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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
The Razer mask looks like it will cost quite a bit. Even that sterilizing box alone makes it seem like that will be priced pretty high. Far too much to become popular, especially compared to ten cents surgical masks and 50 cents KN masks. Hope I’m wrong though.
I know nothing about hearing aids. So, I’m just curious whether something like the Apple AirPods Pro with its feature of piping in exterior ambient noise could make it useful as a traditional hearing aid alternative.
Doggydogworld
Active Member
New Trevor thread with a speculative theory that the mutants are co-evolving inside of patients with chronic infections. I only half-grasp what he's saying and would like to hear experts chime in with pro/con and possible implications.
"This results in the observed increased viral load (https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248834v1) and greater transmissibility (https://gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201) of 501Y.V1 / B.1.1.7, but importantly this is not due to population-level selection for antigenic drift or faster transmission. "
"This results in the observed increased viral load (https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248834v1) and greater transmissibility (https://gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201) of 501Y.V1 / B.1.1.7, but importantly this is not due to population-level selection for antigenic drift or faster transmission. "
Unfortunately, it doesn't. There isn't the ability to do the adjustments the way there is in a hearing aid. I tried, didn't work and sometimes there was really loud feedback from the phone (usually in a meeting). The hearing aid manufacturers almost have a better cartel than DeBeers does for diamonds. If it could be done, then you'd only be losing a $125 device instead of a $2500 device (assumes you only lose one).
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
Sounds like a market ripe for disruption . . .
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yeah might be what happened in Manaus too...based on how far it sticks out in the phylogenetic tree.
We’ll see. Who could have predicted that letting the virus rampage would lead to this?
My guess is that vaccines are going to help a lot, but we’ll be getting them updated in 6 months. Wonder if they will do a vaccine with a bunch of different spikes.
Interesting how some of the virus-based vaccines can’t be used to boost (because the previous vaccine-induced immune response to capsid proteins destroys them before the immune system responds to the spike, from what I understand). mRNA does not have this problem.
I can't wait for neuralink, which is supposed to solve this issue.
Norway adjusts advice after vaccine deaths but isn't alarmed
I wonder what it is about the nursing home population over there? Different qualifiers for who stays in a nursing home? Im sure similar folks in nursing homes here in the US have gotten the vaccine with no such reported adverse events as far as I’m aware.
According to the info in that link, 511 deaths associated with COVID, and now 13 associated with the vaccine for that country.
I wonder what it is about the nursing home population over there? Different qualifiers for who stays in a nursing home? Im sure similar folks in nursing homes here in the US have gotten the vaccine with no such reported adverse events as far as I’m aware.
According to the info in that link, 511 deaths associated with COVID, and now 13 associated with the vaccine for that country.
Aren't those spike proteins used for some normal/useful functions too?
If your immune system is trained to attack anything with those spike proteins, couldn't it cause some disruptions to normal body activities?
It would be odd if your cells had "keyholes" only designed to accept keys from hostile viruses.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Remember this is operating in reverse. The vaccine makes your cells present the spike protein. This is the "inverse" of what your cells present normally - they present the ACE2 enzyme, which is bound to by the virus spike protein, which then unlocks the cell, and incorporates the virus contents via endocytosis.
I'm no biologist, so I don't know what sort of other messaging systems/ proteins the body uses to gain entry to cells via endocytosis, in a way that is not picked up by the immune system, but it's quite conceivable that those avenues of entry would be very different, and not similar to spike. But in this specific case the spike protein being used to generate an antibody response is not similar at all to what is normally presented by your cells. If it were, your cells presenting spike would presumably be trying to bind to the ACE2 enzymes on other cells (that's probably not morphologically possible, but you understand what I mean, hopefully)!
Aside:
Interesting how people are currently dying from COVID at a rate of 1.2 million people a year in the US. That's 43% excess mortality (though lower than that for this time of year)!!! (There are typically about 2.8 million deaths per year.) Not surprising at all of course.
Seems likely at this point. We'll be at 48k for the first 15 days of the month. Hopefully deaths will start slowing down by the end of January, but not a lot of indicators yet that we're truly on the downward side nationwide.
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Isn't most hearing loss due to physical damage/degradation of the physical structures in the ear? How would neuralink fix that?
