CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

rafter said:

2 cruise ships now under quarantine. Not sure if that is reported above and I missed it.

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20Gauge said:

It has only been a few weeks and people are already trying to use the virus as a cause of bankruptcy? Wow!!

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BenIan said:

Not cause of the bankruptcy itself. Reduced hours due to virus disruption of oil industry as a cause for missing their bankruptcy plan payment.

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marsh said:

I have high blood pressure (under treatment.) I was always puzzled by the fact that the Spanish flu took young, healthy people through a "cytokine storm." The 2019 Novel Caronavirus, however, seems to hit older people with hypertension hard and not young people.

I was watching a video on hypertension on the Strong Medicine youtube channel. I came across this slide.

View attachment 181731

So hypertension can have something to do with "cytokine disregulation."

Being a dot connector by nature, I looked up cytokine storm

What is a "cytokine storm," and what are the diseases that cause that?

Answer (1 of 6): 'What is a cytokine storm? What triggers them?' Cytokine storm or Cytokine release syndrome - Wikipedia occurs as a result of overzealous immune responses that generate so much cytokine secretion, hypercytokinesis, that rather than stay local as cytokines normally do, they spill...

www.quora.com

Cytokines are a group of signalling substances the body uses to communicate internally. It is essential for the cells in the immune system to communicate and coordinate immune activity in the defense and repair of damage to the body. Cytokines can be expressed by normal tissue cells to communicate with the immune system, but primarily cytokines are used by the immune system.

At all times, white blood cells circulate in the bloodstream and are the first to sense if a virus or bacteria has infiltrated the body. To fight the pathogens or against infections , white blood cells are accompanied by immune cells. Cytokines signal immune cells such as T-cells and Macrophages to travel to the site of infection. In addition, cytokines activate those cells, stimulating them to produce more cytokines. During this stage, a person's immunity functions properly, and immune cells attack the microbes so they do not get too strong a foothold.

However , for reasons that are not completely understood, too many immune cells can be sent to the infection site. This propagates what is referred to as a cytokine storm or cytokine cascade or hypercytokinemia , where far too many immune cells are caught in an endless loop of calling more and more immune cells to fight the infection. The reaction ends up inflaming the tissue surrounding the infection. Cytokine storms have potential to do significant damage to body tissues and organs.

Symptoms of cytokine storms can be :

• Hypotension (rapidly falling/low blood pressure)
• Tachycardia (rapid pulse, more than 100 beats per minute)
• Dyspnea (difficulty breathing)
• Fever (temperature higher than 38°C/100°F)
• Ischemia (restriction of bloodflow, especially to the internal organs)
• Organ failure (as a result of the lack of oxygen, acidosis and severe failure of the metabolism)
• Uncontrollable hemorrhage - in relation to influenza, typically of lung and airway tissue.

Cytokine storms can occur in a number of infectious and non-infectious diseases which includes :

• Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD)

• Acute Respiratory Distress Summertime (ARDS)
• Sepsis
• Ebola
• Avian Influenza
• Smallpox
• Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS).

Cytokine storm may also be induced by certain medications.

Cytokine storms were held responsible for some widespread diseases such as :

• The number of healthy young adult deaths during the 1918 Influenza pandemic disease , which killed around 50 to 100 million people.
• The probable reason for many deaths during the SARS epidemic in 2003.
• High mortality among healthy young adults in the 2009 swine flu outbreak has led to speculation that cytokine storms could be responsible for these deaths.

______

Then I recalled that HIV drugs have something to do with T cells.
I found this paragraph on an HIV site Starting antiretroviral treatment for HIV

"The CD4 cells (also called T-helper cells) are an important part of the immune system because they fight germs and infections. HIV attacks CD4 cells and reduces the number of them in your body. Without treatment, HIV slowly weakens the immune system, making it harder for your body to fight off illness or infection. "
____________
Anyway, I am no medical professional, but it is getting me closer to understanding why hypertension with the pathology of "cytokine disregulation" might make someone old die of a disease that usually attacks the young and has a symptom of low blood pressure. Perhaps this is also why HIV drugs might work to help regulate the cytokine response.

Click to expand...

