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Yes, saw that Irish study.
Though somewhat counterintuitively the Mediterranean countries often have worse Vit D deficiency than the Northern European countries.
Can I suggest you add Dr Shiva to your research.
Speaking of Vitamin D:-
As reviewed in an earlier article, long before SARS-CoV-2 became part of everyday life, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), believed vitamin C and D were important strategies for enhancing your body's immune system. Just four years ago, he was interviewed by a reporter from Washingtonian on how to avoid getting sick.
He explained the importance of washing your hands, clipping your nails and getting enough sleep. A fourth strategy he discussed was using vitamin C and D supplements:30
"It can enhance your body's defense against microbes. I take 1,000 milligrams a day. Many people also do not get enough vitamin D, which affects a lot of body functions, so that would be helpful, too."
In the current pandemic, the U.S. has placed inexpensive, patent-free nutritional supplements in second place to drugs and vaccines, which come with a high price tag in addition to unwelcome side effects.
In a more recent interview with RealClearPolitics, Fauci appeared to hedge his opinion. He stressed the viability of vitamin C as an antioxidant that's "essentially totally harmless unless you take in a ridiculous amount."
But when asked whether vitamin D might mitigate some respiratory infections, he said: there's "no definitive proof." He did point out, though, that you're not likely to get hurt by it.31 Still, his answers suggest an unwillingness to admit vitamin D plays a proven and important role in infectious disease.
Might Fauci's backpedaling on vitamins C and D have anything to do with the fact that he serves on the Leadership Council for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Vaccine Action Plan? He describes his litmus test for safety and effectiveness as being tied to randomized control trials:32
"That's why you keep hearing me over and over again saying the best optimal way is to do a randomized control trial to determine as quickly as possible whether something works, and if it does, get it out there. If it doesn't, get it off the table."
In what appears contradictory to this statement, Fauci said a vaccine may be released in the next 12 to 18 months.33 However, the standard steps to develop a relatively "safe" vaccine averages five years. It begins with two to four years of laboratory research, followed by one to two years of preclinical studies, and then Phase I, II and III trials.34
Yes. Agree with that. They need to demonstrate that the handful of patients with IDH mutation were spread across both arms at approx the same percentage. And they probably were, because of the matching age stratification across arms.
And you would hope that treatment / control OS delta would be broadly the same for the 5% mutated as it is for the 95% wildtype.
(I could see a narky regulator suggesting that because of the small mutated numbers, the treatment effect has only been properly demonstrated on wild type. Which could possibly mean approval for the 95% and not the 5%. But unlikely.)
Most of the best critiques of the EF-14 trial that were posted here were also authored here!
But here's one by Timothy Cloughesy where he very politely questions the trial and its outcome. And he basically concludes that it should not become part of established SOC.
https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/5464445
And here's one by our old friend Wolfgang Wick which is slightly less polite, but raises the same doubts basically:-
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767251/
It's not that important really for the trial.
The likelihood is that 95% of trial subjects are wildtype.
And the 5% with IDH mutation are way too small a group to draw any meaningful conclusions.
They said as much two years ago in JTM:-
The mutation status of the IDH1 gene has not yet been investigated for this trial, as this factor was not included in trial designs a decade ago when this trial began. It will be collected and analyzed later, but is unlikely to explain the overall survival results, as the mutation associated with prolonged survival occurs in less than 10% of newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients
Studies have shown that selenium is important in the stimulation of antibodies, which are elements of the immune system that seek out and destroy viral, bacterial, fungal, and protozoan foreign bodies that result in diseases and infections. It is said to help stimulate these antibodies, particularly after you receive a vaccination for one of these diseases, making your body resilient and experienced in fighting them off so you remain healthy and protected throughout your life.
Should anyone be interested, Cobra Biologics (owned by Cognate) is part of the consortium with probably the lead vaccine candidate in the UK.
