Coronavirus (Covid19) Corner

[PanBiker]

National News has just reported that the PM's message tonight is likely to replace the "Stay at Home" mantra which has proved to be quite effective with "Stay Alert". Not quite the same ring or message, in fact I reckon quite confusing for lots of folk who may well interpret this as do what you want as long a you are alert. Guess what, I don't know about anyone else but when I venture forth into the street for shopping or indeed a walk, I am already alert without having to be told to be so.

I called at the Coop yesterday and met a bloke who was fully masked up but still ignoring the one way system in the store and just going any route that took his fancy. I unfortunately had to avoid him numerous times while adhering to the clearly marked routes and no entry signs for the aisles. The up/down one way system is in place in our local store because the aisles are not wide enough for passing and maintaining the recommended distance. You only need one, (and he was the only one) to cause chaos.

Anyway we'll wait to see what the PM has to say, Wales and Scotland are staying with Stay at Home.

[Gloria]

My husband went in Aldi yesterday, there was a woman handling lots of items then putting them back, she did it with lots of things.

[Tripps]

This is more science than politics but I believe you can't easily separate the two when politicians are deciding on the action after allegedly taking advice from scientists. I've been pessimistic about the rapid appearance of a vaccine, based on the fact that this virus is related to the common cold, for which no vaccine has ever been developed despite extensive research.

This has raised my hopes a little. Common cold research

Seems there were hundreds of different virus's for the cold, however the Covid 19 seems to be falrly unique - though still liable to mutate as they do. Knowledge and practice in the field of genetics is also light year ahead of where it was then. I'd still say it's about 'double carpet' against though.

We learn HM Queen is staying at Windsor 'for the duration'. Very wise I'd say. She's down to about just 16 servants though, so it must be a trial for her. I bet they don't lack regular testing, and don't have to travel to get it.

[Sue]

Everytime a cell divides the chances about 1 in a million it carries a mutation. So e genes mutate more than others because of the actual chemical sequence in their DNA Most mutations change nothing particularly, eg the appearance of harmless skin blemishes . Some will be a positive for the organism increasing its chance of survival, some will be negative decreasing its chance of survival. The more mutations there are the more ‘different’ the organism becomes and this may determine its overall survival in a particular environment or situation eg haemophilia. Natural selection, survival if the fittest etc. Works on these differences created randomly by mutation caused by quite normal environmental factors eg solar radiations.

In the case of microorganisms eventually whole new strains MAY Appear, quite quickly due to the rapid increase in population size and these may make the organism more or less infective than the original. Indeed as viruses replicate millions of time these small mutations can build up. They can lose their infectivity completely. Some viruses mutate more than others.

There is no way to know which way the mutation will go. As I understand it, it is one region of the nucleic acid that makes it different from other corona viruses. If this changes the virus infectivity changes. It is this one region that I understand helps the virus to attach to the cells of the lung a bit like two jigsaw pieces interlocking. The fit has to be perfect. If it changes and cannot longer attach ie its fit has changed its infectivity changes probably decreases .Again as I understand it, it is suspected that the reciprocal region on the lung ( and we are talking at biochemical level here) has different variants in different people explaining the difference in severity in different people, it could also explain the difference in different races.

According to what I have read, and this information is changing rapidly as more research is done, there seems to be difference of opinions some say this virus is a little more stable than influenza and colds, others say it mutates often. I think the former suggestion seems to be the more common one. Perhaps Tizer knows of recent work, i have been somewhat distracted over the last few weeks and been researching other things.

I am hopeful for a vaccine, I do not belong to the pessimistic group of people around. I am not even going to discuss political issues as I feel we differ on these substantially and I choose to ignore some of the digs made at me about is this political or science, Sue will have you etc. However when I find something of scientific relevance I may contribute.

[Tizer]

I agree with all you've said Sue. I can't add anything much and I've said plenty in earlier posts. The trouble is that it's all so early in the `life' of this new virus that we see frequent contradictions. Unfortunately non-scientists don't like rapidly changing ideas, they demand the final answer on everything, now!

[PanBiker]

According to what I have read, and this information is changing rapidly as more research is done, there seems to be difference of opinions some say this virus is a little more stable than influenza and colds, others say it mutates often. I think the former suggestion seems to be the more common one.

So, does this research intimate that any vaccine developed may well be effective for a reasonable amount time and if so does this mean that any such vaccine may give you a better chance of building antibodies? I know the annual flu jab is constructed to cover the most likely strains that may be prevalent during the "flu season". So many variants of the influenza virus is why we have to have annual targetted boosters as I understand it.

[PanBiker]

Just listened to the PM and all I can say is that I despair!

