Coronavirus

[Dude#1279435]

OK, but if you look at the whole timeline for COVID, the death rate was still never as high as for cardiac disease and cancer and because isolation/sanitization/masks etc became more common, it would be very difficult for most people to determine the correlation. Math geeks could do it, though.

I'm not arguing that vaccination would save their lives but I have a problem with you thinking that the medical profession would turn people down.

I don't know of many religions that don't allow this, outside of Jehovah's Witnesses and possibly some extreme orthodox branches of Judaism and/or Islam. However, if someone is an adult and they make a decision that turns out to be their ending, it's part of human nature- someone tells people what to do and their response is "No, I won't".

My point is things you have some control over (Covid), and things you don't have control over (cancer, car accidents etc). Trump would've been a bad choice because he never articulated an exit strategy. Thank state rights for letting them decide. Trump and his supporters position of heyletsjusthitherdimmunitysowecangettheeconomyrollingandTrumpreelectedandjustburythedeathcountifitgetsouttacontrol would've risked hospital overflow. That would've been the danger with an ultra narcissist leading. Add to that Faux's negligence in coverage. I assume things were staggered to prevent overflow. Even in hindsight there's a great deal of uncertainty and no magic pill answer. Its like a squiggly line of more or less movement. It's all fine though if you're not on the front lines or face no legal ramifications for your actions.

 

[highfigh]

My point is things you have some control over (Covid), and things you don't have control over (cancer, car accidents etc). Trump would've been a bad choice because he never articulated an exit strategy. Thank state rights for letting them decide. Trump and his supporters position of heyletsjusthitherdimmunitysowecangettheeconomyrollingandTrumpreelectedandjustburythedeathcountifitgetsouttacontrol would've risked hospital overflow. That would've been the danger with an ultra narcissist leading. Add to that Faux's negligence in coverage. I assume things were staggered to prevent overflow. Even in hindsight there's a great deal of uncertainty and no magic pill answer. Its like a squiggly line of more or less movement. It's all fine though if you're not on the front lines or face no legal ramifications for your actions.

We have some control WRT COVID- we can be as careful as scared bunnies, but if someone ignores the symptoms or has none and is careless, we either become carriers or are infected- vaccine, or not.

I'm not sure anyone wanted the economy to keep going as it was- anything that doesn't require close proximity to others, could be made safe with masks and other PPE or could be seen as 'essential' as some jobs were considered, could have made the losses in spending, growth or at least keep the losses lower but killing the pipeline and the coal industry, which HAS been much cleaner-burning in recent years, would have prevented the loss of a lot of jobs. I'm not a fan of just dumping pollution in every orifice of the planet, but oil is hard to beat when it comes to energy density and Biden made the US reliant on other sources. Now, the pipeline companies are suing, to the tune of $15B.

The biggest problem in all of this is that, because of the shutdown, demand for many things almost stopped. That, coupled with the World's reliance on China as their main producer of goods, has f&cked the global economy. We're here because we like AV, etc but China is flooding the markets with bad/fake chips and that, hopefully, will bite them on the ass and every sensitive body part nearby.

I'm working on a project that needs a lot of building supplies and the carpenter said he paid $7.25 for studs today- that's half of what he paid at the peak and these didn't come from a big box store because their lumber sucks. The box of speaker cable I bought last week cost almost $200, at wholesale- that's almost double what I paid last year. This homeowner wants a large (75"-ish) Samsung Frame TV- I told him they don't have any and nobody knows when they'll be available.

The shutdown was very poorly conceived and now that people have had a taste of what Welfare is, they don't want to go back to work. A local radio crew was talking about the fact that the TacoBell in Plymouth, WI is offering $17.50/hour to start but the WI dog catcher, who's from the same town, says that people weren't paid to stay at home. Bullcrap.

 

[Dude#1279435]

We have some control WRT COVID- we can be as careful as scared bunnies, but if someone ignores the symptoms or has none and is careless, we either become carriers or are infected- vaccine, or not.

I'm not sure anyone wanted the economy to keep going as it was- anything that doesn't require close proximity to others, could be made safe with masks and other PPE or could be seen as 'essential' as some jobs were considered, could have made the losses in spending, growth or at least keep the losses lower but killing the pipeline and the coal industry, which HAS been much cleaner-burning in recent years, would have prevented the loss of a lot of jobs. I'm not a fan of just dumping pollution in every orifice of the planet, but oil is hard to beat when it comes to energy density and Biden made the US reliant on other sources. Now, the pipeline companies are suing, to the tune of $15B.

