having posted on this topic for years, your comment is the first I’ve seen come to this rational conclusion. usually people double down on their original perspective
strongest evidence so far in gut and immune cells for living organisms.
They did find it in the brain of one patient when doing an unrelated procedure at the NIH. That could be due to many things though. General findings around the CSF/brain have been negative.
they’ve done 15 days all null and the 25 day one was null but has some unique labs they tested but haven’t posted yet.
Paxlovid does something to antiviral genes and shows there’s something there though in secondary analysis (not posted but has been presented at conferences)
sadly Paxlovid doesn’t actually get rid of the viral pieces remaining and a PROTAC or other therapy might be necessary to degrade the proteins.
they are pretty well understood now with growing evidence of viral persistence in the gut and immune cells, and immune dysfunction causing autoantibodies.
they are also distinct from other conditions like ME/CFS or other sequelae although they may share overlapping symptoms. A lot of research is going into different PAIS post acute infection syndromes
what we’re seeing now is that the immune system can go into overdrive, where certain immune cells trigger sepsis-like illness, sometimes in milder or chronic ways. long covid and related conditions seem like part of that same spectrum of immune dysfunction.
the nih recover autopsy studies are also finding viral persistence in multiple organs, with more results coming soon
https://recovercovid.org/pathobiology
i work on multiple NIH RECOVER efforts on this topic and post long covid research on x, and honestly the picture is both fascinating and pretty grim
https://x.com/atranscendedman
> There has been nothing happening on the common cold virus with MRNA vaccines. In retrospect, it seems like CEOs pumping the stock price with wild promises.
So not true. There are numerous candidates for pan-flu and pan-coronavirus vaccines. mRNA and other vehicles.
Look, it’s not that BARDA is throwing science out the window in favor of some wishful thinking. It’s that they’re looking beyond what works now and toward what might work better, not just for today’s virus, but for the ones waiting in the wings.
Oral vaccines, nasal sprays, multi-antigen, multi-receptor approaches, these aren’t just buzzwords. They aim at mucosal immunity, they aim at T-cells, they aim at the places our current tools often miss. And when you learn that SARS-CoV-2 can persist in the body long after the sniffles are gone(i.e. Long COVID/MIS-C), you realize we need more than just antibodies.