COVID-19 (Coronavirus) discussion

Soldato
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I've never had flu in 66 years so the person who claimed we are more likely to get flu than Covid is talking a load of bull.
I didn't follow it all, but you probably have had flu. Most cases are very mild or asymptomatic a fact some people dont seem to acknowledge and then being doubly disingenuous about it when talking about vaccines and efficacy.
 
Man of Honour
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I didn't follow it all, but you probably have had flu. Most cases are very mild or asymptomatic a fact some people dont seem to acknowledge and then being doubly disingenuous about it when talking about vaccines and efficacy.

I don't really remember it but I've only had proper flu once in my life as a kid, any time since when proper flu (diagnosed) has gone around making people properly ill, so far I've not had it, at least not symptomatically. Even when over a couple of weeks or so everyone else at work has had it.

Apparently it can be a side effect for some reason of the steroid treatment I had has a kid though - no one seems to know why but in recent years it is a known thing that some people seem to develop long term/lifetime resistance to flu after it.

Kind of hoped it would give some protection against COVID but doesn't seem to - same for colds, if anything I get colds worse than average.
 
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Man of Honour
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I didn't follow it all, but you probably have had flu. Most cases are very mild or asymptomatic a fact some people dont seem to acknowledge and then being doubly disingenuous about it when talking about vaccines and efficacy.

Well I'll be honest, I didn't know you could have a very mild flu that did nothing to you but I know from experience I've had Covid 3 times and I'm 100% positive my very mild bouts were down to the Covid vaccine.
The only time I've known people have flu they have been really ill so you may have taught me something but I need to read up on it now and at least talk to Infection Control.
 
Caporegime
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Well I'll be honest, I didn't know you could have a very mild flu that did nothing to you

The difference between flu - and almost all other diseases, tbh - and Covid is that flu was defined by its symptoms long before we ever figured out what caused it; whereas "Covid" is defined not by symptoms by a detectable infectious agent. When people talk about "having the flu" they usually mean they were ill in the way they recognise as having flu symptoms not that they were infected with one of the influenza viruses. If you measure "flu" in the same way as we measure Covid - i.e. detectable infection with the virus - then you find that the majority of cases are characterised with mild or no symptoms.

IIRC one of the reasons the covid vaccine isn't working as well as some of the others is for basically the same reason the flu vaccine isn't a one and done shot, covid has mutated a lot, fortunately not enough to stop the vaccines working completely but enough that it takes your body slightly longer to recognise it and react, but the vaccine still works as most do, to reduce the effect of the infection and the duration.

There's some impact from mutation but Covid is nothing like Flu in that respect. Flu has an incredible propensity for recombination that produces an awful lot more variations than we see in most viruses. The main effect is that, for reasons that are unclear, immunity against Coronaviruses is just less persistent than against other diseases. Whether from vaccination or infection, the protective effect tends to decline more rapidly than expected.

Incidentally, even for the things that the UK only vaccinates against in childhood there is a decline in protection over time. Some countries, Germany included, give you boosters against Measles and so on every ten years to keep your protection up.
 
Soldato
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The difference between flu - and almost all other diseases, tbh - and Covid is that flu was defined by its symptoms long before we ever figured out what caused it; whereas "Covid" is defined not by symptoms by a detectable infectious agent. When people talk about "having the flu" they usually mean they were ill in the way they recognise as having flu symptoms not that they were infected with one of the influenza viruses. If you measure "flu" in the same way as we measure Covid - i.e. detectable infection with the virus - then you find that the majority of cases are characterised with mild or no symptoms.



There's some impact from mutation but Covid is nothing like Flu in that respect. Flu has an incredible propensity for recombination that produces an awful lot more variations than we see in most viruses. The main effect is that, for reasons that are unclear, immunity against Coronaviruses is just less persistent than against other diseases. Whether from vaccination or infection, the protective effect tends to decline more rapidly than expected.

Incidentally, even for the things that the UK only vaccinates against in childhood there is a decline in protection over time. Some countries, Germany included, give you boosters against Measles and so on every ten years to keep your protection up.

Your last points bring me to my last post where I mentioned that the antibody titres at 3 months post XBB 1.5 booster remained steady instead of declining rapidly as before.

It would seem to suggest that with repeated constant exposure to coronavirus RNA, the immune system is fairly rapidly adapting and immunity might start to persist longer over time?
 
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Associate
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6 Mar 2013
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Thanks for the concern everyone! Still feel ill, although a little better. Defo don't feel sexy. Maybe sexygreyfox does?

*I know I'm an outcast here. Gives me more scope to be a sarcy pri*k i suppose.
 
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Associate
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18 Oct 2002
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Thanks for the concern everyone! Still feel ill, although a little better. Defo don't feel sexy. Maybe sexygreyfox does?

*I know I'm an outcast here. Gives me more scope to be a sarcy pri*k i suppose.
There's an old saying if you can't get out of bed to pick a fiver off the floor you had flu, if you could you had a cold.
 
Caporegime
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I had proper flu twice, bed ridden both times for around 2 weeks I think, you pretty much just rest the whole time and feel delirious
Seems to be a cold virus doing the rounds right now.

I had it this past week seems to be mild though, my sinuses were clear by day 4, groggy feeling was almost gone by day 3 and I only needed a tissues for 1 day
 
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Man of Honour
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Seems to be a cold virus doing the rounds right now.

I had it this past week seems to be mild though, my sinuses were clear by day 4, groggy feeling was almost gone by day 3 and I only needed a tissues for 1 day

We've had a very mild cold like thing go around at work in recent weeks, aside from 1 person who had the full works everyone else has had symptoms more like mild to moderate hay fever - couple of people have tested positive for COVID with it. Personally think it is COVID due to the affect it has had on me, despite being very mild.
 
Man of Honour
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Typical cold for me has been 4-5 days of symptoms then once symptoms subside a couple of days of recovery then I'm back to 100% - not had a cold have anything like the overall impact of COVID and I've had colds far worse symptoms wise than COVID.
 
Soldato
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I'm generally not a sickly person in anyway and haven't had even a sniffle since I last caught my only dose of mild COVID back in July '21 but I did the old "spoke too soon" and stupidly told two people this fact last week and so, by Saturday, the God of being a **** made sure I'd picked up whatever current chesty cold/flu thing thats currently going around and, to be very honest, its hit me way harder than COVID did and I haven't suffered anything like this since I got Pneumonia in mid '11 after picking up a bug doing some "wild swimming" with a nice hospital visit attached.

It's all been very heavy, chesty coughs with a slight fever so far, with no achy joints or sore throat etc that you'd "usually" associate with cold/flu but, speaking to work colleagues who are off over the Easter break with kids, its seems to be the same with lots of them right now.
 
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