And now that consortium has signed up with Astra Zeneca:-
AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford today announced an agreement for the global development and distribution of the University’s potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine aimed at preventing COVID-19 infection from SARS-CoV-2.
The collaboration aims to bring to patients the potential vaccine, being developed by the Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group, at the University of Oxford. Under the agreement, AstraZeneca would be responsible for development and worldwide manufacturing and distribution of the vaccine if the clinical trials prove successful in showing the vaccine is effective.
Pascal Soriot, Chief Executive Officer, AstraZeneca, said: “As COVID-19 continues its grip on the world, the need for a vaccine to defeat the virus is urgent. This collaboration brings together the University of Oxford’s world-class expertise in vaccinology and AstraZeneca’s global development, manufacturing and distribution capabilities. Our hope is that, by joining forces, we can accelerate the globalisation of a vaccine to combat the virus and protect people from the deadliest pandemic in a generation.”
Mene Pangalos, Executive Vice President, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca, said: “The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca have a longstanding relationship to advance basic research and we are hugely excited to be working with them on advancing a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 around the world. We are looking forward to working with the University of Oxford and innovative companies such as Vaccitech, as part of our new partnership.”
Alok Sharma, UK Business Secretary, said: “This collaboration between Oxford University and AstraZeneca is a vital step that could help rapidly advance the manufacture of a coronavirus vaccine. It will also ensure that, should the vaccine being developed by Oxford University’s Jenner Institute work, it will be available as early as possible, helping to protect thousands of lives from this disease.”
Professor Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, said: “Our partnership with AstraZeneca will be a major force in the struggle against pandemics for many years to come. We believe that together we will be in a strong position to start immunising against coronavirus once we have an effective approved vaccine. Sadly, the risk of new pandemics will always be with us and the new research centre will enhance the world’s preparedness and our speed of reaction the next time we face such a challenge.”
A chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine vector (ChAdOx1), developed at Oxford’s Jenner Institute, was chosen as the most suitable vaccine technology for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine as it can generate a strong immune response from one dose and it is not a replicating virus, so it cannot cause an ongoing infection in the vaccinated individual. This also makes it safer to give to children, the elderly and anyone with a pre-existing condition such as diabetes. Chimpanzee adenoviral vectors are a very well-studied vaccine type, having been used safely in thousands of subjects, from 1 week to 90 years of age, in vaccines targeting over 10 different diseases.
I do hope all trial data query resolution can be achieved by online means.
UK (unenviable combination of lockdown and highest deaths in Europe) announces all incoming flight passengers have to go into 14 day mandatory quarantine. Tens of thousands have flown in during the lockdown with no such restriction. So restrictions are now being ratcheted up.
Such a curious way of going about things.
UK airports suggested that a mandatory quarantine "would not only have a devastating impact on the UK aviation industry, but also on the wider economy".
And the quarantine measure will 'kill air travel'
This is proposed from the end of the month and to continue indefinitely...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uk-bring-14-day-quarantine-210008939.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52594023
Not quite the picture you painted...
Sweden may not have a need to implement such a crippling measure, when it makes a sensible pragmatic decision to re-open borders a month or two down the line.
Do you still believe that you can put the genie back in the bottle?
One hopes none of this adversely impacts NWBO's timeline, but one also has doubts about that.
It is interesting just why NY was hit with such a tragic tsunami.
I wonder how late they were in cancelling sporting events or pop concerts with large attendances.
A densely packed mass crowd who are maybe shouting or singing is the perfect cauldron for virus transmission.
As indeed is a crowded subway train.
Plus Broadway, of course.
Plus lots of incoming international air travellers into NY.
When and wherever social distancing was introduced, infections continued but at a a reduced rate.
Plus (and it's really only my hypothesis) you can get infected with the virus, but only with a small infection. (Maybe when you use a cash till and pick up a low level infection from using the keypad)
In other words, a small viral load.
