advertisement


Coronavirus - the new strain XXIV

tiggers said:
And it was flatpopely and paulfromcamden who framed the story into a lockdown focus rather than the pandemic as a whole (posts 1602 and 1603).
Click to expand...

Fair. And after I posted I realised that I didn't express myself very well.

My point wasn't so much about lockdown, simply that while I consider myself fortunate compared with so many other people I've started to understand that the pandemic has had a greater effect on my wellbeing than I previously realised.

I spent an afternoon this week editing the recording of a tribute concert to someone who died of covid very early on. I liked her but didn't know her well. Nonetheless I found it a very difficult thing to do and I was surprised at the strength of my emotion.

I think covid has left a lot of us with some degree of trauma that remains unresolved.
 
paulfromcamden said:
Fair. And after I posted I realised that I didn't express myself very well.

My point wasn't so much about lockdown, simply that while I consider myself fortunate compared with so many other people I've started to understand that the pandemic has had a greater effect on my wellbeing than I previously realised.

I spent an afternoon this week editing the recording of a tribute concert to someone who died of covid very early on. I liked her but didn't know her well. Nonetheless I found it a very difficult thing to do and I was surprised at the strength of my emotion.

I think covid has left a lot of us with some degree of trauma that remains unresolved.
Click to expand...

No worries Paul, I wasn't having a go at you... just pointing out why we were specifically talking about lockdown. And yes agree with your point re. trauma.
 
The evidence for immunity debt is shaky at best, the idea that we're paying the price for an increase in respiratory syncytial virus, influenza and common cold infections because children and adults were not exposed to those viruses during lockdowns. If you think about it, it's twisted logic anyway: You need to get sick so you don't get sick.

I'll float an alternate hypothesis: That exposure to SARS-CoV-2 has farked many people's immune systems, making them more susceptible to opportunistic infections and having a more shitty response when they are infected. It's not like you won't find papers to support this assertion in the well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals, unlike immunity debt.

Joe
 
Joe P said:
The evidence for immunity debt is shaky at best, the idea that we're paying the price for an increase in respiratory syncytial virus and common cold infections because adults and children were not exposed to those viruses during lockdowns. If you think about it, it's twisted logic anyway: You need to get sick so you don't get sick.

I'll float an alternate hypothesis: That exposure to SARS-CoV2 has farked many people's immune systems, making them more susceptible to opportunistic infections and having a more shitty response when they are infected. It's not like you won't find papers to support this assertion in the well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals, unlike immunity debt.

Joe
Click to expand...
I really don't see what's twisted about the logic of immunity debt: if an infectious disease is suppressed by decreased social contact for long enough for immunity to wain/not be acquired by a significant number of people, then you might reasonably expect there to be something of a surge in cases when normal levels of contact are resumed. This seems like a reasonable enough theory to me, and unusual surges in certain common viruses such as RSV would seem to give it legs. Of course some people use the term to mean other, scarier things but what can you do.

Not aware of any evidence for the idea that Covid has farked our immune systems, although there is a lot of speculation in the usual communities. It's a pretty weird idea, unlike the idea that getting sick with something makes you less likely to get sick next time you encounter it. Evidence *against* the notion would include the fact that (in the UK anyway) rates of infection for common infectious diseases have returned to seasonal norms, following (immunity debt related!) surges. If our immune systems really had been damaged then those waves would just keep building and building.

Still lots of scaremongering out there, and it seems to go hand in hand with the downplaying of real problems.
 
COVID is quite the bugger. It also has effects on fetuses, among them decreased lung growth.

https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2213-2600(22)00060-1

We can argue until the cows come home what balance in retrospect should have been struck between doing nothing versus welding doors shut, but arguments that COVID didn't cause immunological harm and didn't the lockdowns just set ourselves up for nasty colds later are quite frankly bullshit.

Joe
 
Joe P said:
In countries like Sweden, which let COVID rip and is therefore not paying an immunological debt, there's been no spike in RSV cases. No wait...

http://outbreaknewstoday.com/sweden...very-high-compared-to-previous-seasons-51712/

Like most countries, Sweden had a winter (2020–21) without RSV. They had a big surge of RSV last winter (2021–22), and they're having a worse surge this year (2022–23).

