Off Topic Coronavirus

I've mentioned it before but when my Father in law had the virus - he was well past the worst by the time they deigned to test him on about the 5th time of asking- he was in for a week steadily improving after he had been rehydrated. They wanted to send him to a care home to 'recuperate'. It's the last place he wants to be so refused so they eventually sent him hone after about 8-10 days even though his wife and two carers were now all supposed to be self -isolating. He was only tested because the family insisted. However having avoided answering the question at first they did send him home before the test result had come back. It eventually arrived some 3-4 weeks later and was, of course positive. The handling of his case was a shambles from start to finish but, thankfully he has survived and nobody who lived with and cared for him seems to have caught it.

There will be plenty who remember this and the shameful behaviour of those who are now trying to avoid blame for heir part in this debacle when it comes to matter ie the next elections. Doesn't matter if the generation most severely affected dies in substantial numbers. They have grieving families who will deliver retribution at the ballot box..

 

Have to applaud the government in a way after acting so slowly for the first wave they’re mobilising quickly to have people blame “dem forrens” if we get dragged into a second (not that the first is actually over, 83 deaths yesterday).

 

I was just thinking the same thing. All this talk about a 2nd wave while the 1st doesnt seem to be over, record infection rates in certain countries, lockdowns happening and now news coming out that we have had the highest level of excess deaths in europe. A huge success!

 

Here in Oz, the second wave seems to be much quicker than the first.
I guess with the first, we were prepared for it.
The second wave, just as we we almost clear throughout the country, came out of the blue an caught us unawares.

It’s good to hear you guys acting quicker this time round.

 

It seems that the infection rate is rising, mainly among younger people.
This is borne out by my experience in Sainsbury's this afternoon. I counted 6 people not wearing masks, all male and all under 25.

 

Infection rate is only raising because they increaed the testing. The more testing the more "infects" they create keeping up the numbers.Not very difficult to comprehend.

 

Thanks professor.

 

The more people being tested the more "results" into whatever direction are being created - that´s fact. All I would ask everyone here on this site is start considering what is happening, about the consequences and where this will stop. It is and never has been my intention misleading anyone but bring back people to their own thinking.

https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/...9-mortality-in-perspective.jpeg?itok=5CUzclKq

By just ignoring me or calling me names will not change reality.

 

Sorry Butthuber...the number of positives per 100,000 population is rising....and the ratio of positives to negatives is also rising
so your theory, as usual is rubbish

the number of positives is rising...and it is not a phenomena of doing more tests...because we are not doing more at the moment than we were at the top of the pandemic.

 

And so said Donald Trump.. America always has to be first. Leading the way in tests, in deaths and in stupidity and in criminally moronic leaders. You don't do your wacky theories any favours by joining forces with a buffoon.

 

Local lockdownish if you fancy it type thing in Greater Manchester and parts of Yorkshire now.

It was dem forrens.

 

How do they enforce such a lockdown, similar to enforcing people to quarantine on return from a holiday I presume......non existent. The public choose to do their own thing now due to poor/mixed messaging, government/politicians breaking the rules, ignorance amongst many things. There are so many questions to a localised lockdown that just cant be answered and so many people have no choice but to ignore the guidelines whether they agree with them or not. We find ourselves in an impossible situation now.

 

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The next logical step would be to continue to allow all shielding people not to shield from the 1st of august. That should be another success and a feather in the cap!

 

Africans and Europeans have genetically different immune systems... and Neanderthals had something to do with it
© Giovanni Cittadini Cesi
Press release
2016.10.21
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The immune system can be highly active in some people but much less effective in others. This has major implications for the protection of the organism against pathogens – but what is the reason for these differences? To lay the foundations for the establishment of personalized medicine, we need to dissect the factors that affect our response to viral and bacterial infections so that we can understand why some people are predisposed to certain diseases. In a large-scale study published this week in the prestigious journal Cell, scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS unraveled the immune responses of 200 African and European individuals. They show that there is indeed a difference in the way these populations respond to infection, that this response is largely controlled by genetics, and that natural selection has played an important role in shaping such immune profiles. They also offer proof that the genetic legacy passed on by Neanderthals to Europeans has significantly influenced their ability to respond to viral challenges.

