COVID-19 | science, damage limitation, NO POLITICS

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Some good news from the Netherlands.

A human monoclonal antibody blocking SARS-CoV-2 infection

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16256-y

Abstract
The emergence of the novel human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China has caused a worldwide epidemic of respiratory disease (COVID-19). Vaccines and targeted therapeutics for treatment of this disease are currently lacking. Here we report a human monoclonal antibody that neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 (and SARS-CoV) in cell culture. This cross-neutralizing antibody targets a communal epitope on these viruses and may offer potential for prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

In conclusion, this is the first report of a (human) monoclonal antibody that neutralizes SARS-CoV-2. 47D11 binds a conserved epitope on the spike RBD explaining its ability to cross-neutralize SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, using a mechanism that is independent of receptor-binding inhibition. This antibody will be useful for development of antigen detection tests and serological assays targeting SARS-CoV-2. Neutralizing antibodies can alter the course of infection in the infected host supporting virus clearance or protect an uninfected host that is exposed to the virus4. Hence, this antibody—either alone or in combination—offers the potential to prevent and/or treat COVID-19, and possibly also other future emerging diseases in humans caused by viruses from the Sarbecovirus subgenus.

Its insensitivity to mutations also makes it a very interesting finding.

But it is just a first step, on a long path, towards developing a cure.

[LesPalenik]

The Ontario government has unveiled a plan for how the province will begin to safely resume scheduled surgeries and procedures. However, no specific dates were announced for surgery re-openings.

The government said this new plan would allow for some surgeries and procedures to resume while the province also ensures there is capacity for any COVID-19 surge.
The province said there are a number of factors to consider before going ahead with surgeries, including the safety of the patient and health-care workers and the therapeutic benefit of treatment against the risk of transmitting COVID-19.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-unveils-plan-to-resume-elective-surgeries-and-procedures-1.4928705

[Alan Goldhammer]

Some good news from the Netherlands.

A human monoclonal antibody blocking SARS-CoV-2 infection

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16256-y
Its insensitivity to mutations also makes it a very interesting finding.

But it is just a first step, on a long path, towards developing a cure.

I saw it the other day when the pre-print came out.  Do they have a manufacturing partner?  These can be scaled up quite easily.

[armand]

I find it disarming how easily some fall into the conspiracy theories, here or elsewhere. It's just on small leap of faith for some.


Regarding that "Plandemic" thing, it appears you are not the only ones. I found a comment on my facebook (where the factual things are correct) and I looked through that snopes article, they seem to to be on the same page, so I'll post here that comment.

First, background: I’m a physician (specifically a board-certified pathologist, which includes microbiology and laboratory medicine) with a master’s degree in epidemiology.

In the last day or two, several friends have shared or posted about a video “documentary” called “Plandemic”. The film depicts now-discredited former researcher Judy Mikovits who shares a plausible-sounding narrative about the current pandemic. The problem here is that nearly all of her scientific statements are demonstrably false. If you have more to add to this list, or credible data to the contrary, please start a discussion. I suspect there are many more false claims in this video, but these are just the ones that stuck out to me as a physician with epidemiology training.

