Corona Virus

[Kevin Seitzer]

We're now at the same point, roughly, in cases and hospitalizations, and on the same trendline, that we were at when we had the stupid argument here last fall about whether we were about to see a huge increase in deaths from COVID. It really stinks to be back here.

[The Feral Slasher]

We're now at the same point, roughly, in cases and hospitalizations, and on the same trendline, that we were at when we had the stupid argument here last fall about whether we were about to see a huge increase in deaths from COVID. It really stinks to be back here.

Hopefully there is better treatment and some cases are people who are vaccinated. Still lots of pain and suffering to come for sure.

[TranaGreg]

I'm reminded of that Churchill quote, "Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else" ... maybe that's not such a great approach during a pandemic ...

[Moonlight J]

We're now at the same point, roughly, in cases and hospitalizations, and on the same trendline, that we were at when we had the stupid argument here last fall about whether we were about to see a huge increase in deaths from COVID. It really stinks to be back here.

It really does. My local township voted 5-2 to put a mask mandate into effect immediately last night. I renovated my patio over the summer to cover half of it & mounted an outdoor TV to watch games. I'm finding it to be my preferred hangout these days and looks like it will be that way for the forseeable future

[hacko]

Dr in Alabama refuses to see patients unless they have been vaccinated and his county is one of the least vaccinated in the US.

[Moonlight J]

I worked with a district this morning which has seen a 41% spike in the amount of student + staff they had to quarantine over the past week. Went from 530 to 751

[Kevin Seitzer]

Hopefully there is better treatment and some cases are people who are vaccinated. Still lots of pain and suffering to come for sure.

I'm not sure the treatments are all that much better now than they were this winter. I'm hearing more about Regeneron, probably because it politically benefits DeSantis to talk about it, and not because it's widely available or cheap enough for the common person yet. Those who are vaccinated certainly should do better, but it doesn't seem like many of those who are ending up in the hospital with COVID were vaccinated to begin with.

That's me being Debbie Downer on your attempt at hope.

[The Feral Slasher]

I'm not sure the treatments are all that much better now than they were this winter. I'm hearing more about Regeneron, probably because it politically benefits DeSantis to talk about it, and not because it's widely available or cheap enough for the common person yet. Those who are vaccinated certainly should do better, but it doesn't seem like many of those who are ending up in the hospital with COVID were vaccinated to begin with.

That's me being Debbie Downer on your attempt at hope.

Yeah, it looks like the math hasn't changed much in the last year. With in person schools/colleges starting up seems like it may get quite a bit worse before it gets better.

[nullnor]

an interesting question is where did the seasonal flu go during the pandemic. previously I attributed it to masking, social distancing and lockdowns. but there are also other potential explanations. there is a thing called viral interference. it is a well known but poorly understood concept in virology. and there are multiple theories and reasons it may occur. it could be cross immunity, or it could be the innate immune system is amped up from one virus preventing infection from a similar or a different one. it could be cells infected from one virus prevents another infection. like two ppl trying to get thru one door. if true, there's other wacky things that could or might happen. if the flu is displaced by covid, when a country reaches herd immunity the flu should return. in countries with a lot of flu infections covid should've had a low or lower infection rate. in countries with high infections they should have a low flu infection rate. you can also test vaccination and natural immunity and adaptive and innate immune systems at the same time. even the seasonal colds could be affected.

so maybe I am missing something on the twindemic covid + flu thing. didn't we have low flu rates last year? if it was masks than countries like Sweden should get the flu first. but if they have a lot of natural infection their innate immune system should be amped up. I don't know. i'm starting to confuse myself. theoretically countries like New Zealand that only used vaccines and lockdowns should have an immunity debt to be paid, they should have a bad flu season. I didn't know that Massachusetts tried in August to make the flu vaccination mandatory by Dec for people under 30 attending schools. and they got sued and canceled the mandate citing a weak flu season. but then I think they mandate it in other professions.

so there is the scientific hypothesis for why there can be no twindemic.

[nullnor]

and then sometimes I worry that my logic in correlation vs causation looks something like this

[nullnor]

3 thoughts before I go to bed tonight.

