Covid The science behind Covid-19 - All you need to know

Interactive map of phylogency of Covid 19.

It also matters how many strains entered a country, and how early. Just click on country of choice and see the direction of the particular strain and then see the outflow.

https://nextstrain.org/ncov?d=tree&p=full&r=country

Am I reading this correctly?

Did one of the strains go from Belgium and then to Italy (bottom of chart)? Did another go to Italy from the UK?

It looks to me as if Covid 19 was already in Belgium in the beginning of January, and then went to the rest of Europe, yes?

If that's correct, did some delegation go to Wuhan in late December, early January? Or vice versa? Or just the normal travel between countries?
 
A new study by Johns Hopkins researchers and explained in The Economist suggests that Covid-19 may have spread much faster than thought because:

1) the percentage of asymptomatic people is higher than originally expected
2) the number of people reporting flu-like symptoms outside the flu season was much higher than official Covid-19 cases suggest

They conclude that it's good news as the fatality rate would then be 0.1%, similar to that of flu.
 
A new study by Johns Hopkins researchers and explained in The Economist suggests that Covid-19 may have spread much faster than thought because:

1) the percentage of asymptomatic people is higher than originally expected

2) the number of people reporting flu-like symptoms outside the flu season was much higher than official Covid-19 cases suggest
They conclude that it's good news as the fatality rate would then be 0.1%, similar to that of flu.
Great news!

One more:

Many people may already have immunity to coronavirus, German study finds
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ready-have-immunity-coronavirus-german-study/

"Lots of people may have been infected without knowing it and that means the lockdown could soon be lifted, scientists in Germany say."
 
According to the French news website Futura-Sciences, 83% of Coronavirus patients in need of resuscitation in France are overweight or obese. The Guardian already announced 2 weeks ago that in the UK 70% of Corona patients in ICU were overweight or obese. So it would seem that excess weight is a major risk factor - possibly the most aggravating factor along with old age.
 
With a German study showing that in one of the hardest hit areas in Germany the percentage of the population with antibodies is only approximately 15%, as was the case in the study in Lombardia, it's going to have to be a very staggered and different looking emergence, I think.
 
More contagious and faster spreading than anyone thought...

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article

"[FONT=&quot]Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is the causative agent of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease pandemic. Initial estimates of the early dynamics of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, suggested a doubling time of the number of infected persons of 6–7 days and a basic reproductive number (R[/FONT][FONT=&quot]0[/FONT][FONT=&quot]) of 2.2–2.7. We collected extensive individual case reports across China and estimated key epidemiologic parameters, including the incubation period. We then designed 2 mathematical modeling approaches to infer the outbreak dynamics in Wuhan by using high-resolution domestic travel and infection data. Results show that the doubling time early in the epidemic in Wuhan was 2.3–3.3 days. Assuming a serial interval of 6–9 days, we calculated a median R[/FONT][FONT=&quot]0[/FONT][FONT=&quot] value of 5.7 (95% CI 3.8–8.9). We further show that active surveillance, contact tracing, quarantine, and early strong social distancing efforts are needed to stop transmission of the virus."[/FONT]
 
According to the French news website Futura-Sciences, 83% of Coronavirus patients in need of resuscitation in France are overweight or obese. The Guardian already announced 2 weeks ago that in the UK 70% of Corona patients in ICU were overweight or obese. So it would seem that excess weight is a major risk factor - possibly the most aggravating factor along with old age.

Same data % of Obese with this Disease in the USA ...................but they avoid the word obese and use the outcomes of diseases/illnesses that obesity brings/creates, ie, diabetics etc
 
See:

The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women review – bold study of chromosomal advantage

"Sharon Moalem offers an intriguing theory on how two X chromosomes give women the edge in everything from colour vision to coronavirus"

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...en-review-bold-study-of-chromosomal-advantage

Did we need a study?

Just kidding. :)

Yes, it's been shown to be a factor for a lot of diseases.

What people need to keep in mind is that for women, one of the X chromosomes comes from her father's mother, so she's getting alleles from the whole spectrum of her ancestry even on the X chromosomes.

Also interesting from some recent studies is that there's some transference from the X as well.

All of it makes tracing the "source" of the "good" alleles very challenging.
 
Did we need a study?

Just kidding. :)

Yes, it's been shown to be a factor for a lot of diseases.

What people need to keep in mind is that for women, one of the X chromosomes comes from her father's mother, so she's getting alleles from the whole spectrum of her ancestry even on the X chromosomes.

Also interesting from some recent studies is that there's some transference from the X as well.

All of it makes tracing the "source" of the "good" alleles very challenging.
Angela, I believe most of men would - and should - agree that it's indeed the better half. ;)

I just didn't undestand the part in bold. Could you explain it, in short?
 
Angela, I believe most of men would - and should - agree that it's indeed the better half. ;)

I just didn't undestand the part in bold. Could you explain it, in short?

I'm not at all sure about better, but stronger in terms of health, more long lived, as an average, yes. :)

I don't know if the science on this has changed, but these are notes I made for myself a good while ago as to what goes on during the production of the egg and the sperm. I'm sure you know most if not all of it, but here it goes...

The female body doesn't just pick one of its two X chromosomes to go into the egg. A unique X chromosome is made because the two X chromosomes swap some DNA or recombine. Damaged genes on the X are fixed in this way.

