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Covid-19 discussion and humor thread [Was: CDC says don't touch your face to avoid Covid19...Vets to the rescue!


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Posted
5 minutes ago, Wacka said:

Thanks or the smiley. At first reading I missed it and thought you were  dissing me but on the second pass, ?.

I studied DNA replication for my  graduate work.  Used bakers yeast  because it was easy to grow and a lot of work was being done on it. It was the first eukaryote  (nucleated  organism) that had its genome sequenced. Using yeast i developed a a method to map replication origins  (where DNA starts replicating- they are very defined in yeast).  Bacteria have no nucleus.  Then studied herpes DNA  replication proteins and possible gene therapy vectors  as a postdoc.

 

So, you’re a baker?

 

 :)

 

My mother-in-law had a PhD in biochemistry (she was a college professor) and she used to get talking about stuff like this. It didn’t matter if she said it in English, Arabic or French.....I kept up about the same. 

Posted
14 minutes ago, Foxx said:

@Hapless Bills Fan

 

coming up from the depths of PPP here, hope you don't mind my intrusion into your nice thread. have read a good portion of it and glanced through an equally good portion as well. i didn't see my query addressed and may have missed it if it is indeed contained within these pages.

 

that said, here is my question from the outer limits (apologies if i am out of line (just smack me down if i am)) ... i have seen claims out and about in the wilds that this, COVID-19 virus is possibly a bio-weapon. i have also seen it refuted as being impossible to spice HIV genes into this virus. i would appreciate any input you could lend to my collation of data points with regard here. if this has previously been addressed, i do apologize and will look again if that is what needs to be.

 

TYIA

 

It is addressed up thread. 

 

My answer, based on the work of virologists and epidemiologists I respect, is that the Covid19 virus it appears to be the result of natural mutation.


The viral genome from a number of patients in a number of different countries has been sequenced.  There are no HIV genes in it. 

 

 

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Wacka said:

Thanks or the smiley. At first reading I missed it and thought you were  dissing me but on the second pass, ?.

I studied DNA replication for my  graduate work.  Used bakers yeast  because it was easy to grow and a lot of work was being done on it. It was the first eukaryote  (nucleated  organism) that had its genome sequenced. Using yeast i developed a a method to map replication origins  (where DNA starts replicating- they are very defined in yeast).  Bacteria have no nucleus.  Then studied herpes DNA  replication proteins and possible gene therapy vectors  as a postdoc.

 

I guess I can say at this point since it's dead, one of my favorite projects at my previous employer was a gene therapy targeting Hepatitis C virus.  It utilized AAV as the delivery vehicle.  Successful development of oral pharmaceutical therapies rendered it obsolete.
 

2 minutes ago, DrDawkinstein said:

I too studied herpes replication in college...

 

Welcome to the party and if you two feel like jumping in to answer questions and provide info you're very welcome

Posted
19 minutes ago, DrDawkinstein said:

 

No, not likely. That "theory" is only being pushed by the disinformation sector. Please keep that type of stuff to PPP.

 

Whether it's the US saying it about China, or Russia/Mid East saying it about the US, it's a disinformation technique.

 

More info here: https://rusi.org/commentary/infectious-lies

 

 

 

thank you. as i said, apologies if i am/was out of line.

 

5 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

It is addressed up thread. 

 

My answer, based on the work of virologists and epidemiologists I respect, is that the Covid19 virus it appears to be the result of natural mutation.


The viral genome from a number of patients in a number of different countries has been sequenced.  There are no HIV genes in it. 

 

 

 

thanks, Hap. i will go back and look again.

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Posted
10 minutes ago, Foxx said:

thank you. as i said, apologies if i am/was out of line.

thanks, Hap. i will go back and look again.

 

Not out of line at all to ask.  Search the thread for "Trevor" or "Bedford" as he's the computational virologist I quote

Dismissal of answers and repeated contention will likely bring the snippers out

 

2 hours ago, Jrb1979 said:

Its one thing to stay at home and avoid crowds.  That to me isn't over reacting. Its the people that are stockpiling items like it's the end of the world. What the Dr. in that post was getting at is he is scared for is those that go into a full on panic. I see it every day at work with those that have loaded up on toilet paper. Yes this virus is concerning but as the Dr. said, people need to learn the facts and avoid crowds and lay low. The media has made people panic and that really isn't helping anything. 