[plaques]

PanBiker don't be a pessimist, here is Boris's plan as you can see the viral infection rate is on its way down and soon everything will be OK. What could go wrong? Yes Baldrick but.....

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3 point plan.jpg

[Sue]

According to what I have read, and this information is changing rapidly as more research is done, there seems to be difference of opinions some say this virus is a little more stable than influenza and colds, others say it mutates often. I think the former suggestion seems to be the more common one.

So, does this research intimate that any vaccine developed may well be effective for a reasonable amount time and if so does this mean that any such vaccine may give you a better chance of building antibodies? I know the annual flu jab is constructed to cover the most likely strains that may be prevalent during the "flu season". So many variants of the influenza virus is why we have to have annual targetted boosters as I understand it.

1.Any vaccine is there to enable you to build antibodies otherwise it isn’t a vaccine.
2. Until the virus has been around a while no one except God will know how long the immunity lasts. An anti tetanus vaccination lasts 10 years, measles a life time, chicken pox can flare up as shingles when the body is under some sort of health stress. This is life and does not follow precise mathematical rules eg If two individuals are identical in every way it does not mean they will die at exactly the same time or are ill at the same time etc. However there is no reason why it should not last one to two years at least, that is the norm.
3. You can’t really compare with flu because flu has several forms this does not. Any one of those several forms may be prevalent at any one time or mutate to make it more infective . Vaccinations are against the one that is thought to be more prevalent, usually based on what happens, I think, in Australia the previous winter
4. Once a vaccine is proven to work you will probably get an annual dose like flu to top up your antibody production Every low exposure should give your antibodies a boost. You have to receive a certain level of dosage to be ill. When there is no immunity ie no antibodies at all this dosage will be lower as the body has nothing to fight it off. There has been articles about how long ypu can stand in front of someone or how near you should be to get that infective dose.
5. Possibly minor alterations caused by mutations may slightly change its infectivity and there may be a need to update the vaccine, but once you have one the knowledge can be applied to produce another.

Remember if as everyone is saying there are twice or three times the number of people out there have had this, as time hoes on your chances of having it are reduced. Remember the conversation we had on the way the R value is actually calculated.

And what ever happens, Boris clearly states he is working with the science. The scientific models being used by every country build in the features I and Tiz have discussed and many more like population density, age distribution, environmental factors which affect the overall health of the population, type pf employment. Those models would be the same whoever is in power.

At the end of the day more people die of malaria than corona virus, there is no vaccine, anti malarial drugs have to be changed often due to resistance development. Antibiotics too are beginning to be less effective but there are solutions that are bring worked on. Why is tge panic so great that a vaccine may not work. MRSA could kill you too. Just try and keep your concerns in proportion. I am worried, scared even, I don’t want to be ill, I don’t want my family to be ill, but I have confidence in what I read and am being told. Give it time . Everyone is working faster than ever on so many different approaches. This could actually produce a major breakthrough on disease control

Think positive, stay cheerful, it will get better

[plaques]

Boris and the research scientists, mathematicians and behaviorists have an almost impossible job in steering the public down the safest road to economic recovery. Without a vaccine the analogy would be like feeding Christians past the lions in a controlled manner until the lions died of old age. Not a happy prospect if you are one of the early ones in the queue. This is may seem a very callous assessment but dribbling people back into the system and then seeing what happens is about the only thing you can do. In Boris's speech the words were encouraging and so to was his animated fist punching but his graphics were totally meaningless. A lost opportunity all round.
One of the ongoing things that worries me is the fact that these viruses are endemic in a wide range of animal species where no one can predict when they will break out again. The WHO are probably the best placed to take hold of this problem but with Trump trashing their current performance and saying these things will go away on their own nothing will get done. The end result is that we will have to go through it all again counting excessive deaths above norm. When will we wake up?
Sorry if I slipped into World politics.

[Whyperion]

P , there is the idea, scaremongering or otherwise, that the research into wild viruses might have led to the outbreak due to a failure in the control, unfortunately we cannot tell, nor if it was accident, or design. There is a link I think on the BBC (could have been guardian) on researchers, I think related to the oxford university group , getting samples around the worlds as yet less explored places, to some extent I would say leave well alone, and humans keep out (at least in our western trash the environment terms and teams). Boris might get more moan at from his backbenchers, I got the feeling part of the speech was written by civil servants ( Boris might be good, but he is not that nuanced). There was little else I would dispute other than arrivals into the UK by sea should they be isolated for 14 days too.

[Whyperion]

To some degree I find I can't separate covid and politics. The result is I'm tending to hold back from commenting specifically where numbers of sufferers are concerned. Other features like self isolation, = solitary confinement = torture. = no pubic meetings,= no demonstrations,= breakdown of democracy. Where does it all end? So if someone goes off piste and slides from one to the other its perhaps understandable. Of late Sue and Tizer have helped to explain some of the technical details for which I'm thankful and I hope this will remain the main theme of these posts but at the same time we have to be more forgiving where politics and covid overlap.

