I remember Blackbeard at the match in the early 80's. Used to prowl up and down the enclosure like a hungry tiger
Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!
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Im actually amazed 1) Cruise company's are still, running cruises and 2) people are stupid enough to go on them.
I have a thing here that could do with a good polishing lol
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
A dribble of good news.
The coronavirus isn’t mutating quickly, suggesting a vaccine would offer lasting protection
A scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow) isolated from a patient in the United States, emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab. (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/Reuters)
By
Joel Achenbach
March 24, 2020 at 8:30 p.m. GMT
The coronavirus is not mutating significantly as it circulates through the human population, according to scientists who are closely studying the novel pathogen’s genetic code. That relative stability suggests the virus is less likely to become more or less dangerous as it spreads, and represents encouraging news for researchers hoping to create a long-lasting vaccine.
All viruses evolve over time, accumulating mutations as they replicate imperfectly inside a host’s cells in tremendous numbers and then spread through a population, with some of those mutations persisting through natural selection. The new coronavirus has proofreading machinery, however, and that reduces the “error rate” and the pace of mutation. It looks pretty much the same everywhere it has appeared, the scientists say, and there is no evidence that some strains are deadlier than others.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease covid-19, is similar to coronaviruses that circulate naturally in bats. It jumped into the human species last year in Wuhan, China, likely through an intermediate species — possibly a pangolin, an endangered anteater whose scales are trafficked for traditional medicine.
Scientists now are studying more than 1,000 different samples of the virus, Peter Thielen, a molecular geneticist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory who has been studying the virus, told The Washington Post.
There are only about four to 10 genetic differences between the strains that have infected people in the United States and the original virus that spread in Wuhan, he said.
“That’s a relatively small number of mutations for having passed through a large number of people,” Thielen said. “At this point, the mutation rate of the virus would suggest that the vaccine developed for SARS-CoV-2 would be a single vaccine, rather than a new vaccine every year like the flu vaccine.”
It would be more like the measles or chickenpox vaccines, he said — something that would likely confer immunity for a long time.
“I would expect a vaccine for coronavirus would have a similar profile to those vaccines. It’s great news,” Thielen said.
Two other virologists, Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa and Benjamin Neuman of Texas A&M University at Texarkana, both of whom were on the international committee that named the coronavirus, told The Post that the virus appears relatively stable.
“The virus has not mutated to any significant extent,” Perlman said.
“Just one ‘pretty bad’ strain for everybody so far. If it’s still around in a year, by that point we might have some diversity,” Neuman said.
Neuman contrasted the coronavirus with influenza, which is notoriously slippery.
“Flu does have one trick up its sleeve that coronaviruses do not have — the flu virus genome is broken up into several segments, each of which codes for a gene. When two flu viruses are in the same cell, they can swap some segments, potentially creating a new combination instantly — this is how the H1N1 ‘swine’ flu originated,” Neuman said.
It is possible that a small mutation in the virus could have outsized effects in the clinical outcome of covid-19, the experts say. That has been known to happen with other viruses. But there’s no sign this is happening with the novel coronavirus.
The dramatic death rates in Italy, for example, are most likely due to situational factors — an older population, hospitals being overwhelmed, shortages of ventilators and the resulting rationing of lifesaving care — rather than some difference in the pathogen itself.
“So far, we don’t have any evidence linking a specific virus [strain] to any disease severity score,” Thielen said. “Right now, disease severity is much more likely to be driven by other factors.”
Although one team of scientists earlier this year suggested there might be two distinct strains of the virus with different levels of typical disease severity, that conjecture has not been embraced by the scientific community.
The coronavirus isn’t mutating quickly, suggesting a vaccine would offer lasting protection
A scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow) isolated from a patient in the United States, emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab. (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/Reuters)
By
Joel Achenbach
March 24, 2020 at 8:30 p.m. GMT
The coronavirus is not mutating significantly as it circulates through the human population, according to scientists who are closely studying the novel pathogen’s genetic code. That relative stability suggests the virus is less likely to become more or less dangerous as it spreads, and represents encouraging news for researchers hoping to create a long-lasting vaccine.
All viruses evolve over time, accumulating mutations as they replicate imperfectly inside a host’s cells in tremendous numbers and then spread through a population, with some of those mutations persisting through natural selection. The new coronavirus has proofreading machinery, however, and that reduces the “error rate” and the pace of mutation. It looks pretty much the same everywhere it has appeared, the scientists say, and there is no evidence that some strains are deadlier than others.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease covid-19, is similar to coronaviruses that circulate naturally in bats. It jumped into the human species last year in Wuhan, China, likely through an intermediate species — possibly a pangolin, an endangered anteater whose scales are trafficked for traditional medicine.
