BC ALL
Saved by @BillyBostickson

@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad B.1.1.7 reveals clearly that SARS-CoV-2 is reverting to its original pre-outbreak condition, i.e. adapted to transgenic hACE2 mice (either Baric's BALB/c ones or others used at WIV labs during chimeric bat coronavirus experiments aimed at developing a pan betacoronavirus vaccine)

 @EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad 1. From Day 1, SARS-COV-2 was very well adapted to humans .....and transgenic hACE2 Mice https://t.co/TNE4tuLkqN
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad 2. High Probability of serial passaging in Transgenic Mice expressing hACE2 in genesis of SARS-COV-2 https://t.co/B3eR764c1Z
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad B.1.1.7 has an unusually large number of genetic changes, ... found to date in mouse-adapted SARS-CoV2 and is also seen in ferret infections.
https://t.co/9Z4oJmkcKj
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad We adapted a clinical isolate of SARS-CoV-2 by serial passaging in the ... Thus, this mouse-adapted strain and associated challenge model should be ... (B) SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA loads in mouse lung homogenates at P0 to P6.
https://t.co/I90OOCJg7o
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad Mice!
A mink-associated variant carrying Δ(69-70)-Y453F-F486L-N501T-M1229I mutations was also able to utilize mouse Ace2. In addition, all variants carrying an N501Y mutation, a shared feature of UK, South Africa, & Brazil VOC strains, efficiently use mouse Ace2 orthologs.
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad Topolino!
"Moreover, the K417N-E484K-N501Y mutations found in the South Africa variant 501Y.V2 even enable the virus to utilize rat Ace2 more efficiently than using human ACE2. These data suggest that rats and mice may (have) be(en) able to harbor and spread these variants"?
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad Above taken from:
Circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants B.1.1.7, 501Y.V2, and P.1 have gained ability to utilize rat and mouse Ace2 and altered in vitro sensitivity to neutralizing antibodies and ACE2-Ig
https://t.co/j9qEcUz4ea
Well worth a read!
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad even the mink variants were mouse ACE2 adapted, what a surprise...now, who would have expected that?
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad Serial passaging of virus in mouse lungs results in adaptive mutations that increase viral infectivity
MASCp6 genome contains 5 mutations compared to its parental strain IME-BJ05, resulting in four amino acid residue changes in the ORF1ab, S, and N genes, respectively (Fig. 3A)
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad The N501Y mutation seems to provide a more favorable interaction with mouse ACE2 for docking and entry, thus leading to the increased virulence phenotype in mice.
Adaptation of SARS-CoV-2 in BALB/c mice
https://t.co/I90OOCJg7o
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad Protein-coding mutations in SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 virus variant.
A) open reading frames (dark purple arrows) and proteins resulting from cleavage of ORF1ab polypeptide into non-structural proteins (light purple). 17 protein-coding mutations are annotated (top)
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad which includes 14 non-synonymous mutations and 3 deletions spanning 5 viral proteins. B) Expansion of the genomic region from spike to N protein for visualization purposes.
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad "N501Y mutation in SARS-CoV-2 spike leads to morbidity in obese and aged mice"
https://t.co/FOfZg8SiQU
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad Differential efficiencies to neutralize the novel mutants B.1.1.7 and 501Y.V2 by collected sera from convalescent COVID-19 patients and RBD nanoparticle-vaccinated rhesus macaques
https://t.co/fBHaTllKvJ
@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad Just to annoy people
Virology: the problem with ‘leaky’ vaccines
Fresh evidence supports the theory that some vaccines lead to the evolution of more virulent viral strains
https://t.co/ttyM9J2idI

More from Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 🆓

Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
An "Aquarium" needs cleaning in my opinion, but who am I, a mere monkey, to give advice?
Astonished at what @bellingcat discovered about GRU & FSB operations
Skripal https://t.co/PzH3a7JZvy
Navalny https://t.co/eZi63UhWw1
FSB https://t.co/sViYk9RwmB
GRU https://t.co/MY5d5gw2OG


A great post by Ilya Yahin on

Every time Putin talks about “our special services,” his signature smirk appears on his face, and in his words there is poorly concealed bragging
"Of course, we knew everything in advance"
"Yes, we are looking"
"Mercader has already been sent"
“World-class professionals”

