BC HEALTH
Saved by @Alex1Powell

The new Variant Under Investigation (VUI) was re-designated Variant of Concern (VOC) 202012/01 on 18 December

This is an excellent report by @PHE_UK, but it’s a bit technical so I’ll try to unpick it for you

https://t.co/M9f3zaimF5

1/14

 The team at @PHE_uk begin by explaining that on 8 Dec they investigated the surge in cases in the South of England. Only 4% (255/6130) of Kent cases had genetic sequence data, but of these 117 genetically similar cases had been collected between 10-18 Nov

2/14
When looking at national data, these 117 cases were part of a larger cluster of 962 (to 8 Dec) in Kent, NE London, plus a few in rest London, Anglia, Essex

3/14
915 or the 962 cases had additional data: 828 were from November, 79 in Oct, 4 from Sept

90% were from <60 years old (further detail not yet available here)

6 patients had already died

4/14
As of 20 Dec, most cases were in London, the SE and East of England.

Of note, 3 of the main testing labs use a PCR test for 3 different viral genes: N, ORF1ab, S.

The new VOC has a mutation that makes this test negative for S (spike), but positive for the others.

5/14
This 'S-gene target failure' (SGTF) proved useful because 97% of pillar 2 (non-hospital) PCR tests negative for S, but positive for N and ORF1, were this VOC. Using this, it was possible to calculate that VOC is more transmissible, adding about 0.5 to the R value

6/14
We can see here, the proportion of SGTFs in positive tests at one Lighthouse lab. Early on, low level SGTFs were seen due to other strains(blue line), then from Nov the new VOC (red line, also called B.1.1.7) rapidly began to dominate the positive tests

7/14
The new VOC is defined by having 23 mutations.

Because of the way genetics works, 6 of these don’t actually change viral proteins (so-called synonymous mutations).

13 change amino acids of a viral protein (see Figure)

4 remove a small piece of a protein

8/14
Because this VOC has acquired an unusually large number of mutations, seemingly in one step, it is speculated that it might have arisen either in 1 person with a weak immune system (next tweet) or even in another animal (as happened with the Danish cluster involving mink)

9/14
For example, recently a patient on immunosuppressive drugs remained infected (with a different variant) for 154 days before dying. During that infection, the virus acquired many new mutations

https://t.co/f5JWWUOaqy

10/14
N501Y mutation in the S protein of B.1.1.7 & the deletion 69/70 may account for much of its the transmissibility. N501Y is known to increase binding to ACE2, a protein on our cells the virus uses to gain entry. N501Y appears to allow the virus to infect mice too.

11/14
501 is where neutralising antibodies often act, so it's possible that N501Y might affect such antibodies.

Although N501Y has not yet been tested, other mutations at 501 decrease the effectiveness of LYCoV016, a monoclonal antibody developed to treat COVID19

12/14
There is no information about natural antibodies, which, because of their diversity, target many parts of a virus at once. But, vaccination generates lots of different antibodies, so is less likely to be adversely affected.

13/14
There is much still to understand about this variant, but the speed of progress by @PHE_uk and @CovidGenomicsUK is nothing short of breath-taking.

They deserve our thanks!

14/14

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On December 29 we were dillucidating here if the drops meant "surprise, relatively neutral expression" or "a negative expression, horror" (Remember: https://t.co/J2gjQjAENw ). Well, December 22 drops seem to clarify it. First, the December 29 drop that generated the confusion 1/*


didn't appear in today drops, while several old ones have been posted again. I would say that all December 22 drops regarding facial expression mean and clarify "surprise". 2/*


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All these drops were completed with a Christmas gift one, confirming the surprise neutral meaning and adding a related positive one connected to the surprise. 5/*
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[Thread]: Old school "medicine" ads obviously created by aliens.

Let's begin with cocaine toothache drops, for only 15 cents.


Dr. Batty’s asthma cigarettes were not recommended for "children under 6.”


Best prescription for malaria, chills and fever: Grove's tasteless Chill Tonic, obviously.

"It is simply iron and Quinine in a tasteless form".


The cheapest specific for the relief of cough: heroin.


There's also Dr Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People.
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Before we get too far into 2021, I thought I’d write a thread recapping some of the research that came out of my lab in 2020. Most of this work was led by my talented team of graduate students, Kerrianne Morrison, @kmdebrabander, and @DesiRJones.

Back in January, a news story was published about Kerrianne’s study showing improved social interaction outcomes for autistic adults when paired with another autistic partner.

A detailed thread about the study and a link to the paper can be found here (feel free to DM me your email address if you’d like a copy of the full paper for this study or any of our studies):


Another paper published early in 2020 (it appeared a few months earlier online) showed that traditional standalone tasks of social cognition are less predictive of functional and social skills among autistic adults than commonly assumed in autism research.


Next, @kmdebrabander led and published an innovative study about how well autistic and non-autistic adults can predict their own cognitive and social cognitive performance.
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Our conscious experience exists. In fact, it's the only thing you can directly observe, as everything about reality and how we perceive it is filtered through how our brains process stimuli and information. You are the only one who can define who and what you are.

Don't get me wrong, I am a materialist who believes the universe exists in the absence of beings who can observe it from an intelligence standpoint, but we are all collections of atoms, our function governed by chemical processes, not perfectly replicated by the process of birth.

Our means of DNA replication is imprecise because of billions of years of random evolution. We are on one branch of many, and there is countless variation in how all living beings are formed, and how we classify traits of those creatures, including sex and reproduction methods.

It would be an error to say that people who are intersex and/or transgender are the results of mistakes or errors in reproduction, because it implies DNA is "trying" to create a binary model of people and sometimes gets it wrong. It doesn't "try" to do anything; DNA != conscious.

Rather, our biological blueprints are not precise, and this is true for all living things. We can crossbreed plants and animals because of that imprecise nature, it's responsible for what we perceive as the "races" of people, etc. We can observe variation everywhere.
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https://tinyurl.com/1ftbk46h
https://tinyurl.com/1f...
@Aelkus
half of this website believes that all of your problems can be solved by going to therapy

another half thinks that the entire psychological profession is fake and after some vaguely construed revolution mental health will be solved

what's funny about this is that nothing about it new

I wish this wasn't paywalled because the books Lasch reviewed (in 1976!) sound very familiar. The same kind of dumb debates on this subject that occur constantly here are inherited from boomers

the point Lasch makes towards the end is that all of these books are grasping towards something that neither therapy or politics fully covers, even if both are obviously relevant.

but first, he does a tour through the books. he encounters people who believe all character traits are a product of "propaganda" and "conditioning" that can be fixed with therapy or therapy-like processes, and people who think therapy is a distraction from politics
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All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.


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