- She states “There is no vaccine for any RNA virus that works." Incorrect: Polio, hepatitis A, measles, to name a few.
- Her retracted paper was actually not about vaccines at all, even though she insinuates that it was.
- She states that Ebola could not infect humans until it was engineered to do so in the laboratory. This is false.
- Likewise, many other zoonotic viruses have been shown to gain mutations that allow them to infect humans. This would not be some kind of new, crazy idea. We actually predicted it years ago: we just didn’t know exactly which virus or when it would occur.
- She states that the US was working with Wuhan to study coronaviruses years ago, like it’s a “gotcha” moment: yes, of course we were doing this – Wuhan is a coronavirus hotspot and it makes sense to study this family of viruses where it naturally occurs.
- She states that COPD lungs are identical to COVID-19 lungs. As a pathologist, this is ludicrous – any practicing physician would be able to tell COPD from COVID-19, both clinically and histologically.
- The statement taken out of context from the CDC death certificate recommendation reads in full “In cases where a definitive diagnosis of COVID-19 cannot be made, but is suspected or likely (the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as “probable” or “presumed”. In these instances, certifiers should use their best judgment in determining if a COVID-19 diagnosis was likely. Testing for COVID-19 should be conducted whenever possible.”. My physician colleagues are not being pressured to put COVID-19 on death certificates when it should not be there.
- The idea that physicians are incorrectly diagnosing COVID-19 due to financial incentive is also ridiculous. Medicare sometimes bundles payments for some conditions (i.e. if you have a heart attack, medicare may pay XX for your treatment) – it’s possible the hospital could get paid $13,000 for your COVID-19 admission, but do you know what that’s based on? The fact that the average cost of a hospital admission for a respiratory condition is $13,297.
- She states that hydroxychloroquine has been “extensively studied in this family of viruses” – in fact, it has not been studied well in coronaviruses. It HAS been studied in malaria, which is not a virus. And yes, it is considered an essential medicine for the treatment of malaria. Not for coronaviruses.
- Furthermore, the data on hydroxychloroquine are much weaker than they originally appeared: the small study that was highly publicized was not a randomized controlled trial, and the only patients who died were those who received hydroxychloroquine (and these were EXCLUDED FROM ANALYSIS!). This is terrible science. Even so, we want to investigate all possible treatments, so controlled trials are being conducted on hydroxychloroquine right now.
- She insinuates that there is a hydroxychloroquine shortage as a result of reduced production. In fact, there is a shortage because people who take this medication regularly are stockpiling it and because physicians are using it for COVID19 patients because they have nothing else to try.
- “All flu vaccines contain coronaviruses”. Nope, absolutely false.
- The ideas that sheltering in place somehow harms your immune system or that you may reactivate a virus in yourself by wearing a mask have been thoroughly debunked in other posts and I won’t get into the details here. Both national societies of emergency medicine have condemned the statements of these doctors, one of whom is not board-certified.
- Lastly, private companies removing false information from their platforms does not represent repression or promotion of propaganda. It’s helping to promote the spread of sound scientific information. If you think lies should be permitted to circulate freely alongside the truth with the intention of reaching people who won’t be able to tell the difference, you are part of the problem.

[Robert Roaldi]

I find it disarming how easily some fall into the conspiracy theories, here or elsewhere. It's just on small leap of faith for some.


Regarding that "Plandemic" thing, it appears you are not the only ones. I found a comment on my facebook (where the factual things are correct) and I looked through that snopes article, they seem to to be on the same page, so I'll post here that comment.

Thank you very much.

[Manoli]

I doubt that it is intentionally manipulated and from what I've read that's the general consensus of most experts. 

Alan - thank you for the feedback.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Jeremy, this information is widely accessible. If you bother to google for Dangers of milk, you'll find many similar studies and conclusions. Invariably, you'll find also many contradicting opinions.
I don't aim to convert you, but there may be people who didn't know these facts and who could benefit by looking at such reports.

It is irrelevant to this thread and has as much validity as the anti-vaccine hysteria.

Jeremy

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I saw it the other day when the pre-print came out.  Do they have a manufacturing partner?  These can be scaled up quite easily.

According to a recent interview, not yet.

Translated from this (Dutch language) interview in Erasmus Magazine:
https://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/2020/05/05/nederlands-antilichaam-internationaal-erkend-super-maar-doel-blijft-mensen-helpen/

What is the status of a drug or test?

"The publication is the first encouraging step towards possible therapy. The antibody can help in the fight against the virus, because the right antibody stops an infection. But in order to do this, we first need to get a pharmacist on board to demonstrate safety and efficacy in humans, and to scale up production of the antibody. Discussions about this are ongoing, but before it's all over and on the market, we're at least a couple of months and possibly another year away".

