fygjam

Expedited access for COVID-19 related IP The COVID-19 pandemic demands an urgent and unprecedented response. University research and expertise is critical to this effort, and OUI is supporting a growing number of projects from Oxford University involving IP and technology that could help address the current pandemic. These include vaccines, rapid diagnostics, ventilators, therapeutics and remote monitoring technology. The following guidance explains how we approach licensing COVID-19 related IP to 3rd parties in these exceptional circumstances. Guidance for organisations seeking to licence or otherwise access University of Oxford IP relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic OU and OUI will expedite access to Oxford IP to enable global deployment at scale of associated products and services to address the COVID-19 pandemic The default approach of the University and OUI regarding (1) will be to offer non-exclusive, royalty-free licences to support free of charge, at-cost or cost + limited margin supply as appropriate, and only for the duration of the pandemic, as defined by the WHO Licence terms for supplying downstream (post-pandemic) commercial markets will be the subject of a separate agreement The grant to a Licensee of access to IP under (1) does not guarantee it will be granted downstream commercial rights Where relevant University IP is licensed to support commercial sales after the point at which the pandemic is declared by the WHO (or other appropriate body) to be over, such licences will carry appropriate financial terms to allow the University to reinvest proceeds in research and teaching. The University and Oxford University Innovation Ltd will wherever possible adhere to the above principles, subject to our obligations to 3rd party funders and to cases where the overarching principle (1) can only be achieved by a different approach. All licences granted under these principles will preserve the University’s academic research freedoms to publish and use the IP for teaching and research purposes. https://innovation.ox.ac.uk/technologies-available/technology-licensing/expedited-access-covid-19-related-ip/

Hmm, tough decision. Trust the "experts" who did the research and made the stuff or the "experts", who perhaps have an agenda. Evidence based science rules, ok.

Warning. Viewer discretion advised. The following, although written by a pom, may contain suggestions which could be construed by the overly sensitive and emotional as Britain Bashing. The author is a virologist and as such probably has a better understanding of how viruses mutate to escape the immune response compared to a general physician who swapped stethoscope for the editor's pencil at the BMJ. Musings of an anonymous, pissed off virologist 5 JANUARY 2021 Dr. Bieniasz is Professor and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Rockefeller University. As viruses go, SARS-CoV-2, is quite easy to neutralize with antibodies and, it turns out, straightforward to generate effective vaccines based on the spike protein. Perhaps, even probably, those two properties are causally related. Moreover, it appears that it is quite hard (albeit not impossible) to generate resistant spike variants that evade the polyclonal antibody responses elicited by said vaccines. This is all excellent news. However, if I had a nefarious nature and wanted to ensure that the new SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were rendered impotent, these are a few things I would try. First, we’d want to maximize the viral population size and diversity. Because SARS-CoV-2 has a proofreading polymerase, we might have to work hard to do this. The four measures outlined below might help accomplish this, assisting the virus to explore as much genetic diversity as possible, generating every conceivable point mutation as frequently as possible. Delay the rollout of testing, so that the virus could spread undetected, seeding outbreaks in geographically, demographically and culturally diverse host populations, rendering it virtually impossible to quash with test-trace-isolate approaches. Implement partial and patchy restrictions on movement and social interactions, thus maintaining consistently large pools of infected individuals. Keep schools open, claiming that children don’t frequently transmit SARS-CoV-2. Because children have generally mild and perhaps more frequently asymptomatic infections, diversifying viral populations are more likely to spread undetected. Start a rumor-mill, making full use of social media and other outlets, with topics such as masks are unnecessary or don’t work, that PCR tests are too sensitive or unreliable, that infection-induced ‘herd immunity’ is a reasonable strategy, or even that SARS-CoV-2 isn’t real. Undermining already inadequate public health measures helps keep viral population sizes large. Second, during or after the establishment of large and diverse viral populations, we’d begin to apply selection pressure to enrich antibody resistance mutations. For that, we would elicit the help of the medical establishment to implement measures 5 and 6. They, laudably, want to help as many people as possible as quickly as possible — we could exploit this. 5. Treat tens of thousands of people with uncharacterized convalescent plasma of weak/unknown potency, without proper clinical trials, to get the ball rolling in applying some selection pressure to enrich for antibody resistant variants. (Again, I don’t know how effective this would be since it is mostly done in hospitals, where onward transmission would presumably be rare, but it would certainly be worth a try) Immunocompromised individuals with persistent infection might be especially helpful here. 6. Finally, and here’s the kicker: having developed a remarkable two-dose vaccine, that is extraordinarily effective, ADMINISTER IT TO MILLIONS OF PEOPLE – BUT DELAY THE SECOND DOSE. Generating a pool of hosts with just the right amount of neutralizing antibody to apply selection pressure, but also maintain sufficient levels of partially antibody-resistant virus to allow onward transmission is key here. We might not achieve this shortly after the first dose, but if we let immunity wane for a little while, say 4 to 12 weeks, we just might hit the sweet spot. Of course, I don’t know if the above would be successful, but that’s what I’d try if I wanted to generate vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants.