(Very different to someone shouting in your ear at the Aqueduct racetrack, for example.)
And if your immune system is effective enough to handle a small viral load, you will be OK, and if you're young enough you will have minimal or no symptoms, but you will develop antibodies.
(Which is basically the principal behind many vaccines, where you receive an attenuated dose of the pathogen.)
Social distancing measures perhaps led to most new infections becoming mild ones because of low viral load.
And indeed use of masks was a very sensible idea from the outset.
But WHO advised against the general public using them.
As did the BBC in the UK...
I also think that maybe the virus is simply losing virulence over time.
ANY RESULTS OUT OF UCLA ON ITS DC VAX L/KEYTRUDA COMBO TRIAL ?
Personally I lean towards ending lockdowns in most of the west. It is way to widespread to be contained and I do not see a vaccine this year. While the damage cause by the lockdowns is very real.
That is .35% of the population, it does not matter how you count it. And we do not know as fact that it would not have been worse without the lockdown (though I accept the possibility that in places like NYC, N Italy and parts of Spain it has fully played out).
For those who have a hard time with math, that would be about 1M deaths in the US. About 250K in the UK.
Trial participants obviously still don't know what arm they were on.
Perhaps they will never be informed; I don't know what the protocol is around that.
And that's the main reason you don't hear.
Perhaps you missed the recent tweet from Kristyn about her Dad.
It’s almost golf season! Just getting Dad warmed up. Dad was dx with GBM in July 2014. Thanks $NWBO & #DCVax for another season ❤️ pic.twitter.com/tfOXVMa6Zn
— Kristyn Power, CFA (@KristynPower) May 7, 2020
He's not available right now.
Fauci started funding the Wuhan lab after the NIH placed a moratorium on studies of these 'gain of function' pathogens in the US, back in 2014.
From a ScienceMag report dated Dec 19th 2017:-
Concerns over so-called “gain-of-function” (GOF) studies that make pathogens more potent or likely to spread in people erupted in 2011, when Kawaoka’s team and Ron Fouchier’s lab at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, announced that they had modified the H5N1 bird flu virus to enable it to spread between ferrets. Such studies could help experts prepare for pandemics, but pose risks if the souped-up pathogen escapes the lab. After a long discussion, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) decided the two studies should be published and federal officials issued new oversight rules for certain H5N1 studies.
But U.S. officials grew uneasy after the publication of new GOF papers and several accidents in U.S. biocontainment labs. In October 2014, they announced an unprecedented “pause” on funding for 21 GOF studies of influenza, MERS, and severe acute respiratory syndrome viruses. (At the time, NIH said there were 18 paused studies.) NIH eventually exempted some studies found to pose relatively little risk. But eight influenza studies and three MERS projects remained on hold.
I wouldn't put it that strong myself.
Surely any CRO can avail themselves of someone who is at least in the right country.
And the lead investigators on both sides of the pond should be able to exert due influence to iron out unjustified delay.
But it only takes one officious high level hospital administrator to get in the way..
This time they laid out a fairly specific roadmap with target dates.
If the silence means they are bang on track, then great.
But if something does get in the way, they should tell us.
That's all.
Yes, it would be illogical.
But there are many things about the pandemic and the various governmental restrictions in response to it, that are, on the face of it, illogical.
All patient data is critical.
You can't unblind, and then catch upon the last few anomalies.
I'm only saying that I half (three quarters?) expect this to come into play.
But let's hope you're right, and I'm wide of the mark.
If this proves to be an underpromise / overdeliver scenario, rather than the other way round, then great.
In total harmony with you on this one, Flip.
They have previously stated that onsite visits are required in certain situations where they is an unresolved data query or anomaly.
(I imagine we are talking about the files of patients still currently alive. These will require updating right until the last minute.)
So whether you consider it an excuse or not, it's not a new one.
Hope you're proven right, Gary.
But I have my doubts.
