SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Preliminary Study Claims To Have Discovered The First Significant Mutation In The SARS-CoV-2 Pathogen : Analysis of the mutation dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 reveals the spread history and emergence of RBD mutant with lower ACE2 binding affinity

 

Nifty! And I imagine that even without all the calibration studies they still have in the works, this would already give you a way to know whether the load in the area is going ⬆ or ⬇.

 

Around Boston, no less!

Aw, crap, that's where Bisco is!

 

we're on septic

we're third in the nation on the total cases list though. in the surge now, hospitals and ppe holding up, field hospitals still have room, testing inadequate

 

Far-UVC light: A new tool to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases

This is suposedly waiting for FDA approval.

 

Interesting as my first concern was ozone production:

...
An SM-70 Ozone Monitor (Aeroqual, Avondale, Auckland, New Zealand) measured the ozone generation from the lamps to be <0.005 ppm, which is not a significant level to provide an antimicrobial effect to aerosolized viruses ...​

In high school, I had a Tesla coil and generated enough ozone in the house to give everyone but a cough and sore throat. Once we figured it out, all subsequent runs were done with the bedroom door closed and windows open. Apparently the 222 nm is not in an oxygen or nitrogen absorption range.

A rat cornea study: Evaluation of acute corneal damage induced by 222-nm and 254-nm ultraviolet light in Sprague-Dawley rats

A source of multiple papers: nm uv light: Topics by Science.gov

First off, more studies are needed. If 222 nm can be tested in a 'primate house' against a control for an extended study, this could be a game changer for general hospital and clinic sanitation. I'm not so thrilled about use on open wounds in surgery as there won't be a layer of dead skin. Also, skin inflammations need to be tested very carefully. Still, a promising approach.

Bob Wilson

 

I'm getting hung up on something, hoping y'all can help.

What's the resistance to expanded testing? And why is there so little discussion of it?

We had no problem shaking $2T out of the national couch cushions for the CARES act, so it's not the price tag.

Obviously there is a political element, and I'm not trying to open that up on this side of the pancake wall... but is there anything else, some technical, legal or logistical reason why we can't buy ourselves a massive expansion in testing capability?

 

couple things i've read:

1) fda needs to change the rules about who can be tested. labs are no longer at full capacity, so it's the slow grinding of wheels i guess.

2) feds say states are on their own, states aren't readily equipped to pull this off. gonna take time for the lil rudders to turn the ships, and they also have to play by fed rules.

3) not sure where the cdc/dr.fauci figure into this, but some fed people are saying early to mid april for a substantial increase

 

If a test is done in the forest and its specificity is 40%, has anybody been tested?

 

how did china manage to corral the virus without testing?

 

Article seemed to be very focused on one type of test; I know there are several. Article didn't say if the other types have the same sort of specificity problem.

I will speculate that they were in a much better position to track movement with everyone's mobile phone data, and that when they shut down they shut down much harder than we did. So somewhere between brute force and an institutional disregard for privacy rights. I'm doubtful that it could have worked here, and now it's too late anyway.

 

in regard to re opening society, i think we can do it pretty well with testing and contact tracing.

for the political thread, some blue states may have to shut down borders with red states.

 

Fair point. Also the number I quoted was the lowest one used in the article, for teaser value. That was the specificity seen at a point early in the infection.

The larger takeaway seems to be: we are knowingly relaxing, because of exigency, the normal expectations for concluding that a test works before relying on it. How far does it make sense to relax those expectations? Too far, and we're just shoveling money at test companies and getting little chem sets to pass the time with.

 

I'm less and less comfortable thinking of this in terms of "open" and "closed." I just don't think it's ever going to go back to the way it was before.

We never made it back to the way it was on September 10th 2001, and that was a much smaller event than this one.

 

did they? or is it like the newspaper Pravda ..... "record grain harvests". who can say ... after all - see comment # 629.
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agreed. by 'reopening' i didn't mean to exactly as it was. who knows what it will look like. but for all intents and purposes, life today isn't much different than 2000

 

most reasonable sources say that things are starting to reopen. are the numbers correct? that's up for debate, but their are plenty of american corporations in wuhan to report on what's working and what isn't.

 

even after Rome - tho things changed - merchants reopened. It's an amorphic world .... and the older we get - the less change we tolerate.
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Since many cases of COVID-19 are symptomless, I don't think a CT scan would help.

But it can certainly help with the diagnosis f there are no tests available and someone has breathing problems. A less thorough but faster, cheaper, and easier approach is to use Lung Ultrasound:

Heck, you can get an ultrasound device that uses an Android phone for its display. Maybe someday they'll be as common as a stethoscope.

Just realized I was ninja'd by GasperG.

 

Far UV-C sounds promising, but I wouldn't want to be among the first people to get exposed to it. As you say, more studies are needed.

At the opposite end of the UV spectrum, there's a company called Indigo-Clean which pushes the concept of using light right above UV, 405nm. The idea is that it is fine to use for everyday lighting. And although it doesn't instantly kill germs like UV-C, it does supposedly kill them over a long term. So if you use it for your daily light, then the room will get exposed 12 hours/day, disinfecting the room. It is being pushed for hospital operating rooms.