CO-VID19 Tag

Yeah!
CO-VID19 Keynote Speakers

25 Jun

Posted at 17:36h in Uncategorized

The protests occurring across the US beginning the day after Memorial Day were sparked by a shocking video that captured how black persons are often grossly abused and even killed by a broken criminal justice system. In front of our eyes, George Floyd died on May 25, 2020, as a police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck as Floyd gasped, “I can’t breathe.”

In addition to attributing the cause of death to “cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained by law enforcement officer(s),” Hennepin County prosecutors and an early account from the medical examiner in the case list other “significant conditions,” including “arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease.”

At a time when many people in the US are awakening to the systemic racism in the criminal justice system, it is equally important to acknowledge its existence in the US health care system.

Research shows that because of systemic racism, black persons have higher levels of chronic illnesses compared with white persons. It is hard to fathom the gall it took to imply blame for Floyd’s death on the very disparities in which racism plays so large a role.

Evidence has shown for decades that black persons are treated differently (worse) than white persons by the US health care system. In the notorious Tuskegee experiments, members of the US Public Health Service followed up black men infected with syphilis without treating them to observe how the disease took its course; the experiments ended in 1972, but their effects are still being felt. The US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has been tracking racial disparities since 2000. They still remain.

Every single time I hear a presentation or read a manuscript pointing out differences in how black persons are treated with respect to health care, I despair. It seems to me that anyone who does not know this yet is actively remaining ignorant and will not be convinced by 1 more study.

Black women’s maternal mortality is 3 times that of white women. Black patients in the US are less likely to receive proper care for diabetes, kidney disease, and various cancers even though they have higher rates of almost every disease.

Sickle cell disease affects 3 times as many people in the US as cystic fibrosis. Yet cystic fibrosis receives 11 times as much funding per patient from the federal government, and 440 times more funding from foundations.

Black persons in the US face roadblocks in every aspect of health care and even in academic medicine. They are less likely to be able to access health care. If they are able to do so, they are less likely to get the care they need to remain healthy. They are less likely to succeed in the profession. They are less likely to be awarded grants. They are less likely to be promoted, and less likely to be in positions of leadership. There is evidence demonstrating all of this.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has underscored the many levels of systemic racism. Black persons are more likely to have chronic conditions that lead to severe cases of COVID-19. They are more likely to hold lower-paying yet “essential” jobs that place them in harm’s way, more likely to be reliant on public transportation where social distancing is hard, and more likely to live in housing that compounds all that risk.

Even before any protests began, black persons were dying of COVID-19 at rates twice the rate that one would expect based on their share of the US population. In Wisconsin, COVID-19 deaths among black persons comprise more than one-quarter of such deaths, even though they are only 6% of the population. In a study in Louisiana, more than 70% of deaths occurred in black persons despite their comprising only 30% of the studied population. Disproportionately black counties account for more than half of COVID-19 deaths nationwide, and wealth and access to health care do not seem to equalize things.

Should the protests following George Floyd’s death cause transmission of infection, many will blame those who showed up. Those at higher risk—again, black persons—will be more likely to develop severe illness and die. This and all the other disparities are easily predicted, yet it seems, like so many US politicians, the health care community too often offers only “thoughts and prayers” rather than effecting change.

Part of public health is making sure the public is healthy. The US health care system has failed to do that with too many in this country. The US society in general and the health care community in particular need to acknowledge that so much of what is wrong with the health of black persons is the fault of the health care system and not of patients. “Personal responsibility” plays well, but it is often a way to blame the patient when the system fails to support their ability to care for themselves.

It is time to stop wasting time and money proving that disparities exist. It is clear that they do, and pointing out the problem is easy. It is time to do something about it, which is infinitely harder.

It is time to invest in public health to improve the ability of everyone to eat right and exercise regularly, and to quit smoking and drinking unsafely. Just telling them to do so is not enough. Massive investment into making it easier to do so is necessary.

It is time to make sure that everyone has access to the health care system and preventive care. The Affordable Care Act was necessary, but not sufficient. Too many still do not have access to Medicaid, and too many cannot afford care even when insured.

