Corona Virus

[madducks]

Alabama football coach Nick Saban and athletic director Greg Byrne tested positive for COVID-19, the school announced on Wednesday.

Alabama head football coach Nick Saban has been cleared to coach in Saturday night's game between the No. 2 Crimson Tide and No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs.

According to Stewart Mandel of The Athletic, the University of Alabama announced that Saban has tested negative for COVID-19 three straight times, and his initial positive test was a false positive.

[madducks]

University of Florida football coach Dan Mullen has tested positive for COVID-19, he confirmed in a statement on Saturday.

Mullen said he’s isolating from his family and he’s experiencing “mild to no symptoms.”

Mullen’s positive test comes amid an outbreak of staff and players that’s amounted to more than 20 positive tests. Florida’s game against LSU scheduled for Saturday had already been postponed, as the school announced on Wednesday that it didn’t have enough players to play.

Mullen’s positive test comes in the wake of remarks that were dismissive of COVID-19 protocols. After a loss to Texas A&M last Saturday, Mullen suggested unprovoked in his opening statement that Florida fans should “pack The Swamp” this week, using the nickname for Florida’s stadium. He added: “Absolutely want to see 90,000 in The Swamp. Hopefully that creates a home-field advantage for us next week because now we passed a law in our state that we can do that.”

[rhd]

World cases now exceed 40 mil .

[madducks]

This song is awesome!

[Sour Masher]

This song is awesome!

That is great. I hope Disney doesn't go after him!

[rhd]

Another stats update as of 7:46 AM today. Last stats were from 10/12 at 7:46 AM, exactly 7 days ago. Mortality rate is figured using the current death total divided by the total cases from the update 3 weeks ago (9/28).

- 8,388,013 cases in the US, up from 7,992,932, an increase of 4.94% which is a larger increase than last time (4.66%). At the current rate of increase, the US will have 10 mil. cases by about 11/14. The new cases for this period were 395,081 which gives a 7-day daily average of 56,440, up from 50,838. A comparison w last period's new cases (355,866) gives a new cases increase rate of 1.110, lower than that of the last update (1.128). The current test positivity rate is 5.33%, higher than that of the last update (4.90%) and now above the WHO threshold figure of 5.0%. Currently, there are only 9 states that have R-naught below 1.0 a decrease from the 12 states last update, so the overall US R-naught still must be above the recommended threshold of 1.0, and it appears to be going higher. The values for the different states range from 0.91-1.31. We definitely are in the fall spike now. This new wave has mainly occurred in the upper Mideast, Midwest and mountain states. Each of the 3 surges in the US have been disproportionately experienced by a different section of the country.
- 224,732 deaths in the US, up from 219,706, an increase of 2.29% which is a smaller increase than last time (2.37%). The new deaths for this period were 5,026 which gives a 7-day daily average of 718, down from 727. The mortality rate is 3.07% (224,732/7,321,465), slightly lower than last time (3.14% (219,706/7,005,686)). The mortality rate for the week's new deaths is 1.59% (5,026/315,779), lower than last time (1.72% (5,091/295,655)).
- 40,295,165 cases worldwide, up from 37,766,210, an increase of 6.70% which is a slightly larger increase than last time (6.65%). The new cases for this period were 2,528,955, which gives a 7-day daily average of 361,279, up from 336,504. A comparison w last period's new cases (2,355,531) gives a new cases increase rate of 1.074, which is lower than last time (1.125).
- 1,119,757 deaths worldwide, up from 1,082,604, an increase of 3.43% which is a much smaller increase than last time (3.80%). The new deaths for this period were 37,153 which gives a 7-day daily average of 5,308, down from 5,667. The mortality rate is 3.36% (1,119,757/33,316,224), lower than last time (3.47% (1,082,604/31,243,793)). The mortality rate for the week's new deaths is 1.79% (37,153/2,072,431), lower than that of the previous period (1.94% (39,667/2,046,407)).

Another new territory (Wallis and Futana, islands in the South Pacific) got a case for the 1st time, bringing the world total to 220 countries and territories.

New case rate increases went down for both the US and the world but the rate of increase of new cases went up again for both the US and the world. For the US, the R-naught seems to have gone up again, and the test positivity rate also went up again, both bad signs.

Cases continue to surge in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Canada, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, Iran and Morocco. And cases have surged recently in Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Belarus, Armenia and Myanmar. But case increases have dropped recently in Israel. India's cases are now 7,553,959, up from 7,122,862, giving a 7-day moving average of 61,585. India's daily cases now are decreasing while the US's are increasing, so while as recently as 2 weeks ago it looked certain that India would pass the US soon in total cases, this looks very uncertain now. Europe and North America continue to experience a sharp surge in new cases.

[rhd]

Here is an article explaining in some detail what herd immunity is and some of the factors potentially affecting it. It is by an Indian mathematician:

https://science.thewire.in/health/india-covid-19-epidemic-herd-immunity-threshold-lockdown-vaccine-mitigation/

After reading it, altho I did learn some things, such as how the herd immunity for a disease is calculated, I still dont understand herd immunity. One of the most significant things about the article is that it is very critical of the herd immunity approach in combatting CV-19. It basically says that the best approach is to use preventative measures to slow the spread until effective vaccines or effective medicines are found.

[MagSeven]

Here is an article explaining in some detail what herd immunity is and some of the factors potentially affecting it. It is by an Indian mathematician:

https://science.thewire.in/health/india-covid-19-epidemic-herd-immunity-threshold-lockdown-vaccine-mitigation/

After reading it, altho I did learn some things, such as how the herd immunity for a disease is calculated, I still dont understand herd immunity. One of the most significant things about the article is that it is very critical of the herd immunity approach in combatting CV-19. It basically says that the best approach is to use preventative measures to slow the spread until effective vaccines or effective medicines are found.

