181–190 of 207 posts
China sent 90 tons of plasma to Italy? I don't understand. A ton is 1000 liters. A single blood donation is usually 500ml , not sure how much plasma that would produce. But this means that they had at least 180K donations which seem implausible. Could someone please explain?
This crisis is the first event in my lifetime that's given me any optimism about our ability, as a global civilization, to solve problems and get things done. I don't feel like we've seen humanity at its best in several decades. Shame it always takes a catastrophe (and an immediate one at that; see climate change) to bring it out.
> This crisis is the first event in my lifetime that's given me any optimism about our ability, as a global civilization, to solve problems and get things done. would you mind elaborating? because i find it extremely difficult how one could hold such an optimistic and apparent naive opinion. from where i sit, this crisis is showing the exact opposite. there is very little international communication and cooperation,…
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> This crisis is the first event in my lifetime that's given me any optimism about our ability, as a global civilization, to solve problems and get things done. would you mind elaborating? because i find it extremely difficult how one could hold such an optimistic and apparent naive opinion. from where i sit, this crisis is showing the exact opposite. there is very little international communication and cooperation,…
I think you're paying too much attention to Trump and politics. The people actually getting work done are cooperating and moving at a pace that has really never been done. The articles I've read and podcasts I've heard with scientist all echo the same sentiment. Ignore Trump and the politics, the science is happening at a pace unseen before. > the while thing has just been wave after wave of delayed and reactive acti…
A pace that is constantly hindered by wrong/misleading statements made by Trump. You cannot pretend he is not actively making their jobs harder and thus putting us all in more danger.
> Although, I would once again offer up to ignore Trump and watch the governors. They have been acting quickly and decisively.
Not all of the governors have and that is in part because they themselves or their constituents will do just about anything Trump says and/or anything to avoid his ire. We still, to this day, have people parroting things from Trump/Fox about how it's just the flu, it's not bad if you are young, vacinee is right around the corner, we already have drugs to fight this, etc. That is because of one man caring more about his reelection/markets than the people of the United States. Period.
His comments have been and continue to be extremely detrimental to fighting COVID-19. Even now, he is more concerned with re-writing history ("I always took this seriously") and downplaying the threat suggesting we don't have to worry because we already have a vaccine in testing (without saying it's ~14mo out) and by talking about the malaria drugs as if they are cures (we still have to test). Look at how they spend insane amounts of time in press briefings: attacking the press, talking about how the markets will boom after this, repeatedly having the POTUS make false/misleading statements that have to be corrected, and having almost every official start by "I'd like to thank Trump for his leadership...".
> Underprepared with respect to supplies is always easy to say in hindsight because now we know the war we are fighting. There is a saying that armies are always tooled to fight the last war. Until you know what the next war will be, it's impossible to fully prepare.
That's just not true though. They knew about this as early as Jan 3rd and waited months before doing anything substantial, they had a team designed to spearhead the fight against a virus like this and they disbanded it, they had a simulation of a virus outbreak just last year and failed spectacularly but decided to make zero changes.
One more thing to leave you with, /yesterday/ he suggested the reuse n95 masks and just clean them with "very good liquids". And 2-3 days ago he gave the /wrong/ set of symptoms for COVID-19. To ignore "Trump/Politics" is pretty naive as it's not like the experts are in control, he is actively making the situation worse.
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Yeah, I agree, unfortunately. Best examples: To my best knowledge no other European country has pledged massive help to Italy. China did a bit.
Germany has sent a few hundred thousand masks and other equipment. But it’s obviously easier for China since they are past their peak. There are also some French patients being treated across the border, in both Switzerland and Germany.
I am 100% sure, if this didn't reach France, was an Italy/Spanish problem, the EU wouldn't give a shit about it and do nothing.
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> This crisis is the first event in my lifetime that's given me any optimism about our ability, as a global civilization, to solve problems and get things done. Based on what? What I see is the same scenario play out over and over again, from one country to another, delayed by a week, or two, or three, with most of them making the same mistakes that their predecessors made. Nobody in the West lifted a finger to prepa…
Too little too late sums it up in Australia. Schools are still open (there are good reasons, but by the time those reasons become not-good, it will be too late). At least the states and cities are taking over leadership where the federal level has failed.