 

Just got back from grocery.  Trying to plan for ~2 weeks.  My mom is 87 and I want to minimize her exposure through us.


There was TP on the shelves.  Almost every single shopping cart had multiple packs of TP in it.  No hand sanitizer though.

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Posted
On 3/11/2020 at 5:15 PM, Hapless Bills Fan said:

A second line of evidence comes from the intersection of computational biology and virology.  Covid19 is an RNA virus - the genetic material is RNA, not DNA, and it's copied by an enzyme called RNA polymerase.  RNA polymerase is a slob.  It makes mistakes pretty frequently by polymerase standards, "mutations".  So if you find a virus with a mutation, and then another virus with that mutation plus a few more, you can actually track how related they're likely to be and how many passages (patients) they've gone through. 

can you please elaborate here a bit more. are you saying it is possible to know how many people have been infected just by observing the mutations of the virus?

Posted

Here's one from @Jauronimo via the Shoutbox.

 

https://www.click2houston.com/health/2020/03/11/i-had-covid-19-and-heres-my-story-woman-shares-details-of-coronavirus-experience/

 

Note that the only reason these people learned they had Covid, was because the Fred Hutch flu study gang "had it" with CDC testing delays, brewed up their own test, and applied it to all the samples they had.  When they "whistleblower" shared with CDC "hey, we're finding positive Covid tests without foreign travel or known contact, community transmission" they were told to....stop testing and stop talking about it

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html

 

Note symptoms described and duration.

Posted
1 hour ago, Foxx said:

can you please elaborate here a bit more. are you saying it is possible to know how many people have been infected just by observing the mutations of the virus?

 

Not quite.  A bit more info is needed.  You need to know or have a reasonable estimate for the basic reproduction number of the disease (how many people on average get sick from contact with a sick person), which we have (it's about 2.2).  But then looking at the number of mutations can tell you how long the virus has been circulating (from a starting point), and that allows you to calculate how many people are infected.  In this case, he had genomic sequences from Wuhan and from the first patient in Washington as a starting point, then he used sequences of samples their Flu Project tested.

 

I'd rather refer you to some of the links up thread - computational epidemiologist Trevor Bedford does a much better job explaining.  He took software he'd developed to do this sort of analysis for Zika, Ebola, and seasonal influenza.  It's called "genomic epidemiology", and it's really cool beans, enabled by how quickly DNA sequencing can be done now a days. 

 

 

Posted
4 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Not quite.  A bit more info is needed.  You need to know or have a reasonable estimate for the basic reproduction number of the disease (how many people on average get sick from contact with a sick person), which we have (it's about 2.2).  But then looking at the number of mutations can tell you how long the virus has been circulating (from a starting point), and that allows you to calculate how many people are infected.  In this case, he had genomic sequences from Wuhan and from the first patient in Washington as a starting point, then he used sequences of samples their Flu Project tested.

 

I'd rather refer you to some of the links up thread - computational epidemiologist Trevor Bedford does a much better job explaining.  He took software he'd developed to do this sort of analysis for Zika, Ebola, and seasonal influenza.  It's called "genomic epidemiology", and it's really cool beans, enabled by how quickly DNA sequencing can be done now a days. 

 

 

thanks! i am working my way through the thread with a much more thorough comb this time. much appreciated.

 

:beer:

Posted
3 hours ago, SlimShady'sGhost said:

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FAKE NEWS ALERT ? 


I hope the comedic theme is still allowed 

 

Did you hear about the police department in Johnson City, Texas?

They posted on Facebook about potential Covid-19 contamination in crystal meth - and offered to test drugs for anyone who brought them in!

 

Some of their citizens were...Not Amused.

 

Me: ?

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Posted (edited)

Not quite the same as schools shutting down during the Vietnam Era over strikes and protests...

 

Edited by row_33
Posted
7 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Did you hear about the police department in Johnson City, Texas?

They posted on Facebook about potential Covid-19 contamination in crystal meth - and offered to test drugs for anyone who brought them in!

 

Some of their citizens were...Not Amused.

 

Me: ?

 

The old You Won SB Tickets ... Come on down!! bait. 

 

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