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Off Topic Coronavirus

Discussion in 'Liverpool' started by astro, Mar 23, 2020.

  1. Nozzer

    Nozzer Well-Known Member

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    Yes, for AZ. For Pfizer the opposite is supposed to be the case. The mrs (m) had AZ first but now they've stopped giving them out to our age group she'll get Pfizer second in a couple of weeks. So she might get the worst of both worlds.

    No idea when they'll get round to me.
     
    #1021
  2. Zanjinho

    Zanjinho Boom!
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    Same
     
    #1022
  3. johnsonsbaby

    johnsonsbaby Well-Known Member

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    Glad you're feeling okay. My son's a doctor, a surgeon so nothing to do with treating Covid patients but obviously he's in and around it all day. He said the second doses are the ones that are giving the most and biggest reactions. His colleague was quite sick after the second dose, was sent home and had to go back into the hospital because he wasn't well enough to drive. He was fine a day later. He hadn't had Covid btw because all the medical staff are still being flow tested twice a week. Interesting what the nurse said though.
     
    #1023
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  4. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

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    COVID-19 can affect the brain. New clues hint at how
    Researchers are sifting through symptoms to figure out what the virus does to the brain
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    COVID-19 can come with brain-related problems, but just how the virus exerts its effects isn’t clear.

    ROXANA WEGNER/MOMENT/GETTY IMAGES

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    By Laura Sanders

    APRIL 27, 2021 AT 6:00 AM

    For more than a year now, scientists have been racing to understand how the mysterious new virus that causes COVID-19 damages not only our bodies, but also our brains.

    Early in the pandemic, some infected people noticed a curious symptom: the loss of smell. Reports of other brain-related symptoms followed: headaches, confusion, hallucinations and delirium. Some infections were accompanied by depression, anxiety and sleep problems.

    Recent studies suggest that leaky blood vessels and inflammation are somehow involved in these symptoms. But many basic questions remain unanswered about the virus, which has infected more than 145 million people worldwide. Researchers are still trying to figure out how many people experience these psychiatric or neurological problems, who is most at risk, and how long such symptoms might last. And details remain unclear about how the pandemic-causing virus, called SARS-CoV-2, exerts its effects.

    Sign up for e-mail updates on the latest coronavirus news and research[/paste:font]
    “We still haven’t established what this virus does in the brain,” says Elyse Singer, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. There are probably many answers, she says. “It’s going to take us years to tease this apart.”

    Getting the numbers
    For now, some scientists are focusing on the basics, including how many people experience these sorts of brain-related problems after COVID-19.

    A recent study of electronic health records reported an alarming answer: In the six months after an infection, one in three people had experienced a psychiatric or neurological diagnosis. That result, published April 6 in Lancet Psychiatry, came from the health records of more than 236,000 COVID-19 survivors. Researchers counted diagnoses of 14 disorders, ranging from mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression to neurological events such as strokes or brain bleeds, in the six months after COVID-19 infection.

    “We didn’t expect it to be such a high number,” says study coauthor Maxime Taquet of the University of Oxford in England. One in three “might sound scary,” he says. But it’s not clear whether the virus itself causes these disorders directly.

    The vast majority of those diagnoses were depression and anxiety, “disorders that are extremely common in the general population already,” points out Jonathan Rogers, a psychiatrist at University College London. What’s more, depression and anxiety are on the rise among everyone during the pandemic, not just people infected with the virus.

    Mental health disorders are “extremely important things to address,” says Allison Navis, a neurologist at the post-COVID clinic at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “But they’re very different than a stroke or dementia,” she says.

    About 1 in 50 people with COVID-19 had a stroke, Taquet and colleagues found. Among people with severe infections that came with delirium or other altered mental states, though, the incidence was much higher — 1 in 11 had strokes.

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    Serious neurological damage, such as these strokes caused by blocked blood vessels, turn up in people with COVID-19.K. THAKUR ET AL/BRAIN 2021
    Taquet’s study comes with caveats. It was a look back at diagnosis codes, often entered by hurried clinicians. Those aren’t always reliable. And the study finds a relationship, but can’t conclude that COVID-19 caused any of the diagnoses. Still, the results hint at how COVID-19 affects the brain.

    Blood vessels scrutinized
    Early on in the pandemic, the loss of smell suggested that the virus might be able to attack nerve cells directly. Perhaps SARS-CoV-2 could breach the skull by climbing along the olfactory nerve, which carries smells from the nose directly to the brain, some researchers thought.