Scientists now are studying more than 1,000 different samples of the virus, Peter Thielen, a molecular geneticist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory who has been studying the virus, told The Washington Post.
There are only about four to 10 genetic differences between the strains that have infected people in the United States and the original virus that spread in Wuhan, he said.
“That’s a relatively small number of mutations for having passed through a large number of people,” Thielen said. “At this point, the mutation rate of the virus would suggest that the vaccine developed for SARS-CoV-2 would be a single vaccine, rather than a new vaccine every year like the flu vaccine.”
It would be more like the measles or chickenpox vaccines, he said — something that would likely confer immunity for a long time.
“I would expect a vaccine for coronavirus would have a similar profile to those vaccines. It’s great news,” Thielen said.
Two other virologists, Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa and Benjamin Neuman of Texas A&M University at Texarkana, both of whom were on the international committee that named the coronavirus, told The Post that the virus appears relatively stable.
“The virus has not mutated to any significant extent,” Perlman said.
“Just one ‘pretty bad’ strain for everybody so far. If it’s still around in a year, by that point we might have some diversity,” Neuman said.
Neuman contrasted the coronavirus with influenza, which is notoriously slippery.
“Flu does have one trick up its sleeve that coronaviruses do not have — the flu virus genome is broken up into several segments, each of which codes for a gene. When two flu viruses are in the same cell, they can swap some segments, potentially creating a new combination instantly — this is how the H1N1 ‘swine’ flu originated,” Neuman said.
It is possible that a small mutation in the virus could have outsized effects in the clinical outcome of covid-19, the experts say. That has been known to happen with other viruses. But there’s no sign this is happening with the novel coronavirus.
The dramatic death rates in Italy, for example, are most likely due to situational factors — an older population, hospitals being overwhelmed, shortages of ventilators and the resulting rationing of lifesaving care — rather than some difference in the pathogen itself.
“So far, we don’t have any evidence linking a specific virus [strain] to any disease severity score,” Thielen said. “Right now, disease severity is much more likely to be driven by other factors.”
Although one team of scientists earlier this year suggested there might be two distinct strains of the virus with different levels of typical disease severity, that conjecture has not been embraced by the scientific community.
Catfish Blues
Player Valuation: £15m
Nice one, thanks for that, scary to think that an OTC drug in places like India ( where I think you can still buy a bottle of 50 250 or 500mg tablets ) is fatal in relatively small quantities. Makes paracetamol look like smarties, which plainly they're not !
The Darwin awards are going to have to have a whole separate category this year
Catfish Blues
Player Valuation: £15m
Over the winter, we've had roughly between 2500 and 1500 deaths per week due to all respiratory diseases*, with the numbers recently tailing off as you'd expect as we come out of winter.
We've had ~ 400 COVID-19 related deaths, and rising, in the last two weeks.
Anyone trying to convince themselves that people have been dying for months in the UK because of COVID-19 is kidding themselves.
Theoretically possible ? Just about, but it would take an amazing combination of things for it to be so.
Is it probable ? Absolutely not.
*source - https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/pe...nenglandandwales/2020/publishedweek112020.xls
Catfish Blues
Player Valuation: £15m
About damn time
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
It is rather more possible than that, though. If in January you'd gone to your local A&E saying you had a bad flu / pneumonia but had never been to China or had any links there, would they have tested you for this?
I am not saying the study is right, but saying "well it would have been picked up sooner" is not necessarily true.
They're not going to be last at that particular party, hope they enjoyed the chicken wings.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci: 1 in 1000 New Yorkers are infected with Corona Virus.
Wow and absolutely frightening.
Wow and absolutely frightening.
Catfish Blues
Player Valuation: £15m
Oh, there might have been the odd case causing some fatalities bobbling along for longer than first thought, but it's extremely hard to see the rationale behind that and up to 50% herd immunity having already been reached. If we're anywhere near that level of immunity, you wouldn't expect the virus to be spreading so quickly now.
For us to currently have any decent herd immunity would require the virus to be even more contagious than the the R value of 2.5, you'd have to be somewhere between that and measles in an unvacinnated population for it to be spreading at it's current rate, and it would have had to mutate to cause the extra hospitalisations we're seeing here, and in other European countries.
I'd really, really love to be wrong though.
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