In Australia the crew of ships are not allowed to disembark. They stay onboard until the ship either loads or unloads then departs. For aircrew, they are placed in isolation until they depart.

Note. This is from a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Posted January 19, 2021. To date severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected nearly 100 million individuals resulting in over two million deaths. Many vaccines are being deployed to prevent coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) including two novel mRNA-based vaccines. These vaccines elicit neutralizing antibodies and appear to be safe and effective, but the precise nature of the elicited antibodies is not known. Here we report on the antibody and memory B cell responses in a cohort of 20 volunteers who received either the Moderna (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) vaccines. Consistent with prior reports, 8 weeks after the second vaccine injection volunteers showed high levels of IgM, and IgG anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S), receptor binding domain (RBD) binding titers. Moreover, the plasma neutralizing activity, and the relative numbers of RBD-specific memory B cells were equivalent to individuals who recovered from natural infection. However, activity against SARS-CoV-2 variants encoding E484K or N501Y or the K417N:E484K:N501Y combination was reduced by a small but significant margin. Consistent with these findings, vaccine-elicited monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2, targeting a number of different RBD epitopes in common with mAbs isolated from infected donors. Structural analyses of mAbs complexed with S trimer suggest that vaccine- and virus-encoded S adopts similar conformations to induce equivalent anti-RBD antibodies. However, neutralization by 14 of the 17 most potent mAbs tested was reduced or abolished by either K417N, or E484K, or N501Y mutations. Notably, the same mutations were selected when recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV)/SARS-CoV-2 S was cultured in the presence of the vaccine elicited mAbs. Taken together the results suggest that the monoclonal antibodies in clinical use should be tested against newly arising variants, and that mRNA vaccines may need to be updated periodically to avoid potential loss of clinical efficacy. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.15.426911v1 Notation like N501Y denotes an amino acid substitution in the protein, in this case the spike protein. Google something like "single letter amino acid codes" and you will find any number of tables which identify the amino acids in question. The 501 identifies the nucleotide position where the substitution occurred.

NEWS 21 JANUARY 2021 Fast-spreading COVID variant can elude immune responses Evidence that a variant of the coronavirus identified in South Africa might compromise immunity sparks concerns about vaccine effectiveness. Evidence is growing that some coronavirus variants could evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and previous infections. Researchers are trying to make sense of a tsunami of lab studies released this week that raise concerns about some emerging variants and mutations. “Some of the data I’ve seen in the last 48 hours have really scared me,” says Daniel Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, who worries that some of results could portend a reduction in the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00121-z

Boat bike thing.

One zillion years from now, some future archaeologist will read about how a totemic, flammable wax representation of Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina exploded in a woman’s home, and they will think that Gwyn was some sort of angry fertility goddess. And they would be right. On Monday, January 18, a U.K. woman told the Sun that a “This Smells Like My Vagina” Goop candle that she won in an online quiz (about what?) damn near burned her house down after a “50cm flame leapt from the candle and out of the glass jar,” as if she lit a match near a particularly dry bramble. The literal bomb-pussy victim told the Sun, “The candle exploded and emitted huge flames, with bits flying everywhere. I’ve never seen anything like it. The whole thing was ablaze and it was too hot to touch. There was an inferno in the room.” She eventually got Paltrow’s vagina candle under control by chucking it out her front door. Goop, for its part, told the New York Post that it has “alerted the manufacturer to the woman’s issue and have also reached out to her to send her some goop products to help pass the days in quarantine.” Hopefully these products come with a WAPfire extinguisher.

Hint for climbing over (some) paywalls. I run two browsers, Chrome and Firefox. Chrome is my go to browser and I rarely clear the cache, history, cookies etc. This trips me up on sites like the NYT, Washington Post etc because they detect the "you've had your free read" cookie. But if I use Firefox, do a clear history which deletes the "free read" cookie then I can read the article.

And then he screws up by thinking effectiveness is the same as efficacy. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have an efficacy of 95%. The effectiveness has not yet been established. Vaccine efficacy and effectiveness are measures that compare the rates of disease between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Efficacy is measured in controlled clinical trials, whereas effectiveness is measured once the vaccine is approved for use in the general population.

