QT:{{”
Nearly 100 years ago, physicist Emerson Pugh famously said, “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
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Liked the quote: “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
http://www.ealingtoday.co.uk/default.asp?section=info&page=eagertrudelevitt001.htm
My condolences. Your mother was an amazing woman. Very impressed by the MA at 92!
Found it interesting that while Paxlovid has had greater success against #COVID19, Molnupiravir (& Remdesivir) might have more promise for future pandemics
QT:{{”
Not all RdRp inhibitors work the same way. In most cases, including with remdesivir, viruses incorporate the drug into the elongating RNA, and this brings the elongation process to a halt. Molnupiravir’s mechanism is different: elongation doesn’t stop when the enzyme incorporates the drug into viral RNA. Instead, the virus reuses molnupiravir-containing RNAs as template strands, and incorporates the wrong bases into new viral RNA when it re-encounters molnupiravir. Mutations accumulate over cycles, leading to ‘error catastrophe’ and viral death.
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Thought the premise of this story might be useful one day when we confront an extraterrestrial alien.
Great article. Amazing that you can use lost containers of sneakers to study ocean currents.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/06/when-shipping-containers-sink-in-the-drink legos lost at sea
Might be a boon for bioinformatics!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/half-a-billion-in-bitcoin-lost-in-the-dump ultimate going through the garbage
extended QT: {{”
A typical 65-year-old American woman — to take one example — is five foot three inches tall and weighs 166 pounds. If she had been vaccinated and did not have a major Covid risk factor, like an organ transplant, her chance of dying after contracting Covid would be 1 in 872, according to the calculator. For a typical 65-year-old man, the risk would be 1 in 434.
Among 75-year-olds, the risk would be 1 in 264 for a typical woman and 1 in 133 for a typical man.
Those are meaningful risks. But they are not larger than many other risks older people face. In the 2019-20 flu season, about 1 out of every 138 Americans 65 and older who had flu symptoms died from them, according to the C.D.C.
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Liked this qt: “A typical 65-year-old…woman…If…vaccinated and did not have a major Covid risk factor…her chance of dying after contracting Covid would be 1 in 872…In…2019-20…about 1 out of every 138 Americans 65 and older who had flu symptoms died from them.” …
But wonder if these stats are distorted by asymptomatic infections — i.e. if the 1 out of 872 reflects those showing Covid symptoms.
Omicron Is in Retreat: ‘What’s Next?’ – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/briefing/omicron-variant-cases.html
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