Coronavirus

[Mr._Clark]

This may have been posted here already, but the corona virus apparently infects T cells due to the ACE2 receptors:

RETRACTED ARTICLE: SARS-CoV-2 infects T lymphocytes through its spike protein-mediated membrane fusion - Cellular & Molecular Immunology

www.nature.com

 

[Swerd]

This may have been posted here already, but the corona virus apparently infects T cells due to the ACE2 receptors:

RETRACTED ARTICLE: SARS-CoV-2 infects T lymphocytes through its spike protein-mediated membrane fusion - Cellular & Molecular Immunology

www.nature.com

I hadn't seen that, thanks. After a very quick read, the work looks good. If verified by others, it's game changing bad news.

For readers not familiar with immunology jargon, this paper says SARS-CoV-2 infects and kills T lymphocytes. These are the very cells the immune system needs to mount an anti-virus immune reaction. This clearly doesn't happen in every infected person. Most people do recover. But if it can happen sometimes, we must quickly understand it and try to find a way to prevent it.

 

[TLS Guy]

If you were to ask me, the answer would be "yes." Of course, no one has asked me so it's a moot point.

>>>Should scientists infect healthy people with the coronavirus to test vaccines?

Radical proposal to conduct ‘human challenge’ studies could dramatically speed up vaccine research. . . .

Many scientists see a vaccine as the only solution to the pandemic. Clinical safety trials began this month for one candidate vaccine, and others will soon follow. But one of the biggest hurdles will be showing that a vaccine works. Typically, this is done through large phase III studies, in which thousands to tens of thousands of people receive either a vaccine or a placebo, and researchers track who becomes infected in the course of their daily lives.

A quicker option would be to conduct a ‘human challenge’ study, argue scientists in a provocative paper this month. This would involve exposing perhaps 100 healthy young people to the virus and seeing whether those who get the vaccine escape infection.

Nir Eyal, the director of the Center for Population-Level Bioethics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and lead author of the preprint, tells Nature how the study could be done safely and ethically. Participants, he argues, might even be better off for it.<<<

Should scientists infect healthy young people with coronavirus?

Radical proposal to conduct ‘human challenge’ studies could dramatically speed up vaccine research.

www.nature.com

That is a really difficult one. The young woman who was injected with either the active vaccine or placebo from the Oxford study of the novel m-DNA vaccine said she was going to try and get in harms way despite not knowing whether she had placebo or vaccine.

But making infection part of the study is a different matter. However I know there are members of the British public who would volunteer and I expect there are here. But there is somewhat of a Battle of Britain spirit raging in some quarters of the British public right now.

There second vaccine trial from Imperial College London is to start within the month. This is very novel. They have trained a virus vector to infect muscle cells and carry in a DNA splice to direct the infected cells to produce antibodies against the virus.

I do think the answer to this is more likely to come from these "free thinkers" than organized big pharma, but we will see.

 

[Swerd]

That is a really difficult one. The young woman who was injected with either the active vaccine or placebo from the Oxford study of the novel m-DNA vaccine said she was going to try and get in harms way despite not knowing whether she had placebo or vaccine.

But making [a challenge] infection part of the study is a different matter.

I know what lawyers for vaccine manufacturers in the USA will say.

1. Fewer people overall will volunteer for such a study. That will slow down the enrollment enough to cause the study to reach its endpoint slowly instead of quickly.
   
   
2. No matter what informed consent papers volunteers sign, a volunteer may get gravely ill, permanently crippled, or die because of the virus challenge. One patient, or a surviving family member, could sue the vaccine manufacturer. If successful, one such lawsuit would certainly inspire others, threatening the existence of the manufacturer and the vaccine effort.

I can see some merit in the argument to find a vaccine quickly, but I see more merit in getting this done by widely accepted methods, without invoking emergency procedures that may have unintended consequences at a later time.

 

[mtrycrafts]

...

Do you think their profits will go up or down if people stop sheltering in place?

That's a tough one.

Need to brush up on my higher math.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Biden seems to be doing well. He has had a reputation for sound bite gaffs since he was young, so don't use that as an indicator of decline.
However, Trump did a very dangerous thing. He has consistently dismantled the expertise in his advisers and committees and replaced them ... with loyalty as the primary qualification over experience. ...

You mean like a dog breeder? A brain surgeon running housing? Etc.

 

[mtrycrafts]

I was guessing that he meant AOC, but I didn't want to assume.

Well, every now and then, assumptions are correct.