Joe
Click to expand...
They didn’t let covid rip though, they just relied less than many countries on mandatory measures: there was still a decrease in social contact, followed by a return to normal levels of contact.

Disease dynamics are complicated! All I’m saying is immunity debt is not a weird idea, whereas the idea that covid has destroyed our immune systems really is.

Edit: for clarity, I’m not using a surge in cold viruses to argue that lockdowns were bad! Don’t trivialise this stuff though, colds can put some people in hospital. That the suppression of one disease can have unintended consequences for the dynamics of others isn’t something that should be written off as voodoo.
 
Well, it did something to my system, and I'm not the only one for sure.
Still working to put right what it completely screwed up, and I am not really enjoying the process.
What Joe has said above is plenty accurate enough for me, so I'll say no more.
 
Joe P said:
We can argue until the cows come home what balance in retrospect should have been struck between doing nothing versus welding doors shut, but arguments that COVID didn't cause immunological harm and didn't the lockdowns just set ourselves up for nasty colds later are quite frankly bullshit.

Joe
Click to expand...

Yep, plenty of well respected scientific papers documenting this as well, no doubt they're all wrong.
 
Sonority said:
Well, it did something to my system, and I'm not the only one for sure.
Still working to put right what it completely screwed up, and I am not really enjoying the process.
What Joe has said above is plenty accurate enough for me, so I'll say no more.
Click to expand...
I’d give my right arm and leg to understand what’s going on with my right arm and leg following covid. Something is still happening to my body 3 years after the fact and it’s extremely unsettling I don’t mind telling you. Perhaps it involves my immune system, which was already a bit odd. But to say there may be long term consequences for some is very different to claiming that covid has damaged our immunity to other diseases, and that this is what explains surges in those diseases. That remains a scare story and there are enough real things to be scared about IMO.
 
Sean,

Seanm said:
Disease dynamics are complicated! All I’m saying is immunity debt is not a weird idea, whereas the idea that covid has destroyed our immune systems really is.
Click to expand...

I'm saying that immunity debt — to viruses that have been around for ages in human populations — acquired in a couple of years because of lockdowns and masks is a bizarre idea promoted mostly by internet weirdos, and that COVID has a shitload of immunological effects on the body not to mention, ummmm, death.

We can argue about what the correct public health response should have been, but arguing about whether COVID affects the body immunologically just does not hold up.

Joe
 
Before someone brings it up, of course immunological naive populations are very much effected by novel viruses. It's what happened to the indigenous populations in North, Central and South America when they were "discovered" by Europeans.

This is NOT the immunity debt people are talking about when they say "See, I told you masks and working from home would be our undoing."

Joe
 
Joe P said:
Sean,



II'm saying that immunity debt — to viruses that have been around for ages in human populations — acquired in a couple of years because of lockdowns and masks is a bizarre idea promoted mostly by internet weirdos, and that COVID has a shitload of immunological effects on the body not to mention, ummmm, death.

We can argue about what the correct public health response should have been, but arguing about whether COVID affects the body immunologically just does not hold up.

Joe
Click to expand...
Joe of course there are immunological effects on the body including death I’m not a covid denier. But there is little to no evidence that covid has affected our immunity to other diseases. There’s no point scaring yourself and other people with this speculative stuff when there’s so much non-speculative stuff to deal with!
 
Joe P said:
Sean,

Are my links giving you 404s?

Joe
Click to expand...
Joe that link sent me to a dense literature review dealing with over 160 articles: if you expect me to absorb it in 5 minutes you're overestimating me, and if you expect me to just accept that it backs up your claim because, you know, it's a scientific paper, then you're underestimating me at least a little bit. I admit I'm not going to read it, but scanning it I don't see that it addresses the question of whether or not covid compromises immune responses to other infectious diseases. Does it offer any evidence in that regard? Because that's what I thought we were arguing about.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top