totm april 2020 Coronavirus

[DDE]

Krasnoyarsk airport quarantine offices run out of quarantine order forms, causing a minor uprising.

https://www.lenta.ru/news/2020/03/20/shturm/
This stuff is going to keep happening and happening as we evacuate the thousands of Russians abroad - the regional admins are far less capable of enforcing quarantine. All things considered, routing everyone through Moscow may be the only option.

[Guest]

Well, here's another example of an outdated practice that needs to be revised. If their quarantine order forms were online, they wouldn't be able to run out of them.  The bureaucracy is one area that could benefit from a large scale digitalization program.

[RizzoTheRat]

On 3/14/2020 at 7:02 PM, lajoswinkler said:

Folks, Folding@home offers crunching data on behaviour of receptor proteins for a model coronavirus. Folding@home was meant to be part of BOINC (like SETI@home and many others), but that never happened due to incompatibility and it stayed a standalone piece of software.

For any information on how to help scientists model behaviour of these molecules, which will help greatly with fight on COVID-19, visit the site.

https://foldingathome.org/

I've created a team you can join, it's called Kerbal space program forum and its number is 238062.

Installed this the other day but only just occurred to me to look for a Kerbal team having not found a work one.

Currently chugging through my 4th WU, have joined the team but I'm guessing I wont show up on there until it uploads my next one.

It seems like a great cause to donate some computer time to if anyone fancies joining us and even give you some pretty graphics if you want

[DDE]

On 3/14/2020 at 9:02 PM, lajoswinkler said:

Folks, Folding@home offers crunching data on behaviour of receptor proteins for a model coronavirus. Folding@home was meant to be part of BOINC (like SETI@home and many others), but that never happened due to incompatibility and it stayed a standalone piece of software.

For any information on how to help scientists model behaviour of these molecules, which will help greatly with fight on COVID-19, visit the site.

https://foldingathome.org/

I've created a team you can join, it's called Kerbal space program forum and its number is 238062.

Russia's key telecom company just donated them 3.6 petaflops 24/7.

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4298307

Our other IT giants are busy developing Korea-style tracking systems.

And now we go to the Costco in Watford...

This queue is longer than my KSP loading time... but how are they not out of carts?

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

Well, here's another example of an outdated practice that needs to be revised. If their quarantine order forms were online, they wouldn't be able to run out of them.  The bureaucracy is one area that could benefit from a large scale digitalization program.

It's even dumber: our most beloved traffic cops have long since solved this problem. Even if it's a solo guy on a bike, he still has a small printer with him and can therefore bury you in INFINITE PAPERWORK.

Also, careful with that wish. As some HR agencies quip, after the quarantines a lot of companies are going to start asking serious questions about whether they need certain employees and whether they need them on-site.

Edited March 20, 2020 by DDE

[Hotel26]

I called my Mom a couple of weeks ago.  She turned 86 this month and is in good health.  Her long-time ambition has been to make 100 and receive that congratulatory letter from the Queen.

(I haven't had the heart to tell her that QE2 will likely not be with us in 2034.)

I wanted to know what she knew about 'coronavirus'.  She's on top of it.  She has her "social media".  Plays cards with them on Saturday nights, and they talk.  They continue to smoke cigars and drink whisky, but wearing latex gloves now.  She's "distanced" herself from the lawn bowls set...  The only thing she might not have known is that she can order her groceries from the supermarket and have them delivered.  There's a two-week order backlog now, but she says she has a couple of sides of venison in her back-yard deep freeze...  she's a Depression Era baby, so she knows she has to fend for herself.

She's canceled trips.  Washes her hands etc.  Avoids unnecessary trips to the mall.  She's been retired since '92 or so.  Easy for her to lock herself in and protect herself.  She doesn't have to work nor support anyone else.  I guess she feels just a little bit sorry for the rest of us: waiting to be told what to do.

                                                                                   

Meanwhile, my company canceled work in the office last Monday.  Really on-time call and progressive.  I was impressed and gratified.

My only problem is that the public school system here is still dithering.  My 14 year-old wants to continue due to the pressure of this crucial year -- and he knows HE won't get sick.  I've been to trying to persuade him that this year is a "black swan".  (I live in a state in which the Black Swan is the state emblem.  I think this is where the black swan was first discovered, of all places in the world, actually.  The river that divides the city into north and south is the Swan River.)

