Viral secrets

got a warm welcome to today's Talk Saturday the 1st of October now I want to talk about things that we don't know about SARS coronavirus 2 today some of the Mysteries some of the things we know that are unknown and given that there's been an awful lot of money spent on this it's surprising really how little information is in the public domain so I'm hoping to be asking some personal questions we're going to ask where the virus came from uh how come it mutates so rapidly and why some people get so sick and other people don't and various other questions like that so be a bit of a tying together really but really quite some quite interesting points come up now this is Loosely based on an article from The Washington Post but only very Loosely it's called a virus secrets but I thought that was quite a good title so 6.5 million deaths from the virus that's officially registered the real number is way more than that but 16 of those have been in the United States and of course the United States and the United Kingdom and other Western countries have come up particularly badly Russia is the worst by by quite a long way but after that it's the United States in deaths per capita so quite a lot to learn really now this is incredible research has published more than 200 000 studies I mean heck it's nearly a quarter of a million that is an awful lot of an awful lot of work been done on this four times the number published on influenza in the past 100 years and way more than any other infectious disease now first question um where did the virus come from and why has it been so successful interesting now um I think I'll just show you a map here this is uh this map here is Wuhan so here is the instant Wuhan Institute of virology here and here is where the uh the Hunan Market where the first cases were officially reported from and we'll see that the distance between those is about 20 kilometers is it so that's the scale that's about 15 miles apart so um some of you might want to think that's coincidence others might think it's too much of a coincidence of course you'll have to decide that for yourself um but let's let's carry on um this is a Vincent Munster uh virus ecology Rocky Mountain departures uh ni International Institutes of allergy and infectious diseases in the United States now he says this we've now identified 20 or 30 of these viruses that all look very similar so yes there's lots of SARS coronavirus to like viruses there's a lot of virus coronaviruses that look like SARS coronavirus too but they are not the same they are distinguishable and what is true what is the true Hideout place of the progenitor of SARS coronavirus 2 is unknown so what he's saying is that people have been looking for this virus in nature and have not found it the animal Source if it's a natural animal source for this virus has not been found so um that's one possibility it's a natural zoonotic spillover infection the other Theory that's talked about from time to time of course is the lab leak Escape Theory now there's two possibilities here the virus evolved in nature and was being studied now we know this is true we know the Wuhan Institute of biology we're studying coronaviruses that's not a particular secret that's known and have been doing for some time and we know there's possible funding links with other countries that we're not going to go into here but um so it's possible that it was just being studied and then it could be something as simple as a worker decided to steal an animal to sell in the wet Market that that's that's possible from from the lab we simply don't know that um so that's possible it was just being studied but there was a natural leakage well a non-natural leak which is inexcusable but that could have happened or the virus was created in the lab by researchers now the term created here is misleading that this is what the newspaper uses um it's not really we don't really create viruses at all what we can do though is genetically manipulate them to increase their function to make them more effective so we can study them more this is normally called gain of function research so gain of function research is clearly an other possibility but we don't absolutely know that so that's uh that's one interesting question how does the virus mutate so rapidly it's another question now viruses uh coronaviruses normally have this proof reading system now this is a genetic uh this is genetic apparatus genetic molecular machinery and what it does when the virus strings together a new string of amino acids of a nucleotide sorry to make up a new strand of uh ribonucleic acid it's checked there's a genetic checking mechanism but this doesn't seem to have worked uh very well in SARS coronavirus 2 whereas in other coronavirus as it does now we know things like rhinoviruses and influenza viruses the other RNA viruses do mutate very quickly they're checking mechanisms aren't as good but for coronaviruses it should be pretty good and at the start of this pandemic we were told that it's a slow mutator but of course it's to anything it's anything but a slow mutator it's mutated very rapidly so why is this virus so different to other SARS coronavirus to other coronaviruses like like the SARS coronavirus one or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome virus or many of the other coronaviruses why does it seem to be different it seems to be the odd one out and there's not a satisfactory answer for that at the moment so that's kind of an unknown why is the proof reading system so nothing SARS coronavirus too when it's good another viruses um so has the virus uh evolved in immunocompromised people this is probably true so if someone's immunocompromised what would happen is that they'd make a partial immunity to the virus but not enough to get rid of it the virus would then evolve to escape that immunity so there'd be random mutations within the virus the mutation that will be survive as the one that's able to escape the level of immunological response generated by the individual and after weeks and even months of infection in these immunother compromise people that they could then pass on a mutated virus that's possible another one and um I I think this one's also quite likely reverse zoonosis this would mean that the virus has got into an animal perhaps mice Omicron still could have Arisen in mice we simply don't know that yet and then it's come back to humans so the virus could mutate in an animal and of course the animal physiology is different throughout so the virus could mutate rapidly and then it could be spread back to humans so-called reverse zoonosis also possible we don't actually have a definitive answer to that yet despite 200 000 papers and lots of money the virus is found this is not me making this is all the these are the data points here that's the CDC one and this is the paper that deals with the um that this is actually a a talking about infection in Deer particularly but it does say virus found in 29 other animals so far or all mammals of course uh mink we saw these appalling situations in Denmark and Netherlands with being called hamsters were called in uh I'm not going to cross that because I think it was a waste of time uh hamsters were called in in uh Hong Kong which is probably also a waste of time but lots of other animals as well cats are quite a big one dogs are infected but less so than cats um lots of other non-human primates were reported in the past on troops of gorillas I'm being uh infected the virus