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New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

bbc.com

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Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#151

Post by apta »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #149
MechEStudent wrote: post #93

HIV evolves with amazing (super-villian-ic) speed. Many "cures" attack 99% of cells, or similar. Resistance is evolved during treatment, and is usually uniform within just a few months. It mutates/evolves so fast that given just virus samples, it is possible to determine sequence of infection. I think it needs to kill more than 6-9's before it has a good chance at being a cure.

Reminds me of a lesson about misleading statistics I tell my nephews. We've all see the hand sanitizers that advertize killing 99.99% of germs, but what does that actually mean? 99.99% equates to 1/10,000 survivors and assuming for each generation the population doubles means it takes just 14 generations for the original colony to be back at full strength again. For extra creepy effect, e coli can reproduce in optima…

> which buys you only a couple hours of hygiene

Which is long enough for you to complete your lunch! :-)

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#152

Post by delbel »

MechEStudent wrote: post #93

HIV evolves with amazing (super-villian-ic) speed. Many "cures" attack 99% of cells, or similar. Resistance is evolved during treatment, and is usually uniform within just a few months. It mutates/evolves so fast that given just virus samples, it is possible to determine sequence of infection. I think it needs to kill more than 6-9's before it has a good chance at being a cure.

I'm not familiar with any details about this vaccine or other therapies, but from what I understand is when you have a partial solution or near total solution like this, you combined it with another therapy so you have two methods of action to dealt a "kill shot" to the target organism or virus. This combined therapy strategy is used in killing Borrelia type infections. Basically they combined two different antibiotics at the same time. Alone they are effective at relapse rate of say only 5% after 14 weeks, combined they can get near 1% or lower. Also when an organism evolves, its genetics can drift causing mutations that are disadvantageous. There a chance the mutation could make it more vulnerable to something just as well as immune to something else, and also there has to be consideration that there is a scenario where that can happen at the same time.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#153

Post by BuckRogers »

noncoml wrote: post #109
BuckRogers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't see you "imposing" your views on anyone. People can adopt what they will. I don't advocate for laws against free choice, but I am for social pressures against unprotected sex. It's a good thing, saves a lot of pain and lives and there's absolutely no need to apologize if someone wants to take that out of context. As if you're advocating for the police to round up sexually active teens.

> I am for social pressures against unprotected sex What is this if not trying to make other people live their lives following your way of thinking?

I'm more than willing to bet you are happy to voice your opinion on any given subject, including this one as you try to snuff my viewpoint out with claims about my attempt at oppression. Why can't I add my own opinion and voice? Just because you don't like what I think.

This is the same misguided logic you tried to use on bad_user. You really don't get it and honestly I don't care if you ever do or not.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#154

Post by elihu »

toast0 wrote: post #144
jahnu wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, when you US folks talk about how your medical bills work and are paid there is so much jargon and complexity it sounds like Star Trek techno-babble to my ears. "I have a common but chronic ailment so all I had to do was re-route the phase-converter to the deflector shield and invert the chromaton particles in Shelk-Einstein space and we're done!" :/

This is the real heart of the healthcare cost problem in the US. No party in the process knows how much anything costs, so it's unsurprising that costs go up so fast. This wouldn't be tenable in an individual pays environment, or in a government pays environment, but in the US environment where many people get coverage from employment we end up in this crazy system where there are so many parties involved in payment,…

I didn't quite follow joshstrange's accounting so I don't know if this is what he's describing, but (unless it's been changed recently), in some states it's legal for manufacturer of an expensive medication to give coupons to customers to reimburse them for their copay.

This sounds like a nice, generous thing to do, but basically it means that the drug company is bribing the customer to force their insurance company to spend more money on their behalf.

So, imagine that a drug costs $1000 and the customer's copay is $200. The drug company can give the customer a $200 coupon to recover their copay and then raise the price of the drug to $1200. They've basically shifted the price from the customer (who decides whether or not to get the drug and is probably very sensitive to price) to the insurer. They make the same profit, but can probably sell to a lot more customers because it's "free". While they're at it, they could raise the price to $1500 or $2000, and it's still free to the customer.

I think this is a corrupt practice and it's crazy that it's even legal, but it's just one small part of the complexity and perverse incentives of our health care system.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#155

Post by Latty »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #149
MechEStudent wrote: post #93

HIV evolves with amazing (super-villian-ic) speed. Many "cures" attack 99% of cells, or similar. Resistance is evolved during treatment, and is usually uniform within just a few months. It mutates/evolves so fast that given just virus samples, it is possible to determine sequence of infection. I think it needs to kill more than 6-9's before it has a good chance at being a cure.

