Coronavirus Discussion Thread

I am reluctantly setting this thread up for discussion. I don't want to see conspiracy theory or pseudo-scientific stuff as they will be deleted and the thread may end up getting locked. Prior to retirement, I spent 30 years in the biopharma industry and have a good sense of what is going on regarding new drug/vaccine development. I will try to provide links to good references. My state has closed all bars and restaurants and the schools are closed for a minimum of two weeks. Other areas in the US are doing similar things as well. Many countries in Europe have taken strong steps also.

The first small scale trial of a COVID-19 vaccine started yesterday in Seattle. Those in the trial will be tracked for one year to look for safety issues as well as assessing the potency of the vaccine. IMO, large scale production of a vaccine is 12-18 months away. A critical issue given that most people have only mild symptoms is whether the vaccine should be given to all or only those at high risk because of other medical conditions.

Perhaps the best source for information is the World Health Organization Website
They also publish daily situation reports by country

There is a lot of good data coming out of China. They have a good demographic breakdown from the initial outbreak in Wuhan. Most at risk are the elderly and especially those with health conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. Those under the age of 20 seem to be unaffected and many of those probably had the virus but were not ill enough to be tested. Of those that were tested and confirmed to have COVID-19 only 2% were in that age category. 80% of those infected had mild symptoms and did not require any hospital intervention.

https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(19)30483-5/abstract is a good discussion of how a Zika Virus vaccine was developed and some of what is in the paper is applicable to a COVID-19 vaccine

Here is a Chinese paper on the impact of heat/humidity on COVID-19 indicating that perhaps increasing temperature and humidity may slow down transmission. We will find out as temps warm up now that we are entering the Spring months.

Aerosol and Surface Stability of COVID-19 from the NIH infectious disease laboratory

In post to come, I will discuss vaccine and drug development in a little more detail.

 

I'm not sure how true this is. The American biotech company Regeneron, is already producing clinical trial material of a monoclonal antibody. The also have a production facility to produce this at large scale. I know their CEO and he was at the meeting with President Trump last week where this was discussed.

 

That is a different project altogether. See this for the real story: https://investor.regeneron.com/news...es-important-advances-novel-covid-19-antibody

I don't want this thread to be turned into a "my product is better than yours" That is not the intent of it.

 

I'm deleting all of your posts that cover mortality and disease incidents. this was not the purpose of this thread. Anyone who wants to track the disease can get the daily updates on a country basis at the WHO site that I already posted. All of us know that this thing is dangerous and I too have been following it along with former colleagues of mine from the pharma industry.

 

Posting clips of people who say this is a serious outbreak is not content; it is obvious truth. If you don't like this you have two choices, you can leave the forum or report me to the super MODs in which case I will gladly depart from Big Soccer. I don't need this kind of response. I set out the ground rules in the first post and you apparently don't like that.

 

We do NOT need constant posts talking about the dangers of this virus. Everybody knows that. Sit down and think about what goal YOU are serving by putting up X number of posts from experts talking about corona virus. I wanted to use this post to give those who are/were interested in discussions of possible solutions to the problem. Anyone who is interested in the pandemic can go to the WHO or the health authority website in their own country to get health statistics.

Is this clear? As I noted, i was reluctant to set this up in the first place and will give it a couple of more days to run.

 

Enough! You have beaten me into submission. I'm unpinning this thread and will leave it open for several days. You and @feyenoordsoccerfan who seem to be the only posters can use this to whatever means you want. I'm not putting the thread on moderation as that's too much work with me.

Here are the Rules for Every Other Thread: only soccer/football related posting as that is what Big Soccer is for. You can post information about players and training staff who have come down with COVID-19 in the appropriate thread for that team or on the Other Teams thread.

Simple enough rules and any other post outside of this thread will be relentlessly deleted as off topic.

 

If you are talking about The Netherlands, current information shows a 3% mortality rate from those known to be infected. This is much lower than Italy and higher than Germany. Unfortunately, mass screen for COVID-19 infection has not been done in almost every locale. If you don't know the true numbers of infections it can make the mortality rate look much higher than it might actually be.

There continues to be a lot that is unknown. We do know that age and associated other medical conditions appear to be correlated with poor medical outcomes. there is also data from China showing that those who have Type A blood are more prone to infections and have worse outcomes. Until we can crunch a lot of data, things will remain in a state of flux with a lot of unknowns.

 

It's likely a result of having a good healthcare system and prompt reporting.

 

Yes, and yes.