8 ms·

I've learned more about the virus reading this article than anything else I've read over the past weeks.

ETHisso2017 7y ago
This. I've begun to realize that part of the reason you see so much pontification from journalists on the Chinese government's supposed failings is that you don't have to be in danger to write such articles. Real objective reporting like this takes personal courage.
Alex3917 7y ago
I submitted this already, but this is worth reading also: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/conference-call-coronavirus-expert https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/confere...
- codeulike 7y ago
  Thanks for that, it was interesting and quite anti-panic.
  - pnw_hazor 7y ago
    Now it seems healthcare workers are readily getting infected. "A study has found that 40 health-care workers were infected with the novel coronavirus by patients at a single Wuhan hospital in January, underscoring the risks to those at the frontlines of the growing epidemic." https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/coronavirus-chinas-death-toll-hits-717-as-hubei-province-reports-81-new-fatalities https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/coronavirus-chin...
    - russli1993 7y ago
      yeah, in the early days, before mid of January, health care workers did not know what it was so a significant number got infected. And in the early days the local hospitals were overwhelmed with patients and the supplies were running short, some got infected. Now there are a lot of medical staff coming from other regions, and staff is pretty well protected. Hopefully we do not hear anymore medical staff infected.
    - tim333 7y ago
      From the main article: >...South Central Hospital. The deputy director went there to help in their ICU. He found that two-thirds of the medical staff in the ICU were already infected. I was thinking maybe they should get low risk health workers (young fit) to deliberately get the virus under holiday conditions and then return to run the hospitals when immune.
  - seibelj 7y ago
    I have been telling everyone to relax, these mass media panics about some virus happen every few years like clockwork. We are primed as a society to fear China right now so a panic like this is right on schedule.
    - WillPostForFood 7y ago
      Do you think it is a mass media panic within China? Because if you look at what is going on, it doesn’t look like the response to a yearly flu. It looks like a gravely serious event.
      - russli1993 7y ago
        The big difference between this and flu is that there is no effective drug and vaccine. Some people react mildly to the virus, some people's immune system seems to compromised by the virus quickly. It also seems to have long incubation periods and high infection rate. In a city as dense as China, it would spread quick from person to person. So the only effective way to reduce infection is to quarantine people. Not allow them to gather around. Flu is actually affects a lot of people too. It just not a "massive event" because we dont try to contain it. It would take a similar measure to try to contain flu if there is no flu vaccine
- UncleOxidant 7y ago
  That was very informative and tempers a lot of the fearmongering out there.
- eloff 7y ago
  He's the expert, and I'm not. But I can do math. Influenza this year in the US: 19M infected and 10K fatalities. If you posit 1% mortality rate for coronavirus like he argues, that's 20 times more deadly. And it's twice that in China, it's unclear if that's a statistical anomaly or a structural feature of some difference in how things are tested/reported in China. So I'm not going to just shrug and say it's no big deal. It could be. I'm a programmer, I know powers of 2 intimately. We're at 2^15 and doubling every 5 days. If that keeps up for a month we'll be at 1M infected and 16K dead. From there it's another 50 days to 1B infected and 1-2M dead. I'm keeping an eye on that, if it doesn't slow down before 2^20 (1M) then I've already planned to bug out with my loved ones to the mountains of Panama for a couple months until this blows over. I think it won't come to that, but I'm keeping an eye on the progression and doubling rate. The thing with exponential growth is it always ends. The question here is does it end in time?
  - baxtr 7y ago
    You can only do the math right if you get counter and denominator right. The number of unreported cases is probably very high. I found this in the article posted above: ”So the 20,000 cases in China is probably only the severe cases; the folks that actually went to the hospital and got tested. The Chinese healthcare system is very overwhelmed with all the tests going through. So my thinking is this is actually not as severe a disease as is being suggested. The fatality rate is probably only 0.8%-1%. There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China. Compared to Sars and Mers we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of 8 to 10 times less deadly to Sars to Mers. So a correct comparison is not Sars or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold.”
    - eloff 7y ago
      I'm using his mortality rate of 1%. That's 20x the mortality rate of influenza in the US. If it's 2% like the media reports then it's 40x. It doesn't really matter to me, either way is too deadly for my liking.
      - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
- blackrock 7y ago
