Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away

[irishtexan 11519]

5 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

I am not seeing this widespread non-mask usage indoors.  I was in South Texas at the ranch for almost two months.  People in Pearsall and Dilley were all wearing masks indoors.  Also went to a buddies' ranch in Freer to visit.  You could not walk into a gas station without a mask.

Houston -- everywhere I go it was 90% masks indoors.  Now it is 100 percent.

I guess my experiences are anecdotal.  Because I have noticed masks everywhere.

Well, the Governor finally allowed municipalities to decide what's best for the communities they represent and make wearing them compulsory. And I think the word is really getting out about how we're about to be mega fucked re: hospital beds. A few weeks ago mask use at the HEB I go to in Austin had dropped to about 75%. It's back up to 100% now that there's a city ordinance. 

I stopped at the Buccee's in Katy on my way to Galveston nearly weeks ago and MAYBE 20 percent of people were wearing masks. And that's a pretty liberal estimate. I'd say it was closer to 10-15%. 

[Foosters 17856]

1 hour ago, Foosters said:

 

 

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19101]

I prefer to read this as NY learning from our mistakes, and you're welcome.

Maybe you guys should have learned from ours.

[NAVY 6740]

Travis County just updated their dashboard: 508

https://www.traviscountytx.gov/news/2020/1945-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-information

 

 

[Johnny Sack 8397]

34 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

2 hours ago, B00M said:

I prefer to read this as NY learning from our mistakes, and you're welcome.

Maybe you guys should have learned from ours.

Pretty sure our state leadership already knew not to force COVID positive people into nursing homes.  That wasn't unforeseeable.  We knew from Italy this virus killed old populations.  

[Johnny Sack 8397]

Ten COVID deaths in Texas today from the DHS update.

https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/additionaldata/

 

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19101]

12 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

Ten COVID deaths in Texas today from the DHS update.

https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/additionaldata/

 

Texas Med Center is at capacity. What happens when you run out of room to treat?  Oh yeah, I know.  But honestly, the second cases started rising, the bars should have been dialed back.  There were places in Houston (Spire) where no fucks were given.  Thanks, assholes.

[Johnny Sack 8397]

6 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

Texas Med Center is at capacity. What happens when you run out of room to treat?  Oh yeah, I know.  But honestly, the second cases started rising, the bars should have been dialed back.  There were places in Houston (Spire) where no fucks were given.  Thanks, assholes.

Dr. Boom from Houston Methodist discussed it over the weekend.  It is not really an issue.  Was on the phone today with a Houston Methodist board member who is getting constant updates.  He said the same thing.

Think about how New York got popped with cases.  They never got overrun.  Shit the navy boat was barely used.  We aren't close to NYC hospitalizations and have one of the largest medical centers in the world.  Not to mention all the satellite hospitals all over the city.

If NYC did not get overrun, my educated guess is we will weather this a lot better.

I could be very wrong.  Maybe we go from 10-40 deaths a day to 500 like New York did.  I just seriously, seriously doubt it.  I hope I am right.

 

 

[Sgt Hulk 13716]

LA county beaches closed this 4th of July weekend.   Several million will be irate 

[Hate 20108]

3 minutes ago, Sgt Hulk said:

LA county beaches closed this 4th of July weekend.   Several million will be irate 

They should protest.

[Telegraph_it 3357]

4 minutes ago, Hate said:

They should protest.

It is a shame pride month doesn’t extend into July. 

[StruggleBus 3922]

34 minutes ago, Hate said:

They should protest.

Covid only spreads on beaches and at parks, not at protests.

[Guest Lobo]

It's a plausible theory.  Only we won't know for a long time because apparently contact tracing is for communists and fags.  If only we were a nation of technology, will, and resources.  

[Brew 3049]

TN governor just extended his executive order on the state of emergency through 8/29. It’s the same EO that was used to close schools, so it will be interesting to see what happens with that over the next few days. It also ends all contact sports and practices outside of college/pro levels. There have been a couple of counties that have been hit hard with football practices starting back up. Glad I’m in one of the few location in FL that is taking this seriously and staying somewhat locked down. If school gets postponed, we’ll just stick around here a little longer I guess.

[Sgt Hulk 13716]

1 hour ago, Hate said:

They should protest.

ive already seen the FB calling for a peaceful blm protest at the beach on teh 4th  no lie

[Blotto 23509]

Probably a few threads where this could go, but this shit is infuriating....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/upshot/coronavirus-tests-unpredictable-prices.html

Quote

Before a camping and kayaking trip along the Texas Coast, Pam LeBlanc and Jimmy Harvey decided to get coronavirus tests. They wanted a bit more peace of mind before spending 13 days in close quarters along with three friends.

The two got drive-through tests at Austin Emergency Center in Austin. The center advertises a “minimally invasive” testing experience in a state now battling one of the country’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. Texas recorded 5,799 new cases Sunday, and recently reversed some if its reopening policies.

They both recalled how uncomfortable it was to have the long nasal swab pushed up their noses. Ms. LeBlanc’s eyes started to tear up; Mr. Harvey felt as if the swab “was in my brain.”

Their tests came back with the same result — negative, allowing the trip to go ahead — but the accompanying bills were quite different.

The emergency room charged Mr. Harvey $199 in cash. Ms. LeBlanc, who paid with insurance, was charged $6,408.

