Enterovirus d68

With everyone focused on a possible Ebola outbreak, the growing epidemic of enterovirus d68 infection is getting scant attention.  It has been infecting children all over the country and so far is directly responsible for two deaths and indirectly responsible for at least four more.  While it is primarily a respiratory infection, it has caused paralysis in a small percentage of patients, indicating that it is able to attack the nervous system as well.

The fact that this is getting so little attention now is dangerous.  The enterovirus outbreak is widespread enough that everyone needs to know what symptoms to watch for.  This article explains many of the basics on what to be on the lookout for.

I've seen a lot of speculation that this virus was brought in by all the immigrants Obama allowed in this summer, and I've also seen it connected with other outbreaks in Asia and Australia instead of Central America.  It's a virus that hasn't exactly been non-existent in this country, it was first identified in California in the 60's, and has been around ever since then.  It's always caused a few illnesses here and there every spring and summer, but this current outbreak and its widespread nature indicate a new strain that likely has several points of origin in this country.

This is one area where I truly don't know who to believe.  When the outbreak first made the news, I read a lot of message boards that said it was likely from Central America because polio is still prevalent down there and polio is also an enterovirus, but this categorization is extremely general and really means nothing.  On the other hand, this paper from the Virology Journal does seem to indicate that enterovirus respiratory infections were very prevalent in Latin America just a year ago. It's time like this when I really wish we had a media willing to investigate facts, even ones that may be embarrassing to the current administration.

My concerns with Ebola

With a second case of Ebola transmission in the US, fears of a major outbreak are increasing.  A lot of information is being thrown out there about the way it can or cannot be transmitted.  We are told over and over it can only be spread through body fluids, but are often not given details about what this means.  While the list of body fluids Ebola lives in is long, its presence in mucus and saliva are the two that primarily make it communicable.  A person who has direct contact with the saliva or mucus of an infected and symptomatic individual can contract Ebola, but there are several caveats concerning that.  Ebola can't penetrate the skin, so the infected mucus or saliva would have to come into contact with someone's mouth, nose, etc. to enter the body.  For example, if you shook the hand of an infected individual, they could only pass it to you if their hand had a bodily fluid such as mucus or saliva on it, something that is unfortunately a real possibility.  After that, you would only become infected if you touched your hand to your mouth or nose before washing it, or if the virus found a way to enter through a cut or abrasion.

It gets trickier when trying to determine whether or not someone could catch Ebola from a contaminated surface.  I've read that the virus can't survive long outside the body, but it appears "not long" is still a few hours.  In this case the rules of transmission would be if you touch a contaminated surface a few hours after it became contaminated, you could become infected if the virus then came into contact with your mouth, nose, skin wound, etc.

There has been much discussion about the possibility of Ebola becoming airborne with many doctors and scientists saying it is possible.  While it wouldn't be impossible for it to happen it would seem to me that it is improbable.  The virus would have to make a steady series of mutations to become airborne, a series that I find it unlikely to make in a short time frame.

The greater danger with Ebola isn't that it will make the huge leap to become airborne, but that smaller mutations will cause slight alterations that could greatly enhance its infectivity or decrease our chances to detect it.  A single mutation that allowed it to survive outside the body for a significantly longer period of time would be trouble.  It would also be trouble if a mutation altered its symptoms in a manner that made it harder for doctors to recognize.  For example, this article mentions that not everyone who contracted Ebola gets a high fever that would serve as a flag for it.  The lack of a high temperature in this small percentage of patients most likely is due just to variance in physiology and not an alteration in the virus itself.  However, if an alteration in the virus would allow it to infect individuals without causing a significantly high temperature, at least for some time after a person becomes contagious, it would make it much more difficult for us to detect.

An Alphysicist's Tale

One of my favorite book when I was a kid was The Trumpeter of Krakow.  I loved everything about it, but probably my favorite part was naturally the alchemist subplot.  Before reading the book, I had never heard of the historical alchemists and their attempts to turn lead into gold.  Everyone laughs now at their stupidity in trying to carry out an impossible task, but I always knew that what they were doing in theory was possible.  Their ignorant mistake was in thinking they could turn lead into gold through chemical reactions.  It is possible, theoretically, to turn lead into gold, you just need physics to figure out how to alter the nucleus of lead.  Lead has an atomic number of 82 while gold's is 79. This  means that lead differs from gold by having three more protons in its nucleus and three more electrons revolving around said nucleus.  If a process could be developed to remove three protons from lead, it can be turned into gold.  What is needed then is alphysics, not alchemy.

The photo at the top of this post might look like a simple statue, but it is actually a professor who was a pioneer in the field of alphysics.  He devised a process for turning every molecule in his body into lead.  Unfortunately, the reverse process wasn't successful.  His students immediately went to work to try and figure out where he went wrong.  They worked diligently, but couldn't do it.  Recently, funding for the project was pulled as it wasn't considered a high priority.  And so the professor sits diligently, waiting for the day when physics has advanced enough to find a way to turn him back.

Saturday Morning Video: Chemists Know - (Parody of "Let It Go" from Frozen) - University of Cali...

Synthetic Biology: Its promises and curse

After much meandering in my career, I am finally starting to put together a project I can take with me in pursuit of my own appointment.  One thing that finally moved me to take this step is the possibilities that are offered by the capabilities of synthetic biology.  DNA production has gotten so cheap that you can get any gene you want to work with synthetically produced.  No more begging other researchers to send you plasmids of something you want to work with.  For the work I intend to do, this will allow me to express any protein I want to work with recombinantly and look at it in the manner I want to.