The biggest problem in all of this is that, because of the shutdown, demand for many things almost stopped. That, coupled with the World's reliance on China as their main producer of goods, has f&cked the global economy. We're here because we like AV, etc but China is flooding the markets with bad/fake chips and that, hopefully, will bite them on the ass and every sensitive body part nearby.

I'm working on a project that needs a lot of building supplies and the carpenter said he paid $7.25 for studs today- that's half of what he paid at the peak and these didn't come from a big box store because their lumber sucks. The box of speaker cable I bought last week cost almost $200, at wholesale- that's almost double what I paid last year. This homeowner wants a large (75"-ish) Samsung Frame TV- I told him they don't have any and nobody knows when they'll be available.

The shutdown was very poorly conceived and now that people have had a taste of what Welfare is, they don't want to go back to work. A local radio crew was talking about the fact that the TacoBell in Plymouth, WI is offering $17.50/hour to start but the WI dog catcher, who's from the same town, says that people weren't paid to stay at home. Bullcrap.

Poorly known aspects of flattening the curve of COVID-19 - PMC

There is a negative correlation between the final number of infections and their rate of growth. There is both theoretical arguments and experimental evidence for the existence of such a correlation. Flattening the curve causes an increased number ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

All these observations are manifestations of different aspects of our first observation namely that flattening the curve increases the number of infections. Does this mean that flattening the curve was not necessarily the best thing to do? An increased number of infections entails an increased number of deaths. On the other hand, a flatter curve saves lives by avoiding exceeding the capacity of intensive care units in hospitals. Is it possible that more lives were lost by flattening the curve? There is a rather complicated optimization problem here with calculations difficult to carry out quantitatively, a challenge for future researchers. But there is a moral issue that cannot be overlooked: no civilized society will ever opt out from providing critical care to any fraction of its population.

 

[Dude#1279435]

 

[Dude#1279435]

Btw, I do agree with your comment on coal. Now is not the time to be worrying about it.

 

[highfigh]

Poorly known aspects of flattening the curve of COVID-19 - PMC

There is a negative correlation between the final number of infections and their rate of growth. There is both theoretical arguments and experimental evidence for the existence of such a correlation. Flattening the curve causes an increased number ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

All these observations are manifestations of different aspects of our first observation namely that flattening the curve increases the number of infections. Does this mean that flattening the curve was not necessarily the best thing to do? An increased number of infections entails an increased number of deaths. On the other hand, a flatter curve saves lives by avoiding exceeding the capacity of intensive care units in hospitals. Is it possible that more lives were lost by flattening the curve? There is a rather complicated optimization problem here with calculations difficult to carry out quantitatively, a challenge for future researchers. But there is a moral issue that cannot be overlooked: no civilized society will ever opt out from providing critical care to any fraction of its population.

Nor should a society (or government official) lie about the origin or presence of a disease, which will eventually come out, but we have seen the speculation.

 

[cpp]

Do you think that it makes a difference where they practice? I figure the ones in the level one trauma centers that are already crazy busy are the ones that probably have had enough.

I would also wager that the ones that got their pay cut due to hospital profits going down are also on the outs. Granted, they just need to find a place to work that gives a crap about them, but still.

There are a lot of professions in this country that don't get nearly enough credit for what they do. This is one of many, and COVID made it very apparent that a lot of jobs I didn't think of as important are MUCH more important than we think about.

We ALL need to show some damn appreciation for these people because they could decide to stop doing these necessary and important jobs.

Don't have a clue about medical professionals getting their pay cut, as that has zip to do with covid. Hell pay was cut for a lot of people and/or lost their jobs throughout the US due to covid.,

And yes the appreciation of all professionals that worked through the tough covid times need a good pat on the back.

 

[cpp]

I wish it were that, but it's more like this


View attachment 48984

Yep, I guess facebook and forums is the place to get your medical knowledge and diagnosis for illness these days. NOT ! , but some people just don't trust anyone.

 

[Mr._Clark]

Well lets spin that another way, these doctors and nurses getting burned out from seeing in a 8 hr day none stop Monday - Friday of Chemo or radiation patients. Its not that pleasant, take it from someone that went through that for 30 visits, all during covid. . These doctors and nurses are supporting their patients. My Sister, my daughter, my cousin, my brother all in the medical field have never complained during these covid times.

