Thank you for these threads.

Is there any data about how soon after exposure one can expect the onset of symptoms?

@Hawaii_Jake 5–10 days more or less.

What to your knowledge was the earliest occurrence of COVID in the US?

Is the Covid vaccine supposed to be able to help the really sick that are in the hospital get over the virus?

Do you believe a cure or vaccine is within reach? If so, by whom?

Would you like a hug?

@janbb It was probably here as early as December. We didn’t get our first cases until late January/early Feb

@chyna Once you have the virus the vaccine won’t do anything.

@KNOWITALL Cure, no. Vaccine, yes

@cookieman Not hugging anybody but my wife right now! Not even shaking hands.

I’ll just interject there are treatments in trials. Merck has one that I think is completing phase 2 (a friend of mine is assigned to that drug) and I don’t think it would be called a cure, I don’t know, but hopefully help the body fight it off like other antivirals work for viruses. I assume there are other trials going on for treatments. Scientists all agree treatments are needed. People will still be catching covid even with the vaccination being rolled out. Not everyone is vaccinated at once.

@JLeslie Every single drug that has been “approved” for the treatment of C-19 has been shown in subsequent data to be either useless or almost useless.

@Caravanfan: Well, I’m offering virtual ((HUGS)) regardless. Take care of yourself.

Thanks @cookieman just tired but all is fine here.

@Caravanfan I’m talking about a drug in testing, I have no idea if it will pan out to be successful or not. As far as I know the Merck drug is not on the market for other uses, I think it is in development. Or, maybe you mean the Merck drug also isn’t showing results? I would think the trial would have been stopped if that was the case.

@JLeslie I’m just saying that every single drug that has been approved has been either not effective or a big disappointment. I don’t expect anything new to be different.

Many thanks, @Caravanfan, for lavishing so much caring attention on the people here.

My question is about vaccine, and an answer in terms of probabilities is just fine. I know there are no certainties yet, and maybe not ever.

If someone receives vaccine A, does that mean (physically, medically) that they can’t receive vaccine B within x time?

So if you take A and it proves ineffective, have you lost the gamble, and B is precluded?

If A doesn’t help you, will it / can it / might it harm you?

Essentially, do you have anything to lose by taking A, even if it turns out that B is the one?

“If someone receives vaccine A, does that mean (physically, medically) that they can’t receive vaccine B within x time?” Unclear at this time. But the vaccines are similar and basically do the same thing.

“So if you take A and it proves ineffective, have you lost the gamble, and B is precluded?” Unclear at this time. Probably not precluded.

“Anything to lose”. No, nothing to lose.
“If A doesn’t help you, will it / can it / might it harm you?” Probably not

Thank you, @Caravanfan. So I guess if I’m offered one, I should take it. That’s very helpful to know.

@Jeruba I was talking to my ankle doctor about the vaccines and he said they both seemed to be very safe to take because they are based on proteins rather than getting a small amount of the virus. He said he would feel safe getting it as soon as it was offered (A or B I assume.)

@Caravanfan I want to reiterate @Jeruba‘s thanks for your patience and help in taking the time to answer our questions here.

@janbb Yes, sorta kinda. I won’t get into the immunology and molecular biology here as people’s eyes will glaze over, but there is absolutely no risk (and I am talking ZERO risk) of contracting the virus from the vaccine. It’s literally impossible. And yes, at its end point it’s based upon protein antigens, not the virus itself.

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! I will definitely be taking the vaccine as soon as it’s available.

Any word on whether the vaccine is painful? Do they bring it to room temperature before injecting it? Or, is it still a fairly cold temperature?

It’s got to be less painful than dying of covid.

@JLeslie Well, it’s a needle, and they’re injecting a liquid, so probably yes.
They will warm it up to room temp before injecting it.

@Caravanfan I meant more than the average injection. I don’t find that most injections hurt much, if at all. I have been told the rabies shots are rather painful compared to others. I guess that is what I meant. Obviously, it will “hurt” at least as much as any other shot.

@JLeslie No idea.

@Caravanfan Thank you for taking the time to satisfy our minds while you are exhausted. I have several childless aunts who have been asking me to let them know if they should get the vaccine or not. One is 70 and the other is about 78. I’m assuming that since the vaccines are protein based that it should still be safe for them as well

@Caravanfan Are the two vaccines a totally new breakthrough in vaccinations that might be the tip of the iceberg in preventing and curing other ailments?

I was talking to someone who said covid might have progressed medicine by leaps and bounds. I don’t know if they really knew what they were talking about.

It reminded me of how researchers are using the HIV cell to cure sickle cell and cancers, but in this case it wasn’t the covid cell being the miraculous thing, but rather the advancement made because of covid.

@SEKA They should be first in line
@JLeslie Not sure I would go so far as to say “leaps and bounds”. It’s certainly stretched limits and changed practice. Treatments are crap and haven’t progressed anything. The vaccine technique is relatively new, though, as it uses mRNA. (The science of that is out of the scope of this discussion)

Is there any guess yet how long the vaccine will be effective??? The Flu shot is only effective for about 6 months. I guess the real Q is…how often can/should we take it???

Unknown yet

@Caravanfan THANK YOU for your support!!!

If the virus is in your saliva droplets, why does the test consist of swabbing your nostrils when they could just test your spit?

@jca2 I think there is a test where they can test your spit. However, spit is easily diluted (you could have just had a glass of water).

@Caravanfan We have a church member who is swearing that he had 4 C-19 tests on the same day and 2 came up negative with the other 2 showing positive. Are all the tests really that unreliable? I’m thinking that he’s fibbing

@SEKA: My doctor told me the antibody test is only 50% accurate. Maybe your church member is referring to the antibody test?