CaryC said:

Just for conspiracy theory purposes:

Did China's Tencent Accidentally Leak The True Terrifying Coronavirus Statistics

www.zerohedge.com
3 mins read
Ten days ago, shortly after China first started reporting the cases and deaths associated with the coronavirus epidemic, a UK researcher predicted that over 250,000 Chinese would be infected with the virus by February 4. And while according to official Chinese data, the number of infections has indeed soared in the past two weeks, at just under 25,000 (and roughly 500 deaths), it is a far cry from this dismal prediction, about ten times below that predicted by the epidemiologists.

Is this discrepancy possible? Is the epidemic truly far less serious than conventional epidemiological models predicted? Or is China merely hiding the full extent of the problem?
After all, it the WSJ itself reported in late January , China was explicitly manipulating the casualty number by listing pneumonia as the cause of death instead of coronavirus. Subsequent reports that Wuhan officials were rushing to cremate coronavirus casualties before they could be counted did not add to the credibility of the official data.
But the biggest hit to the narrative and China's officially reported epidemic numbers came overnight, when a slip up in China's TenCent may have revealed the true extent of the coronavirus epidemic on the mainland. And it is nothing short than terrifying.
As the Taiwan Times reports in a report first spotted by user @TheHKGroup, over the weekend, Tencent "seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths, which were astronomically higher than official figures", and were far closer to the catastrophic epidemic projections made by Jonathan Read.
According to the report, late on Saturday evening, Tencent, on its webpage titled "Epidemic Situation Tracker", showed confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (2019nCoV) in China as standing at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure.
And while the number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300, most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day.
Moments later, Tencent updated the numbers to reflect the government's "official" numbers that day.
This was not the first time Tencent has done this: as Taiwan Times notes, Chinese netizens have noticed that Tencent has on at least three occasions posted extremely high numbers, only to quickly lower them to government-approved statistics.
This is where it gets even more bizarre: contrary to claiming that this was just a "fat finger" mistyping of data, observant Chinese netizens also noticed that each time the screen with the large numbers appears, it shows a comparison with the previous day's data which demonstrates a "reasonable" incremental increase, much like comparisons of official numbers.
This led many in the mainland to speculate that Tencent has two sets of data, the real data and "processed" data.
In short, two camps have emerged: one, the more optimistic, speculates that a coding problem could be causing the real "internal" data to accidentally appear. The other, far more pessimistically inclined, believes that someone behind the scenes is trying to leak the real numbers, as "the "internal" data held by Beijing may not reflect the true extent of the epidemic."
Indeed, as repeatedly pointed out here and according to multiple sources in Wuhan, many coronavirus patients are unable to receive treatment and die outside of hospitals. Furthermore, a severe shortage of test kits also leads to a lower number of diagnosed cases of infection and death. In addition, there have been many reports of doctors being ordered to list other forms of death instead of coronavirus to keep the death toll artificially low.
What is the truth?
We leave it up to readers, but keep this in mind: on Jan 29, Zeng Guang, the chief scientist of epidemiology at China’s CDC, made a rare candid admission about why Chinese officials cannot tell people the truth in an interview with the state-run tabloid Global Times: "The officials need to think about the political angle and social stability in order to keep their positions."
And then, on Monday, none other than China Xi's called on all officials to quickly work together to contain the Coronavirus at a rare meeting of top leaders, saying the outcome would "directly impact social stability in the country."
Well, if China is mostly concerned about social stability - as it should be for a nation of 1.4 billion - it is easy to comprehend why the entire political apparatus in China would be geared to presenting numbers which seem somewhat credible - in light of the barrage of videos of people dying on the street - but not so terrifying as to cause a countrywide panic.
Then again, if China indeed had over 154,000 cases and almost 25,000 deaths as of 5 days ago, then no attempts to mask the full extent and true severity of the pandemic have any hope of "containing" the truth.

read:Did China's Tencent Accidentally Leak The True Terrifying Coronavirus Statistics

Click to expand...

Tencent may have accidentally leaked real data on Wuhan virus deaths | Taiwan News | 2020/02/05

Tencent briefly lists 154,023 infections and 24,589 deaths from Wuhan coronavirus.As many experts question the veracity of China's statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and...

www.taiwannews.com.tw

rondaben said:

Hey Marsh, good work on this. I'll try to clarify it if I can and how Coronovirus plays with all of this.

