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

If co-infections are so common though, it's more difficult to pinpoint an occuring death to Covid 19 (and not e.g. Influenza), isn't it?

 

My understanding is that current methods for purifying Immunoglobulin (the useful antibodies) involve removing the great majority of infective particles. Also blood can be screened. Prions like BSE might be hard to exclude but they are not prevalent.

I doubt that co-infection of people recovered from COvid19 is a significant issue. And I don't think there is an issue about diagnosis. From what I hear the chest x-ray appearances of Covid19 are highly stereotypical.

 

I watched Andrew Como, Governor of New York propose that other USA states send a lot of ventilators to NY now. The state is short tens of thousands of ventilators.

And then Como said he would send the ventilators back to the states from which they came and send his hospital staff and along with them to help Los Angeles and other cities during their later surge or apex of hospitalized cases.

Hmm. I just wonder, and maybe @Jonathan Edwards you might add to this, that once you have a patient on a ventilator, he is on one typically for 3-6 weeks. Or will this be a new practice of: we'll give you a week on a ventilator, no more. There's the Italian one ventilator per two patients practice.

Getting those borrowed ventilators returned in time doesn't sound like something hospitals in other states would agree to. It's an idea though and Como has disaster experience. Details to be worked out?

New edit. French newscast of Covid ICU patients from Mulhouse area of eastern France being transferred via TGV to hospitals in the west of the country instead of helicopter. Also, some in eastern France airlifted to German (ventilators and ICU beds available).

So, maybe Governor Como should transfer patients out.

 

I can't tell whether you're joking or not.

We know vaccines can trigger autoimmune syndromes, Guillain Barre Syndrome and Immune Thrombocytopenic purpura in particular.

No mRNA based vaccine has yet been approved for use for humans, or even been tested in a large phase 3 trial.

I personally don't think the safety will be any worse than the older types of vaccines, but the efficacy may well be much poorer. Given the fact that the mRNA has to actually make it to the nucleus of cells, be transcribed and then somehow leave the cell - all while bypassing innate defences, until it is finally exposed to T-Cells and B-Cells...

A trial of lipid coated mRNA vaccine for rabies had didn't work when injected intramuscularly, as did other mRNA vaccine trials which found much poorer efficacy with that administration method. Guess what method the "first" Covid-19 vaccine made by Moderna and trialed by Kaiser Permanente is using - you guessed it, intramuscular injection. My hope therefore is in the academic research groups rather than commercial entities like Moderna, but that also means a longer time to production.

 

Stanford are one of the centers participating in the Remdesivir trial. According to this CNBC interview with the Stanford Medicine School Dean they are involved with two, one for severe and one for less severe.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1242957720971546624


Here is a Palo Alto Online newspaper report of a patient who participated and recovered. The story was published last Saturday, 21 March.
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news...ks-a-clinical-trial-drug-was-her-saving-grace

 

This is also a nice personal piece about how Stanford is ramping up testing to 1000 tests a day in order to support other local hospitals. It required cooperation from a lot of folks to overcome shortages. California is way behind on testing, with a big backlog, and like other areas patients who suspect they have the disease still have trouble getting tested. Hopefully this work to ramp up will help the San Francisco Bay Area which has half of California's confirmed patients.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1242944673410359302

 

Here is some thing positive about COVID19. Scientists are coming together to help. Stanford has a list of projects they are working on.

https://med.stanford.edu/covid19/research.html

Some highlights I selected :

The Synder lab where some of the Stanford CFS Research Center team work has three projects listed. The first one is using multi-omics, something they are also doing for ME/CFS

There is also another therapeutic called Lambda that will be trialed in mild patients

Some other novel drugs being targeted for clinical trials

 

There are a lot of posts on s4me about modelling. This project seems interesting.

This is the projects website
https://covidactnow.org/

You can access the model on google sheets for those folks that are interested.