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Following your train of thought, could the synthesis be done in the same way that insulin is currently created? i.e. Have some germs synthesize the antibodies.
Yes, that’s a possibility and currently many monoclonal antibodies are produced that way (basically all drugs ending in “-mab”). However the process is costly and current capacities are not sufficient to supply a whole population regularly with antibodies which is why we still use some older drugs for certain diseases (think MTX for rheumatoid arthritis) and reserve monoclonal antibodies for treatment-resistant cases…
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As someone outside of the US, news about people of the City of Corona queuing to buy guns was quite shocking. Things are difficult everywhere but a rush to buy guns, not least in the most powerful country, is probably one of the most shocking of all the responses I have read and seen so far. I hope none of those guns will need to be used. The virus is already enough of an enemy
Strangely there can be a calming effect, with many people armed. Believe it or not, unscrupulous folk may hesitate to act in times of shortage if their neighbors are armed.
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> This crisis is the first event in my lifetime that's given me any optimism about our ability, as a global civilization, to solve problems and get things done. would you mind elaborating? because i find it extremely difficult how one could hold such an optimistic and apparent naive opinion. from where i sit, this crisis is showing the exact opposite. there is very little international communication and cooperation,…
I think you're paying too much attention to Trump and politics. The people actually getting work done are cooperating and moving at a pace that has really never been done. The articles I've read and podcasts I've heard with scientist all echo the same sentiment. Ignore Trump and the politics, the science is happening at a pace unseen before. > the while thing has just been wave after wave of delayed and reactive acti…
not at all. there are plenty of things wrong beyond him, and i have personally been dealing with the outbreak for months. i don't think you or most understand how some of the government's inaction has truly got us to where we are today and has been harmful. everyone complaining about a less than week long "quarantine" hasn't dealt with this for two months. that being said, one can also not ignore trump and the sycophantic government. he is blatantly misleading people and is ridiculing china for no reason. it's childish and petulent and extremely harmful in the long. we have a senator that says "gag and vote for it anyway" to provide support for people. that tells you the sentiment. and these are things they say in public! it amounts to treason in my book. you cannot ignore the massive narcissitic nature of our "leaders".
> IMO, that is naive and optimistic.
it was hyperbole, although it does have a ring of truth to it. the point is that our enemy is not complex, and as with most things, the true enemy is ourselves. humans laud ourselves for being above animals and our ability to predict the future. however, we don't. we have very short term views and rarely deal with something unless it is right on our doorstep. i don't care about the reaction afterward. it isn't good enough to be this way.
and the idea is that there are far deeper problems than just dealing with and reacting to viral outbreaks when they happen. a more organized society could start preventing or reducing the frequency of the outbreaks in the first place, although i doubt we ever get there.
this is a good article: http://m.nautil.us/issue/83/intelligence/the-man-who-saw-the...
This may be a stupid question. But can the antibodies be synthesized based on samples from recovered patients? If not, why?
In principle, yes, but antibodies are more complicated than normal molecules (glycosylation, protein folding) so you can really only industrially prepare them in certain types of cells (pretty much Chinese Hamster Ovary, last I checked).
Another problem is retrieving the correct antibody gene sequence. All immunoactive antibodies have been subjected to a process of internal evolution and artificial selection. Their DNA is not the same as your germline DNA, through shuffling and active mutation events, and indeed every immune cell that produces antibodies has different DNA than the other ones (that haven't been told to clone themselves) so it's really difficult to retrieve the correct gene sequence.
In practice I wouldn't estimate it to be possible to do this in the 4-6 month timeframe. Maybe in the 6-12 month timeframe under emergency duress situations.
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> This crisis is the first event in my lifetime that's given me any optimism about our ability, as a global civilization, to solve problems and get things done. would you mind elaborating? because i find it extremely difficult how one could hold such an optimistic and apparent naive opinion. from where i sit, this crisis is showing the exact opposite. there is very little international communication and cooperation,…
I've also felt very encouraged by this. To see my own town almost completely shut down before any legal order even required it shows me that people will still voluntarily make sacrifices for the benefit of the whole. Everyone I know is doing their part. And beyond that to see the scientific community come together, to see that even with the blunders there is real cooperation between the various states and the federal…
Not true. The west coast one is deploying soon, but the east coast one was undergoing repairs at the time and is weeks away from deployment.