The increased affordability of synthetically produced biological macromolecules stands to greatly improve the productivity of scientists.  Cheaply produced RNA is probably next in line, which will make the the ability to transcribe and purify RNA a lost and obsolete art.  It will make it easier for scientists with no previous experience in RNA to work with it.

The curse of synthetic biology is the potential it can create for the production of bio-weapons, something that is a plot point in my book.  With the genome sequences of viruses out there, anybody can order a viral genome to work on and mutate.  While the technology isn't there to turn these viral genomes into infectious agents, that is rapidly changing, as outlined in this story about J. Craig Venter and his work creating synthetic life.

Why I'm watching sports less and less

For most of my life I have been an absolute sports fanatic.  I would follow almost every sport to some degree, watch whatever game I was on.  I could even watch the same Sportscenter hour after hour. All of that has changed recently, however.  Any desire I have had to watch and follow sports has abruptly disappeared.  I might still have a game on while I am doing other things, and I will peruse the scores every morning, but something has significantly changed for me.

I've read several posts in the manosphere deploring men to play sports, not watch sports.  These posts have helped point out to me how watching sports is a passive activity that can often be a waste of time when there are more important activities one can actively engage in.  For me, this realization came after several incidents in sports that have made me feel that they are no longer worth watching and following.  The SJWs have been attacking sports for several years, and the various league's have been giving in on one front after another.  Sometimes it feels like the games are secondary to whatever "message" needs to be conveyed from week to week.

A significant portion of my turning away from sports can more accurately be described as a turning away from sports journalism, which has been so fully captured by the SJWs that there seems to be almost no coverage of the actual games anymore.  Of course, this is a trend that stared long ago and has a lot of causes.  The people who work for ESPN came to believe long ago that they were bigger then the sports they covered, and everything at the network has reflected that.  I remember several years ago, shortly after LeBron James announced he was going to the Heat on his ESPN special, a friend of mine on Facebook said that ESPN no longer covered sports, they consisted of nothing other then rumors and speculation, most of which was wrong.  The personalities there want to make names for themselves, and they seem to believe the best way to do that is to report scoops, not the games themselves.

I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't mention the worst offender in the poor sports coverage department, NBC's Football Night in America.  The show is so atrocious that I almost believe it was put together with the purpose of making football so boring no one will want to watch the sport.  It's an hour and a half show that is supposed to cover the action of the day, but shows almost zero highlights.  I truly believe that Chris Berman's fastest three minutes in football contains more highlights then this show.  Still, the highlights are better then the analysis, which is done by former players and coaches who seem to have less knowledge of the game then someone watching it for the first time.  Then, once the analysis is over, they go to Peter King and Mike Florio, who somehow are getting big money to tell us such things as "You know that guy whose leg bent in a way that legs aren't supposed to bend and got carted off the field howling in pain with a bone protruding from his skin.  My "insider sources" tell me he's going to be out for a while.  At least two weeks."

Billing Companies, Collections, and the Economy

Earlier I wrote a post about the trouble my sister's radiology practice was having with their billing company.  For some reason they could never understand, the billing company was unwilling to pass along the money it owed them.  They never figured out what the problem was, and at the time I wondered if Obamacare regulations had screwed up medical billing.  I'm starting to re-think what might have been going on with that situation as my university has recently had some problems with billing.

About a week ago, I got an email from the company that does our DNA sequencing that they did not receive payment for several orders.  After I inquired about it, I found out the university did pay the billing company that handles payments for the sequencing company.  Several other labs at the school received similar notices.  The sequencing company specifically mentioned they didn't get their money from the billing company, so it would appear the billing company is at fault here.

When I found out what the situation was, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between this and the one my sister experienced.  I'm wondering what the overlap might be, if there is any.  I tried to look up the billing company to see what kinds of accounts they handle.  I was curious to see if they do medical billing too, but I couldn't find out anything about them.  It's possible they do medical billing too, and their problems stem from that.

Of course the big question is why these billing companies aren't passing along the money.  For some reason, they're in such dire straits that they're holding on to what money they can and trying to extract it from whoever they can fool into overpaying.  If the problem is Obamacare, then at least the problem is regulatory and confined to the medical/scientific sector.  What really worries me is the fact the problem might be more general economics.  I worry that there is just no money out there for these companies to collect, and that is why they are acting the way they are.  If this is true, then the economy is undoubtedly much worse then the media and our politicians are letting on.

In the email I received from the billing company, they said if we didn't settle our accounts, they would report our debt as outstanding.  It made me remember this story that stated 1/3 of Americans have an unpaid debt in collections.  The story contains a map that shows the region by region data. When the story broke, many commenters made a point that the South has more people with debt in collections then other areas of the country.  I wonder how accurate some of the data is, as the map appears to show that Detroit isn't actually too bad about paying its debts.  This would be the same Detroit that had a major controversy over unpaid water bills.  The same Detroit where half the residents don't pay their property taxes.

It should be noted the story about unpaid debts only concerned those actually reported to collection agencies.  A lot of businesses might not report debts if they believe there isn't much chance of getting their money.  I had an uncle who had this attitude with his medical practice.  As a consequence, regions that are horrible about paying their debts might not actually show it in certain data.  I wonder if there's a similar dynamic occurring with the billing problems I'm seeing with our sequencer's billing company.  They've been hopelessly stiffed by so many other companies they are trying to go after any business that has money.  The big question I have is, what makes them think universities have money?  We're in the middle of a higher education bubble.