I’d like my blood checked for immunity since my family has survived the Black Death twice, once in Europe and then in England.

kv

 

Why worry yourself to death over it then?

Edit: Since infections have been monetized, there is an incentive to report positives. Be sure your tests are sent to 3 labs in different states and take >= 2/3 as the most probable result.

 

Is the greater infection rate due to lifestyle choices or genetic? ( I can't subscribe to the NYT on ethical grounds.)

I'm pretty sure I am immune because the U.S. Army gave it to me in the form of a vaccine in 1970. I had a reaction and though I felt as though I was going to die later that day I have not died from the plague yet!

By the way was the Black Death cause by bacteria spread by fleas? It is unlikely that antibodies are passed down through the generations except for the slight possibility of some antibodies being passed from mother to child.

 

I'm pretty sure I am immune because the U.S. Army gave it to me in the form of a vaccine in 1970. I had a reaction and though I felt as though I was going to die later that day I have not died from the plague yet!

By the way was the Black Death cause by bacteria spread by fleas? It is unlikely that antibodies are passed down through the generations except for the slight possibility of some antibodies being passed from mother to child.

Antibodies are passed down through breastfeeding. Child gets whatever antibodies the mother has.

 

Antibodies are passed down through breastfeeding. Child gets whatever antibodies the mother has.

Yeah, but those antibodies don't last a lifetime, do they?

 

By the way was the Black Death cause by bacteria spread by fleas? It is unlikely that antibodies are passed down through the generations except for the slight possibility of some antibodies being passed from mother to child.

Very interesting comment. Of course, the infective agent was either a bacterium as is generally believed or a virus. My first boss had a cute cartoon in his office. It showed a rat complaining that it was blamed for the plague, but it had nothing to do with what its fleas did. That always reminded me of the rat in the 1973 version of Charlotte's Web. Almost makes you like them. (

).

More seriously, the post by @justtrying (https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/...ave-shaped-human-history.171797/#post-1540949 ) traced relative resistance (not antibodies) of some human races/alleles to specific genes. As per your question, antibodies may be passed mother to child, but not through generations. They are short lived. As a tidbit, mitochondria are inherited only from the mother. They definitely have a role in immunity (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2018.01605/full). That is just the first reference I came across on Google. There are many.

 

an interesting study on masks
https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1164/rccm.201203-0548ED

 

an interesting study on masks
https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1164/rccm.201203-0548ED

The naysayers will be along soon.

 

Some people are immune to AIDS because of a Genetic Mutation caused by the Black Death or smallpox. AIDS is a Virus so in some way either the Mutated Genes causes immunity or the actual antibodies carry down through generations, most unlikely to be carried down and more to be the Mutation which would be permanent.

Devastating epidemics that swept Europe during the Middle Ages seem to have had an unexpected benefit - leaving 10% of today's Europeans resistant to HIV infection.
But epidemics of which disease? Researchers claimed this week that plague helped boost our immunity to HIV, but rival teams are arguing that the credit should go to smallpox.

https://www.nature.com/articles/news050307-15

kv

 

( I can't subscribe to the NYT on ethical grounds.)

I know you can't say why here in the forum I'd like to know the why of that statement. PM?

 

Some people are immune to AIDS because of a Genetic Mutation caused by the Black Death or smallpox

You don't think they are "immune" because they don't participate in the behaviors that spread HIV? It isn't spread like most other diseases you know.

 

You don't think they are "immune" because they don't participate in the behaviors that spread HIV? It isn't spread like most other diseases you know.

Genetic mutation, its in the article. 2 separate studies with differing opinions. But, both say mutations.

kv

 

The naysayers will be along soon.

The naysayers would point to this.

We can now be confident that the use of surgical masks on TB patients is supported by scientific evidence, but we should be mindful that this intervention is only one of several control measures that should be implemented to prevent the transmission of TB to our patients and to our colleagues.

Most of the masks I see the public wearing are just Pandemic Theater. Ineffective or worse than no mask.

 

The naysayers would point to this.


Most of the masks I see the public wearing are just Pandemic Theater. Ineffective or worse than no mask.

Selective reading is best reading. There are also a number of articles out there on use of surgival masks in OR that conclude that they do not make a difference innterms of prevwnting post op infections.

