COVID COVID-19 Coronavirus Containment Efforts

[hagopbul]

Thanks for clarifying what is fast becoming a very complicated issue.

Most definitely nobody should plan on the vaccine being available to halt the spread. As the CSIRO said this is like going to mars, a real stretch for current technology.
Thanks
Bill

Isn't there some exaggeration in relation to this covid-19?

 

[bhobba]

Isn't there some exaggeration in relation to this covid-19?

Honestly I do not know. As I said Israel has said they will have the vaccine approved and everything in 90 days. I have seen an interview here in Aust with a professor of immunology that says 5 months here. This is a very, for want of a better word, perplexing. Maybe I should just post what I find out without comment.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Rive]

This is a very, for want of a better word, perplexing.

I guess it might work, if their solution is about an already approved vaccine production technology with only the virus strain swapped to Covid-19. Depends on the local regulation.

I know something like this works for the production of some flu vaccines, when the strains in the WHO-approved cocktail changes.

 

[bhobba]

I guess it might work, if their solution is about an already approved vaccine production technology with only the virus strain swapped to Covid-19. Depends on the local regulation.

Yes. Its one of those reasons I am now wary of reading too much into what the scientists say.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Rive]

Yes. Its one of those reasons I am now wary of reading too such a into what the scientists say.

Even if it goes the way I described the technology itself required to have proper trials before it is approved for this kind of accelerated process later on. And the process is still just 'accelerated', not without trials.

Too many unknowns. Just take it as a possibility.

 

[bhobba]

I know the Philippines is part of the traffic of worldwide critical elements like chinese PLO agents, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Yakusa, the Mafia, and millions of illegal chinese were in the country who bribed and paid a little to get passports and visa (related to Pogo), with hundreds of chinese and russian prostitutes to serve them, etc.

Can we please stick to the science. The above is about matters way beyond what this forum is about. And yes I am speaking in my capacity as a mentor.

Thanks
Bill

 

[kadiot]

Looks like 14-20 days prior from her arrival in Ausie shores she's been infecting everyone. What kind of PCR tests Philippine-DOH does?

https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/3/5/Woman-who-traveled-to-Philippines-tests-positive-coronavirus-Australia-.html?fbclid=IwAR33MjuIZ7AFLkeXVYUjvF9-F4RKZq1wYf4L-W1wcwirfdFRhPOx2lgGKR0#.XmDKEvrJFis.facebook

 

[bhobba]

(Possibly off topic) Why does extracellular RNAse not just immediately chew up an RNA vaccine? What's the advantage of RNA over DNA vaccines?

I have to mention (and it's possibly irrelevant to the above) the Australian vaccine uses what they call molecular clamp technology which I think may be different - but this is hardly my area of expertise:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_clamp

Thanks
Bill

 

[hagopbul]

Just a question what examination is used to detect covid-19

 

[bhobba]

Just a question what examination is used to detect covid-19

Good old Wikipedia to the rescue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing

But I know everyone really wants something quicker that can be used for immediate screening at airports etc. Of course it's being worked on as a priority; it could be argued it may be more important than a vaccine.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Yes. Its one of those reasons I am now wary of reading too much into what the scientists say.

I once articulated Courtney's law which says, "The quality of the science is inversely proportional to the public policy impact." Though that was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the point is I've observed that finding the clear path from the public policy push back to the sound scientific conclusions back to the careful experiments and hard data to support those conclusions is often harder when there are important public policy implications, especially when the whole process is squeezed by time and political pressure.

In the current Coronavirus event, I am reminded that in science, sound inferences are based on careful experiments and hard reliable data. Repeatable experiments are the only gold standard in science for reliable data. Public pronouncements from government agencies and from scientists themselves do not constitute "facts" or "data" in the scientific method, as these amount to arguments by authority rather than data-driven science. There may be windows of time (hopefully short) where these public pronouncements provide the best available information for making medical decisions.

But as a scientist and a teacher and mentor of other scientists, my mantra for confidence is the verifiability of the scientific method that comes from "Show me the data!" Until there is a clear path from public policy and pronouncements back to quality conclusions and quality data of the sort suitable for publication in peer-reviewed journals, a scientist should retain a healthy dose of skepticism. And no, I don't trust that scientists in some government lab have the data to back up their policy positions until I see the data and can read all the experimental procedures that produced it.

 

[TeethWhitener]

I have to mention (and it's possibly irrelevant to the above) the Australian vaccine uses what they call molecular clamp technology which I think may be different - but this is hardly my area of expertise:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_clamp

Thanks
Bill

A molecular clamp basically just keeps the antigen from falling apart. Wiki does a pretty good job: essentially, the immune system needs to recognize an antigen (in this case, probably a surface protein on SARS-CoV-2), but that antigen takes a different shape depending on whether it's incorporated into the viral structure or free in solution. Since you want the immune system to recognize the viral-incorporated protein specifically, but you're using the protein free in solution, you need to add a "molecular clamp," a molecule that coaxes the free protein into the correct shape for the immune system to respond properly.

