(Bloomberg) — Flare-ups from Australia to Japan show the world hasn’t learned an early lesson from the coronavirus crisis: to stop the spread, those with mild or symptom-free coronavirus infections must be forced to isolate, both from their communities and family. In Australia, where Victoria state has been reporting record deaths, some 3,000 checks last month on people who should have been isolating at home found 800 were out and about. In Japan, where the virus has roared back, people are staying home but aren’t in isolation: 40% of elderly patients are getting sick from family members in the same apartments. The failure to effectively manage contagious people with mild or no symptoms is a driving factor behind some of the world’s worst resurgences. But lessons from Italy, South Korea and others that have successfully contained large-scale outbreaks show that there’s a tried-and-tested approach to cutting off transmission: move them out of their homes into centralized facilities while they get over their infections, which usually doesn’t require longer than a few weeks.“A laissez-faire approach naively trusting everyone to be responsible has been shown to be ineffective, as there will always be a proportion who will breach the terms of the isolation,” said Jeremy Lim, adjunct professor at the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.

Faced with a new cluster this week after 102 days without a locally transmitted case, New Zealand has quickly enacted this strategy, placing 17 people — including two children below the age of 10 — into centralized quarantine.

But other countries facing sustained spread like Australia and the U.S. are not broadly enacting the policy despite its proven track record. Their unwillingness — or inability — to do so underscores the challenges faced by liberal democracies whose populations are less likely to tolerate measures that require individual sacrifice for the greater good.

The existence of a large group of carriers who hardly feel sick is a unique feature of the coronavirus crisis, and a major factor that has driven its rapid spread across the globe. Unlike in previous outbreaks like the 2003 SARS epidemic, many infected people don’t feel ill enough to stay home, and so spread the pathogen widely as they go about their daily lives.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 40% of Covid-19 infections are asymptomatic. Nick Note: I want to again make sure you understand what we are facing. Kicking and screaming all the way….. The US will go into forced lockdowns… Ok here we go. Social distancing is a sick Joke. The virus spreads in a nanoparticle vapor cloud. It can stay in the air as an aerosol for 3 hours and spread hundreds of feet. REALITY is the masks of coffee filter paper or cotton surgical masks are a sick joke. And social distancing will not work it will take isolation. Besides opening move theaters, airline and restaurants the cat killers are sending the kids back to school. This folly means that by October they will have no choice but to do China style lock downs. Concentration camps and all. You have been warned! You would think they would not want to experiment on the children and error on the side of caution. Reality is the sold out politicians from the HA HA HA HA commander and chef on down are facing elections… so fuck the masses.

Continue reading “Forced Isolation May Be the Only Way to Stop Resurgence of Virus”

https://youtu.be/cT5zTz3yIsg

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Thursday that the country is witnessing the falling of the average age of people infected with COVID-19. “We’re seeing a lot of new infections among young people,” Spahn told ZDF Television and added that he is optimistic that “in the coming months and certainly next year there can be a coronavirus vaccine.” According to the Berliner Morgenpost, the overall number of infected people in the country stands at 220,883 while the death toll reached 9,217. In the last 24 hours, there were 1,319 newly infected people that represents the biggest rise since May this year.

Germany has recorded its biggest daily increase in coronavirus cases in more than three months as European countries struggle to curb a surge in infections. More than 1,200 cases were reported in Germany in the past 24 hours. Officials said the rise was due, in part, to people returning from holidays. It came as Germany warned against non-essential trips to parts of Spain. Meanwhile, France had 2,524 new cases in 24 hours, the highest daily rise since its lockdown was lifted in May. The German foreign ministry said it had added a partial travel warning to the Spanish capital Madrid and the Basque region on Tuesday amid rising infections there. Warnings were already in place for the regions of Aragon, Catalonia and Navarra. Germany has recorded more than 9,000 coronavirus-related deaths since the pandemic began. Spain is facing the worst coronavirus infection rate in Western Europe. It recorded 1,418 new infections in its latest daily count on Tuesday and said there were 675 “active outbreaks” in the country. Salvador Macip, an expert in health sciences at Catalonia’s Open University, told AFP news agency the country was at a “critical moment”. “We are right at a point where things can get better or worse. This means we have to pull out all the stops to curb outbreaks before they become more serious,” he said. In total, Spain has recorded more than 326,000 cases – the highest number in Western Europe and the 11th highest in the world. Wearing a face mask became compulsory in all public areas in Brussels on Wednesday amid a rise in cases. The order applies to those aged 12 and above. People were previously only required to wear masks in crowded public spaces and enclosed areas of the Belgian capital, such as shopping centres. Authorities said the enhanced rules were introduced because of a rise in infections, with Brussels recording an average of 50 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants per day over the past week. Police checks are being ramped up to ensure that people follow the new rules. The mask-wearing regulation is one of the strictest currently in place in Europe. Belgium has recorded more than 75,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 9,800 deaths, according to data collated by Johns Hopkins University. This year’s Paris marathon has been cancelled as France battles a spike in coronavirus cases, organisers said on Wednesday. The marathon was originally due to take place on 5 April but was then postponed to 15 November because of the pandemic. Organisers said they had “tried everything to maintain the event” but felt “obliged” to call it off. “There will be great disappointment among those who have sacrificed time training for what had become an autumn marathon,” they said. Organisers are now working on the 2021 marathon. The announcement came after Paris became the latest French city to make face masks compulsory in busy outdoor areas. Face masks were already compulsory nationwide in enclosed public spaces. A government spokesman on Wednesday said France would gradually ramp up police checks to ensure that people were respecting social distancing and wearing masks where required. “We’re at a tipping point… We’re going to mobilise polices forces to make checks,” Gabriel Attal told journalists. France has now recorded a total of 206,696 cases of the virus.

everybody has an opinion and a asshole

Nick Bit: When I first arrived on the tropics on my Yacht, I ran across an Englishman who had lived on the islands for years. He came to me at the local Yacht club and introduced himself. Then he sat down at my table ordered himself a Gin and tonic on my tab. His name was Goeff and he owned a company called Marine Services. The Local Chandelier and Haul out facility.

