Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

Discussion in 'General OT' started by imart, Jan 28, 2020.

  1. Sir iAco

    Sir iAco PhilMUG Addict Member
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    A supercomputer found a promising theory about why COVID-19 cases go downhill fast. It even explains the bizarre range of symptoms.
    (Aria Bendix)
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...e-range-of-symptoms/ar-BB18YWNo?ocid=msedgdhp

    [​IMG]© Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images Claudia da Costa Leite, a radiology professor at University of Sao Paulo, examines lung scans on July 29, 2020. Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images
    • Tennessee researchers used a supercomputer to analyze lung fluid from coronavirus patients.
    • They found that patients with severe cases may produce too much bradykinin, a chemical that regulates blood pressure.
    • This could set off a chain reaction that leads to COVID-19's bizarre range of symptoms — including cardiac, gastrointestinal, and neurological problems.
    Imagine trying to drive a car with a leaky engine. Now imagine there are no brakes, either. Eventually, you're going to run out of fuel or crash. Some passengers might survive — others won't.

    The human body may endure a similar experience in response to a coronavirus infection, according to a study from researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The lab's supercomputers — one of which is the second-fastest in the world — analyzed lung fluid samples from nine coronavirus patients with severe cases in Wuhan, China.

    The computers detected major differences in way these patients expressed certain genes relative to the way healthy people do.

    Based on those abnormalities, the researchers came up with a new theory: Patients with severe COVID-19 may experience what's known as a "bradykinin storm."

    Bradykinin is a chemical that regulates blood pressure. The researchers found that some people with the coronavirus may produce it in extreme excess. That storm throws major systems — including respiratory, gastrointestinal, and neurological pathways — off balance.

    The theory aligns with researchers' growing view of the coronavirus as a vascular disease instead of a respiratory one. Research has shown that COVID-19 can lead to blood clots, leaky capillaries, and inflamed blood vessels — which is why some patients may experience heart damage or stroke.

    "We were really scratching our heads for a while, how does this disease have this darn broad set of symptoms across lots of different organ systems?" Dr. Daniel Jacobson, the lead researcher behind the supercomputer study, told Business Insider. "As we looked at the effects of bradykinin, our model was that this virus can affect several different types of tissues, several different organs."

    Too much bradykinin can send the body spiraling out of control
    Scientists already know that the coronavirus binds to cell receptors called ACE2. That's how the virus sneaks into the body's upper respiratory tract, then infects organs like the lungs, heart, kidneys, or intestines.

    But the supercomputers found that coronavirus patients had a 200-fold increase in the expression of ACE2 relative to a healthy person. This suggests the virus is actively influencing our bodies to make them even easier to infiltrate. At the same time, they computers found, coronavirus patients also had an eight-fold decrease in the expression of ACE, a protein that normally works with ACE2 to keep blood pressure in check.

    "This system that is normally very carefully balanced — COVID-19 really throws it out of whack," Jacobson said.

    This imbalance, the researchers think, is what leads to the over-production of bradykinin, which swoops in to keep blood pressure from getting too high. In severe cases, the cycle seems to go into overdrive: The body can't stop producing bradykinin. This is what researchers call a "bradykinin storm."

    An excess of the chemical widens the gaps in blood vessels, which allows fluid to leak out. That fluid, in turn, starts to fill up the alveoli: tiny air sacs in the lungs — hence why patients have trouble breathing.

    The supercomputers also found that coronavirus patients may over-produce a highly absorbent substance called hyaluronic acid. When the acid mixes with the fluid in the lungs, patients can feel like they're trying to breathe out of "a balloon full of Jell-O," Jacobson said.

    "There may be a tipping point where enough of this hyaluronic acid builds up, then all of a sudden they have respiratory distress," he added. "That explains why some people seem to be doing fine and then they crash and all of a sudden need hospitalization or worse."

    An explanation for the wide range of COVID-19 symptoms
    The bradykinin theory offers a surprisingly cohesive explanation for why COVID-19 infections can result in a broad spectrum of symptoms. Though the disease has certain hallmarks — a fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath — patients have reported a range of cardiac, gastrointestinal, and neurological problems.

    [​IMG]
    "Everywhere we go in the body and look at the symptoms being reported, they map pretty well to exactly what you'd expect to see from bradykinin," Jacobson said.

    [​IMG]© Li Yibo/Xinhua/Getty Images An infrared vascular imager shows blood vessels on the surface of skin in China's Shaanxi Province on March 6, 2020. Li Yibo/Xinhua/Getty Images

    A bradykinin storm could cause fluid to leak from the blood vessels in the brain, which would explain neurological symptoms like dizziness, headaches, fogginess, and confusion that some patients experience. It can also trigger swelling, pain, and inflammation in the body — which can result in muscle soreness and body aches, now known to be common COVID-19 symptoms. That could even lead to purple, swollen toes.

    What's more, Jacobson said, a loss of taste or smell is a classic response to decreased levels of ACE receptors. Lower levels of ACE have also been linked to a dry cough and fatigue.

    Furthermore, the increased production of hyaluronic acid may explain why some asymptomatic patients have abnormal lung scans, Jacobson added.

    "There's probably damage being done in people who feel fine otherwise," he said.

    Implications for future treatments
    Scientists still need to perform more clinical studies to know whether bradykinin storms are driving COVID-19 symptoms. But Jacobson's team isn't the first to suggest the theory.

    In May, Michigan researchers hypothesized that a bradykinin response could lead to life-threatening respiratory complications in some COVID‐19 patients. A study published the month prior also proposed that the body's bradykinin response was to blame for leaky blood vessels observed in the lungs of COVID-19 patients.

    The researchers behind that work suggested that a drug called icatibant, which blocks the body's signal to produce bradykinin, could help treat infected patients. A follow-up study showed that four of nine patients who received the drug no longer needed oxygen support after 10 to 35 hours. The drug also had no severe adverse effects. But the study was too small to yield any significant conclusions.

    Jacobson's study, meanwhile, found evidence that vitamin D might hinder a bradykinin storm from developing in the first place. Studies have already shown that Vitamin D could help reduce the severity of COVID-19 infections.

    [​IMG]© Kathleen Finlay/Getty Images Kathleen Finlay/Getty Images

    His study also supports the idea that corticosteroids can improve survival rates for COVID-19 patients. Bradykinin receptors activate an enzyme called phospholipase A2, which is inhibited by steroids. The World Health Organization issued a "strong recommendation" for the use of steroids among seriously ill patients last week.

    A competing hypothesis: the cytokine storm
    Previously, some scientists suggested that a different internal "storm" could be behind people's severe reactions to the coronavirus: a cytokine storm. That release of chemical signals, when it goes into overdrive, can instruct the body to attack its own cells. This response was also observed in patients who died of H1N1, SARS, MERS, and the 1918 Spanish flu.

    Jacobson said a cytokine response could produce some COVID-19 symptoms, but it's probably not as "stormy" as researchers once thought.