Putin clearly loves all these spy games. He is very proud of the special services and therefore endlessly increases budget funding for them.
This is his top priority.
The elderly dictator cannot understand one thing:

there are no effective special services in a state that is completely corroded by corruption. You won't have honest professionals at your fingertips if your son-in-law buys shares of a state company for $ 100, the real value of which exceeds $ 380 million.
BUSINESS
Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
1. Project 1742 (EcoHealth/DTRA)
Risks of bat-borne zoonotic diseases in Western Asia

Duration: 24/10/2018-23 /10/2019

Funding: $71,500
@dgaytandzhieva
https://t.co/680CdD8uug


2. Bat Virus Database
Access to the database is limited only to those scientists participating in our ‘Bats and Coronaviruses’ project
Our intention is to eventually open up this database to the larger scientific community
https://t.co/mPn7b9HM48


3. EcoHealth Alliance & DTRA Asking for Trouble
One Health research project focused on characterizing bat diversity, bat coronavirus diversity and the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in the region.
https://t.co/u6aUeWBGEN


4. Phelps, Olival, Epstein, Karesh - EcoHealth/DTRA


5, Methods and Expected Outcomes
(Unexpected Outcome = New Coronavirus Pandemic)
ALL
Advertisement
Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
Keep dwelling on this:
Further Examination of the Motif near PRRA Reveals Close Structural Similarity to the SEB Superantigen as well as Sequence Similarities to Neurotoxins and a Viral SAg.

The insertion PRRA together with 7 sequentially preceding residues & succeeding R685 (conserved in β-CoVs) form a motif, Y674QTQTNSPRRAR685, homologous to those of neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) and Bungarus genera, as well as neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains

(20) (Fig. 2D). We further noticed that the same segment bears close similarity to the HIV-1 glycoprotein gp120 SAg motif F164 to V174.
https://t.co/EwwJOSa8RK


In (B), the segment S680PPRAR685 including the PRRA insert and highly conserved cleavage site *R685* is shown in van der Waals representation (black labels) and nearby CDR residues of the TCRVβ domain are labeled in blue/white
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa


Sequence Identity %
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa
Y674 - QTQTNSPRRA - R685
Similar to neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) & Bungarus genera & neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains
T678 - NSPRRA- R685
Superantigenic core, consistently aligned against bacterial or viral SAgs
ALL
Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
#DRASTIC in the News Compilation Thread (2021)
1. Earlier stories collated


2. More examples in same thread start


3. Contributed stories


4. Washington Post (February 5th 2021)
We’re still missing the origin story of this pandemic.
China is sitting on the answers.
https://t.co/N77RUN38vs
Archived: https://t.co/FoahR3iSRw


5. Sky News - DRASTIC Petition on TV
World 'not impressed' by WHO's COVID-19 origins report
https://t.co/MKMZWk6cM8
Members @gdemaneuf and @MonaRahalkar speak out
ALL
Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
Same covid-19 mutations are appearing in different places, which may or may not be strange....
41,000 mutations documented in 880 lineages.
Most in spike protein
What explains it?


https://t.co/MvHzUb4peo


https://t.co/PAwgC3lgsO


https://t.co/f9rnyFI0vq


https://t.co/wAlyNzuI0W
ALL

More from All

Liz (Welsh) Beechinor \U0001f605
Liz (Welsh) Beechinor ...
@LizTweetsTech
My dad led an organization of over 300,000 employees.

When I took on my biggest marketing & events team to date (35 employees) I asked him how the *heck* he did it. Here's what he said and what helped me every day. 🧵

Remember you're leading all the employees under you, but you're not *managing* them all. You're managing your direct reports, which should be 5-7 individuals max. Focus on them.

When you interact with the employees you don't manage directly, get to know them as people first, that'll be the most valuable information in leading them. Remembering everything you learn about them is hard, but doing so will make you a superhero.

If you're not going to empower the managers under you, why do you have them? If you see room for improvement, let the manager know and let them make the change on their teams and come to you with questions/concerns. This will save you SO much time.

