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Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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Saw a reference earlier to Italy "not reporting nursing home deaths". I have no idea whether that's true or not, but I do know that only 2% of Italian seniors are in assisted living facilities, compared to more than 5% in the U.S. Most of their elderly population lives with their adult children (for better or worse). 

I make no judgment on how that has affected (for good or ill) their response to COVID19, but I do know that it makes for much better movie subplots.

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3 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

There’s cheap labor elsewhere in the world. 
hey baby! You got manufacturing facility Vietnam?

Vietnam is under Chinese influence these days.

@Hate's Monroe Doctrine is the best for manufacturing. There are hardly any Asian countries I would trust for manufacturing because China owns most countries in Asia though the Belt and Road initiative.

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1 hour ago, aggie08 said:

When this is all over, I really want to see a comparison between traffic deaths now and at this time last year. Maybe we incidentally save more than we lose. Winning?

Deaths attributed to pollution will be down as well. WHO estimate is about 4.6 million per year die due to pollution, or roughly 12,600 per day.

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2 minutes ago, Walden Ponderer said:

Saw a reference earlier to Italy "not reporting nursing home deaths". I have no idea whether that's true or not, but I do know that only 2% of Italian seniors are in assisted living facilities, compared to more than 5% in the U.S. Most of their elderly population lives with their adult children (for better or worse). 

I make no judgment on how that has affected (for good or ill) their response to COVID19, but I do know that it makes for much better movie subplots.

The Italian Job?

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1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

There’s cheap labor elsewhere in the world. 
hey baby! You got manufacturing facility Vietnam?

Companies are starting to do this, and they are to be applauded.

China has 1.3B people willing to work shit hours for shit wages. This is how the world is able to keep manufacturing costs so low, because if some dude doesn't want to work 12 hours days 6 days a week making shit wages, there are 10 more behind him willing to.

I fully embrace the idea of giving the middle finger to China. In practice, it's going to be much harder.

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1 minute ago, UDontKnow said:

Vietnam is under Chinese influence these days.

@Hate's Monroe Doctrine is the best for manufacturing. There are hardly any Asian countries I would trust for manufacturing because China owns most countries in Asia though the Belt and Road initiative.

Agreed. Get Latin America going, improve the livelihood there, and cut down on transportation costs/impact. Hmmmm.... 

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1 hour ago, BrazilHorn said:

It really is incredible how the labor market went from a complete "Sellers Market" with all negotiating power/leverage on the side of the employee to a "Buyers Market" where all the power and leverage is with the companies hiring over the past couple of weeks.

Just crazy shit.

I don't think that is an accurate description of the previous labor market at all.

In fact, I doubt anybody who has been paying attention to the US economy is surprised by how fragile the job market is for so many. Too actually see the scale of this dip, in real time, in unemployment is mind blowing though.

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15 minutes ago, Skipper said:

Have you heard anything regarding lag time for test results for your colleagues?  Anecdotally, it seems like for ordinary joes getting test in dr. offices or even the official site, results are lagging up to a week and maybe more.  But potentially quicker (within a day) for those admitted to hospitals, etc.  Curious what city employees are seeing.

I can’t say for certain. I don’t personally know anyone that has been tested. My guess is we are on the quick end of the scale but I don’t know. I do know it is imperative we identify and isolate/quarantine ourselves as soon as possible. Luckily the city has made that a priority and I think we have done a good job at keeping possible exposures home. I still feel like it is going to blowup sooner than later just due to the nature of having so many shared surfaces and close contacts. 

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1 hour ago, Somnio said:

I just want to say that I absolutely love when you post here at Surly.  Every single time it brightens my day, and reminds me that there's still something worth living for.  I mean that woman in your avatar's ass is just incredible.  Thank you kind sir.

I wonder if he ever nailed that crazy Dallas female cop who blew away that dude in his own apartment.

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2 minutes ago, Constant said:

I still feel like it is going to blowup sooner than later just due to the nature of having so many shared surfaces and close contacts. 

I knew there weren't many hot female officers, but I had no clue that's how y'all roll.

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15 minutes ago, pacman said:

I don't think that is an accurate description of the previous labor market at all.

