BBO Discussion Forums: Coronavirus - BBO Discussion Forums

Jump to content

  • 86 Pages +
  • « First
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • Last »
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

Coronavirus Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it

#1161 User is offline   y66 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,496
  • Joined: 2006-February-24

Posted 2021-February-12, 08:22

Tyler Cowen said:

https://marginalrevo...vid-safety.html

Scott McCartney at WSJ said:

https://www.wsj.com/...ing-11612966066

The grand experiment of blocking the middle seat on airplanes has proved what we have known all along about air travel: More people care about a cheap fare than comfort, or even pandemic safety.

Delta announced on Monday that it was extending its middle-seat block for one more month, to the end of April. Delta, the last U.S. airline to block all middle seats in coach, will consider further extensions based on Covid-19 transmission and vaccination rates.

So far, Delta thinks it’s earning goodwill and confidence with customers, particularly business travelers, who aren’t traveling now but will come back. Some who’ve flown during the pandemic have been willing to pay Delta more for more space onboard. Most have been price-sensitive leisure travelers willing to sit shoulder-to-shoulder for cheap fares—on airlines not blocking middle seats…

The bottom line for Delta during the pandemic has been bigger losses than rival airlines selling all their seats. Delta was the most profitable U.S. airline in the final six months of 2019. That flipped during the pandemic. In the last six months of 2020, Delta had the biggest losses, with a net loss of more than $6 billion, greater than United and Southwest combined.

Mr. Lentsch says Delta can’t keep blocking middle seats forever.

I do get there is an externality here, so people are not paying enough for those more spacious Delta seats, as they do not take their higher risk to others into sufficient account. Still, a lot of the risk here is private, and I feel the public health community in the United States has not been willing to look such data in the face squarely enough. Is the public policy problem about minimizing “lives lost,” or maximizing “welfare,” or giving people “what they want”? Or some combination of those? Who exactly has been good at thinking through those trade-offs?

Have the pandemic population flows been into the relatively strict Vermont and California, or to the relatively open Florida and Texas?

To what extent is the real externality a kind of degradation of the public sphere, and the spread of stress and mental health problems, rather than the health of others per se?

Worth a ponder.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
0

#1162 User is offline   pilowsky 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 3,786
  • Joined: 2019-October-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Poland

Posted 2021-February-12, 15:23

FYI
Australia's vaccine roll-out strategy - due to start this month.
http://bit.ly/OZCOVID19
Fortuna Fortis Felix
0

#1163 User is offline   thepossum 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 2,606
  • Joined: 2018-July-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Australia

Posted 2021-February-12, 18:09

View Postpilowsky, on 2021-February-11, 17:28, said:

I've just discovered that Led Zeppelin is the reason that the COVID19 problem was not solved earlier.
It turns out that Jimmy Page wanted to be a biologist and study germs.

But he got distracted, which is a shame.
http://bit.ly/JimmyPageGerms


Who knows what he would achieved in anything he tried but we would have lost this

Page and Plant - Rain SOng

I was amused and concerned at the comment that since he didnt have enough brains to be a doctor he wanted to do research instead. No disrespect intended in any direction :)
0

#1164 User is offline   pilowsky 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 3,786
  • Joined: 2019-October-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Poland

Posted 2021-February-12, 18:32

View Postthepossum, on 2021-February-12, 18:09, said:

Who knows what he would achieved in anything he tried but we would have lost this

Page and Plant - Rain SOng

I was amused and concerned at the comment that since he didnt have enough brains to be a doctor he wanted to do research instead. No disrespect intended in any direction :)


haha - I did Medicine instead of science because I was worried that science would be too hard.

I read somewhere that as far as working things out went there was no difference between Science and Med students, but Med students tended to have better 'pattern recognition' memories.
I've no idea if there is any truth to this.
Fortuna Fortis Felix
0

#1165 User is offline   thepossum 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 2,606
  • Joined: 2018-July-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Australia

Posted 2021-February-12, 18:41

View Postpilowsky, on 2021-February-12, 18:32, said:

haha - I did Medicine instead of science because I was worried that science would be too hard.