First, lets talk about the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone system (RAAS). Renin is produced in your kidneys when they feel like they are not getting enough oxygen or blood flow. Renin is an enzyme that will convert another intert substance--angiotensinogen--into Angiotensin 1. As this is circulating throughout the body it will eventually get to the lungs, which produce something called Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE). This converts Angiotensin 1 into Angiotensin 2. There are many blood pressure medications called "ACE inhibitors" (Lisinopril, Ramipril, etc) that inhibit this process. This is important because Angiotensin 2 is a POWERFUL driver of blood pressure. More ACE2 means higher blood pressure essentially. This is accomplished several ways. ACE2 causes the blood vessels to constrict. This causes pressure to go up just like if you place a finger over a garden hose. ACE 2 also causes the release of aldosterone, a hormone with effects on the kidneys. This causes the kidney to hold on to sodium and water. This is a slower process that conserves fluid volume and thus increasing blood pressure. This is another place where we try to address hypertension clinically through the use of diuretics to pull of excess fluids and LOWER volume. Meds that do this can be hydrochlorothiazide, lasix, etc.

CORRECTED (NO, not NO2 and function was reversed. Sorry! it is correct now.)

A final consideration for our discussion is about vascular endothelial dysfuntion. The cells that line the inside of blood vessels are called endothelium. One function of these cells is to produce nitric oxide(NO) that produces a natural relaxation to vessels we can refer to as "vascular tone". Without these cells producing NO you get vasoconstriction and a local increase in blood pressure. If they are destroyed it also causes the vessels to become leaky, much like a soaker hose. One final problem is that if the endothelium is actually destroyed it can cause a blood clot to form. This is a mechanism closeley related in heart disease to heart attacks. I can clarify that later if you are interested.

Now that you have a general idea of how blood pressure works (its more complicated but for our purposes here it is probably sufficient) lets talk about cytokines and what they do.

When white blood cells--those tasked with immune system response--are activated they will begin to signal other parts of the immune system to go into action. It can cause other types of cells to flood into the area to fight infection. They can kill cells that are infected before they go on to release infectious agents (for example a cell may be infected with a virus but has not yet released virus copies. These cytokines can punch a whole in the cell thereby killing it and preventing replication of the virus). As you can imagine these cytokines can have a profound effect on blood pressure. More blood can be shunted into the area of infection so that more white blood cells can participate. The "quarterback" of this response is a T-lymphocyte. It can adhere to infectious agents, vascular endothelium and activate other parts of the system.

So how does all of this work with Coronavirus?

We know that the virus can attach to cells that have ACE2 receptors. This means that cells of the lung, blood vessels, kidneys are targets for the disease. The first stop in infection is the lungs. The virus will infect lung tissue--particularly in the small air sacs called alveoli deep within the lung. The lung tissue has a good amount of white blood cells present to fight infection (as you can imagine, this is one of the primary ways people get infected so your body wants to "forward deploy" its defenses). One thing about alveoli--the walls of these sacs are once cell thick. This is because you want oxygen to diffuse across the cell and into the blood vessel and CO2 across the cell into the alveoli to be exhaled. As the infection progresses across the lung damage begins to occur to these cells. The white blood cells at the site begin to call for reinforcements throgh the use of cytokines. This causes the start of fevers (an effect of cytokines), it causes inflammation in the area, it causes fluid to leak from the blood vessel into the alveoli and gives virus particles a door into the cirulatory system. This reduces the ability of the alveoli to move O2 and CO2 back and forth so the amount of oxygen in the blood begins to drop. You will start to cough to try to expel this fluid in the alveoli.

Now you have two new problems. The virus can attach to ACE2 inhibitors in the blood vessels and kidneys starting another cycle of inflammation. The lower O2 in the blood causes the kidneys to activate the RAAS system we talked about before. This progresses for a few days as more and more cells are infected.

What not is less known in this particular virus is what occurs but I will postulate what I believe happens. White blood cells continue to aggregate to the areas of infection. Infected cells will tend to be stable for a period of time before they essentially self destruct and release thousands or virus particles to continue the infection. I believe this is typically happening 3-6 days after the cell is infected. In the end phase of this disease large swathes of lung tissue is infected. There is a functional pneumonia (all of those alveoli full of fluid). The endothelium is infected and is dysfunctional. The kidneys are being injured and, along with the effect of aldosterone from the activated RAAS, cause fluid retention an the start of kidney failure.