    "That hypothesis is losing a little bit of traction," he said. "We're not saying they're not linked. I think they are. It just doesn't look like the full-blown cytokine storm is completely supported by data."

    [​IMG]© REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo A patient suffering from coronavirus disease wears a snorkeling mask converted into a ventilator in Paris on April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo

    So far, the medical community has approached the bradykinin theory with cautious optimism.

    "To be honest, I'm worried that this proposal is almost too neat and form-fitting," Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist, wrote in Science Magazine. "Rarely do you get something that falls together this well."

    Still, he added, the findings are "pretty plausible."

    Jacobson said his team hopes to do more follow-up studies to test the theory, including studies involving long-haul coronavirus patients who have been sick for several months.

    "I have a couple of long haulers on my team, so this is really near and dear to our hearts, and we're seeing it play out in real time," he said.

    The bradykinin theory might play in there, too: Jacobson's team thinks that once that storm takes off, it could continue until the body figures out how to reset it. But it's still unclear whether any available treatments would make a difference for long-haul patients.

    "That's part of the joy of science," Jacobson said. "For every answer you have, it raises 10 more questions."
     
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  2. Sir iAco

    Sir iAco PhilMUG Addict Member
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    The supplement Dr. Fauci takes to help keep his immune system healthy
    Published Mon, Sep 14 2020
    Jade Scipioni@JADESCIPIONI
    cnbc.com

    [​IMG]
    Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, prepares to testify during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing in Washington, D.C., July 31, 2020.
    Kevin Dietsch | Pool | Reuters

    According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, most “so-called immune boosting supplements” actually do “nothing.” However, there are two vitamins Fauci does recommend to help keep your immune system healthy.

    “If you are deficient in vitamin D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection. So I would not mind recommending, and I do it myself taking vitamin D supplements,” Fauci, 79, said during an Instagram Live on Thursday, when actress Jennifer Garner asked Fauci about immune-boosting supplements.

    (In fact, researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine recently found a link between vitamin D deficiency and the likelihood of being infected with Covid-19 — those with an untreated deficiency were more likely to test positive. “Vitamin D is important to the function of the immune system and vitamin D supplements have previously been shown to lower the risk of viral respiratory tract infections,” David Meltzer, chief of hospital medicine at UChicago Medicine and lead author of the study said in a press release on Sept. 8.)

    In addition to vitamin D, Fauci said that vitamin C is “a good antioxidant.” “So if people want to take a gram or two at the most [of] vitamin C, that would be fine,” he said.

    (Vitamin C “contributes to immune defense by supporting various cellular functions” of the body’s immune systems, according to 2017 study published by The National Institutes of Health, and vitamin C also appears to prevent and treat “respiratory and systemic infections.” according to researchers.)
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Dr. Fauci Recommends These Vitamin Supplements to Fight COVID-19
    IN NEED OF AN EXPERT'S ADVICE? HERE ARE SOME VITAMIN RECOMMENDATIONS FROM NONE OTHER THAN DR. ANTHONY FAUCI.
    newsweek.com


    Scientists have yet to find a working solution to end the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccines are currently in progress, but it may take a while before we get to see it all bear fruit.

    For now, preventive measures are our best option through the use of masks, face shields, and physical distancing. However, these alone aren't enough to keep this menacing virus away. We need that added layer protection through our immune system.

    We all have our ways of doing so, but most of them are self-medicated. So to have a more definitive answer, we'll refer to the statements of none other than the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

    Dr. Fauci has also been leading the Trump Administration's Coronavirus Task Force. In a recent conversation with actress Jennifer Garner, he mentioned what he believes is an effective combination of vitamin supplements that could help shield ourselves from infection.

    Whichever method you may have should work well, but Dr. Fauci's recommendation is certainly worth hearing out, at the very least.

    The Expert's Answer
    [​IMG]

    So what is Dr. Fauci's recommendation? Vitamin D is at the top of his list, based on his own experience.

    If you're deficient in vitamin D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection. I would not mind recommending, and I do it myself, taking vitamin D supplements.

    The second item on his list? Vitamin C. He even suggested the dosage to start with.

    The other vitamin that people take is Vitamin C because it's a good antioxidant, so if people want to take a gram or so of vitamin C, that would be fine.

    We all know that Vitamin C is the go-to supplement to prepare for flu season, but for many of us, that's about it. The knowledge about how far it goes in terms of immune health protection could be very limited. Same thing with Vitamin D, and that you can get it from those early hours of sunlight in the morning.

    But what exactly do they offer, and why are they Dr. Fauci's top recommendations?

    Vitamin C: More Than Just a Cold Buster
    [​IMG]

    Once October rolls around, you'll see your local pharmacy packed with people more than usual. All of them are stocking up for protection, which is the smart thing to do.

    But Vitamin C is not just a weapon to fight the common cold. In fact, it bears a lot of other benefits you probably don't know of. Since the 1970s, experts also deemed it an effective medication for both cancer prevention and treatment, as well as cardiovascular diseases. They pointed to Vitamin C's antioxidant properties to kill off free radicals that cause cell damage.

    Whether it's because of COVID-19 or life's regular stressors, we do need a healthy amount of antioxidants in us. You can have that by not skimping on your Vitamin C intake.

    Vitamin D: The Unsung Immune System Defender

    [​IMG]

    You often hear doctors advise people to get a healthy amount of sunlight as one of their daily dose of Vitamin D. This nutrient bears a number of great benefits, from reducing inflammation to enhancing both bone health and your immune system.

    But Vitamin D is a bit more complex than generally perceived. If you drop by your local drugstore, you'll find two variants: Vitamin D2 and D3. What sets these two apart is that the former comes from plant sources like wild mushrooms. The latter, meanwhile, is mostly derived from animal sources like fish oil and egg yolks.

    When it comes to narrowing these two down, experts deem Vitamin D3 as the more effective nutrient, simply because it is processed better by the body.

    In terms of protection from COVID-19, Vitamin D plays a huge role, particularly for preventing respiratory tract infections. We could definitely use all the lung protection we can get, and this is one way of doing so.

    Are Vitamins C and D Effective Against COVID-19?
    [​IMG]

    If taken correctly, experts deem both of these supplements as providers of ample protection against the coronavirus. Especially with flu season coming up, you'll need that added line of defense.

    Like any other form of medication, doses matter a lot. Taking too much may cause adverse reactions like nausea and diarrhea, so it'd be best to stick to your doctor's prescription. The NIH recommends 90 milligrams of Vitamin C per day for men and 75 milligrams for women. As for Vitamin D, 15 micrograms per day is the sweet spot.

    And if you're in search of a brand that could suit you well, Cymbiotika offers its Synergy Liposomal
    Vitamin C
    and Synergy D3 Synergy D3 K2 COQ10. If we're talking about new-age supplements to tailor-fit this day and age of living, these are the perfect products to start with.

    Unlike traditional forms of medication, these are nutrients that go directly to your bloodstream. The body absorbs them a lot better, and ultimately, you reap the benefits more effectively.
     