I read somewhere that as far as working things out went there was no difference between Science and Med students, but Med students tended to have better 'pattern recognition' memories.
I've no idea if there is any truth to this.


I have no idea on that score. Different people do have very different minds and strengths and weaknesses IMO :)
0

#1166 User is offline   y66 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,496
  • Joined: 2006-February-24

Posted 2021-February-19, 13:41

Ashlee Vance at Bloomberg said:

Spring 2020 brought with it the arrival of the celebrity statistical model. As the public tried to gauge how big a deal the coronavirus might be in March and April, it was pointed again and again to two forecasting systems: one built by Imperial College London, the other by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, or IHME, based in Seattle.

But the models yielded wildly divergent predictions. Imperial warned that the U.S. might see as many as 2 million Covid-19 deaths by the summer, while the IHME forecast was far more conservative, predicting about 60,000 deaths by August. Neither, it turned out, was very close. The U.S. ultimately reached about 160,000 deaths by the start of August.

The huge discrepancy in the forecasting figures that spring caught the attention of a then 26-year-old data scientist named Youyang Gu. The young man had a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and another degree in mathematics, but no formal training in a pandemic-related area such as medicine or epidemiology. Still, he thought his background dealing with data models could prove useful during the pandemic.

In mid-April, while he was living with his parents in Santa Clara, Calif., Gu spent a week building his own Covid death predictor and a website to display the morbid information. Before long, his model started producing more accurate results than those cooked up by institutions with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and decades of experience.

“His model was the only one that seemed sane,” says Jeremy Howard, a renowned data expert and research scientist at the University of San Francisco. “The other models were shown to be nonsense time and again, and yet there was no introspection from the people publishing the forecasts or the journalists reporting on them. Peoples’ lives were depending on these things, and Youyang was the one person actually looking at the data and doing it properly.”

The forecasting model that Gu built was, in some ways, simple. He had first considered examining the relationship among Covid tests, hospitalizations, and other factors but found that such data was being reported inconsistently by states and the federal government. The most reliable figures appeared to be the daily death counts. “Other models used more data sources, but I decided to rely on past deaths to predict future deaths,” Gu says. “Having that as the only input helped filter the signal from the noise.”

The novel, sophisticated twist of Gu’s model came from his use of machine learning algorithms to hone his figures. After MIT, Gu spent a couple years working in the financial industry writing algorithms for high-frequency trading systems in which his forecasts had to be accurate if he wanted to keep his job. When it came to Covid, Gu kept comparing his predictions to the eventual reported death totals and constantly tuned his machine learning software so that it would lead to ever more precise prognostications. Even though the work required the same hours as a demanding full-time job, Gu volunteered his time and lived off his savings. He wanted his data to be seen as free of any conflicts of interest or political bias.

While certainly not perfect, Gu’s model performed well from the outset. In late April he predicted the U.S. would see 80,000 deaths by May 9. The actual death toll was 79,926. A similar late-April forecast from IHME predicted that the U.S. would not surpass 80,000 deaths through all of 2020. Gu also predicted 90,000 deaths on May 18 and 100,000 deaths on May 27, and once again got the numbers right. Where IHME expected the virus to fade away as a result of social distancing and other policies, Gu predicted there would be a second, large wave of infections and deaths as many states reopened from lockdowns.

IHME faced some criticism in March and April, when its numbers didn’t match what was happening. Still, the prestigious center, based at the University of Washington and bolstered by more than $500 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was cited on an almost daily basis during briefings by members of President Donald Trump’s Administration. In April, U.S. infectious-disease chief Anthony Fauci told an interviewer that Covid’s death toll “looks more like 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000” once expected—a prediction that reflected IHME forecasts. And on April 19, the same day Gu cautioned about a second wave, Trump pointed to IHME’s 60,000-death forecast as an indicator that the fight against the virus would soon be over.

IHME officials also actively promoted their numbers. “You had the IHME on all these news shows trying to tell people that deaths would go to zero by July,” Gu says. “Anyone with common sense could see we would be at 1,000 to 1,500 daily deaths for a while. I thought it was very disingenuous for them to do that.”