I want to take my son out of school and relieve the pressure of having to catch up or muddling through "home schooling" when we don't have time (nor expertise) to guide him.  "Take a Sabbatical.  Do something useful but interesting.  Feel no pressure."  Restart the year, next year.  Or does the Grist Mill really not want to skip a beat in the economy, around his graduation time in about ten more years, even if that pressures livelihood and elders: now...??

His math teacher told him, at the start of the week: "school should really be closed: NOW."  But his math teacher is only 24.  What does he know about how things work?

Edited March 20, 2020 by Hotel26

[RizzoTheRat]

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

I wanted to know what she knew about 'coronavirus'.  She's on top of it.  She has her "social media".  Plays cards with them on Saturday nights, and they talk.  They continue to smoke cigars and drink whisky, but wearing latex gloves now.  She's "distanced" herself from the lawn bowls set...  The only thing she might not have known is that she can order her groceries from the supermarket and have them delivered.  There's a two-week order backlog now, but she says she has a couple of sides of venison in her back-yard deep freeze...  she's a Depression Era baby, so she knows she has to fend for herself.

In the UK some supermarkets have said they'll prioritise deliveries for the over 70s, might be worth looking out for down there.  My mothers approach has been to book a delivery slot in a couple of weeks time with only a few things in her basket, and then add what else she needs nearer the time.

[XB-70A]

COVID-19 aftereffect: NO2 fluctuation and decrease over the PRC.

Data from Sentinel-5P and the ESA:

 

Some variations and decreases also appear with the Republic of Korea.

[tater]

 

[tater]

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/coronavirus_worries.png

 

[tater]

https://www.krqe.com/health/coronavirus-new-mexico/navajo-nation-reports-14-cases-of-coronavirus-president-nez-urges-public-to-stay-home/

14 cases in the Navajo Nation (Mostly in NE AZ, a sliver of Utah, and NW NM).

Anyone doubting very broad community spread... the Res is in the middle of noplace.

[tater]

I'd add for people unfamiliar with the SW US. My wife has Navajo patients, and some still live in hogans with dirt floors.  3-4 hours drive from here, and set your calendar back some hundreds of years.

 

On a lighter note:

Spoiler

 

 

[TheSaint]

3 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

I called my Mom a couple of weeks ago.  She turned 86 this month and is in good health.  Her long-time ambition has been to make 100 and receive that congratulatory letter from the Queen.

(I haven't had the heart to tell her that QE2 will likely not be with us in 2034.)

I wanted to know what she knew about 'coronavirus'.  She's on top of it.  She has her "social media".  Plays cards with them on Saturday nights, and they talk.  They continue to smoke cigars and drink whisky, but wearing latex gloves now.  She's "distanced" herself from the lawn bowls set...  The only thing she might not have known is that she can order her groceries from the supermarket and have them delivered.  There's a two-week order backlog now, but she says she has a couple of sides of venison in her back-yard deep freeze...  she's a Depression Era baby, so she knows she has to fend for herself.

She's canceled trips.  Washes her hands etc.  Avoids unnecessary trips to the mall.  She's been retired since '92 or so.  Easy for her to lock herself in and protect herself.  She doesn't have to work nor support anyone else.  I guess she feels just a little bit sorry for the rest of us: waiting to be told what to do.

At the other end of the scale, we have my family. My mom is 87. She moved to where my brother and sister-in-law live to be closer to them so they could take care of her. Then she got into a fight with them and decided that she would never speak to them again. (She does this quite frequently with us. The good news is that "never again" will only last a couple of years or so. The bad news is that it will last a couple of years or so.) So now she's living alone in her apartment, she doesn't know anyone else in the area. She hates any technology newer than the push-button phone. She's driving around on her own, going to the store every other day because she doesn't want to stock up on anything. Or cook, for that matter. I'm pretty shocked she wasn't Patient Zero for COVID in California. (Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, with our luck, she's probably asymptomatic.) And my brother and sister-in-law aren't much better off. They're the comorbidity poster children. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease. If they catch this thing they're doomed.

12 minutes ago, tater said:

https://www.krqe.com/health/coronavirus-new-mexico/navajo-nation-reports-14-cases-of-coronavirus-president-nez-urges-public-to-stay-home/

14 cases in the Navajo Nation (Mostly in NE AZ, a sliver of Utah, and NW NM).

