Michigan Arrogance

August 28th, 2020 at 7:36 PM ^

They aren’t rushing the testing or the approval process. The reason the vac development is accelerating for this is they are pre-manufacturing doses of vaccine that aren’t approved yet, in hopes that they will get approved and they they are ahead of the game manufacturing it. 
 

obviously if it doesn’t work out that are scrapping millions of doses but the companies manufacturing the them have been compensated financially by the govt. 

Michigan Arrogance

August 29th, 2020 at 8:18 AM ^

Phase 1 trials began in humans back in March. Following phases began in June and July on larger scales.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

 

That said, based on the timelines I've seen from scientists (not politicians), the absolute earliest I'd imagine a vaccine could be distributed would be Feb21, and even they only to high risk populations. The majoriety of us will likely not be getting a covid vaccine until Sept of 2021.

the fume

August 29th, 2020 at 4:53 PM ^

I mean, when do you think a vaccine would be shown safe? If we're going to wait a couple years before we take it, we might as well just get Covid now. Cuz a vaccine is the only way to stop the pandemic.

I worked in immunology way back when, I can almost guarantee this isn't going to shorten your life expectancy down the road, no matter what age you are. It can't hide dormant in the body with no observable effects and then 2 years down the road start replicating itself and turn into the plague or cancer.

Malarkey

August 28th, 2020 at 5:38 PM ^

How do we know it’s a true reinfection and not a false positive on one of the two tests?

 

shouldnt there be more stories out of 6 million cases if Covid carried  a significant risk of reinfection?

TrueBlue2003

August 28th, 2020 at 5:54 PM ^

I just listened to a podcast about the first case being a man in Hong Kong (article below).  It's happening.  They genetically sequenced both specimens and they were different so it wasn't a lingering infection or dead particles from the first one.

And of course it's happening.  Why wouldn't it?  It's a virus that in a large number of people doesn't even cause a specific immune response.

There's no reason to believe it'll be much different, if at all, than other easily spread coronaviruses.

And FWIW in this case, the man had a mild initial infection and the second was completely asymptomatic.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/24/first-covid-19-reinfection-documented-in-hong-kong-researchers-say/

TrueBlue2003

August 28th, 2020 at 5:59 PM ^

That's not what is happening here.  They have genetic material from both specimens and confirmed it's a different strain to prove two different and definitively positive cases.

And to answer your question about more stories: no, not necessarily. 

For one, this has only been around for a very short period of time so there simply hasn't been enough time yet for many reinfections.  But they're now trickling in.

For two, everyone will have a different "immunity" period.  There's not a strict point at which, oh, you can get it again.  So these initial cases are probably just at the very very far end of the tail of the distribution.

And three, there probably are more cases but just like 6 million isn't close to the true number of cases in the US, we certainly won't be documenting all reinfections.

TrueBlue2003

August 28th, 2020 at 6:16 PM ^

Are you suggesting that false positives are caused by actual genetic material of the virus but not from the host? I'm not sure that's how it works.  But if it is, those false positives could be ruled out with a second test.  I'm pretty sure they did that before confirming these as reinfections. 

There have been a ton of instances in which someone has tested positive many months apart and that were assumed to be old dead material or false positives as you suggest.  And those were all dismissed because they likely weren't actual reinfections. But these haven't been dismissed because they have very good evidence that these are actual reinfections.

Why do you find it so hard to believe that this is happening?  It was 100% inevitable. It was only a question of when we'd start to see them.

Malarkey

August 28th, 2020 at 6:26 PM ^

Because I understand how PCR tests work and that while they’re good tests, they’re not 100% accurate with both false positives and false negatives. 
 

 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v3

 

different genetic materials don’t matter if the PCR test labeled a patient as having One type of genetic material by mistake 

TrueBlue2003

August 28th, 2020 at 6:34 PM ^

You find it hard to believe that people are becoming reinfected with a disease that literally every expert knew with certainty would be possible, because you know about PCR tests?  That doesn't make sense.

Your theory about this being a false positive happens. It's what has happened in the majority of suspected reinfections.

But it's not whats happening here, or the one in Hong Kong, or the one in Belgium or the one in the Netherlands, etc.

The Reno case was symptomatic in both infections.  There wasn't a false positive involved.  The science here is sound.

Here's a story about all those.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/28/covid-19-reinfection-implications/

TrueBlue2003

August 28th, 2020 at 6:54 PM ^

You're really bad at this, bud.