    #2282 Sir iAco, Sep 16, 2020
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2020
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  3. Sir iAco

    Sir iAco PhilMUG Addict Member
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    How the Coronavirus Attacks the Brain
    nytimes.com
    It’s not just the lungs — the pathogen may enter brain cells, causing symptoms like delirium and confusion, scientists reported.

    [​IMG]
    Brain scans of coronavirus patients from a study published in July. Some develop serious neurological complications, including nerve damage, scientists have found.Credit...Ross W. Paterson, Rachel L. Brown, et al./Brain, Oxford University Press

    By Apoorva Mandavilli
    Sept. 9, 2020

    The coronavirus targets the lungs foremost, but also the kidneys, liver and blood vessels. Still, about half of patients report neurological symptoms, including headaches, confusion and delirium, suggesting the virus may also attack the brain.

    A new study offers the first clear evidence that, in some people, the coronavirus invades brain cells, hijacking them to make copies of itself. The virus also seems to suck up all of the oxygen nearby, starving neighboring cells to death.

    It’s unclear how the virus gets to the brain or how often it sets off this trail of destruction. Infection of the brain is likely to be rare, but some people may be susceptible because of their genetic backgrounds, a high viral load or other reasons.

    “If the brain does become infected, it could have a lethal consequence,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who led the work.

    The study was posted online on Wednesday and has not yet been vetted by experts for publication. But several researchers said it was careful and elegant, showing in multiple ways that the virus can infect brain cells.

    Scientists have had to rely on brain imaging and patient symptoms to infer effects on the brain, but “we hadn’t really seen much evidence that the virus can infect the brain, even though we knew it was a potential possibility,” said Dr. Michael Zandi, consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Britain. “This data just provides a little bit more evidence that it certainly can.

    Dr. Zandi and his colleagues published research in July showing that some patients with Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, develop serious neurological complications, including nerve damage.

    In the new study, Dr. Iwasaki and her colleagues documented brain infection in three ways: in brain tissue from a person who died of Covid-19, in a mouse model and in organoids — clusters of brain cells in a lab dish meant to mimic the brain’s three-dimensional structure.

    Other pathogens — including the Zika virus — are known to infect brain cells. Immune cells then flood the damaged sites, trying to cleanse the brain by destroying infected cells.

    The coronavirus is much stealthier: It exploits the brain cells’ machinery to multiply, but doesn’t destroy them. Instead, it chokes off oxygen to adjacent cells, causing them to wither and die.

    The researchers didn’t find any evidence of an immune response to remedy this problem. “It’s kind of a silent infection,” Dr. Iwasaki said. “This virus has a lot of evasion mechanisms.”

    These findings are consistent with other observations in organoids infected with the coronavirus, said Alysson Muotri, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who has also studied the Zika virus.

    The coronavirus seems to rapidly decrease the number of synapses, the connections between neurons. “Days after infection, and we already see a dramatic reduction in the amount of synapses,” Dr. Muotri said. “We don’t know yet if that is reversible or not.”

    The virus infects a cell via a protein on its surface called ACE2. That protein appears throughout the body and especially in the lungs, explaining why they are favored targets of the virus.

    Previous studies have suggested, based on a proxy for protein levels, that the brain has very little ACE2 and is likely to be spared. But Dr. Iwasaki and her colleagues looked more closely and found that the virus could indeed enter brain cells using this doorway.

    “It’s pretty clear that it is expressed in the neurons and it’s required for entry,” Dr. Iwasaki said.

    Her team then looked at two sets of mice — one with the ACE2 receptor expressed only in the brain, and the other with the receptor only in the lungs. When researchers introduced the virus into these mice, the brain-infected mice rapidly lost weight and died within six days. The lung-infected mice did neither.

    Despite the caveats attached to mouse studies, the results still suggest that virus infection in the brain may be more lethal than respiratory infection, Dr. Iwasaki said.

    The virus may get to the brain through the olfactory bulb — which regulates smell — through the eyes or even from the bloodstream. It’s unclear which route the pathogen is taking, and whether it does so often enough to explain the symptoms seen in people.

    “I think this is a case where the scientific data is ahead of the clinical evidence,” Dr. Muotri said.

    Researchers will need to analyze many autopsy samples to estimate how common brain infection is and whether it is present in people with milder disease or in so-called long-haulers, many of whom have a host of neurological symptoms.

    Forty percent to 60 percent of hospitalized Covid-19 patients experience neurological and psychiatric symptoms, said Dr. Robert Stevens, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins University. But the symptoms may not all stem from the virus’s invasion of brain cells. They may be the result of pervasive inflammation throughout the body.

    For example, inflammation in the lungs can release molecules that make the blood sticky and clog up blood vessels, leading to strokes. “There’s no need for the brain cells themselves to be infected for that to occur,” Dr. Zandi said.

    But in some people, he added, it may be low blood oxygen from infected brain cells that leads to strokes: “Different groups of patients may be affected in different ways,” he said. “It’s quite possible that you’ll see a combination of both.”

    Some cognitive symptoms, like brain fog and delirium, might be harder to pick up in patients who are sedated and on ventilators. Doctors should plan to dial down sedatives once a day, if possible, in order to assess Covid-19 patients, Dr. Stevens said.
     
  4. ice

    ice PhilMUG Addict Member

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    A Chinese virologist claimed the coronavirus was 'intentionally' released. Turns out, she works for a group led by Steve Bannon | Business Insider

     
  5. warmgreentea

    warmgreentea PhilMUG Addict Member

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    Just bought me and my family members packs of the Uniqlo Airism facemasks that launched today. They're really light and comfy, probably the comfiest one that I have among all facemask that I used.
     
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  6. Sir iAco

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    The Most Likely Way You’ll Get Infected With Covid-19
    You don’t have to sanitize your apples anymore, but you do have to wear a mask

    At the beginning of the pandemic in March, Jeffrey VanWingen, MD, a Michigan family physician, scared the bejeezus out of people and infuriated food scientists. During his 13-minute video, which went viral on YouTube and has been viewed over 26 million times, VanWingen tells people that when they come back from the grocery store, they should leave groceries outside for three days, spray disinfectant onto each product, and soak produce in soapy water. His rationale was that those items might carry the novel coronavirus and could potentially infect people after they come into contact with them.

    Six months later, we’ve learned a lot about how SARS-CoV-2 spreads, and it turns out most of VanWingen’s tips are largely unnecessary and some are flat-out dangerous (you should never bleach your food, but hopefully you already knew that). Instead of obsessing over objects and surfaces, scientists now say the biggest infection risk comes from inhaling what someone else is exhaling, whether it’s a tiny aerosol or a larger droplet. And while a virus traveling through the air sounds terrifying, the good news is there is a safe, cheap, and effective way to stop the spread: wearing a mask. Here are the three primary pathways of transmission, and what experts know about them six months in.

