loss of smell as a diagnostic

If you lose your sense of smell, you'll miss more than a variety of scents. Without a good sense of smell, you may find that food tastes bland and it's hard to tell different foods apart. Loss of smell can be partial (hyposmia) or complete (anosmia), and may be temporary or permanent, depending on the cause.

A stuffy nose from a cold is a common cause for a partial, temporary loss of smell. A blockage in the nasal passages caused by a polyp or a nasal fracture also is a common cause. Normal aging can cause a loss of smell too, particularly after age 60.

Loss of smell caused by colds, allergies or sinus infections usually clears up on its own after a few days. If this doesn't happen, consult your doctor so that he or she can rule out more-serious conditions.

Additionally, loss of smell can sometimes be treated, depending on the cause. Your doctor may give you an antibiotic to treat a bacterial infection, or remove anything blocking your nasal passage. But in some cases, loss of smell can be permanent.

Prevalence and 6‐month recovery of olfactory dysfunction: a multicentre study of 1363 COVID‐19 patients

Mild patients were defined as patients without evidence of viral pneumonia or hypoxia and were commonly home‐managed and followed. Moderate COVID‐19 patients had clinical signs of pneumonia (fever, cough, dyspnoea, fast breathing) but no sign of severe pneumonia (including SpO2 ≥ 90% on room air).

Severe COVID‐19 patients were defined as individuals with clinical signs of pneumonia plus one of the following: respiratory rate > 30 breaths/min; severe respiratory distress; or SpO2 < 90% on room air. According to the centre and the availability of local healthcare resource, moderate and severe patients were home‐managed (moderate) or hospitalized in non‐intensive care units (ICU) vs. ICU. Patients with critical disease had acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), sepsis or septic shock and were hospitalized in ICU. Patients with OD were followed to assess the recovery olfactory rates and the duration of OD.

Conclusions:

Amongst the 2581 patients, 1916 reported self‐reported OD (74.2%).

[Meaning 25% did not report loss of smell. Of those reporting olfactory dysfunction the vast majority were those diagnosed as having a mild case of COVID.]

The prevalence of self‐reported OD was 85.9%, in patients deemed to have a mild case of COVID.

The prevalence of self‐reported OD was 4.5%, in patients deemed to have moderate case of COVID.

The prevalence of self‐reported OD was 6.9%, in patients deemed to have a severe‐to‐critical case of COVID.

Common Cold

Each year in the United States, millions of people get the common cold. Adults have an average of 2-3 colds per year, and children have even more.

• Many viruses can cause colds, but rhinoviruses are most common. Infections spread through the air and close personal contact.

In the course of a year, people in the U.S. suffer 1 billion colds, according to some estimates.

How can you tell the difference between a cold and the flu?

Because colds and flu share many symptoms, it can be difficult (or even impossible) to tell the difference between them based on symptoms alone.

The symptoms of flu can include fever or feeling feverish/chills, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, headaches and fatigue (tiredness). Cold symptoms are usually milder than the symptoms of flu. People with colds are more likely to have a runny or stuffy nose. Colds generally do not result in serious health problems.

What is the difference between Influenza (Flu) and COVID-19?

Similarities:

Both COVID-19 and flu can have varying degrees of signs and symptoms, ranging from no symptoms (asymptomatic) to severe symptoms. Common symptoms that COVID-19 and flu share include:

• Fever or feeling feverish/chills

• Cough

• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing

• Fatigue (tiredness)

• Sore throat

• Runny or stuffy nose [can cause loss of smell as mentioned previously]

• Muscle pain or body aches

• Headache

• Some people may have vomiting and diarrhea, though this is more common in children than adults

Flu

Flu viruses can cause mild to severe illness, including common signs and symptoms listed above.

Flu Symptoms

COVID-19

COVID-19 seems to cause more serious illnesses in some people. Other signs and symptoms of COVID-19, different from flu, may include change in or loss of taste or smell. [Which statistically would more likely indicate a mild case of COVID if at all, and if not from a cold or mild flu or other.]

[As there is so much cross-over on symptoms, one can appreciate why accurate diagnosis and testing is important.]

see also:

What's the Frequency?

Weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival: Physics of Fluids

…the steady-state relationships induce significant errors and must not be applied in unsteady saliva droplet evaporation. The classical theory introduces substantial deviations in Nu and Sh values when increasing the Reynolds number defined at the droplet scale. The effects of relative humidity, temperature, and wind speed on the transport and viability of CoV in a cloud of airborne saliva droplets are also examined. The results reveal that a significant reduction of virus viability occurs when both high temperature and low relative humidity occur. The droplet cloud’s traveled distance and concentration remain significant at any temperature if the relative humidity is high, which is in contradiction with what was previously believed by many epidemiologists. The above could explain the increase in CoV cases in many crowded cities around the middle of July (e.g., Delhi), where both high temperature and high relative humidity values were recorded one month earlier (during June). Moreover, it creates a crucial alert for the possibility of a second wave of the pandemic in the coming autumn and winter seasons when low temperatures and high wind speeds will increase airborne virus survival and transmission.

seriously?

