Reply With QuoteMaybe this backs up the vitamin D theory? Just a guessOriginally Posted by ryanb741
BUPA don't say which test they're offering, but they do give a telephone number for enquiries...link.
Maybe this backs up the vitamin D theory? Just a guess
Weather’s been unseasonably good here too this Spring.
Could be a lot of other factors too. There's also a hypothesis that there is a less deadly strain of the virus which is more common in circulation. There has been a couple of outbreaks, for example in Beijing a few weeks back, where a number of people tested positive but none showed symptoms.
I had similar symptoms albeit on a timeline about a month later than yours. Anyway, I was selected by NHS England go take an antibody test which turned up in the post about a week ago.
As much as I was willing it to show a positive result, sadly it didn't.
The ONS/Oxford weekly surveys are showing that a 80% of the positive test results are asymptomatic.
But no breakdown of numbers that go on to show symptoms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53320155
The problem they have now is the sample of 20000 is not big enough now to get accurate numbers of community infections as they are only getting 12-13 positives. I guess that’s good news.
Balls.
(as in oh, not you're talking)
Thanks Pickle B…. I dropped an email to the blood service and they have written back and confirmed that I probably had it!
“What we generally see is a higher antibody titre in donors who had been in hospital with a severe infection i.e., admitted in intensive care. It is possible that the small amount of immune response against Covid-19 you may have had the infection“
I have quite a small amount of antibodies (15% of someone freshly infected) as the plasma sample was a few months after the initial infection…. But, hopefully enough to fight off any more exposure?
Last edited by Wolfie; 8th July 2020 at 20:05.
Nope antibodies will wane but your immunity will come from T cells which will have 'learned' about COvid and will mobilise to make any next infection milder. That's the thing with serology tests - the antibodies wane and it isn't a good indicator of who has had it.
Sorry Ryan, this is incorrect.
It’s a bit late for a full explanation of the different components of an immune response (and I would probably struggle with the more recent developments anyway) but maybe this will help :
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_B_cell
Compare with
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_T_cell
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
Doctor Ryan. Yeah.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Google is his friend........ever the optimist.
Ok what I was getting at was that tyw body's immune response is much more than just antibodies
How's life hiding behind the sofa working out for you then? Regardless, please stay there.
Last edited by ryanb741; 9th July 2020 at 00:57.
Well this is the optimist thread after all but feel free to join OOK behind the sofa sh*tting your pants if it makes you feel better.
Last edited by ryanb741; 9th July 2020 at 00:58.
I’ll take that…. Good old T Cells keeping me and my family safe…
I’m off to lick a few handrails around the city of Leicester now!!!
Of course it is. But if the test is sensitive enough to detect them, if you have antibodies you're protected, as it means that your B-cells have produced them; you will have memory b-cells stored in reserve, ready to reactivate antibody production should you be infected again.
So Wolfie, even with a low count, has some immunity. The low count can be explained by a short lifespan of those antibodies and an early infection, but the important thing is that it is the norm that the body keeps the "recipe" for making the antibodies quickly if needed.
And to be as complete as possible, it doesn't mean he can't catch it, it means that his body will be able to have a specific response very quickly and minimise the spread. Unless of course a mutation renders the antibody inefficient. (so Wolfie stop licking those handrails!)
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
Definitely don't lick them in Leicester!
Ok
No handrail licking!
The guidance on this forum is really great…. I may have got into a bit of trouble!!!
Inaccurate regarding the common cold. The problem is that under this "common" name lie over 100 serovars, (viruses with different surface antigens, requiring different antibodies). So to test for the presence of antigens you would need a sample of the serovar that infected you. Which doesn't happen, and therefore your chances for testing for the right antibody are minute. The best proof that immunity is longer lived than implied by the video is that children are much more prone to catching colds, and that propensity diminishes with age (we're still talking children vs children, not comparing with adults).
I do not know which type of antibody is the shortest lived.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
I'm not sure if this is hope or hype...link:
...Regeneron and the Trump administration signed a $450 million pact for U.S. supply of the drugmaker's investigational antibody cocktail for COVID-19, which entered a late-stage human trial as a preventive earlier this week and is rolling ahead in two phase 2 treatment trials.
As part of the agreement, Regeneron will amp up manufacturing to produce up to 1.6 million doses of the cocktail, dubbed REGN-COV2, as early as the end of summer, the company said.
Because Regeneron is still investigating dosing for possible treatment and prevention uses, the drugmaker said the order covers anywhere between 70,000 to 300,000 treatment doses and 420,000 to 1.3 million preventive doses.
Regeneron will provide bulk, unfinished lots of the cocktail as well as finished doses through 2020. If the FDA eventually grants an emergency authorization for either use, the government would make doses available at no cost and handle distribution...
...as the track record of the US administration lends itself to both categorisations.
Errr... I'm not actually.
But being in an at risk group because of age and health issues I'm not wandering around places where I can't distance from people either. Your posts featuring the latest tidbit of dubious information you've gleaned from the internet, and mostly misinterpreted or misunderstood, are what prompted my comment.
