Virus

Prof. dr. sc. Gordan Lauc radi kao redoviti profesor u trajnom zvanju na Farmaceutsko-biokemijskom fakultetu u Zagrebu, a izabran je i za profesora na američkim sveučilištima Harvard i Johns Hopkins, zatim Kings College u Londonu, te na Sveučilištu u Edinburghu. No danas većinu istraživanja provodi u svom privatnom znanstvenom institutu Genos, koji je osnovao 2007. godine te ga je doveo do pozicije globalnog lidera u području visokoprotočne glikomike. I prije no što su se u Hrvatskoj otvorili europski fondovi za svoja istraživanja je izravno iz Bruxellesa dobio više od 10 milijuna eura. Na njegovim projektima danas radi pedesetak mladih znanstvenika, a zbog njih je i četrnaest znanstvenika iz zemalja poput Rusije i Kine, no i Njemačke, Italije i Francuske došlo raditi u Hrvatsku.

S profesorom Laucom razgovaramo o cjepivu protiv bolesti COVID-19, o tome kako je virus zaustavio svijet, a to nikada prije nije učinio, o strategijama suočavanja sa zarazom, što će se dogoditi na jesen i koliko je opasan drugi val, o asimptomatskim slučajevima, kako to da neki ljudi imaju teški oblik bolesti, a drugi nemaju, o riziku smrtnosti od bolesti COVID-19, kakve pouke smo izvukli iz ove situacije itd.

Putem Skypea u emisiji će sudjelovati akademik Igor Rudan iz Edinburgha te profesor Igor Štagljar iz Toronta. Govorit će o tome je li znanstvenu zajednicu ovaj virus iznenadio, što smo naučili u ovoj pandemiji te kakva nas budućnost čeka.

Autor: Romano Bolković
Urednica: Slavica Babić

Gordan Lauc
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology & Founder and CEO of Genos Ltd

Experience

Director
National Center of Excellence in Personalised Healthcare
Nov 2015 – Present - 4 years 7 months
Croatia

Honorary Professor
King's College London
Aug 2015 – Present - 4 years 10 months
London, United Kingdom

Genos Ltd
CEO
Genos Ltd
Apr 2007 – Present- 13 years 2 months
Zagreb, Croatia
Founder and CEO of Genos Ltd

Prof.
Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Zagreb
Feb 1993 – Present27 years 4 months
Zagreb, Croatia

Visiting Professor
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
Jan 2001 – Jan 2007 - 6 years 1 month

EXCLUSIVE

Leaked Chinese Virus Database Covers 230 Cities, 640,000 Updates

New information may offer insight into the honesty of China’s coronavirus numbers.

BY ISAAC STONE FISH, MARIA KROL SINCLAIR | MAY 12, 2020, 8:32 PM

Beijing claims that since the coronavirus pandemic began at the end of last year, there have been only 82,919 confirmed cases and 4,633 deaths in mainland China. Those numbers could be roughly accurate, and in that case a detailed account would be an important tool in judging the spread of the virus. But it’s also possible that the numbers presented to the rest of the world are vastly understated compared to Beijing’s private figures. The opaqueness and mistrust of outsiders in the Chinese Communist Party’s system makes it hard to judge—but learning more about the coronavirus data used directly by Chinese officials is invaluable for governments elsewhere.  A dataset of coronavirus cases and deaths from the military’s National University of Defense Technology, leaked to Foreign Policy, offers insight into how Beijing has gathered coronavirus data on its population. The source of the leak, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of sharing Chinese military data, said that the data came from the university. The school publishes a data tracker for the coronavirus: The online version matches with the leaked information, except it is far less detailed—it shows just the map of cases, not the distinct data.

The dataset, though it contains inconsistencies—and though it may not be comprehensive enough to contradict Beijing’s official numbers—is the most extensive dataset proved to exist about coronavirus cases in China. But more importantly, it can serve as a valuable trove of information for epidemiologists and public health experts around the globe—a dataset that Beijing has almost certainly not shared with U.S. officials or doctors. (The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

While not fully comprehensive, the data is incredibly rich: There are more than 640,000 updates of information, covering at least 230 cities—in other words, 640,000 rows purporting to show the number of cases in a specific location at the time the data was gathered. Each update includes the latitude, longitude, and “confirmed” number of cases at the location, for dates ranging from early February to late April.

