Re: Life with COVID-19

[Arlen Holder]

In response to what s|b <m...@privacy.invalid> wrote :

> It's not going to last.

Hi S or b,

I know you from this android newsgroup where you have been shown to be
intelligent, which is vastly appreciated in this sea of the hoi polloi.

You're probably correct that human nature will return to its past, where,
I'm trying to study how this particular virus caused such a disruption to
our normal schedules (and even personal space considerations).

Personally, I feel this virus is going to be with us forever.

However, nobody can predict what will happen simply because a lot depends
on how "leaky" the quarantine is, how completely the antibody blood draw
and/or nasal swabs are, and how soon an "effective" vaccine comes out to
protect those at greatest risk, nor whether the virus, admittedly an RNA
virus (which has fewer replication checks than do DNA viruses) will mutate,
and in what direction immunologically.

I've read many predictions, where the most common seems to be a series of
decreasing amplitude 'waves' of infection over the next decade or five, or
ten, or forever, where we must remember that only a couple coronaviruses
cause from one tenth to up to about a third of all common colds today.

That's pretty damn infectious.

Contrast two coronaviruses causing at least 1/10th of all colds with the
_hundreds_ of rhino and adenoviruses out there that _also_ cause the common
cold, and that gives you a glimpse at just how infectious these zoonotic
coronaviruses have evolved to be.

What's particularly nasty about this SARS-CoV-2 bug is that furin enzyme
cleaves the glycoprotein spike such that it attaches wonderfully to our
ACE2 receptors in our ciliated lung cells allowing our phospholipid cell
membranes to fuse with that of the virus.

This essentially opens the door to the capsid which contains the curled up
RNA of the virus, which our cells replicate outside the nucleus, to form so
many new virus particles that our cells rupture, lending our own
phospholipid envelope to the virus to allow it to shed anew.

The problem is that our humoral (i.e., targeted) immune system is not
acquainted with this particular spike protein, so all we're left with is
our innate (i.e., non specific) immune system, which, unfortunately, tends
to run amok with what is known in the trade as a 'cytokine storm'.

Worse, even if we survive the 'honeycomb lung' scarring of the full-blown
Covid-19 disease, our targeted antibody titre only lasts a handful of years
(based on most, but not all scientific papers I've read to date).

What that means is that even if we come up with a way to create the
glycoprotein antigen and inject it into our bodies to make antibodies
targeted to that antigenic shape, those antibodies don't seem to last all
that long so we're gonna have to be taking the vaccine forever (if that's
the case).

The point is there is no cure other than the normal one, which is that
those who die, die, and those who live, pass their genes on to the future.

Unfortunately, most of us are octogenarians, so, we're the ones who
experience the cytokine storm that ends up, in the end, to be our doom.
--
SARS-CoV-2 spike affinity is orders of magnitude greater than SARS-CoV-1.

[John]

The main reason Covid 19 is spreading so bad is because of liberals.
They don't believe in washing their hands frequently or in most cases
even after using the restroom.

[Arlen Holder]

In response to what John <nos...@nospam.com> wrote :

> The main reason Covid 19 is spreading so bad is because of liberals.
> They don't believe in washing their hands frequently or in most cases
> even after using the restroom.

Ignoring the fact you don't usually get Covid-19 from urinary material;
o And while it "may" be in fecal detritus, that's not a key vector.

Keeping things simple, I think the main reason Covid-19 is spreading so
fast is a combination of factors, not the least of which is that it has an
affinity for our lung tissue that is orders of magnitude higher than other
common respiratory viruses.

In addition, since SARS-CoV-2 is a rather large enveloped virus, it travels
safely on far larger respiratory droplets, and can remain viable for up to
9 days on some surfaces (less in air & on paper, more on some metals &
plastics). ions).

Furthermore, given its zoonotic origin (bats most likely), nobody has an
existing humoral (aka targeted) response to the external spike proteins.

All we have is our innate (i.e., non memory) immune system to battle this
virus, which works just fine in almost all people but which, for a reason
none of us are aware of yet, for some of us, particularly the elderly of
us, which is the vast majority of Usenet, I would assume, our innate system
loses control, and a cytokine storm results.

Luckily, while this is an RNA virus (which has fewer replication checks
than do DNA viruses), SARS-CoV-2 does not appear to mutate any differently
than we would expect, at least based on studies in both China & in Italy,
where there have been, to date, roughly about a hundred mutations (which is
along expected trajectories).

Hence a vaccine is possible, although normally it takes about 10 years for
an effective vaccine. We have an advantage here of an early-on full genome
characterization of this SARS-CoV-2 virus; so we likely will have vaccines
earlier than that - but they likely will not be effective for more than a
few months to a small number of years, given that numerous studies showed
the antibody titre to a full-blown classical SARS disease didn't last more
than 3 to 5 years.

In the end, what kills us is the indiscriminate cytokine storm, in people
who can't control their innate immune response, where nobody knows why the
innate system goes out of control - which - I think - is where the money
needs to be spent.

To John's highly political point, in the end, the systemic damage from that
cytokine storm is like sending out hoards of those "liberals" you speak of
who indiscriminately blow themselves up and everything around them in order
to attack the few "conservatives" John presumes those unsanitary liberals
are after. :)
--
Humor is fine but stupidity is not.