The Biology and Immunology Corner

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#622
diyiggy said:
@ C Darwin : Yep I know and repeat that with many posts. The first part of your sentence seemed to me confusing or hard to understand, I think you maybe wanted to say the opposit ? I'm agree it's not contradicting each otthers. What I wanted to say with the link to the post is confinment kill the virus within you if you read it. So if in an ideal situation everybody quarantened will we have the virus yet brcause no bounce possible from personn to personn after 45 days isolated?

My understanding is it's not resistant in the body after the recovry period. it's not HIV or Herpes.


Do we know about covid-19 resiliance ? I heard there was a sequencing map of it documented h24 and worldwide access for scientists ?


Will it be still there in time like the flu because mutations ? Cause for instance the 2009 last one from China & Mexic was stoped ??


Our virologist member seems to say labs don't know yet ?
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SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes the disease COVID-19) is a coronavirus not unlike the common cold. It is different genetically and has a few different genes, but is the same kind and class of virus and therefore has many many similarities. The immune system fights it in the same way as well and it has similar kinetics to infection and clearance. So, once you have the virus and recover some time later, you should be asymptomatic and cleared of active virus. And you should be immune to the exact strain that infected you. However, as you suggested, that doesn't account for mutation!

Chinese researchers were able to isolate and sequence the virus very quickly and, since then, we have thousands of fully sequenced isolates from around the world. The virus is surprisingly stable; in that it does not appear to mutate as rapidly as other RNA viruses. However, the more people you have infected, and the longer they are infected, the exponentially higher mutation rates go. So even though it mutates much much slower than say HIV-1, it is still accumulating mutations that may or may not be improving its "fitness" to infect us. Whether that means it will be able to reinfect the same individuals at a later date is unknown. However, acquired immunity isn't binary either. It's never a yes or no. It's an analogue range dependent on a hundred variables. So, even if you can get "reinfected" with a similar strain descendent from COVID-19 (COVID-20, 21, 22...), your immune system won't be entirely "naive" either.

Here is a cute, albeit simplistic, dip into the kind of analyses we do to study mutations in this context.
Machine Learning for Biology: How Will COVID-19 Mutate Next?
 
#623
Thanks for that :


it's showing than synchronising the confinment everywhere in the same time is the best decision gvts can do and people must observe social distanciation.




Was I correct from what I read about circa 45 days / 6 weeks of isolation is needed from day 1 to be sure you are cleared of active virus (so after the recovry period included if you catched it and was asymptomatic BUT still a danger for over sane people, cause you have not developped heavy diseases) ? At least till now with the CV-19 genom.
 
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#628
About the bread flour...you don't need it to make good bread, which you proved by making bread with pastry flour, which you made by adding oat flour, which is mostly starch and does not contain the proteins that combine to make gluten.
It is common to add such ingredients to reduce gluten.


If you are desperate for protein(and vitamins), whole wheat flour (non-pastry) has a high gluten content, but the fats, fiber, and minerals interfere with rising as high as white flour allows.

If you now have the time, just add work and time, with extra kneading and rise time, you can make more nutritious bread more tender and light than we normally take the time to.


About washing, I have two tips.
First, just wash as if you are about to prepare food, having just worked with dangerous chemicals.
Second, pumice-containing soap(Lava,etc).

There's always a miniscule bit of pumice left in your skin, rub your eyes once with that, you're cured for the day.
 
#631
boswald said:
About the bread flour...you don't need it to make good bread, which you proved by making bread with pastry flour, which you made by adding oat flour, which is mostly starch and does not contain the proteins that combine to make gluten.
It is common to add such ingredients to reduce gluten.


If you are desperate for protein(and vitamins), whole wheat flour (non-pastry) has a high gluten content, but the fats, fiber, and minerals interfere with rising as high as white flour allows.
Click to expand...


You assume whole wheat flour is on the shelves...nope.
 
#635
seantkezm said:
Unfortunately, those battery powered ones aren't too powerful. I don't have any evidence, but I've been skeptical that they emit enough energy quickly enough for how most people would use them. The phone ones are good because they are encased and the UV-C LEDs are right against the phone. If you are cleaning a keypad with a wand, I would hold it right up to it for a at least 30 seconds or so. That will probably be effective.

And remember, you can get your hands contaminated with virus a million different ways, but it can't get through your hand (unless your wounded). If you are diligent about washing your hands (and the handles of sink afterwards!), you should be much safer.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I imagine in an environment of short fuses and subconscious disgust shown to others, taking an extra 30 sec to UV disinfect a card pin keypad at checkout maybe isnt practical.

Always interested however in relatively common technologies that can be exploited beneficially toward our common cause - survival for most people.
 
#636
Here's an interesting interactive display on social distancing.
'Flatten the curve' argues that effective social distancing (green curves) will lessen the maximum number of infected people during an epidemic, so that hospital resources are not overwhelmed (grey line). On the right, we show that 'flatten the curve' arises from a mathematical model that describes the dynamics of an epidemic, specifically the SIR equations.
Click to expand...


The math behind flatten the curve

At Memorial University in St. John's, mathematician Anne Hurford created an interactive graph to demonstrate the effects of social distancing.
On her graph O represents business as usual, with no social distancing. At the other end of the scale 1 represents complete isolation. The slider shows the effect on the epidemic curve at various degrees of social distancing.
"I think it gives you some idea of the difference you can make through social distancing," said Hurford.
Click to expand...
 
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