No offense, but preventing cancer and preventing COVID are not in the same league.

People can walk into a clinic and get a COVID jab and walk out in a few minutes. It's close to 100% effective, the risks are vanishingly small, and person does not have to change their lifestyle. They can continue smoking 3 packs a day, drinking a fifth of vodka every day, lay around on the sofa, etc. and the odds are very high that they will still not get seriously ill from COVID (disclaimer, this is not medical advice!). It's not like they're being asked to storm the beach at Normandy.

I certainly hope there's a cure for cancer someday that is as simple, easy, and effective as the COVID vaccine.

Edit: That was not worded very well, but I'll leave the original wording up in case you feel the need to trash me for it. I realize you never said that preventing cancer and preventing COVID were in the same league. What bothers me about asking burned out healthcare workers to continue treating COVID patients is that almost all of the COVID cases could be prevented very easily if people would just get vaccinated. Cancer seems to be much more difficult, so there's little choice but to train and staff appropriately to treat it.

 

[Swerd]

No offense, but preventing cancer and preventing COVID are not in the same league.

For most types of cancer, we can't come close to preventing them – unlike Covid-19 or other communicable viral diseases, which are easily prevented.

In the past, we could only rely on so-called "lifestyle changes" in hopes that they can prevent cancer. Stopping smoking is the most obvious one. Deaths by lung cancer have dropped significantly since the late 1990s. For colon cancer, we know it is caused by something(s) we eat, but just what is unknown. However, colonoscopy screening does help quite a bit. Deaths by colon cancer are also dropping because 50% of people aged 50 or older do get screened. The same goes for yearly mammograms. They have slowly decreased the number of deaths due to breast cancer.

Preventing cancer only by lifestyle changes, by CT or MRI imaging, or physically invasive screenings are the present conventional methods. That is slowly beginning to change. It has been known for some time that most (80%) cases of cervical cancer is caused by prior exposure to human papiloma virus (HPV). It's a slow growing virus transmitted mainly by sexual contact or by contaminated injection needles. For a number of years we have had access to a vaccine against HPV (Merck's Gardasil). Vaccination must happen before any sexual activity, and the vaccine is only recommended for girls, aged 12 or less. Despite the usual miss-informed opposition to any vaccine, or the deliberately wrong opposition to this particular vaccine, the HPV vaccine is beginning to have a positive effect. The numbers of women in the USA coming down with cervical cancer have dropped significantly.

Many in the medical world also believe that HPV also causes other types of cancer, such as oral/throat cancer (cancer of the head & neck), or anal cancer. If only all children, male and female, under the age of 12 got the HPV vaccine, we might see a revolution in cancer prevention that approaches the near 100% effectiveness we now see with the Covid-19 vaccines.

 

[cpp]

No offense, but preventing cancer and preventing COVID are not in the same league.

People can walk into a clinic and get a COVID jab and walk out in a few minutes. It's close to 100% effective, the risks are vanishingly small, and person does not have to change their lifestyle. They can continue smoking 3 packs a day, drinking a fifth of vodka every day, lay around on the sofa, etc. and the odds are very high that they will still not get seriously ill from COVID (disclaimer, this is not medical advice!). It's not like they're being asked to storm the beach at Normandy.

I certainly hope there's a cure for cancer someday that is as simple, easy, and effective as the COVID vaccine.

Edit: That was not worded very well, but I'll leave the original wording up in case you feel the need to trash me for it. I realize you never said that preventing cancer and preventing COVID were in the same league. What bothers me about asking burned out healthcare workers to continue treating COVID patients is that almost all of the COVID cases could be prevented very easily if people would just get vaccinated. Cancer seems to be much more difficult, so there's little choice but to train and staff appropriately to treat it.

Well when you are in the same hospital (Mayo) and in a bed for 10 days while the hospital is bedding covid patients the risk are extremely high. But luckily I got through that, lucky or just full of 60Gy each day for 30 days. .

Yep if they would work through a cure for cancer, which would mean a cure for over 100 + different types of cancer that would be totally awesome, but cancer is a money making machine, with the industry developing "cures" and improved methods of treatment, and then there is the years of followup and the cost for the patient. I just don't foresee that ever happening in my lifetime.

 

[Dude#1279435]

I think the point is covid is airborne and can be transmitted immediately and spread massively. These other things like junk food, smoking, alcohol, automobile [crashes] are part of industry and cannot be removed. It's apples & oranges to compare.

