Tag Archives: covid19

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 37 Covid Update #43

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Delta is a pain in the BUTT, but our T and B cells are ready to wage war once we have either had natural infection or received the SARS2 vaccine.
Evolution of the SARS2 coronavirus may have reached a perfect level of fitness with the delta variant. It is incredibly effective at transmission while not being more deadly than alpha. Time will ultimately tell if it evolves again in a significant way. If you think of the evolution of humanity with respect to SARS2/Covid19 risk, it is clear to me that this virus would have been much less deadly 30 or 50 or 100 years ago before the invention of modern processed foods, chemicals and stress that have upended human immune health and lead to an era of metabolic diseases and disease. I have thought about this for some time and the reality is as such. We are here to some extent by our own doing and that is a tragedy of our time.
Some may say that modern medicine is saving countless lives and that is so, but how many would have never entered the hospital based on much better baseline health? Ah, these are questions that we cannot answer less we just hypothesize.
Read more for COVID #43….https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 33 and 35 Covid Update #41/42

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A few people are asking about the need to vaccinate if you have already had COVID natural illness. What is the story here? Hot off of the press from Cell Reports Medicine, we see: “Ending the COVID-19 pandemic will require long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Here, we evaluate 254 COVID-19 patients longitudinally up to 8 months and find durable broad-based immune responses. SARS-CoV-2 spike binding and neutralizing antibodies exhibit a bi-phasic decay with an extended half-life of >200 days suggesting the generation of longer-lived plasma cells. SARS-CoV-2 infection also boosts antibody titers to SARS-CoV-1 and common betacoronaviruses. In addition, spike-specific IgG+ memory B cells persist, which bodes well for a rapid antibody response upon virus re-exposure or vaccination. Virus-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are polyfunctional and maintained with an estimated half-life of 200 days. Interestingly, CD4+ T cell responses equally target several SARS-CoV-2 proteins, whereas the CD8+ T cell responses preferentially target the nucleoprotein, highlighting the potential importance of including the nucleoprotein in future vaccines. Taken together, these results suggest that broad and effective immunity may persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients.” (Cohen et. al. 2021)

Read more for COVID #41……https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/988-volume-11-letter-33-coronavirus-update-42

Read more for COVID #42……https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/994-coronavirus-update-42

Happy listening

Dr. M

Women and Children First Podcast #2: Danny Benjamin – COVID 19 and the Return to School

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Dr. Danny Benjamin joins me today to discuss COVID19 in children, vaccines and the critical research that his team performed regarding back to school in North Carolina. He is the Kiser Arena Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Duke University and the Principle Investigator of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Pediatric Trials Network. His group performed two large trials of children going back to school in 2020 effectively proving that children being in school face to face was and is safe. We discuss the safety of the mRNA vaccines in the 12 year old and older age group. We dive deep into the risks and fallout from natural COVID infections as well as weigh the scales of vaccination versus natural disease in older children. He is a wealth of knowledge and I am grateful for his time.

 

Enjoy my conversation with Dr. Danny Benjamin,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 11 Issue 27 Covid Update #38

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Just when you think that the information on SARS2 Covid19 is slowing to a crawl with new discovery, a favorite researcher publishes a truly remarkable bit of scientific discovery. Dr. Alessio Fasano is featured below in Number 6 and his work is really important. A little science heavy but critical for children. There is a take home summary as well. Don’t miss this information.
Quick hits
1) CDC data on adolescent hospitalizations: COVID-19 adolescent hospitalization rates from COVID-NET peaked at 2.1 per 100,000 in early January 2021, declined to 0.6 in mid-March, and rose to 1.3 in April. Among hospitalized adolescents, nearly one third required intensive care unit admission, and 5% required invasive mechanical ventilation; no associated deaths occurred….. Read more at this link: https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/964-volume-11-letter-27-coronavirus-update-38