  That was a good read. This is what should be shared. The entire world is going into a freaking panic over this. And they’re spewing out nonsense that the China government is lying, and their numbers cannot be trusted. Which doesn’t really help the situation, and it clouds the scientific understanding of this incident. Then the 2 moronic scientific papers that were published whipped everyone up into a frenzy. (1) The German paper said that people can transmit it asymptomatically, which means this is some kind of Frankenstein virus that can transmit over 14 days, and infect others when not showing any symptoms. (2) The Indian paper that suggested that this virus was man-made, and thus fueled the conspiracy theories about it being a bio weapon. And this fed more fuel to the fire for #1. Two scientific papers that were both terribly wrong! And what was the result? It created mass panic. So there you have it. Fake news that created real mass panic in the real world. Some good highlights from this transcription were: * This is like SARS, but less deadly. Yes, it is infectious and contagious, but it is also less deadly than SARS. * The virus will likely burn out in May, because it doesn’t do well in warm and humid weathers. So Australia with its hot wildfires will be spared. Go take a vacation in the hot and dry outback of Australia everyone. You’ll be fine out there. * The 2.2 reproductive R0 number is a perfect theoretical scenario, but it will likely not happen in this case, since China mandated the quarantine. And the entire country is a ghost town, with people wearing face masks in public, and avoiding any outdoor activities. This should help to slow the spread, and kill off the virus, like how SARS mysteriously disappeared. So, governments around the world, need to be vigilant, and do what they can to contain the spread of the virus, but we should be ok. There is no need to panic right now. The fear is worse than the disease. The leaders of the world needs to step forward and make regular public health announcements about this. And to calm the public down, and stick to known scientific facts and evidence. Unfortunately, we have morons as our elected leaders.
0xebfc 7y ago
If you want detailed virological and epidemiological research and discussion, please see: http://virological.org/ http://virological.org/ There are other virology / epidemiology forums which may be of use, but I don't have these links at-hand. For instance, the following link is a highly descriptive, accessible analysis of nCoV-2019: http://virological.org/t/analysis-of-wuhan-coronavirus-deja-vu/357/4 http://virological.org/t/analysis-of-wuhan-coronavirus-deja-... OPs article does have merit, as far as giving a first-person account of treating the virus and quarantine procedures, but you'll learn a lot more about the virus itself if you follow the research.
- thedudeabides5 7y ago
  Ok and what does this mean? “ nCoV2019 has a furin-sensitive motif at the traditional S1/S2 border fo the spike protein, i.e. RRAR, that was lacking in SARS (which depends on cathepsin cleavage a few amino acids downstream). nCoV2019 lacks the secondary minimal furin cleavage site, i.e. RNTR, that is found in SARS. Therefore, the endoproteolytic cleavage pattern is expected to be different between nCoV2019 and SARS. Prediction of O-glycosylation sites reveals a cluster of Serine residues, just before and after the RRAR cleavage site, with a high propensity to form a “mini-mucin” patch at that site. It is positioned to protect the putative fusion peptide region in the native or pre-fusion Swiss-Model projection of the probable nCoV2019 structure.” Not sure how to ‘follow the research’ when the first page has 12 proper nouns/terms I’ve never encountered...
  - eindiran 7y ago
    Furin --> A protein. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furin Spike protein --> the proteins on the surface of a virus used to attach onto or enter a host cell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peplomer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peplomer RRAR --> This is a group of amino acids: Arginine Arginine Alanine Arginine. Here is the list of abbreviations: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/MLACourse/Modules/MolBioReview/iupac_aa_abbreviations.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/MLACourse/Modules/MolBioR... For a discussion of cleavage --> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/endoproteolytic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/endoproteolytic For a discussion of it relevant to another virus --> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC103966/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC103966/ Mucin --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucin O-Glycosylation --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-linked_glycosylation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-linked_glycosylation So this is a discussion of the differences in how these viruses uses their respective spike proteins to trigger endoproteolytic cleavage in the host cell. Specifically, what the impact of different positionings of their amino acids is. For example, the idea "Furin-sensitive motif" means that there is a section of the spike protein which contains the amino acids described (RRAR), which is sensitive to the protein Furin in host cells. See here as well: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6756975_Proteolysis_of_Sars-Associated_Coronavirus_Spike_Glycoprotein https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6756975_Proteolysis...
nitwit005 7y ago
I've noticed the English language media has been big on facts and events, but generally provide little context besides the usual unhelpful short quotes.