In fact, I doubt anybody who has been paying attention to the US economy is surprised by how fragile the job market is for so many. Too actually see the scale of this dip, in real time, in unemployment is mind blowing though.

I could be skewed being in high tech but people were moving companies left and right. Now all hiring frozen etc etc

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1 minute ago, PittsburghTiger said:

https://www.pittwire.pitt.edu/news/covid-19-vaccine-candidate-shows-promise-first-peer-reviewed-research

 

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists announced a potential vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic. When tested in mice, the vaccine, delivered through a fingertip-sized patch, produces antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 at quantities thought to be sufficient for neutralizing the virus.

The paper appeared April 2 in eBioMedicine, which is published by The Lancet, and is the first study to be published after critique from fellow scientists at outside institutions that describes a candidate vaccine for COVID-19. The researchers were able to act quickly because they had already laid the groundwork during earlier coronavirus epidemics.   

“We had previous experience on SARS-CoV in 2003 and MERS-CoV in 2014. These two viruses, which are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, teach us that a particular protein, called a spike protein, is important for inducing immunity against the virus. We knew exactly where to fight this new virus,” said co-senior author Andrea Gambotto, associate professor of surgery at the Pitt School of Medicine. “That’s why it’s important to fund vaccine research. You never know where the next pandemic will come from.”

“Our ability to rapidly develop this vaccine was a result of scientists with expertise in diverse areas of research working together with a common goal,” said co-senior author Louis Falo, professor and chair of dermatology at Pitt’s School of Medicine and UPMC.

Compared to the experimental mRNA vaccine candidate that just entered clinical trials, the vaccine described in this paper—which the authors are calling PittCoVacc, short for Pittsburgh CoronaVirus Vaccine—follows a more established approach, using lab-made pieces of viral protein to build immunity. It’s the same way the current flu shots work.  

The researchers also used a novel approach to deliver the drug, called a microneedle array, to increase potency. This array is a fingertip-sized patch of 400 tiny needles that delivers the spike protein pieces into the skin, where the immune reaction is strongest. The patch goes on like a Band-Aid and then the needles—which are made entirely of sugar and the protein pieces—simply dissolve into the skin.

“We developed this to build on the original scratch method used to deliver the smallpox vaccine to the skin, but as a high-tech version that is more efficient and reproducible patient to patient,” Falo said. “And it’s actually pretty painless—it feels kind of like Velcro.”

The system is also highly scalable. The protein pieces are manufactured by a “cell factory”—layers upon layers of cultured cells engineered to express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein—that can be stacked further to multiply yield. Purifying the protein can also be done at industrial scale. Mass-producing the microneedle array involves spinning down the protein-sugar mixture into a mold using a centrifuge. Once manufactured, the vaccine can sit at room temperature until it’s needed, eliminating the need for refrigeration during transport or storage.

“For most vaccines, you don’t need to address scalability to begin with,” Gambotto said. “But when you try to develop a vaccine quickly against a pandemic that’s the first requirement.”

When tested in mice, PittCoVacc generated a surge of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 within two weeks of the microneedle prick.

Those animals haven’t been tracked long term yet, but the researchers point out that mice who got their MERS-CoV vaccine produced a sufficient level of antibodies to neutralize the virus for at least a year, and so far the antibody levels of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccinated animals seem to be following the same trend.

Importantly, the SARS-CoV-2 microneedle vaccine maintains its potency even after being thoroughly sterilized with gamma radiation—a key step toward making a product that’s suitable for use in humans.

The authors are now in the process of applying for an investigational new drug (IND) approval from the Food and Drug Administration in anticipation of starting a phase I human clinical trial in the next few months.

“Testing in patients would typically require at least a year and probably longer,” Falo said. “This particular situation is different from anything we’ve ever seen, so we don’t know how long the clinical development process will take. Recently announced revisions to the normal processes suggest we may be able to advance this faster.”

Additional authors on the study are Eun Kim, Geza Erdos, Shaohua Huang, Thomas Kenniston, Stephen Balmert, Cara Donahue Carey, Michael Epperly, William Klimstra and Emrullah Korkmaz, all of Pitt; and Bart Haagmans, of Erasmus Medical Center.

Funding for this study was provided by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant R21-AI114264, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases grants R01-AR074285, R01-AR071277 and R01-AR068249, and National Cancer Institute grant T32-CA175294.