    That frightening scenario doesn’t seem to happen much. Most studies so far have failed to turn up much virus in the brain, if any, says Avindra Nath, a neurologist who studies central nervous system infections at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. Nath and his colleagues expected to see signs of the virus in brains of people with COVID-19 but didn’t find it. “I kept telling our folks, ‘Let’s go look again,’” Nath says.

    That absence suggests that the virus is affecting the brain in other ways, possibly involving blood vessels. So Nath and his team scanned blood vessels in post-mortem brains of people who had been infected with the virus with an MRI machine so powerful that it’s not approved for clinical use in living people. “We were able to look at the blood vessels in a way that nobody could,” he says.

    Damage abounded, the team reported February 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Small clots sat in blood vessels. The walls of some vessels were unusually thick and inflamed. And blood was leaking out of the vessels into the surrounding brain tissue. “You can see all three things happening at the same time,” Nath says.

    Those results suggest that clots, inflamed linings and leaks in the barriers that normally keep blood and other harmful substances out of the brain may all contribute to COVID-related brain damage.

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    Signs of damage in the brains of people with COVID-19 involve inflammation, including these immune cells around a blood vessel (left), and changes in cells (right) that might have resulted from low oxygen.J. LOU ET AL/FREE NEUROPATHOLOGY 2021
    But several unknowns prevent any definite conclusions about how these damaged blood vessels relate to people’s symptoms or outcomes. There’s not much clinical information available about the people in Nath’s study. Some likely died from causes other than COVID-19, and no one knows how the virus would have affected them had they not died.

    Inflamed body and brain
    Inflammation in the body can cause trouble in the brain, too, says Maura Boldrini, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York. Inflammatory signals released after injury can change the way the brain makes and uses chemical signaling molecules, called neurotransmitters, that help nerve cells communicate. Key communication molecules such as serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine can get scrambled when there’s lots of inflammation.

    Neural messages can get interrupted in people who suffer traumatic brain injuries, for example; researchers have found a relationship between inflammation and mental illness in football players and others who experienced hits to the head.

    Similar evidence comes from people with depression, says Emily Troyer, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Diego. Some people with depression have high levels of inflammation, studies have found. “We don’t actually know that that’s going on in COVID,” she cautions. “We just know that COVID causes inflammation, and inflammation has the potential to disrupt neurotransmission, particularly in the case of depression.”

    See all our coverage of the coronavirus outbreak[/paste:font]
    Among the cells that release inflammatory proteins in the brain are microglia, the brain’s version of the body’s disease-fighting immune system. Microglia may also be involved in the brain’s response to COVID-19. Microglia primed for action were found in about 43 percent of 184 COVID-19 patients, Singer and others reported in a review published February 4 in Free Neuropathology. Similar results come from a series of autopsies of COVID-19 patients’ brains; 34 of 41 brains contained activated microglia, researchers from Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital reported April 15 in Brain.

    With these findings, it’s not clear that SARS-CoV-2 affects people’s brains differently from other viruses, says Navis. In her post–COVID-19 clinic at Mount Sinai, she sees patients with fatigue, headaches, numbness and dizziness — symptoms that are known to follow other viral infections, too. “I’m hesitant to say this is unique to COVID,” Navis says. “We’re just not used to seeing so many people getting one specific infection, or knowing what the viral infection is.”

    Teasing apart all the ways the brain can suffer amid this pandemic, and how that affects any given person, is impossible. Depression and anxiety are on the rise, surveys suggest. That rise might be especially sharp in people who endured stressful diagnoses, illnesses and isolation.

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    In a postmortem brain from a person with COVID-19, a clotting protein called fibrinogen (red) indicates that the blood vessels are damaged and leaky.AVINDRA NATH
    Just being in an intensive care unit can lead to confusion. Delirium affected 606 of 821 people — 74 percent — while patients were in intensive care units for respiratory failure and other serious emergencies, a 2013 study found. Post-traumatic stress disorder afflicted about a third of people who had been seriously sick with COVID-19 (SN: 3/12/21).

    More specific aspects of treatment matter too. COVID-19 patients who spent long periods of time on their stomachs might have lingering nerve pain, not because the virus attacked the nerve, but because the prone position compressed the nerves. And people might feel mentally fuzzy, not because of the virus itself, but because a shortage of the anesthetic drug, propofol, meant they received an alternative sedative that can bring more aftereffects, says Rogers, the psychiatrist at University College London.