ETHisso2017 7y ago

This. I've begun to realize that part of the reason you see so much pontification from journalists on the Chinese government's supposed failings is that you don't have to be in danger to write such articles. Real objective reporting like this takes personal courage.

Alex3917 7y ago

I submitted this already, but this is worth reading also: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/conference-call-coronavirus-expert https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/confere...

codeulike 7y ago
Thanks for that, it was interesting and quite anti-panic.
- pnw_hazor 7y ago
  Now it seems healthcare workers are readily getting infected. "A study has found that 40 health-care workers were infected with the novel coronavirus by patients at a single Wuhan hospital in January, underscoring the risks to those at the frontlines of the growing epidemic." https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/coronavirus-chinas-death-toll-hits-717-as-hubei-province-reports-81-new-fatalities https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/coronavirus-chin...
  - russli1993 7y ago
    yeah, in the early days, before mid of January, health care workers did not know what it was so a significant number got infected. And in the early days the local hospitals were overwhelmed with patients and the supplies were running short, some got infected. Now there are a lot of medical staff coming from other regions, and staff is pretty well protected. Hopefully we do not hear anymore medical staff infected.
  - tim333 7y ago
    From the main article: >...South Central Hospital. The deputy director went there to help in their ICU. He found that two-thirds of the medical staff in the ICU were already infected. I was thinking maybe they should get low risk health workers (young fit) to deliberately get the virus under holiday conditions and then return to run the hospitals when immune.
- seibelj 7y ago
  I have been telling everyone to relax, these mass media panics about some virus happen every few years like clockwork. We are primed as a society to fear China right now so a panic like this is right on schedule.
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    Do you think it is a mass media panic within China? Because if you look at what is going on, it doesn’t look like the response to a yearly flu. It looks like a gravely serious event.
    - russli1993 7y ago
      The big difference between this and flu is that there is no effective drug and vaccine. Some people react mildly to the virus, some people's immune system seems to compromised by the virus quickly. It also seems to have long incubation periods and high infection rate. In a city as dense as China, it would spread quick from person to person. So the only effective way to reduce infection is to quarantine people. Not allow them to gather around. Flu is actually affects a lot of people too. It just not a "massive event" because we dont try to contain it. It would take a similar measure to try to contain flu if there is no flu vaccine
UncleOxidant 7y ago
That was very informative and tempers a lot of the fearmongering out there.
eloff 7y ago
He's the expert, and I'm not. But I can do math. Influenza this year in the US: 19M infected and 10K fatalities. If you posit 1% mortality rate for coronavirus like he argues, that's 20 times more deadly. And it's twice that in China, it's unclear if that's a statistical anomaly or a structural feature of some difference in how things are tested/reported in China. So I'm not going to just shrug and say it's no big deal. It could be. I'm a programmer, I know powers of 2 intimately. We're at 2^15 and doubling every 5 days. If that keeps up for a month we'll be at 1M infected and 16K dead. From there it's another 50 days to 1B infected and 1-2M dead. I'm keeping an eye on that, if it doesn't slow down before 2^20 (1M) then I've already planned to bug out with my loved ones to the mountains of Panama for a couple months until this blows over. I think it won't come to that, but I'm keeping an eye on the progression and doubling rate. The thing with exponential growth is it always ends. The question here is does it end in time?
- baxtr 7y ago
  You can only do the math right if you get counter and denominator right. The number of unreported cases is probably very high. I found this in the article posted above: ”So the 20,000 cases in China is probably only the severe cases; the folks that actually went to the hospital and got tested. The Chinese healthcare system is very overwhelmed with all the tests going through. So my thinking is this is actually not as severe a disease as is being suggested. The fatality rate is probably only 0.8%-1%. There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China. Compared to Sars and Mers we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of 8 to 10 times less deadly to Sars to Mers. So a correct comparison is not Sars or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold.”
  - eloff 7y ago
    I'm using his mortality rate of 1%. That's 20x the mortality rate of influenza in the US. If it's 2% like the media reports then it's 40x. It doesn't really matter to me, either way is too deadly for my liking.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
blackrock 7y ago
That was a good read. This is what should be shared. The entire world is going into a freaking panic over this. And they’re spewing out nonsense that the China government is lying, and their numbers cannot be trusted. Which doesn’t really help the situation, and it clouds the scientific understanding of this incident. Then the 2 moronic scientific papers that were published whipped everyone up into a frenzy. (1) The German paper said that people can transmit it asymptomatically, which means this is some kind of Frankenstein virus that can transmit over 14 days, and infect others when not showing any symptoms. (2) The Indian paper that suggested that this virus was man-made, and thus fueled the conspiracy theories about it being a bio weapon. And this fed more fuel to the fire for #1. Two scientific papers that were both terribly wrong! And what was the result? It created mass panic. So there you have it. Fake news that created real mass panic in the real world. Some good highlights from this transcription were: * This is like SARS, but less deadly. Yes, it is infectious and contagious, but it is also less deadly than SARS. * The virus will likely burn out in May, because it doesn’t do well in warm and humid weathers. So Australia with its hot wildfires will be spared. Go take a vacation in the hot and dry outback of Australia everyone. You’ll be fine out there. * The 2.2 reproductive R0 number is a perfect theoretical scenario, but it will likely not happen in this case, since China mandated the quarantine. And the entire country is a ghost town, with people wearing face masks in public, and avoiding any outdoor activities. This should help to slow the spread, and kill off the virus, like how SARS mysteriously disappeared. So, governments around the world, need to be vigilant, and do what they can to contain the spread of the virus, but we should be ok. There is no need to panic right now. The fear is worse than the disease. The leaders of the world needs to step forward and make regular public health announcements about this. And to calm the public down, and stick to known scientific facts and evidence. Unfortunately, we have morons as our elected leaders.

