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SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by tochatihu, Jan 26, 2020.

  1. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    I am not sure where you are going with this? But it probably belong to the another forum, so I am not going to respond. ;)
     
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  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    if anyone wanted to reduce the population, they wouldn't be promoting any types of vaccines or cures. the virus is doing the heavy work
     
  3. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    . . . the sun is another source for vitamin D, & during the 4 weeks that they called a handful of us back to work, most of it has been outside - not that vitamin D or an unbalanced diet has ever been a concern. It's likely that not getting stuck indoors has a big part to do with avoiding things like flu, Wuhan or otherwise.
    .
     
  4. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Of the approximately 1 billion annual common colds in the U.S., four coronaviruses cause about 200 billion of them. But there are only about 4 million births per year plus 1 million new immigrants. Very crudely, that means each U.S. resident averages 40 common colds per lifetime from just 4 coronaviruses. Or crudely, 10 colds per lifetime from each coronavirus.

    That suggests that immunity to each prior known coronavirus, doesn't last long. Will Covid-19 be any different?
     
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  5. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    A common cold is a discomfort whose symptoms can be handled with over-the-counter meds, chicken soup, and a couple of days off. In contrast, COVID-19 has a 1-in-5 chance of hospitalization and 1-in-20 of death. Change the severity with lethality, it has changed budgets and interest. After all, there may be a Nobel prize for the team that 'cures the uncommon cold.'

    Bob Wilson
     
  6. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Much news about COVID-19

    US by worldmeter has latest week of new case totals below the previous 5-week-long plateau. Yay! First time I could say it.

    Russia is 'making a run' and it is one of the most interesting graphs on Gompertz model page now. Iran interesting there because it shows 3 distinct waves. Have not looked at all (there are ~200 plots) but I have seen no other multi-waves.

    Wuhan (capital city of Hubei Province) is getting new infections and announced they would test all 11 million residents in 10 days or so. A substantial effort. May be using their nucleic acid testing that has >10% false negative? Amazing that there are enough PCR thermal cyclers in the whole world to do a million per day. But we shall see.
     
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  7. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Not opposing the idea of a universal cold vaccine, but this is a group that has excellent access to human nasal cavities overall. As such it may 'feel' little evolutionary pressure. If that gets messed with, much more acreage of human lungs might become attractive.

    There may be a risk of turning one or more cold-makers into a bad boy. I understand that holo-vaccination should stand in the way, but I also expect people unenthusiastic about vaccines already won't jump at this one*. Besides there are about 2 billion that are already difficult to reach with vaccinations, and adding a new one (even if it's essentially free) will not quickly get needles into those arms.

    *A recent poll indicates 14% of Americans would not take COVID-19 vaccine if it were available. If that's any indication.
     
  8. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    1 in 5 chance of hospitalization based on limited testing numbers could change drastically with complete testing
     
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  9. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Too late to edit. That should read 200 Million coronavirus common colds per year.
     
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  10. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    i think we're going to be dependent on medications and then hopefully some immunization. in the meantime, life on the inside will likely be topsy turvy
     
  11. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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  12. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    i don't buy the premise. i haven't read much about blaing animals. but i have read a lot about blaming humans.
    not for the environment, but for eating bats

    if anyone ever figures out where the virus came from, and how, that might help create a start to reducing the chances of another one.
     
  13. ILuvMyPriusToo

    ILuvMyPriusToo Senior Member

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    Well, if you have a very low positive rate, the tests have sufficient sensitivity to allow them to pool samples by a factor or 10 or more. Then, if you get a hit, you go back and retest the individuals in the pool to see which one it was. (y)

    Here is Stanford's version:
    Testing pooled samples for COVID-19 helps Stanford researchers track early viral spread in Bay Area | News Center | Stanford Medicine

    So that reduces the problem to "only" 100,000 reactions per day :eek:
     
  14. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    Provided there are enough supply of reagents to do PCR reactions, the bottle neck is not really the testing itself. Collecting 11 million samples is the rate limiting factor. Current PCR platform is highly scalable. A small lab with a right platform can handle 500-1000 reactions/day easily. If the money is no object, government owned (managed) labs can handle 1 million reactions/day.
     
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  15. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    BGI in Shenzhen has the most next-gen sequencers in the world. So I have been told. I assume that means they also have huge numbers of thermal cyclers; possibly also the hugest. I would be interested to know what their daily throughput was, say 8 months ago. No idea how to find that out though.

    I've never seen a lab capable of 500/day, but I am no doubt out in the little leagues.

    ==
    Interestingly, if a particular grant gets funded, I would look for site and expertise to do metagenomics on a few thousand soil samples with a few different primer pairs. During proposal prep I thought "wow that is expensive" but I never thought "the universe of PCR doers will all be doing human mucus and have no time for my thousands".

    Very many things are changing in unprecedented ways now.
     
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  16. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    business as usual around here. okay, so you can't get a haircut...
     
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  17. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Dang! I'm already 3 months late since my last hair cut. If this keeps up, I'll be able to do a comb-over . . . not sure if it'll be head or eyebrows.

    Bob Wilson
     
  18. Robert Holt

    Robert Holt Senior Member

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    Large-scale simultaneous testing of 12,000 human-usable compounds against Sars Cov2. This non-peer-reviewed preprint has details but bottom line is that they found 7 compounds that had noticeable effectiveness at dose levels that would conceivably be safe for humans. (The oddest one was a proton-pump inhibitor.) Details:
    A Large-scale Drug Repositioning Survey for SARS-CoV-2 Antivirals | bioRxiv
     
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  19. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    the conversation: 'human activities are responsible for viruses crossing over from bats and causing pandemics like coronavirus'

    author: cellular microbiologist narveen jandu
     
  20. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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