GUESS WHAT?! A new study has shown SARS-CoV-2 infection is DISTINCT from common respiratory viruses!
Unequivocally, COVID is NOT "just a cold."
These findings are HUGELY significant, for multiple reasons! Here's a breakdown of the study (written for a general audience)...
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The paper is fairly complicated, so I'm going to start with the high-level takeaways before explaining everything in more detail.
Overall, they found a 3-gene signature that distinguishes SARS-CoV-2 infections from common viral infections—long before PCR test positivity!
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Because the signature:
1. is SPECIFIC to SARS-CoV-2, 2. is an EARLY indicator of infection, 3. is a DISTINCT pattern from other infections, and 4. even accurately identifies Omicron infections,
this discovery may be useful as a diagnostic tool AND a direction for treatment!
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One of the major limitations of this study is that it's unknown how applicable this signature will be for immunocompromised individuals. Why?
Because T cells were the major source of this 3-gene signature being expressed! This is important, because...
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This is YET ANOTHER study showing SARS-CoV-2 adversely impacts the immune system.
Monocyte abnormalities (decreases) were found in BOTH symptomatic and asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections! Because monocytes INCREASE in normal immune response, this suggests monocyte infection!
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This study also found the same odd immune response patterns found by other studies: The immune system is STRONGLY activated (especially the inflammatory response), but the pathway responsible for signaling *targeted* attacks on infected cells is suppressed!
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As shown in Figure 2C, BOTH symptomatic and asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 activate identical cellular pathways, but with less inflammatory signaling for asymptomatic infections.
That is, even asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 impacts processes usually unaffected by the other studied viruses! 7/
This study strongly suggests that there are "distinct molecular mechanisms" at play during SARS-CoV-2 infections, relative to other common respiratory viruses.
It *unambiguously* shows, however, that even asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections are NOT "just a cold." 8/
The authors validated their discovery with a longitudinal study that was able to detect even asymptomatic Omicron infections with high accuracy, long before a given patient is able to test positive with RT-PCR testing.
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That's all the highlights! The study is Open Access and available at
The rest of this thread is going to be commentary/analysis of the details of the study...
10/16mdpi.com/1999-4915/16/7…
So what role do these genes play?
It seems to be a cascade that highjacks the innate and adaptive immune responses in a way that's advantageous for the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself. That's not to say that the virus *directly* increases expression of these genes...
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Rather, these are the common product of the cascade of dysfunctional processes triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection. This study identified a unique signature of *differentially expressed genes*, but there's not a 1:1 cause and effect for differential expression of a given gene!
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The methods were thorough, in that they cross-validated all of their findings multiple ways to ensure they weren't picking up on some spurious signal in the data. Even if the genes turn out not to be meaningful for *pathogenesis*, they're VERY meaningful for *diagnosis*!
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IMO, there's one big error. Figures 2A and 2B have slightly different Y-axes, likely because the graphs were generated separately, but it actually has the effect of shrinking a range that is *unexpectedly* larger.
I aligned the scales on Figures 2A and 2B here
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When symptomatic and asymptomatic gene expression for each virus are put side by side, it's clear that SARS-CoV-2 has a wildly different pattern compared to the other viruses, and a vastly larger magnitude of effect.
Differential expression INCREASES in asymptomatic covid?!
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Most notably, T cells are the PRIMARY type of cell where the 3-gene signature is most differentially expressed... and it's specifically a pattern that will lead to T cell exhaustion through overactivation.
Say it with me: "COVID is airborne and exhausts T cells!"
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Afterthought: The bit about “discovery should include not only SARS-CoV-2 infections but also other respiratory infections” is an echo of another paper about HCoV-OC43… from 1980! There, the author also complained about lack of dataset diversity
I’m not sure if it would, because at least one of the genes is involved in one type of cell entry, and there’s evidence that persistent infections may use *different* methods to move between cells that possibly wouldn’t engage that gene!
Simply put, if the cause of dysregulation is removed, the immune system can *likely* recover.
Time is the enemy, in this case! Cancer is a huge concern here, because without immune cells, cells with defective DNA will be ignored and grow into tumors
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Opportunistic infections are the biggest concern with a compromised immune system (lack of defenses), but when an individual has effectively zero immune system, the body isn't able to perform basic janitorial tasks that clean up random defective processes!
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Sure! Here's a meta-annotated version of the graph with simplified explanations of each element. The graph itself is fairly noisy, but the takeaways are simple!
Lack of symptoms may not even be because of immune system *destruction*! Symptoms of cold and flu are driven by interferon signaling, which SARS-CoV-2 suppresses.
