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You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller
There is a whole series of these book showing all the activities of the Stupid family. It's no wonder we have such a problem. The Stupids dog is named kitty. I searched briefly to see if the Stupids got vaccinated or Covid or both, but it must be too controversial a topic to sell kids book like this nation-wide, except in some states for kindling, not to be judgemental of some populations.
TAT
There's nothing wrong with thinking Except that it's lonesome work sevil regit
Interesting: The South African doctor who first announced the new Omicron variant of concern, said she and other South African doctors are seeing increases in the infection rate which indicates Omicron may be better at transmitting. BUT those cases tend to be milder than usual, with fatigue and headache the main symptoms. So there is the possibility this variant is "the end" of the pandemic: A variant that infects most of the immunologically naive, but causes few hospitalizations or deaths. A "natural vaccination" variant, so to speak.
When viruses mutate, this is always a possibility. Increased fitness, but decreased virulence, because the former has selective advantage, while the latter does not.
Interesting: The South African doctor who first announced the new Omicron variant of concern, said she and other South African doctors are seeing increases in the infection rate which indicates Omicron may be better at transmitting. BUT those cases tend to be milder than usual, with fatigue and headache the main symptoms. So there is the possibility this variant is "the end" of the pandemic: A variant that infects most of the immunologically naive, but causes few hospitalizations or deaths. A "natural vaccination" variant, so to speak.
When viruses mutate, this is always a possibility. Increased fitness, but decreased virulence, because the former has selective advantage, while the latter does not.
God, are you listening?
A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.
Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich
I went back through this thread and noted where we were in February 2020 when I started it. So much has happened since then. It's been a remarkable 2 years. Regarding the initial question: Yes, it has been the plague of the century - so far. (How naïve I was then.)
A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.
Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich
I, unlike most, have seen this OyMyChron variant as a possibly hopeful sign, and have been waiting on data about the type of clinical disease that it produces. Not only are there mutants of the spike protein, against which vaccines are directed, but there are also several mutations in Furin protease sites. Furin proteases seem to be crucial in determining which cells let the spike bound virus into the cells. So mutation, though more infectious, could well limit which cells allow viral replication, and limit disease to some organs or to lesser degrees of damage. I previously speculated that the protease inhibitor in the Pfizer oral med might promote misreading of the virus leading to increased likelihood of more mutations, but shouldnt be a large problem when only used for 4-5 days in treatment. South Africa is a different situation due to the high prevalence of HIV patients taking various mixtures of protease inhibitors in HAART. This festering milieu is just the sort of situation that would be expected to generate new mutants with the very high number of mutated sites. I'm sure that the South African docs are looking into Covid chronic infections in HIV pts on HAART, to characterize this process.
Viruses prefur not to kill their hosts for self preservation. It may well be that the most infectious newer variants will be less virulent, maybe just giving a cold like disease with decreased tendency to severe or lethal disease. Keep in mind that much Covid is already asymptomatic.
Considering, "on the other hand-ism", it is possible that a new mutant, though less lethal, could produce very high probability of long Covid with various organic brain syndromes, hopefully only in the unvaccinated. This will have to be studied in foreign countries with low vaccination populations with low incidence of organic brain syndromes to be able to do valid statistical analysis of variants ANOVA.
TAT
Quote
As it is established that SARS-CoV-2 shares the same cellular entry receptor as SARS-CoV, the ACE2 binding efficacy of S-protein was observed to be 10–20 fold higher in SARS-CoV-2 in a recent study (Song et al., 2018). It was also observed that human cells expressing ACE2 but not human Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP4) or Aminopeptidase N (APN) were less susceptible to the human cell entry of SARS-CoV-2 (Letko et al., 2020). The priming of Spike (S) protein following the binding to the ACE2 receptor results in the viral- host cell fusion (Tortorici and Veesler, 2019). The cathepsin L-dependent viral glycoprotein activation via SARS-CoV S-protein cleavage at S1/S2 boundary under low pH conditions and involvement of transmembrane protease serine 2 (TMPRSS2) in triggering the cleavage of trimer S-protein (Simmons et al., 2005; Millet and Whittaker, 2015) opened new avenues to study the role and participation of different proteases in the endocytosis of SARS-CoV-2 into human cells as well as potential for drug targeting and vaccine development. The observed increase in binding efficiency of SARS-CoV-2 S-glycoprotein to the host receptor can be related to the codon mutations observed in the protein sequence, resulting in a plausible increase in the site-specific priming activity of proteases and cathepsins, leading to the highly contagious nature of SARS-CoV-2 as compared to SARS and MERS. Proteases belonging to the proprotein convertase family, including furin and furin-like serine proteases, were analyzed for their ubiquitous role in viral entry and spread. Although produced in the endoplasmic reticulum and role in the viral biosynthesis, these furin and furin-like proteases were found translocated through secretory pathways to access viral S-protein and promote viral entry to host cells (Seidah and Prat, 2012). A recent study presented results supporting the presence of a furin-like cleavage site in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, which was absent in the other beta coronaviruses (Coutard et al., 2020). It was previously presented that, compared to lower pathogenic forms of the influenza virus, highly pathogenic versions selectively possess a furin-like cleavage site, replaced by a single basic residue cleavage site present in the less pathogenic viruses (Sun et al., 2010; Kido et al., 2012). Another group of researchers correlated the presence of a furin site in the envelope protein to the elevated levels of plasminogen observed in severe COVID-19 patients (Ji et al., 2020). Further research focusing on site-specific binding studies could be an approach to reveal potential druggable targets involving different proteases and specific peptide inhibitors.
Last edited by TatumAH; 11/30/2106:02 PM. Reason: add ANOVA
There's nothing wrong with thinking Except that it's lonesome work sevil regit
I like Sen Paul's approach to the "plague" (hoax to most Republicans). He says natural immunity is the ticket .... full steam ahead, or damn the torpedoes. So if Trump had simply prevented manufacture of vaccines we would have had a light running 5M deaths (using a low estimate of mortality). If Trump had used a warp speed process AND encouraged everyone to get vaccinated we would have had (making assumption vaccine was available prior to first cases) fewer than 50k deaths.
My conclusion is Dr Paul would be better known as Sen Rand "The Kentucky Killer" Paul. Truly a Nazi comparison seems appropriate.
ignorance is the enemy without equality there is no liberty Save America - Lock Trump Up!!!!
Bill Maher quipped about R&R Paul: The Sh!t doesn't fall far from the Bat! TAT Rand like to make up his own rules for Ophthalmology Certification. snopes on Paul
There's nothing wrong with thinking Except that it's lonesome work sevil regit
I think it's actually the mutagen Molnupiravir from Merck that substitutes for some nucleotides during RNA replication and then causes subsequent replication failure. The RNA protease inhibitor Paxlovid from Pfizer does not seem to interact with any human biological process. It just inhibits the SARS-COV2 protease that cuts the big super protein into the smaller functional proteins the virus needs to replicate. Humans don't make a protease that Paxlovid could interact with, and indeed we don't even have the DNA or RNA sequence the SARS-COV2 protease cleaves. Which is the reason Paxlovid is so benign for humans that Pfizer's toxicity test could find no upper limit.
COVID-related American death data shows dramatic differences between Republican and Democratic counties, with the reddest tenth of the nation in October chalking up a death rate six times higher than that of the bluest tenth, NPR reported.
