May I ask, for those of us in the UK not eligible for the free NHS Spring 2025 boosters, would you recommend waiting until levels creep up a bit more or better to get the booster now anyway? The UKHSA dashboard is good, but seems to lag by 7 days for some reason.
SARS CoV 2 is a coronavirus. There's no reason to believe endemic SARS CoV 2 is any more severe compared to OC43. There are big differences in biology between coronavirus and flu virus.
Hello, I'm interested that you say we are still testing waste water in Scotland as I've been unable to see results since July last year. Have they moved them?
Great data. My area has high waste water covid lately , many friends getting it. They are going to work sick with cheap and useless masks. I'm in the USA near the Pacific, Portland , below Seattle. I carry my Aranet monitor and 3m masks everywhere. I go mask free if the air is good and nobody coughing. Works for me so far.
Great to see such continuously low Covid – but why?
Are current strains just less virulent?
Or do we just have herd immunity now?
I read that current strains attack especially the nasal ACE2 receptors which somehow afford extra time for our immune system to mount a defence before it spreads – is that correct?
If an ‘old’ strain reemerges do we have enough immune memory to help us respond effectively?
There's an interesting study that says the latest variants such as LP.8.1.1 mutated again and lost more lung infection power. That could partly explain why hospitalizations are falling.
By now 99% people already caught it and became immune to it. When you are immune to it, it don't send you to the hospital. I bet SARS CoV 2 has very high prevalence. About 1% of the people have it at any give week on the average.
Well yes, acquired immunity is obviously a substantial part of what we see now.
But because a) wastewater sampling shows very low levels and b) anecdotally there just aren’t people (friends, contacts etc.) catching it, it would seem that there is substantially less than 1% per week catching it.
If that were true, then 16+% would have had it in the past 4 months, which seems unlikely.
I would figure the prevalence of SARS CoV 2 is very similar to OC43 and 229E and those ones are very prevalent. In fact, even in October 2021 they had attack rates of 1.5% or even higher. So something like 1.2% attack rate of SARS CoV 2 in any given week on the average is reasonable.
I don't follow your reasoning - in that study other coronaviruses were much more common than SARS CoV 2, so how can you conclude that its prevalence is similar in any given week?
Covid shots don't boost mucosal immunity and therefore don't prevent infection and transmission. Therefore, given the similarity in symptomatology of Omicron (in contrast to Delta which was the circulating variant during October 2021 in the Paris study) and 229E, it makes sense to assume these two strains have very similar prevalence in human populations.
And I don’t see how you can make a universal assumption from samples taken from two Paris night clubs, where only one person became C-19 positive compared to ~10 times that number for 229E & OC43.
May I ask, for those of us in the UK not eligible for the free NHS Spring 2025 boosters, would you recommend waiting until levels creep up a bit more or better to get the booster now anyway? The UKHSA dashboard is good, but seems to lag by 7 days for some reason.
Thank you for your updates.
SARS CoV 2 is a coronavirus. There's no reason to believe endemic SARS CoV 2 is any more severe compared to OC43. There are big differences in biology between coronavirus and flu virus.
Thank you for your truthful information. I don't trust government/NHS media
Hello, I'm interested that you say we are still testing waste water in Scotland as I've been unable to see results since July last year. Have they moved them?
it's here in its own wasterwater section https://scotland.shinyapps.io/phs-respiratory-covid-19/
I am so thankful for the low levels this winter! Life feels lighter 😌
Thank you. What would we do or know without you?
Thank you for this info, it is extremely useful to all people who’s health situation means they have to monitor the covid situation closely..
Great data. My area has high waste water covid lately , many friends getting it. They are going to work sick with cheap and useless masks. I'm in the USA near the Pacific, Portland , below Seattle. I carry my Aranet monitor and 3m masks everywhere. I go mask free if the air is good and nobody coughing. Works for me so far.
Insightful , thank you !
Thank goodness for wastewater checks.
A doctor at my local hospital told me daughter last Sunday that they are seeing a lot of Covid.
Great to see such continuously low Covid – but why?
Are current strains just less virulent?
Or do we just have herd immunity now?
I read that current strains attack especially the nasal ACE2 receptors which somehow afford extra time for our immune system to mount a defence before it spreads – is that correct?
If an ‘old’ strain reemerges do we have enough immune memory to help us respond effectively?
Do we still need boosters?
Does anybody really understand what is happening?
There's an interesting study that says the latest variants such as LP.8.1.1 mutated again and lost more lung infection power. That could partly explain why hospitalizations are falling.
Source:
https://x.com/LongDesertTrain/status/1894923514743865792
https://x.com/LongDesertTrain/status/1894923517155504324
By now 99% people already caught it and became immune to it. When you are immune to it, it don't send you to the hospital. I bet SARS CoV 2 has very high prevalence. About 1% of the people have it at any give week on the average.
Well yes, acquired immunity is obviously a substantial part of what we see now.
But because a) wastewater sampling shows very low levels and b) anecdotally there just aren’t people (friends, contacts etc.) catching it, it would seem that there is substantially less than 1% per week catching it.
If that were true, then 16+% would have had it in the past 4 months, which seems unlikely.
I would figure the prevalence of SARS CoV 2 is very similar to OC43 and 229E and those ones are very prevalent. In fact, even in October 2021 they had attack rates of 1.5% or even higher. So something like 1.2% attack rate of SARS CoV 2 in any given week on the average is reasonable.
Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10724450/
I don't follow your reasoning - in that study other coronaviruses were much more common than SARS CoV 2, so how can you conclude that its prevalence is similar in any given week?
Covid shots don't boost mucosal immunity and therefore don't prevent infection and transmission. Therefore, given the similarity in symptomatology of Omicron (in contrast to Delta which was the circulating variant during October 2021 in the Paris study) and 229E, it makes sense to assume these two strains have very similar prevalence in human populations.
Sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11542980/
https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(24)00227-5/fulltext
Again, I don’t really follow. Shots don't boost mucosal immunity but that doesn’t mean that they don’t prevent transmission.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41109-9
And I don’t see how you can make a universal assumption from samples taken from two Paris night clubs, where only one person became C-19 positive compared to ~10 times that number for 229E & OC43.
Thank you so much. This is really helpful.
Thank you Christina for your excellent updates and for watching out for us all 🙏🏼
Thanks Christina - good to know someone’s still watching for us 🙏