Russet is doing much, much better. Tired and getting lots of sleep, her SpO2 numbers are good and she's functioning at a pretty high level. She had a persistent nose bleed last night which was slightly concerning as (a) cancer and (b) blood thinners, but eventually it stopped. And we live at very high altitude, there's no snow, which typically means fairly low humidity. We might do some humidifying later.

I didn't bother testing until today, and it was, of course, positive. There was never any question as to whether or not I would get it again. No where nearly as angry a red line as Russet's test. I feel absolutely fine! I'm a little tired, but I've been averaging less than 7 hours of sleep for most of the month. My temperature is ever so slightly elevated, not remotely to what you'd consider a fever. I'm considering it an artifact of having recently gotten up and eating breakfast and will keep an eye on it throughout the day.

One thing is for sure: all of the Covid antibodies from 10,000 donors that I infuse every week definitely do me a lot of good! The funny thing is that right now I feel better than I did a week ago when I was sick/recovering from (probably) pertussis. Yesterday was the last of my antibiotics from that, today is my last steroid from that treatment. And my cough is feeling much better, definite improvement in that area, which gives me some optimism that I'll be able to keep the library open late - the new CDC guidelines is that if you're not running a fever with Covid and you mask, you're pretty safe to work. Assuming you're not over-exerting yourself. It's easy not to over-exert yourself working in a library, though there are days. :-)

I just got off the phone with Albertsons and they don't receive their shipment until 2ish, so it's going to be another 4 hours before I find out whether or not I can get the second box of paxlovid. She has another order of meds waiting for her, so I'll be making a dash down the mountain regardless. Probably swing by our favorite Mexican food place and pick up some more green chili stew - our local cure-all. Does an awesome job of opening up the sinuses.

*facepalm*

What we have here is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is under Federal investigation for numerous abuses of office, either unable to understand the statistics behind drug studies - which are complex - or not caring and just wanting to drum up some attention for himself. He's suing Pfizer for $10mil because the pandemic didn't end as soon as the vaccine came out.

Now, the fact that the Texas government is run by Republicans, and as a rule Republicans poo-poohed the precautions of masking, getting vaccinated, social distancing, etc. to reduce the spread of the virus - that surely has nothing to do with the fact that the disease continued to spread and kill.

I'm thinking that Pfizer has more than a large enough war chest, not to mention willingness to make Paxton look like a complete idiot in a court room.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/12/texas-sues-pfizer-with-covid-anti-vax-argument-that-is-pure-stupid/

I knew it was coming, just didn't know when. At least it's not me.

Our house guest Dave just tested positive, so it's inevitable that Russet and I will sooner or later as he was standing next to us talking last night.

So far, he has a low fever and cold/flu symptoms. I told him to contact his doc to get paxlovid ordered, we'll see if he gets it done.

I'll be masking at work today. But Russet has a brutal three-day work shift starting with an 18 hour day tomorrow, which is really going to tax her immune system, add to the fact that she's on chemo, she's going to be a prime target. Fortunately all three of us were immunized within the last month, so fresh antibodies swimming around.

J&J requested the FDA to withdraw the vaccine's authorization for use in the USA after the last stockpiled supplies expired about a month ago, and the FDA did so.

J&J had no plans to reformulate the vaccine for new strains. They suffered tremendous loss of market share and public confidence after a kerfuffle over a clotting disorder with a similar vaccine led to a huge plunge in demand for their vaccine.

I personally am quite glad for the reformulated vaccines. Now, I am an edge-case: I have an immune disorder and don't produce antibodies, so vaccines are sometimes weird on me. On every Covid vaccination that I received, I ran a low-grade fever for a couple of days afterwards. But my last shot was the new bi-valent, and it was smooth sailing - no fever! I don't know if it was because it was formulated against multiple strains, or something had been done to smooth it out or what, but it was a much nicer ride for me.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/06/j-fda-revokes-authorization/

Thus far, I have been extremely fortunate and it looks like my viral load was truly low. I have not retested today to see if the line is similar to Monday morning, I will tomorrow and don't expect a significant change.

I feel mostly fine. Very little cough, an occasional sneeze, but that was happening pre-infection. My back hurts, but I've been playing a lot of Lord of the Rings Online as I have a specific objective to accomplish that expires in eight days - I'm very close to getting it. I've taken three doses of paxlovid thus far, the fourth tonight when I go to bed. For those not familiar with it, it is three pills consisting of two different drugs: one tablet of ritonavir (100 mg) and two of nirmatrelvir (300 mg total). While the National Institutes of Health have a list of drugs that require additional monitoring or complete exclusion and two of my meds are on that list in the more serious category, my doc said to continue them.

I'm drinking lots of water, but no temperature, so clearly my body is busy. Fortunately no alteration to my senses of smell and taste, which is nice. Both Dave and Russet have reported minor changes there.

I am taking nice long naps when I want to, which is nice, but screws up me trying to go to sleep before midnight. I have no alarms set to get up to, which is quite lovely.

Tonight I made beef tacos with ground sirloin and doubled the recipe to 2 lbs of meat. Came out quite nice, albeit a bit spicier than I'd intended. And I'll have plenty left over for future days!

Russet tested positive this morning, not at all to my surprise. I expect I'll test positive tomorrow or Tuesday, or not get it at all. I have the advantage of lots of Covid antibodies circulating through me from my weekly antibody infusion, though they are not the current strain, they still provide some protection.

