This article conveys a priceless distillation of medical and microbiological history that should be summarized in any discussion of pandemics and vaccines.
There are also complex technical models, and predictions about the limitations of vaccinations for coronavirus or influenza pandemics.
The parallels drawn from the long history of fighting influenza with vaccines, and how influenza pandemics progress, is incredibly important and missing from most other public discussions of COVID. Even more so, the warnings about fighting the IBV coronavirus with vaccines should be given way more attention.
This should be posted above every lab bench:
And yet modern science seems to have forgotten about one of the older lessons in magic, which was likely rooted in a fundamental understanding of the natural order of things: Nothing comes without its price.
There are a number of tidbits of Microbiological history and medical history, that should be in every article about pandemics.
These are just priceless, a great analogy:
would roughly represent the genetic activity of a tribe of several hundred people attempting to survive in their environment over the course of dozens of generations.
This also brings a smile:
the winner is just declared one generation at a time.
I love this:
This fundamentally amorphous nature of RNA virus genomes means that the quasispecies approach invalidates the idea of a singular “wild type” isolate genome with one immutable nucleotide sequence described as the contagion at any one moment in time,[xv] since under this approach every RNA virus is by definition a swarming ever-changing mutant cloud of quasispecies variant virions.
Excellent and refreshing writing, Dan. Swarm behavior is a fascinating way to model this pandemic. The historical context you layout for all this is well presented and very appreciated. Thank you, and those who helped edit and work on this, for taking the time to write this out! I hope you continue sharing your work and ideas.
Hey Dan, really great article, especially learned a lot about attenuation.
I was curious what your opinion is on the best way to stop the pandemic. I understand that vaccine development can be very risky and the poliomyetis (spell check) cases you mentioned were pretty disturbing to hear about.
What is your opinion on the mRNA technology? If you believe it shouldn't be used, how else can we stop this other than trying to mitigate the amount of time and tries it has to mutate more and more.
cryogenic? Thoughts on ivermectin? Hcq? Zinc/d/quercetin...or what is your personal plan for surviving zombie apocalypse? (I have to have a little sense of humor with re to zombies, I know we are the chickens)
Probably the best description of what is actually going on with the pandemic.
Phylogenic tree analyses fail to accurately explain the deattenuation of this LAV and do not recognise the swarming behaviour of the quasi species that leads to the virus gatekeeping its way back to its original highly pathogenic form.
Epistatic analyses seem to take us closer to our understanding of what is going on as we see a clearer picture of the convergent evolution within the swarm. However, from a classical point of view, researchers seem torn over the matter of recombination, believing that this is also part of the explaination for the same mutations appearing within diverse broad samples that have been sequenced and studied.
Prior to my questions please consider the following.
Consider superspreading events. We know that in crowded group settings this virus thrives. It is likely that when multiple infected people (asymptomatic, symptomatic or a latent carriers) are put in an enclosed space the unventilated air they breathe is contaminated with virions from multiple swarms.
"In experiments based at Mpala Research Centre in Kenya, researchers instigated ant wars by tying unrelated colonies' trees together, counting casualties in tarps placed below. By simulating the browsing of a large mammal, they discovered that victorious colonies are less able to defend their host trees after fights. After analyzing the DNA of nearly 800 ants, they discovered that fighting changes the genetic make-up of victorious colonies."
In this example we have ant colonies which behave as a swarm. When two colonies, or two swarms, go to war they are able to change the genetic diversity of the resultant swarm whether that be a truce, or a win/lose scenario. The new swarm after this war will continue to behave as one.
So when we consider the superspreading events mentioned above is there not an analogous effect happening to the ant war?
Whereby multiple swarms interact. The swarms may not be at war but on some level the resultant infections produced after these swarms collided must contribute to the gatekeeping effect. This is not recombination of genetic material and it is also not purely two independent swarms converging to the same point.
If the collision of two ant Swarms can lead to an increase in gentic diversity would the same be happening with the RNA quasi species?
If this is the case then the speed, rate or frequency of the gatekeeping is not solely bound by the number of transmission events, rather, the rate of gatekeeping/convergence could be enhanced depending on the nature of how the swarms collide and intercept each other. Essentially modern global travel is networking the swarms in ways that certainly wouldnt be seen prior to the industrial revolution.
