Share your experience, tips, advice, questions…
As it seems most communities world-wide are going into voluntary or enforced quarantine that involves staying at home and avoiding physical contact as much as possible, I thought we could have a thread where we could try a bit of mutual support by cheering each other up over the next few days, weeks, months… Who knows?
I don’t know: suggestions on films to watch, books to read, gardening tips, exercise ideas
Usual rules apply plus a guideline. Let’s be kind and supportive to each other.
About immunity?
This is way over my head, but basically, antibodies are just an indicator that an immune response has been triggered. They are a product of the immune system, but not necessarily the most important.
Insert something here about T cells and such.
My understanding is that CV19 would be rather benign if it didn’t trigger an overreaction in some people. Death by inflammation, rather than death by toxins, as is the case with some diseases. This could be why an important avenue for treatment might be to mitigate inflammation, rather than to attack the virus.
Rather than pontificate about all the mistakes that have been made, I stand in awe at all the progress that has been made in a couple of months. As an old person, I don’t like being in the bullseye, but the simple fact is that diseases like polio, that attack kids, are much worse.
It’s not just a death count. It’s a count of life years lost, and bad as it is, this is not the plague.
This should be the republican platform for the next election.
I forget the source, but there is a famous quote that Dutch isn’t a language, but a throat disease.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/05/01/apple-data-shows-shelter-in-place-is-ending-whether-governments-want-it-to-or-not/#796b1cbd6fb5
I’m no expert either but neutralising antibodies do, apparently, bind to the virus, or to some specific part – the spikes, preventing it from infecting further. It’s from Roche, so a bit rose-tinted but here.
The cytokine storm. Hence the idea of treating with immune suppresants and anti-inflammatories.
That’s noble of you. On the other hand for the retired on reasonable pensions, homeowners, lockdown isn’t so bad. I’ve been enjoying it guiltily though that is wearing off.
You’re probably right but it would be good to have better information and evidence on which to make informed decisions.
Here is Texas, people, when they are not driving when drunk, are planning for the future
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alex-jones-cannibalism-covid-19_n_5eac56e7c5b624b39692b1f2
Makes sense. He’s not getting any crazier if he gets Kuru anyway
Honestly, if you think that’s what evolution is about, then you are badly mistaken.
Unfortunately, you have just described around 40% of the US adult population.
If you don’t think that is what Neo-Darwinism is (I know it sounds ridiculous) then you are the one badly mistaken.
I am well aware of the theory’s claim. I am also well aware why evolutionists want to obfuscate it and make it as muddy as possible.
phoodoo,
The niche, phoodoo! Remember the niche!
Alan Fox,
Even your niche can’t make the accidents less random. Trying to argue that Darwinism isn’t about fortunate accidents is about as dumb as it gets. Or as dishonest, take your pick.
But we agree, no one really believes that. But it makes a great sermon at the church of the God haters.
I doubt if better information will be available for some months. I suspect it will take years to untangle all the threads. Where it came from, how the outbreak started, how and when it arrived in Europe and the US.
My understand is that attempted vaccines have triggered cytokine storms. I don’t have a source for this, but lots of people have been working on CV vaccines for a long time. This influences my judgement as to the likelihood of a quick fix.
So, my thought is, the only way to protect vulnerable people is to allow herd immunity to develop in young, healthy people. While doing our best to protect those most likely to die.
A number of governments agree with this approach. Of course, implementing it is no picnic.
No we disagree, if what you write is what you think.
I fear you may be right but there are a bunch of able people working flat out on vaccines. I try to remain optimistic.
Alan Fox,
@ phoodoo
I’ll even try and elaborate. There is an undeniable interplay between any particular organism and its niche environment. I see a beauty in that association but also life has it tough and can only cope with small changes and all the while extinction looms. Even humans, who are capable of much in the way of niche creation are at the mercy of climate change, meteors and lethal pandemics. It’s the environment that has the upper hand and it is the environment on Earth as it has unfolded that has provided the non-random filter for survival or extinction.
A huge element of chance, sure but not total randomness. The niche is the designer.
Since the situation is ongoing, examining previous mistakes might be valuable in avoiding making the same mistakes for the same reasons again.
Me too. And the reasons for success also should be examined for the same reason as we examine mistakes.
I agree.
And yet with all that being assumed , you still have no alternative explanation beyond something something somehow.
This approach to patients critically ill with Covid-19 looks encouraging.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/02/uk-covid-19-survivors-plasma-being-trialled-to-treat-critically-ill
And it doesn’t seem hugely hi-tech so could be implemented anywhere. If it works it is also a sign that neutralising antibodies do form as a response to the virus, meaning the likelihood of a vaccine being developed is higher.