 

[TeethWhitener]

(Possibly off topic) Why does extracellular RNAse not just immediately chew up an RNA vaccine? What's the advantage of RNA over DNA vaccines?

Answering my own question:
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/rna-vaccines-a-novel-technology-to-prevent-and-treat-disease/
The advantage seems to be that RNA vaccines can be produced much more quickly than DNA vaccines. Also, RNA has less chance of genome alteration and easier uptake into cells than DNA. This is countered by the fact that RNA, as I mentioned, gets chewed up in a hurry (this is a good thing normally: it prevents overexpression of proteins). The claim is that the delivery mechanism (using either lipofection or a cell-penetrating peptide) can encapsulate the RNA enough to protect it from RNAse. Here's a recent review:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.00594/full

 

[cosmik debris]

Yes. Its one of those reasons I am now wary of reading too much into what the scientists say.

Yes, you can't trust scientists...hang on a minute :-)

Cheers

 

[bhobba]

Yes, you can't trust scientists...hang on a minute :-)

Yes it is amusing

Seriously though let's be clear in what is being said here. When scientists use terms, what it means to those like some posting in this thread who are experts in testing vaccines (having been actually involved in doing it) and simply a person with a general scientific knowledge of the area are two different things. An example was the conclusion I drew that testing has begun because animal testing has begun. Sounded reasonable to me, but those that have done this stuff say that's really part of pre-testing. As a politician out here in Aus used to say - the devil is in the detail. Because I am not familiar with that detail I will not be offering commentary any more on information I spot such as the briefing by the CSIRO - I will let those with more expertise comment.

What can be said regarding the vaccine is we now have quite a few - UQ took just 3 weeks to create one and others in similar time frames, although I think UQ may have actually been the first. But it seems this is not the main time consuming part - it's testing the thing, and many say that could take a year to 18 months. Others say sooner - but that does not seem the consensus. We will need to wait and see.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Yes, you can't trust scientists...hang on a minute :-)

Cheers

No, you can't trust scientists when they are making predictions and projections outside of things that are already well-verified by the scientific method. For example:



"There are going to be millions of people dying, and I don't think there's any way to get around that."

 

[chemisttree]

I live in Contra Costa. Did anyone go to the conference? I missed it. Chemisttree did you go?

Nope. It was over a thousand miles away from me. Unknown contact history can only mean one thing though. There’s a cluster of cases there and you should prepare for what will come.

 

[TeethWhitener]

"There are going to be millions of people dying, and I don't think there's any way to get around that."

I didn't watch the video, but responding to this quote: just for some perspective, if 1% of the world's population contracts COVID-19, and if the case fatality rate in the end is 2%, then that's 1.5 million people dead. It's not totally unrealistic, especially if (as has been reported) 80% of the cases present as a mild cold, and if the virus can be passed asymptomatically. For comparison, the flu and malaria each kill about half a million people per year.

 

[mfb]

No, you can't trust scientists when they are making predictions and projections outside of things that are already well-verified by the scientific method. For example:

[MEDIA=youtube]iDelUkpFm60[/MEDIA]

"There are going to be millions of people dying, and I don't think there's any way to get around that."

Don't quote people out of context in such a misleading way please. The relevant part is 1:20 and what he says is this:

If it really does spread as widely as that projection says [40-60% of the adult population infected], and that's what I think is likely to happen, then there are going to be millions of people dying, and I don't think there's any way to get around that."

If so many people get infected then yes, we will see so many deaths, this is well-verified. He doesn't say it will spread so far, he just thinks it is likely.

----

South Korea keeps testing more and more people but the rate of new cases they find goes down (graph). There is some hope that they can contain it. Testing works.

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

Nope. It was over a thousand miles away from me. Unknown contact history can only mean one thing though. There’s a cluster of cases there and you should prepare for what will come.

You would be welcomed at my home any time I was rather upset that the polls at the Civic Center right across the street where I live had so many people voting! My husband dragged me over there. ~

I read that "A novel (new) Coronavirus is causing an outbreak of pneumonia illness". What do you think of that? I could give you a link to it if you would like.

 

[OmCheeto]

No, you can't trust scientists when they are making predictions and projections outside of things that are already well-verified by the scientific method. For example:



"There are going to be millions of people dying, and I don't think there's any way to get around that."

According to my research, tens of millions of people die every year, anyways.
Even if everyone gets the bug, and 1% die, that's not even twice the annual global death rate.

ps. I'm an orphan, so I'm not too worried about my parents dying from this.
pps. I'm kinda old, so I'm somewhat worried about the age mortality rates.
ppps. I don't have any kids, and have lived a VERY full life, so I'm not afraid to die.

 

[kyphysics]

What's the probability this does NOT become a U.S. pandemic.

California first...now NY:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-cases.html

2700+ in quarantine in NY.

Both are heavily and densely populated states with lots of traffic flow and international communities.