1) this article that came out yesterday Sars-CoV-2 spike protein activates human endogenous retroviruses in blood cells https://phys.org/news/2022-01-sars-c...ndogenous.html

It is now of the utmost importance to find out how SARS-CoV-2 activates HERVs. In light of the known penchant for transposable elements to both be activated by, and further integrate into sites of active DNA repair, it may be worth revisiting earlier studies that purported to show that reverse transcribed SARS-CoV-2 RNA https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33958444/ could integrate into the genome of cultured human cells and subsequently express in patient-derived tissues.

I haven't put much effort into it yet, and it's going to take time to understand what is being said here. but i think it's basically putting a slam dunk on covid being able to integrate to our DNA. this is only from infection and not vaccination; unless not all spike proteins are created equal. I basically almost have no idea what this means or the article is implying. but it scares the shit out of me before I can do some due diligence. I don't know if GITH remembers when we were talking about the nurse that wouldn't get jabbed because she feared it writing to her DNA and I posted how it could happen but that it was extremely unlikely. so when you see words like Line-1 retrotransposons, Transposable elements, or jumping genes you know they are talking about writing to DNA. the academic paper is here https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....18.21266111v2 but if I can't understand the synopsis what good will the paper do me. so this issue immediately gets bumped up on the to do list. so maybe I was wrong saying Cov-2 isn't hiding in our bodies. it could mean a million things. still testing positive after full recovery, long covid. or maybe it means nothing. I can't find anyone talking about it. I went to the academic paper and there are ppl linking it to their twitter accounts and tried to see if it's being discussed.

2) why viruses become more contagious and less severe. I see you guys talking about it a little bit. and I am glad to see an interest in it.
a) it really depends on the virus and the host. you'll see statements from ppl saying no respiratory virus in human history has ever become more virulent as opposed to less contagious. and that's not true. as rhd point out to me early the 1918 flu's 2nd wave was more virulent. that's on the to do list also because I found the reason why and didn't save it, and I haven't tried to find it again yet. but there is definitely biological evidence out there in the record of influenza mutations. so while it can happen, it's not usually the norm.

so I was thinking, well, why do they say respiratory viruses become less severe over time. and I thought about Ebola. here is a virus that has been around a very long time, some say a million years. and I thought, but humans are not Ebola's natural host. we have a pretty good idea it's bats, but it hasn't been established. and if it's been around so long, then it would have no selective pressure to change. Ebola is perfectly happy with it's host reservoir. it has no reason to become less severe or virulent. and every time a human gets infected with Ebola it's spillover and incidental. another reason is, and I am assuming this, Ebola doesn't mutate that much. it's a DNA virus, it's more stable. it's vectors are much harder to infect other species. so it's kind of a one trick pony. it's a specialist. and in nature we know specialist's are at greater risk of extinction when there is change. and you can make an argument that bats are a much better host than humans. they have the best immune systems on the planet. they fly around a lot so whatever it's carrying still has opportunities to spread. basically, once you've infected bats and can coexist with them, you've hit the lottery.

so the argument between transmission and virulence depends on the virus and the host and the selective pressures. take cholera for example, when there is poor sanitation it spreads easier. there is no selective pressure on it to mutate and change vectors. but if there is better sanitation it mutates to become more transmissible at the expense of virulence. yet, there are no known animal hosts for cholera. or maybe we should look at the bird flu's for an answer. H5N1 spreads between wild and domesticated birds. but there has to be some birds that are better hosts. the ones that don't die from it. that is because the virus has worked out a deal with it's primary host. it's allowed to coexist. it's become less virulent. other birds that catch H5N1 die from it because it hasn't adapted and the virus burns itself out.

what does this mean for covid? if my theory is correct, the best way to cause a virus to become less virulent is to be it's primary host. as time passes the host and the virus will adapt to each other. -because if it doesn't, we will put selective pressures on it and exterminate it. but there is a caveat here. and it's another theory I have. once a virus has reached full transmissibility in it's primary host (and there is a physical, biological limit where it can't become more contagious) it's really free to mutate however it wants as long as it doesn't lose contagious. this would be the only environmental selective pressure that would cause it to become more severe. and outside of the 2nd wave of the 1918 flu, there is only one other example I know of where this has happened and that is in Marek's disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease

Because vaccination does not prevent infection with the virus, Marek's is still transmissible from vaccinated flocks to other birds, including the wild bird population..The vaccine's inability to prevent infection and transmission allows the spread of highly virulent strains among vaccinated chickens. The fitness of the more virulent strains is increased by the vaccine.The evolution of Marek's disease due to vaccination has had a profound effect on the poultry industry. All chickens across the globe are now vaccinated against Marek's disease

we caused Marek's disease to become more virulent because the vaccination only reduced symptoms but did not prevent transmission. thus the only way cause a virus to become more virulent in it's primary host is to vaccinate the host with a non-sterilizing vaccine. if this were to happen then the vaccinated host would be the vectors while the unvaccinated would not because they would die.