And yes it is the optimists thread. But there's nothing optimistic about false information and rumours.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Agree with the above, I'm not sure what category I`m in based on my medical history and age (62) but I`m still being fairly cautious.
It's clear that peoples' attitudes are shaped by their age and whether they've had this thing or not. I also find the posting of information based on misinterpretation of stuff gleaned from the internet to be quite irritating after a while.
By all means discuss the info, and give an opinion, but much of the medical stuff isn't easy to interpret objectively if you lack a valid medical background.
There's a difference between hope and optimism, I think people lose sight of that.
Not dubious information nut the ONS/Oxford data has just been released.
now at 1/3900 cases in the community, down from 1/2200 last week. was 1/1700. 1/1200, 1/700, 1/400 in previous weeks. (IIRC)
i ignore newspapers/facebook for data and find these give a good indication of what’s happening.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/a...izh62tj00juc00
https://www.scribd.com/document/4678...-Lower-Tier-V2
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...gland9july2020
https://epiforecasts.io/covid/reports.html#Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-...emic_in_London
I haven’t seen the ONS data before. Useful thanks.
Thanks for posting Mr Smith, this is far more relevant than hypothesising about T cells.
Indeed, thanks for posting it.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
I forgot this chap on twitter and his graphs that are easy to follow
https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/scienti...odies/45894798
Eat it
In the context of making decisions on how to conduct our lives over the next few weeks, I contend that accurate ONS data is more helpful than an interesting study on the role of T cells in potentially conferring a level of immunity to an individual. I`m sure others will agree.
The T cell study lends some weight to the argument that more people have been exposed to the virus than the antibody studies suggest; the question is how much weight it adds, that depends largely on one's level of optimism.
As a straw of optimism to grasp at I would file this under 'promising'. I'm sure the true experts in this field will have a clearer view.
Hardly the Holy Grail, too many ifs, buts and maybes for my liking. Oh well, back behind the sofa it is.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
I guess it’s good news that Sadiq Khan is pushing for masks to be compulsory in busy and enclosed public space and Also Boris Johnson is now talking about making masks compulsory in shops. Probably having watched Nicola Sturgeon talk earlier today.
I really hope they do, it’s not difficult and will help reduce infections further, doesn’t matter if it’s a small difference as lives will be saved.
Just watched the Vera Lynn funeral on the news, crowds in the streets having a non social distanced impromptu sing song FFS! so many images on the news of people wearing masks but not covering their noses!? Another news item of random checks of garment manufacturers in Leicester, the inspectors were not wearing masks or gloves?!
There are some very stupid people out there!
Can't understand why masks weren't made compulsory when shops were re-opened. Why wait a few weeks and do it now?
Agreed. One thing that supposedly 'baffles' people is how countries like Japan and Thailand had minimal lockdowns, have in the big cities a reliance on crowded public transport and yet despite the odd cluster of infections here and there have very trivial community spread and a very low death rate.
This reality should be somewhat less 'baffling' upon closer inspection of images of the population where the vast majority have something pretty obvious on their faces that explains the lower transmission.
It is a no brainer that we should be wearing these.
I’ve started watch Japanese TV (much more interesting than BBC News) - seems they have just over 900 total Covid related deaths? Recent cases have spiked from nightclubs and theatres. Everyone wears masks everywhere including on the street.
We were there spring 2018 and masks were worn - typically by anyone who had a cough or cold symptoms - to protect others
Last edited by MartynJC (UK); 10th July 2020 at 19:25.
The hallmark of this governments way of dealing with the pandemic, a delayed reactive response instead of being proactive.
That’s my view too, even if the advantages aren’t huge any benefit is better than none. It also serves to remind people that the current situation hasn’t returned to normal, psychologically this may outweigh the potential for a false sense of security.
Mask - wearing in the far east seems to be a cultural thing, they have hang- ups about coughing and sneezing and I get the impression they don’t have a comfortable relationship with their noses. Ironically, this may be working to their advantage at the moment, wearing masks routinely doesn’t come naturally to most of us in Britain and Western Europe but maybe that’ll change.
We’re moving to a situation where the official advice lacks consistency; 2 metre distancing us still advised but 1 metre’s OK in a pub or restaurant. If we now advocate mask- wearing in shops and busy places how does that work in a pub?
There are no easy answers to all this.
I know it’s easy to be sidelined into general discussions, but remember this is the positive news thread please Gentlemen.
Positive news only.
When one of us cracks the vaccine here’s the place to announce it!
It's promising that wearing masks in shops MAY be made compulsory.
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
He should make masks mandatory for shops, I went yesterday to Tesco's and I'm not joking, myself and my daughter and one other person were the only ones wearing a facemask, my daughter kept asking why she has to wear one if no one else does...
I reckon there was about 80+ people in the store at the time, not sure where the stocks of face masks are selling because they don't seem to be getting used in the North East???
Anyway back to hopefully positive news...