It is time to train physicians to avoid implicit and explicit racial bias when seeing patients. It is time to rebuild trust with black persons and for the health care community to own past mistakes and prevent them from happening again. And it is time to recognize that the reasons black persons fare so poorly with respect to health is because of disparities, not because they chose not to care for themselves, and to fix those disparities.

As efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic continue after protests subside, it is essential to recognize that systemic racism kills black persons through poor health as much as or even more than police brutality. It does so because society tolerates a system that sees them as expendable, even as it labels them essential.

(Reprinted from JAMA Network – JAMA Health Forum https://jamanetwork.com/channels/health-forum/fullarticle/2767595)

Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MSa healthcare speaker, professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine who speaks/blogs on topics such as COVID-19, health research and policy at The Incidental Economist and speaks LIVE on Healthcare Triage. 

23 Jun

Posted at 18:39h in Aaron Carroll MD

 

(Reprinted from The Incidental Economist)

Sometimes I write pieces and can’t place them. I usually save them for later. In this case, I feel strongly enough about it that I’m posting it here. It won’t get the eyeballs it might at a major media site, but it’s more important to me that I publish it now.

Public health has a messaging problem. It’s made the management of COVID hard in the past, and it’s potentially damaging our ability to manage future issues. Some are arguing that declaring the protests more important than infection is damaging the credibility of experts to recommend actions related to preventing outbreaks.

Both the issues being protested and the pandemic are crises. But comparing them, or weighing their relative worth, is a mistake. Black Americans are at real risk from state violence and structural racism. They are risking their lives if they don’t protest, and they’re risking them if they do. Many of us cannot understand the risk calculus, and we likely shouldn’t try. Instead, we should focus our messages consistently on improving health, admitting what we don’t know as well as what we do.

This isn’t the first time we’ve failed to be transparent and clear.

When the pandemic initially reached our shores, we told people that masks were not necessary, because – at that time – most people were wearing masks to protect themselves from infection. Now, however, the prevailing wisdom is that masks might prevent people from infecting others. There’s some evidence for this, although we wish there was more. Given that many more are infected in the United States now, encouraging the wearing of masks seems like a low-cost, potentially beneficial thing to do to protect others.

We have failed to explain these nuances well.

When the pandemic first raged, we did not know how many people were infected, where they were, or how catastrophic this might be. In addition, we feared that many were spreading the disease without knowing they were sick. Studies showed that people without symptoms were infecting others, and because of this, we needed to separate everyone, even when it meant economic or personal sacrifice.

Recently, though, the WHO muddied the issue by first appearing to assert, and then walking back, the claim that asymptomatic transmission is ‘very rare’. Communication could clearly be better.

When I saw protests by people demanding the country open, I noted a lack of masking and social distancing. I was concerned.

When I see protests by people demanding an end to structural racism, my concern remains. I support the call for social justice and radical reform, and I support recommendations that reduce the risk of infection.

That message has been articulated differently by many in public health. Some have taken to making judgments about the value of protest activities, and whether they are, therefore, “worth” the risk. Such judgments from public health experts may make infection control efforts more difficult because others will deem different activities “worth” risk themselves.

More consistent messaging would be desirable.

Public health might be better served continuing to push for the things that will make everyone safest in the coming months and years. These include both the need to eliminate structural racism and the need for better infection control.

As we move into the next phases of this pandemic, we must shift from extreme social distancing to risk minimization. I discussed this weeks ago when focusing on camp. We can do the same with protests.

While outside activities are less likely to lead to an outbreak, the potential still exists. The time and intensity of exposure also matters, and as we seek to minimize risk, we should try and limit both as much as possible. Therefore, we should, as much as we can, limit discretionary activities that take place with other people. When such activities occur, we should make them as safe as possible.

Protests are almost all outside, which is a good thing. In an ideal world, protestors will also respect social distancing and stay physically apart from each other, as they are able. They should wear masks if they’re shouting/chanting/singing. They should wash their hands, or at least carry hand sanitizer.

If they’re sick, protestors should absolutely stay home.

If they are worried about having been exposed, or have any reason to think they might be infected, they should get tested. They should self-isolate while awaiting results. They should be concerned about infecting others, and make every effort to keep their fellow protestors safe.

Police and public officials have other things to consider. They can avoid crowding people. They can avoid using tear gas and other agents that might increase transmission. They can avoid physical contact and wear masks themselves.

