SARS Pandemic Effects on our Community

[Meatpie]

Bats can be infected with several strains of coronavirus at the same time without showing symptoms. Bats are the only mammals that fly.

Dear friends,

There has been some extraordinary developments around the world last couple of weeks clearly the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is out of control taking lives panic is spreading around the world and a sharp economic recession is expected that will negatively affect our community.

In this thread we will post updates on the current situation with the site but NOT on the current SARS outbreak and it's effects around the world. We have a separate thread for that here.

As of March 16 there has been a sharp drop in traffic to the site and very few elite membership donations.

Next couple of months we will be very hard for our community.

 

[Meatpie]

Things were good with our sources before the pandemic now all our sources are overwhelmed by the pandemic in their own coutnries and will most likely stop sharing.

 

[deaddirty]

Thanks Meatpie.
I am not at all surprised that our sources have other priorities right now. But I am surprised that traffic to the site has dropped - with so many stuck at home I would expect it to have risen. Unless many members re already ill
Best wishes especially to any members who are seriously ill, or their loved ones are.

 

[tite]

I will comment on what I see and I find the secret room in the elite group, suddenly that is the reason for few participants at the moment.
the secret room (elite) currently suffers from a lack of updating of its content, new content is just being directed to other sectors of the site, like food of death and super premium elite so it is no longer viable to participate as an elite in the cutedadguys and buy an account entitled to participate in death comers becomes accessible to a few because it is a much higher value in dorals, maybe I also do not renew my elite account for the next month, due to having encountered vast outdated content in the secret room.

 

[Meatpie]

I don't understand what you are banging on about we have fresh updates both male and female in our Secret Room every other day if not daily.

Pandemic situation around the world is rapidly deteriorating and it is starting to affect our sources. We are very worried how things will go from here. Everyone is just overwhelmed at the moment it is a very hard time for our community.

And it will get much worse over the next couple of months for everyone.

All money people donated we put back into the site if there is a deep global economic recession I honestly have no idea how we are going to stay online.

 

[swoods]

Meatpie, if you can take Pal Pal I can send you a little donation, let me know.

 

[deaddirty]

Thanks Meatpie.
I am not at all surprised that our sources have other priorities right now. But I am surprised that traffic to the site has dropped - with so many stuck at home I would expect it to have risen. Unless many members re already ill
Best wishes especially to any members who are seriously ill, or their loved ones are.

Actually I do understand why traffic to the site has dropped, because I'm feeling the same way. Somehow it just doesn't feel right to be posting death stuff with so much real death, illness and fear around - and I guess I've got a superstitious feeling that if I don't post death stuff, maybe things will work out OK for me and those I care about. Logical? No, but that's how I'm feeling. So I'm not going to be posting any 'real death' content for the moment, though I'll still be logging in and contributing to the social/community side of CDG. Assuming I stay well of course.

 

[Meatpie]

You will be fine DD and we understand last couple of days have been tough for all our members and our team included. I myself find it hard to post.

All our sources are out of work and staying and home we won't have new material arriving as often as it did before the pandemic escalated.

 

[Meatpie]

I am in shock how fast this virus can spread.

 

[deaddirty]

Thanks Meatpie.

Some hopeful news for once:

Cambridge research team working towards vaccine against COVID-19

The race is on to find a vaccine against the new COVID-19 coronavirus. Professor Jonathan Heeney explains why a cautious approach is needed and how his team is

www.cam.ac.uk

The race is on to find a vaccine against the new COVID-19 coronavirus. Professor Jonathan Heeney explains why a cautious approach is needed and how his team is using new technology developed for influenza and Ebola viruses to target the new infection.

A vaccine strategy needs to be laser specific, targeting those domains of the virus’s structure that are absolutely critical for docking with a cell, while avoiding the parts that could make things worse
Jonathan Heeney

