The biology of coronavirus COVID-19 - including research and treatments

Frankie said:
:unsure:Not sure how to do this!
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I guess you will only be allowed one question, and the chances of getting your question picked from a lot of questions would be pretty small. I suggest you just leave it here and see whether anyone else makes a suggestion.

Alternatively you could click the 'contact moderators' button on your post and ask moderators to use your post to start a new thread, if you want to start a forum discussion about it.
 
Frankie said:
'He said "COVID-19 has caught us all by surprise. From the experience being gained both personally and professionally and in the wider environment, there are important lessons to be learnt - not only about this virus, but about how society ensures we are best prepared to cope now and into the future".'
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Steven Holgate may speak for himself but I don't think he can say Covid-19caught us all by surprise. A lot of people with expertise in the field, as well as a lot with general medical knowledge, were entirely expecting it. Moreover, the failure to respond had nothing to do with it being unexpected. It was simply that all the necessary procedure were either not available because of decommissioning of facilities or because of sheer stupidity. People like Costello, Pollock and Sridar knew exactly what needed to be done right from the start and were not listened to.

All we need to learn is not to have stupid people in charge. It is not even as if they were protecting economic interests - it was clear from the start that policy would be the worst possible for economic outcome.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Steven Holgate may speak for himself but I don't think he can say Covid-19caught us all by surprise. A lot of people with expertise in the field, as well as a lot with general medical knowledge, were entirely expecting it. Moreover, the failure to respond had nothing to do with it being unexpected. It was simply that all the necessary procedure were either not available because of decommissioning of facilities or because of sheer stupidity. People like Costello, Pollock and Sridar knew exactly what needed to be done right from the start and were not listened to.

All we need to learn is not to have stupid people in charge. It is not even as if they were protecting economic interests - it was clear from the start that policy would be the worst possible for economic outcome.
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Yea if it caught us all by surprise then how come the German Government had set up a network of laboratories to diagnose cases i.e. in advance of this pandemic? Answer is other countries had put systems in place after bird flue, SARS 1 ---.
 
Trying to understand the sense behind the quarantine rules applying to people with unclear symptoms and not tested.

Is it dependent from the course of the illness how long one will be contagious?

So if you have mild symptoms from the beginning and symptoms are still present after 10 days, how likely is it that you're still contagious? Would it make sense to get tested at this stage?

Another question, as the commom cold is spreading over here, too: How likely is it to have both Covid and a common cold at once?

Apologies if that has been discussed already. I didn't manage to follow this thread and now am too brain-fogged to search and skim.
 
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I am not sure if this is an answer to you, but if someone develops symptoms and you have been in contact with them it is possible they gave you the virus while they were still asymptomatic.

It will take a few days for you to develop symptoms but you also could be spreading the virus before then so it makes sense to self isolate for a few days to see what happens rather than risk making someone else sick.

If the original source is negative then you are fine but if they are positive you need to stay away from people for the 14 days it can take for symptoms to develop.

A negative test at this point could be a false negative so it is not useful.

If your contact tests negative but seems to have covid anyway it could be a false negative test and you could still become sick.
 
Thanks @Mithriel . Perhaps I should provide more background.

Had a look at the NHS England website for advise on possible infection with the Corona virus and it seems much easier than what the RKI in Germany advises. But as I don't know on which evidence they base their advise I can't decide which of both makes more sense.

The NHS advises to self-isolate and take further action if you have one of 3 symptoms -- fever, new, persistent cough or loss or change of smell/taste.

In Germany, you don't need to have one of those symptoms to qualify for self-isolation if you instead have one of the following symptoms: shortness of breath, rhinitis, sore throat, headache and aching limbs, general weakness.

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ...gshilfe_Buerger_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

It's not easy to find this information on the RKI Corona website even in German. So if people with mild symptoms bother at all, they still need patience to find any official advise.

Also, we don't get testkits for testing at home. At the doctors' offices that offer testing and at the other testing sites in the hotspots there are long waiting times. People have to stand in a queue or sit in a room or tent with other sick people for hours.

So, many people that should self-isolate but don't need sick notes or don't need medical treatment won't get tested and won't stay at home either.

In addition, in the hotspots here, many infections now can't be tracked back anymore.

Hence the question, if you still have (mild) symptoms that qualify for self-isolation 10 or more days after the first symptoms occurred, how likely is it that you are still contagious?
 
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FMMM1 said:
I'm sure you guys heard about this on the news as well --- virus can survive 28 days on certain surfaces---


The effect of temperature on persistence of SARS‑CoV‑2 on common surfaces

https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1186/s12985-020-01418-7?sharing_token=gZeWNzpBqGqMWWlYBszijm_BpE1tBhCbnbw3BuzI2RPH7jdqQjm4GSWc627bmRViN0gdjUUXa4XmNsLCVxARS5fW6_H-pdK1v6GxwHmr02IpeWQaQhWfdiZqkh8IAAPswG5OMBeJlMvLtQ_xpm3V7AzNehvYyja-6O3X0Zs6-M4=
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Under lab conditions in the dark, I believe.
 
I'm surprised not to have seen more discussion in the news about the prospect of a diagnostic, mass-produced 'chip' where you'd put a drop of blood on it and it could diagnose Covid-19, like this sort of thing. Do the bioscientists among us here fancy its chances? Surely such a thing could be a game-changer.
 
Kreye, J., Reincke, S.M. & Prüss, H. Do cross-reactive antibodies cause neuropathology in COVID-19?. Nat Rev Immunol (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-020-00458-y

Neurological symptoms are seen in patients with COVID-19 and can persist or re-emerge after clearance of SARS-CoV-2. Recent findings suggest that antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 can cross-react with mammalian proteins. Focusing on neurological symptoms, we discuss whether these cross-reactive antibodies could contribute to COVID-19 disease pathology and to the persistence of symptoms in patients who have cleared the initial viral infection.
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Neurologic and neuroimaging findings in patients with COVID-19

https://n.neurology.org/content/95/13/e1868

Methods In this retrospective multicenter study (11 hospitals), we included 64 patients with confirmed COVID-19 with neurologic manifestations who underwent a brain MRI.
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Results The cohort included 43 men (67%) and 21 women (33%); their median age was 66 (range 20–92) years. Thirty-six (56%) brain MRIs were considered abnormal, possibly related to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. Ischemic strokes (27%), leptomeningeal enhancement (17%), and encephalitis (13%) were the most frequent neuroimaging findings. Confusion (53%) was the most common neurologic manifestation, followed by impaired consciousness (39%), presence of clinical signs of corticospinal tract involvement (31%), agitation (31%), and headache (16%). The profile of patients experiencing ischemic stroke was different from that of other patients with abnormal brain imaging: the former less frequently had acute respiratory distress syndrome (p = 0.006) and more frequently had corticospinal tract signs (p = 0.02). Patients with encephalitis were younger (p = 0.007), whereas agitation was more frequent for patients with leptomeningeal enhancement (p = 0.009).
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Conclusions Patients with COVID-19 may develop a wide range of neurologic symptoms, which can be associated with severe and fatal complications such as ischemic stroke or encephalitis. In terms of meningoencephalitis involvement, even if a direct effect of the virus cannot be excluded, the pathophysiology seems to involve an immune or inflammatory process given the presence of signs of inflammation in both CSF and neuroimaging but the lack of virus in CSF.
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