Can you buy it from the pharmacy next to Tim's yet?

c**t, Pussy, Rectum.

Hasn't posted this year. Maybe someone broke his pencil.

Well he should be fit if and when... Foreigners in Bali are punished with push-ups for not following coronavirus health protocols https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-18/foreigners-bali-punished-breach-coronavirus-covid-19-protocols/13057028

Watching Packers shear the Sheep.

The WA Government announced on 10 July 2020, that anyone arriving into WA and directed to enter a State Quarantine Facility (hotel quarantine) on or after the 17 July 2020, would be required to pay for their quarantine period. https://www.wa.gov.au/government/publications/paying-hotel-quarantine-wa-frequently-asked-questions The NSW Government will begin to charge returning international travellers for their hotel quarantine accommodation from 12:01am Saturday, 18 July. https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/nsw-to-charge-returned-international-travellers-for-hotel-quarantine You really should try google yourself occasionally. Might stop you from making a complete idiot of yourself.

The Coronavac trial will adjust the figures to give you the efficacy you want. The 50.4% (50.38%) is what you get when all trial participants are included. Saw some figures a while back. Moderna and Pfizer about $US20 per dose (dunno if wholesale or retail). AstraZeneca about $US2-3 per dose. No idea the cost of Coronavac but it's manufactured old school. Whip up a batch of virus, clobber them with chemicals, stir in some aluminium salts and you're good to go. It's called inactivated virus. I guess if you not a particularly wealthy country and have hundreds of millions to vaccinate you go cheap.

2021 is, at least unofficially, the year of the sea shanty... Of all the things I thought might happen in 2021, spending the first two weeks weeping with joy over a song about the slaughter of a whale is not something I could ever have predicted. But that’s exactly what I and thousands of others have been doing thanks to sea shanty TikTok. It's the rare kind of viral moment that transcends its meme status and offers something more: a vital glimpse of hope. The start of a phenomenon In the final days of 2020, Scottish singer Nathan Evans posted a TikTok of himself singing the sea shanty Wellerman. It's a New Zealand folksong from the mid-19th century, about a Sydney whaling company called The Weller Bros, whose employees and ships were called 'Wellermen'. The song features a supply ship bringing "sugar and tea and rum" to a whaling crew off the shore of New Zealand. https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/what-are-sea-shanties-why-going-viral-online/100005620 What next, bloody hornpipes?

Well I didn't know. I wondered if he made any YouTube videos. And what do I find? Hieronymus Bosch Butt Music Don't ask, don't tell.

You really like your disinformation don't ya. The NSW Government is charging domestic travellers and returning NSW residents from from Victoria and all international travellers (other than from New Zealand) for their quarantine accommodation. https://www.revenue.nsw.gov.au/news-media-releases/covid-19-tax-relief-measures/quarantine-fees The NSW Government will charge travellers for their hotel quarantine accommodation. You will still be required to quarantine in government arranged accommodation, unless provided an exemption to self isolate. The NSW Government will invoice you at the end of your stay. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/factsheets/Pages/hotel-quarantine.aspx

Only problem is you have to snort it. One large bottle per nostril per hour for 7 days.

There are two ways to control Covid-19 in a community. Elimination or management. WA elected for elimination and isolation certainly helps. The severest lockdown started on March 31st and ended April 27th. The last case of community transmission was April 11th. Since then WA has maintained strict control on entry which is easier to do with geographic isolation. If you're coming from overseas or a state with less than 28 days since the last occurrence of community transmission you go into quarantine for 14 days. There are some arrivals who think the rules don't apply to them. They are usually relieved of ever increasing sums of money and get to spend the remainder of their quarantine period in a secure quarantine facility or prison cell. For some, the quarantine clock restarts. Other Australian states have elected for management and are having a continuous run of outbreaks and mini lockdowns. I know which method of control I prefer.

I'd stick it in the totally inaccurate information section. As a ratio of overseas arrival per head of local population, the size of the local population dictates what infrastructure is available NSW 1 arrival per 11 locals WA 1/13 VIC 1/13 NT 1/15 QLD 1/16 SA 1/37 TAS 1/176 Arrival figures, latest ABS monthly statistics. WA could probably take more but the quarantine facilities are clogged up with people fleeing the disease ridden eastern states because the administrations in those states don't appear to be able to control the disease. A never ending series of outbreaks and lockdowns.

There's a web based tone generator https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ or an app for Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.luxdelux.frequencygenerator You can test the whole audio spectrum (or at least up to 20kHz).