I had the UK in mind, rather than the US. It only takes an outstanding data query on one patient.
I think you already have horseracing from Florida, don't you?
Though probably minus a crowd.
I really can't say that even a decade from now we won't still be getting over this pandemic.
Wonder why he is quoting a 10yr old study..
We won't know if poly ICLC is really such an effective adjuvant until it is in a properly controlled trial.
I did notice on the same twitter feed thingy that Kristyn's Dad is still doing just fine, which is very gratifying.
It’s almost golf season! Just getting Dad warmed up. Dad was dx with GBM in July 2014. Thanks $NWBO & #DCVax for another season ❤️ pic.twitter.com/tfOXVMa6Zn
— Kristyn Power, CFA (@KristynPower) May 7, 2020
Anyone speak with DI recently? Been three weeks since the ASM. Did someone here say that they expected more news prior to data lock?
In terms of effect on NWBO, I expect that lockdown regimes will cause some slippage in the timescale to datalock. And if that occurs, I hope the company will simply keep us informed accordingly, seeing as they have now given a fairly firm timescale leading to eventual TLD.
When I referred to a full range of test scenarios in the different States, my intended meaning was unclear.
I wasn't actually referring to comparative testing rates. I was referring to the different regimes of social distancing and / or lockdowns in the different States.
It's only in the final analysis, perhaps in 2 years time, that one can say which regime was most costly in terms of direct lives lost.
We already know that those States (or indeed those countries) with the strictest lockdown, will have the greatest economic devastation. And how do you calculate and factor in the longer term life years lost, due to a damaged economy and the resulting unprecedented unemployment?
You have to remember that most citizens who contract the virus never know they have it. Either because they are either entirely asymptomatic, or they have mild symptoms and simply don't get or aren't offered testing.
In the US you have approaching 1,300,000 cases. And cases just means those who have tested positive.
The actual number of cases at large in the community i.e. those who would test positive if tested, will be in the range of 10 to 30 times that.
In addition, it is now looking like large sections of populations simply have prior effective immunity (without any recourse to a vacccine). Basically this is children and adults with healthy immune systems. There is a clear and obvious linear correlation between age and Covid mortality.
There are several leading scientists, epidemiologists or virologists who argue against harsh lockdowns, and give the view that, in terms of ongoing public heath threat, in terms of mortality this may eventually become somewhat akin to seasonal flu.
Here is a Professor of Structural Biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, giving a view.
He describes lockdowns as 'a huge mistake', at the same time as advocating smart social distancing, basically using something like the Swedish model.
Increasing case numbers is not a bad thing per se.
Increasing deaths obviously is.
In Stockholm, they are approaching 30% infection rate.
As they approach 50%, deaths will increasingly decline due to herd immunity. The virus will have basically burnt itself out.
So in their case, high infection incidence is a good thing, (as long as at the same time you put better and better measures in place to protect those who are most likely to experience serious or life-threatening symptoms).
That's Stockholm. In the more rural, sparsely populated parts of Sweden, the infection wave will continue for a while and so will deaths.
So Stockholm will have zero issue with coming out of lockdown, precisely because they didn't have one in the first place.
The stricter the lockdown, the harder it is to exit.
It's why keeping the reproduction rate below 1 is ultimately a somewhat daft notion and not a good idea. How long do you artificially restrict transmission by a rigid lockdown?
Forever?
And relying on a vaccine is not a good idea either.
Maybe one will be available in a year. But maybe it will only work for a year. And maybe it will only work in some of the population.
But I suppose it will further diminish the 'at risk' population to some degree.
There is no vaccine for SARS or MERS because as those diseases died a natural death, there was no incentive or profit in developing a vaccine.
There is no fully effective AIDS vaccine come to that.
Once Covid-19 becomes endemic, it will be only a little worse than seasonal flu.
And we really don't care one jot about seasonal flu.
Covid-19 may even just largely disappear like SARS and MERS.
