COVID-19: Chapter 7 - Brags, Beats, and Variants

The biggest advantage right now, as I understand it, is that they can spin up mRNA vaccines much more quickly than conventional vaccines and get them to production lines.

As a scientist, I am pretty darn happy about a likely hypothesis that favors me personally getting confirmed, no matter how likely.

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The tradeoff is that mRNA is a much more fragile molecule than DNA. So, not knowing the results, I’d have a hard time betting on which would end up being more effective. The mRNA vaccines have less cellular regulation in their way, but they’re less likely to make it into cells intact. The DNA vaccines are more likely to get in intact, but they face more cellular regulatory obstacles once there.

Also, I’m sure many people have tried porn, but have you tried looking at covid-19 case loads lately?

No Super Bowl bump? Oh, that’s so hot.

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Your pony is a fragile molecule.

Japan did it’s first vaccination yesterday. Covid front-liners will have first dibs on the initial batch, with the rest of the medical community and high-risk individuals to follow. 65+ vaccinations scheduled to begin in April.

It’ll be a half year or more before my turn comes around.

Poker finally reopened here, right around a year after it closed. (No community cases in my state for a couple months)

It’s kind of weird that cases are suddenly just plummeting worldwide. I have yet to see a coherent hypothesis that explains the fall everywhere like that, in both the northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Must have been something Donald Trump did while in office to take care of it so quickly.

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My understanding is that mRNA sequences can be quickly substituted out.

The target DNA sequence is synthesized in a machine and then expressed in a plasmid in a bacteria which cranks out tons of DNA.

The DNA is then purified and enzymatically transcribed into mRNA. Then it’s purification, formulation in fat, and packaging.

The delivery by fat dissolution and uptake into the cell without a live vector is a much simpler mechanism. No need to have the DNA integrate into the genome. No immune response to avoid for the delivery mechanism. No need to have a promoter for gene expression.

For an immune response, the short life of mRNA is perfect. We don’t want to be generating the antigen protein long term.

True gene therapy we want a permanent change that will persist as cells replicate- suited for a viral vector.

(Note traditional vaccines make the protein directly for injection, not instructions to the cells to make the protein).

The mRNA seems much more plug-n-play.

ROW is in differing degrees of lockdown hence the fall in cases.

It’s kinda weird that cases are plummeting in the US however with UK commentators hypothesiing this is either down to an increased awareness of social distancing or that the US is approxiamately at point ‘x’ on my graph below (i.e. pre-UK variant dominance which Fauci states is due early March in US time)

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Elections over? Maybe they were right? lol

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(shrug) exponential increases have to stop eventually.

What’s the deal with Japan? For an advanced economy, it seems really far behind in the vaccine game.

Never thought I’d say this but I’m so goddamn jealous of America now.

Shit’s getting worse in the Czech Republic and they’re planning to open schools and some stores starting March. I mean we’re already the worst in the world in

But vaccines here are working super good among those who have them. Deaths and hospitalizations per day among the 80+ group (the only age range eligible for vaccines now in the CR) have decreased by about 80% over the last month. And that’s with just 180,000 of them fully vaccinated. The cumulative vaccine dosages delivered per 100 people is 22nd of 27 EU member states (Luxembourg, Netherlands, Croatia, Latvia, and Bulgaria are lower).

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Lol Cuomosexuals

In positive news, the government is claiming that teachers will be able to register to get the vaccine starting March 1st. When they did that for people over 80, the website crashed. Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen with teachers too.

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https://twitter.com/laurahelmuth/status/1362379459261833218?s=21

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Sure, but didn’t most expect exponentional increases to turn into a plateau, or maybe a gradual decline? I mean every every other so called “decrease” so far has really only been a slight decrease followed by plateau and increase again. This decrease is off a cliff.

there probably was in the USA at least over the holidays, but everything is weird in that time period.

Declines have been pretty fast too elsewhere.