At some point the immune system decides that it has reached a "do or die" situation with regards to the infection. Massive release of cytokines occurs. Coupled with the damage to the body you get the following effects:

Fluid leaks from the blood vessels throughout the body. In the lungs this causes a foamy, high protein (mixed with blood) in the lungs. All of this fluid leaving the circulatory system causes blood pressure to drop (volume loss). The amount of fluid entering the body tissues (including the lungs) is exacerbated because aldosterone has worked to help the body to retain extra fluid. The endothelum is damaged and NO production goes down causing the blood vessels to further dialate and making blood pressure fall even further. The patient has entered ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) and is in shock (low blood pressure, high heart rate, high respiratory rate, fever, infection). As you can imagine the lung full of high protein fluid is a tissue primed for bacterial infection and secondary co-infection will be common. The patient will need prompt intervention. Antivirals (if they are effective), Antibiotics (to limit co-infection), vasopressors (to cause blood pressure to go up and perfuse all of the organs (brain included). Medications to limit the inflammatory response like steroids will likely be given.

I hope that this has not been to technical but gives an idea of how all of this works. The more you know...

Click to expand...

Heliobas Disciple said:

More on this:

Tencent may have accidentally leaked real data on Wuhan virus deaths | Taiwan News | 2020/02/05

Tencent briefly lists 154,023 infections and 24,589 deaths from Wuhan coronavirus.As many experts question the veracity of China's statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and...

www.taiwannews.com.tw

(fair use applies)

Tencent may have accidentally leaked real data on Wuhan virus deaths
Tencent briefly lists 154,023 infections and 24,589 deaths from Wuhan coronavirus
By Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2020/02/05 18:59

View attachment 181780



TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As many experts question the veracity of China's statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths, which were astronomically higher than official figures.

On late Saturday evening (Feb. 1), Tencent, on its webpage titled "Epidemic Situation Tracker", showed confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (2019nCoV) in China as standing at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure.

The number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300. Most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day.

Moments later, Tencent updated the numbers to reflect the government's "official" numbers that day. Netizens noticed that Tencent has on at least three occasions posted extremely high numbers, only to quickly lower them to government-approved statistics.
View attachment 181781
Netizens also noticed that each time the screen with the large numbers appears, it shows a comparison with the previous day's data which demonstrates a "reasonable" incremental increase, much like comparisons of official numbers. This has led some netizens to speculate that Tencent has two sets of data, the real data and "processed" data.

Some are speculating that a coding problem could be causing the real "internal" data to accidentally appear. Others believe that someone behind the scenes is trying to leak the real numbers.

However, the "internal" data held by Beijing may not reflect the true extent of the epidemic. According to multiple sources in Wuhan, many coronavirus patients are unable to receive treatment and die outside of hospitals.

A severe shortage of test kits also leads to a lower number of diagnosed cases of infection and death. In addition, there have been many reports of doctors being ordered to list other forms of death instead of coronavirus to keep the death toll artificially low.

Click to expand...

northern watch said:

William Yang‏Verified account @WilliamYang120 3h3 hours ago

Shanxxi province reported the first #coronavirus case of a pregnant woman. The patient is 33 years old and pregnant for 8 months. Her in-laws, who had both been diagnosed with the virus, conceal their travel history to #Hubei, and their lies caused their family members and ...

Click to expand...

rondaben said:

Hey Marsh, good work on this. I'll try to clarify it if I can and how Coronovirus plays with all of this.

First, lets talk about the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone system (RAAS). Renin is produced in your kidneys when they feel like they are not getting enough oxygen or blood flow. Renin is an enzyme that will convert another intert substance--angiotensinogen--into Angiotensin 1. As this is circulating throughout the body it will eventually get to the lungs, which produce something called Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE). This converts Angiotensin 1 into Angiotensin 2. There are many blood pressure medications called "ACE inhibitors" (Lisinopril, Ramipril, etc) that inhibit this process. This is important because Angiotensin 2 is a POWERFUL driver of blood pressure. More ACE2 means higher blood pressure essentially. This is accomplished several ways. ACE2 causes the blood vessels to constrict. This causes pressure to go up just like if you place a finger over a garden hose. ACE 2 also causes the release of aldosterone, a hormone with effects on the kidneys. This causes the kidney to hold on to sodium and water. This is a slower process that conserves fluid volume and thus increasing blood pressure. This is another place where we try to address hypertension clinically through the use of diuretics to pull of excess fluids and LOWER volume. Meds that do this can be hydrochlorothiazide, lasix, etc.

CORRECTED (NO, not NO2 and function was reversed. Sorry! it is correct now.)

