A Possible Explanation for Why Children and Younger Adults Have Less Serious Presentations of COVID-19

If you put this article postulating how the novel coronavirus actually kills people (cytokine storms wreaking havoc on healthy cells as well as infected cells) alongside this article explaining how children have reduced cytokine expression, you might have the answer as to why that “immune system immaturity” might confer a strongly protective benefit.

If there is a known and safe therapy to knock down that particular part of the immune system (cytokine expression) it might offer an avenue of therapeutic treatment which is not directly anti-viral. There is a class of drugs termed “cytokine suppressive anti-inflammatory drugs” or CSAIDs. They can prevent cytokine-induced inflammation of bodily tissues in certain contexts. I wonder if these drugs could be used in the context of a viral infection with sequelae of the sort we see in COVID-19.

I'm Happy to Have Fiction in the Current Issue of Clavmag

I love the way this magazine is opening a new frontier of fiction and other genres, hybrid genres, informed by LGBTQIA inventiveness.

I also love their name and logo. Visit the magazine to read about why the clavicle was chosen as the objective correlative. It's rather fascinating.

Thanks much to editors Freya and Gabrielle for including my short story. 

The De-Extinction Controversy and the Passenger Pigeon Redivivus

     I watched this little documentary about the impending de-extinction of the passenger pigeon. I found it interesting and sad.



     I thought it was illuminating when the proponent of de-extinction was asked why he would want to bring back such an "annoying" creature. This attitude is doubtless part of the answer as to why the species went extinct. It's not the entire answer, however. Farmers did lose their livelihoods when the birds descended en masse on crops. It wasn't so much that the species was seen as an agricultural nuisance. Most accounts say that for the size of the population the impact on agriculture was rather small. Passenger pigeons liked to feed on mast, the fruit of forest trees, like acorns, hickory nuts, beech nuts and the like. The deforestation that killed its habitat within its chosen range (Great Lakes to east coast) is a large part of the explanation of the extinction. But the fact that it was easily acquired prey and became a food staple for some populations (in the age of firearms) is the predominant reason this bird no longer exists.

   A really readworthy essay from Audubon Magazine explains how the telegraph and the locomotive contributed to the extinction of the passenger pigeon.

     Here's a simulation of the experience of being under a mega-flock of passenger pigeons. Admit it: you live for just that, don't you?



     The passenger pigeon genome was sequenced in 2012 and this led to speculation that the bird's origin was in the Neotropical Region of the New World (Central and South America). So if the passenger pigeon were to turn up again as a lazarus species, might it be down there? This seems unlikely since the bird doesn't tend to live in isolated pockets. They were a communal species and even helped rear each other's young. So these evolutionary adaptations would probably mean any populations would probably swell to great numbers rather than bottleneck. So most likely it really is "gone gone." Not just "maybe gone." Unless a hidden population of the remaining members of the species underwent a mutation which made them relative isolationists. And how likely is that?

     But attempts are underway to revive the passenger pigeon by using its closest living relative, the western Band-tailed pigeon as an alma mater. In silico, in vitro, in situ: here is the great comeback plan..

      A little scraping from the toe pad of a taxidermied specimen and they were off running. Will we get a true 100% brand-new passenger pigeon? Probably not. Will this be something more like FrankenPigeon? As Morrissey sang, Well, I wonder. The projected realization date for this project is nebulously defined as "decades away."

     Here is Ben Novak again, the biggest proponent of the passenger pigeon's de-extinction, in the inevitable TedTalk.



     Here's an English band perhaps singing presciently about the passenger pigeon and others to return. I never knew why Wire added that "i" to "in vitro." For sound, I suppose. What you gonna do when you have that extra syllable floating in a melody?



     Here is a video featuring Martha, the last of her kind.



     Think how many taxidermied specimens of this lost species must  be hiding in attics of old houses. It's sort of statistically certain since there were billions shot up until 1900 and taxidermy was widely practiced in that period.

     I wondered how often these taxidermied passenger pigeons came up for auction. The sad element of "price" just underscores the worst side of humanity, but here is a link to the debate as to the worth of a newly-introduced specimen in the extinct species marketplace (sad phrase!) There are two links there, and the bottom one includes an interesting and heated discussion about whether or not the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, a great thing, forbids the sale of taxidermied passenger pigeons. The answer turns out to be "no" because the last bird went extinct in 1914 and the species is not named in the Act, which was introduced four years later.  If de-extinction becomes a regular feature of the scientific landscape in the future, rarer specimens of extinct animals might be worth a cruel fortune. One would hope by that point that new legislation would have mandated protection of extinct genetic repositories.

     Also, I learned from that last discussion that possession of a bird's nest (any nest) is a crime in America. Presumably, even if you collect an abandoned one from branches or pick a fallen, empty one off the ground. Who knew. So you could get busted for pot and a bird's nest at the same time. Maybe you could plead out on the pot and do the time for the nest.

     What did the passenger pigeon sound like? Well, here is a helpful document.  And here is the sad truth: "There are no known recordings of passenger pigeons." There were billions of them, but no one thought to record them as they disappeared. Granted, it was a new technology. But we have Walt Whiman's voice. Just not the passenger pigeon. No one cared about you, darlin'. You were so "all or nothing."

   

I Took the Online Jeopardy Test

ANSWER: What is, "I flubbed it, Alex." 

Apparently, I picked the wrong night to take the Jeopardy online test, darn it.

I just clean forgot the first night and so took it the second night (last night). They run three tests over three nights when the online test for wannabee contestants is offered.

There are fifty questions and I got just under forty correct.

I knew people post the tests (without answers) on YouTube after they are run. So I found Tuesday night's test and took it and I got 45 out of 50 on that test. That test was not difficult.