I think we have to assume that the need for mass gatherings in favour of or against political decisions are going to have to take a back seat and we will have to trust small parliamentary scrutiny, select committees and The Lords for now while priorities are elsewhere, I have written off Brexit for Gove etc to sort it or not so its not a problem to me. The public is getting an opportunity to ask questions at least in the daily political briefings, which of themselves if not as techinical as germanys, or party serving as usa, do at times to seem to be deflective propaganda.

[Whyperion]

This is more science than politics but I believe you can't easily separate the two when politicians are deciding on the action after allegedly taking advice from scientists. I've been pessimistic about the rapid appearance of a vaccine, based on the fact that this virus is related to the common cold, for which no vaccine has ever been developed despite extensive research.

This has raised my hopes a little. Common cold research

Seems there were hundreds of different virus's for the cold, however the Covid 19 seems to be falrly unique - though still liable to mutate as they do. Knowledge and practice in the field of genetics is also light year ahead of where it was then. I'd still say it's about 'double carpet' against though.

We learn HM Queen is staying at Windsor 'for the duration'. Very wise I'd say. She's down to about just 16 servants though, so it must be a trial for her. I bet they don't lack regular testing, and don't have to travel to get it.

Dont know if anyone spotted this wrt to Porton Down, etc https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52278716

[Sue]

Boris and the research scientists, mathematicians and behaviorists have an almost impossible job in steering the public down the safest road to economic recovery. Without a vaccine the analogy would be like feeding Christians past the lions in a controlled manner until the lions died of old age. Not a happy prospect if you are one of the early ones in the queue. This is may seem a very callous assessment but dribbling people back into the system and then seeing what happens is about the only thing you can do. In Boris's speech the words were encouraging and so to was his animated fist punching but his graphics were totally meaningless. A lost opportunity all round.
One of the ongoing things that worries me is the fact that these viruses are endemic in a wide range of animal species where no one can predict when they will break out again. The WHO are probably the best placed to take hold of this problem but with Trump trashing their current performance and saying these things will go away on their own nothing will get done. The end result is that we will have to go through it all again counting excessive deaths above norm. When will we wake up?
Sorry if I slipped into World politics.

I think as places like Australia and New Zealand slip into winter months and we move out of them we start to find out wether this is a seasonal dependant disease, which could in turn account for some of the differences in the recorded data for different countries. It probably is because it affects the respiratory system . This again emphasises the importance of WHO who are best placed to analyse and advise. I am no follower of Trump, forget his politics, because he just does not seem to grasp this issue and to my mind he has made massive medical/ scientific errors.From listening and reading articles in french newspapers, which are not the sensationalist headline makers as UK ones, I think that the ways out of isolation have been discussed and to a certain extent agreed by world leaders, probably advised by the WHO .

As for viruses in animal populations leaping to humans, if you were to work this out in terms of probability it is actually very small. Its all to do with those random mutations.

Parasites are very specifically adapted to their hosts. A parasite of one organism rarely infects another successfully because it is not adapted to it. Parasites nearly all produce thousands if not millions of offspring to ensure that sufficient numbers survive to continue the species. In general The fewer the number of offspring of an organism it implies the greater the chance of survival to the next reproductive phase. Viruses are intracellular parasites. They only survive within the specific cell it is adapted to in this case the ciliated lung calls. They reproduce inside that cell producing millions of copies. Mutations are common in this reproductive process and as there are so many resulting offspring probably many carry a small change in their nucleic acid sequence, but what is the chance that it is the right mutation to respond to a human cell rather than its own natural host. Very small really. Then it has to leave the animal and enter the human body in the right way. Ie either by inhalation, inhalation, innoculation ( entering through a skin lesion) or intercourse. It is very rare that a virus would have more than one route in . So tge human has to be exposed in the right way to the virus in the animal

To put it simple what we are experiencing is a very rare event, even though it has happened before, it is still rare.

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[Marilyn]

Prior to a vaccine, I think if we could work toward a surfactant that could stop this “locking together” of the virus in the lungs.
( a bit like dishwashing liquid breaking up grease).
Not that I am doing a Trump and suggesting we could inhale household cleaners!
But there must be something this virus shrinks away from and avoids...