Most importantly, they can avoid arrests.

A recent study published in Health Affairs looked at the relationship between jailing practices and the pandemic in Illinois. They found that “jail cycling” is significantly related to COVID-19 infection. In fact, it accounted for 55% of the variance in case rates in Chicago and 37% in all of Illinois.

Jail cycling was more of a predictor of variance than race, poverty, public transportation, and population density. Unbelievably, cycling through Cook County Jail alone was associated with 15.7% of all documented COVID-19 cases in Illinois and 15.9% in Chicago as of mid-April.

Locking protestors up will increase infections.

Infection control efforts might be better served focusing on these facts and continuing to argue for the things that will make everyone safest from COVID transmission in the coming months and years. That includes continuing to call for much better and more ubiquitous testing so that we can really understand who can participate in riskier activities and when. That also includes the elimination of disparities in every aspect of society, including both the health care and criminal justice system.

We should also publicly recognize that sacrifices matter, financial and personal; it is difficult to make them. COVID-19 is deadly. Economic ruin is horrific. Missing out on important life events is soul-crushing.

Structural racism is all of these things.

Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS  a healthcare speaker, professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine who speaks/blogs on topics such as COVID-19, health research and policy at The Incidental Economist and speaks LIVE on Healthcare Triage. 

23 May

Posted at 00:24h in Dave Knox

For over 25 years, ECRM has been driving efficiencies into the buying and selling process between retailers and brands by hosting over 100 category-specific, face-to-face Programs per year. When the COVID-19 Pandemic shut down travel, the company quickly pivoted, launching not just one, but three new takes on their business model in just under two months. I sat down with Joseph Tarnowski, VP of Content for ECRM, to talk more about how the company’s culture and long-standing embrace of a Continuous Beta mindset helped them move quickly when time was of the essence.

Dave Knox: Let’s start with the background of ECRM and the integral role that you play with the retail and CPG industry?

Joseph Tarnowski: We serve the industry in two ways. One is through our Programs, which are category specific and revolve around private, prescheduled, face-to-face meetings. I use the word programs, not events, because we are not an event company, especially in a traditional sense of a conference or expo. The format and the process of what we do is different. We have around 100 programs across four divisions including food and beverage, general merchandise, health and beauty care, and pharmacy. The main goal is giving these retail buyers discover emerging brands and help them with their category planning. With suppliers, we’re giving them access to these buyers at scale. Anybody can have a meeting, any supplier can go and find a buyer and set up a meeting, but we’re giving them the ability to do this at scale in a condensed amount of time. This includes access to our high-touch Client Success team that works closely with our buyers and suppliers to curate a schedule of relevant appointments by matching buyer needs and objectives with suppliers’ products and capabilities Within two or three days, you’re having anywhere from 50 to 150 meetings depending on the category. The second aspect of the business is the RangeMe product discovery platform, which ECRM acquired 3 years ago. This is a marketplace format with several thousand retail buyers and more than 200,000 suppliers. RangeMe also serves as the inbound product submission platform for many of the largest retailers in the country. A brand uploads their product information, builds a profile on RangeMe and then it gets routed to the appropriate buyer at the retailer. These two parts of our business work in tandem to bring buyers and suppliers together in an efficient and effective way.

Knox: RangeMe is proving to be a very prescient acquisition in today’s environment. What drove ECRM to acquire the business at that time?

Tarnowski: We were looking towards the future and originally we were going to build our own digital offering to bring brands and retailers together because knew it would compliment our business. Obviously, everything is going digital and while we didn’t believe that face-to-face was going away, we did recognize that digital was going to be an important part of our business. Ultimately we decided it was easier and faster to acquire the best in class platform that was out there rather than build our own from scratch. RangeMe already had the reputation and they were very well known with our audience. They had a great platform so why duplicate the process?

Knox: COVID- 19 has greatly impacted the industry that you serve with retailers and brands unable to meet in person. How has ECRM and RangeMe responded?

Tarnowski: Once we started seeing the warning signs with major industry events being postponed and buyers having travel restrictions, we knew the industry was going to have major pain points. As a company, we stepped back, looked at our community, and we realized that because we already have our format and our process of working with these audiences, we could step in and help right away.