It is hard now to conceive that two months ago, few people had heard of the new coronavirus. Now, the virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, has spread to every corner of the globe. The World Health Organization has officially declared the outbreak a pandemic.
With the threat of hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of people being infected and healthcare systems becoming overwhelmed, the race is on to develop a vaccine that will protect individuals and slow the spread of the disease. But Professor Jonathan Heeney, Head of the Laboratory of Viral Zoonotics at the University of Cambridge, and one of the people working on a vaccine, says that coronaviruses present a particular challenge to vaccine developers.
Coronaviruses are named after their appearance: they are spherical objects, on the surface of which sit ‘spike’ proteins. The virus uses these spikes to attach to and invade cells in our body. Once inside, the virus uses the cell’s own machinery to help itself replicate and spread throughout the body, causing disease and allowing it to transmit onwards.
Traditionally, scientists would develop vaccines that programme the body to produce antibodies that recognise and block these spikes. But this strategy can misfire with coronaviruses due to a phenomenon known as ‘antibody-induced enhancement’ or ‘vaccine-induced enhancement’, says Heeney.
“If you make antibodies against the spike, they can end up binding to it and helping the virus invade important immune cells known as monocyte-macrophages. Rather than destroying the virus, these cells can then end up being reprogrammed by the viruses, exacerbating the immune response and making the disease much, much worse than it would otherwise be.”
This phenomenon is well known, says Heeney, but it could still slow down development of a vaccine. “Researchers will want to be confident that their vaccine candidates are safe – that they don’t inadvertently make the disease worse – before they are tested in humans.”
As well as his Professorship at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, Heeney is CEO of DIOSynVax, a spin-out company set up in 2017 with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialisation arm. Its strapline is ‘We change the way vaccines are made’. In the past few years, Heeney has won significant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Innovate UK to develop new vaccines for diseases ranging from influenza to Ebola and other haemorrhagic fevers. It is this technology that he is now applying to the coronavirus.
DIOSynVax’s approach involves using computer modelling of the virus’s structure, created using information on the COVID-19 virus itself as well as its relatives – SARS, MERS and other coronaviruses – and identifying chinks in its armour, crucial pieces of the spikes that will form part of the vaccine, to disable the virus but without making the infection worse.
“A vaccine strategy needs to be laser specific, targeting those domains of the virus’s structure that are absolutely critical for docking with a cell, while avoiding the parts that could make things worse,” he says. “Our technology does just that.”
Their approach is to look at the genetics of these viruses to identify the key piece of genetic code that the virus uses to produce the essential part of its coat, the spikes, that are important for docking with a cell and to target these elements with the vaccine.
“What we end up with is a mimic, a mirror image of part of the virus, but minus its bad parts, the non-essential parts that could trigger those bad immune responses. What remains is just the magic bullet, essentially, to trigger the right type of immune response.”
Then, using a combination of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, the team create a vaccine that includes this piece of genetic code, which can be injected into an individual. The body’s immune cells will then find it, decode it and us the information to program the rest of the immune system to produce antibodies against it.
The next step is to then test the vaccine in pre-clinical trials – in other words, give the vaccine to mice to check that it is safe to use. Mice are an important part of vaccine research: their physiology and immune systems are similar enough to ours to enable researchers to minimise the risk to humans taking part in clinical trials.
DIOSynVax’s approach is much faster than current vaccine development technologies, says Heeney, which means that even allowing for essential pre-clinical mouse studies, his vaccine candidate could be ready for human clinical trials as early as June. He is currently seeking funding to pursue his work further and a pharmaceutical company with whom to partner on clinical trials.
“We need a ‘big pharma’ partner to help us scale up our activities,” he says. “Our vaccine designs are made so that they can be easily integrated into any proprietary vaccine platform that a pharmaceutical company may have ready.”

 

[deaddirty]

And some more - promising though very preliminary indications that some existing drugs may work against Covid-19, with the Japanese work on favipiravir looking particularly promising.

What are the prospects for a Covid-19 treatment?

Guardian science journalists pick out the most promising drugs and look at the evidence that they could work

www.theguardian.com

 

[deaddirty]

Oops, should really have posted in the other coronavirus thread. Meatpie, move them if you want to.

 

[Meatpie]

Thanks for the updates DD.

 

[lindier]

So United Kingdom has now entered a form of lockdown. Most retails outlets are to close excepting food stores and supermarkets. Okay it makes sense but somehow big brother and his state comes to mind.
Hopefully when we come out on the far side we will again become a liberal democracy.
And I wish Boris Johnson stopped trying to sound like Winston Churchill.

 

[Meatpie]

Too late I am afraid. Ideas of cultural or national superiority are the greatest risk factor of all at a time like this. Nowhere is that a more serious danger right now than in the United Kingdom and the United States – two countries especially prone to such delusions.

All the signs suggest that the UK and the US are heading in exactly the same direction as Italy and Iran - mass dying and crippled health systems.

 

[callmecaleb]

... the United Kingdom and the United States – two countries especially prone to such delusions.

Unfortunately, but thanks to their own electorates, two countries stuck with leaders prone to delusions of greatness. Where are Blair and Obama when we need them?

 

[phyzzique]

Too late I am afraid. Ideas of cultural or national superiority are the greatest risk factor of all at a time like this. Nowhere is that a more serious danger right now than in the United Kingdom and the United States – two countries especially prone to such delusions.

All the signs suggest that the UK and the US are heading in exactly the same direction as Italy and Iran - mass dying and crippled health systems.

Is that why everybody wants to live, work and go to school in the UK or USA.
Google, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, Tesla, Apple....the list goes on and on

 

[Meatpie]

USA is a very powerful nation with great achievements that benefit the whole world.

However it has exhausted its own design and will now completely collapse in NYC it will feel like the end of the world as the virus spreads.

Let's not ignore the fact that the USA has the worst healthcare system in the developed world and that income inequality in the United States is at record levels and last year it hit its highest level since the Census Bureau started tracking it more than five decades ago.

Collapse in NYC will feel like the end of the world as the virus spreads.

About migration to the UK for work...yes but it is mostly gypsies. In last couple years thousands of gypsies from Bulgaria and Romania have migrated to the UK to exploit their generous benefits system they have no skills no education and don't even speak the language. If they ever decide to work it's picking fruit or stocking shelves in a supermarket some do house repairs.

I can send you links to facebook groups for migrant workers from Bulgaria and Romania to see pictures and comments of their way of life in the UK it is 90% gypsies.

This week thousand of migrants in the UK have lost their jobs and want to return but with the travel bans and restrictions everywhere many will be stuck in Britain for months and will again apply for benefits.

The UK is the biggest welfare state in Europe perfect for gypsies. It will too like the USA collapse under the strain and become a third world country in the next couple of months.

Bulgaria too we expect complete obliteration here.

And climate change will just finish us off no matter what country you live in just like the virus is doing right now.

 

[Meatpie]

Hope all nations of the world unite and stand side by side in this fight against SARS.

People in Bulgaria are sending pleas for help from Chinese experts doctors here have no idea how to treat this disease and are in panic mode.

 

[Meatpie]

Check this out posted in the Guardian today. Do you think it is fair? I strongly believe it is a crime to let this deadly pathogen spread freely in the USA and cause unnecessary suffering, pain and death to ordinary Americans and even kids. Kids are not immune against this virus reports are coming in of severe cases in kids as well.

I know all of us feel strongly about this we are just having a discussion here I am not attacking anyone or any nation. People in my country are dying too it makes me sick to watch the news.