Coronavirus SZN Forever

[reuben]

I'm very indecisive right now between wanting this to be over and wanting it to spread to some of these red states where people are saying this is a hoax.  I saw a sign of a girl who I could only imagine was anti abortion holding a sign that said my body my rights.

I know its fucked up but people need to learn what is and isnt fake news

I was hoping that the silver lining to this whole mess would be a return to trusting science and scientists.  Seeing these people demand the firing of someone who's well past retirement age working his derriere off to save their lives is so disheartening.  We're going to cook this planet and curse the scientists while we burn.

[Miamipuck]

I know some of you reacted to the possiblity of getting infected more than once from Covid here's an article that discussed it:

As the ranks of Covid-19 survivors swell, scientists are racing to understand how well they resist reinfection—and just how long that hard-won immunity might last.

So far, most medical researchers who have studied coronaviruses related to the pathogen that causes Covid-19—including SARS, MERS and the common cold—are confident that people who do recover gain some immunity to SARS-CoV-2, based on preliminary studies and case reports of the new virus. They don’t know yet whether that protection will last a few months, a few years or a lifetime.

Lengths of Resistance
Average amount of time that people retain immunity to selected viral diseases

LENGTH OF

IMMUNITY

ILLNESS

VIRUS

Covid-19

SARS-CoV-2

Unknown

CORONAVIRUSES

Common cold

HCV-229E

6 months

Severe acute

respiratory

syndrome

SARS-CoV

24 months

Middle Eastern

respiratory

syndrome

MERS-CoV

34 months

OTHERS

Flu

Influenza A

6 months

Measles

Rubeola

Lifelong

Sources: Nextstrain; Epidemiology & Infection;
Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal of
Medical Virology


“The arguments are that a protective response to SARS-CoV-2 will last somewhere between 6 months and 60 years,” said Martin Hibberd, a specialist in emerging infectious diseases at the U.K.’s London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Any time the immune system encounters a new virus, it tailors a custom defense by orchestrating a system of cells, organ and tissues. The strength and longevity of those defenses are affected by heredity, sleep, diet, stress and hygiene, to name a few factors, medical experts say. All play into the levels of protective antibodies a patient can produce to ward off infection—and under the right circumstances, that immunity could last a lifetime.

Under its own pressure to survive, some pathogens can evade those immune responses by gradually mutating until they are unrecognizable. Infection by the virus that causes measles confers lifelong immunity, for instance, while the influenza virus mutates so rapidly that new infectious strains of flu emerge almost every year.

SARS-CoV-2 has a mutation rate of less than 25 mutations per year, compared with influenza’s mutation rate of almost 50 mutations per year, according to an analysis by computational biologists of the Nextstrain consortium, based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and the University of Basel in Switzerland. That gives researchers hope that any natural immunity or vaccine would offer more lasting protection, said Pamela Bjorkman, a virologist at the California Institute of Technology who studies viruses that cause AIDS, influenza and Zika.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is so new that the earliest evidence of any long-term immune response comes not from human patients, but from an experiment with a pair of monkeys

Why Blood From Coronavirus Survivors Could Be a Lifeline for the Sick

A growing number of hospitals are investigating antibody testing and blood plasma therapy as a way to combat the new coronavirus in sick patients.

In March, researchers at the Beijing Key Laboratory for Animal Models of Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Disease reported that they had infected two rhesus macaque monkeys, allowed them to recover and then tried to reinfect them with the virus 30 days later. The animals didn’t become sick again, according to their preliminary report.

Now researchers world-wide are racing to determine the levels of antibodies required to generate protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2, whether the severity of an infection affects the strength of that immunity, and how long the immune system may retain its defenses against Covid-19.

TESTS ON CORONAVIRUS SURVIVORS

As a first step, independent research teams in the U.S. and Europe who tested the blood samples from patients with Covid-19 showed that the immune system does produce protective antibodies against the coronavirus from two to 15 days after symptoms appear.

“What we certainly know is that a good proportion of people exposed to SARS-CoV-2 make relatively decent antibody responses and that these antibodies are effective,” said virologist Florian Krammer at New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who helped develop an antibody test for Covid-19. “What we don’t know is how long it will be protective. The assumption is that the immunity is not as long-lived as with other viruses.”

Even if immunity turns out to be temporary, however, the second illness might be milder than the first, Dr. Krammer said.

As they struggle with the nuances of immunity, medical experts are troubled by reports of people who appeared to recover from Covid-19, test free of the coronavirus, and then sicken again. South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is investigating 160 cases, worried that the virus may reactivate to cause relapses or reinfections.
 

Medical researchers suspect these cases arise from problems with the diagnostic PCR genetic test for the virus. In later stages of the disease, the virus settles into the lungs where it can elude detection. Researchers at the Chengdu Medical College in Sichuan, China, last week reported a case in which a patient with severe symptoms of Covid-19 tested negative for the virus eight times before a positive result. Even a positive result, though, can be misleading because the test might detect only harmless viral fragments, not the fully functional contagion.