 

[JerryLove]

That is a really difficult one. The young woman who was injected with either the active vaccine or placebo from the Oxford study of the novel m-DNA vaccine said she was going to try and get in harms way despite not knowing whether she had placebo or vaccine.

Behavior like that [deliberate action because you are in a study] can ruin a study when the treatment in question is anything but 100%.

 

[JerryLove]

Could they? I'm not saying I agree with them but they are on the front lines

The front line is a terrible place to get a view of a war. It tells you only what you can see and only about the little piece of land you are standing on.

 

[Swerd]

I had a quick & dirty idea for a harmless viral challenge to test the effectiveness of a vaccine. Construct a defective version of SARS-CoV-2. It could enter cells the usual way, but could not produce fully assembled infectious virus particles that kill the host cell, and infect thousands of other host cells. Instead, this defective virus would leave behind partially assembled virus RNA and proteins in the infected cells. These virus gene products could easily be detected by PCR or immunological methods. It would be a molecular version of Kilroy Was Here graffiti.

Before that could be done, the medical community would have to decide to permit recombinant DNA modification of humans. This harmless test virus would be a recombinant version of a human pathogen. So far, that is strictly forbidden.

And after getting over that hurdle, it would also be difficult and time consuming to prove that this defective test virus was reliably harmless – safe enough to use in human volunteers.

So, no I don't see this happening anytime soon.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Agreed... just speaking in that ever so idealistic manner, was trying to remove the current "what is happening" from the equation and suggest a non-partisan mandated solution that should never be undone, in terms of identifying any candidates health risks and who can be eligible to run for ANY office with a direct line to the presidential title. (Which should include VP, Speaker of the House, etc...)

(That said, I don't think Pelosi should be in the position she is, not because I dislike her, but because if she were to be elevated to the role of presidency, could she perform the role and see even a full 4-yr term through to conclusion?)

Again, just being idealistic on this slightly related tangent.

I am confident she would pick qualified cabinet members without loyalty oaths.. Not sure if she could pick a VP or not though.

 

[mtrycrafts]

You mean like a dog breeder? A brain surgeon running housing? Etc.

Oh, wait, how about an education profiteer running the education department?

 

[Mr._Clark]

I hadn't seen that, thanks. After a very quick read, the work looks good. If verified by others, it's game changing bad news.

For readers not familiar with immunology jargon, this paper says SARS-CoV-2 infects and kills T lymphocytes. These are the very cells the immune system needs to mount an anti-virus immune reaction. This clearly doesn't happen in every infected person. Most people do recover. But if it can happen sometimes, we must quickly understand it and try to find a way to prevent it.

Swerd, can you help an Audioholics brother understand this?

In the process of trying to understand the T cell issues raised in the first article, I found another article entitled "Presence of SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in COVID-19 patients and healthy donors."

If I'm reading it correctly, this one is perhaps good news because T cells from those who have not been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus may nevertheless have some activity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, possibly due to prior infections with corona viruses that cause the common cold?

The comment by the person from Mount Sinai is interesting (to the extent I understand it).

I've read the following several times, but I'm not sure I understand the significance of it.

>>>We demonstrate the presence of S-reactive CD4+ T cells in 83% of COVID-19 patients, as well as in 34% of SARS-CoV-2 seronegative healthy donors, albeit at lower frequencies. Strikingly, in COVID-19 patients S-reactive CD4+ T cells equally targeted both N-terminal and C-terminal parts of S whereas in healthy donors S-reactive CD4+ T cells reacted almost exclusively to the Cterminal part that is a) characterized by higher homology to spike glycoprotein of human endemic "common cold" coronaviruses, and b) contains the S2 subunit of S with the cytoplasmic peptide (CP), the fusion peptide (FP), and the transmembrane domain (TM) but not the receptor-binding domain (RBD). S-reactive CD4+ T cells from COVID-19 patients were further distinct to those from healthy donors as they co-expressed higher levels of CD38 and HLA-DR, indicating their recent in vivo activation. . . .The presence of pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in healthy donors is of high interest but larger scale prospective cohort studies are needed to assess whether their presence is a correlate of protection or pathology. <<<

Presence of SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in COVID-19 patients and healthy donors

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a rapidly unfolding pandemic, overwhelming health care systems worldwide1. Clinical manifestations of Corona-virus-disease 2019 (COVID-19) vary broadly, ranging from asymptomatic infection to acute respiratory failure...

www.medrxiv.org

 

[Mr._Clark]

I know what lawyers for vaccine manufacturers in the USA will say.

