Covid 19 - Updates from your zones

[Yastreb]

I'm getting what I'd assume under normal circumstances would be a head cold, but these times ain't normal. No fever yet (that's if I trust my thermometer, though). I'm trying for an appointment with my GP as early as possible tomorrow.

[Róisín]

Good luck mate! Let’s hope it is just a head cold. Mine turned out to be hay fever, much to my relief, so I am okay to do the market tomorn.

[Grade E cat]

If it can reassure you, I got a very bad cough in early Febuary (so bad it kept me up at night and I still had phlegm a couple months into lockdown), but my covid antibody test still came out negative.

[thorny]

If it can reassure you, I got a very bad cough in early Febuary (so bad it kept me up at night and I still had phlegm a couple months into lockdown), but my covid antibody test still came out negative.

Not necessarily reassuring, but the tests do produce some false negatives. So despite the result it's possible that you did have it.

Here's hoping that whatever anybody's got it goes away quickly and without complications.

[Jitter]

I got my pandemic hair cut yesterday! It was about time too, when the hairdresser asked me what I wanted done I said “Miracles”

[Grade E cat]

Not necessarily reassuring, but the tests do produce some false negatives. So despite the result it's possible that you did have it.

Here's hoping that whatever anybody's got it goes away quickly and without complications.

I got better, and my mid-sixties mother who definitely got whatever it was from me (and whose complete recovery happened faster) came out negative also.

[wavewright62]

I was sick a couple of weeks ago too, tested negative.  There is a dizzying array of ever-mutating coronavirus strains, and the current test is just looking for that particular one.  But each of the others has its own nasty little tap-dance to make on your system.  I'm glad you and your mother have recovered, Grade E Cat.

[JoB]

I got my pandemic hair cut yesterday! It was about time too, when the hairdresser asked me what I wanted done I said “Miracles”

Spoiler: show

Hairdressers' standard reply to that is "sorry, ma'am, but we don't do decapitations here", but they usually just think that at customers.

[Jitter]

Yeah, well, we are sort of friends as I've been going to him for... ten years or so? Plus he agreed

We came to the conclusion to cut very short and use a color close to my natural (what's left of it) so that if we get the restrictions back again, it can wait longer without reverting to miracles-needing state.

Finland is doing very good now, but with the global situation, we'll probably be looking at a second wave, or several. Recent news about how getting it only gives you short-lived immunity makes me wonder whether a vaccine is possible at all? Does anybody know if it's possible to make a vaccine that gives you a much better immunity than actually having the disease?

[Mirasol]

Oh no, may all those who live in areas with spikes stay safe and keep having negative tests!
(And on a more hopeful note, may all of your hairdressers make the miracles you hope for happen!)

Does anybody know if it's possible to make a vaccine that gives you a much better immunity than actually having the disease?

Hm. I remember back when I was in primary school, my entire family had scarlet fever several times during the same winter since you only get short-lived immunity from it, and we kept reinfecting each other. That was kind of a problem since each time me and my siblings had it we had to stay home from school/kindergarten for two weeks, and effectively stayed at home for over a month in that year. So to make that cycle stop we all had to take a medication that kept up the immunity long enough to not get it again as long as someone in our family still had it. That did work, so I guess it is possible to find a vaccine that makes immunity longer. Hopefully it is.

Then again, in the next winter, the entire thing happened all over again. It also ended with us having to take the lengthening-of-immunity-medication. But that was it, after that year we never got it again.

[JoB]

Does anybody know if it's possible to make a vaccine that gives you a much better immunity than actually having the disease?

Giving a shot with vaccine simulates the presence of the germ to our immune system. Repeating the shots for longer than the actual disease takes to be cured simulates a disease that miraculously became much harder to get rid of. Our immune system is supposed to react to that in such a way that the final result, the immune reaction upon re-exposition, gets more pronounced. Which means that it should also take longer to be "forgotten" again.

How much that holds for SARS-CoV-2 and what length of an immunity period can be reached that way for this particular virus is still completely up in the air, I'd guess.

I would say that the current observations very likely are the coup de grâce for the concept of "immunity passports" for the convalesced, though.

[Yastreb]

You'll be happy to hear that my test result was negative. I'm not letting my guard down, though.

[Jitter]

Good to know, Yastreb! Thanks for keeping us informed.

[Róisín]

Yay! Hooray! Be careful and lucky!

[Mebediel]

Hooray for negative test results! Hopefully you feel better from whatever you have (a bad cold?) soon, Yastreb!