RugbyRebels

morepork wrote:It's a pretty good start. Just not gold standard. Follow it up with the PCR test and be sure. At least it will help apportion resources somewhat more efficiently. They could encourage participation by offering a packet of fags and a bottle of vodka for every positive result followed up.

morepork wrote:

Son of Mathonwy wrote:

morepork wrote:The biggest/riskiest assumption is that the specific antibody/antigen that this hypothetical study will actually be inactivating.

Can we assume that for a person to recover, at least one type of antibody they produced is inactivating?

Alternatively, if none of them are inactivating, does this mean:
1) they would not be immune to a second infection,
or
2) it's impossible - they would not recover in this case?

Another point - what can be gained from a comparison between the serum of a recovered person and an uninfected person? Can the antibodies be detected, or are they simply too small, or the situation too complex for them to be identified?

Any foreign body will raise antibodies as part of the normal immune response. If that response is inefficient, then some virus will get through a second time. The antibody response is designed to stop foreign objects from getting on or in a cell, so the response will inactivate at some level (prevent the viral capsid from binding). It's a complex biological response that has correspondingly complex sampling issues. As an example, there is a naturally occurring non-pathogenic virus in humans, AAV, that piggybacks on the life cycle of another virus that causes the common cold. AAV is used in gene therapy applications in humans and so the inactivating antibody question has been comprehensively studied for AAV. About 90% of the human population are seropositive for AAV antibodies, but less than half of these individuals have inactivating antibodies. The ability to distinguish inactivating antibodies from non in seropositive individuals is the result of decades of studying the bijebus out of AAV, which is a naturally replication-deficient entity. Can't replicate, so not much mutation going on. Contrast this with the influenza virus, which is able to replicate, and does so at a rate of 10s of thousands of copies per day. Every little error during replication of the viral genome introduces an ocassional change in sequence coding for capsid proteins that your seropositive individuals have antibodies to. This is antigenic drift. The higher the rate of replication, the greater the chance of of drift in the capsid protein antigen. This is why flu shots change from year to year. Influenza has an infectious period of 4-7 days and usually burns itself out. Corona virus has an infectious period of at least 14 days (probably longer), which give twice the time to replicate and shift antigens, and is why it's such a virulent little mother. Add to this rosy picture the fact that the current coronavirus has jumped from animals to humans, so there is a dramatically different antigen profile confronting the human immune system (antigenic shift) that it is utterly powerless against. This is why flu vaccines will not work on coronavirus. Given the longer infectivity time, the corresponding increase in replication rate (1 into 2, 2 into 4, 4 into 8, and so on over time) and the radical antigenic shift presented by coronavirus, how will the immune system keep up with a). the initial overwhelming infection, and b). the inevitable antigenic drift that will be going on. It's an evolution by mutation beast. Even if you by some chance found an inactivating species of antibody in a recovered person, there are almost half a million people world wide that are infected, and counting. That inactivating serum could be rendered redundant within a matter of weeks, and so recovered patient becomes susceptible patient once more once they come into contact with cousin fuckface on the overnight flight from wherever. The more we allow this to spread, the greater the replicating, mutating population of virus becomes, and the harder it will be to apply any treatment or vaccine breakthrough.

Viruses don't do much but inject nucleic acid into cells and make more viruses, but by fuck they are good at countering any attempt by the body to stop that process from marching on. The day health authorities recognised zoonotic animal to human transmission, a big red PANDEMIC communication should have gone out to every country on the globe.

Which Tyler wrote:
"The town of Nembro, near Bergamo, had 158 deaths so far this year Vs 35 on average in the recent past.

Only 31 deaths were attributed to Covid-19"


Of course, some of those will be undiagnosed COVID deaths, and some secondary as equipment and care isn't available for others when capacity is taken up with COVID.

Donny osmond wrote:The figures for the UK on that down tick aren't a full 24 hours figures... dubiety clarified



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Son of Mathonwy wrote:

morepork wrote:

Son of Mathonwy wrote: Can we assume that for a person to recover, at least one type of antibody they produced is inactivating?

Alternatively, if none of them are inactivating, does this mean:
1) they would not be immune to a second infection,
or
2) it's impossible - they would not recover in this case?

Another point - what can be gained from a comparison between the serum of a recovered person and an uninfected person? Can the antibodies be detected, or are they simply too small, or the situation too complex for them to be identified?

Any foreign body will raise antibodies as part of the normal immune response. If that response is inefficient, then some virus will get through a second time. The antibody response is designed to stop foreign objects from getting on or in a cell, so the response will inactivate at some level (prevent the viral capsid from binding). It's a complex biological response that has correspondingly complex sampling issues. As an example, there is a naturally occurring non-pathogenic virus in humans, AAV, that piggybacks on the life cycle of another virus that causes the common cold. AAV is used in gene therapy applications in humans and so the inactivating antibody question has been comprehensively studied for AAV. About 90% of the human population are seropositive for AAV antibodies, but less than half of these individuals have inactivating antibodies. The ability to distinguish inactivating antibodies from non in seropositive individuals is the result of decades of studying the bijebus out of AAV, which is a naturally replication-deficient entity. Can't replicate, so not much mutation going on. Contrast this with the influenza virus, which is able to replicate, and does so at a rate of 10s of thousands of copies per day. Every little error during replication of the viral genome introduces an ocassional change in sequence coding for capsid proteins that your seropositive individuals have antibodies to. This is antigenic drift. The higher the rate of replication, the greater the chance of of drift in the capsid protein antigen. This is why flu shots change from year to year. Influenza has an infectious period of 4-7 days and usually burns itself out. Corona virus has an infectious period of at least 14 days (probably longer), which give twice the time to replicate and shift antigens, and is why it's such a virulent little mother. Add to this rosy picture the fact that the current coronavirus has jumped from animals to humans, so there is a dramatically different antigen profile confronting the human immune system (antigenic shift) that it is utterly powerless against. This is why flu vaccines will not work on coronavirus. Given the longer infectivity time, the corresponding increase in replication rate (1 into 2, 2 into 4, 4 into 8, and so on over time) and the radical antigenic shift presented by coronavirus, how will the immune system keep up with a). the initial overwhelming infection, and b). the inevitable antigenic drift that will be going on. It's an evolution by mutation beast. Even if you by some chance found an inactivating species of antibody in a recovered person, there are almost half a million people world wide that are infected, and counting. That inactivating serum could be rendered redundant within a matter of weeks, and so recovered patient becomes susceptible patient once more once they come into contact with cousin fuckface on the overnight flight from wherever. The more we allow this to spread, the greater the replicating, mutating population of virus becomes, and the harder it will be to apply any treatment or vaccine breakthrough.