A final consideration for our discussion is about vascular endothelial dysfuntion. The cells that line the inside of blood vessels are called endothelium. One function of these cells is to produce nitric oxide(NO) that produces a natural relaxation to vessels we can refer to as "vascular tone". Without these cells producing NO you get vasoconstriction and a local increase in blood pressure. If they are destroyed it also causes the vessels to become leaky, much like a soaker hose. One final problem is that if the endothelium is actually destroyed it can cause a blood clot to form. This is a mechanism closeley related in heart disease to heart attacks. I can clarify that later if you are interested.

Now that you have a general idea of how blood pressure works (its more complicated but for our purposes here it is probably sufficient) lets talk about cytokines and what they do.

When white blood cells--those tasked with immune system response--are activated they will begin to signal other parts of the immune system to go into action. It can cause other types of cells to flood into the area to fight infection. They can kill cells that are infected before they go on to release infectious agents (for example a cell may be infected with a virus but has not yet released virus copies. These cytokines can punch a whole in the cell thereby killing it and preventing replication of the virus). As you can imagine these cytokines can have a profound effect on blood pressure. More blood can be shunted into the area of infection so that more white blood cells can participate. The "quarterback" of this response is a T-lymphocyte. It can adhere to infectious agents, vascular endothelium and activate other parts of the system.

So how does all of this work with Coronavirus?

We know that the virus can attach to cells that have ACE2 receptors. This means that cells of the lung, blood vessels, kidneys are targets for the disease. The first stop in infection is the lungs. The virus will infect lung tissue--particularly in the small air sacs called alveoli deep within the lung. The lung tissue has a good amount of white blood cells present to fight infection (as you can imagine, this is one of the primary ways people get infected so your body wants to "forward deploy" its defenses). One thing about alveoli--the walls of these sacs are once cell thick. This is because you want oxygen to diffuse across the cell and into the blood vessel and CO2 across the cell into the alveoli to be exhaled. As the infection progresses across the lung damage begins to occur to these cells. The white blood cells at the site begin to call for reinforcements throgh the use of cytokines. This causes the start of fevers (an effect of cytokines), it causes inflammation in the area, it causes fluid to leak from the blood vessel into the alveoli and gives virus particles a door into the cirulatory system. This reduces the ability of the alveoli to move O2 and CO2 back and forth so the amount of oxygen in the blood begins to drop. You will start to cough to try to expel this fluid in the alveoli.

Now you have two new problems. The virus can attach to ACE2 inhibitors in the blood vessels and kidneys starting another cycle of inflammation. The lower O2 in the blood causes the kidneys to activate the RAAS system we talked about before. This progresses for a few days as more and more cells are infected.

What not is less known in this particular virus is what occurs but I will postulate what I believe happens. White blood cells continue to aggregate to the areas of infection. Infected cells will tend to be stable for a period of time before they essentially self destruct and release thousands or virus particles to continue the infection. I believe this is typically happening 3-6 days after the cell is infected. In the end phase of this disease large swathes of lung tissue is infected. There is a functional pneumonia (all of those alveoli full of fluid). The endothelium is infected and is dysfunctional. The kidneys are being injured and, along with the effect of aldosterone from the activated RAAS, cause fluid retention an the start of kidney failure.

At some point the immune system decides that it has reached a "do or die" situation with regards to the infection. Massive release of cytokines occurs. Coupled with the damage to the body you get the following effects:

Fluid leaks from the blood vessels throughout the body. In the lungs this causes a foamy, high protein (mixed with blood) in the lungs. All of this fluid leaving the circulatory system causes blood pressure to drop (volume loss). The amount of fluid entering the body tissues (including the lungs) is exacerbated because aldosterone has worked to help the body to retain extra fluid. The endothelum is damaged and NO production goes down causing the blood vessels to further dialate and making blood pressure fall even further. The patient has entered ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) and is in shock (low blood pressure, high heart rate, high respiratory rate, fever, infection). As you can imagine the lung full of high protein fluid is a tissue primed for bacterial infection and secondary co-infection will be common. The patient will need prompt intervention. Antivirals (if they are effective), Antibiotics (to limit co-infection), vasopressors (to cause blood pressure to go up and perfuse all of the organs (brain included). Medications to limit the inflammatory response like steroids will likely be given.

I hope that this has not been to technical but gives an idea of how all of this works. The more you know...

Click to expand...

