📢 Forum Update - Hello everyone! I've made an improvement to the forum that should make following active discussions much easier. Beginning today, forum topics will display the most recent replies first (while keeping the original topic post at the top), so you no longer have to navigate through multiple pages to find the latest conversation. This change also helps improve the browsing experience in long-running discussions with many pages of replies. If you notice anything that doesn't seem to be working correctly or have any feedback, please let me know. — Richard G. New COVID 'Eris' variant: The symptoms, how dangerous it is and whether vaccines work Rebecca Corey·Writer and Reporter There’s a new COVID-19 variant dominating infections in the U.S. EG.5 — or “Eris,” as it’s been nicknamed — was identified in China in February and detected in the U.S. in April, and now accounts for more than 17% of COVID-19 cases nationwide, which is the most of any variant. Here’s what you need to know about the new variant. How do symptoms compare to other COVID-19 variants? EG.5 is a subvariant within the Omicron family of coronaviruses, so it’s pretty closely related to the XBB variant that’s been circulating for a while and was dominant months earlier. You can’t tell which variant you have just based on symptoms (that requires genomic sequencing, which isn’t a routine part of clinical care). But you can expect symptoms from EG.5 to look a lot like what we’ve come to know from other COVID-19 variants, including: Fever Cough Stuffy or runny nose Sore throat New loss of taste or smell “We're at a very, very early stage of the game,” Dr. Jessica Justman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University School of Public Health and senior technical director at ICAP, tells Yahoo Life. “But from everything I'm seeing and reading and hearing, there's no reason to think that this variant is likely to be more virulent, to cause more severe symptoms, to cause more hospitalizations or more deaths than any of the other more recent variants.” The World Health Organization has classified EG.5 as a “variant of interest,” but said it doesn’t seem to pose any more of a public health threat than other variants. But while EG.5 doesn’t appear to be any more dangerous, experts say it isn’t any weaker either. If your symptoms from EG.5 seem less severe than what you experienced with a previous COVID-19 illness, it’s not because the virus is losing strength — it could be the result of your own built-up resilience. “It's very hard to interpret new symptoms with a new subvariant, because not only is the virus different, but we're different. We have more immunity,” Wohl explains. “If you have more immunity because you had Omicron before, or you had the vaccine, or you had a booster, that changes how the virus is going to impact you. So you will likely see fewer respiratory infections deep down in the lungs.” Is Eris more or less contagious? So why the increase in cases? Every year, we’ve seen a slight rise in COVID cases in the summer, so experts say the recent uptick isn’t too surprising. “If you look at a graph of hospitalizations going back over three years, this is the smallest uptick so far,” Justman says. “[There were] 9,000 admissions in the last week in the United States due to COVID, as of July 29. Last summer, around the same time, it was 45,000. So it's just a completely different order of magnitude. This is a very small uptick.” Justman points out that with the ubiquity of at-home test kits that can be used outside a doctor’s office, new case counts likely underestimate how many new cases are out there and aren’t as reliable as higher-quality data, such as hospitalizations and emergency room visits. So it could take a while before we get the full picture of how prevalent EG.5 really is. “The way COVID works is, first there's a rise in the number of cases, then there's a rise in hospitalizations, usually between a week or two weeks after the rise in cases. And then the deaths — if there's going to be an increase in deaths — will take at least another couple of weeks,” she says. “So it's a little too soon to be confident that this is not going to have a higher mortality rate, but there's no evidence yet to say that it does have a higher mortality rate.” Will vaccines and boosters protect me from EG.5? The new vaccine that will be available this fall is designed to combat XBB, which is one subvariant removed from EG.5. “It's going to be really hard to completely keep up with every single dominant variant that's circulating on the planet, but XBB will be a step closer to getting us a kind of protection against what's circulating, at least right now,” Wohl says. While the ideal vaccine would make us totally impervious to infection, breakthrough cases can happen even among fully vaccinated individuals. But experts say the key thing to keep in mind is that vaccines are an important defense against severe illness, hospitalization and death. “Vaccine and boosters always help,” Justman says. “They increase your antibody levels, they give a reminder, a tune up to your cell-mediated immunity, particularly your T cells, so that they're all in a better position to combat any variant.” What does this new variant tell us about future variants and COVID-19 going forward? “I'm really glad we're paying attention, because one day, a variant could or will come along that is different,” Wohl says. “A variant will come along that our immunity just doesn't actually recognize as well, either from previous infections or from our vaccines. That's why we have to be nimble.