Christopher Murray, the director of IHME, says that once the organization got a better handle on the virus after April, its forecasts radically improved.

But that spring, week by week, more people started to pay attention to Gu’s work. He flagged his model to reporters on Twitter and e-mailed epidemiologists, asking them to check his numbers. Toward the end of April, the prominent University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom tweeted about Gu’s model, and not long after that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention included Gu’s numbers on its Covid forecasting website. As the pandemic progressed, Gu, a Chinese immigrant who grew up in Illinois and California, found himself taking part in regular meetings with the CDC and teams of professional modelers and epidemiologists, as everyone tried to improve their forecasts.

Traffic to Gu’s website exploded, with millions of people checking in daily to see what was happening in their states and the U.S. overall. More often than not, his predicted figures ended up hugging the line of actual death figures when they arrived a few weeks later.

With such intense interest around these forecasts, more models began to appear through the spring and summer of 2020. Nicholas Reich, an associate professor in the biostatistics and epidemiology department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, collected the 50 or so models and measured their accuracy over many months at the Covid-19 Forecast Hub. “Youyang’s model was consistently among the top,” Reich says.

In November, Gu decided to wind down his death forecast operation. Reich had been blending the various forecasts and found that the most accurate predictions came from the this “ensemble model,” or combined data.

“Youyang stepped back with a remarkable sense of humility,” Reich says. “He saw the other models were doing well and his work here was done.” A month before stopping the project, Gu had predicted that the U.S. would record 231,000 deaths on Nov. 1. When Nov. 1 arrived, the U.S. reported 230,995 deaths.

https://www.bloomber...n?sref=UHfKDqx7

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
1

#1167 User is offline   kenberg 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 11,228
  • Joined: 2004-September-22
  • Location:Northern Maryland

Posted 2021-February-19, 14:12

Quote



A very good article, thanks.

Maybe the short version is that it shows how education and intelligence can work together.

Education shows how to use some tools, intelligence guides a person on which tool to reach for.

At any rate, congrats and appreciation to Gu
Ken
0

#1168 User is offline   cherdano 

  • 5555
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 9,519
  • Joined: 2003-September-04
  • Gender:Male

Posted 2021-February-19, 14:36

Oh my god a trip to the memory lane. These IHME model were just awful. Moreover, when you'd explain the theory to any random mathematicians, they would either shake their head in disbelief or start laughing.

It's wrong though to cite the Imperial models as predictions. The famous 2-million number was a scenario, assuming no serious government measures to stop the spread of covid, and no serious behavioural changes.

"Dad, slam the brakes, there is a cyclist on the street!!!" Dad brakes, stops before the cyclist. #lockdownsceptics scream "WHY DID YOU TELL HIM TO BRAKE? SEE, NOTHING HAPPENED!!!"
The easiest way to count losers is to line up the people who talk about loser count, and count them. -Kieran Dyke
1

#1169 User is offline   thepossum 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 2,606
  • Joined: 2018-July-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Australia

Posted 2021-February-20, 18:51

Rather concerning. Certain parallels between the huge growing Covid modelling industry and how the Climate Modelling industry has been going for decades

Hopefully some people will remember that we are dealing with a global health and social and economic crisis - affecting billions of people - not an opportunity to sit around comparing models and other technologies forever and a day.

I know I am risking disrespect but does nobody else have any concerns about how IPCC and the massive associated industries and technologies dominate everything (whether good or not) - same is happening with Covid Tech

regarding IPCC most predictions and knowledge can be based on very simple models and physics - they were known decades ago. How many complex models of everything are needed to try to verify what happens - before anyone picks me up I mean easily simplified, conceptualised and explained.