“I assumed, like an idiot, it would be cheaper to use my insurance than pay cash right there,” Ms. LeBlanc said. “This is 32 times the cost of what my friend paid for the exact same thing.”

Ms. LeBlanc’s health insurer negotiated the total bill down to $1,128. The plan said she was responsible for $928 of that.

The story goes on to say she negotiated the copay down to $199 after sharing the what her friend had paid, but she had to force the issue. Our medical system is fucking insane. 

[Newdoc 3440]

7 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Our medical system is fucking insane. 

Do not go to a stand alone ED unless you have prenegotiated a price or you are really sick and don’t want to go to a regular ED. They exist to suck mandatory payment rates for emergency care in or out of network. Most have competent staff but you will pay out the ass for the experience.

[Enchubben 5510]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Ordered a gas mask with eye protection and hair clippers today because this shit isn’t going anywhere.  

[Blotto 23509]

1 minute ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Ordered a gas mask with eye protection and hair clippers today because this shit isn’t going anywhere.  

Sounds like one hell of a gas mask. 

[Anastasis 23469]

14 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Probably a few threads where this could go, but this shit is infuriating....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/upshot/coronavirus-tests-unpredictable-prices.html

The story goes on to say she negotiated the copay down to $199 after sharing the what her friend had paid, but she had to force the issue. Our medical system is fucking insane. 

Not sure that makes a lot of sense. Most insurers have been covering testing at no cost. There is some network scam going on there.

But agree that the whole thing is insane. Son needed some cardiac monitoring. Never had an event that got transmitted, no interpretation, etc.  Basically just provide a device to walk around with that never got used and never required professional services. Got a bill after insurance buy down for $2000.  Told them to go get fucked and that we were not going to pay them anything more than $500 for 3 months. Which was still a rip off but I could see it for a complex medical device on lease. They ended up accepting.  Should have just bought the kid an apple watch with a hear rate monitor. 

[BradInATX 9208]

49 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

 

 

lol

JFC.

Quote

Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence is a 2019 book by Alex Berenson, denounced as alarmist and inaccurate by many in the scientific and medical communities because of his claims that cannabis use causes psychosis and violence.

Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates, 2020

Get this Q-anon bullshit out of here. It's embarrassing to have this posted unironically on a University of Texas message board.

Edited June 30, 2020 by BradInATX

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

The folks downplaying this shit don’t understand there are about to be folks literally dying in the streets waiting to get into a hospital.  

[Telegraph_it 3357]

As long as its not in the trees. 

[XYZ 2154]

1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

Not sure that makes a lot of sense. Most insurers have been covering testing at no cost. There is some network scam going on there.

But agree that the whole thing is insane. Son needed some cardiac monitoring. Never had an event that got transmitted, no interpretation, etc.  Basically just provide a device to walk around with that never got used and never required professional services. Got a bill after insurance buy down for $2000.  Told them to go get fucked and that we were not going to pay them anything more than $500 for 3 months. Which was still a rip off but I could see it for a complex medical device on lease. They ended up accepting.  Should have just bought the kid an apple watch with a hear rate monitor. 

The medical “industry” in America is a fucking racket.

[MNLonghornFUKM 8817]

The folks downplaying this shit don’t understand there are about to be folks literally dying in the streets waiting to get into a hospital.  

We know. So why don’t you update daily death counts now that they’re no longer 2k/day?

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

7 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The folks downplaying this shit don’t understand there are about to be folks literally dying in the streets waiting to get into a hospital.  

Huhhh ?  It's gonna get worse ?    They gonna start sending the seniors back to assisted living centers again ?  Using ventilators incorrectly ?  Leeches ?

[Iceman 2710]

9 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Ordered a gas mask with eye protection and hair clippers today because this shit isn’t going anywhere.  

surprised it isn't mandated.  Your people will get it there...

 

the shaved heads have multiple levels of appeal.

Edited June 30, 2020 by Iceman

[Enchubben 5510]

9 hours ago, BradInATX said:

 

lol

JFC.

Get this Q-anon bullshit out of here. It's embarrassing to have this posted unironically on a University of Texas message board.

You seem triggered. I don’t know this Alex guy from a hole in the ground, nor do I care, but are insinuating the email is fake or the emails are real but the information is not real?

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

8 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The folks downplaying this shit don’t understand there are about to be folks literally dying in the streets waiting to get into a hospital.  

[achooloco 1072]

10 hours ago, Brew said:

It also ends all contact sports and practices outside of college/pro levels. There have been a couple of counties that have been hit hard with football practices starting back up..

Admittedly this isn’t an easy question to answer but does it seem like the people in those affected counties are now more disposed to following SiP/SaH orders? Sucks for the sick kids and people/kids stuck at home but wondering if it is converting some of the people that might not have been taking it that seriously.

My sister is one of those. Prior to this story she had fallen into the fb mommy group Home schooler/anti vaccine hole and been spreading various “hoax” memes, just the flu, etc (some admittedly worth a good chuckle). While we still had civil discussions about taking precautions, social distancing, etc, she was not taking it serious and did minimal effort for any of those things.  Overall she as a nurse knew it existed but was more “roll her eyes” and “whatever, if we get it we get it, no one dies, we’ll be fine, I just want to enjoy green belt!!!“

Her compadre is mid-40s, outdoor worker, more fit than an avg male in his age group, and showed symptoms 13 days ago. First day of symptoms he actually spent with them but has since been in quarantine (luckily, as of today no one has shown any symptoms in her family). By day 9, she reported to us that his main complaint was that he was bored only watching tv and resting. And she said “for some reason” his doc advised him to not do any strenuous physical activity. That got a comment but whatever, it ended with me saying I really hope that in ten years that will be his CoVID story that he was just bored. 