Code:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YEj4Vr6lG1jQ1R3LG6frijJYNynKcgTjzo2n0FsBwZA/edit#gid=1579455912

 

I don't understand, ask any credible scientist and they will tell you vaccines are safe that means they cant trigger autoimmune syndromes or any other
condition.

Thats official.

 

Its also official that we have vaccine courts to provide compensation for damages.

Its also on scientific record that many vaccines have produced massive damage. Such vaccines are usually then recalled fairly quickly.

With vaccines its about relative risk. The diseases we vaccinate against are from somewhat to very dangerous. The risk of the disease is much, MUCH higher than the risk of the vaccine in specific individuals.

Official advice along the lines that vaccines are safe is a public health message. The risk of vaccine is much lower than the disease, or the vaccine is withdrawn.

There are also individuals who have had multiple severe reactions to vaccines. Such patients can no longer be vaccinated. Indeed, this is why the notion of herd immunity receives so much attention. For those few who cannot be vaccinated, usually with a damaged immune system that simply does not respond to the vaccine properly rather than an adverse reaction, others around them need to be vaccinated to protect them.

Vaccines are relatively safe, not absolutely safe. Every now and then a new vaccine is unsafe, and is recalled.

I wish we all had vaccination against measles decades earlier. I probably would not have ME , though this does not factor in possible genetic factors. In my case the most likely trigger was measles encephalitis. People look at death rates, but we also need to factor in disability rates. Vaccines can produce disability, but the diseases we vaccinate against can produce a much worse disability rate.

So again, unless you are a rare individual who should not be vaccinated, the risk of disease is much higher than the risk of the vaccine. Relative risk, not absolute risk. Those not being vaccinated have partial protection because others around them are vaccinated. Its a complex situation.

 

Until reading this I had assumed the 20 seconds hand washing advice was simply to ensure any viruses are removed. But this article clarifies that the Covid-19 virus membrane actually starts to break down after 20 seconds exposure to soap and water. Very interesting.

 

This explains Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome
https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.o...tm_source=Email&utm_Campaign=Campaign_1101095

 

I heard him say that there is tons of equipment on the black market; and he (or some else in govt) contacted the black market, went to some hanger and stated there were tons upon tons of medical supplies.

 

Update this morning 3/26 from Governor Como:

Average length of time a Covid-19 patient is on a ventilator is 11-21 days (normal patients use is 3-4 days average, according to him).

 

This post as been moved from this thread.

Here's a theory about a connection between severe deterioration from Covid-19 and antibiotic resistant bacteria. I have no idea if there might be something to it..

Apollon: Resistente bakterier gjør korona-viruset verre
google translation: Resistant bacteria make the corona virus worse

ETA: This is probably a better article:
Statnews: First Opinion: Antibiotic resistance: the hidden thread lurking behind Covid-19 by Julie L. Gerberding

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1F_kWYdqUY

Coincidental job opening in November 2019 researching bat innate immunity when exposed to "SARS-like" viruses at Wuhan institute of Virology...
link:https://translate.google.com/transl...341/201911/t20191118_5438006.html&prev=search

I don't think people can deny that there is always risk of contamination and infection for workers in virology labs. Nor that there were risks of transmission of the bat virus to humans eventually happening (regardless of how it actually happened) were known given the research interest.

"SARS How a Global epidemic was stopped" - WHO (2006)
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/207501/9290612134_eng.pdf
Note page 236 "LABORATORY-ACQUIRED INFECTIONS IN CHINA", noting cases of laboratory-acquired infection by SARS-CoV.

 

The last UK case of smallpox was of course an escape from a lab.

 

Post moved
Genomic Study Points to Natural Origin of COVID-19, https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/03/26/genomic-research-points-to-natural-origin-of-covid-19/

The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

 

This was just posted in the other thread by Andy [mod note: that post was moved and now appears above], but:

The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2
Kristian G. Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes & Robert F. Garry
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9