The first line of action was RangeMe, where they worked with retailers that have the RangeMe link on their site, and RangeMe handles their inbound product submissions. What they did in mid-March, just as quarantine was starting, was to work with eight major retailers to do what they referred to as sourcing campaigns. So for example, Fresh Thyme Farmers Market was one of them. They announced that all suppliers who couldn’t meet with buyers because of the trade shows closing, they could submit products to Fresh Thyme Farmers Market through RangeMe. Then at the end of the month, all their buyers are going to spend a good portion of a day dedicated to just reviewing those product submissions.

The second was on the ECRM side where we came up with what we called our Efficient Supplier Introductions (ESIs). They are a one-to-many virtual presentation where we have up to 20 category specific buyers and 10 suppliers. Over a two hour period, each supplier gave a 10- minute presentation to that panel of buyers. And we hit a nerve with that because within two weeks of launching it, we had more than 1,000 buyers sign up. For example, you had one buyer jump on the first ESI, then two days later, we had 30 buyers from that same retailer sign up across the categories. The word got around of this really efficient way to find products that they needed.

So the Efficient Supplier Introductions worked very well but we also had feedback that buyers wanted something a little more akin to our in-person experience with the one-on-one interaction directly with each supplier, rather than as a group. The suppliers were looking for that too. That is what led us to launch our Virtual Programs, which is basically the same format and process that we use in person, but with a customized, digital meeting platform layered on top of it.  Both the retailers and suppliers have still have a highly customized experience where they are assigned a client success manager who will have a consultation with them and learn their needs and objectives. That Client Success Manager curates an appointment schedule that is completely relevant and as perfectly matched as possible so no time is wasted.  Now that has been ported to the digital format, but everything else is the same as far as the underlying process, the format, and the very high touch customer service.

We were kind of unintentionally set up for this happening. With our process and format, all we had to do was just layer the technology on top of it. And the technology is a version of an app that the buyers and sellers use at the in-person meetings already. Now it’s just facilitating the virtual meeting component.

Knox: What is remarkable is that while others in the industry cancelled or postponed events, ECRM quickly pivoted with not just one, but really three different innovations in just two months. What is the culture of ECRM that allowed this mindset of Continuous Beta?

Tarnowski: You nailed it by saying culture. The underlying ECRM culture is really what separates us apart from any other organization I’ve worked with in my life. The culture is a true team, where if something happens, everybody drops everything and pitches in, straight up to the CEO. I’ve seen Greg Farrar, our CEO, helping carry boxes and moving stuff in our sessions countless times. It starts from the top and resonates throughout the whole company.

There are so many instances where the company is able to adapt and turn quick. We foster that kind of action within the company. If you think it works, give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, or if something doesn’t work, we iterate. Get the feedback from the market, apply it. And even in our process at our sessions, during every single session we have what is called an exit interview. Our staff will meet with every buyer and every supplier participating, and have a 20-minute discussion with them to just to get feedback. All of that feedback is entered and then at the end of each session, we have a meeting called correction of errors, where we take all that feedback and we put action items against it to apply to future sessions. As a result, the whole company has that culture of constantly taking feedback, applying it to the business, and then growing at each step along the way. That culture is what enabled us to really move quickly.

Knox: Everyone is hypothesizing on what’s going to be the new normal. In your industry, what do you think the role of virtual programs is going to be going forward?

Tarnowski: That’s actually been a big discussion point with the team and we believe that virtual is here to stay. It is not going anywhere and will be part of the new normal. There are a few different ways to look at it.

Several of our in-person programs have become known as the place where everybody in a category gathers and it’s a highlight of the year for the industry. Those will always be in-person. But there are other sessions that might be smaller, which will more than likely stay virtual.  Retailers have told us that they are going to be traveling a lot less going forward and will need to pick their spots. That will also help us determine which ones will be virtual vs in-person. So we are planning for a mix that includes in-person, virtual sessions, and ESI’s that we schedule around the times when the buyers are doing their category planning or midyear review. For instance, the ESI’s might become a tool for the midyear review when they are looking at a refresh of just adding a few new products.

