Coronavirus Thread 3


Status
Not open for further replies.

How mRNA went from a scientific backwater to a pandemic crusher​



n 1995, Katalin Karikó was at her lowest ebb. A biochemist at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Karikó had dedicated much of the previous two decades to finding a way to turn one of the most fundamental building blocks of life, mRNA, into a whole new category of therapeutics.

More often than not, Karikó found herself hitting dead ends. Numerous grant applications were rejected, and an attempt to raise funding from venture capitalists in New York to form a spin-off company had proved to be a fruitless endeavour. ”They initially promised to give us money, but then they never returned my phone calls,” she says.

By the mid 1990s, Karikó’s bosses at UPenn had run out of patience. Frustrated with the lack of funding she was generating for her research, they offered the scientist a bleak choice: leave or be demoted. It was a demeaning prospect for someone who had once been on the path to a full professorship. For Karikó’s dreams of using mRNA to create new vaccines and drugs for many chronic illnesses, it seemed to be the end of the road.

Thirty four years earlier, the discovery of mRNA had been announced amidst a clamour of scientific excitement in the summer of 1961. For more than a decade, researchers in the US and Europe had been attempting to unravel exactly how DNA is involved in the creation of proteins – the long strings of amino acids that are vital to the growth and functioning of all life forms.
 
135833269_10219676840654613_6320603834011155882_n.jpg
 
Click here to visit HBCUSportsStore

A year into the Covid crisis, scientists explain what we learned — and what we got wrong​



Here are their thoughts.

On the virus​

“It is not the winter respiratory virus it was billed to be,” said Dr. Paul Offit, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s far more far-reaching and damaging than that.”

Predictions in the spring about the virus’s course warned it could resemble the patterns of the 1918 influenza pandemic: a milder first wave, followed by a much deadlier second one in the fall.
The autumn of 2020 did ultimately bring with it a feared larger wave of coronavirus cases, but it wasn’t after a uniform trough through the summer as originally expected. Mid-July saw a peak at about 76,000 cases as the virus swept across Florida, Texas and Arizona.
By that time scientists already had a handle on what makes this virus so damaging, experts said, as learnings developed rapidly in the first few months.
“In early January of last year, we were told there wasn’t human-to-human transmission,” said Brown University’s Dr. Megan Ranney. “Once we realized it did spread [person-to-person], we thought it spread like flu... we thought we had to be worried about droplets and fomites.”
 
Covid’s South Dakota Rampage Created a Failed Experiment in Herd Immunity
:nono2:
:nono2:
:nono2:


https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/oth...iment-in-herd-immunity/ar-BB1dlMcp?li=BBnb7Kz

Covid is on the retreat in South Dakota, not long ago the virus’s epicenter in the U.S. There’s a grim reason for that progress, as Harold Frazier, leader of the state’s Cheyenne River Sioux reservation, knows too well.

As many as 2 in 5 residents of the state have been infected, turning it into an unwitting experiment in herd immunity as Governor Kristi Noem refused to mandate safety precautions. The numbers are that bad or worse on the reservation, and its residents’ painful experience shows the steep cost of building up antibodies through laissez-faire policies.

“We were in dire straits,” said Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux, who set up highway checkpoints and instituted lockdowns to protect a community whose health was already challenged by poverty, obesity and diabetes. Ultimately, he couldn’t keep the roiling pandemic at bay. “We knew it was just a matter of time before that virus got here.”
 
The Mystery Of India's Plummeting COVID-19 Cases
:popcorn:
:popcorn:
:popcorn:


View: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/02/01/962821038/the-mystery-of-indias-plummeting-covid-19-cases


Last September, India was confirming nearly 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day. It was on track to overtake the United States to become the country with the highest reported COVID-19 caseload in the world. Hospitals were full. The Indian economy nosedived into an unprecedented recession.

But four months later, India's coronavirus numbers have plummeted. Late last month, on Jan. 26, the country's Health Ministry confirmed a record low of about 9,100 new daily cases — in a country of nearly 1.4 billion people. It was India's lowest daily tally in eight months. On Monday, India confirmed about 11,000 cases.

"It's not that India is testing less or things are going underreported," says Jishnu Das, a health economist at Georgetown University. "It's been rising, rising — and now suddenly, it's vanished! I mean, hospital ICU utilization has gone down. Every indicator says the numbers are down."

Scientists say it's a mystery. They're probing why India's coronavirus numbers have declined so dramatically — and so suddenly, in September and October, months before any vaccinations began.

They're trying to figure out what Indians may be doing right and how to mimic that in other countries that are still suffering.
 
I have a bad feeling that we're about to have forced vaccinations, especially for kids in public school.
we had that when I was growing up. Small pox, polio, measles and mumps and others. A lot of them were combined into a single shot or taken orally in a sugar cube.
 
I should have put this here:

Street committee doctors and scientists on coronavirus- what have you heard?​

This is what I have heard:
1. The vaccine will remap your DNA
2. The vaccine has a chip in it to allow the government to track you
 
Lawd people in the country are silly. The government can't even get people to consider wearing masks. You think they're going to make us take vaccines?
 