Very next night she texts at midnight EST freaking out that her compadre’s wife just called and that they were in route to the hospital. He went from fine to not breathing/unconscious in minutes. The wife had actually been leaving to get the daughter from work, said bye to the husband but only checked on him bc he didn’t respond and found him gasping for air before shortly not breathing at all. Had she left a couple minutes earlier they’d have come home to a dead guy.

Obviously now my sister is in overdrive. Where can I buy the good masks, why can’t we get the great ones, only one person goes out, etc. From the anecdotal stories on seeing mask usage in the wild on this board, I’m assuming that she isn’t the only person in Texas in that situation.

And for those that get sick or know infected people, don’t forget days 10-14/15 are a bitch, always be extra vigilant then. Stay safe y’all

[utee94 15823]

7 minutes ago, achooloco said:

Admittedly this isn’t an easy question to answer but does it seem like the people in those affected counties are now more disposed to following SiP/SaH orders? Sucks for the sick kids and people/kids stuck at home but wondering if it is converting some of the people that might not have been taking it that seriously.

My sister is one of those. Prior to this story she had fallen into the fb mommy group Home schooler/anti vaccine hole and been spreading various “hoax” memes, just the flu, etc (some admittedly worth a good chuckle). While we still had civil discussions about taking precautions, social distancing, etc, she was not taking it serious and did minimal effort for any of those things.  Overall she as a nurse knew it existed but was more “roll her eyes” and “whatever, if we get it we get it, no one dies, we’ll be fine, I just want to enjoy green belt!!!“

Her compadre is mid-40s, outdoor worker, more fit than an avg male in his age group, and showed symptoms 13 days ago. First day of symptoms he actually spent with them but has since been in quarantine (luckily, as of today no one has shown any symptoms in her family). By day 9, she reported to us that his main complaint was that he was bored only watching tv and resting. And she said “for some reason” his doc advised him to not do any strenuous physical activity. That got a comment but whatever, it ended with me saying I really hope that in ten years that will be his CoVID story that he was just bored. 

Very next night she texts at midnight EST freaking out that her compadre’s wife just called and that they were in route to the hospital. He went from fine to not breathing/unconscious in minutes. The wife had actually been leaving to get the daughter from work, said bye to the husband but only checked on him bc he didn’t respond and found him gasping for air before shortly not breathing at all. Had she left a couple minutes earlier they’d have come home to a dead guy.

Obviously now my sister is in overdrive. Where can I buy the good masks, why can’t we get the great ones, only one person goes out, etc. From the anecdotal stories on seeing mask usage in the wild on this board, I’m assuming that she isn’t the only person in Texas in that situation.

And for those that get sick or know infected people, don’t forget days 10-14/15 are a bitch, always be extra vigilant then. Stay safe y’all

I hope she and her family turn out okay, as well as her friend in critical condition.

And yes, I'll add my anecdotal evidence on mask wearing-- it's definitely up in the places I've been in Austin and Cedar Park.  Austin had probably dipped down to 75% a couple of weeks ago, but it's at or near 100% at this point.  And Cedar Park was probably around 30% on a good day, a couple of weeks ago.  Now it's over 80% and the city (like most other Austin suburbs) has now issued mandatory mask orders.

I think the recent increases in cases and hospitalizations are driving at least some of this behavior.

Edited June 30, 2020 by utee94

[BradInATX 9208]

9 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The folks downplaying this shit don’t understand there are about to be folks literally dying in the streets waiting to get into a hospital.  

God damnit, Hugo.

[Brew 3049]

13 minutes ago, achooloco said:

Admittedly this isn’t an easy question to answer but does it seem like the people in those affected counties are now more disposed to following SiP/SaH orders? Sucks for the sick kids and people/kids stuck at home but wondering if it is converting some of the people that might not have been taking it that seriously.

So far the answer is no. We stayed fairly low in sick numbers and also fairly low in deaths, so most in our community have not taken it seriously. People look at you funny if you wear masks, everyone is still getting together, practices/games restarted last month, youth groups are taking trips, etc. We’ve had to send a number of employees home that are still out living their lives on the weekends and we don’t want them in the office. However, numbers have jumped the last week or two especially in the local high school population. It will take the death numbers going up locally for people to start paying attention, but by then it will probably be too late because the idiots aren’t taking precautions. Most don’t know our ICU is pretty well at capacity already although there is overflow capacity in the larger neighboring cities which will help cover it.

It’s part of the reason we have stayed out of town since early May. Kids were all getting back together and our oldest is in a high risk group because of breathing issues she has had all her life. Where we’re at has just now had it’s 11th case and has stayed pretty well locked down.

Edited June 30, 2020 by Brew

[VolenteHawk 495]

20 hours ago, BradInATX said:

It's strange how the masks follow Johnny Sack around despite basically every single human in Texas having had a completely different experience. 

