Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic

[MerelysSoul]

Nothing special about it at all... the vaccine is produced exactly the same way as every other anti-flu vaccine.

The only thing is, because the 2003 SARS burned itself out as fast as it did, the vaccine never even made it to animal testing stages in the USA.

But now? Now they've skipped everything.

https://www.ibtimes.com/coronavirus...l-testing-phase-straight-human-trials-2941208

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I see... That is bad. There are reasons why animal testings are a thing. To better understand the effects of whatever medicine is being made. This is going to turn out horrible before a 'silver bullet' is found. Especially with a virus like this one... One mistake can easily make things even more dangerous.

And because it's a mostly proven technology (it's worked on every other strain of flu we've used it on), they've already begun using the seasonal flu facilities to produce the vaccine. Nobody in the medical community thinks it will fail.

The only fear is if this strain is unusually mutative... but that's highly improbable given the gap between SARS and Wuhan. If anything, evidence suggests Covid strains are less mutative than the more common seasonal flu strains.

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Still playing with fire. Don't want to take any chances with this.

 

[TanaNari]

That is bad.

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If it wasn't, they wouldn't be making the leap this quickly. Not because it isn't safe (with flu, anyhow... some viruses are more difficult to deal with) but because America's standards for medical treatment are incredibly high. Thalidomide is a lesson not soon forgotten.

This is going to turn out horrible before a 'silver bullet' is found. Especially with a virus like this one... One mistake can easily make things even more dangerous.

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No... no it's not.

The current flu vaccine production system is *flawless*, having been exercised seasonally for the last thirty plus years without a single error in the process (though occasionally a given facility has fucked up). There is no possibility for a mistake to cause any harm.

The worst case scenario is that the vaccine is only partially effective (which is most of what's held up anti-HIV vaccines for so damn long), but that's never happened with a flu before and I doubt this will be the exception. And, of course, there's the tiny fragment of the population allergic to the antibodies... but that's always true of every vaccine ever created.

 

[CelestialDragon]

Hey guys just trying to find an answer for a question, what was the case number for the infected Korean who broke the quarantine. I remember when this just started the Korean government has people in isolation and one person broke it and spread. I think it was case 39 or 31. I am trying to google it but having no luck, I could be wrong but I am sure I read about it somewhere.

 

[MerelysSoul]

If it wasn't, they wouldn't be making the leap this quickly.

No... no it's not.

The current flu vaccine production system is *flawless*, having been exercised seasonally for the last thirty plus years without a single error in the process (though occasionally a given facility has fucked up). There is no possibility for a mistake to cause any harm.

The worst case scenario is that the vaccine is only partially effective (which is most of what's held up anti-HIV vaccines for so damn long), but that's never happened with a flu before and I doubt this will be the exception. And, of course, there's the tiny fragment of the population allergic to the antibodies... but that's always true of every vaccine ever created.

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I know. You are right on this. Hope that it works. Just can't shake this feeling. Once the Human Trails prove positive feedback then I can relax a bit on that.

 

[TanaNari]

I know. You are right on this. Hope that it works. Just can't shake this feeling. Once the Human Trails prove positive feedback then I can relax a bit on that.

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It'll work... that said, that's no reason not to be upset. In fact, everyone should rightfully be pissed the fuck off right now.

A lot of people are going to die before this stuff becomes available to the public. All because a cavalcade of fuckups shit the bed almost twenty years ago.

This is the perfect case study of the old saying "A stitch in time saves nine."

 

[Aleh]

Yeah... this definitely caught the CDC and FEMA with their pants down. It's been a century since the last time the USA faced anything resembling a pandemic, and while in theory the infrastructure was all there... exactly nobody had experience using it to its full extent. Unfortunately, the only way to be ready for system errors is experience. If we were smart, we'd hire experts from parts of the world that still have problems with Measles and Mumps for advice. But, well, those places still deal with diseases the USA all but eradicated... how expert could they be?

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... yeah, no, that's not what I wanted to say.

This Wuhan Flu might be an unusual strain, but it's *still* a flu- future infections will happen, but they'll be far weaker than that first nasty punch- and the vaccine is already being developed. If it works anything like its close cousin, SARS... we'll have safe vaccines within a couple months.

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The coronavirus isn't a flu. Influenza viruses aren't even in the same phylum.

There's some symptom overlap in the diseases they cause, and they're both RNA-based viruses, but that's about it.

The only fear is if this strain is unusually mutative... but that's highly improbable given the gap between SARS and Wuhan. If anything, evidence suggests Covid strains are less mutative than the more common seasonal flu strains.

