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Txzen

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Everything posted by Txzen

  1. They are a remarkably resilient and obscenely stubborn people. No better example than the Royal Castle in Warsaw. Mostly destroyed by shelling in WWII, Hitler gave the order to reduce it to a pile of rubble. The Nazis bored holes to place explosives and did just that. But the clergy and locals saved remnants from the rubble, and the castle was eventually rebuilt starting in the 70s, using photographs, paintings...and remnants to rebuild them. If you go into a room and follow the gilded crown moulding, you'll often find one small section which is heavily tarnished. It's an original part which was used to recreate the rest. Some stubborn Pole dug through the rubble and held on to it in their basement through generations and decades knowing that someday they'd rebuild. Frankly, most of the old town in Warsaw was rebuilt that way, using period oil paintings as reference. The Royal Castle in Warsaw A major draw in Wroclaw, the Panorma Raclawice is a massive, 360 degree piece of art commemorating the heroic, though failed, battle for independence in 1794 against the Russians. Yeah, that part of the world has long, long memories for history for sure.
  2. I actually came here to post that study (which had just published) just because it challenged even my assumption of minimal risk to those with no comorbidities, and spoke to your question as to the efficacy of vaccination for not-at-risk populations. I'm not an aloof cunt, I'm a sarcastic one. Well, maybe aloof in that I don't know who the fuck you are, as outside of a few people who post decent scientific info here I don't pay attention to the names of those who routinely post the usual crap (unfounded vaccine safety concerns, statements of steamrolled development, 'I know people who were never vaxxed and we had the same outcome', etc.). If I always post in response to you, well, FAFO I guess.
  3. Curious what 'medical scientist' means, as this is...an interesting opinion not at all grounded on the facts. New study looking at 150k people in the VA - even a mild case has impacts on heart health, regardless of comorbitities. So that's fun. Nature : Heart-disease risk soars after COVID — even with a mild case The paper : Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19
  4. That's a fun read. I spent about a decade doing small molecules in oncology for a large pharma. I'm on the biology side, so my chemistry knowledge is a bit on the 'I slept at a Holiday Inn last night' level, but after a while you do learn some of the salient points. Always enjoyed sitting in with the chemistry team, all wearing 3D glasses while they rotate around the pocket on the kinase we were targeting, overlaying how all the chemical variants they made grew or reached into hydrophobic areas or made contact with key amino acid residues. Space age. I think a lot of small molecules that make it to market probably have similar issues as paxlovid. One thing he didn't mention that I saw was multiple chiral centers. Each time you make that reaction, you have multiple outputs and sometimes only one spacial orientation has the properties you need. The odds are almost never 50:50, and invariably the stuff I worked on always needed the one product that was 20% of the reaction. That's a nuisance in the preclinical stage and a colossal issue at the commercial stage. There's a lot of work as these programs move to IND to ensure that the chemical synthesis doesn't utilize some process which isn't scalable. I know industry gets a bad rap, but I hope that's due to the business/marketing side. The science is incredible, and I'm constantly fascinated by how much work goes in to make these drugs at scale - whether it's small molecule, biologics, or even cell therapy.
  5. Not a B cell guy, but the natural progression of antibody class switching upon antigen exposure is for a first transient production of IgM and then a second prolonged IgG production. My guess would be that your vaccination already ‘switched’ B cell production from IgM to IgG, and any secondary exposure would likely only trigger a profound IgG production.
  6. Thanks for this reference. Unaware of the book or the author, which is odd as his focus area is straight in my interests.
  7. And now I want pelmemi. And barszcz.
  8. He's really, really good. Knows the history of the area, speaks the language fluently and is somehow able to befriend everyone he comes across (minus a few babushkas here and there).
  9. tl;dr - the WHO sets global recommendations, the FDA chairs an advisory committee to pass that recommendation on to manufacturers, then standard lot release assays verify the effectiveness. And yes, I could totally see this happen for COVID strains. The question is will manufacturing be able to keep up with strain emergence. That said I'm still amazed we do this every year in f-ing eggs (which was a prime issue during the H1N1 variant year as it also took out the egg production). An overview of the regulation of influenza vaccines in the United States
  10. Catacombs. Went with my teenage son and found it more profound than macabre. Book in advance. We were there during record heat in July a few years back (115) and it was a great way to cool off for a bit.