Anyway, in the US, you have a full range of test scenarios in the different approaches adopted state by state.
So time will tell.
And bringing it back to NWBO and our trial. I imagine that in the UK, wherever a personal visit is required to complete a patient record and data file, there will be delay because of UK lockdown.
And if UK data checking and finalisation is delayed, then so will be trial datalock.
New infections peaked about 8th April in Europe and a few days later in the US.
Well.
Here's a couple more contributions on the true mortality rate. Between 0.1 and 0.3.
A German virologist, who undertook a study of all households in a small town location. 900 individuals. 15% tested positive. Mortality rate of between 0.2 and 0.3 percent. And they consider that conservatively on the high side.
By extrapolation that means 2.2% or higher of the German population are infected. And he calculates that in the UK that might mean 10m or 15% infected.
Which kind of makes continued lockdown absolutely unnecessary medically, as well as destroying economies.
So the whole 'keep R below 1.0' message, is simply ridiculous.
We barely had R under 1 and are relaxing lockdowns. There is no way this does not lead to a completely uncontrolled spread.
How about Advent issue ?
So here's the SEC definition.
(Not that I'm necessarily asserting that the SEC should be relied upon as a source of objective information.)
What is a Ponzi scheme?
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors to create the false appearance that investors are profiting from a legitimate business.
Why do Ponzi schemes collapse?
With little or no legitimate earnings, Ponzi schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to continue. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it becomes difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors ask to cash out.
How did Ponzi schemes get their name?
The schemes are named after Charles Ponzi, who duped thousands of New England residents into investing in a postage stamp speculation scheme back in the 1920s. At a time when the annual interest rate for bank accounts was five percent, Ponzi promised investors that he could provide a 50% return in just 90 days. Ponzi initially bought a small number of international mail coupons in support of his scheme, but quickly switched to using incoming funds from new investors to pay purported returns to earlier investors.
What is the definition of 'Ponzi'?
If you know, then you will also know that it does not fit the bill here.
Why do you constantly apply it to LP?
What are the generally accepted defining characteristics of a 'Ponzi' scheme?
If you know, then you will also know that it does not apply here.
If you need a definition of a 'Ponzi scheme' there are many here that could supply it.
Completely good news.
Why do they say 'admits'?
S. Korea and the rest of the world should breathe a provisional sigh of relief.
The only caveat is that if remnants of the virus can hang around that long, then additional care needs to be taken in selecting donors for convalescent plasma therapy.
Coronavirus, ECB prepared to increase stimulus!
“I think probably very soon, very shortly, we’ll have a better idea about whether we need to extend the current existing things or move on to new ideas,” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told Fox News Channel.
Well, talking about the UK politicians; they're either completely dumb, or they're compromised, or they're complicit.
Though lets face it, 95% of the public have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, so maybe at least some of the politicians did so to.
Economic impact.
Now let’s have a look to see if we can find one in some other data. Below are two charts showing unemployment figures for the United States from 1948 (the earliest monthly figures I could find), to the present day. The first is in absolute numbers (millions), and the second is in percentage terms. You will notice that there are various peaks and troughs, notably in 1982, when the unemployment rate briefly rose above 10%, and in the Great Recession, when it rose to around 10% in October 2009.
But what you will notice most of all is a spike of truly gargantuan proportions in the last month, which I have put in red. Just to put some actual figures on this, up to 13th March there were 7.1 million unemployed — around 4.4%. Since then, almost 26.5 million more people have filed initial unemployment claims which, when combined with that 7.1 million, takes the total unemployment figure to over 33 million — around 20.6% I find these charts to be some of the most frightening I have ever seen. They show the biggest rise in unemployment ever witnessed in the US. To put them into context:
The previous highest weekly rise in US unemployment was around 700,000 in 1982, but we have now seen consecutive weekly rises in the multiple millions.
Unemployment in the US is now at its highest since 1934.