For locations in and around the center of the outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province, the data also includes deaths and those who “recovered.” It’s unclear how the dataset’s authors define “confirmed” and “recovered”: Like other countries, China has updated its counting methods, as demonstrated in mid-February when Hubei’s reported cases spiked because officials announced they were including patients diagnosed with CT scans. Unlike in other countries, China’s outbreak peaked before rigorous testing methods were widely available, and the Communist Party often manipulates data for political purposes.

The data reviewed by Foreign Policy includes hospital locations, but it also includes place names corresponding to apartment compounds, hotels, supermarkets, railway stations, restaurants, and schools across the breadth of the country. The dataset reports one case of coronavirus in a KFC in the eastern city of Zhenjiang on March 14, for example, while a church in the northeastern provincial capital of Harbin saw two cases on March 17. (The data does not include the names of the individuals who contracted or died from the disease, and the reports of the cases in the dataset could not be independently verified.)

It’s unclear as yet how the university gathered the data. The online version says that they aggregated the data from China’s health ministry, the National Health Commission, media reports, and other public sources. According to its website, the university, based in the central Chinese city of Changsha, is “under the direct leadership of the Central Military Commission,” the body that oversees China’s military. The military has played a large role in mobilizing against the virus: It has helped enforce quarantines, transport supplies, and treat patients. A propaganda message on a prominent military website in China reads, “In the fight against the epidemic, the people’s army is on the move!”

The man most responsible for building the database appears to be Zhang Haisu, a director at the school’s Information and Communication Department. In a May press release, the university credits Zhang for building the “Fight the Virus to Return to Work Database” and praises his dedication. A note on the data tracker’s website reads, “Currently our country is taking forceful measures, and the epidemic situation is being strictly managed and controlled. Please correctly understand that to use the relevant data.” The site features a contact email for a Zhang Haisu; no one responded when Foreign Policy reached out. The university did not respond to a request for comment.

Foreign Policy and 100Reporters, who are co-publishing this piece, are not making the database publicly available for now for reasons of security, but are exploring ways to make the data available for researchers studying the spread of the coronavirus.

For its popular coronavirus tracker, John Hopkins University gathers its data on Chin from DXY, a Chinese medical platform that aggregates cases in the country. But DXY provides information at only the provincial level. Richer information would benefit researchers, and ordinary people who are eager to know more  about how the disease has affected other countries and spread. Patterns in the data could add to what is known about the disease, and the ways Beijing manipulates its numbers. Medical researchers expressed skepticism in mid-April, after Wuhan revised the number of coronavirus deaths from 2,579 to 3,869—an increase of exactly 50 percent.

Why does Beijing restrict access to its coronavirus data? Possibly because of malice or mistrust toward the United States, at a time when tensions are running high. Possibly because of bureaucratic errors. And possibly because Beijing fears that outside researchers will learn of its extensive cover-up, destroying the narrative that an authoritarian nation like China is better equipped to protect its people against a pandemic. Even the public version of the National University of Defense Technology dataset sporadically restricts American IP addresses. To access the military university’s website hosting the map for the first time, one of the present authors had to use a virtual private network to pretend he was browsing in Uruguay.

This piece was co-published with  100Reporters.

Isaac Stone Fish is a journalist and senior fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S-China Relations. He was formerly the Asia editor at Foreign Policy Magazine. Twitter: @isaacstonefish
Maria Krol Sinclair is an independent researcher living in Washington DC. She primarily researches space and technology policy.

Spoiler:

Ako nekog zanima kako situacija u Svedskoj izgleda "na terenu", znaci van konteksta svetskih statistika, pravih i fake news, evo ovako.