Anyone doubting very broad community spread... the Res is in the middle of noplace.

Well, yes and no. The rehab hospital where my wife works is the largest rehab hospital in Northern Arizona. She sees patients from the res every week. The community college where I work is the closest community college to the res, and one of the reasons we have residence halls is because we get tons of students from the res who live on campus to take courses. (And we just sent them all home two weeks ago today for Spring Break.) Their high school plays our high school in basketball and football. So, yeah, it's in the middle of nowhere. But the middle of nowhere has no services at all, so they end up driving all over Hell and half of Georgia to get things they need. So, no, not really shocked that it spread there. 

[lajoswinkler]

For all of you who are taking care of the people in higher risk, remember that the stuff you bring them is more likely to be contaminated every day. Buy only stuff that is packaged, and wash it in soapy bleach solution, then rinse, dry and put in clean bags before you give them the stuff. Remember the outer layer of the bag is also likely to be contaminated. Make a plan, think ahead. Don't enter their apartments unless you absolutely have to, and then make sure to have gloves on, gloves that did not touch outside world.

This is very serious. Please think ahead of how you'll organize this.

[tater]

2 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Well, yes and no. The rehab hospital where my wife works is the largest rehab hospital in Northern Arizona. She sees patients from the res every week. The community college where I work is the closest community college to the res, and one of the reasons we have residence halls is because we get tons of students from the res who live on campus to take courses. (And we just sent them all home two weeks ago today for Spring Break.) Their high school plays our high school in basketball and football. So, yeah, it's in the middle of nowhere. But the middle of nowhere has no services at all, so they end up driving all over Hell and half of Georgia to get things they need. So, no, not really shocked that it spread there. 

True, the fact that my wife has patients from there says as much. Still, they are not routinely in the sorts of crowds of people for here in ABQ, they come into town for some reason, say a Dr appt, and fill the PU truck at Costco, other shopping, then head back. So they have contact, but it's more limited than day in day out in ABQ. I wonder what the math is regarding spread, you need to have a chance to interact with someone shedding virus. So someone had to have it in ABQ (or a Flagstaff, etc), and then had to spread it to someone on the Res. If the cases are not clustered on the Res, then possibly from different contacts outside the Res. The rule of thumb I have seen is 1% penetration for community spread.

Interesting, the 3 States with sustained community spread are WA, CA, NY. They add up to almost exactly the pop of Italy. If 1% was required for that, and they have had community spread since the end of Feb, then there should be over 19 million infected in those States alone (assuming doubling every 4 days). Wonder what the numbers really are...

 

 

[tater]

Basically, look for ways within the body to block proteins the virus needs. Normally this would result in designing a drug to do this, then after years of testing, you have a treatment if it is safe. This group is instead looking for extant drugs that already do what is needed (not necessarily related to their actual purpose, at all). The FDA has 20k+ drugs tested and safe, so they look for candidates, then test on COVID-19 patients (the drugs are already safe to use, after all).

[DDE]

Well, let me turn this thread back onto a very sour note...

The sour note, of course, being that the US probably really does need them more than Italy at this point.

Edited March 20, 2020 by DDE

[StrandedonEarth]

Hand washing done right...

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Basically, look for ways within the body to block proteins the virus needs. Normally this would result in designing a drug to do this, then after years of testing, you have a treatment if it is safe. This group is instead looking for extant drugs that already do what is needed (not necessarily related to their actual purpose, at all). The FDA has 20k+ drugs tested and safe, so they look for candidates, then test on COVID-19 patients (the drugs are already safe to use, after all).

This isn't exactly news:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/09/covid-19-biologic-therapies-reviewed
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/06/covid-19-small-molecule-therapies-reviewed

Note, they're not expecting to find a cure. Antivirals can help treatment and shorten the disease, but they're not going to prevent it or stop it from spreading. New drugs are also being designed for COVID-19, but that'll take a lot of time, probably too much. Notably, one of the most promising antivirals being tested was actually developed for Ebola, but shelved after the epidemic was over before it was ready (it didn't work particularly well for it, either, but now it has a second chance). 

Also note, this isn't exactly an uncommon thing to do, however it's more often based on hints from clinical data. If a known drug seems to help with something it wasn't designed for, sooner or later someone will run a trail. Much cheaper than trying to make an entirely new drug. Now they're more or less throwing known antivirals at the disease and seeing what sticks.