Here is something elae I found today:

https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/07/24/coronavirus-restrictions

Apparently flu all but disappered in southern hemisphere. Lockdowns are credited. This does not look good for the new normal - so many lives saved, prison like existence to eliminate all diseases, will you take it!

 

https://apkmetro.com/lockdown-becomes-an-australian-nightmare/

Australia’s coronavirus response was, till lately, the envy of the world. Like its financial system, which had gone practically 30 years and not using a recession, Australia appeared to have cracked the Covid code. Neighborhood transmission had been all however eradicated, deaths stored low—somewhat over 100—and life within the inhabitants facilities of Sydney and Melbourne was getting again to regular. On the similar time, economists and enterprise leaders had their fingers crossed for a V-shaped restoration, with hopes that the federal authorities would wind up its costly stimulus and help applications earlier than the tip of the 12 months.

Now not. Australia is discovering what a lot of the world has already discovered: Like holding a seashore ball underwater, you may hold your an infection fee down just for so lengthy earlier than it pops up once more. And there’s solely a lot you are able to do to cease a virus from spreading with out resort to petty totalitarianism.

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/covid-19-should-nz-go-swedens-way

The return of Covid-19 to New Zealand last week and the resultant Level 3 lockdown in Auckland has led to a renewed push by pundits for the Government to abandon its elimination strategy in favour of a Sweden-style herd immunity approach.

"This hopeless strategy of perfection, of elimination, entails destroying our economy and quality of life in an endless pursuit of the unobtainable," Damien Grant wrote in Stuff.

I hope NZ can maintain their isolation until a vaccine is ready for mass distribution.

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/8things/our-gross-national-smugness-dented

As of last week, however, it has dawned on us that any kind of outbreak will see us pitched back into uncertainty at a moment’s notice. The prospect of being thrown backwards and forwards from normalcy to emergency, time and time again, is an exhausting and depressing reality to confront. It’s like rolling a boulder up a steep hill, only to realise that it’s going to roll downhill again each time we reach the top.

There will not be the same sense of jubilation and national achievement when the Auckland lockdown is lifted. Any relief will be laced with unease about having to do it again and again until a vaccine is found - and perhaps that is how we should have felt the first-time round.

 

https://apkmetro.com/lockdown-becomes-an-australian-nightmare/


https://www.newsroom.co.nz/covid-19-should-nz-go-swedens-way


I hope NZ can maintain their isolation until a vaccine is ready for mass distribution.

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/8things/our-gross-national-smugness-dented

I dont know why anyone thought it possible to "lock" this out. For example, a small island that has a hospital supports implemented fairly strict no visitors (only essential services policy. For a while it was not official, but you would be harassed by the local natives if you went there so really it was not worth it. The problem is that the locals were travelling off island. Guess how the outbreak happened? Someone went to the mainland and did not self isolate upon returning. The whole scenario has now turned very nasty and political. Many are tired of this and population is getting more and more divided. I find that this "outbreak" is less health crisis and more political manipulation.

 

Most of the masks I see the public wearing are just Pandemic Theater.

Maybe where you live, but around here the most popular are what is known as "procedure masks". I know that is what they're called because it says so on the box. Probably around 85-90 percent of the people are wearing that style. The rest are home made sewn style, glorified bandanas.

 

Re: Posts citing the efficacy of masks in reducing guinea pig (GP) infection with MDR-TB

Here's a link to the original article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3359891/ The study design is good and its analysis seems unbiased. It provides strong clinical evidence and reviews the literature to support mask wearing by patients known to have TB. The study doesn't mention whether the GP's were in separate cages isolated from each other, but it appears they weren't. So what if one or two members of the non-mask group were highly susceptible and infected almost all of the others in their group? Susceptibility to TB does vary between individuals.

Ignoring that aspect, how are those data applicable to SARS-CoV-2?

TB became a reportable disease and was tracked by the CDC beginning in about 1953. Its incidence in the US decreased steadily until 1984 when there was a small surge that lasted until 1991-1992. Following that, incidence continued to decrease and in 2018, only 9,025 cases were reported. MDR-TB emerged during that time, and XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant) emerged in 2006. Neither drug resistant strain has caused a pandemic or even an epidemic of the proportions caused by SARS-CoV-2. Why not?

