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Kevin McKernan 🙂 Profile picture
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8 Jan, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Respiratory viruses have been around longer than any Judge. To assume parasitism and not mutualism is myopic.
45% of our genome consist of viral elements (LINE, Alu etc) and 8% of the genome consists of infectious retroviruses.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/artic…

annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114…
Zero virus plans assume viruses that may be pathogenic for some age groups can be mutualistic for others.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/artic…
The advent of NextGen sequencing allowed us to peer into mutualistic viruses, as in the past, expensive sequencing was reserved for exploring pathogens.

pnas.org/content/118/10…
While we don't have evidence for this in C19, omicron and its less symptomatic ancestors shouldn't be so quickly collectivized into the global elimination bucket. The war against all respiratory viruses for all age groups won't end well. We'll be choked in more ways than one.
^Zero virus plans assume only parasitism. Mutualism is written off for all hosts.

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More from @Kevin_McKernan

Kevin McKernan 🙂 Profile picture
5 Jan
An octogenarian in diapers is centrally planning 330M people’s health care with disastrous results…

Many citizens like it

Cheer it on

Even argue for more

Not because it is rational but because they need their tribe to form their identity.

Insecurity induced Munchausen’s.
Much talk about Ass Formation.

I prefer the moniker “Munchausen’s by internet”

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
This is an interesting read on how Facebook performed a psychological experiment on 860K of its customers without an IRB.

What’s not to like about spreading massive-scale emotional contagion?

Can I get a side of spike protein with that?

pnas.org/content/111/24…
Read 5 tweets
Kevin McKernan 🙂 Profile picture
1 Jan
I like mice…
So does some lab that derived Omicron.

Very good read.
You’ll see how Molnupiravir could not have done this alone.
Random C->U mutations are not elevated in omicron but GC-AT are different in early omicron Vs post outbreak.
Mice host!

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
GC-AT mutations are a signature of ROS damage that makes 8-OxoG.
ROS is elevated in febrile viral infections.

These authors looked at early omicron Vs post outbreak omicron and see a difference here suggesting omicron had a different host at some point.
Mice fit the bill.
Another kind cat sent me this paper.
Another important point is the Ka/Ks analysis they do (dN/dS).
This shows 6.6X higher selective pressure on spike but not on the rest of the SARs genome.
Mice + selection against spike (vax of MAbs) could do this.

Lab derived.
Read 6 tweets
Kevin McKernan 🙂 Profile picture
29 Dec 21
Can't Find a C19 test?
Low supply, Fiat Demand...

I am shocked at how expensive these C19 tests are ($100-$300).

And no...The free ones are not free!

They are printing money, diluting yours and paying a heavy price you just can't see.

Diagnostic PCR is usually $30.
Even with 10X higher margins on C19 PCR, there are still droughts after 2 years?

Why?

This is the story of central planning where the market gets run by whimsical gov diktat and pricing signals are destroyed.

When pricing signals are destroyed companies dont know how to plan
Will Biden have an aneurism or an epiphany today and order 500M tests they fumble?

Will schools panic on Omicron and order more school testing of asympto kids who don't get sick?

When you run the market by Fiat, you create artificial demand but you don't create supply.
Read 5 tweets
Kevin McKernan 🙂 Profile picture
29 Dec 21
I’m in the process of updating this for submission (2,000 downloads before submission)
Several details people have brought up in support of this.

Will walk through them.

osf.io/bcsa6/
1)Some folks at NIH reached out pointed out the work on ribosomal pausing that we missed.
It’s very relevant.

Just the codon change in the FCS is enough to pause the ribosomes and alter 3D structure of spike.
Just 2 codons!

mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/1…
They changed many codons.

2)pseudouridine and N1-methyl should be better spelled out. Xia et al conflates the two and we will spell this out more.
PseudoU wobbles more the methylpseudoU but both significantly alter Tm and thus are ‘stickier’ bases than disrupt translation.
Read 11 tweets
Kevin McKernan 🙂 Profile picture
22 Dec 21
230 days RNA positive post infection.

Turn off the asymptomatic PCR pipeline or we’ll never get out of this.
Tissue specific viral heteroplasmy.
That’s wild.
Very thorough.
Not only applied a live-dead like PCR looking at sgRNA, they also cultured the virus and looked for immune histochemistry confirmation of proteins.
Read 8 tweets
Kevin McKernan 🙂 Profile picture
22 Dec 21
Great chat with @jjcouey
I have some errors to confess to as I spoke to fast.
1)I was enrolled in a PhD program at UW but dropped out to focus on my job when the HGP starting racing with Craig Venter. So No PhD.

twitch.tv/videos/1239989…
2)nsp13 should be nsp3. It interacts with quadruplex G
academic.oup.com/nar/article/49…
3)The vaccines have N1-Methyl Pseudouridine and I shouldn't shorthand this to Pseudouridine as the former has less wobble than the latter. N1-Methyl does alter the Tm and increase base stacking in RNA but its methyl group steals one potential H-bond.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/artic…
Read 9 tweets

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