Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Shanedorf]

7 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Do viruses have Poly A tails? That's about the only explanation I could think of unless there are huge portions of the genome that are blanks.

Could be blanks or non-coding sections. Humans are inhabited by a wide variety of bacteria and phages, most are helpful and some pathogenic. Some of those bacteria have the CRISPR-Cas-9 system to protect them from viral attacks.  So maybe its possible that the microbiome of infected individuals are responsible for those substantial deletions ?

CRISPR-Cas-9 has been shown to cleave both DNA and RNA in lab tests. So you'd have the bacteria in a patient attacking the virus, making deletions and cleavages and if that newly minted virus survives and is passed on, then we'd see it.
Purely speculation on my part and with any luck somebody who knows more can chime in on this possibility

[mistakey]

32 minutes ago, rob_shadows said:

So with all this rushing for a vaccine, multiple companies saying they could be ready by the end of the year, etc... It's left me with one glaring question.

Do we really wanna be taking a vaccine that's been rushed through development? We will have absolutely no idea if it has any negative long term effects.

Has this ever happened before? A vaccine being pushed out before it could be properly tested for potential long term effects and such?

give it to the greedy billionaires first.  give them a taste of their own medicine, literally

[mission27]

Warning to everyone

Deaths will be higher today than they were the last two days. More deaths are reported every day other than Sunday or Monday.  And Tuesday seems to be a big day every week (likely because some states are processing backlog of reported deaths from the weekend).

Please be aware of this when you read the headlines tonight of "deaths spike again"

The only valid point of reference is 7 day trailing averages and looking at what deaths were on Tuesdays of previous weeks:

4/28: 2,470

4/21: 2,683

4/14: 2,566 

If we are anywhere below 2,500 deaths that will be a good number.

[mission27]

2 minutes ago, mistakey said:

give it to the greedy billionaires first.  give them a taste of their own medicine, literally

You joke but they did a botched vaccine in the 1970s and almost immediately stuck it in the arm of President Ford only to later find out it was ****ed

Quote

In 1976, an outbreak of the swine flu, influenza A virus subtype H1N1 at Fort Dix, New Jersey caused one death, hospitalized 13, and led to a mass immunization program. After the program began, the vaccine was associated with an increase in reports of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, which can cause paralysis, respiratory arrest, and death. The immunization program was ended after approximately 25% of the population of the United States had been administered the vaccine.

 

[mission27]

Although, 35 years later they think it actually may have provided some protection to the 2009 swine flu, which is wild

[TVScout]

Data:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/upshot/five-ways-to-monitor-coronavirus-outbreak-us.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200505&instance_id=18228&nl=the-morning&regi_id=127802529&segment_id=26626&te=1&user_id=0ec3b530f45ff5c070e34ae9b6fc8ea1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/

 

 

[mistakey]

6 minutes ago, mission27 said:

You joke but they did a botched vaccine in the 1970s and almost immediately stuck it in the arm of President Ford only to later find out it was ****ed

 

it honestly was no joke,  give it to the billionaires first.  they will be greedy and want it first and its one of those "hey this all works out for everyone involved" situations

[TVScout]

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer begins testing coronavirus vaccine in people

Quote

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer began testing multiple versions of an experimental coronavirus vaccine in healthy young people in the United States this week, a first step toward establishing the safety, dosage and most promising candidate to take into larger trials that will test effectiveness.

In an unusual trial design that signals the pressing need to find a vaccine against covid-19, Pfizer is initially testing four versions of the vaccine, side by side. Typically, companies spend years on animal experiments and select a single promising candidate to put into human testing, but the drugmaker decided to create a flexible trial that could rapidly sift out the best option.  Jansen said the goal is to have a vaccine ready for use in high-risk groups by the fall — an ambitious goal that echoes the timeline from a group at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. There are at least eight other vaccine candidates being tested in people worldwide, according to a tracker by the Milken Institute.  The trial, initially centered at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and New York University Grossman School of Medicine, administered the first five vaccinations to people Monday. Four out of five people in the study will receive experimental vaccinations, and one will receive a placebo.  The trial will start with healthy, young people between the ages of 18 and 55. But as safety is established in that population, it will expand to an older group of study participants — people up to age 85 — because of the high risk they face from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Ultimately, researchers will enroll 90 people at each trial site, which will also include the University of Rochester Medical Center and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/05/pharmaceutical-giant-pfizer-begins-testing-coronavirus-vaccine-people/

[mission27]

Just now, mistakey said:

it honestly was no joke,  give it to the billionaires first.  they will be greedy and want it first and its one of those "hey this all works out for everyone involved" situations

I'd take it tbh 

If you die ,at least you died for a good cause

[WizeGuy]

15 minutes ago, Shanedorf said:

Could be blanks or non-coding sections. Humans are inhabited by a wide variety of bacteria and phages, most are helpful and some pathogenic. Some of those bacteria have the CRISPR-Cas-9 system to protect them from viral attacks.  So maybe its possible that the microbiome of infected individuals are responsible for those substantial deletions ?

CRISPR-Cas-9 has been shown to cleave both DNA and RNA in lab tests. So you'd have the bacteria in a patient attacking the virus, making deletions and cleavages and if that newly minted virus survives and is passed on, then we'd see it.
Purely speculation on my part and with any luck somebody who knows more can chime in on this possibility

Is this potentially good news or bad news or too hard to predict news?

[naptownskinsfan]

Wendy's is pulling hamburgers from their menu in some states due to the meat shortage 

[WizeGuy]

27 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

I'm not a GMP expert by any stretch but the first rule of thumb in biologics (drugs made by other organisms, which many of these vaccine candidates are) is what can go wrong will go wrong.

Havent some of these potential drugs that are being expedited been used to combat other diseases? From what I've read- the vaccine out of Oxford, for example, is an altered Meningitis vaccine, so we can assume it wouldn't have any long-term health issues? Thats why I assumed we can expedite the process on some of these drugs.

 

 

[mission27]

10 minutes ago, naptownskinsfan said:

Wendy's is pulling hamburgers from their menu in some states due to the meat shortage 

 

[seriously27]

50 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Do viruses have Poly A tails? That's about the only explanation I could think of unless there are huge portions of the genome that are blanks.

Yeah that's the only way it can work and they do have poly A tails. 

[animaltested]

40 minutes ago, mission27 said:

Also, lets be honest with ourselves about something:

There is nothing new about having a conversation about how much cost society should willingly bare to keep elderly people alive an extra few years

This is a very taboo subject in the United States for some reason but in pretty much every other developed nation, because they have socially funded rather than privately funded healthcare, there are stricter limits on how much cost will be covered for treatments for people who are 80+ or whatever and likely only have a few years of life left.  And families are making these choices all the time.  Do I put grandma in a nursing home or do I sacrifice the next few years of my life to care for her at home?  Its a tough choice even when its your own loved one because the cost is so great and because there's a (legitimate imo) feeling that these people have lived their lives and at some point we need to move on and live ours, but on the flip side its your loved one and you shouldn't abandon them.  So its hard.  If its someone else's loved one, you probably feel a little differently.   

There's nothing wrong about that conversation.  Its a normal part of life and people have different views.  Not appropriate to demonize people over it tbh.

Somewhat related to this ; but this has been something rattling around in my brain as of late. I think there is a certain segment of the people who are ok with a significant percentage of elderly, and at risk individuals dying as its a way to cut Medicare and Social Security without having to spend the political capital doing so. Of course, absolutely nobody will ever admit this publicly, but I guarantee its something in the back of minds of a number of people.