Are you immune to the coronavirus disease after recovering from it?

The immune response, including duration of immunity, to SARS-CoV-2 infection is not yet understood.

6 days ago

At a Glance

The immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection.

The results provide hope that people receiving SARS-CoV-2 vaccines will develop similar lasting immune memories after vaccination.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/antibodies-from-vaccines-and-from-natural-infection-5092564

Antibodies to the new coronavirus do seem to decrease in the months after infection. However, that happens for all infectious diseases. It doesn’t necessarily mean that immune protection is decreasing.

The B cells actively releasing the relevant antibody may decrease their production in the months after an infection. But memory B cells can continue to circulate in the bloodstream for years in other types of infections. Presumably, these B cells could again start releasing the relevant antibody if they were again exposed to the virus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243

Nucleic acid therapeutics have emerged as promising alternatives to conventional vaccine approaches. The first report of the successful use of in vitro transcribed (IVT) mRNA in animals was published in 1990, when reporter gene mRNAs were injected into mice and protein production was detected. A subsequent study in 1992 demonstrated that administration of vasopressin-encoding mRNA in the hypothalamus could elicit a physiological response in rats. However, these early promising results did not lead to substantial investment in developing mRNA therapeutics, largely owing to concerns associated with mRNA instability, high innate immunogenicity and inefficient in vivo delivery.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5906052/

Current genomic therapy trials herald a new era in medicine. In the short term, cellular medicines that can be easily modified ex vivo by CRISPR genome therapeutics and then transplanted back into the body will robustly and rapidly enter the clinic. Examples of such modified cellular therapeutics include hematopoietic stem cell therapies, immune cell therapies and regenerative medicines derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. Genome therapeutics applied systemically or locally to intact tissues will inevitably produce enormous clinical benefit but delivery of such genome therapeutics is challenging. It is possible that none of the three delivery platforms described above can surmount the many challenges to in vivo genome editing and some more elaborate form of protein engineering will be needed to create a delivery platform capable of efficiently and specifically delivering a gene editing reagent to any desired tissue in the body. One can imagine construction of an engineered artificial virus that would have all of the desirable properties of a virus without limits to the delivery cargo or safety concerns. Our ability to construct or manipulate complex biological systems is rapidly advancing for biological discovery and bioengineering but application to medicine has lagged behind. With heightened interest garnered by the potential of CRISPR-based genome therapeutics, this may not be true for much longer.

New Data Confirms Old Data?

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-01-29/as-coronavirus-variants-threaten-immunity-the-race-to-vaccinate-shows-pitfalls

…The U.S. company Novavax reported this week that although its vaccine was nearly 90% effective in clinical trials conducted in Britain, the figure fell to 49% in South Africa — and that nearly all the infections the company analyzed in South Africa involved the B.1.351 variant that emerged there late last year and has spread to the United States and at least 30 other countries.

Johnson & Johnson announced Friday that its new shot was 72% effective against preventing moderate or severe illness in the United States, compared with 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm#studies

…CDC conducts studies each year to determine how well the influenza (flu) vaccine protects against flu illness. While vaccine effectiveness (VE) can vary, recent studies show that flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine. In general, current flu vaccines tend to work better against influenza B and influenza A(H1N1) viruses and offer lower protection against influenza A(H3N2) viruses.

Evaluation of Intervention Measures for Respiratory Disease Transmission on Cruise Ships

…This study simulated a seven-day cruise with 2,000 passengers and 800 crew members, and each day was assumed to be a port day. When there was an index passenger on the cruise ship, people in restaurants and crew cabins had a higher infection risk than those in other locations. Increasing the ventilation rate of HVAC systems in the restaurants and crew cabins was effective. Installing UVGI devices in all HVAC systems reduced the attack rate by 87.8%. When HEPA filters were installed in the HVAC systems, the efficacy was only slightly lower than that of UVGI devices. The use of surgical masks by crew members serving in restaurants, bars, lounges, or small public places resulted in only a moderate reduction in the attack rate. Quarantining the index passenger and his/her roommate at Day 2 and succeeding days did not greatly reduce the attack rate.

The infection risk from an index crew member was higher than that from an index passenger, because the crew member had potential contact with all the cohorts on the ship.

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a concept for a form of government or political system that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. In totalitarian states, political power has often been held by autocrats who employ all-encompassing campaigns in which propaganda is broadcast by state-controlled mass media.

Totalitarian regimes are often characterized by extensive political repression, a complete lack of democracy, widespread personality cultism, absolute control over the economy, massive censorship, mass surveillance, limited freedom of movement…