3) I forgot what number 3 was.

[nullnor]

are there any respiratory retroviruses in nature?

[Gregg]

are there any respiratory retroviruses in nature?

There is one found in sheep.

Causes contagious lung tumors.

[nullnor]

this was an interesting take on the subject of viruses becoming more contagious and less severe over time. these guys say that viruses run out of possible mutations eventually and if they can't recombine with another virus, they end up making errors and lose fitness. i'm not familiar with Luc Montagnier he's famous but he said some controversial stuff about covid before. which isn't really reflected here. i just ignore the hard data and found the discussion part interesting.

THE OMICRON VARIANT BREAKS THE EVOLUTIONARY LINEAGE OF SARS-COV2 VARIANTS https://www.granthaalayahpublication...view/4418/4510
Jean Claude Perez, Valère Lounnas, Pr Luc Montagnier

DISCUSSION Genome instabilities and epidemic endings are a general law of virus evolution. The mechanisms by which the genome of a rapidly mutating virus may become unstable and provoke the end of an epidemic are unknown, but it seems that they do exist in parallel with the development of the collective immunity or as a consequence of it. We are referring here to viruses that mutate at a rate much faster than the human life span, like flu viruses and SARS coronavirus, excluding retroviruses that can mutate extremely rapidly like the HIV virus because they integrate the genome and thus infect permanently their host. The collective immunity tends to exert a positive evolutionary pressure on these classical RNA viruses to force their adaptation to the more resistant fraction of the population apparently untouched by the virus, despite having been in contact with it, or to the population already immunized after having developed marked symptoms. Ter Meulen (2006)[ter Meulen, Marco Vignuzzi] However, it is observed until now that the efficiency of a perpetual adaptation process is not guaranteed, fortunately, and as a matter of fact the acute phase of epidemics always fades away even-though virus variants continue to circulate for quite a number of years, having a marginal lethal impact. This was the case with the Spanish Influenza A deadly world pandemic of 1918-1919, the basis of the pathogenicity of which remain unanswered and that disappeared progressively. Research indicates that descendants of the 1918 virus still persists enzootically in pigs and probably also circulated continuously in humans, undergoing gradual antigenic drift and causing annual epidemics, until the 1950s. Taubenberger (2006)[Taubenberger]This fact observed for the Spanish Influenza H1N1 virus has a direct and profound implication on the understanding of the stability of viral genome. Would the immunity escape process be always guaranteed then the virus would circulate endlessly along the years with potentially the same level of contagiousness and pathogenic character? The fact that does not seem to happen means that viruses that mutate much faster than the human lifespan do not possess a capacity of infinite adaptation. As the collective immunity spreads, they cannot continuously generate new viable and efficient variants issued from mutation and recombination of themselves and end up generating defective genomes Bosma (2019), Rezelj (2021), Nayak (1989). To survive this programmed decline, they need to re-assort with a viable “helper” virus, a situation not necessarily fulfilled. Vignuzzi (2019)[Marco Vignuzzi, Von Magnus]Thus, it is logical to hypothesized that having explored all possible mutations the genomes of SARS-CoV2 will inevitably become defective and not able anymore to generate new efficient variants in the absence of such a rescue mechanism. It may thus become dormant in an intermediate host until it disappears and/or be replaced by another virus.

and they explain what happened to SARS

It must consider that the deadly epidemic of SARS-CoV of 2003-2004, by many aspects a virus close to SARS-CoV2, has ended without the need for mass vaccination and lock-down. The end of the epidemic was marked by an increasingly defective genome with progressive deletion in the accessory Orf8 gene, at the end of the genome sequence, that participates in viral replication. “A 29 nucleotide (nt) deletion within ORF8 occurred in all strains involved in the middle and late phase of the human epidemic” Muth (2018), Chinese SARS Molecular Epidemiology Consortium (2004)[Doreen Muth, Rossa, Chinese SARS Molecular Epidemiology Consortium]. Truncated genomes at the level of the terminal Orf coding the multifunctional-role nucleocapside protein N have also been observed at the end of the epidemic. Muth (2018), McBride (2014)[Ruth McBride] The hampered virions did not have replicative capabilities.

and that was my call that Omicron is the result of a recombination with another benin cornoa virus.

