SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Right out of high school I had a crucible like period of working in Fast Food.
I think it unfairly get's evaluated as being mindless, or easy. It's not. Taken as a whole, operation of a McDonalds or any typical fast food restaurant requires IMO a lot of attention and diverse skills.
Running a busy Drive Thru, taking correct orders, while simultaneously taking in the money and making correct change can feel like Air Traffic Control.
Dealing with the public is always a constant challenge. Different attitudes, different expectations, you never knew what was going to walk through the door next.
Kitchen work? Is demanding and you're the heartbeat of the whole restaurant.

I'm old now. A long way from fast food work. But I still rank it as one of the most challenging jobs I really have ever had.

You get paid nothing. At least my experience with the managers was an unjustified dictatorial attitude. When and IF you ever hit a slow period, you got phrases thrown at you like " If you have time to lean, you have time to clean".
My feeling was, why don't you let me lean a little here, so I don't fall into the fry vat from exhaustion?

Turn over was huge. I am surprised your friend wasn't hired. Operation always seemed supported by the idea that there was always an easily accessible and unsuspecting "Next".
Another challenge of the job, was that you were so often working with new, young employees, and suddenly you were expected to be a trainer extraordinary, -doing your job, while snapping the young recruits out of their shell shocked stares. I could usually tell in about 90 minutes whether this was a 1 shift wonder or someone that might come back.

 

wall street journal: 'secret group of scientists and billionaires pushing a manhattan project for covid-19'

 

newsweek: 'dr. fauci back controversial wuhan lab with millions of dollars to study coronaviruses in bats'

'many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release'.

 

My original link here, while sufficiently non-political in itself, has too many politics link in its margins, so has been pushed to the end. Here are some non-political ones first, though not otherwise any better.

Kaiser Family Foundation -- U.S. Government Shutting Down USAID’s Predict Program Investigating Disease Jumps From Animals To Humans Oct 25, 2019

JAVMA -- Pandemic prevention program ending after 10 years January 02, 2020

SciAm -- Why the Coronavirus Slipped Past Disease Detectives
Groups of scientists tasked with identifying pandemic-prone microbes were stretched too far and thin April 3, 2020

NYT -- Scientists Were Hunting for the Next Ebola. Now the U.S. Has Cut Off Their Funding.
Predict, a government research program, sought to identify animal viruses that might infect humans and to head off new pandemics. Oct. 25, 2019

=========================
Original post --

A much shorter read, dateline Oct 29, 2019:
VOX: A crucial federal program tracking dangerous diseases is shutting down
Predict, a pandemic preparedness program, thrived under Bush and Obama. Now it’s canceled.

From past articles, I understood this program had supported many labs across the world. Including one in Wuhan.

 

I frequently forget to check which forum I'm responding in. Perhaps that one should have been held for the other forum, and I should look for another article to put in its place in this forum.

 

While the article itself seem fine, the additional stories linked in the margins and below are certainly froth-worthy. So I added additional article links above it, not really any better except that they don't include froth-inducing suggestions alongside.

 

Miss postings in the wrong thread or forum happens ... usually by accident or carelessness. For mine, I 'report' it to the moderator requesting it be moved (or even removed) as needed. Granted some take delight in this poor posting practice but if they don't get the feedback, "ignore user" works perfectly fine. But this one doesn't rank high on the list:

I knew of many of these anti-science efforts and see this as a summary. Perhaps a little relief from our investigations of the empirical side of COVID-19. We'll have a chance to correct these problems in November.

Bob Wilson

 

I came here to share an interesting lay report:
How the coronavirus multiplies its genetic material

When someone becomes infected with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen proliferates rapidly in the cells of the infected person. To do so, the virus has to multiply its genetic material, which consists of a single long RNA strand. This task is performed by the viral "copy machine," the so-called polymerase. Researchers led by Patrick Cramer at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, have now determined the 3-D structure of the corona polymerase. This makes it now possible to investigate how antiviral drugs such as remdesivir—which blocks the polymerase—work, and to search for new inhibitory substances.
. . .
The coronavirus polymerase binds to the RNA in the same way as is known from other types of viruses. However, this polymerase comprises an additional element with which it binds the RNA until it has copied the genetic material. This is important for the corona virus as its genome consists of around 30,000 building blocks and is therefore particularly long, making copying a major challenge.
. . .
The team then examined the samples in the electron microscope with a magnification of more than 100,000-fold—and at first disappointment set in: "Although we took pictures around the clock for 10 days and nights, we were unable to gain detailed insights into the structure," recalls Christian Dienemann, an expert in electron microscopy. "However, one sample looked different, somehow strange. Our first thought was to discard it. Fortunately, we did not: This sample, over all, provided us with the high-quality data we needed," says Dimitry Tegunov, the group's data processing expert who also programmed the software to process large volumes of image data in a short time.

The determination of the polymerase structure will not be the last contribution of the Göttingen researchers to tackling the pandemic: "We are planning to take a look at the helper factors that change the viral RNA in such a way that it cannot be degraded by the human immune system," Cramer says. "And of course, as structural biologists, we hope to find further targets in the virus that might open up new therapeutic strategies in the medium term."​

This has the promise of a clinical treatment of the infected. Slowing down viral replication in all parts of the body gives a chance for the immune system to respond. But the immune system needs to be monitored to prevent run-away.

Bob Wilson

 

I might have heard them from house.

 

reuters: data on gilead drug remdisivir raises hopes in pandemic fight'

'dr. fauci calls it highly significant, saying that it will become the standard of care for covid-19 patients.'

he added that the fda is working with gilead on mechanisms to make it available.

gilead said they will donate 1 1/2 million doses to hospitals.

fauci cautioned that the latest data still needed to be analyzed.

 

npr: why the US government stopped funding a research project on bats and coronaviruses (in wuhan, china)

same deal as newsweek, but no mention of any scientists opposing this kind of research.

news and fake news, how to identify