Media Contact: 

Erin Hare HareE@upmc.edu 412-864-7194 | 412-738-1097

Technically, I actually like this approach. Probably, one of the better ones that I have seen. The only downside is that I haven't seen many vaccines developed that have such a limited protein target. The upside to this approach is that it should limit the potential bad outcomes because of its specificity.

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19 minutes ago, pacman said:

Deaths attributed to pollution will be down as well. WHO estimate is about 4.6 million per year die due to pollution, or roughly 12,600 per day.

Both my grandfathers and 3 cousins have their official cause of death listed as “pollution”

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8 minutes ago, Hanrahan said:

I wonder if he ever nailed that crazy Dallas female cop who blew away that dude in his own apartment.

Oh yeah, for sure.

The other little known rule of the thin blue line states all officers of the opposite sex in the same department must bang at least once.

At least that's what I've always imagined.

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28 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

everyone says this but no one is going to do this in practice. everything will be more expensive. US consumers created china.

we wanted cheaper shit, they provided the cheap labor which enabled us to mass buy cheap shit.

China is the intermediate supply chain a lot of times.  the OEM's will do final build steps in US and sometimes Mexico boarder to meet certain requirements

in other words you never really know if you are buying China.  LG is Korean but they have manufacturing in China for a portion of their TV.

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3 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Technically, I actually like this approach. Probably, one of the better ones that I have seen. The only downside is that I haven't seen many vaccines developed that have such a limited protein target. The upside to this approach is that it should limit the potential bad outcomes because of its specificity.

Hopefully something comes of it. Pitt really is a fantastic university, with shitty weather for about 5 months, with a top-shelf medical school. My dad was a freshman in medical school when Dr. Salk developed the polio vaccine.

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I live in a condo complex. 2 days ago a guy from the landscaping team knocked on my door. I talked to him out of my window that's close to the front door. Cuz, you know, covid and all. He asks me to move my car so they can park their trailer closer to throw in some tree limbs. My car was parked in a regular parking spot. I was pissed and told him to fuck off. I couldn't believe this fuckstick actually did this. 

This fucking asshole just knocked on my door again 3 times presumably to ask again. I didn't answer but I'm sitting here in absolute disbelief at this shit. Am I just a hot headed, unhinged asshole or is this fuckwad  completely out of line?

I'm not ok with my closest friends knocking on my door unannounced in the most normal circumstances, let alone some lazy ass motherfucker that wants to get his trailer 5 feet closer to make his job easier when people are dropping like flies all over the world because of close contact with other people. 

I might plunk this cocksucker in the ass with my bb gun out of the window all day. 

 

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1 minute ago, BBQ2Bayou said:

I live in a condo complex. 2 days ago a guy from the landscaping team knocked on my door. I talked to him out of my window that's close to the front door. Cuz, you know, covid and all. He asks me to move my car so they can park their trailer closer to throw in some tree limbs. My car was parked in a regular parking spot. I was pissed and told him to fuck off. I couldn't believe this fuckstick actually did this. 

This fucking asshole just knocked on my door again 3 times presumably to ask again. I didn't answer but I'm sitting here in absolute disbelief at this shit. Am I just a hot headed, unhinged asshole or is this fuckwad  completely out of line?

I'm not ok with my closest friends knocking on my door unannounced in the most normal circumstances, let alone some lazy ass motherfucker that wants to get his trailer 5 feet closer to make his job easier when people are dropping like flies all over the world because of close contact with other people. 

I might plunk this cocksucker in the ass with my bb gun out of the window all day. 

 

Flat tires, and or masa in your gas tank is a given at this point.

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35 minutes ago, pacman said:

Deaths attributed to pollution will be down as well. WHO estimate is about 4.6 million per year die due to pollution, or roughly 12,600 per day.

holy shit really ?  12K per day   We need to shut the world down permanently to flatten the curve.  :/

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4 minutes ago, BBQ2Bayou said:

I live in a condo complex. 2 days ago a guy from the landscaping team knocked on my door. I talked to him out of my window that's close to the front door. Cuz, you know, covid and all. He asks me to move my car so they can park their trailer closer to throw in some tree limbs. My car was parked in a regular parking spot. I was pissed and told him to fuck off. I couldn't believe this fuckstick actually did this. 