If this is still correct, the y chromosome also goes through a sort of recombination. It can do that because within itself it contains a second copy of its most important genes, and it can use these, which are a palindrome set, to try to correct any errors. In addition, there were papers which found that about 5% of the y matches pretty well with the X and recombine at those sites, also trying to repair errors.

However, none of this is as good at getting rid of errors as having two whole X chromosomes for recombination.

The way this was explained in the things that I read is that the lack of another whole chromosome with which to recombine when making sperm is the reason why the y has shrunk in size over time.

Anyway, that's the way I understood it.

When I first got interested in this discipline, one of the most difficult things for me was grasping how many female ancestors could be in my X chromosomes, not only from my mother's side, but from my father's side.

To track inheritance through the X would be a mind boggling task.
 
I'm not at all sure about better, but stronger in terms of health, more long lived, as an average, yes. :)

I don't know if the science on this has changed, but these are notes I made for myself a good while ago as to what goes on during the production of the egg and the sperm. I'm sure you know most if not all of it, but here it goes...

The female body doesn't just pick one of its two X chromosomes to go into the egg. A unique X chromosome is made because the two X chromosomes swap some DNA or recombine. Damaged genes on the X are fixed in this way.

If this is still correct, the y chromosome also goes through a sort of recombination. It can do that because within itself it contains a second copy of its most important genes, and it can use these, which are a palindrome set, to try to correct any errors. In addition, there were papers which found that about 5% of the y matches pretty well with the X and recombine at those sites, also trying to repair errors.

However, none of this is as good at getting rid of errors as having two whole X chromosomes for recombination.

The way this was explained in the things that I read is that the lack of another whole chromosome with which to recombine when making sperm is the reason why the y has shrunk in size over time.

Anyway, that's the way I understood it.

When I first got interested in this discipline, one of the most difficult things for me was grasping how many female ancestors could be in my X chromosomes, not only from my mother's side, but from my father's side.

To track inheritance through the X would be a mind boggling task.
Thanks. Got what you meant now. You were referring mainly to the limited recombination between Y and X, or more specifically between their pseudoautosomal regions (which have genes, btw).

Yeah, X inheritance is interesting. Below two images that represent it nicely, shared by yourself time ago. :)

X chromosome inheritance for a female:
image042.jpg


X chromosome inheritance for a male:
X-Chromosome+fan+chart+male+-+from+Blaine+300dpi.tif
 
See:
Alarmed as COVID patients' blood thickened, New York doctors try new treatments
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-blood-idUSKCN22421Z

So, neurodegenerative diseases and MS (from a paper on the other thread), and now strokes and kidney disease. I'd rather have the stroke, personally.

I'm struck by how they said the progression in the lung was almost as if the blood was too thick to move and circulate the air.

This is most certainly not the flu.

I don't know how this correlates with the preliminary testing in France showing nicotine (in patches or gum, not inhaled), is helpful. Nicotine increases heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing activity, so maybe it keeps the blood moving more, and more oxygen flowing, but I had always heard that it also leads to blood clots. Perhaps it isn't actually the nicotine which does that?

When the heck are they going to figure this out?

I started taking one baby aspirin a day a year or so ago on the doctor's orders. Maybe I'll take a regular one a day for a while.


This is probably part of the reason why the year to year jump in deaths is so much higher virtually everywhere than the number of semi-official covid deaths. People are dropping dead of strokes, heart attacks, kidney failture etc. Every deceased person should be tested for the presence of Covid and if it could have contributed, i.e. a bunch of young or relatively young people with no known risks suddenly having strokes and heart attacks, for example.
 
SARS-CoV-2 is thought to use ACE2 (rs4646127) as a cell receptor for viral entry. The French paper proposes that nicotine down regulates the activity of ACE2 in lung tissues, which means that cell receptors used by the coronavirus are clogged or covered by nicotine, thus preventing it from infecting the lung.

The relationship between nicotine and ACE2 has been explored in the framework of cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases [9]. Accordingly, in the ACE/ANG II/AT1R arm, nicotine increases the expression and/or activity of renin, ACE and AT1R, whereas in the compensatory ACE2/ANG-(1–7)/MasR arm, nicotine down regulates the expression and/or activity of ACE2 and AT2R, thus suggesting a possible contribution of acetylcholine receptors in ACE2 regulation. This possibility has not yet been explored in the framework of viral neuroinfections.

In conclusion, we propose, and try to justify, the hypothesis that nAChRs play a critical role in the pathophysiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection and as a consequence propose nicotine and nicotinic orthosteric and/or allosteric agents as a possible therapy for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Interestingly, ivermectin, which has been recently shown to inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cells in vitro [53], is a positive allosteric modulator of a7 nAChR [54]. The nicotinic hypothesis might be further challenged by additional clinical studies and by experimental observations determining whether SARS-CoV-2 physically interacts with the nAChR in vitro, for instance by electrophysiological recordings, high resolution EM and by animal model studies. Further work should also specify the still enigmatic relationships between ACE2 and nAChRs in the nervous system.

https://www.qeios.com/read/article/571
 
SARS-CoV-2 is thought to use ACE2 (rs4646127) as a cell receptor for viral entry. The French paper proposes that nicotine down regulates the activity of ACE2 in lung tissues, which means that cell receptors used by the coronavirus are clogged or covered by nicotine, thus preventing it from infecting the lung.

Thanks, Third Term.

I'm not sure if this is right, but I think I remember they were giving it to some health care workers? What would be the effect of downregulating this activity in the lung?
 

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