    Lingering questions — what the virus actually does to the brain, who will suffer the most, and for how long — are still unanswered, and probably won’t be for a long time. The varied and damaging effects of lockdowns, the imprecision doctors and patients use for describing symptoms (such as the nonmedical term “brain fog”) and the indirect effects the virus can have on the brain all merge, creating a devilishly complex puzzle.

    For now, doctors are busy focusing on ways in which they can help, even amid these mysteries, and designing larger, longer studies to better understand the effects of the virus on the brain. That information will be key to helping people move forward. “This isn’t going to be over soon, unfortunately,” Troyer says.
     
    #1024
  5. moreinjuredthanowen

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    this stuff is really lethal and the people who want to put money and fun over human lives try to get covid related deaths removed as you died of a stoke so what?

    The reality is the vaccine is producing some clots as well which might be the same mechanism where the body produces these gloopy **** that's really nasty type of a clot. It is just a sheer matter of the bodies reaction to the proteins.

    the long term harm caused by this virus won't be assessed or published for years.
     
    #1025
  6. johnsonsbaby

    johnsonsbaby Well-Known Member

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    Had my second Pfizer jab yesterday. The same after effects as the first one only came on quicker. My jaw was aching within 20 minutes and my arm started to feel sore pretty much right away too. Other than that, feel fine.
     
    #1026
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  7. RogerisontheHunt

    RogerisontheHunt Well-Known Member

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    ffs

    Still havent had my first yet. No letter or contact either
     
    #1027
  8. moreinjuredthanowen

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    have you not registered?
     
    #1028
  9. moreinjuredthanowen

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    Apparently you can take something before you go like nuerofen but I don't know.
     
    #1029
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  10. RogerisontheHunt

    RogerisontheHunt Well-Known Member

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    I'm registered with a GP yes.

    Obviously too young

    Just seems to me that the role out across the lower ages groups is slow compared to earlier in the year.
    Also don't get why Wales is talking about 18yr olds before a whole group of the adult population across the other parts of the UK havent been vaccinated yet.
    Surely the Vaccines should be diverted to other areas first.
     
    #1030

  11. moreinjuredthanowen

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    I think the levels have dropped off https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55274833 but i think they have switched focus frankly from first does to finishing second doses

    the combined rate seems constant of about 500k or so per day just a lot more being given secnd doses now.

    The general young and good looking group are only going to have their offer by end july ;)

    you are right though you are highly likely to be off shagging in ibiza and getting this off a german hilda.
     
    #1031
  12. InBiscanWeTrust

    InBiscanWeTrust Rome, London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Madrid
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    Younger you go the less affected they are anyway so it’s not as urgent
     
    #1032
  13. RogerisontheHunt

    RogerisontheHunt Well-Known Member

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    I wish I was still that young.

    I'm stuck in the middle of being neither Young or Old these days
     
    #1033
  14. johnsonsbaby

    johnsonsbaby Well-Known Member

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    You're not 'arl like me. :)

    I think there's talk of offering a choice of vaccine for the next age group to be done.
     
    #1034
    Last edited: May 7, 2021
  15. johnsonsbaby

    johnsonsbaby Well-Known Member

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    Tbh I'd rather let it take it's course so I know whether I've had a response. The nurse did say that I should take paracetamol if I felt the need. Didn't they say ages ago pre vaccine, not to take ibuprofen if you had any flu like (possible covid) symptoms.
     
    #1035
  16. johnsonsbaby

    johnsonsbaby Well-Known Member

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    Give your GP a call, you never know you could have just been missed off unintentionally.
     
    #1036
  17. moreinjuredthanowen

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    It's a pure you are fine but just take it thing

    Personally I'd rather a day of whinging than risk interfering too
     
    #1037
  18. RogerisontheHunt

    RogerisontheHunt Well-Known Member

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    Think its more of a combination of things

    I'm in the age group seen as a low priority (not old enough to end up in Hospital or young enough to effect education)
    The Problems in India at the moment, where alot of AZ is manufactured and supplies are being limited.
    And the clotting issue with AZ. NHS is starting to look at alternatives for the younger age groups, so that might be slowing things down.
     
    #1038
  19. johnsonsbaby

    johnsonsbaby Well-Known Member

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    Younger people won't be offered AstraZeneca because of the clotting issue. I think Moderna is close to being approved and that's the same kind as Pfizer (Mrna if I've remembered it right) so shouldn't be any adverse effects.
     
    #1039
  20. InBiscanWeTrust

    InBiscanWeTrust Rome, London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Madrid
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    Talking about AZ not being offered to 30s now but only if it doesn’t slow things down too much.
     
    #1040

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