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© Jérome Bon

The immune systems of any two individuals can respond differently to an infection or therapeutic treatment. To understand the genetic and evolutionary basis of these differences, the team led by Lluis Quintana-Murci, CNRS research director, Scientific Director at the Institut Pasteur and Head of the Human Evolutionary Genetics Unit (Institut Pasteur/CNRS), launched a large-scale study four years ago. The findings are now published in Cell. In collaboration with teams from the French National Genotyping Center (CEA), the Leipzig-based Max Planck Institute and Ghent University, the scientists analyzed the genome-wide expression of genes involved in the immune response of 200 individuals, 100 of European ancestry and 100 of African ancestry. More specifically, they sequenced the entire RNA of these individuals to characterize the way in which immune cells known as monocytes – a key part of the innate immune response – respond when attacked by bacterial or viral ligands, including the influenza virus.



Their first observation was that the amplitude of the immune response in Africans and Europeans differed, especially in the case of genes involved in inflammatory and antiviral responses. These differences can largely be attributed to genetic variants, distributed differently among Africans and Europeans, which modulate the expression of immunity genes. This finding offers insights that can help shed light on why some populations are particularly susceptible to diseases such as lupus, which is more common in Africa than in Europe.



The scientists also showed that the population frequency of some of these mutations has been shaped by natural selection, helping each population to adapt more effectively to its environment. They made the striking discovery that natural selection had independently led to a reduced inflammatory response in populations in both Europe and Africa, via entirely separate processes involving different genes. This example of convergent evolution confirms that while the immune response offers effective protection against infection, an excessively strong response, as seen in allergies or autoimmune diseases, can be harmful.



Finally, since we now know that Europeans met Neanderthals and that their genomes bear a Neanderthal heritage – approximately 4% of the genome of modern Europeans has Neanderthal origins – the scientists wanted to find out if this admixture had had an impact on their capability to respond to infection. Their research reveals that Neanderthals did indeed pass on mutations influencing the control of the immune response to Europeans, including mutations that modulate gene expression in response to viral infections. These regulatory mutations gave an advantage to the populations that inherited them, which explains their high frequency among the European population.



By identifying the genetic variants responsible for the modulation of genes involved in the immune response, this study will provide scientists with new tools for understanding the mechanisms underpinning the immune reaction to infection and predisposition to disease, in both individuals and human populations.



Source
Genetic Adaptation and Neandertal Admixture Shaped the Immune System of Human Populations, Cell, 20 octobre 2016. DOI : 10.1016/j.cell.2016.09.024

Hélène Quach (1,2,3,11), Maxime Rotival (1,2,3,11), Julien Pothlichet (1,2,3,11)#, Yong-Hwee Eddie Loh (1,2,3,11), Michael Dannemann (4), Nora Zidane (1,2,3), Guillaume Laval (1,2,3), Etienne Patin (1,2,3), Christine Harmant (1,2,3), Marie Lopez (1,2,3,5), Matthieu Deschamps (1,2,3,5), Nadia Naffakh (6), Darragh Duffy (7), Anja Coen (8), Geert Leroux-Roels (8), Frederic Clément (8), Anne Boland (9), Jean-François Deleuze (9), Janet Kelso (4), Matthew L. Albert (7,10) and Lluis Quintana-Murci (1,2,3)

(1) Institut Pasteur, Human Evolutionary Genetics Unit, Paris 75015, France

(2) CNRS, URA3012, Paris 75015, France

(3) Center of Bioinformatics, Biostatistics and Integrative Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris 75015, France

(4) Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany

(5) Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Cellule Pasteur, Paris 75015, France.

(6) Institut Pasteur, Molecular Genetics of RNA Viruses Unit, Paris 75015, France

(7) Institut Pasteur, Dendritic Cell Immunobiology Unit, Paris 75015, France

(8) Center for Vaccinology, Ghent University and University Hospital, Ghent 9000, Belgium

(9) Centre National de Génotypage, CEA, Evry 91000, France

(10) Department of Cancer Immunology, Genentech, California 94080, USA

(11) Co-premier auteur

 

Loath as I am to agree with Butthuber (or Donald Trump for that matter), it is plainly true that the more random tests we do, the more infections we will find. Given that many of those infected will have no symptoms, a high number will not have been known otherwise. What we need to know is the number of positives per 1,000 individuals randomly tested.

 

The BBC report interviewing people heading off to Spain post the "Don't travel" message is revealing. One girl said that she was going because she was "entitled" to travel. Another was happy to take the risk

I just hope that they don't expect us as taxpayers to repatriate them if they can't get a return flight

All the interviewees were (at least compared to me) youngsters who, it seems to me, have an increasing attitude that they'll do whatever they want and screw the consequences

 

I think it’s understandable that people are losing respect for the government’s increasingly arbitrary recommendations. They’ve been proven to be the most inept in Europe.

 

Apparently in parts of the North West you cannot meet your neighbour in his, or her, garden but you can meet them in the pub, together with other strangers

 

So you would support people flying to Spain now?