    Surfaces don’t seem to matter as much as originally thought
    The surface or fomite theory — that you’ll get infected by coming into contact with objects that carry the virus, called fomites, like door handles, shopping carts, or packages — was the original leading contender because that’s how scientists and epidemiologists think most respiratory diseases are spread. For example, when a person sick with a cold coughs or sneezes, tiny snot and saliva particles that carry the virus go shooting out of their nose and mouth and land on nearby surfaces. If someone else touches that surface and then touches their mouth, nose, or eyes they could become infected with the virus. This is why we’re supposed to wash our hands before eating or preparing food, and after using public transportation, or touching door handles, especially during cold and flu season.

    “I’m not saying that you can’t get it, that it’s impossible to get it from surfaces, but a very specific set of events have to occur for that to happen.”

    Supporting this idea, an early study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that SARS-CoV-2 survived on various surfaces for several days, including 24 hours on cardboard and 72 hours on plastic. Public health organizations recommended hand hygiene as the first line of defense against the virus, and there were runs on Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer at supermarkets and drugstores, the supply chains for which still have not recovered.

    The problem, says Emanuel Goldman, PhD, a professor of microbiology and biochemistry at Rutgers University, is that the experiments those recommendations were based on were the wrong experiments to do” because they were not representative of how people come into contact with the novel coronavirus in the real world.

    “They started out with a humongous, totally unrealistic amount of virus at the beginning of the experiment, and then, sure enough, they found virus at the end. But they started out with so much more than you would ever encounter in real life,” he says. “You would have to have 100 people coughing and sneezing on one small area of surface to get the amount of virus that was used in the papers that reported the survival of the virus on surfaces.”

    It turns out that despite the catastrophic harm it’s caused, the novel coronavirus is actually quite fragile, and it doesn’t like being out in the open where it can dry up. According to the NEJM paper, the virus’s half-life is a relatively short six hours, meaning that every six hours 50% of the virus shrivels up and becomes inactive or noninfectious. That means if you start with 100 virus particles, after six hours that number halves to 50 particles; six hours later there are 25 virus particles left, and fewer than 10 virus particles remain after 24 hours. However, if there are huge quantities of virus to start, many more will be left behind after each six-hour window, and it will take longer for all of the virus to disintegrate.

    Instead of buying another can of Lysol, maybe invest in an air purifier, more comfortable two-ply cloth masks, or even an outdoor fire pit or space heater.

    “If you start out with a realistic amount, and a realistic amount would be between 10 and 100 virus particles, because that’s what a droplet of a cough or sneeze is likely to have, then your virus is gone in a day,” Goldman says. “Now, I’m not saying that you can’t get it, that it’s impossible to get it from surfaces, but a very specific set of events have to occur for that to happen.”

    Regardless, it’s critical that people keep washing their hands — although that’s something we should all be doing for normal hygiene anyway — but, Goldman says, you don’t have to do anything excessive, like disinfecting your groceries.

    Close range droplets are the new leading theory In May, the CDC updated its guidelines to state that fomites were not a major source of transmission. Instead, the agency said, the primary route of infection was probably virus-laden droplets — those snot and saliva particles that are at the root of the fomite theory. But instead of worrying about them after they land on surfaces, the bigger concern now is coming into contact with the droplets while they’re still in the air.

    When you expel air — whether it’s by sneezing, coughing, talking, singing, shouting, or even breathing — tiny bits of saliva, ranging in size from an imperceptible mist to visible spittle, are pushed out. Heavier particles fall to the ground relatively quickly and are categorized as droplets, while the tinier particles stay afloat in the air for longer. When talking and breathing, the typical droplet trajectory is about three to six feet, hence the six-foot distancing recommendation. If the droplets are expelled with more force, like with a sneeze or a cough, they can travel further before hitting the earth.

    Being in close contact with someone raises the risk that you’ll be exposed to the small droplets they’re expelling, and many scientists now think that’s how most people become infected with the virus. One reason is that a virus inside a freshly exhaled droplet is more likely to be alive and infectious than a virus that’s been sitting on a doorknob for several hours. The other reason is that, in close range, breathing in the air that someone else just breathed out is going to expose you to a higher quantity of virus particles — called the inoculum — than after the droplets disperse and fall to the ground.

    “It’s not that [surface spread] can’t happen, it’s just that the likelihood is less than if someone was actually right in front of you breathing live virus in their droplets onto you,” says Nahid Bhadelia, MD, an infectious diseases physician and associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. “That is a much bigger inoculum, [and] it’s much more likely that there’s a lot more live virus in it, so that’s why it’s a higher risk.”

    As a result, social distancing has become one of the recommended ways to prevent transmission, the idea being that if you stay more than six feet away from someone, you won’t be hit by the majority of their exhaled droplets. Supporting this theory, most people catch the virus from someone they live with and presumably are in frequent close contact with. In one study from China, for example, an infected person had a 17.2% chance of spreading the virus to a family member who lived with them, but just a 2.6% chance of giving it to someone outside the home.

    “I think people have this preconceived notion that if it’s airborne it’s like the measles or like smallpox where it only takes one viral particle to infect you, and this is almost certainly not the case with this coronavirus. Most coronaviruses are probably in the hundreds.”

    However, there have been several documented instances of infections that don’t fit with droplet or surface spread because they happened even when people maintained their distance. Perhaps the most famous example is the choir rehearsal outside of Seattle, Washington, a superspreader event where 52 out of 61 people were infected during a two-and-half-hour practice. What’s notable about this case is that the singers maintained distance from each other and used plenty of hand sanitizer, per safety guidance at the time. Also, the infected person was presymptomatic, so they weren’t coughing or sneezing and projecting droplets further. Despite all this, one person was still able to infect 52 others.

    A study conducted in hamsters in a lab (that’s right, it turns out hamsters are the best animals in which to study coronavirus spread) found similar results in a more controlled environment. The researchers showed that the animals could infect each other not only through direct contact when they were housed in the same cage, but also when they were separated in different cages in the same room. Based on these studies and other mounting evidence, many scientists began to believe that the virus is transmitted through droplets and aerosols, those tiny mistlike particles that can travel farther through air currents and remain afloat for longer.

    Aerosol transmission has gradually gained acceptance
    Despite these observations, some public health experts were initially reluctant to say that the virus is airborne, partly because they didn’t want to alarm the public. There are also word airborne really means — whether the size of the particles or their behavior (how quickly they fall to the ground, whether they can be carried on a gust of air) matters more, and what questions must be answered before a disease can be defined as such.

    Part of the resistance to calling Covid-19 airborne is also rooted in history. For centuries, doctors and scientists didn’t know how diseases spread. One theory was that infections traveled in invisible clouds called miasmas or “bad air.” It wasn’t until the 1860s that Louis Pasteur’s germ theory of disease began to take hold, cemented in the 1890s with the discovery of viruses. As a result, scientists waged a campaign during the early 20th century to discredit the idea of miasmas and airborne spread with the goal of getting the public to take germs — and personal hygiene — seriously.

    “That became the paradigm of epidemiology and infectious diseases from 1910 until now,” says Jose Luis Jimenez, PhD, a professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder who specializes in aerosols. “For medicine, during all this time, a disease going through the air is extremely difficult. It’s an outlandish proposition.”