  11. Had to renew the passport for my minor child, so it was basically almost like a new passport application. Needed birth certificate, and both parents to be there, etc. Did the whole thing at the post office branch (which even offered on-site pictures). Appointment was on Dec 20th, and we paid for expedited service and express mail since we were nervous as we have a trip in February. Just received it today (January 6th). 17 days!
  12. I get the argument about how the SEC may have put the playoffs in a headlock and how CFB is ‘stale’…but this game and the performance of a backup QB is the counter argument. CFB can be so wonderfully unpredictable.
  13. Polish vodka talk not going away. Also the alternative name for that cocktail is ‘tatanka’ (yes, from ‘Dances with Wolves’).
  14. The rule of plumbing is that if it’s too loose, it leaks. If it’s too tight, it leaks. Fuck plumbing.
  15. Nice way to deflect your premise about differences in mRNA translation between a 12 year old and an adult. Or the impact said age on some processing of a proline substitution. There are no chops to insult.
  16. You know enough legitimate science to write a few words, but not remotely understand the meaning. Could cell replication, DNA replication and RNA replication be different between children and adults and thus cause a reaction with the vaccine? This doesn't even make any sense. Please point to the legitimate science supporting this concern. It's not 'designed to create a representation of a 3D conformation'. It's a message to make a string of amino acids which make up a protein. The '3D structure' is built by your own cell machinery. Unnatural start and stop codons? Explain how this impacts the translated product, please. Intermediate stabilizing elements? Approximately 7.4 billion doses administered as of today.
  17. That place looks great. I really prefer the Canyons side of PC. That's a nice base village with a great locker room and a nice bar for a sunny day. We usually stay in the middle of the two base areas, and use the free shuttle to move around - the fact that there's an open air gondola (of sorts) from the bus dropoff that then takes you to 20 steps from the Red Pine gondola is amazing - no hiking up stairs with your gear (why can't more places do that?). It's easy to take that free bus into Park City town proper (or Deer Valley, for that matter). When we had a developing intermediate, the long blue run under the Sun Peak Express was great - seemed out of the way and had a short line. The blues coming off os Saddleback (left when you exit) are fun too as you're sometimes on, or going under bridges through the aspens. Interesting terrain that's like a toboggan run.
  18. Yeah, everyone else was jumping around and screaming and he really needed to just walk to the side and quietly contemplate the experience. It was clear he was pretty moved. Bezos looks like a villain from the next Austin Powers movie.
  19. Yes, but we lost to that first half team.
  20. No, and that whole West Shore area backs up into, and in some cases is surrounded by, forest land. You can't just chop down those trees regardless.
  21. Caldor Fire in the Tahoe area has been laying waste to some of my favorite areas for hiking and camping, and is now threatening the Tahoe Basin it self. Most all of South Lake Tahoe and the West Shore are under a mandatory evacuation. There's been no stopping this beast. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems inevitable it's going to make it to these areas. Horrible. Tahoe Evacuation map
  22. I think one comment brought up is that re-testing for COVID was voluntary, and the authors point out that the reports of people who had COVID saying they never got it again relied on them to get tested if they felt sick. It's a reasonable question to ask if you had it once, how likely would you be to get tested again if you develop symptoms, perhaps thinking 'no, I had it once no way I have it again'. The data are in disagreement with the other study posted yesterday (which is to be expected - we are learning about this month by month). Interesting though.
  23. That paper also shows two other things. First, a naive person + a vaccine appears to generate more neutralizing Abs than someone with prior COVID infection. Second, a person with a history of a prior COVID infection who gets vaccinated has an ever greater response that someone who has only completed a standard vaccination. That's useful as a model for what a booster shot will do, and should provide evidence to those who think their natural immunity from having been infected is sufficient.
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