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Look! How pretty! I love blue! :mdrmdr: Mask study published by NIH suggests N95 Covid masks may expose wearers to dangerous level of toxic compounds linked to seizures and cancer: The surgical N95 mask has been held up as the gold standard when it comes to protecting against Covid. But a study quietly re-shared by the National Institutes of Health in spring suggests the tight-fitting mask may expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals. Researchers from Jeonbuk National University in South Korea looked at two types of disposable medical-grade masks, as well as several reusable cotton masks. The study found that the chemicals released by these masks had eight times the recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds (TVOCs). Inhaling TVOCs has been linked to health issues like headaches and nausea, while prolonged and repeated has been linked to organ damage and even cancer. The researchers found that the levels of TVOCs were 14 times lower in cloth masks and didn't pose a risk to human health. However, the study did not measure the effect of people actually wearing the masks. ‘We Will Not Comply’: Trump Warns ‘COVID Tyrants’ Are Eyeing Lockdowns to Interfere with 2024 Election: Former president Donald Trump warned on Wednesday that “left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates ” to allegedly interfere with the 2024 presidential election. “The left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fear-mongering about the new variants that are coming. Gee-whiz, you know what else is coming? An election,” the 2024 presidential candidate claimed in a video posted to X. “They want to restart the COVID hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal drop boxes, more mail-in ballots, and trillions of dollars in payoffs to their political allies heading into the 2024 election. Does that sound familiar?” he alleged. “But to every COVID tyrant who wants to take away our freedom, hear these words: we will not comply. So don’t even think about it,” he continued. “We will not shut down our schools. We will not accept your lockdowns. We will not abide by your mask mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates.” Trump’s comments come as schools, companies, and hospitals around the country have, once again, imposed mask mandates to purportedly handle the emergence of the EG.5 and BA 2.86 COVID-19 variants. I think they are fooling themselves and wishful thinking with … “Biden warned that everyone will get it despite their previous vaccination status. “It will likely be recommended that everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not,” he added. They are probably looking to create civil war … cause will people that did take the harmful vaxx last time and have these major health problems from it now or know of people who do be willingly trusting to stand in that line again? I don’t think so. Lisa WW65 said her area of Ohio will fight the system and they will also refuse to masks up again too. - Fair Use - Biden admin seeks additional funding for new COVID vaccine 'that works': The Gateway Pundit previously reported that InfoWars published insider information that alleges the TSA and US Border Patrol will be moving back to 2020-era COVID-19 mandates and restrictions starting in mid-September through mid-October, to include mask mandates on all flights. On Friday, Joe Biden announced that he plans to request more funding from Congress to develop a new COVID vaccine “that works.” “I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works,” Biden told the reporters while vacationing for the nth time in Lake Tahoe. Biden warned that everyone will get it despite their previous vaccination status. “It will likely be recommended that everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not,” he added.
Tue, August 15, 2023
“We haven't seen a radical departure that [EG.5] is going to cause new symptoms or that it's going to look a lot different,” Dr. David Alain Wohl, an infectious diseases professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tells Yahoo Life. “We don't see anything that indicates that the virus is evolving to be more dangerous.”
A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Politico that “there is no evidence indicating EG.5 is able to spread more easily, and currently available treatments and vaccines are expected to continue to be effective against this variant.”
Although the bivalent vaccine currently in use was designed to work against the BA.5 subvariant, which accounted for most COVID cases last summer, Wohl says it still appears to offer some protection, because there’s just enough overlap between these Omicron subvariants.
As with COVID seasons past, we should brace for a bigger surge of infections in the late fall and winter. And because the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates so rapidly, Justman says we’re likely to continue to see new variants emerge in the future.