[tater]

11 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

This isn't exactly news:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/09/covid-19-biologic-therapies-reviewed
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/06/covid-19-small-molecule-therapies-reviewed

Note, they're not expecting to find a cure. Antivirals can help treatment and shorten the disease, but they're not going to prevent it or stop it from spreading. New drugs are also being designed for COVID-19, but that'll take a lot of time, probably too much. Notably, one of the most promising antivirals being tested was actually developed for Ebola, but shelved after the epidemic was over before it was ready (it didn't work particularly well for it, either, but now it has a second chance). 

Also note, this isn't exactly an uncommon thing to do, however it's more often based on hints from clinical data. If a known drug seems to help with something it wasn't designed for, sooner or later someone will run a trail. Much cheaper than trying to make an entirely new drug. Now they're more or less throwing known antivirals at the disease and seeing what sticks.

Unless it was posted up the thread, it's "news" to this thread. It's not uncommon to figure out new uses for old drugs. Many have been repurposed, though in some cases by chance.

Throwing known antivirals at it to see if they work is not what these guys are doing, they are looking at all drugs based on possible interactions with their target proteins, even if they were never considered antivirals. Dunno if this is the usual drill already, and if every new virus has the databases searched for compounds that might interact the way they like. I had not seen it, figured it might be interesting.

I never said it was trying to cure it, but any treatment modality that can mitigate the serious cases would be very important going forward.

It's like tamiflu. You need to get the script within a couple days of first symptoms, and all it does is reduce the course of disease by a couple days. If they could reduce the hospitalization or ICU time for a couple days, that frees up beds for the next patients however many % faster. Not a huge impact, but an impact.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

  

17 minutes ago, tater said:

It's not uncommon to figure out new uses for old drug

The XIX century anti-cough mixture from Bayer AG....

 

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, tater said:

I never said it was trying to cure it, but any treatment modality that can mitigate the serious cases would be very important going forward.

No, but many others tend to expect a "magic pill" that will fix the problem entirely. Of course, there's eventually going to be something like this: a vaccine. Of course, given the reactions some have to these, I hope it'll be administered at gunpoint when it does come. Anything else will help smooth things out, which, as per my earlier comment about hospital occupancy being critical, would be a significant benefit towards survival rates, but it will not cause an epidemic nor the quarantine to end early. 

Screening non-antivirals for activity is highly unlikely to be of much use, however there are some drugs where such activity was noted, but still seen as secondary. Example:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/19/coronavirus-some-clinical-trial-data
Viruses are weird things, and not many things can touch them. Antivirals are still the best bet, and Remdisivir appears to work quite well (though proper trail data is still pending).

[tater]

There's no magic pill to fix the economy, sadly. I'm not convinced these shutdowns are actually going to move the needle.

[cubinator]

47 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

administered at gunpoint

Now I'm imagining sharpshooter doctors sniping random people on the street with vaccine darts.

Edited March 20, 2020 by cubinator

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, tater said:

There's no magic pill to fix the economy, sadly. I'm not convinced these shutdowns are actually going to move the needle.

They are. Just look at Italy, which had been left in shambles, with overwhelmed healthcare and a massive, and growing, number of deaths. That's what doing nothing results in. Those lockdowns won't help the overall economy, but they're better than the alternative. Until the vaccine arrives, all that can be done is slow things down, hopefully below what the healthcare can handle. Of course, if the US bungles things particularly badly, we might be looking at a moment that, in the future, will be spoken of as the moment when it slipped from "superpower" to "major power". Not that this epidemic isn't going into history books, anyway. Some are saying that it's already well on the way to become a second Italy, with old people being triaged out of treatment and all that, but with the election is coming people are saying a lot of things in general. Hopefully it won't be quite as bad, but there's no coming out of this thing unchanged. That's just what historic epochs tend to do.

21 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Now I'm imagining sharpshooter doctors sniping random people on the street with vaccine darts.

May be worth it, once we have that thing, to fill up a few tranq rifles with vaccine and stake out an anti-vaxxer convention.  

[tater]

Note that Paul Offit said he thought that fecal oral transmission is a likely mode since flu-like transmission is really impossible to stop (according to him). That was in a zdoggmd vid up thread.