Jucer je na javnom servisu isao prilog o jednoj devojci koja se razbolela pre otprilike devet nedelja. Pocelo je s visokom temperaturom, i tu su je prvo oko dve nedelje zavlacili telefonom (jedini nacin da stupis u kontakt s nekom zdravstvenom ustanovom i inace, a posebno sad) i govorili joj da pije dosta tecnosti, ne ide na posao i ostali bla-bla. Posto nije prestajalo, dobila je priliku da posle dve nedelje sretne svog lekara u domu zdravlja i tu opisuje kako joj je merio saturaciju, da je trebalo pri tome da hoda, ali da se drzala za lekara i zidove, jer nije znala gde je. Opet je poslata kuci, ali sada je bar lekar redovno zvao i pitao kako je. Nije bila ni bolje i gore ni sledecih nedelja, ali sve je ostajalo na razgovorima i savetima. Doduse, temperatura joj vise nije bila 40 nego 38, i pri tome je nestajala na nekoliko dana, pa se ponovo vracala. U medjuvremenu, dobila je tremor ruku i kognitivne probleme u formi smanjene koncentracije, pamcenja, povremene dezorijentacije itd. Lekar je tada narucio neke probe (elektronski, u njenom zurnalu, koji je dostupan svim zdravstvenim ustanovama) i onda krece potraga za mestom na kojem ce da joj izvade krv, jer to ipak ne moze online. Zvala telefonom, negde pokusala i licno da ode, i nigde nije primljena. Odbijena je cak i u satoru postavljenom ispred Karolinske, bas u te svrhe. Dakle, ima uredan uput od lekara i nigde je ne primaju, jer je sumnjiva na covid. I to je to, zadnje dve nedelje pokusava da negde da krv na testiranje da bi lekar mogao uopste da vidi sta joj je. Na covid nikad nije testirana, vec joj je lekar negde u petoj nedelji bolesti saopstio da verovatno ima to, jer nema sta drugo da bude.

Od mojih 15 kolega na poslu, tri prolaze istu pricu. Dve su bile na bolovanju negde krajem marta i pocetkom aprila, po 3-4 nedelje, a onda su pocele da rade od kuce. Sad smo svakodnevno na skype sastancima, pa imam direktan uvid. Ista stvar kao ova devojka gore. Temperatura koja dolazi i prolazi, cudne senzacije u telu koje isto budu pa prodju, stalni telefonski kontakti s lekarom, ali bez poseta i testova. Nijednoj od njih nikad nije receno da imaju covid, vec im se telefonom prati stanje i daju saveti. Otprilike na svake dve nedelje dobiju zakazan termin kod lekara, ali opet samo razgovor i opsti pregled. U medjuvremenu rade iskljucivo online dok mi ostali imamo shemu tako da je svakog dana po dvoje u kancelariji, ostali rade od kuce. Imamo i trecu koleginicu koja je na bolovanju sada cetvrtu nedelju, jos ne znamo kako ce ici s njom. Ne znam ni da li se ijedna od cetiri pomenute u ovom postu broji u obolele od covida, jer nijedna nije testirana. Ni same ne mogu da kazu da li im je bolest potvrdjena, jer im je receno da je verovatno to, ali ne i da je sigurno.

Sto se nasih klijenata tice, a to su stari ljudi, odliv je ogroman. Tek u poslednjih nedelju-dve se pojavljuju po bolnicama, pre toga su samo umirali, sami i izolovani, kod kuce i po domovima. Za ove po bolnicama znam da su testirani, za ostale da nisu. Ustvari se vise testiraju zdravi ljudi, oni koji dolaze u kontakt s rizicnim grupama, dakle pre svega zdravstveni radnici i osoblje po starackim domovima u kojima je zabelezen veci broj umrlih. Oni koji imaju izrazene simptome, kao moje koleginice, stanovnici domova i mnogi drugi, se ne testiraju, nego se dijagnoza postavlja nakon par nedelja simptoma koji ne prolaze sami od sebe. Ako u nekom trenutku postane kriticno, smestaju se u bolnicu i tek tada testiraju. Stari cesto i ne stignu do tu, vec umru gde su se zatekli. Ne znam da li svi oni ulaze u statistiku obolelih i umrlih, ili samo testirani. Ustvari niko ne zna i nema pravila, izgleda da je sve od slucaja do slucaja.