0xebfc 7y ago

If you want detailed virological and epidemiological research and discussion, please see: http://virological.org/ http://virological.org/ There are other virology / epidemiology forums which may be of use, but I don't have these links at-hand. For instance, the following link is a highly descriptive, accessible analysis of nCoV-2019: http://virological.org/t/analysis-of-wuhan-coronavirus-deja-vu/357/4 http://virological.org/t/analysis-of-wuhan-coronavirus-deja-... OPs article does have merit, as far as giving a first-person account of treating the virus and quarantine procedures, but you'll learn a lot more about the virus itself if you follow the research.

thedudeabides5 7y ago
Ok and what does this mean? “ nCoV2019 has a furin-sensitive motif at the traditional S1/S2 border fo the spike protein, i.e. RRAR, that was lacking in SARS (which depends on cathepsin cleavage a few amino acids downstream). nCoV2019 lacks the secondary minimal furin cleavage site, i.e. RNTR, that is found in SARS. Therefore, the endoproteolytic cleavage pattern is expected to be different between nCoV2019 and SARS. Prediction of O-glycosylation sites reveals a cluster of Serine residues, just before and after the RRAR cleavage site, with a high propensity to form a “mini-mucin” patch at that site. It is positioned to protect the putative fusion peptide region in the native or pre-fusion Swiss-Model projection of the probable nCoV2019 structure.” Not sure how to ‘follow the research’ when the first page has 12 proper nouns/terms I’ve never encountered...
- eindiran 7y ago
  Furin --> A protein. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furin Spike protein --> the proteins on the surface of a virus used to attach onto or enter a host cell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peplomer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peplomer RRAR --> This is a group of amino acids: Arginine Arginine Alanine Arginine. Here is the list of abbreviations: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/MLACourse/Modules/MolBioReview/iupac_aa_abbreviations.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/MLACourse/Modules/MolBioR... For a discussion of cleavage --> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/endoproteolytic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/endoproteolytic For a discussion of it relevant to another virus --> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC103966/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC103966/ Mucin --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucin O-Glycosylation --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-linked_glycosylation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-linked_glycosylation So this is a discussion of the differences in how these viruses uses their respective spike proteins to trigger endoproteolytic cleavage in the host cell. Specifically, what the impact of different positionings of their amino acids is. For example, the idea "Furin-sensitive motif" means that there is a section of the spike protein which contains the amino acids described (RRAR), which is sensitive to the protein Furin in host cells. See here as well: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6756975_Proteolysis_of_Sars-Associated_Coronavirus_Spike_Glycoprotein https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6756975_Proteolysis...

nitwit005 7y ago

I've noticed the English language media has been big on facts and events, but generally provide little context besides the usual unhelpful short quotes.