1

COVID-19 / How could we say if omicron variants are intrinsically less pathogenic?

« on: 27/06/2022 04:33:38 »

Seropositivity to CoV2 is about 99% in the UK... ie virtually everyone has been infected or vaccinated. The ratio of hospitalizations to infections is greatly reduced compared to 2020 & 2021. Is there a way to distinguish between immunity and reduced virulence as the cause. It seems quite feasible that immunity could be entirely responsible.
North Korea isn't going to give us the data we would need.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Can two blue eyed parents have a brown eyed child?

« on: 19/06/2022 16:25:16 »

But can two blue eyed parents have a brown eyed child?

Only impossible in Agatha Christie novels.

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Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: Monkeypox: Could it be similar to cowpox, and just a mild variant of smallpox?

« on: 18/06/2022 08:42:06 »

I see that the infamous youtubing nurse has already floated the idea that the monkeypox outbreak is down to lab gain of fuction. Some people will do anything for the love of money.

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COVID-19 / Re: Are Geert Vanden Bossche's predictions for Covid accurate?

« on: 18/06/2022 08:34:06 »

I decided to check Geert Vanden Bossche out to see what he has to say for himself. I watched

. The first half is at least self consistant but psuedo science. The second half is moronic drivel. If you listen to this for yourself hj38 you will be relieved of the notion that this character has anything sensible to contribute.

For example:-
1) He describes the spike protein as moving in and out (ie alternating between the down and up confirmation state), which would violate the first law of thermodynamics, so you know he's making it up.
2) He talks about dendritic cells migrating to various organs around the body and infecting them. In fact they migrate to draining lymph nodes via afferent lymph ducts. They are antigen presenting cells and once in the lymph node they present the antigen to T cell. They don't infect cells except in the case of AIDS where CD4 T cells, uniquely, are the HIV host cell.
3) He claims that cells displaying the spike protein on their outer membrane causes syncytia. A spike protein is common part af the body plan of many viruses and cells routeinly display the proteins they are producing (in order for the immune cells to detect whether or not they are making non-self proteins, which would indicate that they are infected). So if displaying a CoV2 spike protein led to syncytia then so would all the other viral spike proteins, and we would all be dead.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Have covid 19 vaccinations helped/hindered monkeypox?

« on: 02/06/2022 00:29:52 »

In general, replication competent ('live') attenuated vaccines boost immunity to most infections other than their target, while other sorts of vaccine tend to do the opposite.

My guess would be that a mutation which makes the monkeypox virus more fit in humans has been around for a long time. In the past, it hasn't been selected for because it didn't have sufficient fitness to set up shop in humans. Now, with enough people unvaccinated against smallpox, the same mutation has sufficient advantage to circulate in people. We might see more mutations - analagous to CoV2's D614G mutation in the near future. I won't be surprised if it keeps spreading until we vaccinate. The surprise is that we didn't see a big outbreak in Lagos before the current outbreak.

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Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: How do I calculate the cell density in a culture?

« on: 25/05/2022 01:47:51 »

If maths is not your strong point, then the easy way is to just plot the density of the two cultures over time on two graphs. but as Evan implys it's blerry obvious that you asking for help with your homework, you're not a good liar.

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COVID-19 / Re: Why are my covid tests results still positive after 25 weeks?

« on: 28/04/2022 13:36:01 »

It is possible that something other than antigens are causing the positive results. You should try and get some more PCR tests.

If it is something other than antigens giving the positive results, you might try to experiment with your diet eg eat nothing but Lidl's low sugar granola and milk for 5 days, drink just water and tea and take a one a day muti vitamin and mineral tablet and see if that makes a difference. If it does you are probably in the clear and should go back to your regular diet.

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COVID-19 / Re: Covid / vaccine related heart problems - anecdotal or proven?

« on: 10/04/2022 12:54:57 »

Recent research from the CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7114e1.htm?s_cid=mm7114e1_e&ACSTrackingID=USCDC_921-DM79035&ACSTrackingLabel=MMWR%20Early%20Release%20-%20Vol.%2071%2C%20April%201%2C%202022&deliveryName=USCDC_921-DM79035

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COVID-19 / Re: How does covid compare with other respiratory viruses?

« on: 09/03/2022 23:44:41 »

Are there asymptomatic carriers of these viruses too?"[/i]

There are certainly plenty of viruses which you can catch without you ever knowing you're infected. Our bodies contain trillions of viral particles. It is an advantage for a respiratory virus to cause you to cough or sneeze, it helps it to spread. Making us so ill that we take to our beds is a distinct disadvantage. It's not uncommon (but neither is it common) for respiratory viruses to inhibit the interferon response well enough that you don't get that early warning of feeling vaguely ill, which tells you that a cold is on the way, but Covid is particularly good at this - it has about 14 proteins which mess with interferon and one which gets the nucleus to inhibit presenting (on the cell surface) cut up bits of protein produced in the cell, which would alert white blood cells that it is infected.

Sorry I can't be more specific about how common it is, I don't think they've done enough investigating to know, viroligists are not so interested in infections which don't make you ill or ones that make you mildly symtomatic. I expect the vast majority of people cough, snivel or sneeze at least onve every week. If we feel a bit tired one day we don't think much about it.