Takodjer ne znam da li je bolji ovaj totalni nedostatak informacija, ili njihova prevelika kolicina, kao sto je u nekim drugim zemljama. Ali znam da ovo kod nas rezultira opstim stanjem nesigurnosti i brige, koje traje vec toliko dugo da je tesko ostati normalan. Privid da je sve u redu, slobodno kretanje uz izvestan oprez, privreda koja kobajagi radi i sve ostalo, polako se gubi i ostaje samo strah. Ne samo da ces se razboleti, nego i da neces dobiti adekvatnu, ili bar bilo kakvu negu, i da ces se umesto toga "leciti" telefonom.

Koga nije mrzelo da cita, mozda sad ima jasniju sliku kako izgleda doba korone u Svedskoj. Hvala na paznji.

COVID-19: Mumbai hospitals near collapse
India spends less than two per cent of its GDP on healthcare

Published:  May 16, 2020 10:38
AFP

Mumbai: Packed morgues, bodies in wards, patients forced to share beds and medical workers run ragged: Mumbai's war against coronavirus has pushed the Indian city's hospitals to breaking point.

Ravi, 26, had to change his mother's diapers himself as she lay dying from the disease in the huge Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital, better known as Sion.

"They would just give us medicines and leave," Ravi (not his real name) told AFP. Staff in the 1,300-bed facility were "overworked and tired", he said, with sometimes three patients per bed.

Now he too has contracted the virus and is in another hospital - but only after four facilities refused to admit him. "We don't have the infrastructure for this disease," he said.

The state-run Sion hospital has become a byword for the stunning failure of Mumbai - home to billionaires, Bollywood and slums - to cope with the pandemic.

A video widely shared on social media and shown on Indian TV showed corpses wrapped in black plastic left on beds in a ward where patients are being treated.

Authorities said they were investigating the footage.

'So many cases'

With space at a premium, and relatives too afraid or unable to claim their dead because they are themselves in quarantine, disposal of coronavirus corpses is not easy, doctors say.

But dealing with the sick is much harder.

"We don't have enough beds to manage so many cases. The emergency area gets full in a matter of hours," Aditya Burje, a junior doctor working night shifts at Sion hospital, told AFP.

The hospital's proximity to India's biggest slum Dharavi makes it a key battleground in the fight against the pandemic.

"In March there were just one or two suspected cases a day. It all seemed to be under control. Then the situation drastically changed," the 25-year-old said.

By the end of April, Burje and his colleagues were overwhelmed.

"We were seeing 50-100 patients a day, 80 percent of whom would turn out to be positive and many would need to be on oxygen," he said.

Doctors not paid

Like many doctors at state-run hospitals, Burje, who gets a $700 (Dh2,571) monthly stipend, has not been paid since India went into lockdown in late March.

He has not had a night off in two months.

With nearly a third of his medical school cohort at the hospital diagnosed with coronavirus, he admitted he was scared to go to work.

"If something happens, who will take care of me?"

'System exploding'

Sion hospital is not alone in India's financial capital. And everyone - from medical students to doctors with decades of experience - is struggling.

Intensive care specialist Deepak Baid, who runs a private hospital in north Mumbai, volunteered to help at a state-run medical facility, Rajawadi Hospital.

But though it is only equipped to handle patients with moderate symptoms, doctors there routinely end up treating critically ill people, Baid said.

Even clinicians specialising in fields like dermatology or orthopaedics are being hit with caseloads of patients they are not qualified to treat.

"We can't send (patients) to other better-equipped hospitals because they have no beds and so we do what we can," he told AFP.

"The system is under a lot of pressure, it's exploding," he said.

Flimsy protective equipment has made sanitation workers fearful of tackling tasks such as changing sheets used by coronavirus patients, Nilima Vaidya-Bhamare, another doctor, told AFP.

'Utterly neglected'

Mumbai has 4,500 beds for coronavirus patients, according to Daksha Shah, a senior health official with the city authority.

"We are expanding capacity all the time," she told AFP, pointing to efforts to build a 1,000-bed field hospital in a commercial hub.

Authorities are also setting up intensive care units inside schools.

But with Mumbai so far registering around 18,000 cases, a fraction of its 18-million-strong population, fears are growing that India's worst-hit city is unprepared for a potential surge.

