Coronavirus (way, way, off topic)
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@NeverDie 17 days is the longest I know of SARS-CoV2 surviving in the wild.
Here is the link to the source....
Thank @skywatch that's interesting, especially the nearly 18% of asymptomatic cases, it explains why the epidemic could progress silently in many places before beeing noticed.
For the "surviving" that's not what I understand, they say "traces of SARS-CoV-2 RNA" it means they can still see it was there on some surfaces, but the virus is probably "dead". Looks more like a trace of blood that you see after a murder.
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Thank @skywatch that's interesting, especially the nearly 18% of asymptomatic cases, it explains why the epidemic could progress silently in many places before beeing noticed.
For the "surviving" that's not what I understand, they say "traces of SARS-CoV-2 RNA" it means they can still see it was there on some surfaces, but the virus is probably "dead". Looks more like a trace of blood that you see after a murder.
@Nca78 I understood it was viable (i.e. capable of infection) detection, maybe , maybe not. ;)
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
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@Nca78 I understood it was viable (i.e. capable of infection) detection, maybe , maybe not. ;)
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
maybe , maybe not
Yup:
Does the cruise ship report imply that viruses survive up to 17 days on surfaces?
Dr Julia Marcus: A CDC investigation of the cruise ship found evidence of viral RNA in cabins that hadn’t yet been cleaned. But to be clear, that just means the virus was detectable – not that it was viable or that contact with those services would have been able to infect someone. (Editor’s note: RNA, or ribonucleic acid, carries the virus’s genetic information.)
Dr Akiko Iwasaki: It just means that there are parts of the virus that still remain. The virus needs many other components to be intact. If you have bits and pieces of RNA, that’s not going to make a virus, you need an entire intact genome. Just because you had a little piece of RNA doesn’t mean that there’s an infection.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/04/how-long-does-coronavirus-live-on-different-surfacesIt seems that they only tried to detect either it (possibly intact) or any trace bits of it (possibly not intact), and the way I read it, we don't know whether what they detected was purely unviable bits or whether something still viable was mixed in there as well. I guess if it had turned out that they couldn't even detect it, then that would have been useful information. It's too bad they didn't think ahead enough to test for viability if they did detect something.
I'm just amazed that by now such basic, practical questions like this, which it should be fairly easy for science to answer, haven't been pinned down with certainty. Or, maybe it has, and we just need to find it somewhere in the scientific literature, unfiltered and undistorted by mass media?
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Thank @skywatch that's interesting, especially the nearly 18% of asymptomatic cases, it explains why the epidemic could progress silently in many places before beeing noticed.
For the "surviving" that's not what I understand, they say "traces of SARS-CoV-2 RNA" it means they can still see it was there on some surfaces, but the virus is probably "dead". Looks more like a trace of blood that you see after a murder.
Another interesting tidbit:
One other surprising finding from the study was that 70 percent of the patients sick enough to be admitted to the hospital did not have a fever. Fever is listed as the top symptom of covid-19 by the CDC, and for weeks, many testing centers for the virus turned away patients if they did not have one. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/22/coronavirus-ventilators-survival/
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@Nca78 I understood it was viable (i.e. capable of infection) detection, maybe , maybe not. ;)
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
Now that's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Do you have a source link? Does getting one offer any protection against the others, or will we have to endure 33+ separate assaults? I feel like I've already had it twice this year (all the symptoms except for fever), but I'm unsure as to whether it was just the flu or genuine coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Oxford University is already doing a double-blind study of an innoculation they've developed. They're testing it on human volunteers (and at least some of the ones receiving the placebo control will need to develop actual covid-19 before they can conclude efficacy). They expect they'll know within 6 months or less whether or not it works.
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@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
Now that's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Do you have a source link? Does getting one offer any protection against the others, or will we have to endure 33+ separate assaults? I feel like I've already had it twice this year (all the symptoms except for fever), but I'm unsure as to whether it was just the flu or genuine coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Oxford University is already doing a double-blind study of an innoculation they've developed. They're testing it on human volunteers (and at least some of the ones receiving the placebo control will need to develop actual covid-19 before they can conclude efficacy). They expect they'll know within 6 months or less whether or not it works.
@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
Now that's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Do you have a source link?
Of course! ;)
And now we have this...."The coronavirus changes at an average speed of about one mutation per month. By Monday, more than 10,000 strains had been sequenced by scientists around the globe, containing more than 4,300 mutations, according to the China National Centre for Bioinformation."
See the full article here.....
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@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
But 'the' virus had mutated into at least 33 different versions which might explain why some people/places have more deaths than others. It is also why a cure/vaccine is still a very long way off.
Now that's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Do you have a source link?
Of course! ;)
And now we have this...."The coronavirus changes at an average speed of about one mutation per month. By Monday, more than 10,000 strains had been sequenced by scientists around the globe, containing more than 4,300 mutations, according to the China National Centre for Bioinformation."
See the full article here.....
@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
See the full article here.....
