Off Topic SARS-CoV-2 Covid-19

Sorry, I actually did something like this to detect salmonella bacteria some years ago before retiring. We made the peptides manually. They do have machines to sequence DNA & RNA and also machines to synthesise the peptides. They also have machines to do "High throughput screening" of antibody tests but where they are getting their antibodies from I dont know. Its still a mammoth task, hopefully the vaccine will provide protection.

 

Well. if todays papers are to be believed, UK could have vaccine by September.... whats strange is reading one of them as I walked around is that its already in mass production...?.. maybe I read that incorrectly... if it is available, who will get it first, the front line people followed by..?..... the 750k high risk people who HAVE been abiding by lockdown restrictions...?.... or MP's

 

They don’t know it works, they’re manufacturing anyway so that if it does work, they’ve got launch stock as soon as possible. If it doesn’t work it’ll get destroyed.

I’d imagine front line care workers would be first in the queue. 1 million doses won’t go that far, but it would be a great start.

 

They’re saying they ‘aim’ to achieve it by September

in other news I’m ‘aiming’ to be a super fit, lithe, piano playing, Bugatti driving, rear of the year winner ...by September

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52329659

 

I think it depends what you mean by " works". If it doesn't give any protection at all, then they won't release it. If it gives partial protection then it will be very useful to reduce the severity of the disease and ease pressure on the NHS but it won't be perfect. It may not give complete protection and may be "tweaked" each year like the flu vaccine. Or it may give lifetime immunity (if we are lucky). We may get a better vaccine later. What worries me is WHO saying antibodies in the blood doesn't guarantee immunity, because the vaccine produces antibodies in the blood. We will see

 

Minnesota and Michigan both having a democratic state legislature, hardly surprising in an election year Trump is seen to be on their side. If this has strayed into the no no area, please delete.

 

Brain dead. It shouldn't surprise though, they did vote Trump in.

 

I don't know if it's strictly accurate, but it's an interesting thought when thinking of the end game without a vaccine. Especially looking at the timings for the drop in new cases shown by the earlier graphs.

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Why aren’t posters going mad about Sweden??

 

Because they adopted a different strategy? Need to see final scores before we know who to get mad at.

 

So, to summarise.

1. You MUST NOT leave the house for any reason, but if you have a reason, you can leave the house.

2. Masks are useless at protecting you against the virus, but you may have to wear one because it can save lives, but they may not work, but they may be mandatory, but maybe not.

3. Shops are closed, except those shops that are open.

4. You must not go to work but you can get another job and go to work.

5. You should not go to the Doctors or to the hospital unless you have to go there, unless you are too poorly to go there.

6. This virus can kill people, but don’t be scared of it. It can only kill those people who are vulnerable or those people who are not vulnerable people. It’s possible to contain and control it, sometimes, except that sometimes it actually leads to a global disaster.

7. Gloves won't help, but they can still help so wear them sometimes or not

8. STAY HOME, but it's important to go out.

9. There is no shortage of groceries in the supermarkets, but there are many things missing. Sometimes you won’t need loo rolls but you should buy some just in case you need some.

10. The virus has no effect on children except those children it affects.

11. Animals are not affected, but there is still a cat that tested positive in Belgium in February when no one had been tested, plus a few tigers here and there.

12. Stay 2 metres away from tigers (see point 11).

13. You will have many symptoms if you get the virus, but you can also get symptoms without getting the virus, get the virus without having any symptoms , be contagious without having symptoms, or be non contagious with symptoms...

14. To help protect yourself you should eat well and exercise, but eat whatever you have to hand as it's better not to go out shopping.

15. It's important to get fresh air. Don't go to parks but go for a walk. But don’t sit down, except if you are old, but not for too long or if you are pregnant or if you’re not old or pregnant but need to sit down. If you do sit down, don’t eat your picnic.

16. Don’t visit old people but you have to take care of the old people and bring them food and medication.

17. If you are sick, you can go out when you are better but anyone else in your household can’t go out when you are better unless they need to go out.

18. You can get restaurant food delivered to the house. These deliveries are safe. But groceries you bring back to your house have to be decontaminated outside for 3 hours including Pizza.

19. You can't see your older mother or grandmother, but they can take a taxi and meet an older taxi driver.

20. You are safe if you maintain the safe social distance when out but you can’t go out with friends or strangers at the safe social distance.

21. The virus remains active on different surfaces for two hours ... or four hours... six hours... I mean days, not hours... But it needs a damp environment. Or a cold environment that is warm and dry... in the air, as long as the air is not plastic.

22. Schools are closed so you need to home educate your children, unless you can send them to school because you’re not at home. If you are at home you can home educate your children using various portals and virtual class rooms, unless you have poor internet, or more than one child and only one computer, or you are working from home. Baking cakes can be considered maths, science or art. If you are home educating you can include household chores to be education. If you are home educating you can start drinking at 10am.

23. If you are not home educating children you can also start drinking at 10am.

24. The number of corona related deaths will be announced daily but we don't know how many people are infected as they are only testing those who are almost dead to find out if that's what they will die of… the people who die of corona who aren’t counted won’t be counted.

25. You should stay in locked down until the virus stops infecting people but it will only stop infecting people if we all get infected so it’s important we get infected and some don’t get infected.

26. You can join your neighbours for a street party and turn your music up for an outside disco and your neighbours won’t call the police. People in another street are allowed to call the police about your music.

27. No business will go under due to Coronavirus except those businesses that will have already gone under.

 

I had to take the missus for COVID 19 test this morning.
It took 6 minutes between tests.
100,000 a day?
10 an hour per testing station?

 

I'm not sure that social distancing as we now know it was widely practiced at the time of the initial outbreak in 1917. I do know that some doctors were advocating and implementing local quarantine arrangements but there was little evidence of a co-ordinated approach nationwide. Also I was always under the impression that the symptoms associated with the second wave were much more severe than those of first wave victims, who displayed more typical flu-like symptoms and achieved a higher survival rate. Those infected later showed violent symptoms of organ destruction within days and might well have been victims of a modified viral strain.
Certainly the armistice celebrations were a big factor in the spread of the disease in late 1918.
I know that, at the time of the swine flu outbreak (?2009) there were some efforts to try and recover evidence of the specific viral types associated with the "Spanish" flu - these included the (unhelpful) exhumation of Tatton Sykes at Sledmere. Finally I think useable samples were found in the bodies of victims who had been buried in regions of perma-frost.

 

I read something that suggested that most, if not all modern strains of flu can be traced back and shown to be a variant of that Spanish flu. I have no idea what that suggests in reality, or if it's true, even allowing for my probable misuse of the terminologies. In fact, I'm not sure why I mentioned it really...

 

Swedish expert: why lockdowns are the wrong policy

Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government (he hired Anders Tegnell who is currently directing Swedish strategy), the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and an advisor to the director general of the WHO, lays out with typically Swedish bluntness why he thinks:

• UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
• The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
• This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
• The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
• The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
• The paper was very much too pessimistic
• Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
• The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
• The results will eventually be similar for all countries
• Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
• The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
• At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available

https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-johan-giesecke-shares-lessons-from-sweden/

 

One of my best friends lives in Sweden, he sent this to me yesterday... He's welsh and not necessarily happy with whats happening there..

 

Well summarised