COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[somapop]

I had to read this several times just get a basic grasp of its point. There's some incredibly smart people on this planet. It's hard to imagine what the basis would be to even discover this as an option, let alone be able to think far enough ahead to think it's viable too. Amazing.

Incredible isn’t it. I hoped graphene would yield some amazing functionality (clean water from sea water/infected water) amongst the more techy possibilities and this a great example.

 

[somapop]

Any seem this?
Just about to read it but appears to be a counterpoint to the optimism of a fast track vaccine (or least a comment on that):

https://www.biospace.com/article/me...ern-about-rapid-covid-19-vaccine-development/

 

[Cassandra]

If you create a nm sized pore in a synthetic material like graphene and then put a voltage across it in an electrolyte solution ions will flow unimpeded through the pore to create a current but if at the same time you put through a viral RNA molecule such as Sars-cov-2 then each base interferes with the current in a known manner and you can sequence the bases. This is the technology behind some rapid testing technology.

See https://nanoporetech.com/covid-19/overview if you are interested.

Here's the picture based version for simple microscopists -
https://nanoporetech.com/applications/dna-nanopore-sequencing

 

[Healdplace]

New cases up to 642. from 152,063 tests though. A lot more than recent days.

 

[True_Blue69]

Russian cyber spies are trying to steal research into coronavirus vaccines and treatments from Britain, the US and Canada, the three countries claimed on Thursday.

The attack is ongoing, with British cyber experts working to defend research institutes, laboratories and other targets in the UK, according to a branch of the spy agency GCHQ.

Organisations in other countries involved in the fight against COVID-19 are also allegedly being targeted

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...-research-from-britain-us-and-canada-12029697

I don't get why all the world's experts are not working together and sharing all their data on this. I know big pharma is a pretty murky industry with massive profits but surely there's enough here to go round.

 

[Mr Partridge]

So we still haven't had any kind of significant spike yet(touch wood) from the pubs opening.

I'm not a pub goer so I wouldnt know but from what I've heard a lot of the pubs haven't been anywhere near as busy as they would normally be. However, a couple more weeks of the figures coming down should help and give people more confidence to go out, it's a shame we dont have the daily press conferences anymore because they would reassure people further. I think some were waiting to see what reopening would do to the figures. So far so good.

The virus obviously knows it isn't winter yet.

 

[Healdplace]

Regional scoreboard.

London + 68 (up again and highest in 6 days)

West Midlands + 64 (it was 85 yesterday)

Yorks & Humber + 132 (highest in a week)

North West + 80 (down from 84 and the fourth successive sub 100 total).

 

[Cassandra]

We know now that that is likely not a full picture though. Been widely reported that most are beating this without producing antibodies. T-cells etc. I'd expect that to be at least 3 times higher.

Around 12 to 16% would have been my intuitive guess. Say with lockdown 20% of the population are likely to be exposed to the virus. So by the time the curve has passed its peak and is well on the way down I'd have expected about 60 to 80% of those to have encountered the virus some way or another; so 12-16% of the whole population should be showing antibodies.

That's where my, now rusty, microscopist's mindset clicks in. As I understand it corona viruses (generally) have specific binding sites on the cell surface. There are also suggestions (though not peer reviewed) that folk with "O" blood type are less susceptible to contracting the virus whilst "A" & "AB" blood types were more susceptible to contracting the virus. As I understand it blood types are related to differences on the surface of red blood cells. I also understand that part of the mutation that allows viruses to jump across species relates to changes in the protein spikes that allow the virus particles to attach to the surface of cells. So to me there seems to be a possibility that some folk are naturally more resistant to the virus because their cell surfaces do not have or have fewer available, binding sites. Of course further mutations during the course of a pandemic could reduce this specificity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-019-0233-y
https://www.livescience.com/why-covid-19-coronavirus-deadly-for-some-people.html

This is why I'm puzzled: if I were building a mathematical model to predict how the virus would spread across a population, or at what level "herd immunity" might become significant I'd want to factor in what proportion of the population had more/less natural resistance. Nothing that I have heard suggests that this is being taken into account, although I realise that it is difficult to assess. Perhaps some folk on here have a wider insight into this issue than I.

 

[lust overlord]

Did you see his 1st post? certainly no mistaking anything in that one.

No pal.
Just the other one.

 

[somapop]

Clear explanation of antibodies: