Coronavirus - Is this the killer flu that will wipe us out?

[anonymous-user]

emperorburger said:

About 50% of our genetic material is shared with bananas. Sometimes the small differences matter.

There may be certain genes that can hinder ot help the virus, but they will be spread across the world, as even though Chinese people look different to Europeans there is just not enough difference in genetics to say the virus would react differently.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20363/
'' Furthermore, genetic variation around the world is distributed in a rather continuous manner; there are no sharp, discontinuous boundaries between human population groups. In fact, research results consistently demonstrate that about 85 percent of all human genetic variation exists within human populations, whereas about only 15 percent of variation exists between populations (Figure 4). That is, research reveals that Homo sapiens is one continuously variable, interbreeding species.''

Again we are just too similar as Humans, not Bananas etc. It really is something that people seem to believe in race differences, when there isn't.

[anonymous-user]

emperorburger said:

Thesprucegoose said:

There is no 'race genetics' as much as people like to make out. Races of people are vastly diverse, take African for example,this term alone is over 3000 variances in colour and physical difference, yet genetical near enough identical to you and me.

''All humans are 99.9 per cent identical and, of that tiny 0.1 per cent difference, 94 per cent of the variation is among individuals from the same populations and only six per cent between individuals from different populations.''

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northam...

About 50% of our genetic material is shared with bananas. Sometimes the small differences matter.

Look at what happened to red indians and eskimos when exposed to european sicknesses on purpose because it wasnt as severe in europeans but our common diseases were fatal to them.

[RTB]

LimSlip said:

I know almost nothing about the biological aspects of this, but is it not possible to determine genetic susceptibility in a lab rather than just analysing the spread and mortality rate of a disease within a population?

Edited by LimSlip on Friday 21st February 19:52

It's less clear with regards infectious disease. One thing to bear in mind is that you have natural selection working to make the pathogen able to infect as many genetic backgrounds as possible in a population.

The only way to determine susceptibility in a lab is to discover the mechanism of action of a pathogen in-vitro and then go back to the population genetics and start looking for correlations between what you observed in the lab and what is observed in the population.
You would then go back and generate an animal model that had the same genotype as your hypothesized susceptible population and see if your hypothesis is predictive in a whole organism. You've then got a body of evidence that a particular mutation or level of expression of a particular gene provides a basis for a susceptibility to a disease.

Not related to the virus but potentially interesting:

A number of years ago I worked as part of a team on a diagnostic assay to select patients that would respond to a particular anti-cancer drug in development. All the Phase 1 and Phase 2a trials had been done in Japanese hospitals and we'd seen good response rates. As it went into Phase2b and Phase3 trials we moved into European and American centres and the response rate to the drug dropped to close to zero. It turned out that the drug preferentially bound to a mutated version of the drug target that was prevalent in SE Asian populations. Caucasians do very occasionally have this version of the gene but its very rare. Therefore before treatment you need to be screened to make sure you're genetically suitable.

Founder effects and ethnicity is something we keep an eye on when designing trials. We also scrutinise the data to stop any expensive retrospective personalised healthcare programmes.

[philv]

Gregmitchell said:

1 new cases in the United States in Sacramento County, California. The individual had returned from China on Feb. 2 and has so far shown no symptoms.

19+ days no symptoms.. they're among us lol!

It could. have been on a bag handled by an infected person.
Several days later he touches that part of the bag.
A couple of weeks later he developed symptoms.
Who knows.

[emperorburger]

Thesprucegoose said:

There may be certain genes that can hinder ot help the virus, but they will be spread across the world, as even though Chinese people look different to Europeans there is just not enough difference in genetics to say the virus would react differently.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20363/
'' Furthermore, genetic variation around the world is distributed in a rather continuous manner; there are no sharp, discontinuous boundaries between human population groups. In fact, research results consistently demonstrate that about 85 percent of all human genetic variation exists within human populations, whereas about only 15 percent of variation exists between populations (Figure 4). That is, research reveals that Homo sapiens is one continuously variable, interbreeding species.''

Again we are just too similar as Humans, not Bananas etc. It really is something that people seem to believe in race differences, when there isn't.

I'm open-minded. The genetic differences may be immeasurably small, however I am interested in mortality statistics by ethic origin outside of China.

[Budflicker]

Gregmitchell said:

1 new cases in the United States in Sacramento County, California. The individual had returned from China on Feb. 2 and has so far shown no symptoms.

19+ days no symptoms.. they're among us lol!

That's not good.

How many people have they infected in 19 days of normal life.

Spin class, yoga, fast food, coffee shop, shopping at the mall, public transport and work in an air conditioned office?

[philv]

Budflicker said:

Gregmitchell said:

1 new cases in the United States in Sacramento County, California. The individual had returned from China on Feb. 2 and has so far shown no symptoms.

19+ days no symptoms.. they're among us lol!

That's not good.

How many people have they infected in 19 days of normal life.

Spin class, yoga, fast food, coffee shop, shopping at the mall, public transport and work in an air conditioned office?

Impossible to trace all contacts?
Hard to imagine it not spreading.

[RTB]

Budflicker said:

That's not good.

How many people have they infected in 19 days of normal life.

Spin class, yoga, fast food, coffee shop, shopping at the mall, public transport and work in an air conditioned office?

That's why health services will be looking for spikes in pneumonia cases. There's around 2000 deaths a month from pneumonia in the UK, so there will have to be a decent sized covid outbreak to get a signal. Fingers crossed we don't see a signal.

[otolith]

emperorburger said:

I agree with everything you have written, however we cannot rule out genetics as a variable, simply on the basis that it may be considered in some way vulgar or racist.

No, that is true. I can't help thinking that there is a bit of wishful thinking going on, though, when people say "it must be 'cos they're Chinese / all smoke like chimneys / the air is polluted" - I mean, they could all be factors which alter the odds, especially the smoking, but usually something that's killing people is a bit less discriminating than that.

[otolith]

philv said:

I think afro Caribbean men are more likely to get prostrate cancer.

They probably need to lie down after hearing that.

[Budflicker]

philv said:

Impossible to trace all contacts?

Exactly!

I'm worried about this virus, both in terms of illness and on the potential impact on our society in terms of economy and potential breakdown of social order in the UK.


We only need a bit of snow or a fuel protest and it all goes to st pretty quickly here.

Let's face it, a drug dealer gets shot in Tottenham and all the tts in London start looting TV and trainer shops, imagine what will happen if the NHS is overwhelmed, curfews or quarantined are imposed and police numbers are restricted further?


Inner cities will be like Judge fking Dread.

[otolith]

Alan535 said:

Look at what happened to red indians and eskimos when exposed to european sicknesses on purpose because it wasnt as severe in europeans but our common diseases were fatal to them.

More to do with an immunologically naïve population than genetics, I think - they were killed by things like smallpox which also killed Europeans, but when a substantial proportion of the population has already had it it's not going to rip through them in quite the same way.

[philv]

Budflicker said:

philv said:

Impossible to trace all contacts?

Exactly!

I'm worried about this virus, both in terms of illness and on the potential impact on our society in terms of economy and potential breakdown of social order in the UK.


We only need a bit of snow or a fuel protest and it all goes to st pretty quickly here.

Let's face it, a drug dealer gets shot in Tottenham and all the tts in London start looting TV and trainer shops, imagine what will happen if the NHS is overwhelmed, curfews or quarantined are imposed and police numbers are restricted further?


Inner cities will be like Judge fking Dread.

Na....most people want law and order.
The scum are still in a minority.
They'd impose martial law.

[anonymous-user]

otolith said:

Alan535 said:

Look at what happened to red indians and eskimos when exposed to european sicknesses on purpose because it wasnt as severe in europeans but our common diseases were fatal to them.

More to do with an immunologically naïve population than genetics, I think - they were killed by things like smallpox which also killed Europeans, but when a substantial proportion of the population has already had it it's not going to rip through them in quite the same way.

You put it well but thats what i mean,the chinese and others maybe immunologically naive so it hurts them more.Is it a novel virus in the world,since westerners of many races seem to survive better from what i have read.I have no numbers to back it up.

[nffcforever]

RTB said:

Budflicker said:

That's not good.

How many people have they infected in 19 days of normal life.

Spin class, yoga, fast food, coffee shop, shopping at the mall, public transport and work in an air conditioned office?

That's why health services will be looking for spikes in pneumonia cases. There's around 2000 deaths a month from pneumonia in the UK, so there will have to be a decent sized covid outbreak to get a signal. Fingers crossed we don't see a signal.

Would relying on identifying additional pneumonia cases be problematic though, because of the incubation period (typically 10-14 days AFAUI), and then probably another several days for pneumonia to develop and be diagnosed.

So what I mean is you might have people who have been infected not getting identified via the 'pneumonia spike method' until 2-3 weeks have passed from initial infection. So it might appear there isn't an outbreak for 2-3 weeks, until you can recognise the associated pneumonia spike, and during that 2-3 week period additional spreading will most likely have been happening.

I'm not saying that a spike in pneumonia cases shouldn't be looked for, and I'm also not really sure what should be done in addition to that in the interim to try and ID infections earlier on.

[jimmythingy]

Well our supply chain director will have just dropped. With our backup manufacturing in South Korea and components suppliers in Italy. Honestly I have not seen him all week without a phone stuck to his ear.

[emperorburger]

RTB said:

It's less clear with regards infectious disease. One thing to bear in mind is that you have natural selection working to make the pathogen able to infect as many genetic backgrounds as possible in a population.

The only way to determine susceptibility in a lab is to discover the mechanism of action of a pathogen in-vitro and then go back to the population genetics and start looking for correlations between what you observed in the lab and what is observed in the population.
You would then go back and generate an animal model that had the same genotype as your hypothesized susceptible population and see if your hypothesis is predictive in a whole organism. You've then got a body of evidence that a particular mutation or level of expression of a particular gene provides a basis for a susceptibility to a disease.

Not related to the virus but potentially interesting:

A number of years ago I worked as part of a team on a diagnostic assay to select patients that would respond to a particular anti-cancer drug in development. All the Phase 1 and Phase 2a trials had been done in Japanese hospitals and we'd seen good response rates. As it went into Phase2b and Phase3 trials we moved into European and American centres and the response rate to the drug dropped to close to zero. It turned out that the drug preferentially bound to a mutated version of the drug target that was prevalent in SE Asian populations. Caucasians do very occasionally have this version of the gene but its very rare. Therefore before treatment you need to be screened to make sure you're genetically suitable.

Founder effects and ethnicity is something we keep an eye on when designing trials. We also scrutinise the data to stop any expensive retrospective personalised healthcare programmes.

Thank you for posting. It was an interesting read for me.

[red_slr]

Budflicker said:

philv said:

Impossible to trace all contacts?

Exactly!

I'm worried about this virus, both in terms of illness and on the potential impact on our society in terms of economy and potential breakdown of social order in the UK.


We only need a bit of snow or a fuel protest and it all goes to st pretty quickly here.

Let's face it, a drug dealer gets shot in Tottenham and all the tts in London start looting TV and trainer shops, imagine what will happen if the NHS is overwhelmed, curfews or quarantined are imposed and police numbers are restricted further?


Inner cities will be like Judge fking Dread.

I posted a very similar post probably 2 weeks ago. Its going to be bad if it kicks off round here. Society wont help itself tats for sure.

[anonymous-user]

MaxFromage said:

Figures from the John Hopkins tracker WITHOUT Hubei Province:

Confirmed cases: 14,065
Deaths: 103
Recovered: 6,774

In comparison to yesterday, 369 more confirmed cases, 4 more deaths and an increase of 632 in recovered patients.

Deaths/(Deaths plus Recovered cases) is now at 1.5% and of course each day the data becomes more statistically mature. A week ago it was 2% and has dropped every day. (Interestingly Hubei has dropped from 27% to 15% in that time and so clearly does not help statistical analysis in comparison to the mainly China without Hubei data). Of course that ignores undiagnosed cases which we are led to believe could be up to 90-95% of all cases. Not that anyone can trust the Chinese figures.

Just checked and it’s around 11% now. Or 0.5% if there’s 20 times the number recovered at home!

I caught the end of what I think was a WHO chap on the radio. Utterly awful update he gave saying things might get ‘messy’
Is ‘messy’ a WHO term for TFU?

[nffcforever]

Good round up

https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/21/coronavirus-pi...