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3080771/coronavirus-mutations-affect-deadliness-strains-chinese-studyI would take this with a grain of salt, because of this: "The authors say their findings - based on just 11 patients - are the first to show the mutation could affect the severity of illness."
You can't pretend to trace mutation and link them to different regions of the world with only 11 patients...
They claim the strain in Europe is more deadly, but it's the one that arrived in Vietnam (vast majority of the 270 cases recorded here are linked to people arriving from Europe in March) and it doesn't seem to be that deadly: most people are now cured and no none died.
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@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
maybe , maybe not
Yup:
Does the cruise ship report imply that viruses survive up to 17 days on surfaces?
Dr Julia Marcus: A CDC investigation of the cruise ship found evidence of viral RNA in cabins that hadn’t yet been cleaned. But to be clear, that just means the virus was detectable – not that it was viable or that contact with those services would have been able to infect someone. (Editor’s note: RNA, or ribonucleic acid, carries the virus’s genetic information.)
Dr Akiko Iwasaki: It just means that there are parts of the virus that still remain. The virus needs many other components to be intact. If you have bits and pieces of RNA, that’s not going to make a virus, you need an entire intact genome. Just because you had a little piece of RNA doesn’t mean that there’s an infection.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/04/how-long-does-coronavirus-live-on-different-surfacesIt seems that they only tried to detect either it (possibly intact) or any trace bits of it (possibly not intact), and the way I read it, we don't know whether what they detected was purely unviable bits or whether something still viable was mixed in there as well. I guess if it had turned out that they couldn't even detect it, then that would have been useful information. It's too bad they didn't think ahead enough to test for viability if they did detect something.
I'm just amazed that by now such basic, practical questions like this, which it should be fairly easy for science to answer, haven't been pinned down with certainty. Or, maybe it has, and we just need to find it somewhere in the scientific literature, unfiltered and undistorted by mass media?
@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
I'm just amazed that by now such basic, practical questions like this, which it should be fairly easy for science to answer, haven't been pinned down with certainty. Or, maybe it has, and we just need to find it somewhere in the scientific literature, unfiltered and undistorted by mass media?
The only things they can detect are some specific DNA sequences that are specific to the virus. So the tests can either find those DNA sequences, or not. There are probably ways to check if there are indeed viable viruses in the samples taken, but it must be a very hard task and not worth the energy.
For survival time of the virus I guess the most practical approach is to put live virus on different surfaces and check after x hours/days if the viruses are still "alive" and able to contaminate people, like the studies you quote earlier. Based on these studies, it doesn't seem credible that the traces found are still dangerous after 17 days. -
Here is some more breaking news to cheer you up!
@skywatch Yipes! Thanks for the heads up.
The article you linked makes it sound as though it is better at hooking onto and penetrating human cells, but I wonder if anything else of importance may have changed too. For instance, I wonder whether it lives the same length of time on surfaces as the original virus, or whether that information is obsolete wrt the new mutation. That might be an alternate explanation for the higher infection rate.
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@skywatch Yipes! Thanks for the heads up.
The article you linked makes it sound as though it is better at hooking onto and penetrating human cells, but I wonder if anything else of importance may have changed too. For instance, I wonder whether it lives the same length of time on surfaces as the original virus, or whether that information is obsolete wrt the new mutation. That might be an alternate explanation for the higher infection rate.
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@zboblamont Do you have a link for the 'outing'?
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@zboblamont Do you have a link for the 'outing'?
@skywatch said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
@zboblamont Do you have a link for the 'outing'?
Maybe this? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/health/coronavirus-mutation-transmission.html
It is rather curious that, at least in the US, the Los Angeles Times was the only "major" (usually reputable) newspaper to print the original story.
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In the US, the trend is toward removing the lockdown. What do you guys think about that? I mean, if anything, isn't there a more immediate coronavirus threat now than when the lockdown was started? The politicians seem to be saying: "Oh, look, the hospitals didn't get over-run after all." But, in reality, aren't coronavirus infections still growing geometrically? I'm wondering whether the "end the lockown" movement might be the biggest case of GroupThink in world history.
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@zboblamont Do you have a link for the 'outing'?
@skywatch Sorry, read it in two separate press articles but didn't pay attention which ones... Essentially virologists and epidemiologists reckon this is the most watched and researched bug worldwide, yet ONE lab published a non peer-reviewed paper ?
@NeverDie There is no one-size-fits-all approach to exit lockdown, the trouble is there are multiple demands to do so none of which are based on science, which is why most of Europe is feeling it's way slowly and with an abundance of caution, the alternative is a lot of dead and overwhelmed health systems.
Romania has 48/M dead, UK 460, US 236, even if eradicated now there will be 2nd, 3rd etc waves unless you have another strategy to prevent spread. It's all about breaking chains of transmission, and that means dramatically changing "normal" human behaviours.
Social distancing and sanitation appears to be key, Test/Track/Isolate is also being examined, but no jumping in a plane to Paris for a weekend, it's now 14 days in quarantine. -
@NeverDie Your name on here is more apt than ever now! ;)
I think that 'fake news' is a bit harsh. They both agree that mutations have and continue to occur, they do however differ in their opinions on what this actually means.