We are really going to let the market determine which way different programs go. If they really are fine doing it virtual, we’ll do it virtual. It’s easier for everybody. There are so many less moving parts in terms of getting there and coming home and digging out from that. It will vary from category to category because each category has a different personality. Some are more about the face to face and the social part that goes with it. Some of them are a little more about just the meetings. Once we do get past this and it is okay to travel, some are going to stay virtual and some are going to be in person. By extending our services to include virtual meetings along with the in-person meetings and RangeMe, we’re now able to serve our customers whenever, wherever and however will best fulfill their needs.

Knox: With that in mind, ECRM isn’t an event company but you do have a great expertise for in-person. What happens on the other side of this for the entire event industry ranging from mega events like CES to more niche gatherings?

Tarnowski: I think at least minimum until we get a vaccine, any place where you have those massive get togethers of 50,000+ people, it’s not going to be the same. There are still way too many unanswered questions. The event still might happen but there is going to be social distancing, whether it’s by regulation or just by people wanting to maintain social distance. There is an intimacy at that is just not going to be there and it is going to change the way people interact at events. A lot of major industry trade shows follow the same format with an expo format that has a thousand booths and massive audiences sitting close together. Those are going to have to completely rethink their formats.

We were able to make this pivot because by nature, our programs, our sessions are smaller. We’re only bringing the relevant buyers and suppliers for the category. As a result, the total audience is maybe 600 people at a session.  That is why we’ll have 100 of these during the year, but our total audience at each one is small. So even in person, we would be able to manage that with those social distancing requirements. But how do you do that with an 80,000 person event? That’s going to be very tough. And then it is the sponsors of those events and the participants who are paying to go there. What are they going to think? Will the value be there for that cost? They may just opt for something virtual instead because they’re not going to get what they got from in-person for a while.

*This article first appeared in Forbes on May 20, 2020

Dave Knox has been recognized throughout the industry as an innovator who bridges the world between brand marketing, digital and entrepreneurship. Invite him to speak at your next virtual or LIVE event!

21 May

Posted at 23:10h in Uncategorized

 

“Singapore is knocking it out of the park in their approach to COVID-19 and they still had to succumb to lockdown.  The United States is no where near their game and we are already trying to reopen. We’ve got to scale up our response to this virus.  That’s the topic of this week’s Healthcare Triage.” Says Aaron Carroll, MD.  Singapore had one of the world’s most robust and effective responses to coronavirus and COVID19. Despite that, the country still had to enter lockdown and struggled to control the spread of the disease. What can this tell us about how the US has responded, and how and when American society can reopen?

Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS  a healthcare speaker, professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine who speaks/blogs on topics such as COVID-19, health research and policy at The Incidental Economist and speaks LIVE on Healthcare Triage. 

08 Apr

Posted at 17:05h in Uncategorized

Everyone wants to know when we are going to be able to leave our homes and reopen the United States. That’s the wrong way to frame it.

The better question is: “How will we know when to reopen the country?”

Any date that is currently being thrown around is just a guess. It’s pulled out of the air.

To this point, Americans have been reacting, often too late, and rarely with data. Most of us are engaging in social distancing because leaders have seen what’s happening in Europe or in New York; they want to avoid getting there; and we don’t have the testing available to know where coronavirus hot spots really are.

Since the virus appears to be everywhere, we have to shut everything down. That’s unlikely to be the way we’ll exit, though.

Some cities or states will recover sooner than others. It’s helpful to have criteria by which cities or states could determine they’re ready. A recent report by Scott Gottlieb, Caitlin Rivers, Mark B. McClellan, Lauren Silvis and Crystal Watson staked out some goal posts.

  • Hospitals in the state must be able to safely treat all patients requiring hospitalization, without resorting to crisis standards of care.

Other cities and states fear that they will approach New York City’s state of crisis. They’re trying to increase the number of available beds and ventilators — as well as doctors, nurses and other health care providers — to make sure they aren’t overwhelmed in their capacity to provide care to all those who need it.

This is the most immediate bar, and the focus of most public health officials’ attention. At the moment, there’s no reason to believe any area is over a surge of cases, and analysts’ models predict many places won’t peak for weeks to come.

  • A state needs to be able to test at least everyone who has symptoms.

Dr. Gottlieb and colleagues estimate that the nation would need to have the capacity to run 750,000 tests a week — this is after things have calmed down greatly. There are times we might need even more.

