Both had a surprising-to-me “pinkeye” symptom profile. Weird!
The dairy worker in Michigan had various “compartments” tested and their nasal compartment (and people they lived with) were all negative. Hopeful?
Apparently and also hopefully this virus is NOT freakishly good at infecting humans and also weirdly many other animals (like covid was with human ACE2, in precisely the ways people have talked about when discussing gain-of-function in years prior to covid).
If we’re being foolishly mechanical in our inferences “n=2 with 2 survivors” could get rule of succession treatment. In that case we pseudocount 1 for each category of interest (hence if n=0 we say 50% survival chance based on nothing but pseudocounts), and now we have 3 survivors (2 real) versus 1 dead (0 real) and guess that the worst the mortality rate here would be maybe 1⁄4 == 25% (?? (as an ass number)), which is pleasantly lower than overall observed base rates for avian flu mortality in humans! :-)
Naive impressions: a natural virus, with pretty clear reservoirs (first birds and now dairy cows), on the maybe slightly less bad side of “potentially killing millions of people”?
I haven’t heard anything about sequencing yet (hopefully in a BSL4 (or homebrew BSL5, even though official BSL5s don’t exist yet), but presumably they might not bother to treat this as super dangerous by default until they verify that it is positively safe) but I also haven’t personallylooked for sequencing work on this new thing.
When people did very dangerous Gain-of-Function research with a cousin of this, in ferrets, over 10 year ago (causing a great uproar among some) the supporters argued that it was was worth creating especially horrible diseases on purpose in labs in order to see the details, like a bunch of geeks who would Be As Gods And Know Good From Evil… and they confirmed back then that a handful of mutations separated “what we should properly fear” from “stuff that was ambient”.
Four amino acid substitutions in the host receptor-binding protein hemagglutinin, and one in the polymerase complex protein basic polymerase 2, were consistently present in airborne-transmitted viruses. (same source)
It seems silly to ignore this, and let that hilariously imprudent research of old go to waste? :-)
The transmissible viruses were sensitive to the antiviral drug oseltamivir and reacted well with antisera raised against H5 influenza vaccine strains. (still the same source)
Since some random scientists playing with equipment bought using taxpayer money already took the crazy risks back then, it would be silly to now ignore the information they bought so dearly (with such large and negative EV) back then <3
To be clear, that drug worked against something that might not even be the same thing.
All biological STEM stuff is a crapshoot. Lots and lots of stamp-collecting. Lots of guess and check. Lots of “the closest example we think we know might work like X” reasoning. Biological systems or techniques can do almost anything physically possible eventually, but each incremental improvement in repeatability (going from having to try 10 million times to get something to happen to having to try 1 million times (or going from having to try 8 times on average to 4 times on average) due to “progress” ) is kinda “as difficult as the previous increment in progress that made things an order of magnitude more repeatable”.
The new flu just went from 1 to 2. I hope it never gets to 4.
Also, there’s now a second detected human case, this one in Michigan instead of Texas.
Both had a surprising-to-me “pinkeye” symptom profile. Weird!
The dairy worker in Michigan had various “compartments” tested and their nasal compartment (and people they lived with) were all negative. Hopeful?
Apparently and also hopefully this virus is NOT freakishly good at infecting humans and also weirdly many other animals (like covid was with human ACE2, in precisely the ways people have talked about when discussing gain-of-function in years prior to covid).
If we’re being foolishly mechanical in our inferences “n=2 with 2 survivors” could get rule of succession treatment. In that case we pseudocount 1 for each category of interest (hence if n=0 we say 50% survival chance based on nothing but pseudocounts), and now we have 3 survivors (2 real) versus 1 dead (0 real) and guess that the worst the mortality rate here would be maybe 1⁄4 == 25% (?? (as an ass number)), which is pleasantly lower than overall observed base rates for avian flu mortality in humans! :-)
Naive impressions: a natural virus, with pretty clear reservoirs (first birds and now dairy cows), on the maybe slightly less bad side of “potentially killing millions of people”?
I haven’t heard anything about sequencing yet (hopefully in a BSL4 (or homebrew BSL5, even though official BSL5s don’t exist yet), but presumably they might not bother to treat this as super dangerous by default until they verify that it is positively safe) but I also haven’t personally looked for sequencing work on this new thing.
When people did very dangerous Gain-of-Function research with a cousin of this, in ferrets, over 10 year ago (causing a great uproar among some) the supporters argued that it was was worth creating especially horrible diseases on purpose in labs in order to see the details, like a bunch of geeks who would Be As Gods And Know Good From Evil… and they confirmed back then that a handful of mutations separated “what we should properly fear” from “stuff that was ambient”.
It seems silly to ignore this, and let that hilariously imprudent research of old go to waste? :-)
(Image sauce.)
Since some random scientists playing with equipment bought using taxpayer money already took the crazy risks back then, it would be silly to now ignore the information they bought so dearly (with such large and negative EV) back then <3
To be clear, that drug worked against something that might not even be the same thing.
All biological STEM stuff is a crapshoot. Lots and lots of stamp-collecting. Lots of guess and check. Lots of “the closest example we think we know might work like X” reasoning. Biological systems or techniques can do almost anything physically possible eventually, but each incremental improvement in repeatability (going from having to try 10 million times to get something to happen to having to try 1 million times (or going from having to try 8 times on average to 4 times on average) due to “progress” ) is kinda “as difficult as the previous increment in progress that made things an order of magnitude more repeatable”.
The new flu just went from 1 to 2. I hope it never gets to 4.