@SEKA The antigen test is not as sensitive as the PCR test and only really helpful if it’s positive. Negative does not rule out disease, especially if someone is not symptomatic.

And it’s an important reminder that NO test EVER is 100%. This just cements the fact that people must remain diligent. Mask, social distance, hand wash, and stay the fuck away from crowds.

Nobody knows what to do with the antibody test.

I think it might be helpful at this point to describe what these tests are and how they work.

PCR. What PCR does is it takes a little piece of DNA and amplifies it. So a very little bit of DNA can be amplified and then the virus detected. This is the “gold standard” and can have false positives because it’s so sensitive. It takes awhile for the amplification to take place in the machine so turnaround time is usually several hours

Antigen test: This is a rapid test that can be done in 15 minutes. What this looks for is actual protein virus particles, and if detected, will be positive. If a patient has lower levels of virus in the sample it can be negative. That’s the disadvantage. The advantage, obviously, is that it’s rapid. But since it’s only really useful if you’re shedding a lot of virus so it’s kind of useless as a point test. It MIGHT be more useful if repeated tests are done, say, on a daily basis. (This is what is done for football players)

Antibody test: This is a blood test, and shows if you have antibodies to the virus, and were probably exposed sometime in the past. I say it’s useless because nobody knows what to do with the result and nobody knows if that means that you are immune.

Thank you @Caravanfan I now have a better understanding of what I don’t understand. At least that’s a start

Everyone I have seen that talks about the likely reactions to the vaccine recommends acetaminophen for relief of the symptoms, no one I have heard has recommended any NSAIDs as an alternative.
Is there a reason for that?

And thanks again for continuing to be patient with us.

No idea. But they both should work ok

@canidmajor Friday night I saw Anderson Cooper interview a couple who was in the phase 3 trial and the wife had side effects after her infection and used Alleve for her symptoms. Her husband is a doctor, so I assume he knew what he was doing, but I don’t know for sure what the doctors running the trials were recommending.

@JLeslie, glad to hear it. Acetaminophen does nothing for me, I’d like to be able to pop back an NSAID or two when I get vaccinated.

@canidmajor I tried to find the video, but it didn’t pop up readily, you might be able to see it on demand if you have cable. Obviously, when you get the vaccine still ask if it is ok to take it. I don’t know how long ago she was vaccinated, so they may have learned more since she had it done, and have different recommendations. The woman said it helped a lot.

@Caravanfan, in another thread, a jelly said that they had “heard that they are letting patients die sooner now.” Is that a thing? Have you heard that? Are you familiar with that where you are?

To be clear, I am not saying they are killing patients.

@canidmajor Um, what?

Well, since she has stepped up to claim the statement, I’ll expand a bit. In another thread, @JLeslie posited just that. I wondered if you had heard of such a thing.

Can someone please copy and paste the statement here? I don’t want to go hunting.

First post on this thread. https://www.fluther.com/224433/why-are-active-covid-cases-in-the-us-so-high/

My question was not meant as any kind of censure, I was just curious, I had not heard this.

She’s wrong. It is an incorrect statement. Nobody is letting anybody “die sooner”.

@Caravanfan When the hospitals start vaccinating employees will they purposely not give the vaccine to all people in a unit on the same day in case some people have side effects and need a day off? Have they bothered to plan vaccination with a planned day off the next day?

@JLeslie The vaccines are going to be staggered. I plan just muscling through it and working the next day, but I’ve told others to plan a day off. Theoretically I should be getting my first dose tomorrow, but things are a bit in flux now.

@Caravanfan Mazel tov! I’m so glad health workers are getting it – including my DIL very soon. Let us know your experiences when you can.

@Caravanfan I hope other hospitals are thinking ahead like you have.

Can a person still be a carrier or a spreader once they have had the vaccine, either after the first or the second vaccine?

@chyna Act like you can be.

@Caravanfan Have doctors been trying antihistamines for symptoms besides congestion? I read a while back that they were being tried in the lab environment, but I assumed that meant not on people. I wasn’t sure if they thought it could help to keep people out of the hospital, or if it might be tried in the hospital to reduce more severe symptoms.

@JLeslie I don’t understand the question. What do antihistamines have to do with Covid?

I googled and didn’t find the same article I read previously, but here are a few. Don’t feel obligated to read it. By your answer I assume the antihistamines aren’t being used. It makes sense that squashing the immune response might be helpful since some of the injury being done seems to be an overabundance of immune response, but I know you can’t just overgeneralize that all drugs that affect immune responses will be helpful.

This one is similar to what I remember reading previously https://ufhealth.org/news/2020/existing-antihistamine-drugs-show-effectiveness-against-covid-19-virus-cell-testing

I found this pubmed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33309272/

I also found this article that talks about Zyrtec and Pepsid, I was once given Pepsid for an allergic reaction, only to find out I can’t take the drug. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1094553920301462

@JLeslie No, none of that stuff works.
The only thing that will work is the vaccine.

According to my local Fox news those having a bad reaction to the vaccine have all had shellfish allergies. Any chance this is true???

@LadyMarissa No. Just because someone has a shellfish allergy does not mean they will have an allergy to the vaccine. That particular person’s experience is coincidental.

Approximately 2.3% of the population is allergic to shellfish. That’s roughly 6.6 million.

Before it was even rolled out to the public, their phase 3 had 30,000 enrollment. Not even counting all the people who have already received the vaccine in the first wave.

This is the first known reaction of its severity from the Moderna shot.

2.3/100 = 1/x
x = ~43