CONCLUSIONS Contrary to the emergence of the original SARS-CoV2 virus in Wuhan in December 2019 that poses serious concerns regarding its natural origin, Perez and Montagnier (2020), Lounnas (2021), Quay (2020)Lounnas, Quay], we are here witnessing a scenario that is fully in accordance with established knowledge on epidemic evolution. The number of mutations in the spike gene increasing dramatically along with contagiousness from the Alpha to the Omicron variant is in clear agreement what we know on natural pandemic development such as that of the Spanish influenza of 1918-1919. End of epidemic variants are expected to be less infectious and highly defective. It is not impossible that Omicron is a end of epidemic variant that has tried to survive by recombining with a helper virus (a benin coronavirus), possibly via HIV infected persons who are more prone to develop long-term viral infection but also who may integrate the vaccine RNA in their genome via the HIV reverse transcriptase. And of course, end of epidemic variants normally is much less pathogenic but highly contagious helping the collective immunity to spread broadly. This article in Nature explains how debilitated variants may serve as natural vaccine Rezelj (2021). This should be reflected in a worldwide continuously decreasing Covid-19 death toll in the coming months.

i was more interested in another theory to consider for decreasing virulence but i don't think it's possible for a virus to run out of combinations to mutate.

[nullnor]

it's weird that Luc Montagnier who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus. I guess he's an antivaxxer or something. I haven't been paying attention but 1.5 years ago he claimed Covid had HIV inserts. I guess he's gotten worse since then. but I find it weird he co-authored a paper later about Omicron being a traditional RNA virus.

this was an interesting paper that was pulled from biorxiv and seemed to create a big controversy. Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...871v1.full.pdf

We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts beingdiscontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. This work provides yet unknown insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus.

and this looks like the rebuttal. HIV-1 did not contribute to the 2019-nCoV genome https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7033698/

The detection of completely matched sequences of 1 and 2 insertions in only a few HIV-1 strains demonstrated that four insertions are very rare or not present among tens of thousands of natural HIV-1 sequences. This also explains why four insertion homolog sequences could only be independently found in different HIV-1 genomes [8]. Because of their poor identities to and rareness in the HIV-1 sequences, HIV-1 could not be the source for those insertion sequences in the 2019-nCoV genome.

there were some nice graphs I can't embed. anyways, I can't tell what is going on. but since I brought the topic up. is this yesterdays misinformation or todays facts. HIV is a retrovirus. COV-2 is a traditional RNA virus. but now they say it's activating junk DNA (whatever that means), and honestly.. it's the wild west. when history looks back it will say ppl made so many false claims. but it's also part of the scientific process understanding. even just viruses. I don't think traditional viruses exist if quasi viral species exist. which is a theory I don't understand.

farther down the rabbit hole. this is the antivaxx site I found that information another unsual connection between covid and aids https://homolog.us/blogs/bioinfo/202...en-covid-AIDS/

Another unusual connecting between Covid and AIDS came out afterwards. Ed Hooper, who wrote the book The River, A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS in 2000 noticed interesting similarities between how AIDS was claimed to be from African bushmeat, and Covid was claimed to be from the meat of bat or pangolin. But there is more. The same scientists and journalists, who went on overdrive to discredit his well-researched work were all co-authors of the fast-tracked paper on the origin of Covid. What a coincidence. Quoting Ed Hooper from his blog.. http://www.aidsorigins.com/covid-19-...of-aids-debate

I remember telling coworkers AIDS wasn't created by the government. IT WASN'T. because in science there is always a scientific path to the truth. and I stand behind that statement. Science always involves time. and Nature and Time always win. and that is not what this guy Ed Hopper is saying anyways. but he is an interesting person. because he was there, and he had a different perspective. I haven't actually read it. it's on the to do list. he made a famous movie about it I guess. I have it somewhere.

I mean, there is so much to say. there is so much on the table to talk about. so much science to learn a long the way and fun.

for the record I don't believe DDT caused Polio. or that viruses don't exist. it's a big job trying to be a teacher. students or ppl today getting all their information from the internet is like watching TV instead of reading. TV is much more emotional. which is why I am against videos over journalism. I would rather read someone's thoughts than watch them.