When you get outside of the city, mask usage drops significantly. Marble Falls Wal Mart = 10% mask usage. Me and one other young lady who didn't look ugly enough to be a local. Kyle HEB was somewhere around 50% last time I was there. I've been all around Central Texas (golf is one of the few things I've been doing outside of the house) and once you get outside of Austin mask usage is 50% or less just about everywhere. Went camping at Spicewood a month or so ago, same thing at two gas stations.

That may change now that we're spiking and the governor is urging it. But the phenomenon that Sack has been posting about for months now where the entire world seems to mask up when he enters is quite odd and a little bit concerning from a mental health perspective.

It was that way, but I’m not seeing it anymore. I stopped at the Stripes in Kyle on our way to baseball for breakfast tacos two weeks ago then last Sunday. Same store, roughly the same number of people inside. First time, zero masks on customers and a couple employees without one. Sunday, exactly one person in the store not in a mask.

[BradInATX 9208]

It was that way, but I’m not seeing it anymore. I stopped at the Stripes in Kyle on our way to baseball for breakfast tacos two weeks ago then last Sunday. Same store, roughly the same number of people inside. First time, zero masks on customers and a couple employees without one. Sunday, exactly one person in the store not in a mask.

Definitely. Seeing the same in south Austin. But the phenomenon where the sheer gravitas of Johnny Sack makes everyone stop and mask up when he enters a room has been going on for months.

[VolenteHawk 495]

I wish I had that kind of pull, but I’ve only lived here for 20 years.

[Js1 85337]

31 minutes ago, achooloco said:

Admittedly this isn’t an easy question to answer but does it seem like the people in those affected counties are now more disposed to following SiP/SaH orders? Sucks for the sick kids and people/kids stuck at home but wondering if it is converting some of the people that might not have been taking it that seriously.

My sister is one of those. Prior to this story she had fallen into the fb mommy group Home schooler/anti vaccine hole and been spreading various “hoax” memes, just the flu, etc (some admittedly worth a good chuckle). While we still had civil discussions about taking precautions, social distancing, etc, she was not taking it serious and did minimal effort for any of those things.  Overall she as a nurse knew it existed but was more “roll her eyes” and “whatever, if we get it we get it, no one dies, we’ll be fine, I just want to enjoy green belt!!!“

Her compadre is mid-40s, outdoor worker, more fit than an avg male in his age group, and showed symptoms 13 days ago. First day of symptoms he actually spent with them but has since been in quarantine (luckily, as of today no one has shown any symptoms in her family). By day 9, she reported to us that his main complaint was that he was bored only watching tv and resting. And she said “for some reason” his doc advised him to not do any strenuous physical activity. That got a comment but whatever, it ended with me saying I really hope that in ten years that will be his CoVID story that he was just bored. 

Very next night she texts at midnight EST freaking out that her compadre’s wife just called and that they were in route to the hospital. He went from fine to not breathing/unconscious in minutes. The wife had actually been leaving to get the daughter from work, said bye to the husband but only checked on him bc he didn’t respond and found him gasping for air before shortly not breathing at all. Had she left a couple minutes earlier they’d have come home to a dead guy.

Obviously now my sister is in overdrive. Where can I buy the good masks, why can’t we get the great ones, only one person goes out, etc. From the anecdotal stories on seeing mask usage in the wild on this board, I’m assuming that she isn’t the only person in Texas in that situation.

And for those that get sick or know infected people, don’t forget days 10-14/15 are a bitch, always be extra vigilant then. Stay safe y’all

My friend works in the medical field in Houston. In April/May he wasn’t taking it seriously because it wasn’t at an overwhelming level - he just didn’t think it was as bad as advertised. Last night he was almost in tears on the phone because now he’s taking it seriously, exhausted/stressed/scared 

[Js1 85337]

31 minutes ago, achooloco said:

Admittedly this isn’t an easy question to answer but does it seem like the people in those affected counties are now more disposed to following SiP/SaH orders? Sucks for the sick kids and people/kids stuck at home but wondering if it is converting some of the people that might not have been taking it that seriously.

My sister is one of those. Prior to this story she had fallen into the fb mommy group Home schooler/anti vaccine hole and been spreading various “hoax” memes, just the flu, etc (some admittedly worth a good chuckle). While we still had civil discussions about taking precautions, social distancing, etc, she was not taking it serious and did minimal effort for any of those things.  Overall she as a nurse knew it existed but was more “roll her eyes” and “whatever, if we get it we get it, no one dies, we’ll be fine, I just want to enjoy green belt!!!“

Her compadre is mid-40s, outdoor worker, more fit than an avg male in his age group, and showed symptoms 13 days ago. First day of symptoms he actually spent with them but has since been in quarantine (luckily, as of today no one has shown any symptoms in her family). By day 9, she reported to us that his main complaint was that he was bored only watching tv and resting. And she said “for some reason” his doc advised him to not do any strenuous physical activity. That got a comment but whatever, it ended with me saying I really hope that in ten years that will be his CoVID story that he was just bored. 

Very next night she texts at midnight EST freaking out that her compadre’s wife just called and that they were in route to the hospital. He went from fine to not breathing/unconscious in minutes. The wife had actually been leaving to get the daughter from work, said bye to the husband but only checked on him bc he didn’t respond and found him gasping for air before shortly not breathing at all. Had she left a couple minutes earlier they’d have come home to a dead guy.

