Physics Girl: health update #2

For example look at this study from Italy on antivirals + monoclonal antibodies:

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-6382/12/9/1460

14/15(93%) found viral clearance with a combined therapy.

13 patients were alive, asymptomatic, and negative for SARS-CoV-2 by 90 days. 2 passed away for other causes.

There are other existing literature on these things helping middle-aged people as well such as:

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/monoclonal-antibodies-n...

3 lives completely restored back to normal with the use of an existing monoclonal antibody just sitting on shelves.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073567572...

This isn't a perfect treatment that cures everyone, but the efficacy seems rather high and the safety profile already exists given how much this has been given in acute covid during the EUA.

Also there is an upcoming monoclonal antibody that just went into clinical trials for safety that acts like a "pan" mAb which can target all variants with high efficacy by regeneron(look for REGN17092 below):

https://investor.regeneron.com/static-files/a73a7d9c-591d-43...

https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05923424?intr=REGN17092

Finally, there have been some people participating in the AER002 clinical trial (closest to Lilly's bebtelovimab) where they are seeing complete reversal of symptoms. The challenge is that there is existing literature suggesting both cases where people get better permanently and some people only are better for the duration of the half-life of the drug.

Either way you look at it, treatments are looking closer than ever.

Is this an accumulation of lasting damage to assorted organs (including brain) and the direct and higher order effects of that? Or is there some ongoing infection to be combatted?

The unspoken hard truth here is this: Long Covid is a nightmare, it's an open-ended sentence for lifetime disability. We as a society have generally "moved on" - which again, translates to a ruthless abandonment of those who happen to tangle with the actual reality of this ever-present illness and lose the to the russian-roulette-odds of the draw where the acute phase ends, but the long-term consequences bloom.

It's an absolute absurdity that we collectively "went back to normal", pretending this endemic virus that can wreak havoc across multiple organs and systems just went away - while we did very, very little to enact any impactful change at all.

Every Covid-19 infection carries with it a 15% chance of Long Covid, and the odds worsen with every subsequent infection - by the 5th time, you're basically looking at a coin toss. Diane is one example, but there are over 65M people worldwide with this affliction - a debilitating, fully disabling, long-term illness with no known cures or mitigations. There doesn't seem to be much urgency in finding any, either, and the entire situation is not getting mass media attention, while "content creators" who post about it appear to get demonetized.

The risks are real, and the consequences catastrophic. This is a mass-disabling event, and we're pretending not to notice; it's slow roll is making that easier. If we do nothing today, a decade from now our society will be utterly transformed.

We need to invest time and effort into changing the public perception, push for air quality standards to be enforced via OSHA and equivalent, and otherwise promote clean air standards in shared indoor spaces. People don't like wearing "masks" (fair, the surgical or cloth ones don't do much here, you need a proper N95 respirator or equivalent), but unless we have proper infrastructure in place, this is the only fallback.

The comparison to the (somewhat apocryphal) actions of Dr John Snow and the plague-spreading water pump in London's old SOHO has been made again and again -- the learnings from that time are what led the officials to build entire sewer and water purification systems, a basis which permit modern cities to exist. The same thing needs to happen today for the air which we breathe.

Content creators and online personalities with big followings have a responsibility to spread a science-positive, pro-social message like this. And if a call to a "greater good" falls on deaf ears - think selfishly. If a very popular online persona like Physics Girl can fade into obscurity overnight, what will happen to you?