The Once and Mutant Crown

Olga Miltsova, Pond5

"Scientists say a now-dominant strain of the coronavirus appears to be more contagious than the original." This headline came as a text message to me from a friend. The LA Times article is by Ralph Vartabedian. 

What Viruses Do:  Mutate Unceasingly

Coronaviruses are famous for being masters at mutating. The authors of the paper are scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Duke University in the US, and the University of Sheffield in England. Bette Korber, who was quoted extensively in the LA Times article, is a computational biologist and a medical science rock star. Korber earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from Cal Tech, has contributed substantially to work on an HIV vaccine, and was awarded the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 2004, the highest scientific award bestowed by the US Department of Energy. After spending some time on her FB page, it is clear she is as kind and caring as she is brilliant. 

She and her fellow scientists uploaded their 33-page paper to BioRxiv, a site where researchers share findings before peer review. (I could find the paper yesterday, but I can't today, and no article I've read has published the exact title. My apologies.) Currently, this pre-print biology server has 577 scientific papers on coronavirus, and its sister site medRxiv has 2335. 

Korber, et al, did not wait for peer review to upload their paper because "they felt an 'urgent need for an early warning' so that vaccines and drugs under development around the world will be effective against the mutated strain."  

Narin Saiparsan, Pond5

From  the LA Times via the AJC (Atlanta Journal-Constitution):  "The report contains regional breakdowns of when the new strain of virus first emerged and how long it took to become dominant. Italy was one of the first countries to see the new virus in the last week of February, almost at the same time the original strain appeared. Washington was among the first states to get hit with the original strain in late February, but by March 15, the mutated strain dominated. New York was hit by the original virus around March 15, but within days the mutant strain took over.

"Wherever the new strain appeared, it quickly infected far more people than the earlier strains that came out of Wuhan, China, and within weeks it was the only strain that was prevalent in some nations, according to the report. The new strain's dominance over its predecessors demonstrates that it is more infectious, according to the report, though exactly why is not yet known." 

Anokato, Pond5

A summary for us normal folks:

• Corona comes from the Latin for "crown." The virus is so called due to the club-shaped spikes or "tines" that extend from its "lipid envelope." (Merriam Webster)  These spikes enable the virus to attach to lung cells.

• SARS-CoV2 began mutating as early as last February. The mutation, named D614G, occurs on one or more of these spikes.

• The first version of the virus had barely begun its invasion when the mutations began to occur. 

• The mutated virus is becoming the dominant pandemic form. Based on what I glean from current reporting, this mutated, dominant form can infect people faster and can increase the body's virus load. 

• If the virus underwent one mutation this quickly, is it possible it will mutate again soon, possibly leading to yet another new dominant pandemic form of the virus? Vaccine researchers are working with a moving target.
• This also means that the antibody picture just got blurrier. Antibodies to which version of the virus? We already know the presence of antibodies does not imply immunity to SARS-CoV2 (the name of the virus causing Covid-19). 

My takeaways from this latest information: As The Economist wrote this week: "Assumptions are not data."
Separate the assumptions you read, hear, or make from real knowledge. 
Assume that you do not have all of the knowledge.
Commit to becoming more knowledgeable every day.
Every day, we learn something new about this virus.
What we learned yesterday is helpful, but still not enough.

You will read and hear scientists who think the report of the D614G mutation is no cause for worry.  Even a recent fact-checked report on Healthline says SARS-CoV2 is mutating very slowly, and that all viruses mutate, especially RNA viruses. However, author Julia Ries does go on to refer to Korber, et al's study.  It's a good article from a writer I trust. Still, I'm sticking to my policy of not assuming. Until those scientists can provide the same depth and amount of data as Korber, et al provide, I will rely on the 33-page paper by experts.

I have another reason to believe the study on this latest mutation. The virus behind  Covid-19 is exactly that, a mutation. The coronavirus that causes SARS mutated into SARS-CoV2.  SARS had a death rate of 10 percent, but did not spread as rapidly as SARS-CoV2. According to several sources, it's believed that someone could not be a carrier of SARS  without having symptoms. If this current SARS mutation can be this sneaky, deadly and pervasive, I find it quite plausible that the D614G mutation is a force to reckon with. I also believe that the SARS-CoV2 may be an older, mutated virus than we can know.  (I've seen references to its discovery in animals as far back as 2012.)

There is no vaccine for any coronavirus.  This in itself could be a testament to the viruses' abilities to mutate and slip from our grasp, when it comes to fighting back. 

The Past is Present

We learned a lot from HIV. No unprotected sex, no needle sharing: those two simple acts were able to save millions of lives. Are you by any chance still thinking this was mostly about gay men? Think again. Children born with AIDS were not born from gay men. Massive numbers of women were infected by unfaithful husbands who refused to wear condoms. Selfish actions, global consequences. It beggared belief to see how resistant people (often heterosexual men) were to engage in protected sex. They would risk death first, and risk the death of another, very likely a loved one. 

Many of us learned to think of HIV as a virus that affected gay men, sex workers, drug addicts, children (mostly) in other countries, and poor, disenfranchised women. Whoever "we" were, AIDS happened to "them."  But "we" are "them." We are the people now who have no immunity from a virus. There is no immunity yet for HIV either, a virus discovered in the 1980s, with some evidence it was first identified in the 1950s. We cannot bet on herd immunity, antibody tests, or vaccines. We simply can't, until we have evidence. Evidence may be years in coming. It has been for HIV.

We know the simple steps we can take to protect ourselves and others from Covid-19: Wear a mask, wear gloves, and stay six feet apart from others or more. Wash hands frequently (after touching something outside your normal environment). Avoid touching your face. Change clothes after being in a public environment. Avoid large public gatherings. Wipe surfaces regularly after any outside exposure, such as bringing in groceries. If you are in public without a mask, you are being selfish. Even at your own expense. We need to do at least what we know to do. It's less than convenient, and for people with physical limitations, the constant wiping down and other chores are difficult or even painful, but I know that these are the only defenses I have. I have only myself to blame if I don't use them.*  The good news: doing these things can save lives! Thousands of lives.

Максим Евдокимов, Pond5

Invisible Stalkers, Invisible Grace

Today's death toll in the US is 76,693 (Worldometer). With more than 2400 deaths yesterday, May 6, the US leads the world in deaths. Johns Hopkins University reports more than 1.2 million Covid-19 cases confirmed in the US.  The US population is more than 330 million people.  This is a testing rate of less than 1 percent.  We cannot even "assume" a total number of cases until we have all the data needed from testing. As hard as people work to confirm these numbers, they still do not have all the information in hand.

Thank Goodness, the world has people like Bette Korber in it. Her words from a recent FB post reassure me: "This is hard news, but please don't only be disheartened by it. Our team at LANL was able to document this mutation and its impact on transmission only because of a massive global effort of clinical people and experimental groups, who make new sequences of the virus (SARS-CoV-2) in their local communities available as quickly as they possibly can." 

It raises my spirit and my hopes to know that, just as I cannot see this invisible virus, stalking the world, I also cannot "see" these scientists hard at work, doing all they can to help, even to save, us. As much evil is invisible, so also is much good. 

And much is still good.

Blessings, all.

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*According to Live Science: A new analysis found that the SARS-CoV2 virus can remain viable in the air for up to 3 hours, on copper for up to 4 hours, on cardboard for up to 24 hours, and on plastic and stainless steel up to 72 hours. This study was originally published in the preprint database medRxiv on March 11,  and now a revised version was published on March 17 in The New England Journal of Medicine