Obviously now my sister is in overdrive. Where can I buy the good masks, why can’t we get the great ones, only one person goes out, etc. From the anecdotal stories on seeing mask usage in the wild on this board, I’m assuming that she isn’t the only person in Texas in that situation.

And for those that get sick or know infected people, don’t forget days 10-14/15 are a bitch, always be extra vigilant then. Stay safe y’all

My friend works in the medical field in Houston. In April/May he wasn’t taking it seriously because it wasn’t at an overwhelming level - he just didn’t think it was as bad as advertised. Last night he was almost in tears on the phone because now he’s taking it seriously, exhausted/stressed/scared 

[achooloco 1072]

9 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The folks downplaying this shit don’t understand there are about to be folks literally dying in the streets waiting to get into a hospital.  

This isn’t helpful. We won’t become Guayaquil. If by some small chance we do, even though we won’t, then a helluva lotta shit went wrong and CoVID is the least of our worries. 

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

3 minutes ago, achooloco said:

This isn’t helpful.

[Js1 85337]

We don’t have folks dying in the streets here. Check the trees instead 

[Huckleberry 32861]

10 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The folks downplaying this shit don’t understand there are about to be folks literally dying in the streets waiting to get into a hospital.  

 

9 hours ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

We know. So why don’t you update daily death counts now that they’re no longer 2k/day?

It's like a debate between Helen Lovejoy and Homer Simpson.

[Viper 12109]

This may be an explanation for why this "wave" is spreading so much more than earlier in the year. A mutation has made it spread easier, though doesn't make people sicker.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/06/29/coronavirus-mutation-science

Quote

When the first coronavirus cases in Chicago appeared in January, they bore the same genetic signatures as a germ that emerged in China weeks before.

But as Egon Ozer, an infectious-disease specialist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, examined the genetic structure of virus samples from local patients, he noticed something different.

A change in the virus was appearing again and again. This mutation, associated with outbreaks in Europe and New York, eventually took over the city. By May, it was found in 95 percent of all the genomes Ozer sequenced.

At a glance, the mutation seemed trivial. About 1,300 amino acids serve as building blocks for a protein on the surface of the virus. In the mutant virus, the genetic instructions for just one of those amino acids — number 614 — switched in the new variant from a “D” (shorthand for aspartic acid) to a “G” (short for glycine).

But the location was significant, because the switch occurred in the part of the genome that codes for the all-important “spike protein” — the protruding structure that gives the coronavirus its crownlike profile and allows it to enter human cells the way a burglar picks a lock.

And its ubiquity is undeniable. Of the approximately 50,000 genomes of the new virus that researchers worldwide have uploaded to a shared database, about 70 percent carry the mutation, officially designated D614G but known more familiarly to scientists as “G.”

“G” hasn’t just dominated the outbreak in Chicago — it has taken over the world. Now scientists are racing to figure out what it means.

At least four laboratory experiments suggest that the mutation makes the virus more infectious, although none of that work has been peer-reviewed. Another unpublished study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory asserts that patients with the G variant actually have more virus in their bodies, making them more likely to spread it to others.

The mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but a growing number of scientists worry that it has made the virus more contagious.

“The epidemiological study and our data together really explain why the [G variant’s] spread in Europe and the U.S. was really fast,” said Hyeryun Choe, a virologist at Scripps Research and lead author of an unpublished study on the G variant’s enhanced infectiousness in laboratory cell cultures. “This is not just accidental.”

But there may be other explanations for the G variant’s dominance: biases in where genetic data are being collected, quirks of timing that gave the mutated virus an early foothold in susceptible populations.

“The bottom line is, we haven’t seen anything definitive yet,” said Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

The scramble to unravel this mutation mystery embodies the challenges of science during the coronavirus pandemic. With millions of people infected and thousands dying every day around the world, researchers must strike a high-stakes balance between getting information out quickly and making sure that it’s right.

A better lock pick

SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19, can be thought of as an extremely destructive burglar. Unable to live or reproduce on its own, it breaks into human cells and co-opts their biological machinery to make thousands of copies of itself. That leaves a trail of damaged tissue and triggers an immune system response that for some people can be disastrous.

This replication process is messy. Even though it has a “proofreading” mechanism for copying its genome, the coronavirus frequently makes mistakes, or mutations. The vast majority of mutations have no effect on the behavior of the virus.

But since the virus’s genome was first sequenced in January, scientists have been on the lookout for changes that are meaningful. And few genetic mutations could be more significant than ones that affect the spike protein — the virus’s most powerful tool.

This protein attaches to a receptor on respiratory cells called ACE2, which opens the cell and lets the virus slip inside. The more effective the spike protein, the more easily the virus can break into the bodies of its hosts. Even when the original variant of the virus emerged in Wuhan, China, it was obvious that the spike protein on SARS-CoV-2 was already quite effective.

But it could have been even better, said Choe, who has studied spike proteins and the way they bind to the ACE2 receptor since the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in 2003.

The spike protein for SARS-CoV-2 has two parts that don’t always hold together well. In the version of the virus that arose in China, Choe said, the outer part — which the virus needs to attach to a human receptor — frequently broke off. Equipped with this faulty lock pick, the virus had a harder time invading host cells.

“I think this mutation happened to compensate,” Choe said.

Studying both versions of the gene using a proxy virus in a petri dish of human cells, Choe and her colleagues found that viruses with the G variant had more spike proteins, and the outer parts of those proteins were less likely to break off. This made the virus approximately 10 times more infectious in the lab experiment.

