Broad Institute’s friday infectious disease talk on infectious disease in the developing world. Lots of discussion of the current situation and how some countries that are far less discussed in the press are preparing/handling SARS2.
Not a must watch, but interesting if you have the time.
“Grandma shared this on Facebook” posted in the Science and Data thread got a snort and a giggle out of me.
I haven’t clicked through or anything so I don’t know what the contents are, it just came across as really really funny to me.
I think we already knew this, but I thought it was a good read regardless.
Is about BCG vacines. Some people are convinced theres a correlation different levesl of mortality and vacination. Switzerland is interesting because different cantons have different rules, so the correlation pops even more.
I’m going to be a lot less nice than Kevin: KEEP THAT SHIT OUT OF THIS THREAD
For fucks sake, this is an self described “Rock & roll enthusiast.
Broadly paleocon politically & realist on foreign policy.
Armchair interests in European history & developments in population genetics.” who has no credentials, does not link anything of purport, and if you had even read the first few comments on his twitter thread it should have given you pause.
DO BETTER. KEEP THIS THREAD ON TOPIC.
Didn’t take long for the “only verified scientific stuff” point of this thread to get derailed, did it?
Meanwhile - Duke has validated a procedure for decontaminating and reusing N-95 masks, including demonstrating that the decontaminated masks still meet performance standards:
Uses vaporized hydrogen peroxide - commonly used in hospitals already for decontaminating instruments
Not only does that just use hydrogen peroxide, the only resudue left after the fact is water… so that’s a great process they’ve identified.
15 hours is REALLY specific and perked up my “Is this bullshit-o-meter”. I can’t find any reference to that claim in the paper. I found the more well known info:
“We estimated that peak infectiousness was reached at about 0-2 days before symptom onset, and the proportion of transmission occurring before illness onsetwas 52% and 46% respectively”
It looks like new scientist looked at a smoothed distribution of very noisy data and extracted precision out of their asses - the original researchers don’t make that claim, as they know they’re working with a noisy estimate.
I sent that to my brother, who is a doctor who uses his own N95 masks since the hospital doesn’t provide any. His first question was: how is he supposed to vaporize Hydrogen Peroxide?
I’d like to remind people here that even bioarchiveX stuff is NOT PEER REVIEWED. Read with caution. There have already been a number of retractions, so if you’re going to cite that stuff, you need to read it carefully! [This is not the media’s strong suit]
Consider the hydroxychloroquine results, or the ibuprofen letter to the lancette.
We’re in a rush to publish as much information as we can, and in that rush some things are going to fall through the cracks. The 2 big manuscripts I’ve been working on for publication have been in process for about a year now - we usually take a long time to really carefully digest the data, and in the process of submission to a high quality journal they can ask you to do additional experiments to prove your point. This is all missing right now - most of us can’t even get to a lab.
Boiling point of hydrogen peroxide is 150C. So sounds like you can pretend your N-95 is a dumpling and put it in a steamer basket? [I’d actually expect the temperature alone would be sufficient, but wouldn’t be surprised if that kills the mask] Alternately, how do cool water humidifiers work?
Cool mist humidifiers work either by using a fan to evaporate water that’s been pulled up into a wick or by using ultrasonic vibration to break water into small particles and disperse them into the air. Either way, they produce a cool vapor that raises a room’s humidity but not its temperature.
Alternately, one could read the protocol:
This room currently utilizes a Bioquell Clarus™ C system with a 35% hydrogen peroxide solution and distribution system to disperse Hydrogen Peroxide Vapor into the room in a uniform fashion. In addition, we are evaluating the new Bioquell Z‐2 and Bioquell ProteQ systems that will provide increased capacity and flexibility to our reprocessing needs.
Buy yours on ebay today!
Seems like there’d be easier ways to get HPV, even in quarantine.
More enjoyable ways, at any rate.
It appears to have been taken down from Dr Campbell’s site as well. My apologies, I trusted him as a source so far, but I’ll think twice and verify it next time.
Does anyone know where I can find the chart that shows the impact of social distancing. The one that shows it going from one person to 4 other people to 4 other people, and how breaking it at points can stop the spread?
No worries, it got me too. I assumed he was a doctor even when he never identifies as one, and checking the validity of the clip wasn’t easy until I stepped up my google-fu by learning the Spanish word “bulo” :-)
That’s the one!
Thank you.
SSI - the Danish version of CDC - has released a press release about a new test for the Covid-19 virus (also mentioned in the article here along with a short profile of the guilty parties).
According to the press release: this is a new simple and fast method which can be used as an alternative to the chemical reagants, kits, and complicated robots which most laboratories today are dependent on for testing Covid-19. Anders Fomsgaard who developed the new method along with two other scientists (Anna Fomsgaard, his own daughter who is a Ph.D. student, and Maiken W. Rosenstierne), refers to the new method as a “MacGyver” solution. The method is extremely basic - scrape is put into a half milliliter of water, and warmed to 98 degrees for five minutes to split out the RNA-genes (this is the step which usually involves reagants and complicated robots). The second step is the same as the existing method (basically genetesting). The entire process takes just over 95 minutes.
The method is slightly less sensitive than the existing test, but the difference in sensitivity is not considered to be significant (it’s about 97,5% as accurate as the chemical test). The method will be published online shortly, and has been sent by e-mail to other laboratories in Europe, who might consider using it.
The method is already being used in Odense in Denmark, and seems to be working as expected. It has also sent to laboratories in Spain, who yesterday contacted their European colleagues. Initial feedback from Spain seems to be very positive as well.
This is an important breakthrough if it works as advertised, because one of the limitations on testing right now for many countries is not a lack of machines (and their slow speed), but above all the lack of the reagants required for testing. If it works, this removes a major bottleneck on Covid-19 testing, and will allow countries to ramp up testing significantly.