has also been found in a hippopotamus manatees and a few other a few other animals now this is serious because the virus can evolve in these animals and and be transmitted back to humans and if this reservoir of animal Reservoir is there it means the virus is almost guaranteed to be endemic indefinitely into the future unfortunately now another question is why is there such massive variability in the clinical picture so some people very often two partners living in a household one will get sick one one won't one could even die in the other be essentially asymptomatic um why is this again not entirely clear why why older people are affected more than children and younger people at one younger people are protected why is it better to be one than 50 because what we have basically is a linear gradation the younger you are the safer you are from the serious Adverse Events of this verse you what the older you are the more at risk you are it's a linear increase now that that's we we know this so well now that we kind of accept it as normal but it isn't it isn't um so the 1918 flu pandemic highest mortality rates in children under five and adults aged 20 to 40. as well as the over 65s just imagine if this had been the case in this pandemic if we'd lost I don't even want to mention it it's too horrendous it would last several million children under the age of five that's what happened in 1918 adults 20 to 40 who had a vigorous immune response had much higher death rates um so why is this pandemic such a linear increase in risk with with a with a correlation with age again 1957 flu pandemic I know it's another influenza but it's shows it's not normally like this uh greatest mortality here was in school-aged children terrible so five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve-year-olds and in young adults as well as the elderly population as well but again imagine school-aged children have been disproportionately affected by this pandemic it would just would have been awful but that was the case in 1957. school-aged children died as did young adults so again we don't know why this is and it's it's strange and it is unusual you know we we're so used to talking about it now we think it's normal but in actual fact it's not so um is it something to do with mucosal immunity and interferons now this is not me making up again this is a paper in nature so um it could be that young people younger people make more interferons in their respiratory mucosa and the interferons basically interferon is released by an infirally infected cell it's a protein chemical it's like a cytokine and it protects the cells around about from further viral infections and there's indications that at least in the mucosal compartment the younger you are the more of this you make is it that it's one factor does that explain it all not by any means so again it's a bit of an unknown um genetic variations now I just put one paper here association between polymorphism but polymorphism just means the different forms of the gene so this genetic variations in individuals this is in PubMed peer review check it out for yourself that they conclude genetic and non-genetic factors are responsible for the High um into individual variation in response so there are some genetic factors here now we have to be careful here um this is genetic variation within pupil groups we are not saying that certain races are affected more than others were emphatically not saying that and I agree with the YouTube Community guidelines here which I quote here this is the YouTube Community guideline here and that's the reference for it content that claims that any group or individual is immunity to the virus cannot or cannot transmit the virus that that's clearly um the the YouTube Community guidelines is clearly correct we are not claiming that any individual has immunity or cannot transmit the virus but we are saying rightly so we're on the authority of many papers that there are variation Within populations I think this community guideline came along in the early stages of the pandemic when people were saying the whole races can't transmit the virus or can't get it patently rubbish so I actually agree with the YouTube Community guideline there I hope that clarifies that now and why do some people develop long covert and others not um like like me you'll know young fit people um or certainly young adults I know several young adults really quite debilitated with long covert um why is it that they're getting long covered and again it's not clear why I can think of one case where the husband is quite debilitated with long over the wife had the infection at the same time is absolutely bouncing it's there's significant unknowns here why does covet severity different from uh well the age we've just talked about from one person to another so so long covered particularly now um we do know some factors here along covid this is the office for National statistics more common in the sort of middle age group 35 to 69 younger people less than 35 less Common People older than 69 less common strange but true females more common people living in more deprived areas more common those working in Social care more common people not looking for work in other words it's less common in people that are looking for work so is there some socioeconomic factor in some cases perhaps but in many cases of course it's purely biological another activity more commonly people with another activity limiting health condition or disability but as I've said like you we know people that are basically otherwise young and fit who develop long covered um and we don't know why this should be now um as time goes by we'll leave this uh pretty well last word to uh this this guy Bill powderly division of infectious diseases Washington University School of Medicine the virus is becoming more infectious but less dangerous for the majority of people this is clearly clearly the trend isn't it this is clearly what's happening thankfully we predicted this for a long time it is happening but he does counsel that with no guarantee that the virus won't develop additional mutations that are eventually make it more virulent in the future I think it's unlikely but it is right to say it's not impossible but we do notice with gratitude that the vice becoming more infectious as the virus infects more and more people it's going to generate more and more natural immunity and for the majority of people less dangerous but still dangerous for the uh minority so there you go um these were kind of known unknowns um things that we know we don't know there's probably unknown unknowns well inevitably that's unknown unknowns as well things that we don't know but we don't know what they are yet so plenty more to come um for the amount of research that's been done the amount of information and definitive knowledge on this virus is actually pretty abysmal so in terms of uh bang for your book what we've been getting for all this research money that have been spent uh I I must say I'm disappointed let's hope there's more meaningful day to published soon and much greater public uh transparency would also be nice so uh we'll leave that there and thank you for watching

Channel: Dr. John Campbell

Views: 366,586

Keywords: physiology, nursing, NCLEX, health, disease, biology, medicine, nurse education, medical education, pathophysiology, campbell, human biology, human body

Id: Eg0r2z5tX0c

Length: 15min 42sec (942 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 01 2022