While this is an approach, it's far better to accelerate monoclonal antibody therapy. Plasma has to be handled very carefully and purified to make sure that any contaminants are purified out or inactivated. Blood from recovered coronavirus patients has to be screened for a variety of viruses before being pooled into lots. This is the big advantage of MAb production. Have you seen any follow up from the Erasmus Univ finding? Have they found an industrial partner who can scale up production?
Why do we have almost the same deaths as South Korea (50 million citizens) and twice as many as Germany? What is true about this? Different way of counting deaths. They count dead OF Covid19, not dead WITH Covid19 (like most of the world does). At least those are the published numbers. I’m sure they count both but don’t publish— Maserv (@maserv) March 19, 2020 "No post-mortem tests Another explanation cited by Italian experts, could be that Germany, unlike other countries, tends not to test those who have already died. "We don't consider post-mortem tests to be a decisive factor. We work on the principle that patients are tested before they die," the RKI told AFP. That means that if a person dies in quarantine at home and does not go to hospital, there is a high chance they will not be included in the statistics, as Giovanni Maga of Italy's National Research Council pointed out in an interview with Euronews."
Dr. Fauci said last night on CNN its very likely that you'll have immunity after recovering from the virus, or at the very least have stronger immunity to it so you'll barely get sick if it comes around a second time. Best news I heard all week
According to the researcher, Frank Grosveld, they're in the process of getting a pharmaceutical on board and it's looking good. Edit: the Erasmus University has a company called The Harbour Antibody bv, but that's not capable to produce it in large quantities.
Grosveld and his Utrecht co discoverer Berend-Jan Bosch have submitted to Nature the research article to get the stamp it's the first Covid-19 antibody. Before it can be produced it has to go through testing, which can take months.
On the site BioRxiv they published an extract of their research and it's world first published working antibody.
Found an English article from the Erasmus University itself: https://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/en/2020/03/14/unique-discovery-in-erasmus-mc-antibody-against-corona/
I managed a multi-million $$ project in 2008-10 before I retired. One of th academic drug safety epidemiologists is/was a faculty member at Erasmus Univ. I can't remember his name but he was very smart.
They had some expert on CNN who said the majority of the time when viruses mutate they become weaker, not stronger. Lets hope this little bastard follows suit
We Dutch are the problem to ourselves in this case. We didnot vote in morons like the WHmaniac or BoJo in the UK who keep telling their people the most insane stuff, but people telling us what to do in the current situation. So what do we Dutch do? The sun shines and after a week staying at home if possible we go en mass to the beach, en mass to parks to watch the blossoming cherry blossoms, en mass to big DIY centres, en mass to sit on terraces. Foto: Bloesempark Amstelveen – Het advies van de organisatie van het Amsterdamse bos om het bloeiende Bloesempark te mijden is dit weekeinde door flink wat mensen genegeerd: wel was het minder druk dan normaal in de bloeiperiode. Are you mad? This is asking for the gouvernment to put us all in a lockdown as we obviously donot grasp or donot want to act according to the severity of the situation.
Wow, just saw that Dutch producer of chloroquine all of a sudden is under police protection, because of serious suspect circumstances. No explanation by the police what those are.
Dutch lung doctors are desperate as suggested treatments like chloroquine donot work, but do cause by effects, some very nasty by effects. Longarts Leon van den Toorn, voorzitter van de Vereniging van Artsen voor Longziekten en Tuberculose (NVALT) en longarts in het Erasmus MC erkent dat de bewijslast voor de werking van de medicijnen tegen corona 'flinterdun' is. © Erasmus MC Pulmonologist Leon van den Toorn, chairman of the Association of Physicians for Pulmonary Diseases and Tuberculosis (NVALT) and pulmonologist at Erasmus MC, acknowledges that the burden of proof in favour for the effect of the drugs against corona is 'paper thin'. © Erasmus MC
Seems loss of smell and taste without other symptoms could be a flag for corona infection: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-symptoms-smell-taste.html
Research in the US has shown that there are very few mutations in isolates from US patients. The mutations that they are seeing are not in the surface proteins of the virus. this means that a vaccine developed against the virus will be the best approach.
Anyway, the virologists didnot mention more than these two now existing varieties, but said as it hops from human to human it's bound to mutate further. Whether that is in less or more dangerous direction isnot possible to predict.
But thats the US. Iceland found 40 of them: https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/iceland-scientists-found-40-mutations-of-the-coronavirus-report-says/