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Again, the coronavirus isn't a flu.

The current flu vaccine production system is *flawless*, having been exercised seasonally for the last thirty plus years without a single error in the process (though occasionally a given facility has fucked up). There is no possibility for a mistake to cause any harm.

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You obviously haven't studied the flu vaccine production system in detail. I can think of several major flaws right off the top of my head (e.g. the use of chicken eggs, without an alternative formulation, to incubate the viruses for the vaccine, has been known to cause what I will politely describe as "problems" for people with egg allergies, or the predictive and error-prone nature of the methods we use to choose which strains are included).

The worst case scenario is that the vaccine is only partially effective (which is most of what's held up anti-HIV vaccines for so damn long), but that's never happened with a flu before and I doubt this will be the exception. And, of course, there's the tiny fragment of the population allergic to the antibodies... but that's always true of every vaccine ever created.

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Again, the coronavirus isn't a flu... and that "allergic to the antibodies" bit makes no sense. The vaccine doesn't contain any antibodies; the point of a vaccine is to train your body to produce them.

A lot of people are going to die before this stuff becomes available to the public. All because a cavalcade of fuckups shit the bed almost twenty years ago.

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Yeah, no. Again, though, I can't discuss this in detail without hitting Rule 8 really, really hard.

That said, yes, there were major fuckups involved. They just weren't twenty years ago.

Edit: Forgot to close a parenthesis, added an example to the list of issues with the flu vaccine, as I apparently forgot to, you know, make one, close the parenthesis it was in, etc. Way, way too tired for this shit right now.

 

[CelestialDragon]

I am not saying anyone is wrong (so please don't assume I am talking about you) but it just occured to me just how rife misinformation will be on this thread (though to be fair sb and sv aren't great either).

 

[Aleh]

I am not saying anyone is wrong (so please don't assume I am talking about you) but it just occured to me just how rife misinformation will be on this thread (though to be fair sb and sv aren't great either).

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Yeah, one of many reasons I said you shouldn't be getting your information from QQ.

 

[TheLastNanaya]

Meanwhile, you have people who gathered for a dance of peace and positivity, also covers their bodies in blue paint or participate in "insert certain International Day Marching" or going to any other large public space, even when they have been informed and have to self-quarantine before getting lockdown.

They really didn't know that what they did is going to effectively not only bite but they are basically spreading their buttholes wide and open to receive Corona-chan's godly blessing of her beer being shoved inside.

Am I suppose to feel sorry or disgusted by these people who doesn't take it seriously. Are they unaware that the virus is Highly Infectious?

 

[Aleh]

Am I suppose to feel sorry or disgusted by these people who doesn't take it seriously. Are they unaware that the virus is Highly Infectious?

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I've spent a significant portion of the last decade dealing with active germ theory denialists. I am... unsurprised... by such behavior.

 

[TanaNari]

There's some symptom overlap in the diseases they cause, and they're both RNA-based viruses, but that's about it.

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Ah, right, thinking of H1N1 there for a second. But that doesn't change the nature of the fact that *both vaccines are made and work the exact same way*.

and that "allergic to the antibodies" bit makes no sense.

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Yeah, my B. I meant to write "antigen". It's an easy typo to make, and if you gave me the benefit of assuming I'm talking in good faith you'd probably have figured out where I made my mistake, yourself.

You obviously haven't studied the flu vaccine production system in detail.

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I'm aware.

the use of chicken eggs, without an alternative formulation, to incubate the viruses for the vaccine, has been known to cause what I will politely describe as "problems" for people with egg allergies

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You point this out, yet you didn't recognize that I meant 'antigen'? Come on, dude.

Unfortunately, there's not exactly a better option at this point in time. They're making great strides with both Cell and Recombinant vaccine techniques, but those are not without flaws.

Cell based relies on cultured mammalian tissue (aka- cloned cells grown in a vat), and is difficult to scale to the production demands of epidemic-tier diseases like flu and Wuhan virus. And some people are allergic to that, too- rarer than poultry egg allergy, but still.

And Recombinant doesn't even get rid of eggs, it just replaces chicken with insect eggs. Which is difficult since it involves creating a genetic chimera-virus that is an insect virus but causes the immune system to think it's a human virus. The method has been lackluster, thus far. Also difficult to scale since insect eggs don't produce with nearly the same efficiency. Plus it has its own allergy risks.

the predictive and error-prone nature of the methods we use to choose which strains are included

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Yes, that's an annoyance when it comes to the flu strains. Lucky us, it's 100% irrelevant when it comes to the Wuhan strain, since there is only one of them to worry about at the moment. There's no need to predict anything.