It is now just 3% off the highest ever rate of 23.6% in the Great Depression of 1932 (see here), and the rate of change suggests it could well surpass that in the next week or so.
Make no mistake: this is unprecedented; this is unparalleled; this is unfathomable. It is a meltdown of massive proportions, and yet I have been utterly astonished at the complacency shown by so many people to the economic consequences, which were clear from the moment the decision to switch off large swathes of national economies was taken. Many seem to have treated the lockdown as if it were some period of extended holiday. Many others dismissed any talk of economic consequences as somehow being the kind of thing that only materialistic pigs could possibly focus on at such a time. Well, take a look at those graphs again. They are not just lines on a chart. They are real people losing real jobs and having to now work out how to feed their real families. If these shocking charts don’t cause the truth to finally hit home with some that this was never about people vs money, but lives vs lives, I don’t know what will.
But here’s the thing. The correlation between the rise in unemployment in America and the lockdown is absolutely unmistakeable. Twenty six-and-a-half million US citizens have been made unemployed in just over a month, because of actions that were taken to shut down large parts of that economy. The correlation CANNOT be denied.
But back to that first chart. Is there a correlation there between lockdown and saving lives? Nope. *So far* there is none. So then, can anyone explain why actions were taken that were bound to put our economies into meltdown, putting untold millions out of work with the host of evils and misery that will bring, all for a policy that cannot be shown using any data to have had any discernible effect, even on its own terms? I really would like to know.
I take an interest in just the UK and am shocked at how haphazard the counting, reporting and testing is.
We do not know how many people are dying Because of Covid-19, the nearest we get are the figures from Critical Care Units / Intensive Care Units (ICUs) reported by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC)
NHS and DHSC report deaths in hospitals of people with Covid-19 but that includes terminally ill patients and trauma victims that would have died regardless of the virus,
ICNARC report weekly but adjust past reported figures e.g. in the Report dated 17th April it stated that up to 15th April 1,499 ICU patients had died with Covid-19
In the 24th April Report it stated that up to the 15th April 2,034 patients had died with Covid-19.
In the 24th April Report admissions, discharges and deaths for were adjusted back to 5th March. Weeks of re-adjustments occur with each report resulting in the reported picture being constantly fluid.
The same is true with NHS figures, the numbers they report today will be adjusted tomorrow and re-adjusted for weeks to come.
e.g. Of the 711 deaths reported by NHS England on 25/4; 105 were from the previous day many from weeks before.
The media should be clearer on this.
— Professor Karol Sikora (@ProfKarolSikora) April 26, 2020
Of the reported 711 NHS England fatalities yesterday, only 105 were from the previous day.
Many were from weeks ago.
Using accurate and current data shows a much more encouraging picture - NHS England produce the graph every day!
Thanks HB.
Seen it. The vast majority of the comments are very critical.
It seems like the public are beginning to understand epidemiology better than he does.
How many times did he say 'until there's a vaccine'
From his body language, it looks to me like he knows he is defending the indefensible.
Back in 2005 he predicted 200 million deaths from bird flu:-
"Around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak," said Prof Ferguson. "There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably."
A Department of Health contingency plan states anywhere that there could be between 21,500 and 709,000 deaths in Britain.
Last week, veterinary and medical chiefs from the European Union held talks aimed at drawing up an EU-wide action plan to prevent the spread of bird flu. Experts say spotting any outbreak immediately and treating local people with anti-viral drugs and vaccines will be the key to containing any outbreak.
Rich countries are stockpiling anti-viral supplies. Britain announced in March that it was spending £200m on treatments for up to 14 million people. In July the government also said it would buy 2m doses of vaccine for key workers, though it will take around six months for it to arrive.
Glad you recovered.
But before Halloween?
A different infection perhaps?
Those questions were submitted to the ASM but were not addressed.
So there is no change to the previous estimates.