Reminds me of a lesson about misleading statistics I tell my nephews. We've all see the hand sanitizers that advertize killing 99.99% of germs, but what does that actually mean? 99.99% equates to 1/10,000 survivors and assuming for each generation the population doubles means it takes just 14 generations for the original colony to be back at full strength again. For extra creepy effect, e coli can reproduce in optima…

Is that even the claim they are making? I honestly never thought about it, but the claim could easily be "we kill 99.99% of germ strains" or "we kill 99.99% of germ cells".

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#156

Post by jahnu »

elihu wrote: post #154
toast0 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real heart of the healthcare cost problem in the US. No party in the process knows how much anything costs, so it's unsurprising that costs go up so fast. This wouldn't be tenable in an individual pays environment, or in a government pays environment, but in the US environment where many people get coverage from employment we end up in this crazy system where there are so many parties involved in payment,…

I didn't quite follow joshstrange's accounting so I don't know if this is what he's describing, but (unless it's been changed recently), in some states it's legal for manufacturer of an expensive medication to give coupons to customers to reimburse them for their copay. This sounds like a nice, generous thing to do, but basically it means that the drug company is bribing the customer to force their insurance company…

Oh, wow... never even heard of that one. What a horror show.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#157

Post by nonbel »

Fomite wrote: post #136
nonbel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"an infected person produces billions of virus particles every single day... The oft-cited rule of the thumb is that every base of the viral genome is mutated every day" Isn't it pretty weird that, despite this massive diversity, infections seem to be only caused a single, or sometimes a few, distinct virus particle(s): >"we show that 78% of infections involved single variant transmission and 22% involved multiple v…

Note that not all of those genomes continue to persist. People often have a single dominant strain, but what exactly that strain is varies wildly over time.

I'm saying that a person must be getting exposed to millions or billions of variants, and only one leads to an infection. That is very surprising to me given my understanding of viruses.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#158

Post by phyllostachys »

pasbesoin wrote: post #133
MechEStudent wrote: post #93

HIV evolves with amazing (super-villian-ic) speed. Many "cures" attack 99% of cells, or similar. Resistance is evolved during treatment, and is usually uniform within just a few months. It mutates/evolves so fast that given just virus samples, it is possible to determine sequence of infection. I think it needs to kill more than 6-9's before it has a good chance at being a cure.

HIV was/is an early hint at the computational complexity we face in understanding biology. Not that we should consider in insurmountable nor ungrasp-able. But that we -- or parts of our society and professional institutions -- should lose some of our arrogance. On the upside, that complexity also harbors enormous opportunity. Just, don't be simplistic about it an let your ignorance take you into disaster.

I'm always amazed at how many doctors I've encountered behave as if their knowledge is the extent of medical practice. I get it though, research is hard to stay on top of and isn't linear to results.

Granted, also, that there are lots of doctors who do follow research.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#159

Post by noncoml »

BuckRogers wrote: post #153
noncoml wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am for social pressures against unprotected sex What is this if not trying to make other people live their lives following your way of thinking?

I'm more than willing to bet you are happy to voice your opinion on any given subject, including this one as you try to snuff my viewpoint out with claims about my attempt at oppression. Why can't I add my own opinion and voice? Just because you don't like what I think. This is the same misguided logic you tried to use on bad_user. You really don't get it and honestly I don't care if you ever do or not.

Why do you think I am trying to snuff your viewpoint? How did I prevent you from voicing your opinion? My reply was just:

"> I am for social pressures against unprotected sex. What is this if not trying to make other people live their lives following your way of thinking?"

Yes, I really don't get it how is this preventing you to voice your opinion.

I honestly don't care what you think or support, but when you are suggesting "social pressure" in order for people follow your opinion then you will find me calling you out.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#160

Post by KGIII »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #127
usaphp wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise he will fall back to talking bs all day long like he does with Malaria. Can you elaborate on this? I thought he was a type of person who does more than he talks.

Sure, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is used for tax evasion, supporting corporate interest in developing countries and to control the WHO. https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/r... They even advised not to lower prices for vaccines, because then pharma corporations wouldn't invest in the global south anymore.

If you have evidence of tax evasion, I'm sure the tax authorities would love to hear about it.
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