The biology of coronavirus COVID-19 - including research and treatments

still trying to understand this issue

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7121452/

 

The Infection That’s Silently Killing Coronavirus Patients

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/pneumonia.html#click=https://t.co/WiG8YUACez

It’s about pneumonia and hypoxia - often by the time patients go to hospital and breathlessness starts (in the 2nd week), pneumonia and hypoxia has already taken hold and it’s sometimes too late. This is why telling people to just stay at home until breathlessness happens or things get worse doesn’t seem to be a good strategy - because they would have needed medical treatment before then. A pulse oximeter can help detect oxygen levels at home.

“There is a way we could identify more patients who have Covid pneumonia sooner and treat them more effectively — and it would not require waiting for a coronavirus test at a hospital or doctor’s office. It requires detecting silent hypoxia early through a common medical device that can be purchased without a prescription at most pharmacies: a pulse oximeter.

Pulse oximetry is no more complicated than using a thermometer. These small devices turn on with one button and are placed on a fingertip. In a few seconds, two numbers are displayed: oxygen saturation and pulse rate. Pulse oximeters are extremely reliable in detecting oxygenation problems and elevated heart rates.

Pulse oximeters helped save the lives of two emergency physicians I know, alerting them early on to the need for treatment. When they noticed their oxygen levels declining, both went to the hospital and recovered (though one waited longer and required more treatment). Detection of hypoxia, early treatment and close monitoringapparently also worked for Boris Johnson, the British prime minister.”

 

does the timeline sound to good to be true?

 

https://www.scientias.nl/nieuwe-beh...patienten-levert-veelbelovende-resultaten-op/

There's a lot more in the link, talking about a cytokine storm among other things.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/22/coronavirus-blood-clots/


A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients

 

Sky news correspondent says this (Roche is pharmaceutical company)

https://twitter.com/user/status/1252865243442642946


but Oxford say, it can be ready by this year?!

 

I suspect these people are playing politics. There will probably be a good vaccine in a while but as to when I doubt anyone has any idea.

 

Anyone with any knowledge of the vaccine or pharma sector would tell you it's incredibly unlikely that a new vaccine would be developed in less than 2-3 years.
Even if someone has no knowledge of the sector historical data will show timeliness that are in the 5-10+ year range.

But now all of a sudden journalists are shocked that we probably won't have a vaccine in less than 2 years.

 

I feel like there's a huge lack of science journalism in this. I mean people that have actually studied both, science and how to communicate it, question and put into perspective the presented data.

So often it seems like it's just political journalists interviewing experts. Or TV doctors.

 

Yes, it's really obvious these journalists have no idea about science, but also journalism.
They are used to having a story fed to them so when they are presented with an ongoing situation they have no idea how to read it.
They just take whatever is said to them that day and that is the story for the day.

 

I saw a video on this recently and the fastest vaccine, if I remember correctly it was mumps, was 4 years. That was in the 50's, science and technology improved massively since and despite that this is the fastest.

 

The Guardian top story at present is that a study has shown that Covid19 case numbers in China might have been four times higher than recorded. (Shock Horror how awful of those Chinese).

Erm yes, but had they forgotten that up till now everyone has agreed that case numbers were likely to be ten times higher than recorded?

And as for the shock horror of Covid19 coming from a laboratory we should remember that the last known case of smallpox on earth (actually the last two cases, a daughter and mother) were due to virus escape from a lab in Birmingham, UK.

 

Where people work there can be made mistakes.

 

Also from the outset, presumably in an attempt to down-play how serious the virus was, it has been called 'The Corona virus' and then subsequently the illness, Covid-19. Very rarely, apart from research papers, did the govt officials or journalists use the name SARS-CoV-2. They are both(ie SARS-CoV and Cov-2) 'corona viruses'.

(article describing the differences: https://www.healthline.com/health/coronavirus-vs-sars#receptor-binding).

Interesting to read about the H1N1 pandemic in 2009:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1252698979285991424


eta: worth reading the rest of the thread to get a more balanced opinion

 

Quite so and it is also true of most politicians which is concerning in the present situation and in general.

 

'the IgG response fades noticeably after just two months '

That doesn't look to me like a particularly fading response; it always peaks and then levels off lower.

And the comment from States seems off beam anyway. What matters is the IgG response to the vaccine, not the virus. It doesn't matter if the virus does not generate antibodies if the vaccine does.

 

That had never really occurred to me. So are there precedents for vaccines that provide better immunity than would catching and recovering from a disease they aim to protect against?

 

I do not know of any precedents but the great majority of micro-organisms generate immunity.
The ones that do not tend not to have effective vaccines but for complicated and different reasons.
HIV stimulates an immune response but it uses that response to survive. So vaccines that stimulate a similar response are likely to help the virus.
Malaria and a lot of other protozoa I think work just by having surfaces that are invisible to the immune system. A vaccine does no good because there is nothing that antibodies can see on the microbe surface.
Norovirus is peculiar in that we do not make a lasting response to it and can get reinfected. I think it might be a good case for a vaccine that did better but I am not sure that a norovirus vaccine has been developed. Someone may know.

What we tend to forget is that for viruses a key factor in preventing recurrence of symptomatic disease is T cell surveillance. This is primed by antibody but you do not necessarily need a lot of antibody to prime. Measuring T cell immunity is not easy. It is now routine for TB but not for much else.