Search results

I'll take these in order: 1. No, other groups and companies would continue, especially if they were very far along in the development path, especially in a disease like this. The analogy is drug development, let's take statin drugs as an example. After the first one one came out, other...

Depends in part on what kind of mask. I'll start with an N-95 or KN-95 (if it's made in China). This is what healthcare workers ideally wear around patients. It filters out 95% of particles above a certain size and fits VERY tightly around your face. These are not generally available except...

Somebody asked about an article in the Guardian on why we might not get a vaccine. (They seem to have deleted their post though, but I already wrote the answer). I like the Guardian. I think in general this newspaper article is starting from the most pessimistic possible position and then...

Equipment was part of it, and they definitely made courts slower, which also contributed. Tennis is also less interesting now.

You are right. It is more uniform, and I think less entertaining.

No. I believe spin is more related to ball size than material. Most "40 mm" balls were 39.2-39.5. The 40+ balls are around 40.5. So the change to plastic also resulted in an increase in ball diameter and weigh almost as much as switch from 38 to 40. (Back when we were first going through...

Marko, just remember that large groups of people indoors is a bad idea, especially if there are many people you dont know. We're not through this yet By the way, I saw a little bit of your country last summer, took a ferry over from Italy to Dubrovnik. I really liked it!

The good news is you were tested carefully. To be honest, the swab needs to be pushed all the way to the back of your nose to get to where the virus is most likely to be, and that hurts. A doctor colleague of mine has told me he truly hates it, and he's had it done several times now. The way...

We actually had them back then. I cant remember which brand, but there was at least one that was not celluloid. Halex maybe? And I agree, 40+ was a step too far.

I think the space was fairly small also for some of the dance classes. It definitely is consistent with the fairly intuitive idea that if you are exhaling hard because of aerobic exercise you would eject more virus if you were infected. Again, though, time and distance and luck. Three of the...

I agree and part of it is the 40+ ball. I understand why a change of materials was a reasonable decision but they also made them larger and heavier. That was not necessary.

This is a study from Korea documenting spread of Covid-19 from instructors to students in Latin dance fitness classes. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-0633_article

Rain is right, the proof is in the pudding and we scientists tend to be a cautious lot. One reason I am confident about a vaccine is the number of different strategies that are being pursued to develop one. People are using old tried and true methods (like Sanofi) as well as a variety of...

Yes, in fact NASA Headquarters is in my city, but I don't personally need to go to outer space. I am happy to emigrate to some place more nearby but sane, like New Zealand; or maybe a village near a small city in the south of France.

The idea would be to infuse them into people who are infected to prevent the virus from spreading to adjacent cells, giving your own immune system a big advantage in its battle with the virus, preventing disease progression and speeding recovery and reducing hospital time. Could you use them to...

Lots of companies are in a race to develop antibody therapies for Covid-19. Here is a great fairly non-technical summary. High likelihood quite a few will succeed, main question is how soon? Note that this is not a vaccine...

The antibody from the original SARS patient has been cloned so it is not necessary to ever take blood from him/her again. It is even possible that the people creating this recmbinant human monoclonal antibody have no idea who the original donor is. I think the main idea is that a cocktail of...

A long time ago the way a vaccine was made was to take some microbe or virus and kill it with heat or exposing it to formaldehyde and then inject the killed virus or bacterium into a person. The person would then develop an antibody response without getting sick. Later, vaccines were made by...

More about neutralizing human monoclonal antibodies https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2349-y What is cool about THESE is they were derived from a patient who recovered from SARS in 2003 but they work against SARS-COV-2. Also the authors are finding several which means that they will...

Let me write something about why it takes a long time to test a vaccine. Drugs and vaccines are tested in three phases but the process for a drug and for a vaccine is a little different because of the nature of how they work. In Phase 1 you give the drug or vaccine to a few healthy...