Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

[steenkh]

Viruses don't work that way. They enter the nose and either enter and infect cells somewhere in the airway, or they don't hang around. They aren't going to sit there and later be passed on to someone else.

I can understand other sorts of objections to this line of thinking, such as virus numbers being to low to be able to transmit the disease from the nose, throat, and lungs of immune persons to other persons, but I do not understand your argument. I thought that hanging around is exactly what viruses do until they are destroyed. If the airways of an immune person is not actively destroying the virus, I would have thought that the damp interior of a human body is a fine place to hang around, rather than on surfaces on door handles and so on, where the virus can be desiccated.

 

[Darat]

It also seems a lot more virulent.



It's pretty much summer all year round for a good portion of people around the equator. Your technical correctness isn't really very informative.



He's an IT guy. Why should his opinion on a pandemic and how we respond to it be worth more than yours or mine?

Because he has literally billions to spend, and we know he is willing to spend the money to help others, he can get us a head start on producing a vaccine, can you or I?

 

[angrysoba]

He's an IT guy. Why should his opinion on a pandemic and how we respond to it be worth more than yours or mine?

Are you kidding me? He's had a lot of experience with viruses over the years, as have everyone else who used his software!

 

[Planigale]

I can understand other sorts of objections to this line of thinking, such as virus numbers being to low to be able to transmit the disease from the nose, throat, and lungs of immune persons to other persons, but I do not understand your argument. I thought that hanging around is exactly what viruses do until they are destroyed. If the airways of an immune person is not actively destroying the virus, I would have thought that the damp interior of a human body is a fine place to hang around, rather than on surfaces on door handles and so on, where the virus can be desiccated.

One of the antibodies an 'immune' person will produce is IgA, this specifically delivers mucosal immunity and is secreted into mucus and will bind to virus, IgA mainly acts by physically interfering with the viruses ability to bind to its target receptor. So virus inhaled or ingested by immune people will be inactivated preventing its invasion, and limiting its ability to infect other people if it were to be re-exhaled.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3842584/
good review but focusses on the gut rather than the airways but the same applies to the airways.

 

[Planigale]

It also seems a lot more virulent.



It's pretty much summer all year round for a good portion of people around the equator. Your technical correctness isn't really very informative.



He's an IT guy. Why should his opinion on a pandemic and how we respond to it be worth more than yours or mine?[/QUOTE]

The Gates foundation has been trying to tackle the pandemics of HIV and TB so they do have experience and practice at trying to control pandemics particularly in resource poor countries. Presciently the Gates foundation had run a table top exercise for politicians and health service mangers looking at a global pandemic of a novel coronavirus in 2019.
http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/scenario.html
So the Gates foundation rather than Bill Gates himself are well placed and experienced in trying to control pandemics and have been involved in advocating for pandemic preparedness for such a scenario as we now face.

 

[Dr.Sid]

He's an IT guy. Why should his opinion on a pandemic and how we respond to it be worth more than yours or mine?

Dude, he works in 3rd world charity for years. Not 'gives money'. Works. Finds money. Invest into technologies. Oversees money being applied at destination. And surprisingly, diseases are big part of that. As for large scale health equipment logistics, for example, the guy has great experience.
And he warned about unpreparedness for pandemic basically all the time for past few years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

Also he's smart AF. You definitely SHOULD listen to this IT guy.

 

[steenkh]

That is awesome! I do have some serious doubts that he'd be wasting the money on the others, pretty sure they could build more things

I have seen implying that Gates must be daft when we wastes money on building facilities to produce vaccines where only one in seven will work. I really wonder about this line of thinking. First of all, it is a gift to humanity if he can get a working vaccine mass produced fast. Secondly, if he wants to make a lot of money, it makes a lot of sense to bet on all the horses in the race, if you can make more money on the winning horse than you lose on the losing horses.

 

[JesseCuster]

The Gates foundation has been trying to tackle the pandemics of HIV and TB so they do have experience and practice at trying to control pandemics particularly in resource poor countries. Presciently the Gates foundation had run a table top exercise for politicians and health service mangers looking at a global pandemic of a novel coronavirus in 2019.
http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/scenario.html

From that link:

"The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms"

Pretty much what we're actually dealing with now, but thankfully, although very closely related to SARS, this novel coronavirus is a lot less virulent. Imagine if COVID-19 had a mortality rate similar to SARS, ~10%?

 

[Planigale]

From that link:

"The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms"

Pretty much what we're actually dealing with now, but thankfully, although very closely related to SARS, this novel coronavirus is a lot less virulent. Imagine if COVID-19 had a mortality rate similar to SARS, ~10%?

My nightmare is that during its travels through the Middle East / Africa that SARS-CoV-2 enters into a dalliance with MERS and they exchange a little RNA and we end up with offspring such as a highly transmissible MERS-2 or a highly pathogenic SARS-CoV-3.

 

[Planigale]

I have seen implying that Gates must be daft when we wastes money on building facilities to produce vaccines where only one in seven will work. I really wonder about this line of thinking. First of all, it is a gift to humanity if he can get a working vaccine mass produced fast. Secondly, if he wants to make a lot of money, it makes a lot of sense to bet on all the horses in the race, if you can make more money on the winning horse than you lose on the losing horses.

Of course the facilities built to produce the less successful 6 vaccines will be easily repurposed to manufacture the successful vaccine. The important thing is that the manufacturing plants are widely located. Preferably in small countries with a small population. Think what a disaster it would be if Trump banned the export of a successful vaccine.

 

[Belz...]

The BMGF has been going since 2000. Bill Gates has focussed his efforts on that, he left Microsoft in 2008. And having heard him talk at conferences, I'd consider him expert enough.

Expert enough in what? Managing a foundation? I'm talking about epidemiology.

