Coronavirus - how much do you worry ?

[kenya]

In Woodstock 77 cents, 91 cents in Stratford

[Shnookie]

Our gas went up another 2 cents today.

I watched Dr. Oz this morning. The expert he had on said the virus on the east side of the US is not the same as the one in China. The virus on the east side came from Europe. The virus on the west side of the US is the same as the one in China. They are both Covid-19, but are slightly different. This could make it more different to create a vaccine.

[Killerbunny]

Personally I am not holding my breath waiting for a vaccine. Viruses survive by mutating.
Please jump in here @WLLady.

[WLLady]

Well, said i would stay away....
oh well. So the virus IS mutating. there are 9 clades of it now. 2 in the USA, one arrived from the asias and one from europe. Canada seems to mostly be the european clades however, we aren't sequencing it as much as other countries are.
Anyways, the trick with the vaccine is to make it against a part of the virus that doesn't change or mutate as much. The thing with the flu viruses that have the yearly vaccine is they mutate a lot, and fast....so we have to rely on computer modelling to predict what we think is the most likely strain(s) to be circulating the coming year. We are wrong a lot. lol. imagine that, mother nature outsmarting us HAHA (sarcasm here...of course she is smarter than we are!). anyways, SARS-CoV-2 is mutating. So....there are viral clades. The original virus is the first clade. The virus then adopts mutations, which make it different from the original. Some of the original clade get changes that are maintained and become a second clade. it's like a family tree of genetics, every time there are mutations some of them may be beneficial to the virus and are kept, while others are not and those viruses with those mutations die out. natural selection. Over time, different populations arise, and these are clades. so the clade on the west coast of the USA is descended from (and the same mutations as) the Asian clade. The clade on the east coast is the clade that developed somewhere in europe (looks like the netherlands from nextstrain.org). It's different now in the mutations than cladeA....the logical part to design a vaccine to is the spike domain-the piece that binds with the receptor on the cell. if we can make a vaccine that will allow us to make an antibody to that portion then the virus cannot get into the cells. so it will not infect (or will at such low levels that we can beat it off with our immune system easily). problem is, the spike domain has a very large mutation in it, the addition of an RRAR amino acid string. which makes it more infective. Any mutations in the region of the RNA that encodes for the spike domain can change the structure of the spike domain and make it "different" so that any antibody that we made in us against the original domain wouldn't bind anymore. so they are looking for a place in, on or around the virus that doesn't mutate as much so that will stay good for ALL the clades, not just the one clade they happen to use in the design of the peptide antigen to vaccinate us with. There are trials with whole attenuated virus-but right now "killing" the virus (so that it's not infective) is proving very difficult. And we don't want a repeat of the small pox disaster. There are vaccines being trialed against the spike domain. There's an old vaccine against TB that is being trialed as a ramp up for the immune system-one that doesn't target SARS-CoV-2 per se, but causes an increase in the immune response (we need to know that this won't increase the cytokine storm that some people go into which kills them). There are vaccines being made against the RNA inside the virus for testing. There are peptide pieces from the coat of the virus being tested, but these don't seem to be as protective in animals against infection than the spike domain-and these regions are more prone to mutate. Unfortunately the spike domain has changed from the original virus that was detected, so if one uses the spike domain alone as a vaccine, and the body makes antibodies, it is possible that those antibodies will not detect the second type of spike domain conformation and would be ineffective. Right now the majority of canada's cases are of one type of virus (clade A2 descent), but the USA has both the different spike domains-the original and the mutant so Clade A and B, so it WILL get here into canada at some point. So either we need a vaccine that will detect all of the clades, or individual vaccines for each, or vaccines that work for some/many/most and another for what the first doesn't hit. What it looks like to me is that clade A2 descendent viruses are more able to spread in our population here for whatever reason, and that will become the predominant clade running around North America. However, that clade may still spawn other clades....
There is evidence for reinfection in people in korea, what i do not know is if this is the same clade infection or a new clade infection. If it's the same clade then the antibodies may be having an off target effect on the human system so the body gets rid of it after the threat of the virus has been handled. Or it's an atypical antibody response. however, the IgG IgM response is detectable, so the response doesn't seem abnormal. And they don't know how long the antibodies are around for once produced. I have a feeling that we will end up with a vaccine like the flu vaccine (hit or miss) that will need to be administered every so often in order to maintain protectiveness. I just worry that any antibody that recognizes the spike domain may cause a change in the population of ace2 receptor proteins, which is vital in regulating blood pressure and cardiovascular health. only testing and testing and more testing will tell that. of course, crappy blood pressure is better than dead from a cytokine crises from infection! so.
A really decent website is nextstrain.org. you can pick national or worldwide, whatever. on the next screen on the left side pick colour by clade. this will give you each clade in a different colour, and you can see on the map on the right where they are around the world, and how they got there. underneath all that is a schematic of the RNA coding of the virus, and the peaks show mutations....the S is the spike domain coding, the place in the RNA that codes for the protein piece that sticks out and binds to the receptor on the finished virus. you see the big peak there, that's a big mutation....one that changes structure....and if you click that it will colour the graphs/map above. then hover over the spots in the left tree and you can see where they are around the world. super cool site. it's as up to date as one can expect-with all the data pulled in as soon as it is released by the researchers.