Intestinal Fortitude said:

After Ebola success, Regeneron turns antibody capabilities against 2019-nCoV

After Ebola success, Regeneron turns antibody capabilities against 2019-nCoV
by Nick Paul Taylor |
Feb 5, 2020 8:52am

Regeneron has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop a treatment for the coronavirus outbreak. The alliance will leverage Regeneron antibody technology that gave rise to an effective treatment for the Ebola virus.

Through the project, Regeneron and the HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) aim to develop multiple monoclonal antibodies that, when given as monotherapies or in combination, treat the 2019-nCoV coronavirus. The plan is to develop antibodies that bind to viral proteins and, in doing so, stop the pathogen from readily infecting human cells.

Regeneron has previously applied its antibody discovery capabilities to pathogens including Ebola and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). The Ebola medicine emerged from a four-therapy clinical trial as one of the preferred treatments for the virus.

Biopharma is a fast-growing world where big ideas come along every day. Our subscribers rely on FierceBiotech as their must-read source for the latest news, analysis and data in the world of biotech and pharma R&D. Sign up today to get biotech news and updates delivered to your inbox and read on the go.

The 2019-nCoV collaboration unveiled this week is an expansion of an existing relationship between Regeneron and HHS, which teamed up in 2017 to work on antibodies against up to 10 pathogens.

Rick Bright, deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response and director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at ASPR, framed the expanded collaboration as part of the U.S. government’s efforts to protect the nation.

“Emerging infectious diseases can present serious threats to our nation's health security. Working as public-private partners like we have with Regeneron since 2014, we can move rapidly to respond to new global health threats,” Bright said in a statement.

The HHS-Regeneron collaboration opens another front in the growing effort to develop medicines and vaccines against 2019-nCoV. Other companies including AbbVie, Gilead Sciences and Moderna are also going after the virus. Some of those projects are more advanced than Regeneron’s program, but HHS thinks its partner can move quickly, pointing to technology that truncated development of the Ebola and MERS-CoV antibodies to make its case.

Click to expand...

In the race to develop a coronavirus treatment, Regeneron thinks it has the inside track

The novel #coronavirus arrived at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ sprawling campus like any other parcel: inside a cardboard box.

www.statnews.com

northern watch said:

Carmen Ng 吳嘉文‏ @Carmen_NgKaMan 21h21 hours ago

The other impact of #coronavirus: “Because #China produces such a large proportion of the US’ drugs & medical supplies [...] our members have expressed concern that the already fragile #supplychain will break with the worsening conditions in China” #nCoV19

Click to expand...

northern watch said:

China Economy‏ @CE_ChinaEconomy 9h9 hours ago

People who hide history of traveling or living in regions with major novel coronavirus outbreaks will be held responsible, even on criminal charges, in Guangdong. Those who are aware they likely carry coronavirus but do not self-report will be held responsible, even criminally.

Click to expand...

northern watch said:

Aki Heikkinen‏ @akihheikkinen 4h4 hours ago

Taiwan news scoop: Chinese conglomerate Tencent may have accidentally leaked real data on Wuhan virus deaths briefly. "Tencent has on at least three occasions posted extremely high numbers, only to quickly lower them to government-approved statistics."

Click to expand...

bw said:

Just hauled out my spare oxygen concentrator. Never throw anything away.

Click to expand...

Hfcomms said:

Check some of your local stores in the paint department. A box store by me a few days ago still had a fair assortment of masks, gloves, booties and Tyvek suits.

Click to expand...

northern watch said:

EndGameWW3‏ @EndGameWW3 1m1 minute ago

Funeral Home Worker in Wuhan: We Are Working 24/7 to Cremate Bodies

Click to expand...

Heliobas Disciple said:

19 suspects screened for coronavirus in Madhya Pradesh

Meanwhile, in Bhopal, health minister Tulsi Silawat chaired a meeting of health department officials and reviewed the situation. He directed the officials to make sure that there is no panic and government hospitals have the facilities to meet the challenge. It was decided that tourists and visitors from affected countries would be screened for the virus and kept in observation till blood report is received.

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mzkitty said:

View attachment 181761

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Heliobas Disciple said:

More on this:

In the race to develop a coronavirus treatment, Regeneron thinks it has the inside track

The novel #coronavirus arrived at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ sprawling campus like any other parcel: inside a cardboard box.

www.statnews.com

(fair use applies)

In the race to develop a coronavirus treatment, Regeneron thinks it has the inside track
By Damian Garde
February 5, 2020

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. — The novel coronavirus arrived at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ sprawling campus like any other parcel.