 

[Aleh]

Yes, that's an annoyance when it comes to the flu strains. Lucky us, it's 100% irrelevant when it comes to the Wuhan strain, since there is only one of them to worry about at the moment. There's no need to predict anything.

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As you should be able to tell from context -- and the quote I placed this under -- I was referring to your remark that the flu vaccine production system is "flawless." You went so far as to emphasize the word with twin asterisks in a semistandard markup notation for bolding the enclosed text.

Yeah, my B. I meant to write "antigen". It's an easy typo to make, and if you gave me the benefit of assuming I'm talking in good faith you'd probably have figured out where I made my mistake, yourself.

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Unfortunately, it still makes little sense in this context.

You point this out, yet you didn't recognize that I meant 'antigen'? Come on, dude.

Unfortunately, there's not exactly a better option at this point in time. They're making great strides with both Cell and Recombinant vaccine techniques, but those are difficult to scale to the production demands of epidemic-tier diseases like flu and Wuhan virus.

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There are, in fact, alternatives to the use of eggs in the production of the flu vaccine.

Also, egg isn't a vaccine antigen in this context. I mean, the egg proteins that people react to are antigens in the pedantic sense that nearly anything anyone has an immune response to is an antigen and allergic reactions are essentially erroneous immune responses, but the entire point of a vaccine is to provoke the immune system into responding, and thus it includes elements which the immune system is supposed to respond to.

In a vaccine context, the antigens are, thus, those elements in the vaccine intended to directly provoke an immune response. People who have allergic reactions to vaccines typically are reacting to other elements in them -- such as the aforementioned egg protein.

 

[tehelgee]

re: Vaccine production, the Mario Bros streamer CarlSagan42 is a PHD researcher into plant-based vaccine production. It's not ready yet, but from what he's said, it will be easier and cheaper to produce the vaccines and it'll be allergen free... speed-wise, I'm not sure he's talked about that.

 

[TanaNari]

As you should be able to tell from context

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Make you a deal- when you start caring about my context, I'll care about yours.

re: Vaccine production, the Mario Bros streamer CarlSagan42 is a PHD researcher into plant-based vaccine production. It's not ready yet, but from what he's said, it will be easier and cheaper to produce the vaccines and it'll be allergen free... speed-wise, I'm not sure he's talked about that.

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Starts at roughly 24:30

He doesn't go into great detail (and note- he's not vaccine focused, he's genegineering focused, so it's no surprise- plus, as is common in any industry, it's easy to forget most people don't know what you know) is that plant vaccines are a very different system than animal vaccines.

Vaccination works by prompting the animal immune system (humans, usually) to generate its own proper antibodies. Which means you have to expose said animal to the virus (or certain environmental bacteria like tetanus, but antibiotics are the preferred method with most bacteria) and let nature do her thing and create antibodies. There are, in effect, two methods to make that happen.

The first- what is the technical definition of a vaccine- is to expose the body to the virus (or a very similar virus- the use of the mostly harmless to humans cowpox virus was our first big break in vaccinating against smallpox, as an example) after damaging, killing, or otherwise rendering it harmless. Live vaccines are increasingly unpopular because of the inherent risk, so those are rare these days.

This is the primary method because it's real easy to do (the basic tech is pushing two centuries old, now) and is guaranteed to work against the vast majority of viruses... exceptions mainly being diseases that have ways to actively fuck with the immune system (most forms of herpes- including chickenpox), mutate too fast to pin down (rhinovirus), and those which other animal immune systems aren't any better at fighting than ours (rabies). HIV is a special pain in the ass because it's all three.


The other main method is to synthesize a protein resembling a virus which tricks our immune system into making antibodies that work on said virus, and let it do the work. The main weakness is that it's difficult to predict the outcome and you require a very thorough understanding of the underlying mechanisms of that specific virus (once again, HIV resists classification). The technology to make these sorts of vaccines is very new, and the library of diseases they work on is still quite limited.

The advantage of this method- when it works- is that it's very cheap and reliable, has less risk of adverse reactions, and you don't need to cultivate the disease you're trying to eradicate in order to produce the cure. It's like a cook book... once the proper recipe is in the medical database, it's available to anyone with the equipment anywhere in the world.

And it's not hard to believe that at some future point, every human pathogen will be in that database. Personally doubt it'll be in our lifetimes, but I would like to be proven wrong.