Thanks for the article.

[rhd]

Here is the latest video from Dr. John Campbell, which is about a recent article (Oct 14th) detailing the results of 51 different studies re: seroprevalence (presence of antibodies) of CV-19 among different populations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofGMSH5tjYk&ab_channel=Dr.JohnCampbell

It says that the average infection fatality ratio (IFR) among these populations was 0.23% (see at 3:56 of the video). This basically is the "real" death rate from CV-19 based on the # of people actually infected. The case fatality ratio (CFR) that I calculated in today's update was 3.07% for the US so this IFR is about 13 times less than this. This would seem to indicate that the number of actual infections in the US is 13 times higher than the reported # of active cases (approx. 5 mil. at the time of the article), which would put the actual # of US residents infected at about 65 mil., which is about 20% of the population. That seems high. The studies of seroprevalence that I have seen in the past indicated to me that the IFR was around 0.75%. Also, another recent report (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/26/less...udy-finds.html) estimated that the actual "herd immunity" level of the US was less than 10%, which would agree w my IFR figure. Another recent report (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkvk..._channel=NewsX) said that the estimated # of Indians that have CV-19 antibodies was around 30%, which is even higher than the figure indicated in this article. Interesting info. I didnt read the actual article. Another interesting thing about this video was that some people, perhaps as much as 9%, that are diagnosed as infected do not develop antibodies. I had not heard this before. Perhaps some these were false positives.

[nullnor]

a peer reviewed research paper from 2008
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2395109/

A 3V armored L-RNA of 2,248 bases containing six gene fragments—hepatitis C virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV1, SARS-CoV2, and SARS-CoV3), avian influenza virus matrix gene (M300), and H5N1 avian influenza virus (HA300)—was successfully expressed by the two-plasmid coexpression system and was demonstrated to have all of the characteristics of armored RNA.

SARS-CoV2 is Covid19 and SARS-CoV3 isn't supposed to exist yet- especially not in 2008. this is going to be where it is found, in the research paper trail.

[Sour Masher]

a peer reviewed research paper from 2008
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2395109/SARS-CoV2 is Covid19 and SARS-CoV3 isn't supposed to exist yet- especially not in 2008. this is going to be where it is found, in the research paper trail.

My understanding is that researchers name viruses following inconsistent naming conventions (there was some debate about renaming SARS-CoV2 early on, because of potential confusion in the public about SARS). I do not understand the science of that paper, but it seems possible/likely that they are naming a different virus there that did not catch on or got renamed, freeing the name to be used for this new virus now. But this is interesting. I'd love for someone with knowledge of this stuff explain to me what the viruses in the paper were/are, what they are called now, and why those names did not take and how this new virus is different.

[Ken]

My understanding is that researchers name viruses following inconsistent naming conventions (there was some debate about renaming SARS-CoV2 early on, because of potential confusion in the public about SARS). I do not understand the science of that paper, but it seems possible/likely that they are naming a different virus there that did not catch on or got renamed, freeing the name to be used for this new virus now. But this is interesting. I'd love for someone with knowledge of this stuff explain to me what the viruses in the paper were/are, what they are called now, and why those names did not take and how this new virus is different.

Correct. Naming convention issue.

The SARS coronavirus BJ202 genome, which is what this article was calling "SARS-CoV-2" is here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/AY864806

COVID-19, which is Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/1798174254

In reality there are numerous potential genomes of the SARS coronavirus.

https://tomdelmundo.com/2020/06/covid-19-day-87-sunday-meme/

[frae]

A nice visual of all the times Trump has claimed the virus will disappear or is disappearing while showing how covid cases were growing...

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/10/politics/covid-disappearing-trump-comment-tracker/index.html

[nullnor]

those 2 genomes don't seem all that similar. I was wondering if it had the RAA receptor binding RBD site. maybe it was an early mutation of the original SARS and that's why they called it that.

anyways I went back to https://virological.org/t/tackling-r...cov2019/384/22 which was a good source of gene jockey information earlier in the year and they had more comments. and then the guy wrote a paper sort of. I think he is saying CoV-2 came from a common ancestor of Bat RaTG13 and a pangolin Pan_SL-CoV_GD/P1L (which had the RBD) and Bat HKU9. I am trying to recall what I read but. the info takes a while to sink in. I think it's highly likely there will be proof of a natural origin found from the wobbles or the drift in the genetics.

[nullnor]

I guess there is a possibility of CoV2 mixing with MERS. something about their breakpoints being similar and could swap segments of code; otherwise genetically MERS is less similar to CoV2 than SARS is. in contrast I came across this statement

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)—another deadly coronavirus, but which is currently not presenting a pandemic threat—emerged in 2012, and has caused 2494 reported cases and 858 deaths in 27 countries and has a very high case fatality rate of 34%.3 Because MERS-CoV is widespread in dromedary camels, zoonotic cases continue to occur, unlike SARS-CoV, which emerged from wildlife and was eliminated from the intermediate host reservoir. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...484-9/fulltext

which would increase the likelihood of CoV2 and MERS having the chance of recombination events.

if you look at the timeline of SARS (2003) and MERS (2013) and CoV2 (2018) and compare the characteristics, you could philosophically think nature is randomly throwing them around. the first two with too much mortality and then this one with too much transmissible but less lethal. it's seems simply like a recent pattern of naturally emerging zoonotic respiratory coronaviruses. if I philosophically thought independently evolving viruses become more transmissible and less lethal. eventually the mortality rates naturally selects itself down. and when the host species survives the accumulated viral fragments left in it's DNA help the host against future disease.

my interest in CoV2's origins is for philosophical reasons. if it's natural we can use history as a guide and might able to predict the future path of CoV2 better. but if it's not than you can't.