How can there not be a COVID-19 thread?

Alli said:
Have you tried reporting them? Ours has been very good at removing posts (and people) who go on anti-mask kicks or make fun of those who wear masks.
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Yes but they're more sympathetic to right wing posts than MR.
 
SuperMatt said:
Well, the vaccine roll-out is going great. At its current pace, we should reach 80% vaccination by the year 2030. Trump is awesome!

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There's a huge state-wise scatter. I have at least 50 FB friends who got it already (all in healthcare). My wife is scheduled for next week. I've not heard about my shot yet...

That said I did complain about this before. Trump had shown no evidence of actually having an understanding of the magnitude and challenges of making a vaccination campaign like this reality.
 
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P_X said:
Trump had shown no evidence of actually having an understanding of the magnitude and challenges of making a vaccination campaign like this reality.
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Or of anything else involving human pain and loss. Bloomberg had a roundup of photos from 2020, these are two that made me cry to think of how difficult it has been for all caregivers and family to get through this terrible time doing the best they can --and making innovations!-- to keep compassion in the picture for the patients.

share the caring.jpg


humans behind the masks.jpg
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And then there was the mixed messaging at the WH briefings... and the risk-balancing scientists should not have had to make in weighing what to say when Trump had said his piece...
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ericgtr12 said:
On my NextDoor app they have posts where people are discussing restaurants that are defying closure orders so they can gather, and NextDoor is allowing it. As everyone knows CA is now the worst state in the nation and this is why and they're more than happy to let the hospitals fill up if it means being able to dine in somewhere.
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NextDoor has gotten just as bad as most [other] social sites, I've reported, complained, nobody cares, so I don't participate any longer.
 
DT said:
@P_X

This thread in the darklands ...


Specifically, the question from VulchR (I wish they would join us here), the AG response, etc., your $0.02 ?
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The answers (without doing a deep dive):
1. mRNA is pushed intramuscularly. Muscle cells are literally the largest cells so a significant portion of the shot probably gets in muscle cells, and some into the interstitium (space between muscle cells). It probably doesn't even hit your circulation.
2. The vehicle (liposome) will allow the mRNA to pass into the cells [muscle here], which is a great kind of tissue full of ribosomes, that are like sewing machines using mRNA going in and synthesizing the spike protein.
Things get a little less clear to me, because the rest of the virus' machinery complement the spike protein, whereas this isn't the case here but then the spike protein could produce an immunogenic signal in multiple ways
3a. Cells have major histocompatibility complex (MHC-1) molecules that they use as virtual flag poles to display flags indicating what's getting expressed int he cell itself. Spike protein could be recognized through MHC-1 and trigger cellular immune response.
3b. Spike protein is directly immunogenic and is a transmembrane protein on its own, so it could stick out the cell membrane directly and trigger an immune response
3c. Extracellular leakage or transport of the spike protein can be picked up by professional antigen presenting cells (APCs), integrating it into their MHC-2 (imagine like police sharing "Wanted" posters") and triggering cellular and humoral immune response.

The acute side-effects could therefore be due to the mRNA or due to an exacerbated immune response, which would primarily target the muscle. It doesn't seem to be the case, I suspect it's due to the short half life of mRNA (which is like a USB stick in genetic informatics), so by the time cytotoxic immune response would be triggered (cell killing), the mRNA is gone.

Same thing applies to the blood brain barrier. It's a super barrier that's hard to cross, even for mRNA, which would have to make it to the systemic circulation from the interstitial space in an interval that is shorter than the mRNA half life. Even less likely.

How is this better than the adenovirus? The concern is that if you already have some level of immune response to the adenovirus vector (which is expected to be rare, but feasible), you'll clear the vector without mounting an immune response against its payload.

Why is it safe to use the mRNA vaccines?
A) Because they have fantastic signal-to-noise ratio. This is also the reason how these were developed so insanely quickly (Fauci's institute identified the target epitope in like 10 days after they got the sequence of SARS-CoV-2!!!). Why don't design an artificial virus to do the same? See the attenuated adenovirus' problem: if people mount a response against the vaccine vector, then your vaccine is worthless.
B) Because they went through rigorous phase III testing. Safety was established in phase I, effective dosing in phase II and large scale efficacy in phase III, and at all levels safety data was very closely monitored.

TL;DR: money's on the short half life of the mRNA. Long enough to trigger an immune response, too short to produce major local or distal inflammation. The vaccine was adequately tested too and it would have to be the worst vaccine I've ever heard of to be on par with the complications of COVID.

What's the catch?! We have evidence of high efficacy in the first 2-4 months. Nobody knows how those numbers will drop over time...

(probably have some inaccuracies here but that's my best response without reading up)
 
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@ericgtr12 I believe someone said they PM'ed them and their response was "Thanks, but just sticking to one major site for now", you know, time, etc. Maybe I'll ping them directly with a link to the @P_X's response / post #248.

@P_X Thanks! I won't suggest I understood everything in your response, but between a few med reference sites for some clarifications (I had like 20 tabs and 3 windows open ...), and some of your simplified examples, that was extremely helpful and informative.
 
I work in pharmaceutical manufacturing. We’re a contract manufacturer for drug companies. As it happens, we’re making Moderna’s vaccine at my site. When that news broke I initially assumed my department would be working on it but it went to a newer part of the facility.

One of the perks we lost when COVID started was our employee gym. Now, they’re converting it into a COVID testing center for employees. There’s an expectation floating around that we’ll be early vaccine recipients but no news on that.

After frontline workers, it seems proper to me that grocery store and pharmacy workers should get it.
 
ericgtr12 said:
Okay, now this is funny. However, the Oxford comma will always be one of the pointless mysteries of the world to m
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I thought it was pretty funny they managed to spell Moderna wrong while focused on the commas....
 

Serial comma - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

It's just a joke about the Oxford (or serial) comma, i.e., the one before the word "and" in a series.

Some say a serial comma clarifies status of the last item versus the previous one(s). Others say it's just excess baggage. It all depends on what's in the series and possibly on how those items are qualified. In the case of that joke, that last comma is pretty useless if you ask me. But there are cases where it does resolve ambiguity.

An apocryphal book dedication is given in the wiki explanation. The second form has the serial comma.

To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.​
To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.​

Serial comma - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Sometimes a comma has been the focus of court cases. I'm not talking about the one in the Second Amendment either.

www.cnn.com

An Oxford comma changed this court case completely | CNN

If you have ever doubted the importance of the humble Oxford comma, let this supremely persnickety Maine labor dispute set you straight.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com
 
And once again I managed to derail a thread... apologies.

This thread is supposed to be about Covid.
 
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