Riobard

Apologies, the 3rd paragraph above refers to the South African variant. If vaccination regarding some of these variants is only as good as the protection level given between the two doses on the recommended schedule, as you can see from the large Pfizer/BioNTech human trial’s symptomatic cases of infection it is not very good. Good luck and enjoy while staying safe.

Can we now agree to retire both this and the ‘Bye, Felicia!’ meme since they are long past being overly played out? lol

My calculated judgement is that piping in here is not hijacking, since vaccination is mentioned throughout. Lab studies wrt Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine are ongoing. For the SouthAfrican variant a brief report dropped in NEJM yesterday and a similar study of antibodies neutralizing the Brazilian spike protein variant (similar in mutations as the SA one) is occurring. The antibody levels generated by this mutation, artificially engineered and introduced to blood samples of subjects in the study that had been inoculated for original wild type virus, were several times less than neutralizing antibodies produced against that initially circulating first generation CoV. The main problem is not knowing the threshold of neutralization antibodies for preventing infection and illness. The vaccine might be protective, analogous to the kind of reduced level of efficacy conferred in the earlier period following a single dose. It cannot be determined without human trials.

I am usually pretty good at biting my tongue, but ... The song is essentially themed on existentialism and does not fit the context. The face is frozen, does not waver one iota in terms of the many muscles we all have for varying ranges of expression. Perhaps should have deferred to a point where the Botox paralysis wears off a bit. Sterile, cold, leaves me with nothing edifying gained. The fellow should sign up for Bar Stock streaming for pointers if and when we have a reopening of such venues.

That’s cuz the minute Oz walks in it is the CasGAYde at the ASScot.

There are a few broker options. All have the capacity to satisfy take-out orders but naturally each punter may have a preference. Perhaps attend to this thread from a year ago ... www.boytoy.com/topic/32143-dominican-republic-santo-domingo-long-report/ Sorry, I cannot get the link to work, though I clicked ‘share’. It starts around March 3rd, 2020 I think, member 12is12, under LatAmer Destinations on this board.

Finale: Not shocked by the final turn of events as it seemed a logical resolution, but the way all the players on the board were choreographed hurtling towards the conclusion was quite riveting.

His Whatsapp profile photo for a while has been a painting of a deceased person close to him (first initial ‘T’) but I am quite sure it is Manny’s line.

He’s many years past university graduation with an accomplished CV. The age difference is approximately 12 years, not 24 years as some of the dumb loser responses suggest. Together since met at age 36-ish and 24-ish respectively. About the Charles-Di gap equivalent without the royally fucked pathology. Not that the shade thrown would at all be justified based on consenting adults with any age difference and orientation. Social media is its own enduring pandemic. Trolls gonna pan things wherever possible. If you don’t want to draw the inevitable assholes into negative commentary about your personal business, keep it to a bubble as opposed to throngs of anonymous strangers never met.

HIND athletic socks ... when you want to ensure bilateral marshalling in to the perfect targeted touchdown.

And this could potentially work for more remote private desert venues ...

The edit function is not working; it might be due to the video attachment. I wanted to add that the crude mortality rate for the municipality’s overall population for the disease is about 1 in 371 persons. Carioca vaccination uptake is approximately 3.6% to date.

Around the noon hour today ... certainly muted given the holiday context. At least they are outdoors. The city has among the highest COVID-19 case fatality rates in the world: cumulatively 1 death per 10.9 diagnosed cases. FullSizeRender.mov

Yes, I’ve seen a few ads within Brazil that do not seem to appear on the more familiar commercial sex worker sites. I do find it a bit frustrating, however, that many have the indication of embedded photos but you must undertake the additional step of opening them, while others have at least one image visible as you scan the pages and you can quickly decide whether it is worth opening the ad. I don’t know if that is due to a fee hierarchy for charges paid by the advertiser.

It would be prudent to rotate these vehicle rentals so an ongoing pattern of isolated parking does not alert authorities to various shenanigans ... Ford Escort, Dodge Magnum, Ford Probe, Dodge Ram, etc.

I read the iBooks sample and will definitely buy it.

Correction: Probably more variants than can be tracked ... (not ‘that can be tracked ...’)

Aaaawww ... welcome back.

(For some reason I can no longer snip a quote) Re: antiretroviral meds and CoV... Nope. That is absolute bunk.