 

[cpp]

I think the point is covid is airborne and can be transmitted immediately and spread massively. These other things like junk food, smoking, alcohol, automobile [crashes] are part of industry and cannot be removed. It's apples & oranges to compare.

Heck if they can just get people to stop texting while driving it would be a huge achievement in my book and would save a lot of lives. But just like anti vaxers, people just push the envelope.

 

[Mr._Clark]

For most types of cancer, we can't come close to preventing them – unlike Covid-19 or other communicable viral diseases, which are easily prevented.

In the past, we could only rely on so-called "lifestyle changes" in hopes that they can prevent cancer. Stopping smoking is the most obvious one. Deaths by lung cancer have dropped significantly since the late 1990s. For colon cancer, we know it is caused by something(s) we eat, but just what is unknown. However, colonoscopy screening does help quite a bit. Deaths by colon cancer are also dropping because 50% of people aged 50 or older do get screened. The same goes for yearly mammograms. They have slowly decreased the number of deaths due to breast cancer.

Preventing cancer only by lifestyle changes, by CT or MRI imaging, or physically invasive screenings are the present conventional methods. That is slowly beginning to change. It has been known for some time that most (80%) cases of cervical cancer is caused by prior exposure to human papiloma virus (HPV). It's a slow growing virus transmitted mainly by sexual contact or by contaminated injection needles. For a number of years we have had access to a vaccine against HPV (Merck's Gardasil). Vaccination must happen before any sexual activity, and the vaccine is only recommended for girls, aged 12 or less. Despite the usual miss-informed opposition to any vaccine, or the deliberately wrong opposition to this particular vaccine, the HPV vaccine is beginning to have a positive effect. The numbers of women in the USA coming down with cervical cancer have dropped significantly.

Many in the medical world also believe that HPV also causes other types of cancer, such as oral/throat cancer (cancer of the head & neck), or anal cancer. If only all children, male and female, under the age of 12 got the HPV vaccine, we might see a revolution in cancer prevention that approaches the near 100% effectiveness we now see with the Covid-19 vaccines.

At the risk of derailing this thread, I've been seeing articles about possibly using mRNA vaccines to treat cancer (e.g. link below). Off hand, I find myself wondering how difficult it is to trigger one's immune system to specifically but effectively target cancer cells (mutated versions of your body's cells) without causing your body's immune system to attack your body's own non cancerous cells.

CRISPR Breakthrough Blocks SARS-CoV-2 Virus Replication in Early Lab Tests

Scientists have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to successfully block the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in infected human cells, according to research released Tuesday that could pave the way for COVID-19 treatments.

www.sciencealert.com

Investigational mRNA Vaccine Induced Persistent Immune Response in Phase 1 Trial of Patients With Pancreatic Cancer

Learn how MSK researchers are deploying mRNA vaccines against pancreatic cancer.

www.mskcc.org

More on the topic of COVID treatment, a recent paper concerning use of CRISPR to treat COVID has been reported in various news outlets. I'll concede I do not fully understand the paper at nature.com (link below). In particular, it's not clear to me that these results could be achieved in a person (this is well outside my area of technical expertise).

Reprogrammed CRISPR-Cas13b suppresses SARS-CoV-2 replication and circumvents its mutational escape through mismatch tolerance - Nature Communications

Cas13b can be harnessed to target and degrade RNA transcripts inside a cellular environment. Here the authors reprogram Cas13b to target SARSCoV-2 transcripts in infected mammalian cells and reveal its resilience to variants thanks to single mismatch tolerance.

www.nature.com

It will be interesting to see if CRISPR leads to effective cancer treatments.

 

[GO-NAD!]

Meanwhile, in Tennessee....

Tennessee abandons vaccine outreach to minors — not just for COVID-19

Tennessee halted all vaccine outreach to minors, not just for COVID-19, amid pressure from Republican lawmakers. A vaccine expert was also fired.

amp.tennessean.com

 

[Trell]

... Vaccination must happen before any sexual activity, and the vaccine is only recommended for girls, aged 12 or less. Despite the usual miss-informed opposition to any vaccine, or the deliberately wrong opposition to this particular vaccine, the HPV vaccine is beginning to have a positive effect. The numbers of women in the USA coming down with cervical cancer have dropped significantly.