Section 2.2 re temperature..does it flourish or diminish in higher Temps? Or does the body temp just signify the virus burrowing deeper into the tissue? Should we consider cryogenics?
Hi Dan - First i want to thank you for all the tireless work you do to offer clarity to the public about this historical period of life. I hope some of live long enough to see it through...You mention H1N1 and V-1000... I'm wondering if this flu variant made an appearance before Covid in late December 2019? I was deathly ill like never before and a trusted doctor/researcher said there was an appearance of this like- flu at that time. Not Covid yet. Thoughts? Cyndy (I follow you on Twitter too!)
I would love it if you would say more about what people can do to weather this storm or prepare for what's to come? Doom and gloom may be the reality but besides sinus irrigation and gargling, what can we practically, do?
You are a great writer You should write a one act play combining the history of viruses like you do and our current virus. I think it would be very powerful. We could look for a way to get it produced.
This article above reiterates the importance of quasi species concepts.
When lookong at the global sequence databases eventually the consensus sequence changes.
We saw this with Omicron and it is happening faster each time for it to come to dominant the samples.
What would you say is happening within the swarm that causes the consensus sequences to realign everywhere all at once?
Is there some sort of messaging within the swarm that builds up over time? Perhaps it is sampling its host environments and seeding messenger mutants across the transmission events. Once these messenger mutants reach a critical threshold the consensus sequence realigns.
Hi Harvard. Sorry for not posting on here, I saw your post on twitter and wanted to catch you there.
I understand (well attempting to understand) swarm theory but does that always lead to negative scenarios? What data are you seeing that makes you think it is happening now?
Why do you think Governments are suddenly changing their tune, why not continue the panic?
Golden Silkworms in Pandora's Box
This article conveys a priceless distillation of medical and microbiological history that should be summarized in any discussion of pandemics and vaccines.
There are also complex technical models, and predictions about the limitations of vaccinations for coronavirus or influenza pandemics.
The parallels drawn from the long history of fighting influenza with vaccines, and how influenza pandemics progress, is incredibly important and missing from most other public discussions of COVID. Even more so, the warnings about fighting the IBV coronavirus with vaccines should be given way more attention.
This should be posted above every lab bench:
And yet modern science seems to have forgotten about one of the older lessons in magic, which was likely rooted in a fundamental understanding of the natural order of things: Nothing comes without its price.
There are a number of tidbits of Microbiological history and medical history, that should be in every article about pandemics.
These are just priceless, a great analogy:
would roughly represent the genetic activity of a tribe of several hundred people attempting to survive in their environment over the course of dozens of generations.
This also brings a smile:
the winner is just declared one generation at a time.
I love this:
This fundamentally amorphous nature of RNA virus genomes means that the quasispecies approach invalidates the idea of a singular “wild type” isolate genome with one immutable nucleotide sequence described as the contagion at any one moment in time,[xv] since under this approach every RNA virus is by definition a swarming ever-changing mutant cloud of quasispecies variant virions.
Excellent and refreshing writing, Dan. Swarm behavior is a fascinating way to model this pandemic. The historical context you layout for all this is well presented and very appreciated. Thank you, and those who helped edit and work on this, for taking the time to write this out! I hope you continue sharing your work and ideas.
Hey Dan, really great article, especially learned a lot about attenuation.
I was curious what your opinion is on the best way to stop the pandemic. I understand that vaccine development can be very risky and the poliomyetis (spell check) cases you mentioned were pretty disturbing to hear about.
What is your opinion on the mRNA technology? If you believe it shouldn't be used, how else can we stop this other than trying to mitigate the amount of time and tries it has to mutate more and more.
cryogenic? Thoughts on ivermectin? Hcq? Zinc/d/quercetin...or what is your personal plan for surviving zombie apocalypse? (I have to have a little sense of humor with re to zombies, I know we are the chickens)
Probably the best description of what is actually going on with the pandemic.
Phylogenic tree analyses fail to accurately explain the deattenuation of this LAV and do not recognise the swarming behaviour of the quasi species that leads to the virus gatekeeping its way back to its original highly pathogenic form.