Could it be that SARS-CoV-2 is far more contagious? Let's assume it is, and there is certainly evidence to support that. Now, let's see how that would have affected the study on masks and TB. The masks reduced infectious quanta* by 75% (1,659 infectious quanta/12-h sample to 408 infectious quanta/12-h sample). What if the infection rate in the mask group was 85/90 (94%), could the non-mask group have reached statistical significance? No.

How much more infectious would the etiologic agent need to be for those results? Twice, well maybe, if things were linear. Ten times? More likely.

MDR-TB and SARS-CoV-2 are not the same disease. SARS-CoV-2 seems to be much more contagious.

A second concern is that mask wearing by the public in the US is highly variable. Some cover the nose and mouth properly, Some use fabric approaching thin gauze. Some only cover the mouth. Some even use them as chin supports. Everyone is constantly readjusting them.

How were masks in that study used?**

Mask Use by Patients
During this 12-week study, of which half the days (42 d) were designated as mask-use days for the 12 hours between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., patients generally used two to three masks per 12-hour period. Approximately 650 masks were used for the entire study. With few exceptions, patients wore masks for the entire 12-hour mask-wearing period, with removal for meals and medication administration. The nursing spot checks revealed that patients used masks consistently during daytime hours on mask-use days. The most common reasons for mask change in a given day were excessive moisture accumulation within the mask.

That is not representative of how masks are used in the US. As I have said before, proper use may have an effect. But current mandates do not require that nor is it done.

What we need is for those with access to the data and the proper tools to look at excess deaths before masks, after masks became popular in non-mandate states, and in states with mandated masks.

*See: "Estimation of the Infectious Quanta Generated by Patients during First Month of Study" right after Figure 3.
**Loc.cit. after Table 2.

Edit: By contagious rate, I am not referring to R0 but to minimally infectious dose. There is obviously a relationship, but a x10 R0 is probably unreasonable for this pair of diseases. As for minimally infectious does, a x1000 is perfectly reasonable and has been observed for other infectious diseases.

 

https://apkmetro.com/lockdown-becomes-an-australian-nightmare/

I know that the US has taken their own unique path with the pandemic, but please, is it really necessary to spread partisan politics in an attempt to rubbish what other places have done? The author of that piece is roughly somewhere between Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. If you enjoyed that piece, can I suggest his show - 'Outsiders' on Sky - you can get the podcasts.

Firstly, no-one really knows what the 'right' strategy is. It depends on what medical advances there are, and these we don't know.

Australia has never pursued an elimination strategy, but rather a containment strategy. Of the 7 major 'states', 5 are essentially virus free, life on a local level is relatively normal, including with sports. Interstate travel is problematic. The two other states are NSW and Victoria. NSW where I am, is the largest state (7.5 million), and since mid April, we have had 0-20 cases a day. It has never gone away, but we are managing it. A new case does not go 'boom - major outbreak' as has been suggested in this thread, but rather spawns a new trail of contact tracing. The medical folk were saying that if you can get your new cases down to under about 5 cases/million/day then you can manage it with test and trace. This seems to be where we have been for 4 months. Can we keep doing it or have we just been lucky? I don't know - but 4 months is a reasonably good test. If we can survive this increase in cases coming across from Victoria then we will be more confident. We have a large testing program, typically doing 20k - 25k tests/day to find those 20 cases. Just showing the daily cases in NSW and Victoria:
(data from: ABC News (Australia) Covid data )

You can see the outbreak in Victoria and how this leaked into NSW. NSW closed it's border to Victoria in early July, but residents are able to return, and for a while they sourced cases. Recently they have to go through a mandatory 14 day quarantine. The raw numbers aren't the worry, what we watch is the breakdown provided by the contact tracers (NSW numbers):



The top graph is the one we worry about - these are the cases they can't track back to a known source. Since May we were getting just the odd case every now and again, then they got more regular in July almost certainly from the Victoria outbreak. The middle ones are the cases all linked to contacts, and the bottom plot (overseas) are the cases occurring in hotel quarantine for returning travellers. You can see why this is important.