Not exactly with crazies, but you do illustrate something about human nature. You have fixated on a foregone conclusion, which happens to be wrong. Happens to Trump with thumping regularity. And you do pretty much the same thing he does: wildly misrepresent a correct understanding into something patently absurd, and then mock the absurdity of your misrepresentation.
If you give a golfer an infinite number of mulligans, he’ll end up with a score that clearly doesn’t make sense. Nobody will believe that’s an honest score, but most people will realize that the infinite mulligans made a difference. You don’t.
There are only two kinds of people, those who are binarists, and those who are not…
This is rather unfair. I, for one, have done my damnedest to explain things clearly. If I’ve failed, I’ve failed, but I’m not trying to deceive anyone. Of course, I would say that.
I don’t think that’s the case. I think the cytokine storm occurs when the immune system is triggered by ruptured cells into attacking whole ones. Cell rupture should only happen with an actual infection, I can’t see it happening with a vaccine.
Alan Fox,
My wife purchased me that book for Christmas last year. I gave it a shot and didn’t make it terribly far before putting it down (maybe 1/4). I found I didn’t agree with his approach to writing and to argumentation. In my opinion, the author extrapolates quite heavily from insufficient evidence to support the author’s feelings about how the world used to be and how humanity developed. I also did not appreciate the manner in which evolution was described throughout that portion of the book. The author makes the classic mistake of portraying evolution with goals and feelings for ease of communication. I find that this approach all too commonly leads to confusion and misunderstanding of evolution, especially when one takes the author as an expert on evolution rather than a historian.
Flint,
If you want to argue that Darwinism isn’t about random accidents adding up to intelligent sophistication, argue it with someone else. Its pure stupidity to claim that is not what it is, and even more ludicrous to say believing that is what Darwinism is is akin to the the denials of the turnip.
People are quite aware of the claims of Neo-Darwinism. Anyone who isn’t is free to bury their head in the sand and shout “the niche”, I could care less.
The materialist explanation for the existence of everything is somehow, some way, just is…
OK, so that’s what it is. Groaning shelves of material derive from that supposed presumption, but there’s nothing in ’em.
You object to being lumped in with nonlin, but my attempts to convey some very basic genetic concepts to them have a clear parallel with your own approach to the basics of evolution. It’s an exercise in going LA LAAAAAA.
Yes, I found myself questioning his style, wondering where was the evidence for some of his very bold claims. I almost felt I was being lectured to. Looking up reviews I see it was in fact based on a course of university lectures.
That’s a fair point. He’s not a biologist and I think the prehistory could have been reduced to a preface or even omitted without detracting from the rest of the book.
If Darwinian evolution relied solely on random accidents, I would agree with you. But it doesn’t and therefore I don’t. A straw man is what you are knocking over.
Good point. Clinical trials should eliminate dangerous candidates, one hopes.
They’re nearly all going for RNA vaccines, in which the RNA (in trenchcoat and dark glasses) is taken up by our cells and translated into antigen protein. There’s nothing there, on the face of it, to cause cell rupture, by contrast with some ‘whole-cell’ therapies.
Actually, I’m wrong. Cytokine storms nearly killed some volunteers in an antibody trial.
Just trying to think out the long term strategy.
If current measures have flattened the curve, or even produced a downward trend, then we will never reach herd immunity. The projections I’m seeing suggest close to zero infections in a few months.
But not zero. So I don’t see any way to shut everything down while waiting for a vaccine. What has to happen is minimax policies. Work out what needs to be done to minimize deaths. Part of that has to be improvements in treatment.
petrushka,
I’m inclined to agree. I hate to be on the same page as right-wingers, anti-vaxxers and NWO loons, but if we don’t allow some spread now, it’ll happen later. I just watched an interview with a Swedish epidemiologist who felt that all countries, regardless of strategy, were going to end up in the same place.
If the HIV drug proves effective ,delaying getting to the “same place” could mean improved outcome for some. Also the medical professionals could use some recovery time from the initial surge, before another wave comes.
Allan Miller,
Right now China is the safest place in the world to avoid the virus. I am not getting the “yea, but still…” part of the equation.
Sars didn’t run through the entire population until some vague herd immunity arose.
I’m guessing SARS wasn’t nearly as infectious as Covid-19
I think New Zealand’s probably safer. But then what? Suppose we have a situation where both antivirals and vaccines fail to be developed, while the more apparently foolish nations get to herd immunity (at a cost)? New Zealand is then dry tinder.