This fucking asshole just knocked on my door again 3 times presumably to ask again. I didn't answer but I'm sitting here in absolute disbelief at this shit. Am I just a hot headed, unhinged asshole or is this fuckwad  completely out of line?

I'm not ok with my closest friends knocking on my door unannounced in the most normal circumstances, let alone some lazy ass motherfucker that wants to get his trailer 5 feet closer to make his job easier when people are dropping like flies all over the world because of close contact with other people. 

I might plunk this cocksucker in the ass with my bb gun out of the window all day. 

 

You sound like the asshole to me, but hey what do you expect on surly...

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26 minutes ago, PittsburghTiger said:

https://www.pittwire.pitt.edu/news/covid-19-vaccine-candidate-shows-promise-first-peer-reviewed-research

 

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists announced a potential vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic. When tested in mice, the vaccine, delivered through a fingertip-sized patch, produces antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 at quantities thought to be sufficient for neutralizing the virus.

The paper appeared April 2 in eBioMedicine, which is published by The Lancet, and is the first study to be published after critique from fellow scientists at outside institutions that describes a candidate vaccine for COVID-19. The researchers were able to act quickly because they had already laid the groundwork during earlier coronavirus epidemics.   

“We had previous experience on SARS-CoV in 2003 and MERS-CoV in 2014. These two viruses, which are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, teach us that a particular protein, called a spike protein, is important for inducing immunity against the virus. We knew exactly where to fight this new virus,” said co-senior author Andrea Gambotto, associate professor of surgery at the Pitt School of Medicine. “That’s why it’s important to fund vaccine research. You never know where the next pandemic will come from.”

“Our ability to rapidly develop this vaccine was a result of scientists with expertise in diverse areas of research working together with a common goal,” said co-senior author Louis Falo, professor and chair of dermatology at Pitt’s School of Medicine and UPMC.

Compared to the experimental mRNA vaccine candidate that just entered clinical trials, the vaccine described in this paper—which the authors are calling PittCoVacc, short for Pittsburgh CoronaVirus Vaccine—follows a more established approach, using lab-made pieces of viral protein to build immunity. It’s the same way the current flu shots work.  

The researchers also used a novel approach to deliver the drug, called a microneedle array, to increase potency. This array is a fingertip-sized patch of 400 tiny needles that delivers the spike protein pieces into the skin, where the immune reaction is strongest. The patch goes on like a Band-Aid and then the needles—which are made entirely of sugar and the protein pieces—simply dissolve into the skin.

“We developed this to build on the original scratch method used to deliver the smallpox vaccine to the skin, but as a high-tech version that is more efficient and reproducible patient to patient,” Falo said. “And it’s actually pretty painless—it feels kind of like Velcro.”

The system is also highly scalable. The protein pieces are manufactured by a “cell factory”—layers upon layers of cultured cells engineered to express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein—that can be stacked further to multiply yield. Purifying the protein can also be done at industrial scale. Mass-producing the microneedle array involves spinning down the protein-sugar mixture into a mold using a centrifuge. Once manufactured, the vaccine can sit at room temperature until it’s needed, eliminating the need for refrigeration during transport or storage.

“For most vaccines, you don’t need to address scalability to begin with,” Gambotto said. “But when you try to develop a vaccine quickly against a pandemic that’s the first requirement.”

When tested in mice, PittCoVacc generated a surge of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 within two weeks of the microneedle prick.

Those animals haven’t been tracked long term yet, but the researchers point out that mice who got their MERS-CoV vaccine produced a sufficient level of antibodies to neutralize the virus for at least a year, and so far the antibody levels of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccinated animals seem to be following the same trend.

Importantly, the SARS-CoV-2 microneedle vaccine maintains its potency even after being thoroughly sterilized with gamma radiation—a key step toward making a product that’s suitable for use in humans.

The authors are now in the process of applying for an investigational new drug (IND) approval from the Food and Drug Administration in anticipation of starting a phase I human clinical trial in the next few months.

“Testing in patients would typically require at least a year and probably longer,” Falo said. “This particular situation is different from anything we’ve ever seen, so we don’t know how long the clinical development process will take. Recently announced revisions to the normal processes suggest we may be able to advance this faster.”