My immunologist ordered me paxlovid, so I have that on-hand. Russet got a flu shot at his practice a few years back, so I asked him if he could order it for her. Here's hoping. I think her oncologist should order it for her, but that'd be a couple of days out, being expressed from Salt Lake City. Still, if he agrees to do it today or tomorrow, we could start her on my dose, knowing that there's another set coming if I get sick. That's assuming my immunologist can't order it for her.

So much fun!

Right now, I feel fine. No fever, a little hoarse, but we're in spring with lots of pollen and fire smoke, so it may just be a pollution reaction at the moment.

FDA regulators are mad because Moderna did not release all of their study information to the vaccine advisory board, which, upon closer study, shows that 1.9% of people who received Moderna's original vaccination subsequently caught Covid, while the bivalent vaccine - which should have offered increased protection against the Omicron variants - had an infection of 3.2%!

Moderna received $5 billion from the US government to develop this vaccine and then didn't disclose all of the study information, apparently in an effort to get it approved and make more profits.

From the CNN article: "The six FDA and CDC advisers interviewed by CNN said that this infection data wouldn’t have changed how they voted, because the data had such limitations, but it still should have been presented to them."

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/11/health/moderna-bivalent-transparency/index.html

New England Journal of Medicine summary of the studies:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2213907

The NEJM article at least has a disclaimer: "Limitations of our study include the small sample size and follow-up period of our groups. We also note that the between-group comparisons were not controlled for factors such as age, vaccine type, and health status, which may have had an effect on antibody responses. These findings may be indicative of immunologic imprinting, although follow-up studies are needed to determine whether antibody responses will deviate over time, including after the administration of a second bivalent booster."

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/01/16/1612250/fda-vaccine-advisers-disappointed-and-angry-that-early-data-about-new-covid-19-booster-shot-wasnt-presented-for-review-last-year

Not much, but it does. The identifiable area is that concerned with your sense of smell! The amount is small, 0.5-2%, and it doesn't seem to be particularly impairing, which is interesting.

The study was conducted by the UK BioBank, studies that are part of the National Health Service. It is a collection of brain scans from people pre-Covid who contracted it and later again had a brain scan, so they had before and afters that could be compared. And the results were interesting. They did find some shrinkage in other parts of the brain, but in areas that they couldn't say "This" part does "That" function, where as your sense of smell is in a fairly well-defined area.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/03/extensive-study-finds-small-drop-in-brain-volume-after-covid-19/

My wife watched a video on the Immune Deficiency Foundation web site today, a doc was talking about, among other things, Covid and the antibody replacement treatment pools. Since my body doesn't produce antibodies, I do antibody replacement therapy. I infuse donated antibodies that go through a six month(!) purification process before they reach me, so what I'm receiving right now are approximately from mid-year 2021.

He was showing graphs from data from CSL Behring, Griffols, and other manufacturers of drugs used in primary immunedeficiency treatment, and the upshot is that LOTS of Covid antibodies are entering the donor pool, so in addition to being double-vaxxed and boosted, I'm now also getting Covid antibodies every week with my infusions! So that's pretty spiffy!

We also know that my body actually produced antibodies in reaction to my Moderna vaccination. My immunologist had a titer test run and the count was effectively greater than zero. There is no standard saying it must be greater than X to say that you are protected, the disease hasn't been around long enough to know what level really confers effective protection, so as long as it is a measurable number, they assume that you are protected.

So some spiffy news to start the weekend!

Of course, it will be several more months before Omicron antibodies start appearing in the pool, but that's the way it is. Meanwhile, just have to trust my vaccinations, keep my mask up, and stay careful.

The one problem, of course, is that monoclonal antibody treatment is pretty much ineffective against Omicron. They will re-jigger it and a new MCA will come out, but that will take some time to redo it and then get the production lines back up to volume, and then odds are that Florida will suck up most of the production. All they'd have to do is encourage vaccination and their consumption of MCAs would drop by half, but that would be admitting that vaccines work and the virus isn't a hoax.

Can't do that!

Russet is still in the twilight zone of trying to get connected with local doctors. The Rat Bastards LOST the records release form that she filled out in their office, and DIDN'T BOTHER CALLING TO TELL HER. The only reason she found out is she called THEM to find out if they'd received the records from her Las Cruces doctor!

Bastards.

So still in a holding pattern there.

It's not like it's life or death.

Oh, wait.

It is, kinda.

Increased risk of stroke from living at high altitude.

Yeah. Kind of important.

Bastards.

Singapore has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world with over 85% of the country vaccinated and 18% boosted. It is also a monarchy, not any form of democracy, so the rulers make the rules. And as of January 1, if you have chosen not to get vaccinated, you'd better hope you don't get Covid or that you have an awful lot of money backing you because you're on your own!

There are exceptions for the young who haven't been vaccinated yet or the people who legitimately cannot be vaccinated. But religious exemptions? Homey don't do that. On your bike!

I am frankly sick and tired of these people who "Well, I've researched it and I have doubts." Oh! You've spent twenty years studying virology and disease and microbiology? No? I think everyone has a relative or knows someone who spouts some bullshit along these lines. And the University of Facebook graduates more and more of these idiots every day.

IT DOESN'T CAUSE STERILITY.
LONG-TERM EFFECTS WOULD HAVE SHOWN UP BY NOW WITH THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE VACCINATED WORLD-WIDE.
THERE IS NO MICROCHIP IN THE VACCINE, BUT THERE IS ONE IN YOUR CELL PHONE.

GET THE FUCKING SHOT!

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/11/09/1053889069/singapore-medical-bills-covid-19-patients-unvaccinated-by-choice