The mutation does not seem to lead to worse outcomes in patients. Nor did it alter the virus’s response to antibodies from patients who had the D variant, Choe said, suggesting that vaccines being developed based on the original version of the virus will be effective against the new strain.

Choe has uploaded a manuscript describing this study to the website bioRxiv, where scientists can post “preprint” research that has not yet been peer reviewed. She has also submitted the paper to an academic journal, which has not yet published it.

The distinctive infectiousness of the G strain is so strong that scientists have been drawn to the mutation even when they weren’t looking for it.

Neville Sanjana, a geneticist at the New York Genome Center and New York University, was trying to figure out which genes enable SARS-CoV-2 to infiltrate human cells. But in experiments based on a gene sequence taken from an early case of the virus in Wuhan, he struggled to get that form of the virus to infect cells. Then the team switched to a model virus based on the G variant.

“We were shocked,” Sanjana said. “Voilà! It was just this huge increase in viral transduction.” They repeated the experiment in many types of cells, and every time the variant was many times more infectious.

Their findings, published as a preprint on bioRxiv, generally matched what Choe and other laboratory scientists were seeing.

But the New York team offers a different explanation as to why the variant is so infectious. Whereas Choe’s study proposes that the mutation made the spike protein more stable, Sanjana said experiments in the past two weeks, not yet made public, suggest that the improvement is actually in the infection process. He hypothesized that the G variant is more efficient at beginning the process of invading the human cell and taking over its reproductive machinery.

Luban, who has also been experimenting with the D614G mutation, has been drawn to a third possibility: His experiments suggest that the mutation allows the spike protein to change shape as it attaches to the ACE2 receptor, improving its ability to fuse to the host cell.

Different approaches to making their model virus might explain these discrepancies, Luban said. “But it’s quite clear that something is going on.”

Unanswered questions

Although these experiments are compelling, they’re not conclusive, said Kristian Andersen, a Scripps virologist not involved in any of the studies. The scientists need to figure out why they’ve identified different mechanisms for the same effect. All the studies still have to pass peer review, and they have to be reproduced using the real version of the virus.

Even then, Andersen said, it will be too soon to say that the G variant transmits faster among people.

Cell culture experiments have been wrong before, noted Anderson Brito, a computational biologist at Yale University. Early experiments with hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, hinted that it was effective at fighting the coronavirus in a petri dish. The drug was touted by President Trump, and the Food and Drug Administration authorized it for emergency use in hospitalized covid-19 patients. But that authorization was withdrawn this month after evidence showed that the drug was “unlikely to be effective” against the virus and posed potential safety risks.

So far, the biggest study of transmission has come from Bette Korber, a computational biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who helped build one of the world’s biggest viral genome databases for tracking HIV. In late April, she and colleagues at Duke University and the University of Sheffield in Britain released a draft of their work arguing that the mutation boosts transmission of the virus.

Analyzing sequences from more than two dozen regions across the world, they found that most places where the original virus was dominant before March were eventually taken over by the mutated version. This switch was especially apparent in the United States: Ninety-six percent of early sequences here belonged to the D variant, but by the end of March, almost 70 percent of sequences carried the G amino acid instead.

The British researchers also found evidence that people with the G variant had more viral particles in their bodies. Although this higher viral load didn’t seem to make people sicker, it might explain the G variant’s rapid spread, the scientists wrote. People with more virus to shed are more likely to infect others.

The Los Alamos draft drew intense scrutiny when it was released in the spring, and many researchers remain skeptical of its conclusions.

“There are so many biases in the data set here that you can’t control for and you might not know exist,” Andersen said. In a time when as many as 90 percent of U.S. infections are still undetected and countries with limited public health infrastructure are struggling to keep up with surging cases, a shortage of data means “we can’t answer all the questions we want to answer.”

Pardis Sabeti, a computational biologist at Harvard University and the Broad Institute, noted that the vast majority of sequenced genomes come from Europe, where the G variant first emerged, and the United States, where infections thought to have been introduced by travelers from Europe spread undetected for weeks before the country shut down. This could at least partly explain why it appears so dominant.

The mutation’s success might also be a “founder effect,” she said. Arriving in a place like Northern Italy — where the vast majority of sequenced infections are caused by the G variant — it found easy purchase in an older and largely unprepared population, which then unwittingly spread it far and wide.

Scientists may be able to rule out these alternative explanations with more rigorous statistical analyses or a controlled experiment in an animal population. And as studies on the D614G mutation accumulate, researchers are starting to be convinced of its significance.

“I think that slowly we’re beginning to come to a consensus,” said Judd Hultquist, a virologist at Northwestern University.

Solving the mystery of the D614G mutation won’t make much of a difference in the short term, Andersen said. “We were unable to deal with D,” he said. “If G transmits even better, we’re going to be unable to deal with that one.”

But it’s still essential to understand how the genome influences the behavior of the virus, scientists say. Identifying emerging mutations allows researchers to track their spread. Knowing what genes affect how the virus transmits enables public health officials to tailor their efforts to contain it. Once therapeutics and vaccines are distributed on a large scale, having a baseline understanding of the genome will help pinpoint when drug resistance starts to evolve.

“Understanding how transmissions are happening won’t be a magic bullet, but it will help us respond better,” Sabeti said. “This is a race against time.”