@zboblamont I'd rather have another 3 months of lockdown with a clear way out then a rushed one that then comes back after another 30000 Brits die. Lets face it, WE are the test dummies in this scenario and many more will die if the government gets it wrong.
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@NeverDie Your name on here is more apt than ever now! ;)
I think that 'fake news' is a bit harsh. They both agree that mutations have and continue to occur, they do however differ in their opinions on what this actually means.
@zboblamont I'd rather have another 3 months of lockdown with a clear way out then a rushed one that then comes back after another 30000 Brits die. Lets face it, WE are the test dummies in this scenario and many more will die if the government gets it wrong.
@skywatch Agreed, but I'm in a shielded group due to age, and since retired my "normal" ain't everyone else's.
The immediate problem of lockdown (beyond getting pissed off) is political not health. With so many now on the government payroll (that quaint US term furlough) essentially MMT is in place and working, and it's scaring the sh1t out of those who make a nice living out of MMT denial. If the penny drops as lockdown extends, the big con is over, hence the heavy campaigning to exit lockdown soon, and politicians bricking it. I gather you're a Brit so this may prove interesting if you're not already acquainted with Murphy... https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/05/05/people-and-jobs-or-wealth-the-government-has-to-decide-which-to-prioritise-and-there-is-only-one-right-answer/
Our lives will be fundamentally changed for probably 18 months to 2 years with trials and setbacks to keep things under control, what form the steady state takes is currently anybody's guess, but we should know better by 6 months in, around October. -
@skywatch Agreed, but I'm in a shielded group due to age, and since retired my "normal" ain't everyone else's.
The immediate problem of lockdown (beyond getting pissed off) is political not health. With so many now on the government payroll (that quaint US term furlough) essentially MMT is in place and working, and it's scaring the sh1t out of those who make a nice living out of MMT denial. If the penny drops as lockdown extends, the big con is over, hence the heavy campaigning to exit lockdown soon, and politicians bricking it. I gather you're a Brit so this may prove interesting if you're not already acquainted with Murphy... https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/05/05/people-and-jobs-or-wealth-the-government-has-to-decide-which-to-prioritise-and-there-is-only-one-right-answer/
Our lives will be fundamentally changed for probably 18 months to 2 years with trials and setbacks to keep things under control, what form the steady state takes is currently anybody's guess, but we should know better by 6 months in, around October.@zboblamont I have not read that link entirely, but the title "People and jobs? Or wealth?" made me smile. How will 'wealth' get created without people and jobs?
Anyway, I will read it all tomorrow when I have more time. Seems that you need some hobbies to avoid getting 'pissed off'. I have been cleaning, gardening, cooking and generally fiddling with mysensors stuff. A few movies as well, it's not as bad as being in an ICU bed I can assure you!
I think the government should do a half hour presentation to the public about the virus and then 'advise' a lockdown without enforcing it. Then, only the idiots would carry on, as normal, get the disease and die. therefore we could improve the future gene pool by getting rid of some of them. But not everyone would agree with me.
Also, this is not a war and no infrastructure has been destroyed, to bounce back can happen very quickly when the balance between dead voters/tax payers/GDP contributors (read us, the public) is acceptable for the financial markets to go back to what they were doing before.
As for now, I understand that alcohol kills the sars-cov-2 virus and so have a lockdown plan to tackle this.......
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@zboblamont I have not read that link entirely, but the title "People and jobs? Or wealth?" made me smile. How will 'wealth' get created without people and jobs?
Anyway, I will read it all tomorrow when I have more time. Seems that you need some hobbies to avoid getting 'pissed off'. I have been cleaning, gardening, cooking and generally fiddling with mysensors stuff. A few movies as well, it's not as bad as being in an ICU bed I can assure you!
I think the government should do a half hour presentation to the public about the virus and then 'advise' a lockdown without enforcing it. Then, only the idiots would carry on, as normal, get the disease and die. therefore we could improve the future gene pool by getting rid of some of them. But not everyone would agree with me.
Also, this is not a war and no infrastructure has been destroyed, to bounce back can happen very quickly when the balance between dead voters/tax payers/GDP contributors (read us, the public) is acceptable for the financial markets to go back to what they were doing before.
As for now, I understand that alcohol kills the sars-cov-2 virus and so have a lockdown plan to tackle this.......
@skywatch I understand your confusion on the wealth/jobs aspect, "the financial markets to go back to what they were doing before " is precisely what we do NOT need if we're not going to avoid boom bust austerity cycles... Mark Blyth does some good lectures on it which may help reset perspectives, his software/hardware computer analogy is particularly helpful.
Those same vested interests have been provoking public frustration of late in England, but I sincerely hope folks stick with it, idiots are not the only victims if they don't.Plenty to keep me occupied here and beer is cheap enough (ca 50p ;) ), currently fitting IP65 spots in the bathroom, so laying off the beer and looking forward to a shower....
