8 ms·

Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19

84 points by laybak 6y ago

i5heu 6y ago
thank you for submitting this article
kalaido 6y ago
We should extend lockdowns and close all businesses.
DoingIsLearning 6y ago
This paper made me realize just how much info I have been bombarded with since february. This feels like a distilled set of Cliffs Notes from the past 8 months.
est31 6y ago
I find this paragraph to be too neutral about HCL, and tbh a bit out of date: > Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are other potential but controversial drugs that interfere with the entry of SARS-CoV-2. They have been used in the prevention and treatment of malaria and autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. They can inhibit the glycosylation of cellular receptors and interfere with virus–host receptor binding, as well as increase the endosomal pH and inhibit membrane fusion. Currently, no scientific consensus has been reached for their efficacy in the treatment of COVID-19. Some studies showed they can inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro, but the clinical data are insufficient. Two clinical studies indicated no association with death rates in patients receiving chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine compared with those not receiving the drug and even suggest it may increase the risk of dying as a higher risk of cardiac arrest was found in the treated patients130,131. On 15 June 2020, owing to the side effects observed in clinical trials, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked the emergency use authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 The in vitro studies that showed HCL efficacy were using vero lines, basically kidney cells. Those cells don't express the TMPRSS2 receptor, which is expressed on lung cells though. Studies have shown since that if you modify vero lines to express TMPRSS2, or use lung cells instead of kidney cells, HCL has no effect. It's kinda understandable that the earlier studies have used vero lines, because it's a standard cell line. But research has moved on since. The newer study has come out in July and should have been known to the authors of this review. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2575-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2575-3
- roenxi 6y ago
  The circumstantial evidence of HCQ being positive is substantial, and at least some of the complaints against it are politically motivated. Although how being hopeful about a COVID treatment became a pro-Trump political stance is beyond me. They can wait until the scientific evidence is overwhelming. No hurry, there are a lot of studies starting to come due. Bodies are complex and maybe something is going on that hasn't been thought of yet. EDIT Thanks swebs for the HCL->HCQ correction.
  - OnACoffeeBreak 6y ago
    Seems like your wait is over. From the second half of [0]: > Hydroxychloroquine treatment for coronavirus does not work. It is not beneficial, and in fact appears to be actively harmful. As far as I’m concerned, administering it to infected patients now constitutes medical malpractice. Check the linked article for reference to the study. 0: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/10/09/hard-data https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/10/09/ha...
    - roenxi 6y ago
      One of my favourite posts on HN was some gentleman telling me that masks didn't help against COVID, that the science was in, and that I was endangering lives by even suggesting something so stupid when either the WHO or CDC or Fauci had debunked the idea. I think that was back around April. My current policy is to wait until the evidence is older than a week. That is one open label study on patients that were already in hospital - strong evidence, but not a final word. Maybe they missed something, maybe they made a mistake. Science is hard.
      - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
        I think you're making false equivalences. To be clear, there has never been good scientific evidence that masks are ineffective against respiratory viruses. I think WHO, CDC and Fauci made grave errors at the time by making the argument that mask-wearing by the general public "doesn't work". The clear (and quite understandable) fear was that there would be a run on masks by the general public, so instead of telling the truth ("we need the masks for healthcare workers") they made broader and confusing statements about the effectiveness of masks that were not supported by the underlying science. This had the terrible effect, as your post shows, of making people even more wary of scientific pronouncements. Mine is not an isolated viewpoint. There was a good opinion article in the Washington Post at the time by an influential researcher where she argued the same thing. Contrarily, the good studies that have come out about HCQ have nearly uniformly shown their potential danger. There is simply no equivalence between the scientific data that HCQ is harmful and the data (that never existed mind you) that mask-wearing is ineffective.
jerome-jh 6y ago
"Currently, our knowledge on the animal origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains incomplete to a large part." So we still have no proof of SARS-CoV-2 originating from natural selection, just as we have no proof of human intervention. I often read the first hypothesis is far more likely than the second, but I do not agree. The actual probabilities to be compared are: - the likelihood of a virus outbreak due to natural selection in Wuhan - the likelihood of a virus resulting from a gain of function experiment "escapes" from Wuhan BSL4 Note that we are sure that Wuhan BSL4 was doing gain of function experiments. Also note that natural virus outbreaks are quite likely when looking at China as a whole, China is big, or even when looking at the whole world. But that does not answer the question at hand, and that does not make the natural selection hypothesis "far more likely".
- legulere 6y ago
  The outbreak happening in Wuhan does not mean that the virus originated there. In the beginning there was more genetic variety seen in Guangdong, which is a sign that the virus originated there and not in Wuhan.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jerome-jh 6y ago
    The outbreak has always been claimed to occur in Wuhan's "wet market". The article only mentions pangolin coronavirus strains in relation to Guangdong. There is no assumption in the article SARS-CoV-2, the human virus, could originate from Guangdong. Should SARS-CoV-2 actually originate from Guangdong would anyway be the sign of a huge dissimulation.
    - matthewdgreen 6y ago
      My understanding is that many scientists have concluded that animal->human adaptation occurred prior to the Wuhan wet market, and the market is basically a red herring. This is based on the relatively low degree of genetic drift that has occurred with SARS-Cov-2 since that time, which indicates that the substantial changes related to human adaptation are likely to have occurred prior to those wet market infections. There are better articles, but here's one [1]. [1] https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-wet-market.html https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