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
Bypass the physical mechanism of hearing entirely and communicate with the nerves.
There are two main types of hearing loss: sensorineural (nerve and inner ear) and conductive (middle and outer ear).
Types of Hearing Loss | CDC (CDC will say they are 4 types, but the last 2 are really just mixes of the first 2 "pure" types).
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
On the coast is wasn't too bad, but not as good as I've seen in Washington and Oregon. In part is was abnormally warm. Morro Bay is usually in the 60Fs year round with about 2 weeks in September when temperatures rise to around 80F. The day time temps essentially on the water were around 90F (in October) and I went down to Los Osos in the southern part of the bay and the temperature there was 96F. People don't have air conditioning, so lots of people were out running around.
Few were wearing masks outdoors, but indoor compliance was fairly good.
The part of California where I saw a lot of disdain for the rules was in the central valley, which is dramatically more conservative than the coast. It always has been more conservative, but I saw a level of misalliance about it that I've never seen before.
I have a friend who has needed hearing aids his entire life. He thinks his hearing was damaged by the ventilator he was on as a premature baby in the 50s. He was born early enough the doctors couldn't give odds for his survival. The baby ventilators then had a tendency to damage hearing.
He's had the best or close to the best hearing aids possible throughout much of his life. They are very sophisticated bits of tech that is highly specialized, especially current versions. It's not a huge market to begin with and individual needs further breaks up the market into people needing different devices.
My father should have had hearing aids much of his life due to hearing loss from WW II, but he refused until the last decade and the VA bought him some of the best available. He rarely wore them though. I think he was used to the silence. It made it very difficult to talk to him.
I found the charger and one of his last hearing aids in one of the boxes I'm going through. If I can find the other one I'll look into donating it to a charity that redistributes them. I know there are charities for eye glasses (and there are a lot of those too).
It might be genetic. Norway is more genetically homogeneous than the US. It's well knows some genetic groups are more prone to certain health problems than others. There may be an ingredient in the vaccine that Scandinavians are more likely to have a reaction to than the rest of the world's population.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
No surprises that the administration has been lying, but this seems like a good problem to have! So far there has been no shortage of vaccine at all, so it's good to see it start to be a problem. I mean, obviously you don't want to have that problem either, but it's great to use up every available dose (obviously we're not at that point yet).
Still, even though this has made the news, I don't see any evidence that there are currently any vaccine shortages. We'll see how things go over the next couple weeks, to see whether things become supply constrained.
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COVID news: New strain in US; Biden to invoke Defense Production Act
Biden to invoke Defense Production Act for COVID-19 vaccine
President-elect Joe Biden will use the Defense Production Act to expand the production of the COVID-19 vaccine and vaccination supplies as part of a wide-ranging plan to deliver on his pledge to vaccinate 100 million people in his first 100 days.
Biden’s first and perhaps biggest challenge in getting there will be addressing vaccine shortages in health systems across America. He’s long advocated for the use of the Defense Production Act, which gives the government authority to direct private companies to meet national defense needs.
President Donald Trump had invoked the Defense Production Act to address various aspects of the COVID-19 public health crisis.
His plan also includes proposals to create federally funded community vaccination centers, make the vaccination available in pharmacies and launch mobile clinics to get the shot to underserved communities. And he’ll expand the health care workforce so there are more people qualified to deliver the vaccine to Americans.
President-elect Joe Biden will use the Defense Production Act to expand the production of the COVID-19 vaccine and vaccination supplies as part of a wide-ranging plan to deliver on his pledge to vaccinate 100 million people in his first 100 days.
Biden’s first and perhaps biggest challenge in getting there will be addressing vaccine shortages in health systems across America. He’s long advocated for the use of the Defense Production Act, which gives the government authority to direct private companies to meet national defense needs.
President Donald Trump had invoked the Defense Production Act to address various aspects of the COVID-19 public health crisis.
His plan also includes proposals to create federally funded community vaccination centers, make the vaccination available in pharmacies and launch mobile clinics to get the shot to underserved communities. And he’ll expand the health care workforce so there are more people qualified to deliver the vaccine to Americans.
I wonder if evidence will surface that somebody was selling vaccine out the "back door" to people willing to pay a bribe for it. Whether in this country or overseas.
scottf200
Well-Known Member
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