Cost to patient (if indeed it is the patient who is paying) is here:-
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=154790317
He didn't say 1 in a 1000 about NY. I think he said 0.03%.
Let's watch mortality rate.
I wouldn't want to predict wider infection rates in the UK, because tests have been restricted to those with serious symptoms, though now being extended to medical professionals. Certainly they will be a lot lower than Sweden.
But therein lies the problem; the stricter the lockdown, the lower the infection rate at large. Thus no real herd immunity.
And the harder it is to come out from it without a major recurrence of cases with symptoms and/or deaths. A second wave if you like.
Which Sweden just won't have.
BTW, I also find his argument that a lockdown weakens the immune system disingenuous. He knows full well that it will not matter on a short term basis.
Glad it piqued your interest enough for you take a good look!
And it's right up your professional street I believe?
Who did you say you worked for?
So I won't debate the science at the moment. I'll wait until I've reviewed all the available evidence!
But here's a notorious bit which you've probably seen:-
"Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag"
We then translated the aligned genome and found that these inserts are present in all Wuhan 2019-nCoV viruses except the 2019-nCoV virus of Bat as a host [Fig.S4]. Intrigued by the 4 highly conserved inserts unique to 2019-nCoV we wanted to understand their origin. For this purpose, we used the 2019-nCoV local alignment with each insert as query against all virus genomes and considered hits with 100% sequence coverage. Surprisingly, each of the four inserts aligned with short segments of the Human immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1) proteins.
The insertions were observed to be present in all the genomic sequences of 2019-nCoV virus available from the recent clinical isolates (Supplementary Figure 1). To know the source of these insertions in 2019-nCoV a local alignment was done with BLASTp using these insertions as query with all virus genome. Unexpectedly, all the insertions got aligned with Human immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1). Further analysis revealed that aligned sequences of HIV-1 with 2019-nCoV were derived from surface glycoprotein gp120 (amino acid sequence positions: 404-409, 462-467, 136-150) and from Gag protein (366-384 amino acid) (Table 1). Gag protein of HIV is involved in host membrane binding, packaging of the virus and for the formation of virus-like particles. Gp120 plays crucial role in recognizing the host cell by binding to the primary receptor CD4.This binding induces structural rearrangements in GP120, creating a high affinity binding site for a chemokine co-receptor like CXCR4 and/or CCR5.
Our results highlight an astonishing relation between the gp120 and Gag protein of HIV, with 2019-nCoV spike glycoprotein.
Our analysis of the spike glycoprotein of 2019-nCoV revealed several interesting findings: First, we identified 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike glycoprotein that are not present in any other coronavirus reported till date. To our surprise, all the 4 inserts in the 2019-nCoV mapped to short segments of amino acids in the HIV-1 gp120 and Gag among all annotated virus proteins in the NCBI database. This uncanny similarity of novel inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag is unlikely to be fortuitous. Further, 3D modelling suggests that atleast 3 of the unique inserts which are non-contiguous in the primary protein sequence of the 2019-nCoV spike glycoprotein converge to constitute the key components of the receptor binding site. Of note, all the 4 inserts have pI values of around 10 that may facilitate virus-host interactions. Taken together, our findings suggest unconventional evolution of 2019-nCoV that warrants further investigation. Our work highlights novel evolutionary aspects of the 2019-nCoV and has implications on the pathogenesis and diagnosis of this virus.
I don’t think i’ve ever seen 2 so confused people talk in such an authoritative way about a subject since the last discussion about NWBO on ihub.
Yes, clearly there's a fairly robust debate going on right now about lockdown v sensible restrictions v very little restrictions.
And in the US you've got the full range, I believe.
This Doctor will be criticised for drawing economic conclusions, when he is a medic and not an economist.
But he is qualified to talk about the health impacts of unemployment.
Time will indeed give us better answers.
Testing is getting more extensive all the time, and infection mortality rate estimates will get more accurate (and lower, imo).