And in relation to the conflicted interests of those benefitting from the Climate industry and those who claim to have all the expertise and be able to challenge and silence misinformation I fear the same for some in the new Covid industry. And believe you me, much of the worst misinformation comes from interests having or at least claiming authority

When technology, profits and other interest conflict with various types of ethical professions there can be problems - even if not intended

Not to mention politics. We are often talking about difficult political and social and economic justice issues which most prefer to put in the too hard basket and go for a nice tech solution. Well looking through history technology has often benefitted the oppressors

I know many of us on here are from various maths/science/engineering/tech/modeling type backgrounds. But maybe sometimes I think the world has become obsessed with the tiny technical details and precision at the risk of overfitting highly complex systems, wasting huge resources striving for a tiny bit of variance - its an overfit for those who understand the term

What has sadly taken over the world is the kind of precision required for precision machinery being used on humans. Think of an example I actually know a fair bit about - predictive models in psychology where even tiny effects or relatively small amounts of explained variance are regarded with some excitement, I imagine similarly in many health/human/biological/natural systems models. I am all for precision in terms of trying to deal with an individual - I wanted to be a clinician after all but that takes human on human precision - not a model and a machine approach

Quick question on Covid tech - whats happening to the mountains of PPE often being used unnecessarily/incorrectly by members of communities. Is it clogging up all our waste systems yet and polluting the planet. Much like the wonderful Lithium industry allegedly clean and green where as far as I know most lithium batteries end up in land fill - not recycled as the industry would have us believe etc etc. Some of us out here actually know enough about enough things and are smart enough to spot BS without being experts. Efficient use of resources taking account of externalities - one for the often maligned economists perhaps

Where is the oversight on everything. Its problematic when the same people needed to do oversight are needed elsewhere. It may seem strange to have the same concerns as with the climate industry but since health is now so technological, so engineering and manufacturing focussed, etc etc surely we have a right to have concerns

We live in a world that now has fully industrialised and profits from the destruction of a planet and people's lives as well as making massive profits from technology to allegedly fix it up
0

#1170 User is offline   Chas_P 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 1,513
  • Joined: 2008-September-03
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Gainesville, GA USA

Posted 2021-February-20, 20:48

And now, ladies and gentlemen, back to the coronavirus hysteria.https://www.wsj.com/...inion_lead_pos5
0

#1171 User is offline   sfi 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 2,576
  • Joined: 2009-May-18
  • Location:Oz

Posted 2021-February-20, 21:35

Hysteria is an odd word to use on the very day that total deaths in the US from the virus are likely to pass half a million people.
0

#1172 User is offline   y66 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,496
  • Joined: 2006-February-24

Posted 2021-March-01, 13:29

Good read: Yuval Noah Harari: Lessons from a year of Covid
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
0

#1173 User is offline   johnu 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 5,049
  • Joined: 2008-September-10
  • Gender:Male

Posted 2021-March-01, 15:07

CDC Director Warns Latest COVID-19 Data Could Spell Trouble For The U.S.

Quote

“At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.


Quote

Recent declines in cases have leveled off at nearly 70,000 new cases per day, with nearly 2,000 deaths. Those number are both up 2% from the previous seven days, she said.

“I remain deeply concerned about a pootential shift in the trajectory of the pandemic,” Walensky said.

Vaccine rollout is picking up, but we still have a long way to go, she said, noting that states with aggressive reopening plans pose a serious risk to safety.

“With these new statistics, I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19,” Walensky said. “I understand the temptation to do this; 70,000 cases a day seems good compared to where we were just a few months ago. But we cannot be resigned to 70,000 cases a day, 2000 daily deaths.”


For the record, 70,000 new cases per day is more cases than anytime in the winter/spring of 2020 when the US was in close to full lockdown, or anytime during the 2nd peak in the summer . 70,000 only looks good because from late October to today has been dismally awful compared to anyplace in the world.

Same thing for the ~2,000 deaths per day from Covid. More deaths than that awful time in the spring when the local gov had to bring in dozens of refrigerator trucks to NYC to handle the overflow of dead bodies. For comparison, 2,000 deaths per day is the equivalent of 2 9/11's deaths happening every 3 days.

The variants are extremely troubling, because some appear to be somewhat resistant to the available vaccines, which means you may not be safe even if you are vaccinated. Also, some are much more easily spreadable, may cause more severe symptoms, and the Manaus variant may be able to easily infect those who were previously infected.