1. Fewer people overall will volunteer for such a study. That will slow down the enrollment enough to cause the study to reach its endpoint slowly instead of quickly.
   
   
2. No matter what informed consent papers volunteers sign, a volunteer may get gravely ill, permanently crippled, or die because of the virus challenge. One patient, or a surviving family member, could sue the vaccine manufacturer. If successful, one such lawsuit would certainly inspire others, threatening the existence of the manufacturer and the vaccine effort.

I can see some merit in the argument to find a vaccine quickly, but I see more merit in getting this done by widely accepted methods, without invoking emergency procedures that may have unintended consequences at a later time.

If I was a lawyer for a vaccine manufacturer in the US, I'd advise them to let the federal government do it after specifically granting itself immunity.

 

[KEW]

Oh, wait, how about an education profiteer running the education department?

Or putting a Exxon executive in charge of the EPA?

 

[mtrycrafts]

Or putting a Exxon executive in charge of the EPA?

Goodness. My memory lapsed.

But wait, there must be more.
Oh, yes, one was also in charge of the state department, no?
Do we have a race car driver in there someplace?

 

[mtrycrafts]

Swerd, can you help an Audioholics brother understand this?

In the process of trying to understand the T cell issues raised in the first article, I found another article entitled "Presence of SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in COVID-19 patients and healthy donors."

If I'm reading it correctly, this one is perhaps good news because T cells from those who have not been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus may nevertheless have some activity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, possibly due to prior infections with corona viruses that cause the common cold?

The comment by the person from Mount Sinai is interesting (to the extent I understand it).

I've read the following several times, but I'm not sure I understand the significance of it.

>>>We demonstrate the presence of S-reactive CD4+ T cells in 83% of COVID-19 patients, as well as in 34% of SARS-CoV-2 seronegative healthy donors, albeit at lower frequencies. Strikingly, in COVID-19 patients S-reactive CD4+ T cells equally targeted both N-terminal and C-terminal parts of S whereas in healthy donors S-reactive CD4+ T cells reacted almost exclusively to the Cterminal part that is a) characterized by higher homology to spike glycoprotein of human endemic "common cold" coronaviruses, and b) contains the S2 subunit of S with the cytoplasmic peptide (CP), the fusion peptide (FP), and the transmembrane domain (TM) but not the receptor-binding domain (RBD). S-reactive CD4+ T cells from COVID-19 patients were further distinct to those from healthy donors as they co-expressed higher levels of CD38 and HLA-DR, indicating their recent in vivo activation. . . .The presence of pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in healthy donors is of high interest but larger scale prospective cohort studies are needed to assess whether their presence is a correlate of protection or pathology. <<<

Presence of SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in COVID-19 patients and healthy donors

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a rapidly unfolding pandemic, overwhelming health care systems worldwide1. Clinical manifestations of Corona-virus-disease 2019 (COVID-19) vary broadly, ranging from asymptomatic infection to acute respiratory failure...

www.medrxiv.org

Aren't we fortunate to have Swerd here? Free of charge.

 

[ryanosaur]

Do we have a race car driver in there someplace?

You mean like a bootlegger/stock car racer in charge of DOT?

 

[Danzilla31]

You mean like a bootlegger/stock car racer in charge of DOT?

One question maybe someone could help me with

Isn't there a stronger candidate they could have found then Biden for the democrats?

Dialoguing with my friends his age is a factor for some people a lot of people I've spoken too

If he's qualified he's qualified but I just feel like the democrats missed a real chance here by not going with a younger different candidate I can't help feeling that they dropped the ball maybe.

Unless there is a reason they went this way?

Can anyone help me understand why they didn't choose a strong candidate that's a little younger?

 

[ryanosaur]

One question maybe someone could help me with

Isn't there a stronger candidate they could have found then Biden for the democrats?

Dialoguing with my friends his age is a factor for some people a lot of people I've spoken too

If he's qualified he's qualified but I just feel like the democrats missed a real chance here by not going with a younger different candidate I can't help feeling that they dropped the ball maybe.

Unless there is a reason they went this way?

Can anyone help me understand why they didn't choose a strong candidate that's a little younger?

Short answer: YES

Biden 77
trump 73
Sanders 78
Hillary 72

Those are the four major candidates I was referring to from the last and current election.

And yes... BOTH parties could field better candidates.

(I should move to Finland)