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[John Camp]

I don't think we'll ever know the death toll for this virus. I just spent some time looking at the deaths from other countries, and I believe that some of them -- notably China and India -- are probably lying about the number of deaths for political reasons. India, for example, which has refused to close its economy in any effective way, or to institute meaningful social distancing, reports some 60,000 cases and 2,000 deaths. The country has a population of more than 1.3 billion people, with poor medical care and widespread tobacco use by all ages, and yet has large enough covid-19 presence that it should be tearing through the population. According to official reports, it is not doing that, but why it is not, is unknown...unless you simply assume that most deaths aren't reported or officially noted, and that the suppression is officially supported.

Edit: According to the worldometer site, US deaths just crossed 78,000.

[Chris Kern]

I don't think we'll ever know the death toll for this virus. . . .

Perhaps not, but―at least here in the United States―I think we will eventually get a plausible estimate once the epidemiologists apply statistical techniques similar to those they use to determine the number of seasonal influenza deaths each year.

For example, during the 2018-2019 'flu season, slightly more than 7K individuals died after testing positive in the United States for the circulating influenza viruses.  But that hard count was calculated by epidemiologists to be significantly lower than the actual fatality rate: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after applying its standard statistical modeling techniques, estimated the actual influenza deaths to be in the range of 26-53K; as I understand it, this includes deaths from secondary infections, such as pneumonia, which would not have occurred if the patients had not been infected by a 'flu virus.  (Similar deltas between tested and estimated fatalities apply to earlier years.)

As I write this, about 78.5K individuals who tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus have died in the States.  I don't have the background to know the appropriate respective statistical models that should be used to compare the fatality rates of the two viruses, but I would expect the final number of estimated COVID-19 deaths to be some multiple of the number of deaths of positively-tested individuals.  The computed figure won't be precise, but it should eventually give us a reasonable sense of how devastating this novel coronavirus has been.

[BobShaw]

I don't think we'll ever know the death toll for this virus. I just spent some time looking at the deaths from other countries, and I believe that some of them -- notably China and India -- are probably lying about the number of deaths for political reasons. India, for example, which has refused to close its economy in any effective way, or to institute meaningful social distancing, reports some 60,000 cases and 2,000 deaths. The country has a population of more than 1.3 billion people, with poor medical care and widespread tobacco use by all ages, and yet has large enough covid-19 presence that it should be tearing through the population. According to official reports, it is not doing that, but why it is not, is unknown...unless you simply assume that most deaths aren't reported or officially noted, and that the suppression is officially supported.

Edit: According to the worldometer site, US deaths just crossed 78,000.

I agree that some countries stats will be out but saying countries are lying without any proof is perhaps harsh.
You can not die from Corona virus unless you have been tested for Corona virus and no one will waste a test kit on a dead person.
India is on the Equator. Probably not too many die from any flu like disease. If you can survive starving, malaria and typhoid you will get past it.
There are plenty of modern countries with integrated hospital systems to get data from.

[John Camp]

I agree that some countries stats will be out but saying countries are lying without any proof is perhaps harsh.
You can not die from Corona virus unless you have been tested for Corona virus and no one will waste a test kit on a dead person.
India is on the Equator. Probably not too many die from any flu like disease. If you can survive starving, malaria and typhoid you will get past it.
There are plenty of modern countries with integrated hospital systems to get data from.

It may perhaps be harsh, but I think there are a lot of political leaders trying to dodge blame for something they really couldn't fully control; but they can control stats, and they really don't want the blame.

And as a geography freak, I can tell you that no part of India is on the equator, and that New Delhi is at about the same latitude as Tampa, Florida. A little north of that, in fact.

(And did you know the Pacific side of the Panama Canal is EAST of the Atlantic side?) 8-)

[BobShaw]

And as a geography freak, I can tell you that no part of India is on the equator, and that New Delhi is at about the same latitude as Tampa, Florida. A little north of that, in fact.