Reinfections More Likely With New Coronavirus Variants, Evidence Suggests
0

#1174 User is offline   johnu 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 5,049
  • Joined: 2008-September-10
  • Gender:Male

Posted 2021-March-01, 15:18

UW study: About 30% of people who get coronavirus experience long haul symptoms

Quote

But, research does show clearly the virus doesn't only impact older adults or people with underlying conditions. Even people who are young and healthy -- and didn't have severe cases of the virus -- may have to live with its long-term impacts.

“You can do well initially, but then overtime develop symptoms that are quite crippling in terms of fatigue,” Chu said.

In the study, about 27% of people 18 to 36 years old were impacted, compared with 30% of people 37 to 64 and 43% of people 65 and older. So, the likelihood people would experience long-haul symptoms did increase for people who were older, but still impacted a significant percentage of people who were younger.


One of the scariest long haul Covid symptom is brain fog. Basically, the virus invades the brain, and causes inflammation and maybe the death of some brain cells. Nobody can really afford to lose excess brain cells.

Why Does COVID-19 Cause Brain Fog?
0

#1175 User is offline   thepossum 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 2,606
  • Joined: 2018-July-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Australia

Posted 2021-March-02, 02:53

According to the WHO the vaccines will protect the most vulnerable people but will not prevent the repressive measures against everyone else

I smell a rat

The rest, especially the young have a right to a life and not to have their lives, dreams, and hopes put on hold indefinitely to protect people who have had one of the best lives in human history and have the while world looking after them

The fascism we are observing all over the world. The inequalities. The true lack of care for genuine inequality.

Seriously what happened to everyone's "liberal" credentials

There is even inequality in the sacrifice expected. The wealthy maybe have a year or two's sacrifice but the poor have many more years, maybe indefinite given the way their chances have been knocked back

Meanwhile all these happy privileged biotechs and associated interests sit their smugly as the dollars roll in indefinitely. They worked that one out nicely too

When are people going to take their heads out of the sand, look around and start asking some serious questions

In other possibly related news etc

Some of us had the nous/knowledge and the courage to call out the way the world was going years ago. 2020-21 is so far the pinnacle etc

I don't usually like ad hominem but sometimes you need to look at the money, who is doing well out of something and ask a few questions - on a global scale as well as across sectors within countries

And no, I do not have to be an academic, a doctor whatever to ask legitimate questions and make informed comments - but I appreciate the risks people like me take calling stuff out

For most of 2020 the one hope the people spreading the BS used against us all was that a vaccine would free us all up. All we had to do was wait and get excited when thse dozens of corporations and research insitutions globally made all their money and produced their competing vaccines

But hey, when a few of them start being rolled out sure enough the BS (most of us saw) is held up for all to see by the WHO itself

Meanwhile the self-interested powerful groups who benefit from it all, are hardly affected, still get to do their stuff, make money, have nice lives get to enjoy stuff indefinitely while the rest suffer indefinitely. That's the deal is it

What's interetsing and what some of us know is that its not just biotech where they sit, climate tech, other tech, all sold as a lie to a gullible world so they keep wealthy and powerful and who cares about the rest

But what doo we get from one of our other self-interested groups which like to manipulate the world. Instead of pictures of poor people dying in the street under repressive measures we get happy smiling propaganda pieces of people waving their 24/7 surveillance apps around

We get puff pieces out of Beijing about the manipulative stuff they feed their own people. Now seemingly the whole world has the same level of media manipulation. I'm not pointing fingers at Beijing by the way. The problem groups are in each of our counties

Finally, I know I'm not officially allowed to comment. I was denied that for various reasons (private) but in terms of biotech/pharma lack of scrutiny I have a fair bit of evidence and know of a fair bit of silenced evidence in a few major areas of big pharma. Are we trust those same people with the covid rubbish. You cannot compromise a health ethic with dollars. Its something of a disaster really. You cannot compromise health with the same kind of risk that people take investing in other types of tech. Look at the world. Seriously. How many people can defend it