 

[kyphysics]

In 10 days, will the whole U.S. be engulfed?

 

[mathwonk]

Those of us in the Seattle area are a bit closer to this than most. I have connections to more than one resident of the affected nursing home where several have died in the past few days, including one known personally to me, not all of whom have even been tested to attribute the cause of death. Moreover all stores are out of sanitizer, most are out of alcohol, and many are out of soap, towels, toilet paper and kleenex. Still, let's be realistic; if someone is concerned about of dying of a possibly preventable disease, I suggest he/she is advised to immediately get a flu shot and stop smoking.

Update: In my area, even flu shots are not readily available, i.e. both my son and grandson were told there were none available for them at the two places they sought them, both of which had prominent advertising of " flu shots here".

 

[chirhone]

Looks like 14-20 days prior from her arrival in Ausie shores she's been infecting everyone. What kind of PCR tests Philippine-DOH does?

https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/3/5/Woman-who-traveled-to-Philippines-tests-positive-coronavirus-Australia-.html?fbclid=IwAR33MjuIZ7AFLkeXVYUjvF9-F4RKZq1wYf4L-W1wcwirfdFRhPOx2lgGKR0#.XmDKEvrJFis.facebook

I read there are two kinds of strains:
https://fortune.com/2020/03/04/coronavirus-mutating-second-strain-covid-19-wuhan-china/amp/

It is not within the realm of impossibility that the Philippines may have the S-strain which caused weaker infection which prevented hospital admissions.

For other countries with the L-strain. Do all victims or patients require hospitalization enabling their identification or can some hide in the midst infecting more?

My concern is the latter. The former is more hopeful. That means we can have thousands who carry the L-strain and it doesn't cause deeper symptoms than the common cold. But if a elderly get it. Would the symptoms be weak too?

Also is the term "Persons Under Investgations" (PUI) under use too in other countries? Could there be foreigners with the L-strain who somehow escape being part of the PUI?

 

[Ygggdrasil]

I read there are two kinds of strains:
https://fortune.com/2020/03/04/coronavirus-mutating-second-strain-covid-19-wuhan-china/amp/

The Fortune article is based on a recently published paper in the journal National Science Review (which is not a journal I had heard of before looking up that paper, though it does appear to focus on publishing work from China). This paper has recently been criticized by other researchers in the field:

An analysis of genetic data from the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak was recently published in the journal National Science Review by Tang et al. (2020) 84. Two of the key claims made by this paper appear to have been reached by misunderstanding and over-interpretation of the SARS-CoV-2 data, with an additional analysis suffering from methodological limitations. [...] Given these flaws, we believe that Tang et al. should retract their paper, as the claims made in it are clearly unfounded and risk spreading dangerous misinformation at a crucial time in the outbreak.

http://virological.org/t/response-to-on-the-origin-and-continuing-evolution-of-sars-cov-2/418

I have not had time to read the paper or the critique in detail, but for now, you may want to take the claims about two strains of the virus with a grain of salt.

 

[bhobba]

There are only 50 people in the the whole of Australia that have it, but boy has it had an impact psychologically:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51731422

I saw a couple of interviews with psychologists/psychiatrists and even they were somewhat perplexed. Every commentator I have listened to has basically said - they give up - people are mad.

People likely have seen it but just in case here is a post about the starting of human trials with the Moderna vaccine:
https://www.livescience.com/us-coronavirus-vaccine-trial-recruiting.html

I will let those more experienced in vaccine tests comment on exactly what it means.

Thanks
Bill

 

[kadiot]

1. An Australian woman tested positive for COVID-19 and she had a travel history from the Philippines. We have no idea what the timelines are, if she stayed in the PH for a long time or just transited, or if she came from somewhere else.

2. A Taiwan man who tested positive also came from the Philippines. We have a little bit more detail about him from official sources, but we need some more data on whether he traveled elsewhere and if he was sick before that.

They got to trace their flight itineraries to find out which areas in the Philippines they roamed. Otherwise, PH-DOH should do a shotgun testing like what South Korea is doing if epidemiologic tracing will not work.

 

[kadiot]

Also is the term "Persons Under Investgations" (PUI) under use too in other countries? Could there be foreigners with the L-strain who somehow escape being part of the PUI?

Next set of query from the chart, they should remove the query Yes or No for history since either go for PUI and PUM.. Confusing.

 

[chemisttree]

There are only 50 people in the the whole of Australia that have it, but boy has it had an impact psychologically:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51731422

I saw a couple of interviews with psychologists/psychiatrists and even they were somewhat perplexed. Every commentator I have listened to has basically said - they give up - people are mad.

Yeah. I live through that whenever a hurricane comes close. You should do something to prepare, though. The supply chain HAS been interrupted. Fallout from that is just around the corner.
India has just halted export of a couple of dozen of (pharmaceutical) APIs. Wuhan is (was?) an important source of pharmaceutical ingredients that supplied India. Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is on https://dgft.gov.in/sites/default/files/Noti%2050_0.pdf