Daily review 08/06/2020

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, June 8th, 2020 - 12 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

12 comments on “Daily review 08/06/2020 ”

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  1. weka 1
    8 June 2020 at 5:36 pm

    shouldn't that be 0? 🙂

  2. SPC 2
    8 June 2020 at 6:57 pm

    An interesting test of our ability to move towards our future is underway at the moment.

    Business leaders want government and council to require staff to return to working from the office.

    Yet working from home was always an alternative in the fast broadband era and staff have now experienced this in practice.

    It has so many positives – saves time commuting, prevents congestion during the peak hours (reducing the need to build more roads, more resources for other things) – but results in less customers for inner city hospitality and retail. And thus business wants government or council to do something.

    In an irony, private sector employers might well take greater heed of staff preferences. And thus business leaders do not mention them at all.

    One sensible response is to allow staff their own choice, including flexible working hours at the office and a mix of home and glide time at the office (with some work hub hub collaboration time scheduled in as essential office time). Thus staff have easier commutes – bike on a good day, bus or train with spare space out of peak time another. Then staff would work days they planned meet-ups at a cafe, some retail, a film or a restaurant in the evening.

    Forcing people to commute at peak times is inane. It's so 20th C.

    • James Thrace 2.1
      8 June 2020 at 8:33 pm

      Exactly. In satellite suburbs such as Porirua (where it seems near 40% of public servants live) having even half of them work from home on the regular would be a boon to local cafes in the area. Managers could make the weekly/fortnight trip from Wellingon to justify their middle management existence support cafes outside of Wellington. Mojo might have a reason to branch out given it doesn't exist outside of the Wellington CBD.

      But that's forward thinking and as such, is anathema to many managers over the age of 45 who have infected the public service..

      • Sacha 2.1.1
        9 June 2020 at 8:14 am

        I'd like to hear govt offering support for city centre businesses to relocate rather than trying to force other workers to go back to old commuting patterns.

    • greywarshark 2.2
      8 June 2020 at 8:47 pm

      I agree with the last sentence. But there are sociological aspects to mixing with colleagues and getting out into the world. If a couple are obliged to spend 24 hours together for too long, they will get more than cabin fever. But an attendance plan will result in happier workers, more like in the Jetsons! Some days at home, some at work, and glide-time and better public transport.

  3. SPC 3
    8 June 2020 at 7:06 pm

    Genetic variations may be what causes different people to suffer from different symptoms of the coronavirus, according to a new study by European scientists

    Variations at two spots in the human genome are associated with an increased risk of respiratory failure in COVID-19 patients, according to the study. Patients with Type A blood were linked to a 50% increase in the likelihood of needing to get oxygen or go on a ventilator, reported the Times. Surprisingly, variations in ACE2, the protein to which the virus attaches itself on the surface of human cells, did not seem to make a difference in the severity of the virus. "

    The locus where the blood-type gene is located also contains DNA that acts as an on-off switch for a gene producing a protein that triggers strong immune responses. The novel coronavirus triggers an overreaction of the immune system in some people, leading to inflammation and lung damage. It could be that genetic variations influence that response. The second locus found in the study, on Chromosome 3, has an even stronger statistical link to COVID-19, but the spot houses six genes so it's still unclear which one influences the severity of the illness, according to the Times. One of the six genes encodes a protein known to interact with ACE2, but another nearby gene encodes a potent immune-signaling molecule. It could be that this gene triggers an overreaction as well.

    https://www.jpost.com/international/scientists-find-link-between-covid-19-severity-and-genetics-630413

  4. SPC 4
    8 June 2020 at 7:19 pm

    The article also included the variety in strains. Some resulting in much greater viral load than others. This may explain the theory that the coronavirus is weakening with more cases with less viral load.

    Over 30 different strains of the coronavirus were found in a study carried out in April by Prof. Li Lanjuan and colleagues from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and published in a non-peer reviewed paper released on the website medRxiv.org.

    Li 's team infected cells with COVID-19 strains carrying different mutations, of which the most aggressive strains were found to generate as much as 270 times as much viral load as the weakest strains. The aggressive strains also killed the human cells the fastest. The results indicated that "the true diversity of the viral strains is still largely underappreciated,” Li wrote.

    “Drug and vaccine development, while urgent, need to take the impact of these accumulating mutations into account to avoid potential pitfalls,” the scientists said.

    https://www.jpost.com/international/scientists-find-link-between-covid-19-severity-and-genetics-630413

    Covid-19 has likely become less potent as it mutates over time, and hopefully one day will become a common cold virus, a New Zealand, London-based professor says. Professor Alberto Zangrillo, head of intensive care at Italy's San Raffaele Hospital in Lombardy, says the new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal.

    New Zealander Gary McLean, a professor in molecular immunology at London Metropolitan University, told Sunday Morning he was inclined to believe Zangrillo, whose claim was backed up by a second doctor from northern Italy who said he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken. "They've experienced the full gamut of this virus and the effects and I think we have to believe what they're saying, the clinical picture that is. If they're seeing reduced severity there must be something to it. The virus may well have changed or attenuated causing a change in the clinical picture, McLean said. "I would probably favour that in some way the virus is attenuating itself, just by accumulating mutations over time…and these little mutations accumulate and eventually the virus has had long enough in that host, in humans, it will drift and change slightly," McLean said.

    Zangrillo said: "We have never said that the virus has changed, we said that the interaction between the virus and the host has definitely changed." He said this could be due either to different characteristics of the virus, which he said they had not yet identified, or different characteristics in those infected. The study by Clementi, who is director of the microbiology and virology laboratory of San Raffaele, compared virus samples from Covid-19 patients at the Milan-based hospital in March with samples from patients with the disease in May. "The result was unambiguous: an extremely significant difference between the viral load of patients admitted in March compared to" those admitted last month, Zangrillo said.

    Gary McLean said there were 40 known coronaviruses, including seven which have infected humans, including four which are endemic cold viruses which cause relatively mild symptoms. One of the endemic strains, OC43, has been mapped back in time and the common ancestor is a cow coronavirus thought to have jumped into humans in 1890, McLean said. "And coincidentally in 1890 there was a world-wide pandemic of a respiratory disease that killed one million people. And you can put one and one together and assume OC43 may have come from a pandemic and over the next 130 years it's evolved into a very mild, common cold virus,"

    McLean said. "And I'm hoping it doesn't take 130 years for this one to get that mild, but let's say it might take a year or so and we're going to have another common cold coronavirus. "So I'd like to predict that but I don't know for sure if that will happen."

    https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/top-nz-immunologist-backs-theory-covid-19-losing-potency-could-become-common-cold-virus