It occurred about then, probably a bit before.
Printable View
another useful explanation video using very small words...
How To Tell If We're Beating COVID-19 - YouTube
Would someone be able to clear the fog for me with respect to mutation? I'm guessing that there are different types or degrees of mutation, so an unqualified use of that term may cause confusion.
This WaPo article has an encouraging thesis, that, unlike the flu, one vaccine will be effective for an extended period for most, given that the bug isn't mutating very quickly: https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...5b5_story.html
This Danish article (English translation courtesy of Google Translate) reports on the findings from the Icelandic boffins at DeCode Genetics who have observed that the bug is mutating quickly and have found 40 strains so far, enabling to trace 3 main clusters of infection source: Google Translate
The two articles do not appear to be consistent with one another as far as I can comprehend, but I don't have a head for this sort of stuff.
Coronavirus genome - What do we know about genes of COVID-19?
This article has useful links. The virus is always going to mutate. You have 30,000 bases with several distinct genes providing different functions. Anyone of the bases can be copied wrong, but most of the time, it doesn't really change the overall virus. It will come down to how the vaccine functions, and how it promotes a immune response from the body.
It is all theory since there is no working vaccine. Assume from the multiple of vaccine development projects, they will try to attack the problem in slightly different ways. The best thing that can happen is you get more than one viable vaccine which create a different immune response. Even if Virus mutates around one immune response, you'd have the other vaccine as backup.
More importantly, even before a vaccine is developed, we will probably have several forms of therapy. So fingers crossed, survival rates long term will only improve.
Thanks. Much of the stuff went over my head.
From previous posts, I understand the bit about this bug having only one RNA, unlike the flu with 8, so I understand that the scope of mutation is much more limited, relatively speaking. I also understand that the change in function is more of interest than the general phenomenon of mutation.
However, I'm not understanding the discrepancy between the two statements regarding the speed of mutation (and the number of mutations being counted), which in turn raises questions, in my mind at least, about whether one type of vaccine can be effective for a long time, for most people, (which is what I think the WaPo article is saying) when we probably don't know enough yet to project the frequency or extent of changes in function.
Chik, I think the honest answer is "We don't know".
SARS-CoV2 is a single strand (positive sense) RNA virus, one of many such.
The polio virus is another, the vaccine for which is famously incredibly effective and long lived. We can hope that a similarly effective vaccine for this virus will be found, and quickly, but we cannot know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc
If nothing else, thank you for giving me the opportunity to insert Doris Day into the conversation. I love Doris.
Slow down on speed of mutation, first let's think of Apples and Oranges. It is probably more apt to compare the family of Coronaviruses (MERS, SARS, CORVID-19) to the family of flu virus. The flu viruses are smaller than CORVID-19. 13,500 bases versus approx. 30,000. CDC sequences several thousand flu virus variants a year. Almost all of these changes, don't really add function to the virus in Flus.
The RNA is just the sequence which is the code to create the proteins needed to reproduced the virus in an infected cell.
Although the RNA is small and efficient, most mutations are not of consequence. You can think of our own human terms, we all have unique mutations in our own genomes. Of our 3billion bases, 99% is not expressed in proteins via RNA so we have a lot of wasted space. (we really don't know what non-expressed part of our genome does) Of the other 1%, it is our genes which are expressed. Statistically, almost all of our mutations are harmless.
If this wasn't the case for mutations, we'd be wiped out long long ago.
Neither source of information about the mutation has gone through peer review, so you can't tell which is fact and which is not. At least not from those two news reports.
As for mutation and vaccines, the viral component being used for vaccine development is the viral spike protein, either the whole thing or the receptor binding domain (RBD). The RBD is the part of the spike protein that binds to one of our proteins for entry into our cells. The logic is that changes (mutations) to the spike protein/RBD can interfere with cellular entry, and so these are selected against as the virus is propagated and evolves. Consequently, the vaccine is expected to be useful for a couple of years until the virus evolves in a way that both retains receptor binding activity AND changes the feature of the spike protein (the epitope) that our antibodies recognize. This might require multiple different mutations, greatly reducing the probability of it occurring. By using the whole spike protein for vaccine development, rather than just the RBD, there will be more epitopes and more, different antibodies made that bind to it, and so even if a mutation removes one epitope, others remain and the vaccine remains useful. A vaccine isn't going to be here for a while yet, but the prospects for getting a vaccine are pretty good.
I was thinking about the serology tests, and if you have the antigens/antibodies you are allowed to go back to work. Fed Gov Bullard is proposing something like this. This introduces an interesting dynamic to the labor market. If I am a minimum wage employee at Amazon, Walmart, a restaurant doing take out, and I have the antibody test, I would demand a raise. It is of incremental benefit to the employer. You are competing in a reduced labor market, a takeaway shop with all cooks being immune is no longer a risk of contaminating the food etc. It's be a marketing boon. I am sure you are immediately employable. Since many corporations refuse to allow unionism, this shifts the negotiating power back to you. You are by default part of a select union.. For large parts of the country not experiencing clusters, this may not be an issue, but for New York, Detroit and other urban areas, definitely an issue.
My daughter and her boyfriend have it in the UK with mild symptoms, it is clear this is it despite testing because he lost taste and smell. Not very surprising as she was still at work about 10 days ago as a primary school teacher.... Because the BoJo idiot did not close the schools until very late, this guy is now himself in the hospital.
Yes best wishes Lionel.
OK so much for a certifed workforce. It does reek of disparate treatment in any pay for work situation. One exception being volunteer/unpaid selection for healthcare and blood studies.
It's not a hypothetical. Germany is scheduled to begin serology tests on a small scale, to move to a program to give green cards so people can return to work.
The UK has discussed this as a game changer.
This was touted by Fed Gov Bullard as a way forward to get America back to work.
This will happen.