The Science Rant
You can be your own scientist. Ken Mitton, Ph.D. (Editor)
March 25, 2021
COVID19 Cases and Deaths for Any Country
February 20, 2021
We are Reaching Half-A-Million COVID 19 Deaths in the United States.
By the end of Monday 22nd February 2021, we will pass through and above 500,000 deaths from COVID19 in the United States. I calculate and plot the doubling time in days averaged over a moving 7-day period. Doubling time, based on the previous seven days average, as of the end of 2020 had dropped below100 days. The doubling time for US deaths from COVID19 is increasing again early in 2021, as seen in the current graph below.
February 11, 2021
What are the Special Syringes for More Vaccine Doses?
February 6, 2021
New Covid19 Variants Can Infect Those Who Had Covid19 Before. Vaccination Protects Better.
- The Pfizer two-dose vaccine (RNA type) seems to generate serum antibodies that react and bind well to the spike protein of the South African variant. The paper reporting this is not yet peer-reviewed in a journal but it is pre-print public here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.07.425740v1
- The Moderna vaccine, similarly, has likely protective ability to the new strain. Their own report is found here: https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-retains-neutralizing-activity-against
- Other vaccines in the process of approval review in the UK seem to offer some reactivity to protect against the new South African variant too, as reported in this BBC news post: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55850352
- These include the Jannsen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine, a new single-dose protocol vaccine: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55857530
- Oxford-AstraZeneca's vaccine offers limited protection against the new variant but the company is also now developing a second version of the vaccine to match the amino acid changes in some of the new variants that are evolving around the world.
So, for those persons who had Covid19, their immunity after a real infection may not be a justification for skipping vaccination. I am signed up and eagerly awaiting my turn. I will gladly get vaccinated and I suggest you get it too even if you have recovered from a covid19 infection.
November 11, 2020
November 2020: The Rule of 70 and Why Your Hospitals are Feeling the COVID Tsunami Second Wave
October 23, 2020
In search of reliable mobile fast tests for COVID-19 Antibodies.
While all research labs were shut down for a few months, late March to mid-June 2020, for all but COVID19 related research, I turned my biochemical skills to a project to help evaluate one version of a serum COVID-19 antibody test that can use a single droplet (10 microliters) of blood from a finger-poke and which gives a reliable result in 15 minutes. Also without using any powered equipment. Cheap, mobile reliable tests like this can be used in almost any location. The problem in January to March 2020 was that many unreliable kits for such tests were rolled out mostly by firms looking to cash in, even selling online to the public. The main problem with those test kits was that they either 1) fail to detect antibodies to COVID19 when people have them, or 2) they say you are positive for antibodies to COVID19 BUT you are not.
Using finger-tip blood for tests of this type is very possible, and in fact, there are FDA and European Union approved tests that use this format "lateral flow test" for AIDS and Legionnaires Disease. However, those tests have been around for some time and were of course tested to confirm their reliability. So I approached a particular manufacturer of antibody-based research reagents when I heard they were turning their expertise to making a reliable family of tests for COVID19 antibodies in blood.