Sorry, perhaps I have created some confusion. The whole topic is very complex. There is also the problem of varying meanings for vaccine effectiveness; protection from acquiring viral infection and attenuation of degree of disease severity are not interchangeable. The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna research briefs data support the idea that vaccination greatly reduces acquiring symptomatic infection irrespective of severity. However, the data do not support efficacy regarding their clinically defined criteria of severe illness. In fact, proportionally across case count the placebo groups had a smaller number of cases meeting the threshold of severity. That reality is lost when the minimal preponderance of severity among those vaccinated is selectively highlighted. The fact is, you need a substantial number of infections in order to produce each single case of disease severity. The concept of antibody-dependent enhancement of viral infection is related but distinct from that of assessing a current vaccine’s ability to deal with new variants. I believe that the evaluation of some products’ effectiveness with (a) new coronavirus variant(s) has been done at the test-tube level but not yet in human efficacy trials. Because such a small handful of vaccine recipients in research caught the novel coronavirus, subsamples cannot be stratified across CoV variants for analysis based on the time frame prior to which the variants became more discerned, even with old blood samples standing by for additional analysis. What the Pfizer, Moderna, etc reports concede is that the jury remains out on whether the actual antibodies generated will lead to more serious illness upon later viral infection exposure as immunity wanes ... ADE. This is related to the idea that some antibodies may give a boost to later degree of illness severity upon exposure to essentially the same virus or a variant of that virus. If that occurs for two or more strains of the virus the problem in vaccine development is that one component may generate those problematic antibodies that exacerbate illness upon exposure to another strain or to another vaccine component that targets an alternative strain. Let’s take the example of Dengue-1, 2, 3, and 4. Inoculating against D-1 generates the same type of antibodies as does exposure to D-1, so the bind is that vaccination for any one sero-type risks more serious illness upon secondary exposures to alternate sero-types as much as natural exposure to infection by any sero-type does. Recall that one dengue exposure is less serious than another different strain exposure at some later point in time. These liabilities are interchangeable, hence, the challenge in creating a vaccine for broadband coverage of D1, D2, D3, D4. The above type of scenario, ADE, would be extremely dangerous in the context of COVID-19. It is more the long range view and less attention is given to it. But the concept is found in the fine-print of recent CoV vaccine study safety analyses, as well as immunology and virology circles contemplating it. However, it is distinct from the idea of renewed vaccination if and when immunity conferred by earlier vaccination wanes, combined with tweaking vaccines for emerging virus’ spike protein variants. What we read about is the sequencing of variants naturally occurring due to genetic drift, population surveillance for their effects, followed by scrambling to assess vaccine efficacy wrt the variants and to ensure that the genetic encoding that triggers human immunogenicity, by tricking our immune systems to behave as if we caught the actual virus, best matches the spike protein mutations that spur variants of concern. This is not unlike seasonal influenza vaccines being altered each year. There are probably more variants that can be tracked, counted, or sequenced. The ones that are identified and highlighted seem to be attributable to shifts or anomalies in contagion as assessed by epidemiological surveillance. In sum, the more and faster community case incidence, the more rapid mutations, the more rapid variants evolving, and so on. As mutations naturally select for viral configurations that escape prior immunity ... the virus evolves as if prior natural infection and vaccination are similar ... ongoing proliferation among the population risks the type of scenario we definitely don’t want. Therefore, it is important that the early cohorts receiving vaccine do not catch the virus even if such a viral challenge to inoculation poses less risk at an individual clinical level. The more iterations of immune response accompanied by antibody production, the greater the chance of either ADE, virus strains that evade vaccination or against which vaccine adjustment cannot keep pace, or both. One other possibility is that other parts of the virus find an entry point into human cells. Currently, the spike-centred receptor-binding domain is the target, blocking its capacity to unlock entry into human cells. But that is not all there is to it. We also have substandard vaccination being introduced into the population, one in particular upcoming in common between Brazil and Dominican Republic, all of which additively promotes the worse case scenario fallouts of greatest worry.

Based on the meaning I understood growing up, I thought at first that ‘clout-chasing’ here meant one of the guys pursued getting smacked around during sex play. Now I grasp the alternate interpretation. FullSizeRender.mov

Correction: 2nd paragraph last line, ADE in bold (not AED)

I am treating my coronavirus vaccination the same as my one previous infection with the flavivirus dengue I experienced in Brazil a few years ago. I am also treating it as if I have had at least one SARS-CoV-2 exposure from which I recovered. As many know, there are at least four dengue sero-types (aka strains) and consecutive exposure to the different strains inflates the possibility of more serious disease, eg systemic hemorrhagic complications. I cannot imagine enduring being sicker than the first time. The general concept behind the phenomenon of one sero-type exposure potentiating more serious illness with another later exposure is called antibody-dependent enhancement (of disease) (AED). If you are wondering why you have not become familiar with ADE from media news cycles, I assure you that it is, nevertheless, a thing and was referenced several times in the detailed Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna FDA briefings preparatory to EUA dispositions two months ago. The general caveat is that antibody generation from natural infection or artificial exposure (ie, inoculation) is such that floating among neutralizing antibodies and non-neutralizing but helper or innocuous antibodies are extraneous antibodies harnessed by viral particles through endless mutation cycles to facilitate capacity to infect human cells for viral replication. It is like an ‘own goal’. Widespread dissemination of this notion will exacerbate vaccine hesitancy. There is pretty much radio silence regarding it. It also essentially provides a legal escape clause for enforced/mandatory vaccination. And to the usual cast of nutters it sounds ‘hoaxy’. However, it is one element of the science-based narrative that underpins the importance of assiduously avoiding a SARS-CoV-2 exposure in spite of personal vaccination and until community vaccination has been successfully accomplished. It is known that, like for flavivirus, evolutionary ADE is plausible and possible for a CoV that proliferates throughout the global population. This phenomenon accounts for why a viable vaccination strategy for a disease as serious as dengue evades human scientific capacity, not for want of years of diligent research. The emergence of ‘escape’ variants should be one of the red flags that alerts us to the eventual possibility that some of our many random CoV or vaxx-generated antibodies may render us vulnerable to more serious illness when exposed to new strains. It is not a guarantee this crisis will develop. It is perhaps even freakishly random that a particular set of antibodies confers Houdini-like capacity to the coronavirus. But it essentially happened with dengue, where each successive strike portends the umpire calling eventual lights out. The idea of vaccination passports is utterly premature hooey until this virus is controlled. Each individual hopeful delusion of robust and enduring protection fuels the potential for antibody-dependent enhanced disease down the line.

Probably worth a look ...