So Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, at 8.00 pm last night (04/01/21) on television announced the 3rd Lock Down to try and stop the spread of the coronavirus and protect the NHS from collapsing under the pressure of new cases needing hospitalisation. At over 50,000 positive tests for the virus per day with this translating, at a likely 2% death rate, to generating in 4 weeks a death rate of 1000 deaths per day against the available UK beds and importantly the ICU places. Very basic mathematics covering statistics and arithmetic. The only logical criticism should be the decision was late being made since it had hit 89,000 positives on the 29th December 2020 which should have been the immediate trigger. Lock down is currently the only current way forward until the vaccine can be put in place and in this respect the UK is way ahead of the World. Yet on social media within minutes you see posts rubbishing him and claiming it is all a government hoax to control us more as citizens. Apart from those that oppose everything many of these people just do not understand how a virus works. The fact that you cannot see something that can potentially destroy a good part of the human race is inconceivable to many people.
Now move onto my daily walk in the cold fresh air where my
“narrating self” starts talking to me about just about everything. Thanks to
Yoval Noah Harari, the author, who introduced me to this “narrating self”
expression along with many other insightful things. So the “narrating self” now
chooses by itself to follow another pathway of thought. Like there is no cosmic
plan. Life has no script. Life has no meaning. During our brief stay on this
tiny plant we have many emotions and then we are not heard of any more
physically but we may leave digital fragments. But why would anybody look at these
digital fragments. It appears to be all a waste of time. Then the mind has these
philosophical thoughts terminated by my “experiencing self” where the sight of
a woman walking ahead smoking creates a huge plume of smoke which is blown
sideways and rises upwards. The “narrating self” returns to analyse this
linking it to the exhalation of a virus. It gives a real visual illustration of
how extensive human breath can travel beyond the body. Now were she carrying
the virus the tiny invisible viruses attached to tiny invisible water droplets
expelled from her mouth would be available to transmit to the next person
entering into that plume of her breath. Fortunately she was walking well ahead
of me. But wearing a mask at all times does make sense.
So back to the “narrating self” and the social media non-believers.
It is easy to see that if you step in front of a bus you can get run down and
killed. The Government has created laws to define how the roads are used. In
the same way the Government has created laws to protect us from a virus. No
different. The problem is people cannot see the virus coming whereas they can
see a bus. So let us look consider this virus scientifically.
It has got a name from the bioinformatics community of
SARS-CoV-2 and it is at the bottom level of life based upon RNA. It exists in
the primeval soup of life but it has come up through a chain of DNA life acting
as a carrier possibly via a bat to gain entry into us humans. Now within this
primeval soup it would have constantly changed to maintain its survival within
this soup. Once moving up through a chain of transmission it would have changed
forming new variants to continue this survival. Not a believer in any cosmic
plan they are just random chemical processes that can generate different
outcomes. But we now have the scientific capabilities to track these changes
and to see the digital code underlying them.
Boris Johnson’s announcement followed scientific evidence
that a new “UK variant” is more transmittable whilst there appears to be a
“South African variant” that is even more transmittable. Measuring and
comparing transmission rates is not easy since it is dependent on the
effectiveness of mass testing. The number, accuracy and record keeping of these
tests.
The mutations to create the variant are in the virus’s spike
protein. This spike protein alone can be considered to be like a string of
about 3000 beads folded into a complex three dimensional structure to form the
spike. Now this spike is interesting. Is its entry into the human cell
dependent on it being a “beak” or “key” or “pad”? The beak would suggest some
mechanical becking, the key something that fits into a membrane lock or a pad
suggesting a chemical agent on it that dissolves some local human cell
membrane. Reading the latest research the idea of a key seems the most popular.
As a key the spike must fit with a receptor, the lock is called Ace2, which
sits on the surface of the cell membrane. To me it seems very important to
establish exactly the physical process of entry. For example one suggestion is
the South African one is “stickier” one assumes meaning it holds on better for
longer to gain entry.
The virus is continually making copies of itself and in this
replication process changes can randomly occur some of these benefitting the
virus whilst some do not. The process of evolution then supports those that are
made more effective whilst those less effective die off. It is a continual
cycle guaranteeing the strongest or most effective succeed.
Now these changes can be digitally defined with the digital
code changed in the virus identified. Consider the virus to be like a saved
word document where the text (code) can be changed and then saved as a
different file name. So these spike mutations have resulted in many different
file names. Within the UK and South African they have been identified as N501Y being
one of the changes within the spike. This maybe just one of the 3000 beads
making up the spike being differently set. The N501Y change seems to be popping
up across the world in unconnected settings suggesting it seems to be a very
common naturally forming mutation. Sort of if you reproduce enough times it is
likely to be an error that often occurs but then it prospers so further
reproductions automatically include it from the start.
Now some of these spike mutations can be worrying
particularly when they might reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine. There is
one school of thought that believes that once you start vaccinating the human
bodies anti-bodies get produced more readily and with the virus more exposed to
them it might mutate to counter the attack into something that more lethal. The
spread of this more lethal virus would then evade the effects of vaccination.
One such mutation has been named K417N which has prevented a
type of monoclonal antibody taken from a recovered patient from attacking the
virus. The virus effectively resisting this antibody. Another called E484K has
also shown signs of making some antibodies less effective against the spike.
Now this is where the term primeval soup can be used again. Vaccination causes
the body to create a soup of different antibodies to fight the virus and this
takes place within a healthy body where the virus has not got hold. The human
bodies antibody soldiers supported by a healthy body can focus upon the
destruction of the invader virus. When the virus has got hold of someone making
them unwell then the antibody creation mechanisms result in the loss of their
effectiveness.
For those suffering from the virus it makes your “narrating
self” try to understand what your “experiencing self” is going through and it
is not nice. Your body is taken over with all your control over it lost to what
will be your ultimate fate. To those on social media it is not the Government
that control your destiny it is your hourly or daily decisions you make that
are the only things that may have an impact on your life expectancy. It is your
personal virus avoidance plan that matters. But this is within a cosmic
backdrop that is beyond everybody’s control. It was no wonder religions were
once very popular since science offers you no peace of mind. But one sure fact
is that your death is inevitable one day from something.
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