Viruses don't do much but inject nucleic acid into cells and make more viruses, but by fuck they are good at countering any attempt by the body to stop that process from marching on. The day health authorities recognised zoonotic animal to human transmission, a big red PANDEMIC communication should have gone out to every country on the globe.

That's frighteningly complicated (in other times it would be interestingly complicated).

This is crazy. The number of deaths due to the virus in a similarly sized country, Italy, is about 14x what we have in the UK and still growing at ~9% per day. This suggests that we are far from reaching anything like 50% infected. As you say, the hypothesis of mild, widespread infection is not something to be distracted by.

The Chinese are beating this thing. We need to employ their methods right now. If this was a war we'd do it.

Donny osmond wrote:

Donny osmond wrote:The figures for the UK on that down tick aren't a full 24 hours figures... dubiety clarified



Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

And its ticked right back up again

Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

Son of Mathonwy wrote:
The Chinese are beating this thing. We need to employ their methods right now. If this was a war we'd do it.

Mellsblue wrote:

Donny osmond wrote:

Donny osmond wrote:The figures for the UK on that down tick aren't a full 24 hours figures... dubiety clarified



Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

And its ticked right back up again

Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

Yep. Not pretty. Still too early to see whether the latest social distancing measures have had any effect. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

morepork wrote:

Mellsblue wrote:

Donny osmond wrote:And its ticked right back up again

Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

Yep. Not pretty. Still too early to see whether the latest social distancing measures have had any effect. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Those measures buy time for hospitals and facilities working in a vaccine. They won’t stop overall cases in the long term but they give the poor overworked fuckers on the frontline some space in which they can work effectively.

Mellsblue wrote:

morepork wrote:

Mellsblue wrote: Yep. Not pretty. Still too early to see whether the latest social distancing measures have had any effect. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Those measures buy time for hospitals and facilities working in a vaccine. They won’t stop overall cases in the long term but they give the poor overworked fuckers on the frontline some space in which they can work effectively.

Flatten the curve, baby. Ironically, being stuck inside is only fattening my curve/belly.

Mellsblue wrote:

morepork wrote:

Mellsblue wrote: Yep. Not pretty. Still too early to see whether the latest social distancing measures have had any effect. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Those measures buy time for hospitals and facilities working in a vaccine. They won’t stop overall cases in the long term but they give the poor overworked fuckers on the frontline some space in which they can work effectively.

Flatten the curve, baby. Ironically, being stuck inside is only fattening my curve/belly.

morepork wrote:

Mellsblue wrote:

morepork wrote:
Those measures buy time for hospitals and facilities working in a vaccine. They won’t stop overall cases in the long term but they give the poor overworked fuckers on the frontline some space in which they can work effectively.

Flatten the curve, baby. Ironically, being stuck inside is only fattening my curve/belly.

It’s rekindled my fondness for whisky.

Mellsblue wrote:

morepork wrote:

Mellsblue wrote: Flatten the curve, baby. Ironically, being stuck inside is only fattening my curve/belly.

It’s rekindled my fondness for whisky.

You are not alone. In a tacit admission that the UK population is predominantly a bunch of alcoholics at even the hint of a stressful event, the govt has now designated off licences and breweries with bottle shops as providers of essential items and they are therefore now allowed to reopen to the public.

hugh_woatmeigh wrote:WTF are the US playing at? Most cases in the world now and many parts of the US are still continuing as usual. If that keeps spreading and those cases start maturing and turning into deaths... This could be devastating.

morepork wrote:

hugh_woatmeigh wrote:WTF are the US playing at? Most cases in the world now and many parts of the US are still continuing as usual. If that keeps spreading and those cases start maturing and turning into deaths... This could be devastating.

No place in the US is continuing as usual.

hugh_woatmeigh wrote:

morepork wrote:

hugh_woatmeigh wrote:WTF are the US playing at? Most cases in the world now and many parts of the US are still continuing as usual. If that keeps spreading and those cases start maturing and turning into deaths... This could be devastating.

No place in the US is continuing as usual.

Friends in Oklahoma, Louisiana & Florida claim otherwise. Some slight restrictions.

Donny osmond wrote:The NY times has an page full of interesting graphs right here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... untry.html

Dunno how accurate they are but I thought this one is a nicely optimistic way of looking at things... we'll, unless you're in the states in afraid

Puja wrote:3rd March: In an attempt to downplay the risks of Coronavirus, Boris Johnson says that he's not going to stop shaking hands and boasts that he was shaking hands in a hospital where Coronavirus patients were being treated. (https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/…/bori ... and-corona…)

27th March: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52060791

Twat.

Puja