It’s eerie to think about how much of where we are today was so easy to predict. We and others, working from deductive reasoning, called it point for point (ht , eg). This is a talk I gave over two years ago, based on our work then: youtube.com/watch?v=GImBQk 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
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Arijit Chakravarty
@arijitchakrav
Biologist who knows some math, working in pharma R&D. Day job-helping companies make drugs more efficiently. Night “job”- publishing on covid. (he/him)
Arijit Chakravarty’s Tweets
TONSILS ARE MAJOR SITES OF PROLONGED SARS-COV-2 INFECTION IN CHILDREN
medrxiv.org/content/10.110
1st picture from Wikipedia, 2nd from the study.
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I did say JCVI minutes always made it appear that vaccination was a short term strategy to get over the hump and back to "normal", long term plan was always "booster infections"
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My takeaway from this JCVI statement:
Under the current plan most under-50s will not be offered another covid jab in the future.
A move with huge implications.
gov.uk/government/new
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Taxpayers contributed to every aspect of COVID vaccine development. Now, Big Pharma wants to quadruple the price—after already making tens of billions in profit. A lack of competition in the industry enables these companies to cheat taxpayers and patients.
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Durable spike-specific T cell responses after different COVID-19 vaccination regimens are not further enhanced by booster vaccination
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc
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Really thought this tweet was a lot older than that!
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Happy birthday to this unfortunate (?) tweet.
H/t @fitterhappierAJ
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Said the quiet part out loud. This guy was a member of Biden’s covid task force, can you tell?
(For all the slurs that the Right throws at Democrats for “socialist” ideology, it appears there are some who’ve been influenced by National Socialist ideology too.)
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2. Death is a loss but living too long is also a loss. It leaves most of us debilitated and unable to contribute to society. We are no longer remembered as being vibrant and engaged, but instead as feeble and ineffectual.
thetimes.co.uk/article/zeke-e
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🤣🤣🤣 what a pure, unadulterated piece of shite this paper is. I haven’t laughed so hard in a while as I did after I read the methods section. prize committee, I have a nomination for you.
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#vaccineswork #COVID19 The most recent survey study done by professor of Economics Mark Skidmore out of @michiganstateu illustrates why using a pure statistical approach to address a medical problem can result in nonsensical results. 
(1/15) bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11
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Saying “not this” is the first step in working towards a solution. “Unlimited covid” is not a sustainable way of life. It’s only ‘inevitable’ because not enough people are saying out loud that it’s a problem.
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Abolitionists show us the power of saying "not this" even if we don't have all the answers, even when it scares folks, even when the actions we can imagine right now feel insufficient.
I'm not going to critique disabled folks who are saying "not this" to the forever pandemic.
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A recent opinion piece speculated that COVID-19 deaths are over-counted.
Our new article explains why this piece is flawed.
COVID-19 deaths are not overcounted; most evidence indicates they are undercounted.
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Check out the date on this. It was relatively easy to predict what was going to happen next, if you were operating in good faith
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Kids and schools thread.
1. Known for years rates of coronas are high in kids and they (re)infect adults. Beware experts saying otherwise.
2. Contact tracing of 60,000 in South Korea found highest rates of COVID-19 in 10-19 y.o. See table.
wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26
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Exactly. This course of action will drive people into poverty.
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The pandemic is already reducing living standards globally. In a post-pandemic world we face lower life expectancy, less access to healthcare, higher cost of living, greater job insecurity and the loss of many comforts we took for granted. Sad to see so many ppl cheering this on.
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Be ready for a rematch. Once or twice a year. (Hope you win every time!) 🤞🤞🤞
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Wow... this is actually real. Reinfection is SARS-2 Policy in the U.S. twitter.com/ElyPaul/status…
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False statements like “covid doesn’t damage your immunity”,“long covid is exaggerated”, “hybrid immunity will save us” & “t cells will save us”.
The vendors of bullshit are still out there vending bullshit. They’d prefer to forget all the bullshit that they vended before. (3/3)
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the only ones making these points in the public sphere.
And the point is this- many of the people who were wrong repeatedly during the early pandemic continue to make statements that are either known now to be factually false, or contrary to reasonable predictions (2/)
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The CEO of Maple (private healthcare co in ON) is a doc who has worked for McKinsey and the Fraser Institute. Maple is partnered with Shoppers Drug Mart which is owned by the Weston family. Westons want “choice” privatization in education... 1/x #cdnpoli
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Check out the hazard ratios for post-COVID death in this new study examining early pandemic patients. Really eye-popping numbers! As a prospective study, it sidesteps one of the criticisms of the VA work (covid cohort is sicker). Consistent findings though
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Typos: collaborator is Laura White () at BU, and one collaborator was missed on the list: at Stanford U, School of Medicine
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Large population cohort in Denmark **during lockdown** periods finds "no support" for the notion of increased self injury, suicidality, and eating disorder symptoms in young people.
