.
Someone posted a study showing 2/3 of people had long covid over in another thread. I’ve seen 10% somewhere, and you saw 2%. I think until we get more precise definitions of “long covid” it will be hard to pin this down.
Here it is
Thank you, that is interesting. Here Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK - Office for National Statistics is an ONS study from the UK with data up to 5th September.
I think , from my experience, that the shift in attitudes is being caused by the huge case increase here in the UK driven by the Omicron variant, and the feeling amongst people that, even though vaccinated, they may not be able to avoid catching Covid and having long term life-limiting health issues even though they are doing everything right (with regard to vaccines, boosters, masks et al).