I'm not saying he knows nothing about it, but that there are actual experts out there that I'd trust more to know about this thing.

Because he has literally billions to spend, and we know he is willing to spend the money to help others, he can get us a head start on producing a vaccine, can you or I?

What the hell does that have to do with whether he's an expert?

 

[Roboramma]

Make it 85k US deaths attributed to Covid-19 by Jan 1, 2021, and you have a deal.

Thanks! That works for me.

 

[Belz...]

Deleted.

 

[varwoche]

I'm reasonably condfident that Bill Gates' efforts are not foolish, because he's not a fool. And that he will rely upon actual experts. And that he's not doing it for profit, because I believe his efforts with BMGF are sincere.

 

[ServiceSoon]

One of the antibodies an 'immune' person will produce is IgA, this specifically delivers mucosal immunity and is secreted into mucus and will bind to virus, IgA mainly acts by physically interfering with the viruses ability to bind to its target receptor. So virus inhaled or ingested by immune people will be inactivated preventing its invasion, and limiting its ability to infect other people if it were to be re-exhaled.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3842584/
good review but focusses on the gut rather than the airways but the same applies to the airways.

Fascinating! Lets dive into the details of the reference you have provided.

Since IgA is produced in large quantities at mucosal surfaces including the gastrointestinal tract, it has long been presumed that IgA is a critical factor in protection of these surfaces against viral infections. Many studies in humans correlate increases in viral-specific IgA levels at the mucosal surface with either the cessation of virus excretion or protection against infection and disease (33–37).

This study is about a very specific infection, mucosal rotavirus, and its very specific impact on the gut. I am not sure how we can confidently apply the findings of this study to a different family of viruses and the impact that different virus has on a different organ.

However, unlike norovirus, mucosal rotavirus-specific IgA strongly correlates with less severe disease and prevention of rotavirus infection in humans (37, 92–95).

The findings of this study about IgA correlating with disease progression and prevention (Spread), don't even apply to norovirus, which is a different virus from the study, but still an infection of the intestinal tract.

For other non-enteropathogenic viruses, such as hepatitis A, coxsackievirus, and echovirus, much less is known about the relative importance of mucosal IgA in protective immunity (Table ​(Table11).

Further reading, the study you cited explicitly states that the role that mucosal IgA plays with viruses infecting biological systems excluding the gut is unknown.

I appreciate you sharing this information, however, I can not extrapolate its findings universally.

 

[Capsid]

Fascinating! Lets dive into the details of the reference you have provided.

This study is about a very specific infection, mucosal rotavirus, and its very specific impact on the gut. I am not sure how we can confidently apply the findings of this study to a different family of viruses and the impact that different virus has on a different organ.

The findings of this study about IgA correlating with disease progression and prevention (Spread), don't even apply to norovirus, which is a different virus from the study, but still an infection of the intestinal tract.

Further reading, the study you cited explicitly states that the role that mucosal IgA plays with viruses infecting biological systems excluding the gut is unknown.

I appreciate you sharing this information, however, I can not extrapolate its findings universally.

IgA as an immune effector molecule at the mucosal surface is well established.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunoglobulin_A

 

[Planigale]

Fascinating! Lets dive into the details of the reference you have provided.

This study is about a very specific infection, mucosal rotavirus, and its very specific impact on the gut. I am not sure how we can confidently apply the findings of this study to a different family of viruses and the impact that different virus has on a different organ.

The findings of this study about IgA correlating with disease progression and prevention (Spread), don't even apply to norovirus, which is a different virus from the study, but still an infection of the intestinal tract.

Further reading, the study you cited explicitly states that the role that mucosal IgA plays with viruses infecting biological systems excluding the gut is unknown.

I appreciate you sharing this information, however, I can not extrapolate its findings universally.

I am afraid there is no study that will suit your requirements. Looking at the neutralising ability of human IgA in humans exposed to SARS-CoV-2. I suspect it would not get past ethics. This reminds me of HIV denialism there was never a paper that fitted exactly what were the requirements of those who didn't believe HIV caused AIDS. If you want to go and read up the literature feel free. There is a great deal on respiratory coronavirus in pigs (very similar to SARS and SARS-CoV-2) but I suspect that a different coronavirus in a different animal won't be enough for you. The nearest I can get for you is

Mucosal immunisation of African green monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops) with an attenuated parainfluenza virus expressing the SARS coronavirus spike protein for the prevention of SARS

Which does demonstrate mucosal immunity to a SARS protein in a monkey model.

 

[Steve]

Expert enough in what? Managing a foundation? I'm talking about epidemiology.

I'm not saying he knows nothing about it, but that there are actual experts out there that I'd trust more to know about this thing.



What the hell does that have to do with whether he's an expert?

Gates is not an expert in epidemiology. No one here has claimed that he is, and Gates has not claimed that he is. Gates is not offering his opinion on how the pandemic should be handled so his expertise, or lack thereof, is irrelevant.

The Gates foundation has sufficient expertise to be able to build and operate the vaccine research and production facilities that he is offering. Gates will not be personally building or operating them so, again, his personal expertise, or lack thereof, is irrelevant.

The vaccine facilities proposed by Gates will be designed, built, equipped, and operated by the appropriate experts.

The whole issue of Gates personal expertise is a person composed of nothing but horse bedding.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

I like this:

IBM Supercomputer Summit Attacks Coronavirus…

The researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used Summit to perform simulations of more than 8,000 possible compounds to screen for those that have the most opportunity to have an impact on the disease, by binding to the main “spike” protein of the coronavirus, rendering it unable to infect host cells.

 

[Andy_Ross]

South Sudan has reported its first case - a 29-year-old woman who works for the UN, officials say. She recently arrived in the country from the Netherlands,