No one is saying that.  Yes, most of the previous suspected reinfections were just testing anomalies or inconclusive.  I've said that like twice already. 

You can keep thinking that's the case here but it's not and you'll start to see more and more reinfections, because obviously.

Malarkey

August 29th, 2020 at 6:49 AM ^

I mean no offense, but you are failing to grasp the connection.  

 

just take a deep breath think about this rather resorting to ad hominem replies. 
 

1) pcr tests can produce false positives

2) pcr tests can label patients as having a genetic strain of Covid WHEN THEY IN FACT DONT HAVE COVID. 

3) a couple patients our of TWENTY FIVE MILLION tested positive for one strain of Covid and then another strain of Covid 


Why are you so certain that the method of PCR collection and analysis for this patient was some magical foolproof means of genetic code collection that somehow avoided the intrinsic limitations of the test ? 

because NBC wrote an article about it?

 

i don’t understand how you can acknowledge false positive PCR tests but say that this one patient had 0 shred of doubt for his diagnosis which was made BY PCR TESTING

 

 

Markley Mojo

August 29th, 2020 at 10:31 AM ^

The diagnostic test isn’t what they use to do the DNA sequencing. The diagnostic answers “yes/no”. The sequencing tells us the nucleotides. If it were a false positive, the sequencing attempt would fail utterly. 
 

It’s like testing positive for pregnancy from checking urine, versus blood, versus actually looking at the embryo. 

TrueBlue2003

August 29th, 2020 at 7:57 PM ^

Exactly what Markley said and what I said several times.  And you clearly didn't read any of the scientific articles I shared (not NBC, bud) and clearly didn't grasp any of my points.

They didn't just have a simple PCR yes/no test, they had the genetic specimens from both tests.  They literally sequenced them side by side and determined 37 nucleotides to be different to conclude it was a different infection.  You can't do that if one of the specimens is not SARS-CoV2.  You don't just "mislabel" the genetic material that is clearly the genetic material of SARS-CoV2 as verified by a genetic sequencing (NOT a PCR test).

I thought you were a science guy.  Read the science, bud.

Also, my telling you that you are bad at this was not an hominem argument.  When you failed to comprehend the basic reading of my argument and continued to make poor arguments, it was simply a matter of fact I was pointing out that you are bad at reading comprehension and making arguments.  It was separate from my (sound) arguments, it was not the basis of my arguments which is what an ad hominem argument is.

FauxMo

August 28th, 2020 at 6:30 PM ^

Well, not really that unsurprising though, since there are many viruses you get lifetime or near lifetime immunity to, like chicken pox or measles. The flu is notorious for its ability to mutate, so while you can "get it twice," you are really getting sick with very different flu viruses. And two confirmed cases only? I would not call this a "slam dunk" for widespread reinfection... 

TrueBlue2003

August 28th, 2020 at 6:49 PM ^

Those viruses are DNA viruses that remain in your body.  They are very different from coronaviruses in so many ways.  So I don't know why people keep bringing up those viruses as if they're at all relevant.

We know things about coronaviruses that are very similar to this one.  And based on that knowledge, most experts agreed that immunity would last maybe 1-3 years.  So it's not at all surprising we're starting to see some outliers after a few months.  Especially when we know that some cases are so mild that they don't induce a specific immune response.

No one said anything about "widespread" reinfection though.  This is almost certainly just some initial outlier reinfections.

ndscott50

August 28th, 2020 at 6:06 PM ^

That picture is just a little bit inflammatory don’t you think?

Overall, this is to be expected and the relatively low number of reinfection cases at this point is a good sigh.

Here is a good article relevant to the subject.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/25/four-scenarios-on-how-we-might-develop-immunity-to-covid-19/

Also Biden 2020. https://joebiden.com/ 

 

rainingmaize

August 28th, 2020 at 7:58 PM ^

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but lets say worst case scenario, this reinfection thing is real and its going to impact everyone. 

If you've already recovered from it once, shouldn't the body immune system be able to adapt and be able to fight it off more effectively, and therefore side effects be more managable?

Also, lets say the above isn't true, a vaccine can still be effective. Lets say 50% of people get the vaccine and antibodies only last a handful of months. We can still work with that as it will drastically reduce the amount of Corona spread to the point where we should be able to handle and manage it more effectively (especially with better testing thats coming out).

Also if we can get a vaccine that is somewhat effective, we can adapt it into one that you take every year, like a flu shot.