The strategy advocated is not no lockdown at all, but protection of the vulnerable while herd immunity builds in the young and fit. Of course, deaths will still occur among that group, but at a reduction of deaths from certain other causes.
There was very little community spread of SARS, since maximum shedding occurs when people are already quite ill. It makes it self limiting, and susceptible to extinction. Covid-19, on the other hand, has more opportunity for asymptomatic spread, so extinction is not an option.
Thank you, Allan
Hate disagreeing with phoodoo, but China is not honest.
I don’t trust any of the stats, but the majority are being sort of honest. Just not honest by the standards of science. The standards for diagnosing and recording cases keep changing.
If China has in fact shut down the spread entirely, as claimed, it will just flare up in some other place. You can’t wipe out a disease that is contagious for a week before symptoms show, and which shows no symptoms in most people.
All the temperature taking is window dressing.
My claim was that if you insist on ignoring selection, what you have left is an absurd misrepresentation. You are quite correct to mock the absurdity of this misrepresentation. I don’t mind trying again: the vast majority of these random accidents are discarded because they fail. ONLY the winners get to enter the next round.
What I can’t figure out is why you ignore the (by now) hundreds of replies trying to explain the nature of, and importance of, selection. Yes, without selection, random accidents won’t add up to anything, and everyone recognizes this. But others here are not stupid because YOU won’t read.
newton,
Yes, I hear that! My daughter (I’m a hero by proxy!) has been pretty stretched. That could have been helped enormously by better protection of the vulnerable. Although then we end up with an intra-country version of my ‘dry tinder’ argument – care facilities need strict lockdown, but are surrounded by contagion.
Allan Miller,
Still puzzling why the New Zealand model could not be workable elsewhere.
Well, comparing it to an island of similar size, we have 67 million people, they have 5 million. We are 22 miles from neighbours, they are thousands. We have dozens of ports of entry, they have 3.
They’d only had 8 cases by 16th March, when France went into lockdown. They locked down themselves on 19th, when they could see what was happening in the world, yet their caseload was just 28. If any European country had gone into lockdown with 28 cases, without any data from the rest of the world, they’d have been accused of gross overreaction. NZ had a much clearer picture than we did at the equivalent stage.
But suppose the UK had somehow managed to stand alone in Europe, and eradicate. We’ve then quarantined the rest of the world, which burns away before consuming the fuel, gaining herd immunity in the process. Now, when people start to circulate again, we’re like Pacific Islanders encountering the common cold for the first time.
petrushka,
What would need to happen once the number of new cases gets really low is to instate a stringent system of test, trace and isolate. The classic epidemiological approach to defeating epidemics. Every new potential case is investigated, contacts are traced and tested, and anyone found positive will get isolated until they are demonstrably no longer positive.
This requires a big effort, for sure. Lots of feet on the ground and lots and lots and lots of testing. It isn’t practical with the current high number of infected in most countries. A place like New Zealand where there now seem to be very few or no infected people could do very well with this apporach. Other countries might be able to follow in due course. Eventually the virus will be gone because it just can’t access enough fresh meat to survive.
faded_Glory,
I think it’ll be ‘gone’ the way ‘flu is gone, still circulating but with a substantial buffer of immunity to circumnavigate. I don’t think it will become extinct in the wild the way H5N1 has.
Yes, but as faded_glory wonders, the virus can only live in live hosts. There isn’t anywhere else for it to hide. Eradication has worked for other infectious diseases. Is it that RNA viruses can mutate too rapidly for immunity to be effective?
That’s the issue with ‘flu, certainly. Most diseases we’ve eradicated, we’ve done it with vaccines, with some help from survivor immunity. But survivors eventually die, and non-immune kids are born.
H1N1, the Spanish Flu of 1918, hasn’t actually gone away, it’s just become quite rare, and comparatively mild. Which is a curiosity – once the survivors start dying, to be replaced by non-immune children, how come it doesn’t go full-on pandemic, a generation later? I wonder if there is some genetic component to susceptibility, and selection weeds out the genes of those tending to respond badly to the infection (eta – more a factor in 1918, when mortality was greatest in 20-40 year olds, than with Covid, where it increases with age).
Additionally, when a pathogen is circulating, but there is some level of population immunity, we may tend to build up a bit of immunity as kids by encountering it often, but in small doses. And the pathogen itself may mutate to reduced virulence, since it is in its own interests to do so (non teleologically, of course).