If you're the smartest person in any room - you're doing it wrong. As a leader, your job is bringing together the best people to get the job done - your skillset is identifying those people, not being one of them.
ALL , WORK , A CATAGORY
Liz (Welsh) Beechinor \U0001f605
Liz (Welsh) Beechinor ...
@LizTweetsTech
My dad led an organization of over 300,000 employees.

When I took on my biggest marketing & events team to date (35 employees) I asked him how the *heck* he did it. Here's what he said and what helped me every day. 🧵

Remember you're leading all the employees under you, but you're not *managing* them all. You're managing your direct reports, which should be 5-7 individuals max. Focus on them.

When you interact with the employees you don't manage directly, get to know them as people first, that'll be the most valuable information in leading them. Remembering everything you learn about them is hard, but doing so will make you a superhero.

If you're not going to empower the managers under you, why do you have them? If you see room for improvement, let the manager know and let them make the change on their teams and come to you with questions/concerns. This will save you SO much time.

If you're the smartest person in any room - you're doing it wrong. As a leader, your job is bringing together the best people to get the job done - your skillset is identifying those people, not being one of them.
ALL , WORK , A CATAGORY
Advertisement
Liz (Welsh) Beechinor \U0001f605
Liz (Welsh) Beechinor ...
@LizTweetsTech
My dad led an organization of over 300,000 employees.

When I took on my biggest marketing & events team to date (35 employees) I asked him how the *heck* he did it. Here's what he said and what helped me every day. 🧵

Remember you're leading all the employees under you, but you're not *managing* them all. You're managing your direct reports, which should be 5-7 individuals max. Focus on them.

When you interact with the employees you don't manage directly, get to know them as people first, that'll be the most valuable information in leading them. Remembering everything you learn about them is hard, but doing so will make you a superhero.

If you're not going to empower the managers under you, why do you have them? If you see room for improvement, let the manager know and let them make the change on their teams and come to you with questions/concerns. This will save you SO much time.

If you're the smartest person in any room - you're doing it wrong. As a leader, your job is bringing together the best people to get the job done - your skillset is identifying those people, not being one of them.
ALL , WORK , A CATAGORY
Rossana Segreto
Rossana Segreto
@Rossana38510044
I must say it, @K_G_Andersen never ends to surprise me with his compelling arguments... If you want to figure out why Wade is wrong you can Google it 🤣😂🤣


Here he downplays the FCS of SARS2. These fragments do not really come and go all the time. I am not aware of experiments on CoV where the FCS arose by cell or animal passage. More on the FCS here:
https://t.co/oyPKBVVG4f


Here he refers to RmYN02, which has no insertion at the S1/S2 cleavage site
https://t.co/0Goapx6cXj
https://t.co/zEALrUUj8F
And to Gallaher's paper, with the fanciful theory of recombination on a train to Wuhan
Recombination is rare outside its group +
https://t.co/DBs7RMeq4X


As also my co-author @ydeigin says
https://t.co/qrOG0nlIzR
the FCS could be not optimal because part of a vaccine attenuation strategy
https://t.co/tHWG1Igf7Q
Andersen admitted to be wrong with his prediction of the O-linked glycans


The FCS might be similar at the aa level to some FCoV sequences, but less at the nt level.
https://t.co/Hvi3azygu6
Andersen does not mention that the FCS binds extremely well to heparan sulphate as possible result of cell passage
https://t.co/s7q6Ynh7NY
ALL
WORLD OF SANATAN DHARMA
WORLD OF SANATAN DHARM...
@world_sanatan
EXPLANATION OF THE EXISTENCE OF DARK MATTER AND DARK ENERGY !

A 🧵 u must read

What Is Dark Energy ?

More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery.

1/9


But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.

2/9

This diagram reveals changes in the rate of expansion since the universe's birth 15 billion years ago. The more shallow the curve, the faster the rate of expansion. The curve changes noticeably about 7.5 billion years ago, when objects in the universe began flying apart as

3/9


a faster rate. Astronomers theorize that the faster expansion rate is due to a mysterious, dark force that is pulling galaxies apart.

WHAT OUR SANATAN DHARMA SAYS IN THIS CONTEXT LET’S TAKE A LOOK

The verses of Taittiriya Aranyaka say that only one pada of the Lord

4/9

is this manifested universe and the remaining three padas are outside it.