    As a result of this legacy, public health experts initially believed that SARS-CoV-2 couldn’t be spread through the air because the presumption was that virtually no diseases were. There have been a few exceptions made over the years, but those were for viruses that are so contagious they couldn’t conceivably be spread any other way — namely, measles and chickenpox.

    “For diseases like measles and chickenpox, because they are extremely transmissible, the evidence became too obvious,” Jimenez says. “They’re so transmissible through the air that it just became undeniable, and they were accepted as transmitted through aerosols.”

    As surprising as it may sound, by comparison, the novel coronavirus is not very contagious. Each person who gets infected with SARS-CoV-2 will, on average, spread it to two or three other people. A person with measles will infect 15 others. Jimenez says the WHO initially cited the coronavirus’s relatively low infectious rate as a reason why it couldn’t be spread through the air. “[They] are confusing an artifact of history with a law of nature,” Jimenez says. “They are thinking it is a law of nature that if a disease goes through the air, it has to be extremely contagious.”

    It wasn’t until a public outcry from over 200 scientists that the WHO finally conceded in July that aerosol transmission was possible.

    So if the novel coronavirus is airborne, why isn’t it as contagious as measles? One reason could be that measles is a heartier virus (remember that SARS-CoV-2 is relatively fragile) and can survive longer in those tiny aerosols. Another potential difference is the infectious dose — the amount of virus required to start an infection. Scientists still don’t know exactly how much of the novel coronavirus is needed to make someone sick, but it’s likely higher than conventional airborne viruses.

    “What’s the infectious dose via the respiratory route is really probably the last piece of this that isn’t completely answered yet,” says Joshua Santarpia, PhD, an associate professor in the department of pathology and microbiology at the University of Nebraska. “I think people have this preconceived notion that if it’s airborne it’s like the measles or like smallpox where it only takes one viral particle to infect you, and this is almost certainly not the case with this coronavirus. Most coronaviruses are probably in the hundreds.”

    Another question that needed to be answered before many public health experts could accept that SARS-CoV-2 was airborne was whether it could even survive in those smaller aerosol particles. Some viruses can’t because they dry up too quickly without a larger liquid droplet to support them. However, many scientists feel this issue has been put to rest with two recent papers (which have yet to be peer-reviewed) that provide what some have called the "smoking gun” for aerosol transmission: live, replicating virus collected from the air of Covid-19 patient hospital rooms.

    “Confidently, what you can say is that things that we consider aerosols, not droplets, have both [viral] RNA and [live] virus in them that is capable of replication in cell culture,” says Santarpia, who led one of the studies. “I think that between the two of [our studies], you can say that aerosols are infectious… meaning that probably we’re looking at something that’s airborne.”

    How to protect yourself from all transmission routes

    By now, most scientists and public health experts agree that SARS-CoV-2 can be spread by both droplets and aerosols, particularly in close range, although no one knows which is the dominant route of transmission. “I think it’s a false dichotomy to think of this as airborne versus droplet. Most things exist on a range,” Bhadelia says.

    What matters more is whether people know how to properly protect themselves from the virus. Fortunately, the prevention steps for both transmission routes are largely the same: keep your distance and wear a mask. Evidence of the importance of masks, in particular, has been mounting, not only because they trap outgoing particles from escaping, which protects others, but also because they block larger incoming particles from getting into a person’s airways, protecting the mask wearer themselves. And even if some viral particles do get through, the viral dose will still be much smaller, so the person will be less likely to get seriously ill.

    A clear example of the benefits of masks is a recent outbreak in South Korea, in which one woman at a Starbucks infected 27 other customers — whom officials assume were not wearing masks because they were eating and drinking — but none of the employees, all of whom were masked the entire time.

    Aerosol transmission does increase the importance of one additional protective step, which is proper ventilation and air filtration. Airflow, either introducing new air into a room or filtering the existing air, can disperse and dilute any infectious aerosol particles, reducing a person’s potential exposure.Being outdoors is the ultimate ventilation, and for months public health officials have recommended that people socialize outside rather than in. However, with winter and colder temperatures coming, indoor air filtration and adherence to masks will become even more important.

    “The important thing on the public side is air handling, reducing the number of people in enclosed indoor spaces, and wearing a mask,” says Bhadelia. “[Aerosol transmission] explains why indoor settings are so much more important and contribute so much more to new infections than outdoor settings do.”

    Armed with this knowledge, think about how you can make fall and winter safer, both physically and mentally. Instead of buying another can of Lysol, maybe invest in an air purifier, more comfortable two-ply cloth masks, or even an outdoor fire pit or space heater. Be prepared to meet friends outside in colder temperatures or insist upon masks, even in your home. We’ve still got a long way to go before we can declare victory over the novel coronavirus, but at least we know more now than we did six months ago. And you don’t have to sanitize your apples anymore.

    elemental.medium.com
     
  7. Sir iAco

    Sir iAco PhilMUG Addict Member
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    Kids have a better immune response to COVID-19 compared to adults, new study says
    Korin Miller
    [​IMG]Tue, September 22, 2020, 1:37 PM EDT

    Mystery solved? Why kids fight off COVID-19.Young COVID-19 victims treated at a New York hospital system had shorter stays, less need for mechanical ventilation and a lower mortality rate than adults, a new study found.

    'There has always been this mystery'»

    https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/kid...-covid19-compared-adults-study-173710433.html

    New study shows children’s immune response is more effective against COVID-19 compared with adults

    Data has shown that children, as a whole, have less severe cases of COVID-19 infections than adults. Now a new study may explain why: They have a better immune response to the virus.

    The study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, analyzed immune responses in 65 children and 60 adults with COVID-19 at a hospital system in New York City by looking at blood and cell samples. The researchers discovered that the children had a shorter length of stay, less of a need for mechanical ventilation and a lower mortality rate than adults.

    Previous research has found that a dangerous immune response to COVID-19 has been linked to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which can have severe outcomes in adults, including a great need for mechanical ventilation and a higher risk of death. It’s less common for children to have those severe consequences, which has caused some experts to theorize that their immune response to the virus is suppressed.

    But the study found that children actually produce higher levels of two immune system molecules called cytokines, specifically interleukin 17A (IL-17A), which helps prompt an immune system response early in an infection, and interferon gamma (IFN-γ ), which tries to stop the virus from replicating. The researchers found that the younger the patient, the higher their levels of IL-17A and IFN-γ. “This suggests that IL-17A and IFN-γ or the cells that produce them contribute to immune protection, particularly against lung disease,” study co-author Dr. Betsy C. Herold, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, tells Yahoo Life. “Our findings suggest that boosting innate immune responses early in the disease may be beneficial.”

    “Takeaway message: Kids do get infected and can get very sick but, in general, do better when infected with the virus,” Herold says. “This age-associated difference may reflect differences in immune responses.”