Epistatic analyses seem to take us closer to our understanding of what is going on as we see a clearer picture of the convergent evolution within the swarm. However, from a classical point of view, researchers seem torn over the matter of recombination, believing that this is also part of the explaination for the same mutations appearing within diverse broad samples that have been sequenced and studied.
Prior to my questions please consider the following.
Consider superspreading events. We know that in crowded group settings this virus thrives. It is likely that when multiple infected people (asymptomatic, symptomatic or a latent carriers) are put in an enclosed space the unventilated air they breathe is contaminated with virions from multiple swarms.
Please consider this from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160318181610.htm,
"In experiments based at Mpala Research Centre in Kenya, researchers instigated ant wars by tying unrelated colonies' trees together, counting casualties in tarps placed below. By simulating the browsing of a large mammal, they discovered that victorious colonies are less able to defend their host trees after fights. After analyzing the DNA of nearly 800 ants, they discovered that fighting changes the genetic make-up of victorious colonies."
In this example we have ant colonies which behave as a swarm. When two colonies, or two swarms, go to war they are able to change the genetic diversity of the resultant swarm whether that be a truce, or a win/lose scenario. The new swarm after this war will continue to behave as one.
So when we consider the superspreading events mentioned above is there not an analogous effect happening to the ant war?
Whereby multiple swarms interact. The swarms may not be at war but on some level the resultant infections produced after these swarms collided must contribute to the gatekeeping effect. This is not recombination of genetic material and it is also not purely two independent swarms converging to the same point.
If the collision of two ant Swarms can lead to an increase in gentic diversity would the same be happening with the RNA quasi species?
If this is the case then the speed, rate or frequency of the gatekeeping is not solely bound by the number of transmission events, rather, the rate of gatekeeping/convergence could be enhanced depending on the nature of how the swarms collide and intercept each other. Essentially modern global travel is networking the swarms in ways that certainly wouldnt be seen prior to the industrial revolution.
The v-1000 analogy will never leave me and I have so many questions about this...all in agreement and in amazement
Section 2.2 re temperature..does it flourish or diminish in higher Temps? Or does the body temp just signify the virus burrowing deeper into the tissue? Should we consider cryogenics?
Hi Dan - First i want to thank you for all the tireless work you do to offer clarity to the public about this historical period of life. I hope some of live long enough to see it through...You mention H1N1 and V-1000... I'm wondering if this flu variant made an appearance before Covid in late December 2019? I was deathly ill like never before and a trusted doctor/researcher said there was an appearance of this like- flu at that time. Not Covid yet. Thoughts? Cyndy (I follow you on Twitter too!)
Sec #3 tests..is 2pm really the optimal time? Also I guess the ch I n ese knew what they were doing with anal swabs lol
Ques 1..are we in the gatekeeper phase w/the 3 mutations? Is that stage 3?
Is the super variant after that?
Should we all start clucking because we are on the chicken farm?
I would love it if you would say more about what people can do to weather this storm or prepare for what's to come? Doom and gloom may be the reality but besides sinus irrigation and gargling, what can we practically, do?
You are a great writer You should write a one act play combining the history of viruses like you do and our current virus. I think it would be very powerful. We could look for a way to get it produced.
https://www.virology.ws/2009/05/11/the-quasispecies-concept/
This article above reiterates the importance of quasi species concepts.
When lookong at the global sequence databases eventually the consensus sequence changes.
We saw this with Omicron and it is happening faster each time for it to come to dominant the samples.
What would you say is happening within the swarm that causes the consensus sequences to realign everywhere all at once?
Is there some sort of messaging within the swarm that builds up over time? Perhaps it is sampling its host environments and seeding messenger mutants across the transmission events. Once these messenger mutants reach a critical threshold the consensus sequence realigns.
Hi Harvard. Sorry for not posting on here, I saw your post on twitter and wanted to catch you there.
I understand (well attempting to understand) swarm theory but does that always lead to negative scenarios? What data are you seeing that makes you think it is happening now?
Why do you think Governments are suddenly changing their tune, why not continue the panic?
Event 201 ..could it be short for event 2020-2021?
holy cow.