Inside a cardboard box, shipped to the company’s scientists, was a small tube. And inside it was a fragment of genetic code belonging to 2019-nCoV, the infectious agent that has killed more than 400 people since the start of the outbreak in China. Because it was just a snippet of the full genome, the virus wasn’t actually infectious.

It also wasn’t hard to obtain. The sender was one of the many vendors that will whip up synthetic genomes for a fee — a process that, for biotech companies, has become nearly as commoditized as food delivery.

“You can’t get it on Amazon,” Christos Kyratsous, the company’s vice president of infectious disease research, said with a smile, “yet.”

What happens with the virus now is still very much a story being written. Like a number of other biopharma companies, Regeneron’s response to the outbreak has been rapid. Vir Biotechnology, a startup based in San Francisco, is also working to develop a treatment. Johnson & Johnson and others are hoping to develop vaccines. The drug maker Gilead Sciences has already shipped an investigational medicine to China to see if it might work against the virus.

Despite the response, developing drugs or vaccines during an outbreak can be tortuous, and the early science usually provides only the barest clues to whether or not further work will yield success. If history is any guide, most of the efforts launched in recent days will ultimately fail — for any number of reasons.

One of them is that what works in lab mice often fails in actual people. But that’s where Regeneron — a $38 billion company that crafted a treatment for Ebola virus — believes it has a leg up.

Decades ago, the company set out to bend the curve of drug development by genetically engineering a mouse to have a fully human immune system. That means if you inject it with a foreign agent, it’ll generate human antibodies to fight the perceived infection. One of those antibodies became Dupixent, Regeneron’s multibillion-dollar eczema drug, and another grew into Libtayo, the company’s recently approved cancer immunotherapy.

Now, Regeneron is betting its mice can come through in 2019-nCoV.

The process began last month, when scientists in China sequenced the virus and uploaded their findings to an open-source archive. Back in Tarrytown, Regeneron scientists copy-pasted it into genome analysis software and began poring over the sequence in search of the key that 2019-nCoV uses to unlock and infect human cells.

Much like the pandemic pathogens SARS and MERS, each individual virus of 2019-nCoV relies on a surface “spike” protein to bypass cellular defenses — and cause infection. Any eventual treatment would have to stop that protein from reaching its target.

So Regeneron homed in on the snippet of the virus’ genome that encodes for spike, which boiled down to about 10% of the roughly 30,000 base pairs that make up 2019-nCoV, said senior R&D specialist Kristen Pascal. And then it placed its order.

About a week and a half later, the tube came in the mail and Regeneron’s scientists cleared their calendars. Over the course of some long days and an unobserved weekend, they cloned the spike-producing code and used it to “decorate” the surface of some otherwise harmless particles, Kyratsous said. That created a pseudo-virus that would mimic 2019-nCoV’s cell-penetrant biology but leave out its ability to replicate and cause illness.

And that’s where the mice come in. Regeneron’s scientists are currently at work immunizing them with the spike-coated pseudo-virus, generating antibodies that will interrupt the coronavirus from breaking into cells.

The process will take weeks and likely result in thousands of antibodies with slight variations, Kyratsous said. Once it does, Regeneron will host an internal bake-off, screening each antibody to isolate only the most potent.

The winners will get tested against animal models of 2019-nCoV, but first they have to grow.

“The day we decide on a lead antibody, that’s the day we can get started,” said Hanne Bak, head of Regeneron’s preclinical manufacturing division.

Downstairs from some of the labs at Regeneron is an on-site manufacturing operation, a biotech brewery where row after row of gleaming bioreactors house the genetically modified cells that churn out therapeutic antibodies.

There, scientists will thaw out a vial of frozen cells and put them into an oscillating machine called a wave bioreactor, which rocks back and forth like it’s trying to coax the cells to sleep. From there the antibody factories move through ever-larger bioreactors, a weekslong process that produces enough drug product for the requisite animal studies.

If any 2019-nCoV antibodies graduate to clinical trials, the saga continues at Regeneron’s upstate manufacturing facility, which is outfitted with the scale necessary for making human drugs.

In the end, the company hopes to have a handful of antibodies that can be packaged as a cocktail.

“You want antibodies that bind to the same target but don’t compete with each other,” Kyratsous said. “If you use more than one antibody, you increase the chances your treatment will still work as the virus evolves.”