“As long as you are mounting a strong immune response, you should not be reinfected right away,” said molecular virologist Rebecca Dutch at the University of Kentucky, who is a former president of the American Society of Virology. “The most likely explanation is that they never cleared the virus in the first place.”

From the outset, the effort to understand how the body marshals its defenses against SARS-CoV-2 has been hampered by the paucity of previous research on coronaviruses, scientists said.


Funding for basic research on closely related pathogens, such as the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, dried up after earlier outbreaks were contained, said Northwestern University microbiologist Karla Satchell, who is co-director of the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases, a consortium of seven universities that is analyzing the coronavirus.

In fact, little is known reliably about the risk of re-infection by the coronaviruses that cause SARS, which first emerged in 2002, or MERS, which was first detected in 2012, several infectious-disease experts said.

When researchers in South Korea spot-checked 11 patients who had contracted the MERS-CoV coronavirus in 2015, they found that levels of protective antibodies were still high two years after the patients recovered. And several studies of people who contracted the SARS coronavirus also suggested that antibodies might last two years or so before waning; one unconfirmed case report suggested that levels might still be high as long as 17 years later.

In either case, no one knows if the antibodies were sufficient to prevent reinfection.

Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
SARS-CoV-2 causes Covid-19. An earlier version of the chart accompanying this article incorrectly said it caused the flu. (Corrected on April 19)

[Pope]

If by May 31 were all still sitting inside I declare on June 1 everyone is forcefully given Coronavirus and we let nature handle the rest.

[dcm1602]

If by May 31 were all still sitting inside I declare on June 1 everyone is forcefully given Coronavirus and we let nature handle the rest.

The strategy I've seen for some European countries makes most sense to me. Soon as hospitals and stuff aren't swamped and recovered, you send the young people all back to work first (since they're most likely to survive and break curfew anyway) then soon after expand it.

This way you get herd immunity (ideally) while killing the least amount of people and don't overwhelm healthcare resources

[guinness77]

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEGN-WQeJ6h4vMfYxaYPWzY4qGQgEKhAIACoHCAowvIaCCzDnxf4CMN2F8gU?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
What a country I live in.

[Miamipuck]

I wish Coronavirus killed by IQ, the lower the more dangerous it is. Wipe out those idiots that are dumber than plant life.

[guinness77]

I wish Coronavirus killed by IQ, the lower the more dangerous it is. Wipe out those idiots that are dumber than plant life.

This one just takes the cake for me. Shouting at a nurse or a doctor to go to China. I’m embarrassed to be from the same country as these people.

[reuben]

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEGN-WQeJ6h4vMfYxaYPWzY4qGQgEKhAIACoHCAowvIaCCzDnxf4CMN2F8gU?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
What a country I live in.

The fact that she's screaming about China and the obvious visual parallel makes me think of Tank Man.  Just a heroic everyman taking a stand against the biggest threat to his country's people: in China, the government and its tanks; in America, freaking idiot rednecks and their Dodges.

[dcm1602]

Apparently coronavirus has absolutely annihalted the oil market like never in existence

And oil contracts are selling for negative prices.

I think the economic implications of this virus could end up way worse than imagined

[Johnny English]

Apparently coronavirus has absolutely annihalted the oil market like never in existence

And oil contracts are selling for negative prices.

I think the economic implications of this virus could end up way worse than imagined

Alberta's oil industry has been on life support for years anyway, if this finally turns the machine off for them then it will be a tough transition for the next few years but one they've needed to make for a long time. I'm not about to start shedding tears for the oil industry.

[bojanglesman]

Alberta's oil industry has been on life support for years anyway, if this finally turns the machine off for them then it will be a tough transition for the next few years but one they've needed to make for a long time. I'm not about to start shedding tears for the oil industry.

It sucks for the employees, don't care about the companies.

This would be a great time for renewables to take off, either with new companies or the oil and gas companies converting to "energy" companies, or both.

[CatoTheElder]

As I’ve said multiple times, Texas can just go away.

I’m all on board for the army force-marching these white assholes to the middle of a lean-to reservation to let them contaminate each other in peace and leave the rest of the world the freak alone.

Half of this excrement is just an excuse to let the gun nuts and increase their visibility. Just imagine if these protesters were black.

freaking third world country in a Gucci belt is looking more and more accurate every day.

[CatoTheElder]

It sucks for the employees, don't care about the companies.

This would be a great time for renewables to take off, either with new companies or the oil and gas companies converting to "energy" companies, or both.

All the major oil companies hold enough patents to do it.

[bojanglesman]

All the major oil companies hold enough patents to do it.

I really don't know enough about that industry, it just seems like a golden opportunity.  Oil is excrement, why spend money propping it up when you can spend money replacing it with something better.

I know we will bail out the oil industry anyway, but a guy can dream.

[Johnny English]

I really don't know enough about that industry, it just seems like a golden opportunity.  Oil is excrement, why spend money propping it up when you can spend money replacing it with something better.

I know we will bail out the oil industry anyway, but a guy can dream.

I think a number have been trying to go that way for a while, but oil is a mighty lucrative teat to wean yourself off.