Well my friend had COVID, is fully vaccinated and just got it again. Feels awful but not sick enough for the hospital thankfully. 40’s, no underlying conditions and it has them flattened! All I can think is how sick they would be without the vaccine. Rest of the family managed to somehow not get it-2 vaccinated one too young.
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I know someone who had the same. Covid, vaccinated, 6 months later covid again. Second bout wasn’t as bad as the fist tho, which hit her hard. She does have underlying issues.
And I’m going to go get that PCR test today, but it will be positive; I just lost my senses of taste and smell.
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I am sorry! I hope you feel better soon!
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Oof. I’m so sorry! I hope you don’t get any worse. Did DH find that pulse ox? So glad you’re vaccinated!
And you don’t meet any of the criteria for monoclonal antibodies, right?
And obviously you didn’t have your first PCR processed in Wolverhampton. Whatever the issue is with that lab, I hope they aren’t too quick to dismiss it as the source of all the discrepancies if there is a widespread problem with testing.
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Oh no! I hope you’re already as bad as you’re going to get and you’re on the mend soon.
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Glad I’m vaccinated, too!
I don’t qualify for the monoclonal antibodies. I looked at paying for them out of pocket, but if you actually go through and attempt to schedule an appointment you find out they don’t have any in stock and do not know when they might get more.
Also, a small bright spot that I’m the first one down at at our house - this means I can come out of quarantine first while still helping my family members at home if they get sick.
I also just opened the windows to my bedroom and put on a hoodie. Who says I have to miss out on our first real fall day?
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I am so sorry you are sick. 
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That’s actually a really good point. And you will be able to safely snuggle any sick kids.
I’ve been thinking about that UK lab. They seem pretty confident the issue started Sept 8. Someone even re-tweeted himself from that time saying “Hey, does anyone know if this area has fallen behind on reporting because their numbers just dropped noticeably the last couple days.”
So maybe they had either a process or personnel change around then? It seems like the best case scenario is they are able to replicate the problem, something like “Oh! With Delta, if you pause more than 2 minutes between steps 3 and 4, you are likely to get a false negative.” And that lab just happened to start consistently doing that. And maybe it’s something other labs might be doing on occasion, not realizing it’s an issue. And they wouldn’t have caught it if that lab hadn’t done it consistently. But then they can alert everyone how to avoid it?
The centralization of health data in the UK is way more advanced than in the US. If it took them this long to catch it (already concerning), I’m not sure we ever could.
A negative PCR followed by a positive one might easily be dismissed as “Oh, they tested too early.” But PCRs are supposed to be more sensitive than rapid tests. If the rapid tests are coming back positive before the first PCR is, something is fishy.
Is this hitting the testing radar in the US at all @BoilerMomPharmD ?
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Oh, and look at New Zealand go! They jabbed 2.5% of their total population in just one day! (The US equivalent would be 8.4M shots…so that’s almost twice the best US day!)
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Oh, duh. There’s another obvious answer to this inconsistent testing, and I wonder if someone has ruled it out?
So this was a helpful graphic from the start of the pandemic, that now seems a bit questionable to me given the inconsistent testing being reported, both in relation to symptoms timing and sensitivity of the 2 test types:
There has already been some data that Delta load increases more rapidly than the original variant.
What if it’s more than just that? What if the viral load with Delta doesn’t increase in a smooth curve?
What if it fluctuates significantly towards the beginning of the infection as it increases rather than a smooth rise? So someone could be above the “test positive” line at times and below it at times before permanently being over it?
They have also had somewhat inconsistent study results about whether people with Delta breakthrough infections have a lower or the same viral load as the unvaccinated. That might also explain why that data is not being consistent.
I know some of the studies have tested viral load over time, but I wonder if they’ve done any with very short time intervals to see how much it might fluctuate?
(Then the UK lab with all the false negatives could be largely an unrelated issue.)
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Second PCR test today came back positive.
I definitely think the second tester tickled my brain better than the first, so perhaps it was just a bad sample to begin with. But it’s still weird that I would test positive on a home test and negative on a PCR when the PCR is supposed to be more sensitive.
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I hope you feel better soon.