(And did you know the Pacific side of the Panama Canal is EAST of the Atlantic side?) 8-)

Fair enough, 8 degrees or so north so about 500 NM. New Delhi is very much in the north so most of the country is closer to the equator.
My experience was that it was 46 Degrees C and there was no way I was getting a flu of any kind. Dying from exhaustion and lack of clean water was however on the cards. (:-)

[kamma1]

I don't think we'll ever know the death toll for this virus. I just spent some time looking at the deaths from other countries, and I believe that some of them -- notably China and India -- are probably lying about the number of deaths for political reasons. India, for example, which has refused to close its economy in any effective way, or to institute meaningful social distancing, reports some 60,000 cases and 2,000 deaths. The country has a population of more than 1.3 billion people, with poor medical care and widespread tobacco use by all ages, and yet has large enough covid-19 presence that it should be tearing through the population. According to official reports, it is not doing that, but why it is not, is unknown...unless you simply assume that most deaths aren't reported or officially noted, and that the suppression is officially supported.

Edit: According to the worldometer site, US deaths just crossed 78,000.

India has no doubt undercounted cases, whether deliberately or not, but it did completely shut down its borders, its internal transportation and its main gathering places (religious centres) very early - while people here in Italy were still zipping around the country.  India is still under serious lockdown.  And the government is not generally known for sutblety in enforcing laws.

[BrianVS]

https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/114720192-5eb8307f-017c-4075-a697-348628da0204.pdf

I'm not going through 100's of pages on this forum about this subject- but did a Search and did not see any mention of the paper by Botao Xiao on "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus". This paper was posted on researchgate, but was removed. Once on the Internet, always on the Internet.

Chinese students returning to the US after Christmas break talked about the Virus coming from the Lab in Wuhan. South China University of Technology is highly ranked in the world. At least the theory that the Wuhan Virus was a lab accident started in China, not elsewhere.

If it has already been discussed to death, my apologies. It is not readily available on the Internet.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Perhaps not, but―at least here in the United States―I think we will eventually get a plausible estimate once the epidemiologists apply statistical techniques similar to those they use to determine the number of seasonal influenza deaths each year.

It's not just statistical sampling but going back and testing tissue samples from autopsies.  They did this in Santa Clara county and found the first death was in early February.  Autopsy sample testings are way at the back of the queue these days so we're not going to have a full counting for some time.  The other problem is we still have no clue about the rate of infection and one cannot do an appropriate case report fatality (CRF) without good numbers from either.  I'm still standing pretty firm in my estimate of 0.3 - 0.4%.  That is still higher than the regular flu and in line with major epidemic years.

[Ray]

It's been mentioned often in these threads on the Covid-19 virus that those most at risk of serious symptoms and fatality are the elderly who usually have other pre-existing medical conditions, or comorbidity.

Another factor which appears to be very significant is Vitamin D deficiency. As I understand, Vitamin D has a very important role in keeping the immune system strong so one can fight off viruses and bacteria that cause illness, especially colds and flu, and also Covid-19 according to recent research.

"Results revealed that majority of the death cases were male and older and had pre-existing condition and below normal Vitamin D serum level. Univariate analysis revealed that older and male cases with pre-existing condition and below normal Vitamin D levels were associated with increasing odds of death. When controlling for age, sex, and comorbidity, Vitamin D status is strongly associated with COVID-19 mortality outcome of cases."
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561

"After studying global data from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, researchers have discovered a strong correlation between severe vitamin D deficiency and mortality rates."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200507121353.htm

According to the following ScientificAmerican article, a high percentage of US citizens are deficient in Vitamin D.

"Three-quarters of U.S. teens and adults are deficient in vitamin D, the so-called "sunshine vitamin" whose deficits are increasingly blamed for everything from cancer and heart disease to diabetes, according to new research."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vitamin-d-deficiency-united-states/

[Chris Kern]

I'm not going through 100's of pages on this forum about this subject- but did a Search and did not see any mention of the paper by Botao Xiao on "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus". This paper was posted on researchgate, but was removed. Once on the Internet, always on the Internet.

Thanks for posting this.  A cached copy of the paper is available on the Wayback Machine archive.

The Chinese government has been less than forthcoming about the origins of the virus and reportedly Chinese sources are responsible for propagating some of the conspiracy theories that have tried to implicate the United States in the origin of the virus.  Still, the proximity of two research labs to the "wet market" in Wuhan strikes me as a rather weak basis for a research paper.