 

[Anastasis 23469]

9 minutes ago, Viper said:

This may be an explanation for why this "wave" is spreading so much more than earlier in the year. A mutation has made it spread easier, though doesn't make people sicker.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/06/29/coronavirus-mutation-science

 

Already out of rep.  Thanks for posting the full text.

 

Of course this shitty virus mutates, and instead of getting weaker, increases its ability to spread. 

[Don Johnson 4753]

45 minutes ago, Viper said:

This may be an explanation for why this "wave" is spreading so much more than earlier in the year. A mutation has made it spread easier, though doesn't make people sicker.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/06/29/coronavirus-mutation-science

 

I'm a dumbass, but based on what I read on here months ago, but in simplistic terms, isn't this what viruses often do?  Mutate to infect more hosts but become less deadly to not kill the host?

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

13 minutes ago, Don Johnson said:

I'm a dumbass, but based on what I read on here months ago, but in simplistic terms, isn't this what viruses often do?  Mutate to infect more hosts but become less deadly to not kill the host?

So yer saying it's passive aggressive ?

[Guest Lobo]

No, he's saying the virus is female.  

[Parliament 14260]

This may be an explanation for why this "wave" is spreading so much more than earlier in the year. A mutation has made it spread easier, though doesn't make people sicker.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/06/29/coronavirus-mutation-science

