Thread by @enn_nafnlaus

With 42076 cases reported today, the UK doubling time drops to 97d, while mortality and hospitalization rates continue upwards.

The big news today is that the JCVI has made the UK the only major country to reject the vaccination of children (in this cases, ages 12-15):

gov.uk/government/pub…

Their opinion, which references only three non-peer-reviewed preprints, is full of misleading and outright wrong statements - for example:

Anyone should immediately see the problem of using the *whole population* as the denominator rather than the rate per infection (when talking about allowing all children to get infected), but the numbers don't even match their preprints, and are more to the point, impossible.

Just since 1 July alone, more than 2300 children have been hospitalized of COVID. Even if 100% were with preexisting conditions, their statement would imply that there were >23 million infected high risk kids in the UK (pop: 68M). If they were low risk, it'd imply 1,15 billion.

Reading their statement it's just an endless string of mind-boggling statements. Some random examples: kids have little impact on spreading COVID, vaccines have little benefit on disease spread, vaccines (not infection with COVID) disrupt school, on and on.

For comparison from the US (whose views match the international mainstream on this issue), I recommend reading the ACIP slides
cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/…

This matches the opinion of respected expert groups as well, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics:
pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediat…

In the meantime, ONS just provided a new update of their Long COVID study. In particular the focus is on children; among those suffering at present, 34k have for at least 4 weeks (+4k since july), 29 for 12wks (+2k) and 11k for 1yr (+4k).

ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

Of the UK population, ONS estimates Long COVID rates at:
2-11yo: 0,16%
12-16yo: 0,65%
17-24yo: 1,22%
25-34yo: 1,5%
35-49yo: 2,12%
50-69yo: 2,18%
70+yo: 1,14%

Median: 1,5%

Of Long COVID sufferers, the percentage who have activity limitations (little / lot):

2-11yo: 44% / 25%
12-16yo: 46% / 9%
17-24yo: 41% / 9%
25-34yo: 43% / 16%
35-49yo: 48% / 18%
50-69yo: 48% / 22%
70+yo: 50% / 26%

Median: 47% / 19%

ONS lacks ZOE's app cessation and one-good-week=cured problems, but has its own self-reporting biases. They have, however, previously compared confirmed COVID cases vs. controls and found a much higher rate of prolonged symptoms among COVID patients:

ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

In the US the discussion is of boosters. It appears that Moderna's initial application was wanting and the initial booster rollout will be exclusively based on Pfizer.

nbcnews.com/politics/white…

In research news, an interesting study - in response to concerns over SARS-CoV-2 central nervous system infection - tested in vitro whether the spike protein would induce syncytia formation among neurons. It did indeed, and they even shared organelles.

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

It should be noted that this was only in vitro, but it's still an interesting result. I've been browsing the literature looking for other human viruses that do this and come up (mostly) empty. CNS infection with measles was suspected to, but prob. doesn't:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

A number of herpesviruses form neuronal syncytia in the peripheral nervous system, and the formation of signaling loops via this may play a key role in their nervous pathology:

proquest.com/docview/152401…

Only exceedingly rarely however do they invade the CNS.

By far the most well studied example of CNS syncytia formation appears to be in pseudorabies, a livestock disease carried by pigs, but also infecting other species (usually fatally, with rabies-like symptoms).

scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&…

RSV, a well-known syncytia-associated virus, does occasionally cause CNS neurological conditions. However, I can't find any examples of papers documenting formation of neuronal syncytia. Seems plausible, however.

frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…