India spends less than two per cent of its GDP on healthcare.

As of 2017, India had 0.8 doctors per 1,000 people, around the same level as Iraq, according to the World Bank. China has 1.8 per 1,000, and the United States 2.6.

Many of the problems highlighted by the pandemic have been festering for a long time, Vaidya-Bhamare said, from a lack of basic supplies such as soap to overburdened staff.

"I graduated in 1994 and government hospitals were utterly neglected then," she said. "Why does it take a pandemic to wake people up?"

JetBlue’s Founder Helped Fund A Stanford Study That Said The Coronavirus Wasn’t That Deadly

A Stanford whistleblower complaint alleges that the controversial John Ioannidis study failed to disclose important financial ties and ignored scientists’ concerns that their antibody test was inaccurate.


A highly influential coronavirus antibody study was funded in part by David Neeleman, the JetBlue Airways founder and a vocal proponent of the idea that the pandemic isn’t deadly enough to justify continued lockdowns.

That’s according to a complaint from an anonymous whistleblower, filed with Stanford University last week and obtained by BuzzFeed News, about the study conducted by the famous scientist John Ioannidis and others. The complaint cites dozens of emails, including exchanges with the airline executive while the study was being conducted.

The study — released as a non-peer-reviewed paper, or preprint, on April 17 — made headlines around the world with a dramatic finding: Based on antibodies in thousands of Silicon Valley residents’ blood samples, the number of coronavirus infections was up to 85 times higher than believed. This true infection count was so high that it would drive down the virus’s local fatality rate to 0.12%–0.2% — far closer to the known death rate for the flu.

Almost immediately, the study became a flashpoint in the increasingly politicized debate over whether and how to reopen the economy. Although many scientists assailed its methods, leading the authors to post a revision nearly two weeks later, it was trumpeted by conservative media to support a growing theory: that fears of the coronavirus are overblown.

“Most of the population has minimal risk, in the range of dying while you’re driving from home to work and back,” Ioannidis said on the Fox News show Life, Liberty & Levin, a few days after the study’s release.

But Ioannidis and his coauthors did not disclose that the study was funded in part by Neeleman. “Concern that the authors were affected by a severe conflict of interest is unavoidable,” states the complaint, which was submitted to Stanford’s research compliance office by an anonymous whistleblower involved with the research.

And emails cited within the complaint also suggest that the study’s authors disregarded warnings raised by two Stanford professors who tried to verify the accuracy of the antibody test used. The pair of scientists ultimately refused to put their names on the study because, they told the lead researchers, they could not stand by the test results. The complaint suggests that Neeleman “potentially used financial incentives to secure cooperation from” one of these scientists, who told colleagues by email that she was “alarmed” by aspects of the antibody test’s performance.

rumbeando wrote:Tako je, 1 promil je isto što i 0,1 posto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_mille

Patient 5 did not meet patient 0 but did meet patient 4 on Jan 22. Their only encounter was a canteen visit, sitting back to back, when patient 5 turned to patient 4 to borrow the salt shaker from their table. The encounter was 2 days before symptom onset in patient 4. Presymptomatic transmission from patient 4 to patient 5 is strongly supported by virus sequence analysis (table 2): a nonsynonymous nucleotide polymorphism (a G6446A substitution) was found in the virus from patients 4 and 5 onwards but not in any cases detected before this point (patients 1–3).

Samo za dva dana 15. i 16. maja u Vranju je potvrđen kovid kod 52 osobe, zbog hospitalizacije pacijenata nužno je ponovno otvaranje kovid bolnice u zgradi Hirurgije koja je privremeno zatvorena 30. marta, potvrdio je za Novosti gradonačelnik Vranja dr Slobodan Milenković.
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Novooboleli su uglavnom radnici jedne privatne fabrike nameštaja, članovi njihovih porodica i kontakti. Kod četiri osobe dijagnostifikovana je upala pluća u početnoj fazi dok su ostali pacijenti sa blažom kliničkom slikom.

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Sotir wrote:114/6526
То би требало да је видљив скок отварања.

Mór Thököly wrote:

Sotir wrote:114/6526
То би требало да је видљив скок отварања.

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