And while I am not going to outline my evidence the doubts and the possible suspicions/questions/hypotheses that are quite legitimate its educational how few people ask them and how those who ask them have their lives destroyed. Sadly the group(s) we trust to ask questions have gone AWOL or are not knowledgeable enough to ask or sadly are too interested to ask. I know we all have interests. We all have lives. That is power. So I have a legitimate interest and am starting to speak up. Not all of us believe in an afterlife or reincarnation or whatever

So tell me all you experts out there (many who play Bridge) I could sit here and have a comfortable but miserable self-interested life and stay silent. Or care about something with meaning and speak up. What am I supposed to do. Maybe ask that of everyone

Hey at least I'm prepared to own up to my self-interest and realise it relies largely on things like expectancy of quality life ahead compared to may others. Seriously people

All these years we/I trusted all these institutions. When the crunch comes they either show up as not competent to provide adequate scrutiny or too self-interested to ask questions. Maybe look at how all those interests have become concentrated increasingly. I may be able to understand papers about the dopaminergic system, receptor and the impact of medications on those - but seriously does anyone even have the time or patience to try and make sense of a biotechengineering paper

Public debate is still at a very low level.

Maybe the world doesnt care. Maybe everyone is happy in their empty propaganda filled lives. Who knows
0

#1176 User is offline   pilowsky 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 3,786
  • Joined: 2019-October-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Poland

Posted 2021-March-02, 03:54

View Postjohnu, on 2021-March-01, 15:18, said:

One of the scariest long haul Covid symptom is brain fog. Basically, the virus invades the brain and causes inflammation and maybe the death of some brain cells. Nobody can really afford to lose excess brain cells.



There is a little more to it than that.
Viruses can cause brain problems for many reasons. I'll try and simplify it.
1. Direct:
Some viruses are actually 'neurotrophic'. This means that their main target is nerve cells. But not all nerves. To understand this, try to think of a nerve as a tree and a virus as a parasite that likes trees. Some specific trees are affected by a specific parasite, but others are not.
Why is this? Like trees, neurons live for a long time - basically for the life of the individual.
They are almost unique in this. Being very long-lived is great. It means that we can use one neuron to store precise bits of information. Vision neurons that only respond to objects moving from left to right on a horizontal plane are good examples (Torsten and Weisel got the Nobel for this discovery).

Every neuron can also be characterised in terms of where it projects and the inputs it receives. Also, every neuron produces and secretes multiple chemicals that it releases onto other neurons and multiple receptors that it expresses all over its membrane.
The chemicals it releases in response to the frequency of action potentials determines how much it affects other neurons or targets of other types.
Engineers will immediately see all kinds of possibilities for dynamic amplitude and frequency modulation.

I mentioned things that neurons express on their surface. The lining of a neuron is two layers of lipid. the proteins that the cell makes (e.g. receptors) sit within this lipid bilayer. Proteins have hydrophilic and hydrophobic domains, so one end sticks out into the water, and the other bit prefers to be in the lipid. Many of these proteins have an inside bit and an outside bit.

Viruses usually bind to one of these proteins. The neuron gets annoyed and recycles (no waste) the useless protein into the cell. The virus then releases its cargo of DNA or RNA into the cell, and everything starts to go bad. Viruses that sound like 'DNA' release parcels of DNA (e.g. adenovirus and hepatitis and herpes viruses). Polio is an RNA virus. It only affects neurons that control skeletal muscle.
Coronaviruses use a protein found on many cells as their target: this is the angiotensin-converting-enzyme or ACE. To control the fluid distribution and blood pressure in the body. a system called the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System has evolved. (RAAS). It works like this:

1. The liver makes angiotensin 0 (angiotensinogen). There are bucket loads of it circulating in the blood all the time - just waiting.
2. The kidney makes renin (not rennin) - renin is an enzyme released from special cells in the kidney if blood pressure falls. If released, renin chops off a bit of A0 and turns it into A1.
3. Nothing happens until the A1 is turned into A2 (actually called AII) by an enzyme called ACE. then the AII acts on angiotensin type 2 receptors (and 1 for other stuff). Most of the receptors are on blood vessels. You can guess from the name what happens next - angio- (blood vessel) -tensin (constrict), and up goes your blood pressure.
4. Other enzymes in the blood quickly degrade the angiotensin restoring the system to normal.