[ross]

Sooo in layman’s terms , with all due respect, Kathy were F__ked for a long time yet .

[WLLady]

it becomes a dance as mentioned before.....ease up a little, see what happens, and if the cases start spiking again, then shut things down a bit more, until cases reduce and back and forth until either we all have gotten it and made sufficient antibodies that last, or a vaccine becomes available. best case, the antibodies are awesome and infected cannot get reinfected and we beat it that way. or the vaccine is 100% effective and we can eradicate it. Worst case is it becomes entrenched like the annual flu (inflA and B) and we go through this every year forever.....and hope it doesn't mutate into something worse....
i'm sure we'll land somewhere between those 2 points ;-P
given that the A clade seems to be more prevalent worldwide right now, that clade must have some kind of advantage over the B clade....but the fact that it mutated enough to have this many clades in only 5 or 6 months....that's fast biologically speaking.

[Shnookie]

I'm not a scientist, but I figured this would not just "go away", like some people are saying. :)

WLLady, that was very interesting information. I have never gotten a flu shot. They have said on TV that they think everyone should get a flu shot this fall in order to possibly prevent getting both the flu and Covid-19. I don't know if I will get a flu shot or not. I have a few months to think about it.

[KimChick]

I have never gotten a flu shot, either.
Is this vaccine thing just a smokescreen for misguided hope?
It is my non-scientific understanding that a vaccine cannot be developed for viruses because of their constant mutations. After all, there is no vaccine for the common cold. All we do is treat the symptoms.
So I think the number of people getting this virus will go up and down for quite a while.

[WLLady]

So the vaccine for MMR works because those viruses don't mutate that much. same with rabies-if any of you are vaccinated (i am....worked at a vet college for a long time). it's influenza A and B that mutate like crazy, so they come back in a new form every year. SARS-CoV-2 seems to be mutating, but not at the rate that inflA/B do. so that's hopeful. If they can find a piece of the virus that isn't mutating, and is stable, then they can make a vaccine. but it still takes time to make and test a vaccine. a year.....or more.....so we are in this for the long term.

I just heard that i can likely head back to work early june! it's silly how excited that has made me feel. LOL.

[Killerbunny]

Not silly at all!
I am vaccinated for more things than I care to name BUT I no longer have the flu vaccine. I didn't used to get vaxx for flu and I only had flu once when a teenager, Hong Kong flu. When the bird flu was going round I relented and we both got vaxxed. We were sick for about 10 days with a reaction to it as were a lot of other patients. It traced back to a rushed batch. It left me with a reactive airway which sometimes hits when I get a cold or some other stressor like that. I will not have anothr flu vaccine. I stress I AM NOT an anti vaxxer but I will tread with care over this one.