[Marilyn]

My ears prick up every time I hear of clusters of Covid19 in meat processing plant workers ( Germany, USA, Australia).
What is it I wonder that would make meat packing plants attractive to the Virus? Generally the are cool places, with a lot of blood about, yet workers wear a degree of protective gear and must wash their hands a lot.
( we have seen clusters in Nursing Homes, Cruise Ships and now, Meat Processing Plants).
I can see how people in Nursing Homes and on Cruise Ships live in close quarters, perhaps having only their own bedroom and possibly a bathroom, yet sharing communal spaces and dining facilities. They are common denominators.
I have no idea if some meat processing workers tend to live in a similar fashion...I would have thought it steady work and one didn’t have to live dormitory fashion as fruit pickers/grape pickers etc might.

[Bodger]

Meat processors in Ireland also have high rates of infection !
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/ ... -1.4248743

[Marilyn]

It must be the closeness of long shifts on the production line, combined with sharing communal lunch rooms/toilets etc

[Sue]

Those in the UK may like to download and use this app.

6012B8A8-5ABA-4D09-8F6B-440574D5EDBB.jpeg

You report daily on your symptoms wether you are well or not. It is designed by scientists to help them track the development of the disease. My sister has used it for weeks. With it they have produced data that determines the real level of the disease in the community. There are graphs you can follow, a regional map of the UK showing its actual distribution. This only becomes more accurate the more people log on and use it daily. There is also a review of the up to date research. I downloaded it 3 days, i find the content very reassuring. They are asking for people to spread the word as the more that register the more accurate it will be

[Sue]

Real estimates for Craven. Interesting stuff

42ACAF87-0813-4C81-A7E6-B41ED8F5D343.png

[Sue]

Sorry about the clarity, these are screen shots. Remember these figures based on peoples responses to symptom questions.

16FF91C2-EC8C-4EF1-B8D4-4A10AB8587A2.png

[Sue]

P , there is the idea, scaremongering or otherwise, that the research into wild viruses might have led to the outbreak due to a failure in the control, unfortunately we cannot tell, nor if it was accident, or design. There is a link I think on the BBC (could have been guardian) on researchers, I think related to the oxford university group , getting samples around the worlds as yet less explored places, to some extent I would say leave well alone, and humans keep out (at least in our western trash the environment terms and teams). Boris might get more moan at from his backbenchers, I got the feeling part of the speech was written by civil servants ( Boris might be good, but he is not that nuanced). There was little else I would dispute other than arrivals into the UK by sea should they be isolated for 14 days too.

Arrivals by sea are to be isolated except France. The two governments have an agreement. That explain the announcement we saw last week in France that said people coming from Uk were exempt from quarantine. They did however restrict entry only to those with France as a Primary home, and those who have to enter for work reasons

[Whyperion]

I think you will find that useful. presumably helps eurostar too.

For holiday makers maybe less so as many places to visit will be closed, and beaches you will be competing with the french anyway. it is probably aimed at business people working for few days at joint offices and so on, though much work will be done remotely anyway now. it keeps the Entente cordiale going anyway.

[plaques]

It must be the closeness of long shifts on the production line, combined with sharing communal lunch rooms/toilets etc

New York has seen similar cluster hot spots in meat and food processing plants. The reason is because they are working in close proximity with each other, Their conveyor lines are not conducive to spreading out he work load . Also these places tend to be very cold environments not helping respiratory problems.

There is also a review of the up to date research. I downloaded it 3 days, i find the content very reassuring. They are asking for people to spread the word as the more that register the more accurate it will be

I'm all for introducing new technology to help in any way it can but always remember the information is from a selected group of people who have this technology and are willing to spend time on it. A bit like the old telephone surveys gathering data from telephone owners while ignoring everybody else.
On animal transfer I agree it would be impossible to start at the virus end and try to predict which one may mutate to affect humans. Taking bats for example, not to kill off all the bats but take them off the table so to speak and create a trade barrier against the more dangerous probabilities.

Boris's Speech. Unfortunately its one of those speeches which will require another week and several groups of experts to explain what he really meant to say.

[Sue]

The good thing about this app is you can get it in all forms eg iPhones, ipads, all mobiles , computers etc. And so many of the population have at least one of these. I think if people know it is there it will hit quite a cross section of the community and yes you will always have people who won’t or can’t be bothered, but it certainly increases the sample size in the community giving a better feel for numbers and the way they are going.

At the moment the research published isn’t very new, doesn’t say anything we don’t know but I am hopeful. You can sign up for a research newsletter which I have done. There was one interesting article on the unreliability of tests and the number of false negatives which of course can have devastating consequences. I would be the first to admit science ain’t perfect. I remember being involved in the bacteriological assay of a new disinfectant. We did the test daily to get a statically valid sample. It was all going brilliantly, then one day we got an entirely different result. We could not explain it. If we had got that first at the screening stage we would probably have chucked it out. It went on to be a successful disinfectant in the dairy industry

I agree completely about the wild animal situation. Its always been an issue, even here. TB Comes to mind