Click here to visit HBCUSportsStore
Lawd people in the country are silly. The government can't even get people to consider wearing masks. You think they're going to make us take vaccines?
As Herbert said, public schools mandated that children be vaccinated before entering schools and they have to show proof. It's the MMR vaccine.
And yes the government can force people to get the vaccine; especially if you want to travel and what about people wanting to come into the U.S.?
 
As Herbert said, public schools mandated that children be vaccinated before entering schools and they have to show proof. It's the MMR vaccine.
And yes the government can force people to get the vaccine; especially if you want to travel and what about people wanting to come into the U.S.?
I'm not saying that government CAN'T force vaccinations. I'm saying that they WON'T.
 

Pfizer exec 'confident' in ability to deliver 2 billion coronavirus vaccine doses this year​



An executive at Pfizer said he and the company are "confident" in its ability to deliver 2 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year in an interview with the Associated Press published Sunday.

We are confident in this commitment, but of course are constantly looking for ways to make and distribute more doses faster," he added.

McDermott, who has worked at Pfizer for 30 years, said in his interview that the company is working to increase the efficiency of vaccine development, through methods including adding more manufacturing lines, using contract manufacturers and doubling batch sizes.

"There is a dire need to vaccinate more people quickly," he said. "We are expanding our capacity to make more vaccine as quickly as possible."

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine became the first approved in the U.S. in December. But since then, more contagious COVID-19 variants, first discovered in the U.K. and South Africa have made their way to the U.S., sparking concern about the current vaccines' effectiveness against the strains.
 
White justice

DeSantis defends controversial vaccine deal with developer -- and threatens to pull vaccines if officials don't like it

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/17/politics/ron-desantis-vaccines/index.html

Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has threatened to move a pop-up vaccination clinic that his state has set up in an affluent community in Manatee County after he was confronted with allegations of political favoritism and preference for the wealthy at a news conference Wednesday.
Manatee County announced on Tuesday that Florida's Division of Emergency Management would host a "pop-up" vaccination spot at Lakewood Ranch this week for 3,000 Manatee County residents, according to a statement from the county.

The vaccines, however, would be limited to people living in only two zip codes -- 34202 and 34211.

Manatee County Commissioner Misty Servia, a Republican, criticized the selection of these two areas at a Board of County Commissioners work session on Tuesday.

"You're taking the Whitest demographic, the richest demographic in Manatee County and putting them ahead of everyone else," Servia said. "The optics are bad ... very bad -- I'm really disappointed," she added.
Commissioner Reggie Bellamy, a Democrat, also noted that he's been "fighting like hell to show people that the (vaccine) lottery is equal and we cannot compromise the system."
 
Its great having a president that cares about the virus, who is working on getting more vaccines to Americans.
:clap:
:clap:
:clap:


What a difference a REAL PRESIDENT makes.
:popcorn:
 
Why aren't we talking about what India appears to be doing right to combat spread of the virus. What did they do that the rest of the world hasn't or doesn't know how? Quick hint: It involves Bill Gates! :cool: 😂
 
Good news!

Republicans are least likely to want the coronavirus vaccine
:clap:
:clap:
:clap:


https://news.yahoo.com/republicans-least-likely-want-coronavirus-100012373.html

By the numbers: 41% of Republicans say they don't plan to get a vaccine if it's available to them. Only 33% say they do plan to get vaccinated.

70% of Democrats and a plurality of independents (47%) say they plan to get vaccinated.

White Americans are now less likely than Black and Latino Americans to say they plan to get the vaccine.

Between the lines: States' levels of vaccine hesitancy correlate strongly with their politics, according to CoVaxxy, a project by Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media.

Blue states have lower rates of vaccine refusal than red states, and battleground states are generally somewhere in the middle.

Wyoming, North Dakota and Mississippi have some of the highest rates of vaccine refusal, while Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut have some of the lowest.
 
I should have put this here:

Street committee doctors and scientists on coronavirus- what have you heard?​

This is what I have heard:
1. The vaccine will remap your DNA
2. The vaccine has a chip in it to allow the government to track you

If the government wanted to track you there are ways to do that without some chip.
 
Good news!

Republicans are least likely to want the coronavirus vaccine
:clap:
:clap:
:clap:


https://news.yahoo.com/republicans-least-likely-want-coronavirus-100012373.html

By the numbers: 41% of Republicans say they don't plan to get a vaccine if it's available to them. Only 33% say they do plan to get vaccinated.

70% of Democrats and a plurality of independents (47%) say they plan to get vaccinated.

White Americans are now less likely than Black and Latino Americans to say they plan to get the vaccine.

Between the lines: States' levels of vaccine hesitancy correlate strongly with their politics, according to CoVaxxy, a project by Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media.

Blue states have lower rates of vaccine refusal than red states, and battleground states are generally somewhere in the middle.

Wyoming, North Dakota and Mississippi have some of the highest rates of vaccine refusal, while Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut have some of the lowest.
How it good news that people do not want to take the vaccine? These folks are also less likely to mask, which places a bunch of people at risk.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top