But the end result is the same: lack of effective immune response!
The immune system has a vast range of functions spread across different systemic and cellular mechanisms.
It's likely that there are many people walking around with a compromised innate immune system, who don't realize it as leftover adaptive defenses fight infections
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This discovery seems to have a clear path to commercialization, because this discovery is purely a new method of *analyzing* the results of existing types of Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests (NAAT), including RT-PCR and LAMP testing. It's software!
The advantage here is that, rather than requiring detection of a specific viral protein (which may be present in the body but not the swab location), it requires detection of elevated levels of HOST PROTEINS that indicate active viral infection!
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Here's the entire thread about the article "A T-Cell-Derived 3-Gene Signature Distinguishes SARS-CoV-2 from Common Respiratory Viruses," on a single page for easier sharing: readwise.io/reader/shared/…
[Caveat: This doesn’t apply to people trying supplements as *treatment*]
Supplements will have no effect. The deficiencies associated with severe covid/LC are likely a product of the infection itself, because the virus is dysregulating the production processes
That's not to say that it's impossible to use solid-state media for long-term storage. It's just that anything with durability guarantees gets prohibitively expensive quickly. Spinning hard drives—as well as DVDs and Blu-ray discs!—are your friend.
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- The way data is stored in solid-state media makes it much more susceptible to bit rot than other media.
- In a spinning hard drive, the moving parts are the most common point of failure.
- When you burn a DVD, that shit is fairly permanent.
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I wish people would understand that insurance underwriters have armies of actuaries calculating risks, and if an insurance company drops you, it's because things have changed in such a way that insuring you will take more out of the financial pool than you're putting in
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It sucks, but it's a direct result of the fact that humans are widely inhabiting locations that are rapidly becoming impossible to inhabit safely. If you can't find insurance for your home, it means there's a high likelihood you'll need to move soon anyway.
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You get insurance so that you can replace all of your stuff in the event of a disaster. When the insurance company effectively says "the risk of disaster is so high that insuring you would almost certainly cause us to lose a lot of money," it ALSO means your life is in danger
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So here’s the thing about some of the subtle neuro damage related to SARS-CoV-2 infection that I think a lot of people miss: some of the known deficits are correlated with things like impulsiveness and poor emotional control, so we might expect to see deficits there are well
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Consider how impatient people seem to be on the road in the last couple years relative to the 2010s, and I think we have a perfect example of where this is LIKELY already manifesting.
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This impact is particularly insidious for the person experiencing it, because poor impulse control, by definition, doesn’t really come on gradually. My biggest concern is how interactions under these circumstances will play out if this impact continues to become more common
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Let's review some major points in the Nukit controversy, since some people are unclear:
- Someone criticized someone's use of Nukit lanterns.
- Nukit attacked the critic because, as noted, this is how they market
- Nukit now demands "mediation" with the community (how??)
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So let's look at this a bit more critically. Here is the "evidence" Nukit provided that the didn't say anything racist. First of all, these aren't the comments in question, but it's worth a look anyway.
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Let's be clear about what happened here: Someone lamented the unequal access to protective measures and criticized someone who seems to be using a certain device to *maintain the status quo*, and the manufacturer of the device found it unacceptable.
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NEW STUDY! This exploratory study identifies a SPECIFIC PHENOTYPE OF LONG COVID that appears related to NEUROMUSCULAR DISTURBANCE rather than lung damage—and they've termed it Complex Ventilatory Dysfunction!
Breakdown of the paper (thread written for a general audience!)...
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Broadly speaking, there are two groups of acute covid outcomes involving dyspnea (shortness of breath) as a long-term symptom:
- Severe cases that may have physical lung damage
- "Mild" cases that now have ME/CFS-like features, but who have no evidence of lung damage!
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In this study, they explored this distinction further and identified a distinct subset of patients with a pattern of breathing abnormality that they have termed complex ventilatory dysfunction (CVD).
So how did they arrive at this conclusion? Let's dig in!
NEW STUDY! It VERY thoroughly supports the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 emerged as a zoonotic spillover event in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market—using multiple methods!
Breakdown of the paper (written for a general audience!)...
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This paper reanalyzes the same data from the April 2023 paper in Nature that cast doubt on the Huanan Market hypothesis (pictured).
In the new paper published in Cell this week, another group conducted far more detailed (and statistically sound) analyses!
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This new paper starts by reviewing the evidence supporting the Huanan Market hypothesis, and some of the details are FASCINATING!
To begin with, of the 174 COVID cases identified with an onset of December 2019, 32% had a link to the Huanan Market.