With plant vaccines... you only have access to the latter vaccine type. Which means in order to deploy them you first have to identify the perfected protein (which requires *massive* research with no guarantee of success), then genetically modify the vaccine plant to produce that one protein (also no guarantee of success).

That said- when they finally get it working, it will be *magic*. Chances are good plant vaccines will be absurdly cheap, easy to transport, require only the labwork in order to cultivate and ship the origin plants (at which point, any hydroponics garden can do the rest), be orders of magnitude easier to store (big problem with all vaccines- they have a pathetic shelf life), and there's reason to believe most of them would be *edible*.

That's right... in the future, the cure to rabies and ebola could be in the form of children's chewable vitamins. And cost about the same.


Buuut... we've got a few decades to wait for that point. As of right now, the cultivation method is often the only method. Especially for mutative viruses like influenza or novel diseases like the Wuhan virus.

 

[AllyDoodle]

It's currently 7:41 am and I am standing outside my local supermarket which is already packed.

Shit is getting ridiculous.

 

[Drak4806]

I had go pick up a prescription for my mother today and so much stuff is just cleaned out. Good thing I stocked up on everything over a month ago because I saw this happening. People called me crazy but look at where we are now

 

[Coffeexy]

Fortunately the hoarders and panic buyers around my way aren't early risers. They usually don't tend to start picking the shelves clean in their mad trolley dashes until around after lunchtime so sane shop-goers like myself have plenty of time to get our daily essentials in.

 

[d.fish]

Having gone through this for the last 2 months.

Hm.

 

[Jiven]

Second day of confinement in France. Some are being clever, some are stupid.

 

[Guardian Box]

Here in Poland stores are working shorter hours, limited amount of customers allowed at once. Bars and restaurants closed except for takeouts.

Many factories slowing down production or closing down for a few weeks entirely. Industrial material and resources shortages happening since international transport is being impeded.

I'm hoping a full quarantine happens on March 20th, just in time for Doom Eternal to come out.

 

[RACIST SKELETON MAN]

I hate that everything is all fucked up because some idiot decided a bat looked tasty.

 

[tehelgee]

-snip long post-

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It should be mentioned that's not the only video he talks about vaccines in. Check his recent videos, always at the end of the video.

 

[seeing_octarine]

The coronavirus isn't a flu. Influenza viruses aren't even in the same phylum.

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COVID-19 is actually a particularly nasty variation on the common cold. But then, the common cold is caused by a variety of viruses (mostly rhinovirus, but also coronavirus, influenza virus, etc) and so is rather imprecisely named.

I hate that everything is all fucked up because some idiot decided a bat looked tasty.

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More like because China can't be bothered to enforce food safety laws for meat markets. The same thing used to happen centuries ago in Europe before we learned better.

 

[OverReactionGuy]

It's going to be pretty much impossible for me to tell if I get the virus unless I get the really serious symptoms like death.

Because I had to deal with shit that has practically the same symptoms my entire life so I wouldn't be able to know if it's just that acting up again or the virus. >.>

I also hate the panic buyers but who doesn't?

 

[Guardian Box]

I also hate the panic buyers but who doesn't?

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The sellers.

 

[TanaNari]

The sellers.

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Actually, most of the distribution companies have been trying to get people to buy *less*. Probably because they know in the long run it won't affect their bottom line. People hoarding toilet paper just means it's difficult to distribute toilet paper to keep up, not that people will buy more of the stuff in the long run.

And it's far, far too early in the fiscal season for them to be able to use the artificial sales bump for stock manipulation purposes. That's what Christmas is for.

If anything, the slump in sales later on (due to all the panic buyers sitting on stacks of goods that they'll be using for the next few months) is going to hurt them more overall.


Now... if this demand was a new normal rather than an artificial spike, they'd be shitting themselves in joy, but it's not.

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

The sellers.

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More the managers or CEO's, the cashiers doing the actual selling probably hate them (I'm aware that's kinda knit-picky, as you probably meant the company/business as a whole when you said seller *shrugs*).

 

[Lykaia]

More the managers or CEO's, the cashiers doing the actual selling probably hate them (I'm aware that's kinda knit-picky, as you probably meant the company/business as a whole when you said seller *shrugs*).

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Well, at least they still have a job which is more than quite a few people can say.

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

Well, at least they still have a job which is more than quite a few people can say.

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They also have to regularly come in contact with large amounts of potentially infected people, so swings and roundabouts y'know.

 

[TanaNari]

They also have to regularly come in contact with large amounts of potentially infected people, so swings and roundabouts y'know.

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And most of them are old, which are the people the Wuhan virus kills the most.