Additional authors on the study are Eun Kim, Geza Erdos, Shaohua Huang, Thomas Kenniston, Stephen Balmert, Cara Donahue Carey, Michael Epperly, William Klimstra and Emrullah Korkmaz, all of Pitt; and Bart Haagmans, of Erasmus Medical Center.

Funding for this study was provided by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant R21-AI114264, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases grants R01-AR074285, R01-AR071277 and R01-AR068249, and National Cancer Institute grant T32-CA175294.

Media Contact: 

Erin Hare HareE@upmc.edu 412-864-7194 | 412-738-1097

UPMC kicks ass.  Getting published in Lancet is no joke.  We can cut clinical trials down significantly too as far as time needed.  I'd think 6 months is still as low as you can go and have the appropriate safety issues covered. 

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49 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

There’s cheap labor elsewhere in the world. 
hey baby! You got manufacturing facility Vietnam?

Or...how about we keep it in the same hemisphere:
 

Hola bebe ¿Tienes instalaciones de fabricación en México?

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17 minutes ago, BBQ2Bayou said:

I live in a condo complex. 2 days ago a guy from the landscaping team knocked on my door. I talked to him out of my window that's close to the front door. Cuz, you know, covid and all. He asks me to move my car so they can park their trailer closer to throw in some tree limbs. My car was parked in a regular parking spot. I was pissed and told him to fuck off. I couldn't believe this fuckstick actually did this. 

This fucking asshole just knocked on my door again 3 times presumably to ask again. I didn't answer but I'm sitting here in absolute disbelief at this shit. Am I just a hot headed, unhinged asshole or is this fuckwad  completely out of line?

I'm not ok with my closest friends knocking on my door unannounced in the most normal circumstances, let alone some lazy ass motherfucker that wants to get his trailer 5 feet closer to make his job easier when people are dropping like flies all over the world because of close contact with other people. 

I might plunk this cocksucker in the ass with my bb gun out of the window all day. 

 

 

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Moving the car seems like a pretty easy thing to do to make some else's life a little easier.  Especially when their work has a positive effect on your place.  I'm an asshole too sometimes but there's a time and place for it and that seems pretty trivial.  

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4 minutes ago, Your Mom said:

Moving the car seems like a pretty easy thing to do to make some else's life a little easier.  Especially when their work has a positive effect on your place.  I'm an asshole too sometimes but there's a time and place for it and that seems pretty trivial.  

Well there's a real principle involved here. 

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31 minutes ago, BBQ2Bayou said:

I live in a condo complex. 2 days ago a guy from the landscaping team knocked on my door. I talked to him out of my window that's close to the front door. Cuz, you know, covid and all. He asks me to move my car so they can park their trailer closer to throw in some tree limbs. My car was parked in a regular parking spot. I was pissed and told him to fuck off. I couldn't believe this fuckstick actually did this. 

This fucking asshole just knocked on my door again 3 times presumably to ask again. I didn't answer but I'm sitting here in absolute disbelief at this shit. Am I just a hot headed, unhinged asshole or is this fuckwad  completely out of line?

I'm not ok with my closest friends knocking on my door unannounced in the most normal circumstances, let alone some lazy ass motherfucker that wants to get his trailer 5 feet closer to make his job easier when people are dropping like flies all over the world because of close contact with other people. 

I might plunk this cocksucker in the ass with my bb gun out of the window all day. 

 

Sounds like you need one of those coldies I was referencing 

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37 minutes ago, PittsburghTiger said:

Hopefully something comes of it. Pitt really is a fantastic university, with shitty weather for about 5 months, with a top-shelf medical school. My dad was a freshman in medical school when Dr. Salk developed the polio vaccine.

My grandfather went to med school at Pitt. Graduated sometime in the 30's. Hits close to home (not really)

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Deaths attributed to pollution will be down as well. WHO estimate is about 4.6 million per year die due to pollution, or roughly 12,600 per day.

That won't be apples to apples because pollution deaths typically stem from conditions like athsma, cancer, whatever. It isn't people just walking outside the door and choking to death. At least outside of Houston.
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  • hayden_horn changed the title to Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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