So life in NSW is pretty normal on a local level and the virus is rare, deaths are rarer. Schools are open (in fact we have never closed them), sports are happening but without spectators at this stage. There are restrictions designed to limit mass spreading events and to help contact tracers. Restaurants and bars are open, somewhat reduced capacity, but you have to sign in with your contact details to allow for contact tracing if needed. Theatres are still closed. Masks are becoming more common on public transport and in supermarkets. One of the large chains has requested customers wear masks in store. People are pretty happy with the way things are going, particularly when they see what;'s happening overseas. Like everywhere, the full economic effects are yet to be determined, the official unemployment rate is 7.5%, but there is a government wage subsidy in effect probably supporting many jobs in now non-viable businesses.

Victoria is another matter - what happened there is currently the subject of a number of enquiries, but it appears that the hotel quarantine they ran for returning travellers had insufficient medical oversight. Relatively poorly paid and untrained security guards had little idea of infection control. Clearly their testing and tracing also didn't pick up the outbreak early enough. It's easy to point fingers (as Morrow does in that article, but it's scarcely objective - think Hannity writing about sone problem that occurred on Hilary Clinton's watch), we will have more facts soon enough, There are other jaw dropping problems in this outbreak though, some large percentage of cases are health care workers (20% ish on some days I think), and a disaster in aged care.

it is also important to note that when a new case surfaces, there is inevitably a burst of cases diagnosed over the next few days. This is not the virus spreading uncontrollably, but rather the effect of chasing down the contacts along a transmission path. So when NZ announced 4 new cases, then 30 or so in the next few days, this is probably more about finding and shutting down the chain of transmission as about an outbreak. Only time will tell though.

 

Re: Posts citing the efficacy of masks in reducing guinea pig (GP) infection with MDR-TB

Here's a link to the original article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3359891/ The study design is good and its analysis seems unbiased. It provides strong clinical evidence and reviews the literature to support mask wearing by patients known to have TB. The study doesn't mention whether the GP's were in separate cages isolated from each other, but it appears they weren't. So what if one or two members of the non-mask group were highly susceptible and infected almost all of the others in their group? Susceptibility to TB does vary between individuals.

Ignoring that aspect, how are those data applicable to SARS-CoV-2?

TB became a reportable disease and was tracked by the CDC beginning in about 1953. Its incidence in the US decreased steadily until 1984 when there was a small surge that lasted until 1991-1992. Following that, incidence continued to decrease and in 2018, only 9,025 cases were reported. MDR-TB emerged during that time, and XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant) emerged in 2006. Neither drug resistant strain has caused a pandemic or even an epidemic of the proportions caused by SARS-CoV-2. Why not?

Could it be that SARS-CoV-2 is far more contagious? Let's assume it is, and there is certainly evidence to support that. Now, let's see how that would have affected the study on masks and TB. The masks reduced infectious quanta* by 75% (1,659 infectious quanta/12-h sample to 408 infectious quanta/12-h sample). What if the infection rate in the mask group was 85/90 (94%), could the non-mask group have reached statistical significance? No.

How much more infectious would the etiologic agent need to be for those results? Twice, well maybe, if things were linear. Ten times? More likely.

MDR-TB and SARS-CoV-2 are not the same disease. SARS-CoV-2 seems to be much more contagious.

A second concern is that mask wearing by the public in the US is highly variable. Some cover the nose and mouth properly, Some use fabric approaching thin gauze. Some only cover the mouth. Some even use them as chin supports. Everyone is constantly readjusting them.

How were masks in that study used?**


That is not representative of how masks are used in the US. As I have said before, proper use may have an effect. But current mandates do not require that nor is it done.

What we need is for those with access to the data and the proper tools to look at excess deaths before masks, after masks became popular in non-mandate states, and in states with mandated masks.

*See: "Estimation of the Infectious Quanta Generated by Patients during First Month of Study" right after Figure 3.
**Loc.cit. after Table 2.

Edit: By contagious rate, I am not referring to R0 but to minimally infectious dose. There is obviously a relationship, but a x10 R0 is probably unreasonable for this pair of diseases. As for minimally infectious does, a x1000 is perfectly reasonable and has been observed for other infectious diseases.

I look at this as an example of a good study. I do not see the data as applicable to COVID but as a good experiment that can be replicated to put some serious questions to rest? Not just for COVID, the infection prevention policies have been changed lately due to shortages of PPE, some diseases are now aomwhow much less contageous than before. Go figure