    Looking at specific forms of cytokines is important here, Dr. Danelle Fisher, a pediatrician and vice chair of pediatrics at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., who did not participate in the study, tells Yahoo Life. Cytokines are a group of proteins in the immune system, she explains. “Every cell in the human body has cytokines in it,” she says. “If the cells release the cytokines, then they have effects on the immune system.”

    Each cytokine has a slightly different impact on the immune system. “Some can be helpful, some can have dangerous effects,” Fisher says. “But the ones children are releasing more of seem to be more effective at fighting off SARS-CoV-2 than other cytokines that adults tend to release more.”

    That appears to be what’s sparing children from severe illness from COVID-19, she says. According to one analysis of pediatric COVID-19 hospitalization data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about eight per 100,000 children were hospitalized with COVID-19, compared to 164.5 per 100,000 adults.

    “There has always been this mystery of why children have milder cases of COVID-19 and are less represented among the hospitalized,” Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who did not participate in the study, tells Yahoo Life. “The immune response in children seems to be different.”

    While the study’s authors didn’t explore why the immune response is different in children versus adults, Adalja says it’s likely evolutionary. “Immune systems develop over time, and children’s immune systems face different threats than adults’,” he says. “They evolved this way.”

    The study results are exciting, but Dr. Chris Carroll, a pediatric critical care physician at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, cautions against putting too much weight in them. “This study provides an important clue in investigating the differences in immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus,” he says. “But more work needs to be done to determine the specifics of why children have less severe infections.”

    Carroll is also wary that the study only took a snapshot of the patients’ immune response. “The immune response to an infection may change over time, so future studies need to examine how that response changes with illness,” he says.

    Overall, though, experts say this study may help with finding a treatment for COVID-19. “Learning about this is important because some of the treatments we’re thinking about for COVID-19 are immune modulators,” Adalja says. (Immune modulators are a type of immunotherapy that enhances the body’s immune response.) “It will be interesting to see if we can harness how children respond to the virus to make better treatments,” he says.
     
    #2287 Sir iAco, Sep 23, 2020
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2020
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  8. Sir iAco

    Sir iAco PhilMUG Addict Member
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    Scientists Discover Sugar Molecules in SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus Spike Protein Play Active Role in Infection
    TOPICS:American Chemical Society Biochemistry COVID-19 Molecular Biology Virology

    By AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY SEPTEMBER 23, 2020
    scitechdaily.com

    [​IMG]
    In this illustration, glycans (dark blue) coat the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (light blue), which is anchored in the viral envelope (colorful bilayer on bottom). Credit: Adapted from ACS Central Science 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.0c01056

    As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, researchers are working overtime to develop vaccines and therapies to thwart SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the disease Many efforts focus on the coronavirus spike protein, which binds the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) on human cells to allow viral entry. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have uncovered an active role for glycans — sugar molecules that can decorate proteins — in this process, suggesting targets for vaccines and therapies.

    Before the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein can interact with ACE2 on a human cell, it changes shape to expose its receptor binding domain (RBD), the part of the protein that interacts with ACE2. Like many viral proteins, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has a thick coat of glycans on its surface. These glycans, which are attached at specific sites, help shield the viral proteins from the host immune system. Rommie Amaro and colleagues at University of California San Diego, Maynooth University (Ireland) and the University of Texas at Austin wondered whether certain glycans in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein might also be active players in the process leading to infection.

    To find out, the researchers used structural and glycomic data to build molecular dynamics simulations of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein embedded in the viral membrane. The computer models, which presented a detailed snapshot of every atom in the spike glycoprotein, revealed that N-glycans linked to the spike protein at certain sites (N165 and N234) helped stabilize the shape change that exposes the RBD, which could help promote infection. The simulations also identified regions of the spike protein that weren’t coated by glycans and thus could be vulnerable to antibodies, especially after the shape change. In laboratory experiments using biolayer interferometry, the team showed that mutating the spike protein so that it no longer had glycans at N165 and N234 reduced binding to ACE2. These results lay the foundation for new strategies to fight the pandemic threat, the researchers say.

    Reference: “Beyond Shielding: The Roles of Glycans in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein” by Lorenzo Casalino, Zied Gaieb, Jory A. Goldsmith, Christy K. Hjorth, Abigail C. Dommer, Aoife M. Harbison, Carl A. Fogarty, Emilia P. Barros, Bryn C. Taylor, Jason S. McLellan, Elisa Fadda and Rommie E. Amaro, 23 September 2020, ACS Central Science.
    DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.0c01056

    The authors acknowledge funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, the Irish Research Council, and the Visible Molecular Cell Consortium.

    https://scitechdaily.com/scientists...-spike-protein-play-active-role-in-infection/
     
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  9. Sir iAco

    Sir iAco PhilMUG Addict Member
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    Here’s how many health care workers have died from COVID-19
    By Gabrielle Fonrouge
    September 28, 2020 | 1:39pm | Updated
    nypost.com
    [​IMG]
    Bonnie Castillo, executive director of National Nurses United.Getty Images

    More than 1,700 health care workers have died of COVID-19 and related complications — after many of them said they didn’t have adequate personal protective equipment, according to the country’s largest nurses union.

    The report released by National Nurses United also found health care workers of color have been disproportionately affected by deaths and infections and there’s been a serious undercount of figures nationwide.

    “While this figure for all health care workers is higher than has been reported elsewhere, National Nurses United (NNU) believes it is a conservative estimate. These cases have been documented by NNU using media reports, social media, obituaries, union memorials, federal and state reporting, and NNU internal reporting,” the report states.

    “Comprehensive disclosure and transparency with respect to Covid-related health care worker deaths have been all too rare. These deaths frequently have been met with silence or outright denials. If hospitals are not widely required to publicly disclose their deaths and infection rates, they lack important incentives not to become zones of infection. We cannot allow the more than 1,700 deaths, many of them avoidable, to be swept under the rug, and vanished from our collective memory by the health care industry.”

    As of Sept. 16, NNU found an estimated 213 registered nurses have died from COVID-19 and related complications and more than 58% were nurses of color, which tracks with overall numbers linking the disproportionate impact the virus has had on communities of color.

    A total of 67 nurses, or 31.5%, are Filipino, even though the demographic makes up just 4% of registered nurses in the U.S., the report found. Thirty-eight, or 17.8%, were black when black RNs account for a total of just 12.4% of nurses nationwide, the report found.

    Further, NNU’s count of the total number of health care worker infections at 258,768 is 166% higher than the 156,306 cases the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.

    “However, we believe this total still represents a severe undercount. Just 16 states are providing infection figures for all health care workers on a daily, semiweekly, or weekly basis,” the report states.

    The overwhelming majority of overall health care worker and nurse deaths happened in New York with 310 and 58 fatalities respectively. However, California had the most infections with 35,525 cases. New York had 14,336 total infections.

    Specific facility information was only available for 1,515 health care workers but it shows the majority of deaths, 70.4 percent, occurred for staffers employed in places like nursing homes, medical practices, EMS settings and “other care settings,” the report showed. Just 448, or 29.6 percent, worked in hospital settings, the report found.