According to the observations and realizations of ancient seers, nearly eighty percent of this universe is yet of unknown nature which remains inactive during the process of creation (rather, evolution).
ALL

You May Also Like

Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
LIFE
Mark Allan Bovair
Mark Allan Bovair
@markallanbovair
People are weary.

They get run down by the daily demands of life.

Work, stress, health, money.

It all adds up.

THEN, when their defenses are low, they get SLAMMED with very clever, psychologically manipulative marketing.

Game over. Broke and sick for life.

They used to stand a chance when it was newspaper and TV ads.

Now, with algorithms that prey on the data they themselves provide via social media and browsing habits? No chance.

Digging an endless hole.

Very smart, well educated people cannot overcome this trap.

And the few that do are tempted to use that knowledge to prey on others.

Those with less intelligence and agency are sheep being led to slaughter.

Leaders, those who have been given the ability to initiate change in the world (you know who you are), have a responsibility to fight against those who take advantage of others, to not sit quietly under the false flag of peace.

Everywhere you go, look around, nearly everyone looks miserable.

The most prosperous time to be alive in human history, and people walk like zombies through life.

They were told these material goods would bring fulfillment, instead they brought debt slavery.
ALL
Advertisement
Katie Mack
Katie Mack
@AstroKatie
Light travels at about 1 foot per nanosecond.

Hold your hand up 12 inches from your face: you’re seeing your hand as it was a nanosecond ago. Everything you look at is, to one degree or another, in the past. The farther away in space, the more ancient in time.

You can’t see the Sun as it is now, but you can see it as it was about 8 minutes ago. You can’t see Alpha Centauri now, but you can see it 4.4 years ago. You can see the Andromeda Galaxy as it was 2.5 million years in the past. And so on.

With powerful telescopes, we can see galaxies whose light has been traveling to us for more than 13 billion years. We see them shining in a universe that’s still young, where gravity has just begun to pull matter together into stars and galaxies.

We can see something even more distant, and more ancient, than the first galaxies. If we peer out far enough, in between the galaxies, we can see parts of the Universe that are so far away, it has taken the light from that distance almost the entire age of the cosmos to reach us.
SCIENCE
Randy Milholland
Randy Milholland
@choochoobear
Who wants to hear a nice story about meeting a hero?

So this is a lot, I apologize. But this is the story of how I met one of my teenhood icons while I was still a teenager. But there's a bit of lead up.

When I was sixteen, I discovered Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. It was about three years into it's run. And like the works of Phil Foglio and Don Rosa, it was unlike anything I'd ever seen. I was hooked instantly.

My teen years were pretty chill. Most of the teen angst had been used up by my sister, so my parents and I had a mutual understanding and I was trying hard not to make life hard for them.

My sister moved out for the first time in March or April of 1992. Her room was bigger, so I laid claim on it instantly. Like, I waited an hour for her to be gone. We had a strained sibling relationship, to say the least. No hate, but no like.
ALL
katya adler
katya adler
@BBCkatyaadler
EU views PMs letter accompanying his formal #Brexit extension request - saying that he doesn’t actually want an extension- as a gimmick aimed at a domestic audience. As far as EU law is concerned: a formal request from the UK prime minister, is a formal request full stop /1

EU leaders not rushing to make decisions. Instead they watch events in Westminster carefully. If their newly negotiated #Brexit deal is approved by the majority of MPs - as the PM promised them it would be - then possibly no extension will be needed OR /2

Only a short one maybe to allow for necessary legislation to be completed. If this is the case, EU leaders won’t think twice about granting this short extension. They may even approve it by writing rather than on person at an emergency #Brexit summit. Spoiler alert../3

EU leaders - who surprise, surprise already have a thing or two planned in their diaries over next couple of weeks - have zero appetite to return to Brussels again especially for #Brexit They have no desire to be involved in the drama playing out right now in the UK BUT /4

If MPs reject the deal, if there are plans for a general election or a referendum on the deal then a longer extension will be necessary. Here it is harder for EU leaders to come to immediate consensus so an emergency summit becomes likely /5
BREXIT