Xiao Botao, one of the authors, told the Wall Street Journal in February that the paper was withdrawn because "the speculation about the possible origins in the post was based on published papers and media, and was not supported by direct proofs."  The WSJ article is paywalled, but Radio France International had a well-reported piece earlier this month that, inter alia, describes the paper and its withdrawal.

[LesPalenik]

It's been mentioned often in these threads on the Covid-19 virus that those most at risk of serious symptoms and fatality are the elderly who usually have other pre-existing medical conditions, or comorbidity.

Another factor which appears to be very significant is Vitamin D deficiency. As I understand, Vitamin D has a very important role in keeping the immune system strong so one can fight off viruses and bacteria that cause illness, especially colds and flu, and also Covid-19 according to recent research.

"Results revealed that majority of the death cases were male and older and had pre-existing condition and below normal Vitamin D serum level. Univariate analysis revealed that older and male cases with pre-existing condition and below normal Vitamin D levels were associated with increasing odds of death. When controlling for age, sex, and comorbidity, Vitamin D status is strongly associated with COVID-19 mortality outcome of cases."
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561

"After studying global data from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, researchers have discovered a strong correlation between severe vitamin D deficiency and mortality rates."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200507121353.htm

According to the following ScientificAmerican article, a high percentage of US citizens are deficient in Vitamin D.

"Three-quarters of U.S. teens and adults are deficient in vitamin D, the so-called "sunshine vitamin" whose deficits are increasingly blamed for everything from cancer and heart disease to diabetes, according to new research."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vitamin-d-deficiency-united-states/

Ray,

thank you for posting those links. As stated in the last article, Institute of Medicine recommends 200-600 International Units of vitamin D daily, but that is clearly insufficient. In Canada, the recommended dosage is 1,000 units, but even that is not enough. I upped it gradually from 1,000 to 3,000 units and that raised my D levels to the acceptable range.  Unfortunately, in Canada testing for vitamin D levels is not free (compared with vitamin B12, cholesterol, etc), and as a result, very few people are aware of their vitamin D deficiency, since they do not get regularly tested for it.

Vitamin D is associated also with significant reduction of cancer-related mortality, rheumatoid arthritis and cardiovascular diseases.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Thanks for posting this.  A cached copy of the paper is available on the Wayback Machine archive.

The Chinese government has been less than forthcoming about the origins of the virus and reportedly Chinese sources are responsible for propagating some of the conspiracy theories that have tried to implicate the United States in the origin of the virus.  Still, the proximity of two research labs to the "wet market" in Wuhan strikes me as a rather weak basis for a research paper.

Xiao Botao, one of the authors, told the Wall Street Journal in February that the paper was withdrawn because "the speculation about the possible origins in the post was based on published papers and media, and was not supported by direct proofs."  The WSJ article is paywalled, but Radio France International had a well-reported piece earlier this month that, inter alia, describes the paper and its withdrawal.

With the risk of entering the realm of politics, here s an interesting article about how the spread of a/this Corona virus can be traced back to it's origin.

How coronavirus mutations can track its spread—and disprove conspiracies:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/how-coronavirus-mutations-can-track-its-spread-and-disprove-conspiracies/

Tracking cases through mutations

Bedford’s lab has been using genetics to track the new coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, since the first U.S. cases started to multiply in Washington State in February and March. Back then, public health officials focused on tracking patients’ travel histories and connecting the dots back to potentially infected people they’d met along the way.

Meanwhile, Bedford and his team turned to unlocking the virus’s genetic code by analyzing nasal samples collected from about two dozen patients. Their discovery was illuminating: By tracing how and where the virus had changed over time, Bedford showed that SARS-CoV-2 had been quietly incubating within the community for weeks since the first documented case in Seattle on January 21. The patient was a 35-year-old who had recently visited the outbreak’s original epicenter in Wuhan, China.

[...]

First off, most of SARS-CoV-2’s underlying structure is unlike any of coronaviruses previously studied in a lab. The novel coronavirus also contains genetic features that suggest it encountered a living immune system rather than being cultivated in a petri dish.