I saw people on message boards were saying the same thing. They largely said they scored way better on the first test (taking it without official scoring, after the fact) than last night's. 

I do think the second test was much harder since the first test tended to stay in the areas of "general knowledge," whereas the second test went for some very specific cultural mentions that were either hit or miss in your life. 

It really smarted that I missed the first question out of the gate. Correct answer: Marie Kondo. I remembered hearing her quote about throwing away things that do not bring you joy. But it was such a blip on the cultural radar for me. And the other ones that got me were things like the producer of a show I never watched and the name of a video game I never played.

Of course, I missed some questions that were just fair game general knowledge. And there were at least two questions that I knew the answers to as soon as the fifteen second time window allowed elapsed and the question disappeared. Thank you, age. 

They say nobody outside of the show's production team knows how many answers (minimum) you must get correct to be considered for the show. You hear 35 online and if that's true, I'd at least have made the cut for consideration for sure. But maybe they look at 40 and up. Who knows. 

It was an experience and it was sort of fun even with the stress. I was sure there was going to be an African capital I could not remember but that never happened, at least.

I wonder what the third test will be like tonight. I'll probably take it on the YouTube version after it's posted since you can't take the test more than one time per cycle. Wish they let you take all three and then just took your best score. If so, I would be sitting pretty. But then I think I read about eighty thousand people take the test and they only pull 2500 people from the qualifiers. And then you have to test out okay with the auditions. So there's lots of ways NOT to make it on Jeopardy. 

I tend to be able to answer two-thirds or more of the board on any given night. Usually, it's sports that kill me. And I'm remarkably ignorant about most things Canadian, a subject area which (not surprisingly) comes up quite a bit on the show. Give me science, literature, words, languages, art, or history and I'm happy. 

But who knows. Maybe I'd get there and find the working of the buzzer defeats me. Life is full of funny little surprises like that. 

And what if you get there and lose the first time out. I wonder if that's a worse Jeopardy experience than never getting to play the game with Mr. Trebek mere feet away.

I am in complete awe of how Alex Trebek is handling his pancreatic cancer diagnosis. I really can't imagine a braver response and if you've seen recent interviews by him it only makes you love the guy more. Have you ever seen him be mean or slight anyone even once through the years? Trebek is the Buddha. 

I don't really watch the show to see how much money people win. That's the least interesting thing to me. I watch the show because I'm an information junkie.

 I probably should have tried out when I was much younger and quicker on my reflexes. But then I read as much now as I did when I was in my twenties, if not more. It was the messy years between here and there when I was actually too monomaniacal in my focus, I think.  Now I'm back to being interested in everything again. The world is a fascinating place to be reborn every day. As I age, something inside me feels as though it is growing younger every day. I wish the cells outside my brain shared that sentiment. 

Harry Bertoia Was So Wabi-Sabi

And vintage Steve Reich. The comments under this one on YouTube are priceless.



The music of the spheres?

I Speculated on the Heartbreaking Disappearance of Michael Negrete

here.

How Transmissible and How Deadly is the Latest Coronavirus Pandemic?

The CDC's website is in the process of updating information.

Is this one of those cases where authoritarianism goes in the favor of the species? China is rapidly shutting down all egress from Wuhan and engaging in massive quarantining efforts there, as they have done with past epidemics.

But since the virus has spread to other countries already, including America, pronouncements like Lipkin's "The horse is already out of the barn" are almost certainly correct.

Efforts are underway to develop a vaccine. Did you invest in any Inovio stock lately?

If, as early reports suggest, the elderly and immunocompromised are most at risk of the worst consequences and will have the highest mortality rate, it might make sense to encourage our loved ones who fall into these categories to try to get any necessary doctor's visits taken care of as soon as possible. I'm not referring to the flu shot, which is ineffective against this novel strain and probably confers no protective benefit in this instance. I'm referring to the risk of exposure which will probably skyrocket once the infection becomes entrenched throughout America. Maybe it won't be the situation, but looking at the latest updates from China with drastically upscaled numbers, it seems likely to be the case.

It would be prudent if physicians could prescribe maintenance medications without seeing patients where it is possible and not risky. I mean during epidemics. How is it in the interest of an elderly person to come sit in a waiting room full of a potentially deadly virus with a high rate of transmission.

For prophylactic purposes, I wonder if lysine would help? I know it's been largely discredited as actually killing many of the viruses it has been reported in the past to kill. But it does lower arginine levels and that is probably what's responsible for the antiviral effects many claim to have witnessed across a spectrum of viruses. And aspirin's antiviral effects (suppressing viral replication) have been reported in the scientific literature recently. It's not just an antipyretic and analgesic. It might have a prophylactic usefulness apart from the cardiovascular benefits.

Won't it be nice when the future is vegetarian or vegan and epidemics like these can become an extreme rarity? Because once again animal "agriculture" (euphemism for pointless torture) is the origin. Humans should be able to evolve away from predation and animal-based diets and decreased epidemiological load will be a great benefit of that.

If you want to see the GATTACA sequencing of the ugly bug, it's all over the internet. Early on this was posted but there's much more now from many different sources (countries).

I was checking in with Laurie Garrett's Twitter or the latest updates. I know if anybody is going to do a great job of digesting the info as it breaks, it is she.It is really alarming to see how quickly it is spreading and she's pretty much compiling the epidemic's updates in real time.

And I do hope the reproduction number on this early prediction is wrong. Scary stuff.

This is the 3rd stat model to show how grossly undercounted the #nCoV2019 is. In this case:
- official reproductive number is 2.5, but this says it's actually 3.6 to 4.0
- only 5.1% of infections in #Wuhan are identified now.
(which would imply 11,680 cases now in China.) https://t.co/cmmiOupEA6

— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) January 24, 2020