Data that needs amplification as it speaks against the moral panic.
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Yes, the covid vaccines definitely had a role to play in this person’s sudden death. She refused to get vaccinated, and she died.
I thought for a second that this was an onion headline, but hey- self parody is so much funnier!
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I demand an IMMEDIATE investigation into Covid vaccines and the dramatic increase of people dying suddenly!
This can no longer be ignored and is NOT political. twitter.com/RSBNetwork/sta…
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Supports the notion that very early treatment/post-exposure prophylaxis may reduce LC risk. Would be great if someone ran a trial with nitric oxide, carrageenan or povidone iodine (nasal spray or mouthwash) to see what LC risk looks like
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Brain fog and other symptoms of #LongCovid appear to be correlated with delayed clearance of the virus from the upper respiratory tract, via 9 serial PCR assessments out to 42 days in 73 participants
medrxiv.org/content/10.110
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In summary, multiple lines of evidence argue against a role for T cells in protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection. The observed durability and evolutionary stability of the T cell response has not translated into lasting protection against infection or severe disease. (14/)
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(The alternative explanation for the evolutionary stability of the T cell epitopes, that they cannot be evaded by the virus, has been undermined by the rapid reductions in VEs due to evolutionary immune evasion). (13/)
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At this point, viral evolution is being primarily driven by nAb immune evasion- rapid evo of immune evasion to nAbs validates impact on viral fitness. OTOH, evo stability of the T cell epitopes is consistent with no selection pressure being exerted by T cells on SC2. (12/)
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Observed evo of SC2 further supports argument that humoral-not cellular- immunity is primary source of protection against SC2. It is a basic principle in evolutionary biology that the strength of the selection pressure determines the rate of evolution of resistance. (11/)
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Drugs & conditions that impair B cell function/ decrease nAb levels are strongly associated with worse outcomes for SC2 infection. Restoring nAb levels leads to better outcomes. Limited preclinical data suggests that this is not the case for T cell functionality for SC2. (10/)
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OTOH, a strong case can be made that nAbs are a correlate of protection for SARS-CoV-2. They've been shown in multiple studies to be predictive of vaccinal protection for both symptomatic infections & severe disease, across a range of vaccines and viral variants. (9/)
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Despite reports to the contrary, T cells levels are not predictive of protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Similarly, reports of T cell protection without functional B cell (or nAb) response have been prone to issues with interpretation of the underlying data. (8/)
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Loss of T cells (either due to disease or drug treatment) does not result in worse outcomes for COVID-19 disease progression & the T cell blockading drug Abatacept has shown a positive impact on disease outcome in COVID-19 patients in a clinical setting. (7/)
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SC2-specific CD8+ & CD4+ T cells have also been found in unexposed controls from the beginning of the pandemic; these are thought to arise as a result of cross-reactivity with common cold coronaviruses (6/)
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Conflating the post-infection increase in the relative frequencies of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells with their absolute numbers is a major source of confusion on the point of whether T cells are protective. Can't be protective if you're getting beaten up. (5/)
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T cells are prey for SC2- they are infected directly & undergo apoptosis. While some pools of T cells (esp SC2-specific CD8+ & CD4+ T cells) are frequently found in convalescent patients, overall T cell numbers decrease during infection in both mild & severe cases. (4/)
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Early in the pandemic, a body of studies convincingly showed that T cell response is durable after infection & vaccination - led to widely held perception that T cells would protect against severe disease & viral evo. (3/)
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Much ink has been spilled about the importance of the T cell response in limiting death & severe outcomes from COVID-19. T cell durability (or not) is a practical issue, so let's talk a bit about how strong the evidence is (or isn't) for that point of view. (2/)
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The T cell cavalry ain't coming: a 🧵 on the lack of evidence for a protective role for T cell immunity for SARS-CoV-2. (Summary of this longer 'mini-review' with refs: docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv) (1/)
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Their slogan appears to be: “A pandemic for thee but not for me.”
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H/t
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Study looking at #LongCovid 2 years after infection:
Despite exercise, respiratory & olfactory rehab, cognition/speech therapy & psychological support, the main symptoms (fatigue, neurocognition, muscle) did not resolve.
Only 9% of patients recovered. 1/
mdpi.com/2077-0383/12/3
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