84 points by laybak 6y ago

i5heu 6y ago

thank you for submitting this article

kalaido 6y ago

We should extend lockdowns and close all businesses.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago

This paper made me realize just how much info I have been bombarded with since february. This feels like a distilled set of Cliffs Notes from the past 8 months.

est31 6y ago

I find this paragraph to be too neutral about HCL, and tbh a bit out of date: > Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are other potential but controversial drugs that interfere with the entry of SARS-CoV-2. They have been used in the prevention and treatment of malaria and autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. They can inhibit the glycosylation of cellular receptors and interfere with virus–host receptor binding, as well as increase the endosomal pH and inhibit membrane fusion. Currently, no scientific consensus has been reached for their efficacy in the treatment of COVID-19. Some studies showed they can inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro, but the clinical data are insufficient. Two clinical studies indicated no association with death rates in patients receiving chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine compared with those not receiving the drug and even suggest it may increase the risk of dying as a higher risk of cardiac arrest was found in the treated patients130,131. On 15 June 2020, owing to the side effects observed in clinical trials, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked the emergency use authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 The in vitro studies that showed HCL efficacy were using vero lines, basically kidney cells. Those cells don't express the TMPRSS2 receptor, which is expressed on lung cells though. Studies have shown since that if you modify vero lines to express TMPRSS2, or use lung cells instead of kidney cells, HCL has no effect. It's kinda understandable that the earlier studies have used vero lines, because it's a standard cell line. But research has moved on since. The newer study has come out in July and should have been known to the authors of this review. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2575-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2575-3

roenxi 6y ago
The circumstantial evidence of HCQ being positive is substantial, and at least some of the complaints against it are politically motivated. Although how being hopeful about a COVID treatment became a pro-Trump political stance is beyond me. They can wait until the scientific evidence is overwhelming. No hurry, there are a lot of studies starting to come due. Bodies are complex and maybe something is going on that hasn't been thought of yet. EDIT Thanks swebs for the HCL->HCQ correction.
- OnACoffeeBreak 6y ago
  Seems like your wait is over. From the second half of [0]: > Hydroxychloroquine treatment for coronavirus does not work. It is not beneficial, and in fact appears to be actively harmful. As far as I’m concerned, administering it to infected patients now constitutes medical malpractice. Check the linked article for reference to the study. 0: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/10/09/hard-data https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/10/09/ha...
  - roenxi 6y ago
    One of my favourite posts on HN was some gentleman telling me that masks didn't help against COVID, that the science was in, and that I was endangering lives by even suggesting something so stupid when either the WHO or CDC or Fauci had debunked the idea. I think that was back around April. My current policy is to wait until the evidence is older than a week. That is one open label study on patients that were already in hospital - strong evidence, but not a final word. Maybe they missed something, maybe they made a mistake. Science is hard.
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      I think you're making false equivalences. To be clear, there has never been good scientific evidence that masks are ineffective against respiratory viruses. I think WHO, CDC and Fauci made grave errors at the time by making the argument that mask-wearing by the general public "doesn't work". The clear (and quite understandable) fear was that there would be a run on masks by the general public, so instead of telling the truth ("we need the masks for healthcare workers") they made broader and confusing statements about the effectiveness of masks that were not supported by the underlying science. This had the terrible effect, as your post shows, of making people even more wary of scientific pronouncements. Mine is not an isolated viewpoint. There was a good opinion article in the Washington Post at the time by an influential researcher where she argued the same thing. Contrarily, the good studies that have come out about HCQ have nearly uniformly shown their potential danger. There is simply no equivalence between the scientific data that HCQ is harmful and the data (that never existed mind you) that mask-wearing is ineffective.

jerome-jh 6y ago

"Currently, our knowledge on the animal origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains incomplete to a large part." So we still have no proof of SARS-CoV-2 originating from natural selection, just as we have no proof of human intervention. I often read the first hypothesis is far more likely than the second, but I do not agree. The actual probabilities to be compared are: - the likelihood of a virus outbreak due to natural selection in Wuhan - the likelihood of a virus resulting from a gain of function experiment "escapes" from Wuhan BSL4 Note that we are sure that Wuhan BSL4 was doing gain of function experiments. Also note that natural virus outbreaks are quite likely when looking at China as a whole, China is big, or even when looking at the whole world. But that does not answer the question at hand, and that does not make the natural selection hypothesis "far more likely".

legulere 6y ago
The outbreak happening in Wuhan does not mean that the virus originated there. In the beginning there was more genetic variety seen in Guangdong, which is a sign that the virus originated there and not in Wuhan.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jerome-jh 6y ago
  The outbreak has always been claimed to occur in Wuhan's "wet market". The article only mentions pangolin coronavirus strains in relation to Guangdong. There is no assumption in the article SARS-CoV-2, the human virus, could originate from Guangdong. Should SARS-CoV-2 actually originate from Guangdong would anyway be the sign of a huge dissimulation.
  - matthewdgreen 6y ago
    My understanding is that many scientists have concluded that animal->human adaptation occurred prior to the Wuhan wet market, and the market is basically a red herring. This is based on the relatively low degree of genetic drift that has occurred with SARS-Cov-2 since that time, which indicates that the substantial changes related to human adaptation are likely to have occurred prior to those wet market infections. There are better articles, but here's one [1]. [1] https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-wet-market.html https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]