General > General Technical Chat
Covid 19 virus
nctnico:
--- Quote from: vodka on March 18, 2020, 02:47:46 pm ---For the people still think the coranavirus only kill to elder people or than they have previous pathologies.
Today, a Military Policeman with 37 years old and without previous pathologies have dead.
--- End quote ---
Nobody ever claimed that younger people are not affected. The numbers however show that younger people have a significantly lower chance of dying from the Corona virus. Pointing out single cases is not helping anyone.
Bud:
--- Quote from: paulca on March 18, 2020, 02:40:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: Bud on March 18, 2020, 02:05:19 pm ---
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on March 18, 2020, 12:21:25 pm ---Politicians, and the health authorities have totally fucked it up almost everywhere; varying from a high, or even higher degree. But 99.99% of them are not actual experts.
--- End quote ---
But they say they are listening to experts. Take our PM Trudeau. When asked why he was so late with shutting off the border he said "I listened to experts". Guess where he is now. On quarantine at home.
--- End quote ---
Oh please tell us Lord almighty what should we do?
--- End quote ---
Follow our instincts. Do what WE think make sense and look ahead how events may unfold. It is not a rocket science. It was clear 2 weeks ago borders must be shut off here in North America, let alone in Europe.
DrG:
--- Quote from: Bud on March 18, 2020, 03:04:14 pm ---
--- Quote from: paulca on March 18, 2020, 02:40:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: Bud on March 18, 2020, 02:05:19 pm ---
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on March 18, 2020, 12:21:25 pm ---Politicians, and the health authorities have totally fucked it up almost everywhere; varying from a high, or even higher degree. But 99.99% of them are not actual experts.
--- End quote ---
But they say they are listening to experts. Take our PM Trudeau. When asked why he was so late with shutting off the border he said "I listened to experts". Guess where he is now. On quarantine at home.
--- End quote ---
Oh please tell us Lord almighty what should we do?
--- End quote ---
Follow our instincts. Do what WE think make sense and look ahead how events may unfold. It is not a rocket science. It was clear 2 weeks ago borders must be shut off here in North America, let alone in Europe.
--- End quote ---
What do we do when my instinct is different than your instinct?
Cerebus:
--- Quote from: VK3DRB on March 18, 2020, 09:55:15 am ---This university dropout with no medical qualifications whatsoever warned of the virus pandemic with incredible insight... 5 YEARS AGO!
--- End quote ---
Anybody who's been a regular reader of New Scientist or similar level-headed board science journals/magazine could have told you that this is a "not of, but when" situation. There have been calls for better emergency preparedness for a pandemic going back to the 1980s when I started reading New Scientist.
Cerebus:
--- Quote from: thinkfat on March 18, 2020, 10:16:23 am ---There's plans over here to systematically test blood bank samples for coronavirus immune globulines in order to assess the true spread of the virus.
--- End quote ---
That's a canny idea.
--- Quote ---Also, development is underway for a new type of tests that will deliver results in minutes instead of days. Works similar to a pregnancy test. These tests will not be as sensitive as the currently dominant RT-PCR test kits but it is known that the virus load in the throat is very high already when people start to complain about symptoms. These tests will be sensitive to the proteins of the virus' hull, not to the RNA. You need a higher concentration of virus material but as mentioned, that will not be a problem. Once produced in masses, they will immensely improve test coverage.
--- End quote ---
I'd imagine that more than one group started working on this as soon as it looked like SARS-Covid-2 was a problem. It's probably an ELISA test. They are relatively quick to develop, the trickiest bit is genetically engineering a bacterium or yeast to produce antibodies to the virus' coat proteins. The hard part is producing a DNA sequence to code for an antibody to the coat proteins, after that its just routine work that has been done for 100 ELISA tests before. It's easier to make an ELISA test that produces a colour change that's outside the visible spectrum, uses fully wet chemistry and needs an instrument to read the results (similar, ish, to blood glucose meters that take test strips). Producing one that indicates with a visible colour change and only uses dry chemistry (like pregnancy tests) is harder. So it's possible that we'll see a laboratory version quite some time before we'll see a 'field test'.
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