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I’ll share a few quick highlights from last week’s VRBPAC (FDA advisory) meetings, but here is a more detailed, but still concise, summary:
Remember, VRBPAC recommendation is just a step in the process. FDA authorization will need to follow. Then ACIP (CDC advisory) meets this coming week, then CDC issues guidance. Final guidance may not exactly match earlier iterations.
Moderna
Roughly the same as what they said for Pfizer, but the booster will be a half-dose instead of a full dose to reduce side effects.
The one caveat to that is immunocompromised people should continue to get a full “additional dose” as opposed to a half-dose booster per the Aug 12 EUA. Before the 6 month mark for that approaches, they will decide if they should also get a 4th shot booster or not.
J&J
Much discussion about whether it should have been a 2 dose vaccine all along, but that wasn’t up for vote today. (There are advantages to J&J to be able to continue to market globally as one dose.)
[Note: J&J could eventually require 2 doses to be considered fully vaccinated. No one knows if that would be retroactive. There might still be a limited window for people to get fully vaccinated with only 1 shot of J&J. In case you know anyone that might be motivating to.]
Regarding the data showing a much higher response boosting J&J at 6 months vs 2 months? That study only involved boosting 17(!) people at 6 months. Several times over the two days, VRBPAC had issues with the depth of the data, but this one was really 
.
Screenshots are variously from YLE (link in this post) or Statnews live blogging links that were previously posted on the days of the meetings.
I think that catches everyone up until FDA authorization comes out and/or ACIP meets.
I’m sure everyone has seen by now that Colin Powell died from complications of Covid-19. He was vaccinated but immunocompromised, according to CNN and other sources:
Gen. Colin Powell had multiple myeloma, according to a source familiar with the matter. Multiple myeloma is a cancer of plasma cells that suppresses the body’s immune response.
Even if fully vaccinated against Covid-19, immunocompromised people are at greater risk from the coronavirus.
I have a friend who had a brain tumor and has pled with her friends to get vaccinated to help protect her (she is in her mid-30s) since she is still vulnerable. Powell’s death is another such reminder.
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Yeah, I have a high school classmate (so 50ish) with multiple myeloma, so this has to be hitting her hard. Part of her treatment, they had to reboot her entire immune system (intentionally destroy it and rebuild it’s much as they could). She posts openly that Covid probably means she will need to mask in public for the rest of her life, even if cases bottom out. Even with masks required, with community transmission so high, she has to be extraordinarily careful. She is one of the people I think about that makes basic inconveniences of Covid to me seem trivial.
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Speculation is running amuck, but I don’t think anything official on exactly what happened with those 43k false negative PCR tests at the lab in the UK. Everyone has the same questions. What happened and could it be happening to a lesser degree elsewhere? And why was it not caught sooner?
A bunch of people apparently got these over the weekend:
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Yup. My kid had a stem cell transplant years ago. He’ll never have a normal immune system. (Plus he already has 40% reduced heart and lung function - adriamycin is a B - and Covid would be disastrous for him.)
The one good thing that has come out of is this is I have realized what an idiot I was being “tough” and going to school or work when I was sick. I was not thinking about all of the people who were at risk in various ways that I was endangering. I am far more aware now. I will probably be much more careful to isolate when I am sick of any kind, and if there’s ever a doubt I will probably adopt the approach they take in Asia and throw on a mask. I can’t stand the idea that I harm somebody just because I was either unthinking or careless.
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Before anyone asks, since it’s starting to hit the media here in the US…
…yes, I’m keeping an eye on Delta+ variant AY.4.2
…no, it’s not even hitting the tracking in the US yet
…no, we don’t know much at all about it yet
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It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t see by what mechanism the viral load would alter that dramatically. I don’t think that the immune system is ramping up and down, or that the particles are emerging from cells in coordinated waves. I asked DH and he didn’t think that such variation was likely; FYI, viral loads are related to his work but not specifically his area of expertise.
I’m not following. How would someone having a lower viral load overall explain that person getting a real positive antigen test but false negative PCR test? A vaccinated person who tests positive on an antigen test should have enough virus in them to test positive on a PCR, even if they have less virus in them than an unvaccinated person.
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17?!?!?! 
How in the world are folks supposed to trust the results of a study with such small sample sizes? Maybe there’s something I’m missing, but that seems nuts. I’m kind of horrified right now. What were they thinking?
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