[conspire] Numbers racket

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2020, at 2:08 PM, Ruben Safir wrote:
> On 4/27/20 5:55 AM, Deirdre Saoirse Moen wrote:
> > Exactly, and that assumes that there’s immunity, which we still do not
> > know.
> 
> When there is no immunity the patients die.  That is what happens with
> HIV.  There is no immunity and the patients never overcome the disease
> and they die.  Most patients take this one and never get more than a
> cold.  That is the defintion of immunity.

It is not, not at all. We do not know they cannot get *reinfected*. That is an assumption that people have been making that is unwarranted.

1. We don't know that we can create an effective vaccine because we have never created an effective vaccine for the betacoronavirus family for humans.

2. Even if we did, we don't know that it would actually prevent reinfection, or that reinfection wouldn't actually be worse (my point in raising dengue).

I'm going to harp on the second because it's more fun.

The cytokine release storm that causes the unreal lung issues in ICU patients in COVID-19 who are otherwise healthy implies that there is a possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement, but I have lost the tab with the logic for that, mea culpa. So my apologies for the lapse of logic between this paragraph and the next.

HAVING HAD THE VIRUS MAY MAKE REINFECTION WORSE, NOT PREVENT REINFECTION.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement

…and that's what's, in part, leading to the specific failures in lungs and heart, possibly what led to the heart *rupture* in the autopsy I posted yesterday:

Linked from here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Exclusive-Autopsy-report-of-first-known-15226422.php

So, what ADE means, as a practical matter, to spell it out: previous exposure to something similar (SARS, MERS, COVID19) *may* (we don't know) set you up so that a reinfection could kill you when you get infected with something similar enough. Which means a vaccine could too, unfortunately. (No, I'm not an anti-vaxxer in the slightest, but there are issues in safe vaccine production.)

Now, I will admit, I have a ton less less specific pharmacological experience than you do, but on this specific disease, I'm pretty sure I've read a lot more than you have because I've read over 2000 pages of science papers so far and trying to ensure I understand all the nuances of what I'm able to. (I don't have a lot of bench science, but I do have immunology and neuroscience specifically.)

1. From SARS research: Viral-Induced Enhanced Disease Illness

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6290032/

2. From SARS research: Anti–spike IgG causes severe acute lung injury by skewing macrophage responses during acute SARS-CoV infection

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478436/

> By contrast, it was shown that SARS-CoV–specific immune memory induced by prior infection enhanced lung inflammation following homologous challenge in African green monkeys (17).

3. From research on numerous species: SARS vaccines: where are we?

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/erv.09.43

> Unfortunately, CoV vaccines have a history of enhancing disease, notably with feline CoVs [80,125].

Which, fwiw, may be specific to feline genetics and immune systems.

All of this depends on *long-term* how it affects the B-cells, which we do NOT YET KNOW.

Ruben, sit down and let the virologists do their shit.

Deirdre