Leilani writes:

Hello Vincent and TWiV crew!

Would you please discuss this article?

I’d really appreciate your review and thoughts of it.

Also could you explain it in lay persons terms as much as possible?

Thank you kindly,

Leilani

https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/83634 

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/207333/coronavirus-antibody-prevalence-falling-england-react/

Loren writes:

Greetings from Seattle, where it is a Monday in November, and therefore cloudy and 7°C, or 45°F.  After listening yesterday to your conversation with Dr. Shane Crotty in TWiV 684, I thought I might have something worth sharing.

Though I am a mere architect with a physics degree, I have been an avid TWiV listener since early March, understanding maybe 80% of each episode.  Over the summer months, I wished there were something I could do to contribute to making this pandemic less pandemicky, so when the large-scale vaccine trials started, I raised my hand to volunteer.

I am now in the Moderna phase 3 trial, and just had a one-month in-office health check with the study after getting my second shot in late October.  They took 8 tubes of blood today, and the study calls for similar checks at 7, 13, and 25 months for all 30,000 of us.  I asked how the blood I was giving them would be tested, and they said it would be checked for virus, antibodies and more.  When I asked, they confirmed that the goal was to not only catch asymptomatic cases, but also to determine if the vaccine is protecting against infection.  For those of us who actually show up for the 7-, 13- and 25-month checks, they should also be able to chart how our response is declining, assuming it will.

Is there anything else you want them to check?

The logistics are complicated, but they are doing it anyway.  

By the way, I am pretty sure I am a control, since I had essentially no reaction to either of the shots. Then again, maybe I am wrong/lucky.

Loren

Jim writes:

Dear TWiV Team:

As a faithful mask wearer, love to get your take on this article in the WSJ.

Love the show! 

Thanks.

Lincoln writes:

Hi TWIVers,

It’s a lovely 22c/71f here in Melbourne, VIC, where we are now becoming world renowned for having effectively reduced our cases from over 700 new cases a day, and sadly having said goodbye to 800 of our state’s people on account of COVID, now with a 14 day rolling average of just 2.6 new cases per day, having had 2 days earlier this week at 0 new cases with over 20k tests each day from our 5.5m population.

But moving on to the news, I came across this article today that piqued my interest. I know that the idea of copper-laced masks has come up on the show, and I’ve even seen some copper laced snoods (kind of somewhere between a scarf and a skivvy-neck) being sold as a preventative measure too. But now I’m seeing the idea of using PPE (or as this article proposes rephrasing as “public health equipment” or PHE) being taken a step further. I’d love to hear your views on it. https://scitechdaily.com/face-mask-with-anti-viral-layer-to-deactivate-covid-19-virus/

Not being a scientist, but a voracious sponge for knowledge, I can see huge value in the mass production of a solution like this presents… if the science and virology checks out.

This year has quite frankly sucked, but learning of and becoming quietly infatuated with each next TWIV episode has made it suck just a little less. Thanks and best of luck throughout the remaining months not of this year, but of this global health crisis for which your words provide some guidance that I think the whole healthcare and political community would do well to heed, should they not already be.

Lincoln