    NNU called on the federal government to use their authority under the Defense Production Act of 1950 to expand domestic production of personal protective equipment so health care workers can be safe while doing their job. They also called on them to mandate the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to establish an emergency temporary standard on infectious diseases.

    “NNU believes the standard must incorporate the evidence being gathered that the Covid-19 virus transmission is likely airborne, and as reflected in the arguments presented in the early July 2020 letter sent to the World Health Organization (WHO) by 239 scientists from 32 countries calling on WHO to “recognize the potential for airborne spread of Covid-19,” the report states.

    “The ongoing failure to take action is costing the lives of registered nurses, other health care workers, and patients.”
     
  10. denpacs

    denpacs PhilMUG Addict Member

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    Just made a short review on this one.
    Please check it out on the link below.
    Thanks! (y)

     
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  11. raypin

    raypin PhilMUG Addict Member

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    Mm......COVIDIOT TRUMP and wife Melania ARE COVID POSITIVE. MFacker finally gets it.

    source: his own tweet. Lol!

    it was bound to happen. Recent Trump rally:

    04FD1A2E-072B-437A-AB2C-1C98E8C11D56.jpeg
     
    #2291 raypin, Oct 2, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2020
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  12. Sir iAco

    Sir iAco PhilMUG Addict Member
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    [​IMG]
    How Russia Shortened the Covid Vaccine Race to Declare Victory
    Putin’s bold claims for Sputnik V put Russia’s vaccine on the map. Western scientists remain skeptical.

    By Stepan Kravchenko Ilya Arkhipov , and Yuliya Fedorinova
    October 1, 2020, 7:00 PM EDT
    bloomberg.com

    Russia’s version of America’s Operation Warp Speed
    vaccine project is located far from the Kremlin on a sleepy side street on the outskirts of Moscow.

    Tucked in a sandy-brick building with an office advertising medical tests and a dingy wooden door, it doesn’t look like a cutting-edge medical laboratory. But it was here that, if you believe President Vladimir Putin, Russia won the global race to develop a vaccine against Covid-19.

    Praising the developers at the state-run Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Putin declared in August that Russia had registered a shot for public use, making it the first vaccine worldwide to gain such clearance. Russia named it Sputnik V after the Soviet-era satellite that set off the space race in 1957 — a clear signal of the geopolitical importance Putin has attached to the project.

    The president’s live-TV announcement glossed over one key point. Russia approved the vaccine after tests in fewer than 80 people, with larger trials needed to assess safety and effectiveness just underway. Putin’s claim of victory has met with skepticism and disapproval from health experts in the West, where shots will have to be tested in tens of thousands of subjects before being cleared.

    [​IMG]
    Vladimir Putin speaks on Aug. 11.
    Photographer: Alexey Nikolsky/AFP via Getty Images
    The vaccine will be ready for wide distribution late this year or early next, officials say. That's roughly the same schedule as shots from rivals in the U.S., U.K. and China. Initial results from final-stage studies won’t be ready until November, with full data expected next year.

    “Overall I’d say Russia is a little bit behind the leading Western candidates,” said Rasmus Bech Hansen, CEO of Airfinity Ltd., a London-based firm that tracks Covid-19 vaccine and drug development, “but not far behind.”

    Putin’s August announcement has already delivered one key result for the Kremlin: It put Russia’s previously under-the-radar vaccine efforts on the map, triggering a rush of requests from governments around the world to buy or produce the shot. By late September, the head of the state fund backing the project said it had orders for 1.2 billion doses.

    “We did a survey in 12 key countries and name recognition for Sputnik is 80%,” Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said in an interview. “But it’s not PR. We’re trying to save people.” He says Sputnik is three to four months ahead of rivals.

    With the fourth-largest number of cases in the world but per capita health-care spending far lower than in most Western countries, Russia needs a vaccine. Facing a spike in cases, Moscow has joined other European capitals in tightening restrictions. Russian labs are working on another two dozen candidates.

    For years, Putin has pushed to rebuild Russia’s prowess in long-neglected life sciences, arguing success might one day determine global winners and losers. With little presence in global pharma innovation, the Kremlin has used vaccines as soft-power tools to win influence in developing countries.

    Named for a legendary Soviet microbiologist, Gamaleya was Russia’s biggest producer of a tuberculosis vaccine. In 2015, Putin praised its development of a shot against Ebola. About 2,000 people received it in Guinea in 2017-2018, according to Gamaleya’s website. But in the recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, new inoculations from Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson were used.

    Still, Gamaleya had broken through with the audience that mattered at home. The Ebola vaccine used adenoviruses, relatively harmless cold viruses, that can make proteins that stimulate the immune system against specific pathogens. Gamaleya also used the technique to develop an experimental inoculation against another coronavirus, the deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome.

    [​IMG]
    A heath worker prepares the injection site on a patient's arm for administration of the Sputnik V vaccine during a trial in Moscow, on Sept. 23.
    Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
    As Covid-19 began spreading earlier this year, it took Gamaleya scientists only a few weeks to adapt their MERS adenovirus vectors for the new pathogen. After testing on mice, guinea pigs and monkeys, the center’s director and key scientists injected themselves with the vaccine.

    “My goal wasn’t to be first in the world; it was to protect my loved ones,” Denis Logunov, a deputy research director at Gamaleya and head of the lab that developed the vaccine, said in July.

    Gamaleya got a key financial backer in the Russian Direct Investment Fund, whose chief, Dmitriev, meets regularly with Putin and works on some of the president’s most sensitive global assignments. RDIF studied more than two dozen vaccine efforts in Russia and chose Gamaleya and its human adenovirus-based technology because it had been used for years for other illnesses, said Dmitriev. He embraced the project, getting shots along with his family in April.

    “We are confident in the vaccine because we know the platform is incredibly safe,” he told Bloomberg Television Sept. 7.

    As the coronavirus spread, sickening officials and members of the business elite, Dmitriev and Gamaleya quietly offered shots to hundreds of Russia’s powerful people.

    “The vaccine is the only way to return to normal life,” said Andrey Guryev, a fertilizer CEO who was inoculated over the summer. “It’s important that Russia is one of the first countries to have it.”

    Early-stage trials included just 76 people, mostly military personnel. Others who received it were formally signed up as volunteers for trials and monitored, but no data on them have been released.

    The research, peer-reviewed and published in the Lancet medical journal only after Putin’s approval announcement, still raised questions from scientists who said results from some volunteers appeared too similar to be plausible. While the Gamaleya specialists have responded, more details should be released, said Enrico Bucci, a biologist at Temple University in Philadelphia.

    “We would like access to the full data record,” said Bucci, one of the authors of a letter to the journal criticizing the Gamaleya study. “The data we were asking for were not provided’’ in the response the Russian researchers made to the Lancet, he said.

    [​IMG]

    Bloomberg
    The politics of Covid-19 vaccines — and which countries will get them first — have roiled a field in which scientists normally work in relative obscurity. After U.S. President Donald Trump hinted that a vaccine might be authorized before the Nov. 3 election, drugmakers banded together in a pledge to uphold safety standards and avoid shortcuts.