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COVID-19 / Re: Can someone be infected by multiple variants at the same time?

« on: 03/03/2022 11:34:41 »

Yes, no reason why they shouldn't be. It can lead to recombination. The genome copying shifts from one variant to the corresponding place on the other variant in the same infected cell and then shifts back. There are cases dubbed Deltacron reported in the UK and France.

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COVID-19 / Re: Is there a difference between herd immunity & "living with covid 19"?

« on: 03/03/2022 11:26:10 »

Basically there is no such thing as herd immunity with covid, at least for now. Omicron started in the UK with 90% seropositivity and this has now reached 98% and the prevelace of infections is 80% higher now than the height of the Alpha wave, according to the Zoe symptom tracker - which estimates 145,000 new symptomatic cases per day. So who are these people being infected by?

Perhaps we could achieve herd immunity by vaccinating every 3 or 4 months. That's not going to happen - 56% have had the booster, although contrary to what we're told it's quite sustainable and it would be the cheap option.

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COVID-19 / Re: Do lateral flow tests recognise dead covid cells?

« on: 09/02/2022 05:02:40 »

They test for specifc antigens ie parts of the virus. I think they generally look for two or three antigens, these can be on an intact viral paricle or on a fragment. For more infornation on when they test positive compared to a PCR test look up the challenge trial - they go into this in detail.

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COVID-19 / Re: Why does this treatment want me to defer a vaccination for 90 days?

« on: 09/02/2022 04:46:08 »

The vaccine needs to induce an immune response. The monoclonal antibodies can do the job, or part of the job of the immune system and this will dampen the immune response from the vaccine. Specifically you may not produce the antibodies in the monclonal antibody cocktail, which have been selected because they are particularly potent.

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COVID-19 / Re: Do heavy colds help prevent covid infection?

« on: 09/02/2022 04:18:56 »

Some viruses have the ability to inhibit other viruses but it is the property of the individual virus rather than the severity of illness that counts. Different states in the US are often unsyncronised in covid waves, but there have been occasions when every state saw a downward blip within a couple of days of each other - another respiratory virus spreading is a possible explanation.

Some infections can detect that the immune system is at defcom1 fighting another infection and then hide away until the immune system stands down.

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COVID-19 / Re: Is there a period of immunity to Omicron after first catching it?

« on: 09/02/2022 04:08:46 »

You can certainly catch Omicron and then catch what is being described as the sub-lieage of Omicron. This is because they are actually two quite different variants, but pretty much everyone is going along with "It's only a variant when the WHO says so." Perhaps the WHO is nostalgic for the early days of the pandemic, when, it spread disinformation freely. While on the subject of misclassifying, Delta should actually be called a new strain, it has two ways of infecting a cell - a new property which defines it as a new strain not a variant.

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COVID-19 / Re: What are the exact benefits of taking all covid vaccines?

« on: 09/02/2022 03:52:34 »

  full vaccination renders you 100 times less likely to suffer severe symptoms.

Concur. I heard the figure 97% less likely to die from Omicron if your boosted, compared to unvaccinated and not previously infected of whom there will soon be less than a million, in the UK.

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COVID-19 / Re: Should we try to catch covid if we've been vaccinated to build more immunity?

« on: 09/02/2022 03:43:07 »

There can be an advantage in that your immunity gets boosted but only if the virus doesn't kill you, cause permenant dammage to your lungs, heart or kidneys or give you long covid.

Basically what you're hoping for is that if you catch covid, it won't be so bad um when you er catch Covid.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / What's the lowdown on thorium reactors?

« on: 17/01/2022 02:11:21 »

I read an article on them. It said they were a lot safer than the reactors we currently use and had been shunned in the past because they didn't yield weapons grade material. I presume that there's much more too it than that.

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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: Why are dogs becoming more and more afraid of cats?

« on: 12/01/2022 07:07:04 »

Very interesting question. From observations in real life and youtube videos I have noticed:
i) If you start with a dog / dogs in your home and then get a cat / cats then the cat(s) rule. But the other way around the dog(s) may end up on top.
ii) If they don't live in the same household then  dogs will chase cats and cats will kill birds. But put them in the same household and their behavior is very different.
iii) on youtube you can see cats tormenting dogs and birds tormenting cats and it's clear that's exactly what their what their doing - deriving pleasure from another creature's discomfort.. We talk about man's inhumanity to man but it seems that this behavior was around way back in evolutionary time.

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COVID-19 / Re: How can we record the cases daily?

« on: 10/01/2022 13:48:43 »

Zoe gives there estimate of the avaerage number of daily new symptomatic cases in the UK. https://covid.joinzoe.com/ They use people reporting symptoms and then results of their pcr tests. You can multiply this by 1.67 if you assume 40% are infected and asymptomatic and then by 1.28 if you think people will be presymptomatic for two days then, on average, symptomatic for five days. You can change the 1.67 or 1.28 if you think the 40% and 2:5 ratio are not right. Their number peaked on monday the 3rd.