Like me, those of you who have high blood pressure will be taking either a -pril type drug or -artan. Drugs ending in -pril block ACE. Drugs ending in -artan block the angiotensin receptor.
At one time, there was (completely unfounded) anxiety that people taking these drugs could have bigger problems with COVID. This turns out to be wrong. Keep taking your drugs.

Returning to the original point, ACE is found in very high concentrations in the lung. All of the A1 made by renin is turned into AII as the blood is pumped through the lungs (basically a couple of heartbeats. But ACE is found in many other places - including the brain and the testes (ouch).
Wherever there is ACE, the coronavirus can cause problems.
And yes, it's in the brain too.

2. Specific but indirect.
Because the virus can damage blood vessels - yes, ACE is there too; this can affect blood transport to the brain. Also, many people are in poor condition for many reasons, and it does not take much reduction in oxygen to stop the brain from working properly. Remember, the brain needs an adequate supply of oxygen and glucose all the time.

3. Not specific and indirect.
The brain needs the body to be operating in a narrow range for other reasons. Any sickness that, e.g., elevates temperature, can cause neurological problems. Around 10% of babies can get such a high fever that they have a seizure. 90% of them grow out of it.

So, that's viruses in a nutshell. Obviously, there is a lot more.
Fortuna Fortis Felix
0

#1177 User is offline   johnu 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 5,049
  • Joined: 2008-September-10
  • Gender:Male

Posted 2021-March-02, 16:54

Yes!!! Time to completely reopen the US of A.

COVID Numbers Are Now Spiking Again in These 10 States

Quote

1. Texas
New cases in last seven days per 100,000 people: 193
Percent change in daily cases in last seven days: Up 99 percent


Statistics and math have a liberal bias!!! Do not believe the numbers, trust the Manchurian President, Q, and the insurrectionists and seditionists who would never lie to you!!! The fake pandemic is over and you have nothing to fear from the Trump Virus!!!
0

#1178 User is offline   Chas_P 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 1,513
  • Joined: 2008-September-03
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Gainesville, GA USA

Posted 2021-March-03, 19:21

View Postjohnu, on 2021-March-02, 16:54, said:

Yes!!! Time to completely reopen the US of A.

COVID Numbers Are Now Spiking Again in These 10 States



Statistics and math have a liberal bias!!! Do not believe the numbers, trust the Manchurian President, Q, and the insurrectionists and seditionists who would never lie to you!!! The fake pandemic is over and you have nothing to fear from the Trump Virus!!!


Get 'er done Johnboy! You are a legend in your own mind.
0

#1179 User is offline   johnu 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 5,049
  • Joined: 2008-September-10
  • Gender:Male

Posted 2021-March-05, 00:32

Biden calls Texas decision to reopen 'Neanderthal thinking'

Quote

President Joe Biden on Wednesday called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's decision to end his state's mask mandate "Neanderthal thinking," echoing frustration from top COVID-19 response officials in his administration that case numbers are not low enough to relax restrictions before more Americans are vaccinated.


What a political misstep by Biden! Biden needs to apologize to Neanderthals for slandering them by comparing them to Republican governors in TX, MS, and AL. Sure, Neanderthals were primitive and went extinct, but they cared for family members unable to survive on their own, followed best medical practices and weren't racists, white supremacists, KKK, Nazis, insurrectionists, seditionists. Neanderthals deserve an apology!!!
0

#1180 User is offline   Cyberyeti 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 14,306
  • Joined: 2009-July-13
  • Location:England

Posted 2021-March-05, 03:08

Vaccinated yesterday, first dose of Oxford vaccine, slightly sore arm, no other effects so far.
0

  • 86 Pages +
  • « First
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • Last »
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

18 User(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 18 guests, 0 anonymous users