Regeneron took the same approach the last time it broke the glass on its outbreak-response process, an experience that both lends hope to the 2019-nCoV effort and underlines why pandemics can be perilous for drug development.

In 2014, as Ebola ravaged West Africa, Regeneron employed its chimeric mice to come up with antibodies against the virus. About 10 months later, with the support of the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Regeneron had come up with EB3, a three-antibody cocktail ready for human testing.

But the world wasn’t ready for Regeneron. The outbreak had subsided by late 2015, leaving EB3 on the shelf.

Three years later, when the virus flared up in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Regeneron shipped out doses of EB3 for a landmark clinical trial. The results were dramatic: About 65% of patients who got Regeneron’s one-time therapy survived their infections, compared to 33% in the outbreak overall.

The speed and efficacy of EB3 is what Regeneron hopes to replicate in 2019-nCoV, even if there’s little hope for return on its investment. As with Ebola, BARDA is supporting the latest effort, and Regeneron is aiming to replicate that 10-month time frame. But just like last time, the outbreak’s uncertain future could render a treatment unnecessary by the time it’s ready for use. And even if the coronavirus persists, the unpredictability of drug development could leave Regeneron with nothing to show for its efforts.

“This is not a profit-driven endeavor,” Kyratsous said. “We never start a project here by saying, ‘Oh, my God, this is a great commercial opportunity. Let’s do it.’”

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Pinecone said:

Talk about unfortunate timing. We just got a flyer from a local cremation company inviting us to dinner at one of two local eateries to learn more about their services. One was a pizza place. The other - one of the local Chinese restaurants.

(It's a great place to eat, but we won't be going there for a long while.)

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homecanner1 said:

Our medical profession is rife with LGBT activism and they are truly oblivious to reality at the gritty street level. I also would argue that meth keeps things running in our society now and a certain level of 'unregulated after hours visitation' is probably already going on in the more corrupted bleeding heart liberal enclaves.

Denial. Guilt. "Meth as quick fix to imitate cheap lust" or quietly promote workplace efficiency and they use it in all the danceclubs too. Its a total scourge on our society right now. That was absolutely shocking as a renegade undercover investigation. They best get their priorities straight now, its not about getting Mayor McCheese into the white house or demanding that every hospital floor have a tranny toilet for their public visitors. Its life and death now staring us all down

I cannot imagine the chaos if we lose our nationwide hospital security in this, patients getting raped, drugs stolen by zombie hordes in withdrawl.

Today's Pandemic War Room, Episode 12 with Dr. Steven Hatfill again, this time discussing "plateau' of cases and what to expect. Excellent listening as always. Please share the link far and wide with every state health services crisis response team, sign up for the podcasts and get on Bannon's mailing list

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jWIKtjAVDRg&feature=youtu.be

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Pinecone said:

Talk about unfortunate timing. We just got a flyer from a local cremation company inviting us to dinner at one of two local eateries to learn more about their services. One was a pizza place. The other - one of the local Chinese restaurants.

(It's a great place to eat, but we won't be going there for a long while.)

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dvo said:

You speak some truth here. My niece is a RN...still practicing I believe. Quite addicted to drugs and a porn star as well. Not sure how she carries that off. The drug problem....way more than just enjoying some daily bourbon...is another factor in the coming zombie apocalypse.

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raven said:

you probably have figured this out by now but it probably should be said out loud.
Quarantine is technically illegal. It is illegal because it is discrimination and we have made discrimination illegal.
And not merely a legal construct, it has become a social construct.
You cannot discriminate against someone with HIV.
You cannot discriminate against someone with coronavirus.

Once you understand this, you will also understand that when a government announces that they will no longer allow persons from Wuhan to enter the country, it is a very big deal.

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Jubilee on Earth said:

Funny (or not so funny), but I've been monitoring Twitter for updates about the virus for the past week now. There has definitely been a huge decline in hashtag posts, and most of it seems to be "approved" content or newswires. I've hardly seen any first hand accounts, videos, photos, or any rumors.

How sad.

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Tristan said:

"Wuhan" is no longer a single-point of contagen. Many cities in China, and elsewhere, have exhibited h-h transmission.

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desertvet2 said:

note to self buy a carton of smokes....and resist the urge to start smoking again unless I get high blood pressure... aaaggghhhh! damn you satan, you never run out of tricks to bring us back into the fold , do you?

LOL!

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nebb said:

Gonna suck if any of the cremation fumes carry the virus......no, can’t happen.

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