When the first coronavirus cases in Chicago appeared in January, they bore the same genetic signatures as a germ that emerged in China weeks before.
But as Egon Ozer, an infectious-disease specialist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, examined the genetic structure of virus samples from local patients, he noticed something different.
A change in the virus was appearing again and again. This mutation, associated with outbreaks in Europe and New York, eventually took over the city. By May, it was found in 95 percent of all the genomes Ozer sequenced.
At a glance, the mutation seemed trivial. About 1,300 amino acids serve as building blocks for a protein on the surface of the virus. In the mutant virus, the genetic instructions for just one of those amino acids — number 614 — switched in the new variant from a “D” (shorthand for aspartic acid) to a “G” (short for glycine).
But the location was significant, because the switch occurred in the part of the genome that codes for the all-important “spike protein” — the protruding structure that gives the coronavirus its crownlike profile and allows it to enter human cells the way a burglar picks a lock.
And its ubiquity is undeniable. Of the approximately 50,000 genomes of the new virus that researchers worldwide have uploaded to a shared database, about 70 percent carry the mutation, officially designated D614G but known more familiarly to scientists as “G.”
“G” hasn’t just dominated the outbreak in Chicago — it has taken over the world. Now scientists are racing to figure out what it means.
At least four laboratory experiments suggest that the mutation makes the virus more infectious, although none of that work has been peer-reviewed. Another unpublished study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory asserts that patients with the G variant actually have more virus in their bodies, making them more likely to spread it to others.
The mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but a growing number of scientists worry that it has made the virus more contagious.
“The epidemiological study and our data together really explain why the [G variant’s] spread in Europe and the U.S. was really fast,” said Hyeryun Choe, a virologist at Scripps Research and lead author of an unpublished study on the G variant’s enhanced infectiousness in laboratory cell cultures. “This is not just accidental.”
But there may be other explanations for the G variant’s dominance: biases in where genetic data are being collected, quirks of timing that gave the mutated virus an early foothold in susceptible populations.
“The bottom line is, we haven’t seen anything definitive yet,” said Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
The scramble to unravel this mutation mystery embodies the challenges of science during the coronavirus pandemic. With millions of people infected and thousands dying every day around the world, researchers must strike a high-stakes balance between getting information out quickly and making sure that it’s right.
A better lock pick
SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19, can be thought of as an extremely destructive burglar. Unable to live or reproduce on its own, it breaks into human cells and co-opts their biological machinery to make thousands of copies of itself. That leaves a trail of damaged tissue and triggers an immune system response that for some people can be disastrous.
This replication process is messy. Even though it has a “proofreading” mechanism for copying its genome, the coronavirus frequently makes mistakes, or mutations. The vast majority of mutations have no effect on the behavior of the virus.
But since the virus’s genome was first sequenced in January, scientists have been on the lookout for changes that are meaningful. And few genetic mutations could be more significant than ones that affect the spike protein — the virus’s most powerful tool.
This protein attaches to a receptor on respiratory cells called ACE2, which opens the cell and lets the virus slip inside. The more effective the spike protein, the more easily the virus can break into the bodies of its hosts. Even when the original variant of the virus emerged in Wuhan, China, it was obvious that the spike protein on SARS-CoV-2 was already quite effective.
But it could have been even better, said Choe, who has studied spike proteins and the way they bind to the ACE2 receptor since the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in 2003.
The spike protein for SARS-CoV-2 has two parts that don’t always hold together well. In the version of the virus that arose in China, Choe said, the outer part — which the virus needs to attach to a human receptor — frequently broke off. Equipped with this faulty lock pick, the virus had a harder time invading host cells.
“I think this mutation happened to compensate,” Choe said.
Studying both versions of the gene using a proxy virus in a petri dish of human cells, Choe and her colleagues found that viruses with the G variant had more spike proteins, and the outer parts of those proteins were less likely to break off. This made the virus approximately 10 times more infectious in the lab experiment.
The mutation does not seem to lead to worse outcomes in patients. Nor did it alter the virus’s response to antibodies from patients who had the D variant, Choe said, suggesting that vaccines being developed based on the original version of the virus will be effective against the new strain.
Choe has uploaded a manuscript describing this study to the website bioRxiv, where scientists can post “preprint” research that has not yet been peer reviewed. She has also submitted the paper to an academic journal, which has not yet published it.
The distinctive infectiousness of the G strain is so strong that scientists have been drawn to the mutation even when they weren’t looking for it.
Neville Sanjana, a geneticist at the New York Genome Center and New York University, was trying to figure out which genes enable SARS-CoV-2 to infiltrate human cells. But in experiments based on a gene sequence taken from an early case of the virus in Wuhan, he struggled to get that form of the virus to infect cells. Then the team switched to a model virus based on the G variant.
“We were shocked,” Sanjana said. “Voilà! It was just this huge increase in viral transduction.” They repeated the experiment in many types of cells, and every time the variant was many times more infectious.
Their findings, published as a preprint on bioRxiv, generally matched what Choe and other laboratory scientists were seeing.
But the New York team offers a different explanation as to why the variant is so infectious. Whereas Choe’s study proposes that the mutation made the spike protein more stable, Sanjana said experiments in the past two weeks, not yet made public, suggest that the improvement is actually in the infection process. He hypothesized that the G variant is more efficient at beginning the process of invading the human cell and taking over its reproductive machinery.
Luban, who has also been experimenting with the D614G mutation, has been drawn to a third possibility: His experiments suggest that the mutation allows the spike protein to change shape as it attaches to the ACE2 receptor, improving its ability to fuse to the host cell.
Different approaches to making their model virus might explain these discrepancies, Luban said. “But it’s quite clear that something is going on.”
Unanswered questions
Although these experiments are compelling, they’re not conclusive, said Kristian Andersen, a Scripps virologist not involved in any of the studies. The scientists need to figure out why they’ve identified different mechanisms for the same effect. All the studies still have to pass peer review, and they have to be reproduced using the real version of the virus.
Even then, Andersen said, it will be too soon to say that the G variant transmits faster among people.
Cell culture experiments have been wrong before, noted Anderson Brito, a computational biologist at Yale University. Early experiments with hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, hinted that it was effective at fighting the coronavirus in a petri dish. The drug was touted by President Trump, and the Food and Drug Administration authorized it for emergency use in hospitalized covid-19 patients. But that authorization was withdrawn this month after evidence showed that the drug was “unlikely to be effective” against the virus and posed potential safety risks.
So far, the biggest study of transmission has come from Bette Korber, a computational biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who helped build one of the world’s biggest viral genome databases for tracking HIV. In late April, she and colleagues at Duke University and the University of Sheffield in Britain released a draft of their work arguing that the mutation boosts transmission of the virus.
Analyzing sequences from more than two dozen regions across the world, they found that most places where the original virus was dominant before March were eventually taken over by the mutated version. This switch was especially apparent in the United States: Ninety-six percent of early sequences here belonged to the D variant, but by the end of March, almost 70 percent of sequences carried the G amino acid instead.
The British researchers also found evidence that people with the G variant had more viral particles in their bodies. Although this higher viral load didn’t seem to make people sicker, it might explain the G variant’s rapid spread, the scientists wrote. People with more virus to shed are more likely to infect others.
The Los Alamos draft drew intense scrutiny when it was released in the spring, and many researchers remain skeptical of its conclusions.
“There are so many biases in the data set here that you can’t control for and you might not know exist,” Andersen said. In a time when as many as 90 percent of U.S. infections are still undetected and countries with limited public health infrastructure are struggling to keep up with surging cases, a shortage of data means “we can’t answer all the questions we want to answer.”
Pardis Sabeti, a computational biologist at Harvard University and the Broad Institute, noted that the vast majority of sequenced genomes come from Europe, where the G variant first emerged, and the United States, where infections thought to have been introduced by travelers from Europe spread undetected for weeks before the country shut down. This could at least partly explain why it appears so dominant.
The mutation’s success might also be a “founder effect,” she said. Arriving in a place like Northern Italy — where the vast majority of sequenced infections are caused by the G variant — it found easy purchase in an older and largely unprepared population, which then unwittingly spread it far and wide.
Scientists may be able to rule out these alternative explanations with more rigorous statistical analyses or a controlled experiment in an animal population. And as studies on the D614G mutation accumulate, researchers are starting to be convinced of its significance.
“I think that slowly we’re beginning to come to a consensus,” said Judd Hultquist, a virologist at Northwestern University.
Solving the mystery of the D614G mutation won’t make much of a difference in the short term, Andersen said. “We were unable to deal with D,” he said. “If G transmits even better, we’re going to be unable to deal with that one.”
But it’s still essential to understand how the genome influences the behavior of the virus, scientists say. Identifying emerging mutations allows researchers to track their spread. Knowing what genes affect how the virus transmits enables public health officials to tailor their efforts to contain it. Once therapeutics and vaccines are distributed on a large scale, having a baseline understanding of the genome will help pinpoint when drug resistance starts to evolve.
“Understanding how transmissions are happening won’t be a magic bullet, but it will help us respond better,” Sabeti said. “This is a race against time.”

 
So this proves it's a Chinese bioweapon. I knew it.

[Viper 12109]

14 minutes ago, Parliament said:

 
So this proves it's a Chinese bioweapon. I knew it.