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Superspreading

6 Comments

What causes some to transmit the disease more than others?

[Update a few minutes later]

The immune system may have a unique response to the coronavirus (also an interesting description of how viruses work).

6 thoughts on “Superspreading”

  2. The “studies” are all over the place and because they are so contradictory as a group, no single study should be trusted.

  3. Rand I consider you an expert on risk. That is at the center on this problem. My county had 2 new cases of Covid 19 last week. We may have the same or less next week. It makes sense. We are in general taking precautions, it’s not perfect, but sufficient, in a smaller population. It’s manageable here. LA, or NYC, are another can of worms. A large portion of their population not only live on top of each other, but they are also not in the best of health. To send them back to their daily lives will fill the hospitals again in short order. Everything in the news is directed at them, to convince them to continue to quarantine. Frankly it sucks to be them, but we are managing. And more importantly respecting each other, and not visiting the vulnerable. That can’t be done there. The risk is to high because of population density.

  4. I love just about anything Derek Lowe* writes. What he says here pretty much is in-line with what I’ve seen written elsewhere and commented on before. If we can get a successful vaccine, great, but we shouldn’t do just that. More research into the COVID-19 pneumonia and methods to prevent its associated cytokine storms should be done in parallel. In order to have successful treatments at hand as palliatives in case we encounter either yet another novel virus that acts this way or a mutation of SARS-CoV-2 against which a new vaccine doesn’t provide immunity. We need to act on this quickly, before the COVID-19 syndrome disappears. Or it will be SARS (one) all over again. No disease, thus no symptoms, ergo no treatments. If we’re smart *this* time around, we’ll keep enough samples of live SARS-CoV-2 around that maybe, should it disappear in the general population, we can find brave volunteers to induce COVID-19 responses in to discover palliative treatment. OK, sure bring on the ethicists to help us decide how to do this ethically.

    We have the nuclear option of steroids such as prednisone and immune-suppressants such as cyclosporin. But as someone else pointed out, these are like atomic bombs against the immune system and may do more harm than good. As I posted in a prior link there are other immune-suppressants that target specific cytokines such as IL-6, etc. that used individually or in combination with others, perhaps in an IV cocktail, can prevent the deadly pneumonia of the COVID-19 response in some people to the Sars-CoV-2 virus.

    *- of things I won’t work with fame…
    https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/05/08/things_i_wont_work_with_dimethylcadmium

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