Many in the medical world also believe that HPV also causes other types of cancer, such as oral/throat cancer (cancer of the head & neck), or anal cancer. If only all children, male and female, under the age of 12 got the HPV vaccine, we might see a revolution in cancer prevention that approaches the near 100% effectiveness we now see with the Covid-19 vaccines.

From the usual suspects the "solution" is not to have sexual activity before marriage

 

[Swerd]

At the risk of derailing this thread, I've been seeing articles about possibly using mRNA vaccines to treat cancer (linked above). Off hand, I find myself wondering how difficult it is to trigger one's immune system to specifically but effectively target cancer cells (mutated versions of your body's cells) without causing your body's immune system to attack your body's own non cancerous cells.

This topic has been a topic of research for decades, since the 1970s or 80s. It had long been recognized that certain advanced metastatic cancers, such as melanoma, kidney, and lung, could be spontaneously eliminated by an unknown mechanism, in about 15% of patients. It was suspected that the immune system played a central role, but no one could figure out what it was or how to take advantage of it.

More recently, since the early 2000s, the discovery of the Programmed Cell Death protein 1 (PD-1) and the Programmed Cell Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1) signalling system finally began to emerge as the long-sought-after mechanism. To simplify, immune T-cells, capable of recognizing and killing tumor cells, can and do exist. But they usually die off without affecting the tumor. Mature T-cells have a system where, after an infection is stopped, they can be switched off. They have several cell surface proteins (such as PD-L1 or CTLA-4, called Immune Checkpoint proteins). If these proteins are given the right signal from cell surface proteins on other cells (for example from the PD-1 protein), they enter programmed cell death (also called apoptosis). Normally, macrophage cells (one of the actors in the immune system) provide the PD-1 signal at an appropriate time. But certain tumors have evolved to express large amounts of PD-1 protein on their surfaces. This allows them to tell killer T-cells to ignore the tumor cells and die. Once these discoveries were understood, it led to the development of monoclonal antibodies, such as Pembrolizumab (Keytruda and others) and Ipilimumab (Yerevoy) that block these turn-off signals. They have had a revolutionary effect on cancer therapy.

The basic science discoveries of these signalling systems in T-cells led to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2018.

PD-L1 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pembrolizumab - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ipilimumab - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Swerd]

More on the topic of COVID treatment, a recent paper concerning use of CRISPR to treat COVID has been reported in various news outlets. I'll concede I do not fully understand the paper at nature.com (link below). In particular, it's not clear to me that these results could be achieved in a person (this is well outside my area of technical expertise).

CRISPR Breakthrough Blocks SARS-CoV-2 Virus Replication in Early Lab Tests

Scientists have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to successfully block the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in infected human cells, according to research released Tuesday that could pave the way for COVID-19 treatments.

www.sciencealert.com

Reprogrammed CRISPR-Cas13b suppresses SARS-CoV-2 replication and circumvents its mutational escape through mismatch tolerance - Nature Communications

Cas13b can be harnessed to target and degrade RNA transcripts inside a cellular environment. Here the authors reprogram Cas13b to target SARSCoV-2 transcripts in infected mammalian cells and reveal its resilience to variants thanks to single mismatch tolerance.

www.nature.com

It will be interesting to see if CRISPR leads to effective cancer treatments.

There has been active research using CRISPER for cancer treatment for much of the last decade. It's been slow, but recent progress from the Covid-19 emergency will have a positive result in cancer.

The Nature article you linked provides 'proof of concept' that CRISPER can work under ideal conditions in cultured cells. It provides a nuclease enzyme, called Cas13, that if modified, can cleave the coronavirus's mRNA genome, and stop replication of the virus in cultured cells. Now the only problem is to figure out how to get it to work in humans (not cells in a dish), and to get it to work well enough in humans infected with SARS-CoV-2. Easy, right ?

This should result in a treatment for infected people that actually works, unlike hydroxychloroquine.

 

[Swerd]

From the usual suspects the "solution" is not to have sexual activity before marriage

Avoiding sexual contact among females before marriage cannot solve the problem of Human Papiloma Virus causing cancer 20-30 years down the road. It requires vaccinating both males and females before they ever become sexually active.

If celibacy were actually achievable among all teens, then the HPV virus might not exist. But we all know that celibacy – even among ordained priests – is a myth. Vaccines work – myths don't.

 

[panteragstk]

Vaccines work – myths don't.

Gonna make some T-shirts with that on them