    Sputnik’s developers, on the other hand, encouraged Putin to move their vaccine to the public sphere. After a visit to Gamaleya’s labs by Russia’s health minister in early April, the project was taken to Putin to seek his support. On a televised video meeting a few days later, center Director Alexander Gintsburg asked the president to sign off on an accelerated approval process, based on promising animal data.

    “We’ll do everything to accelerate the administrative procedures,” Putin replied.

    Before Aug. 11, Gamaleya’s vaccine was just one of hundreds of projects worldwide, trailing frontrunners including Moderna Inc., the University of Oxford working with AstraZeneca Plc, and the partnership of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE. Putin’s announcement of the approval of Sputnik V seemed to change all that.

    “We are the first to register one,” Putin said. “It forms lasting antibody and cellular immunity,” he told government officials in the televised meeting. “I know that well because one of my daughters has had this vaccination. In that sense, she participated in the experiment.”

    Dmitriev, the RDIF chief, followed with a whirlwind of international broadcast appearances. Russian state television featured top officials and politicians getting the shots and deliveries of the first small numbers to regions around the country. More than 6,000 people have gotten the shots since approval in August and are reporting back using a special app.

    While China has also released a vaccine for use outside clinical trials, it hasn’t claimed approval. Many of those getting shots are in the military, where experimental immunizations have often been used for national security reasons.

    “In China, we see more adherence to standards and transparency about what’s going on,” Airfinity’s Hansen said. “Ultimately it’s in the state’s own interest.”

    Meanwhile, Putin is pushing ahead, ordering an advertising campaign to help Russians choose which vaccine to use. RDIF announced deals with India, Brazil and Mexico to supply or produce the vaccine locally. Putin touted the shot in a speech to the United Nations, offering to provide it for free to the organization’s staff worldwide.

    To help strengthen their case, RDIF officials say they will release interim data from about 25,000-30,000 people in the phase 3 trial now underway at the end of October or early November. “Mass vaccination” will begin before that, Dmitriev said.

    [​IMG]
    A lab technician removes a vaccine bank from a cryostorage during production of the COVID-19 vaccine at the Gamaleya National Research Center in Moscow, on Aug. 6.
    Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
    Industry leaders are struggling to figure out how to produce what’s been promised. Fewer than 150,000 doses have been made, though RDIF says it’s targeting 10 million a month by December.

    “It’s just a race to make news when our speakers say there’s demand for another 100 million doses,” said Alexey Repik, whose R-Pharm Group has signed on to produce Sputnik V. “We don’t have enough vaccine to cover our own needs yet.”

    Despite the hype, Putin hasn’t tried the vaccine himself. Visitors must quarantine before meeting him face-to-face or sit at a distance in official events.

    Experts share his caution. Covax, the $18 billion initiative to deploy future Covid-19 vaccines around the world, would need to see results from a full, properly powered efficacy and safety trial along with regulatory review to “engage” on Russia’s vaccine, said Seth Berkley, chief executive officer of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, one of the partners in the international effort.

    “But we are talking to them,” he said, “and whether they have a product that will ultimately be useful or not I think will have to be told by the science, not by the politics.”


    — With assistance by James Paton

    bloomberg.com

     
  13. Godfather

    Godfather PhilMUG Addict Member

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    3qeus1.jpg

    maxresdefault.jpg

    Guess who has Covid?

    Clue: He's a nobody.

    Coronavirus to be renamed in his honor. Moronavirus.
     
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  14. Sir iAco

    Sir iAco PhilMUG Addict Member
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    Donald Trump, Melania Trump Test Positive For The Coronavirus
    huffpost.com

    The president tested positive for COVID-19 while working on plans to reopen the country despite the risks of cases soaring again.
    By Nick Visser and Carla Herreria Russo

    esident Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the coronavirus just days after one of his closest advisers who also had COVID-19 traveled with him aboard Air Force One.

    Trump announced the diagnosis in a tweet: twitter.com

    In a statement dated Oct. 1, 2020, Dr. Sean Conley, physician to the president, confirmed the diagnosis.

    “The President and First Lady are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence,” Conley stated.

    He also claimed Trump would continue to “carry out his duties without disruption while recovering.”
    twitter.com

    Trump canceled plans to travel to a rally in Florida on Friday but kept on his schedule a midday phone call with “vulnerable seniors” about CODID-19 support.

    Trump, who is 74 and is considered obese, according to an assessment in June by the White House physician, faces an increased risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have long warned that older adults and those with a body mass index of 30 or above are at increased risk of hospitalization and possibly the need for intensive care should they become infected.

    Hope Hicks, a counselor and senior adviser to the president, tested positive for COVID-19 after traveling with Trump on Tuesday for his first presidential debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden.

    People close to Hicks told Bloomberg News that she was experiencing symptoms of the virus. She was photographed not wearing a mask as she arrived at the airport in Cleveland for the debate.

    Trump’s infection also comes after many of his family members attended the debate in Ohio without wearing masks, even after a Cleveland Clinic doctor asked barefaced members of the audience to put them on.

    At the debate, Trump also mocked Biden’s wearing of masks at campaign events while falsely claiming there had been “no negative effect” from any of his large campaign rallies in recent weeks. (After a June 20 rally in Oklahoma, health officials cited it as the “likely” source of a surge in local cases.)

    “He could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen,” Trump said of Biden’s use of face coverings and his decision not to hold large in-person campaign events.

    The president’s infection comes amid his ongoing efforts to declare that the nation has largely moved past the worst threats of the pandemic and could reopen large swaths of the economy, a positive election season message that health experts have warned could not be further from reality.

    More than 207,000 people in the U.S. have now died of the coronavirus, and more than 7.3 million have been infected. Cases remain high or are rising in more than a dozen states even after an economically devastating shutdown period in nearly every corner of the country.

    Liza Hearon contributed to this article.
    huffpost.com
     
    raypin and Godfather like this.
  15. ransom

    ransom PhilMUG Addict Member

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    At least Trump won't have to worry about brain damage.
     
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  16. raypin

    raypin PhilMUG Addict Member

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    Mm...I think Biden should also be tested. Who knows? Trump’s spit reached Biden during the debate. Both men were maskless but socially distanced.
     
  17. SE20

    SE20 PhilMUG Addict Member

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    He said he is more positive than anyone ever tested in the history of the world.
     
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  18. eag

    eag PhilMUG Addict Member

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  19. raypin

    raypin PhilMUG Addict Member

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  20. Sir iAco

    Sir iAco PhilMUG Addict Member
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    Trump joins small group of world leaders who have tested positive for COVID-19
    msn.com


    From Washington to Madrid, politicians across the globe have been exposed to the virus, and in some cases caught it. Here's our watch list of presidents, prime ministers and supreme leaders who have been tested or may be at risk for infection.
    msn.com

    President Trump tests positive for COVID: Here’s what we know
     

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