He said you are new to the tropics and I asked him how do you know? He said because you have barnacles on your water line from cold waters and you’re still white. He said there are two things you need in the tropics… And he handed me a captains hat so the sun did not burn my scalp and a gin and tonic. He told me to drink Quinine water every day so I did not get Malaria.

So for over 20 years in the tropics I wore a captains hat and I still drank a liter of Schweppes Quinine water every day with lemon and fruits. For ten years I added Hydroxychloroquine tablet once a week. I never got Malaria and I never got the Plague… Knock on wood! But I can’t tell you if the shit works or not. There is plenty of debate!

Geoff and I became good friends and I sold him the Yacht on terms when I purchased a bigger one.

And I still drink Quinine water every day and have my pills but this time because of the plague.

Quinine in Tonic Water: What Is It and Is It Safe?

Continue reading “Quinine in Tonic Water: There is always a way!”

Though Police Prmo:

Reality from a front line teacher:

D614G mutation is characterized by aspartic acid to glycine shift at the amino acid position 614 of a protein. Recent studies have shown that D614G mutation in the spike protein of novel coronavirus makes it more infectious, transmissible, and deadly.

What is D614G mutation?

A genetic mutation is characterized by a permanent change in the DNA sequence that may occur due to environmental factors (UV radiation), or due to an error during DNA replication process. Genetic mutations can be of many types, including missense, nonsense, insertion, deletion, duplication, frameshift, and repeat expansion mutations. D614G mutation is a missense mutation wherein an alteration in single DNA base pair causes the substitution of aspartic acid (single-letter code: D) with glycine (single-letter code: G) in the protein encoded by the mutated gene. The RNA codons that codes for aspartic acid and glycine are designed as GAU/GAC and GGU/GGC, respectively. Thus, a single mutation in the RNA codon causing A to G shift can lead to aspartic acid to glycine shift in the peptide sequence of the target protein. Glycine is a nonpolar amino acid with a single hydrogen atom as its side chain; whereas, aspartic acid is a polar amino acid with an acidic side chain. Given the substantial difference between the basic nature of these amino acids, D614G mutation is expected to have significant biological implications.

What are the implications of D614G mutation in the spike protein of novel coronavirus?

In general, viruses can undergo frequent genetic mutations because of several factors, such as natural selection and random genetic drifts. Because these factors can work sequentially, it is often very difficult to identify when a viral mutation becomes more prevalent.

In the case of a novel coronavirus, D614G mutation in the viral spike protein occurred at the initial stage of the pandemic, and recent evidence suggests that viruses containing glycine residue at position 614 have now become the most prevalent variant globally.

To identify the causative factors responsible for the rapid emergence of G614 containing coronavirus, scientists have extensively monitored all coronavirus genome sequencing data that are available globally at the Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) database. Using suitable bioinformatic methods, scientists have found that G614G mutation in the viral spike protein is the most frequently occurring mutation across many geographical locations. As pseudotyped viruses,

G614 variants have considerably higher infectious titers than D614 variants. This indicates that spike D614G mutation makes the novel coronavirus more infectious and that the virus can be transmitted more easily and rapidly from person to person.

Moreover, scientists have shown that people infected with the G614 variant have higher viral RNA load in the upper respiratory tract than those infected with the D614 variant. However, D614G mutation is not associated with increased disease severity. Because D614G mutation is located in the interface between neighboring spike protein protomers, it may modulate protomer-protomer interaction by disrupting between-protomer hydrogen bond formation. Interestingly, one study conducted on pseudoviruses containing either D614 or G614 has claimed that G614 containing viruses are more susceptible to convalescent sera-mediated neutralization. This finding indicates that D614G mutation does not facilitate the virus escaping host immune responses.

Is spike D614G mutation associated with higher mortality?

Although there is no evidence showing that D614G mutation is associated with increased COVID-19 severity, a recent study using a phylogenetic tree of more than 4000 coronavirus genomes has claimed that viruses containing D614G mutation are more virulent, and thus, are associated with higher disease-related mortality. The study has speculated that higher viral pathogenicity may be due to mutation-mediated conformational changes in the spike protein, which facilitate the exposure of polybasic cleavage site to cellular proteases.

Could D614G mutation impact vaccine development?

The spike protein gets a lot of attention from the host immune system as it is located on the outer surface of the virus (external protein). Thus, spike D614G mutation is expected to play a major role in modulating the viral ability to escape vaccine-induced immune responses.However, there is evidence suggesting that the possibility of D614G mutation affecting the vaccine efficacy is very less. Because the mutation is not in the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein, it is less likely to affect the ability of the domain to induce host immune responses, which is believed to be a prerequisite for antibody-mediated neutralization of the virus. Moreover, a large portion of ongoing vaccines are developed against the receptor-binding domain, and thus, D614G mutation is not supposed to have any effect on vaccine efficacy. Another important observation is that convalescent sera obtained people infected with D614 containing viruses have been found to neutralize viruses containing G614, and vice versa. This indicates that D614G mutation does not alter antibody-mediate immune responses.

Boiling The Frogs

Critical information about what is really going on with the virus, the vaccine, the happy checks and the mail in elections.