Private channel session 785
15 messages over 2h 10m, 2021-01-10 – 2021-01-10.
A “conversation” here is an activity session — a run of messages with under 60 minutes of silence inside it. The channel had no native conversation boundaries.
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https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248834v1.full.pdf Phase change may be too strong a term. SC2 is still SC2. But it is adapting - evolution is indeed a pain in the arse. When you allow a pathogen that came from an animal to spread unchecked in humans like this one (thank you Donald Trump et al), it will find ways to get better at spreading in humans. The plots of Ct values from nasal swabs suggest that the UK variant is a heck of a lot better at replicating in the URT (I'm guessing if you did G614 vs D614 you see something similar maybe not asdramatic). Coupled with what we can infer from the immune escape studies from Bloom lab and Zahradník[@Kristian Andersen above] we can see that the SC2 is getting fitter and more evasive. [shared file(s): image.png]
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I'm gonna break reviewer privacy because it's relevant to share an title of an article I just this minute was asked toreview: "Hypothesis of Potential Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 through Hybridization of SARS-CoV-1 withSaccharomyces cerevisiae and Mycobacterium avium naturally inside an immunocompromised Pangolin" Incredible.
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The next data point that's going to be super critical is IF we start to see vaccine breakthrough with the UK variant. Ithink enough people have been vaccinated in the UK to perhaps start to see a trend.
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I'm not so sure immune selection isn't showing an appreciable selection pressure - "phase change" might be a little too strong, however, I think it could already be one of the most selective forces. We'll see. Bob - yeah, Doug had higher viral loads too, but much less of a dramatic difference than Nelly. Of course, the plot we're looking at here is Doug vs Nelly - Nelly vs Hugo (Hu-1..) would be even more dramatic.
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Indeed -here's one of many Hugo vs Doug (Genome copies not Ct) ~1 log whereas Nelly vs Doug is ~2 Logs on average it seems: [shared file(s): image.png]
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This is just the URT (nasal) I think data in the lung not as dramatic if any change at all (need lung data for Nelly, Eeek and Pooh) - worth noting Doug alone is easier to neutralize.
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My prediction is that B.1.1.7 will turn out to be more transmissible because of the 501Y with the other stuff (FCS, deletions etc) - and it arose because of an extraordinary circumstances. But the Brazilian and RSA variants will turn out to be doing well because they are fitter in the very high (and underestimated) existing seroprevalence in those places. So they will pop up every where but are unlikely to really take off in places with lower seroprevalence (or atleast no more likely than anything else).
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But that means they will soon be fitter in other places like USA and Europe unless things improve quickly.
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Yeah, very reasonable. It's unclear to me if B.1.1.7 might also have an "immunity" phenotype - a lot is said about the RSA variant in that regard, but that's because we have _data_ on E484K, but for B.1.1.7 we don't have anything yet. Also, Eeek is already in B.1.1.7 as you say....
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Oh, and to the last part - things over here won't improve quickly, unfortunately. It's rapidly deteriorating - without the effect of the new lineages.
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Students are coming back to Tulane campus - there is an almost desperate attempt to get one of the vaccine manufacturers to vaccinate all or at least part of the undergraduate students for the purposes of doing an vaccine efficacy study. It'ds almost as good as a challenge trial because the undergrads will be tested 2-3 times per week.So far pushback, because corporate think. I don't think they want to know or are afraid to even raise the question hence the Nelly study above. Most of the medical faculty and some of the med students and residents have already gotten the first doses. Faculty, staff, med students, residents and grad students are getting the Pfizer vaccine next week.
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Eddie, you don't look too happy at the prospect of lunch, I think:
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55565284
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It's like when Jeneba our cook in Sierra Leone kills the chickens [at least I think it's chicken] for dinner. At least itsolves the cold storage problem and it's fresh.
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Nom nom, pumpkin chicken :drooling_face::hatched_chick:. I miss Jeneba's cooking (although, not the leafy green and fishy stuff!)