Pfizer, BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine expected to be ready for approval by year end.
Northern Ireland have not had a single COVID-19 death in the past week.
Scientists hail 'stunning' results that show areas of New York may have reached 68 percent immunity.
Pdf download but this is potentially huge
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...888v1.full.pdf
Some annotated extracts
"Importantly, SARS-CoV2-specific T cells were detectable in antibody-seronegative family members and individuals with a history of asymptomatic or mild COVID-19. Our collective dataset shows that SARS-CoV-2 elicits robust memory T cell responses akin to those observed in the context of successful vaccines, suggesting that natural exposure or infection may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19 also in seronegative individuals."
Quick breakdown ....
"SARS-CoV2-specific T cells were detectable in antibody-seronegative family members and individuals with a history of asymptomatic or mild COVID-19"
Even if you didn't test positive on an antibody test, they still found Covid specific T Cells.
"robust memory T cell responses akin to those observed in the context of successful vaccines"
They behave like T cells from working vaccines
"suggesting that natural exposure or infection may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19 also in seronegative individuals."
They suspect that if you have the t cells you will likely have some level of immunity even if you don't have any antibodies left.
"However, antibody responses are not detectable in all patients, especially those with less severe forms of COVID-19 (Long et al., 2020; Mallapaty, 2020; Woloshin et al., 2020). Previous work has also shown that memory B cell responses tend to be short-lived after infection with SARS-CoV-1 (Channappanavar et al., 2014; Tang et al., 2011). In contrast, memory T cell responses can persist for many years "
T-cells usually last longer and confer longer immunity than antibodies and B cells.
TL:DR
Even if you didn't test positive on an antibody test, they still found Covid specific T Cells.
They behave like T cells from working vaccines
They suspect that if you have the t cells you will likely have some level of immunity even if you don't have any antibodies left.
T-cells usually last longer and confer longer immunity than antibodies and B cells.
Also regarding implications for community immunity;
"In this study, we used a systematic approach to map cellular and humoral immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 in patients with acute moderate or severe COVID-19, individuals in the convalescent phase after asymptomatic/mild or severe COVID-19, exposed family members, and healthy individuals who donated blood before (2019) or during the pandemic (2020). Individuals in the convalescent phase after asymptomatic/mild COVID-19 were traced after returning to Sweden from endemic areas (mostly Northern Italy). These donors exhibited robust memory T cell responses months after infection, even in the absence of detectable circulating antibodies specific for SARS-CoV-2, indicating a previously unanticipated degree of population-level immunity against COVID-19."
"Indeed, almost twice as many exposed family members and healthy individuals who donated blood during the pandemic generated memory T cell responses versus antibody responses, implying that seroprevalence as an indicator has underestimated the extent of population-level immunity against SARS-CoV-2."
^^^^^
That looks encouraging Ryan…. Despite having had CV19 I am wearing masks in supermarkets in France (far more people seem to here)…
Being a Brit, I simply don’t want others to feel uncomfortable or worried as many European countries are not entirely delighted about us travelling…. The town of Tournus has been happy to take my money so far though and people have been friendly enough!!!
So some people have a level of immunity. Others are still dying.
I think the news about the Pfizer vaccine is much more positive for those at risk of severe symptoms.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Myself and Mrs Ryanb741 have also had the lurgy - in my case pretty mild apart from half a day of it being tough to breathe - Mrs Ryanb741 was more sick although hers was manifested more by consistently high fever that was causing fainting due to dehydration.
It's encouraging to know that in theory we wouldn't need to go through it again for some time, and in all likelihood never as acutely.
Possibly but it is still good to know that it is increasingly unlikely that people are going to be repeatedly infected with a nasty form of Covid. Re Pfizer vaccine this is encouraging however the ChAdOx1 vaccine manufactured by AstraZeneca should be ready for approval by September/October and China's Cansino vaccine has already been approved although currently only the military are being vaccinated. Issue with the vaccines isn't in creating a protective response it is A making sure they are safe and B then ramping up production to get 7 billion people jabbed. Particularly due to the 'Cretin factor' of Anti-vaxxers combined with people being scared by the Daily Mail and/or (Russian) Facebook feeds who won't take the vaccine at the first attempt through 'fear'. So we will need to legislate to forcefully vaccinate if need be (or provide strict penalties for non compliance such as loss of benefits, passports etc) else the issue just carries on and on
I wasn’t aware you had it Ryan…. I’m glad it wasn’t too traumatic for you and yours…. Similarly mild for us too….
Yes…. It encouraging that potentially we’re a little safer in our respective communities…. I will still take care though just in case!
Faster and cheaper CV testing
https://www.crick.ac.uk/news/2020-07...avirus-testing
If some idiots believe that they shouldn't be vaccinated, at least those sensible enough to do so will be protected from them. And at least the children won't be so at risk from their parents anti-vaccination fairy tales, unlike the MMR dreamers.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Primark and Ikea are doing the right thing, pity some other businesses/people don’t do the same if they’re able.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-53380719
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-53047895
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