“The 750,000 number should be viewed as a reasonable expectation for when we haven’t been having any major pockets or regional outbreaks to manage,” said Mark McClellan, an author of the report and a professor of business, medicine and policy at Duke. “If more testing to help contain outbreaks and potential outbreaks is needed, which seems very plausible, especially early on, the number would need to be significantly larger. We’ll also have to do some surveillance of people without symptoms, especially in higher-risk settings.”

A national estimate means less in deciding whether a state can reopen than its local capabilities. A state would need to be sure it could test every single person who might be infected, and have the results in a timely manner. That would be the only way to achieve the next requirement.

  • The state is able to conduct monitoring of confirmed cases and contacts.

A robust system of contact tracing and isolation is the only thing that can prevent an outbreak and a resulting lockdown from recurring. Every time an individual tests positive, the public health infrastructure needs to be able to determine whom that person has been in close contact with, find those people, and have them go into isolation or quarantine until it’s established they aren’t infected, too.

This will be a big challenge for most areas. Other countries have relied on cellphone tracking technology to determine whom people have been near. We don’t have anything like that ready, nor is it even clear we’d allow it. The United States also doesn’t have enough people working in public health in many areas to carry out this task.

Building that capacity will take significant time and money, and the country hasn’t even started.

  • There must be a sustained reduction in cases for at least 14 days.

Because it can take up to two weeks for symptoms to emerge, any infections that have already happened can take that long to appear. If the number of cases in an area is dropping steadily for that much time, however, public health officials can be reasonably comfortable that suppression has been achieved, defined by every infected person infecting fewer than one other.

In suppression, cases will dwindle at an exponential fashion, just as they rose. It’s not possible to set a benchmark number for every state because the number of infections that will be manageable in any area depends on the local population and the public health system’s ability to handle sporadic cases.

“We wanted to suggest criteria that would allow locations to safely and thoughtfully begin to reopen, but what that looks like exactly will vary from state to state,” said Caitlin Rivers, another author of the report and an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We therefore included some flexibility for jurisdictions to tailor these criteria to their local context.”

These four criteria are a baseline. Other experts think we will need to add serological testing, which is different from the viral detection going on now. This type of testing looks for antibodies in the blood that our bodies created to fight the infection, not the infection itself. These tests can be much cheaper and faster than the ones we’re currently using to detect the virus in sick people.

Testing for antibodies will tell us how many people in a community have already been infected, as opposed to currently infected, and may also provide information about future immunity.

Gregg Gonsalves, a professor of epidemiology and law at Yale, said: “I’d feel better if we had serological testing, and could preferentially allow those who are antibody positive and no longer infectious to return to work first. The point is, though, that we are nowhere even near accomplishing any of these criteria. Opening up before then will be met with a resurgence of the virus.”

He added, “That’s the thing that keeps me up every night.”

Until we get a vaccine or effective drug treatments, focusing on these major criteria, and directing efforts toward them, should help us determine how we are progressing locally, and how we might achieve each goal.

It would also prevent us from offering false hope about when America can start reopening. Instead of guesses, people could have clear answers about when they might be able to go back to a closer-to-normal way of life.

 

Aaron Carroll, MD, MS is a professor, speaker and author who keynotes events on the future of healthcare.  Invite him to your next meeting.

Originally appeared on The Upshot (copyright 2020, The New York Times Company)

07 Apr

Posted at 23:56h in Uncategorized

In January, virologists in China isolated a new virus. In March the Coronaviridae Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses named the virus SARS-CoV-2. Most people call it the coronavirus. The virus causes a disease called Covid-19. The vocabulary can be very confusing. The goal of this article is to shed some light on the various terms.

Let’s start with taxonomy, a scheme of classification of things, especially living things. A Swedish naturalist named Carolus Linnaeus is considered the “Father of Taxonomy”. In the 1700s, Linnaeus developed a method we still use today to name and organize species. The table below shows one version of the Linnaean Classification of Humans.

Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Chordata
Subphylum Vertebrata
Class Mammalia
Subclass Theria
Infraclass Eutheria
Order Primates
Suborder Anthropoidea
Superfamily Hominoidea
Family Hominidae
Genus Homo
Species Sapiens

The level of detail can make your head hurt. We humans are often referred to simply as Homo Sapiens. There is much more detail beyond the table if you want to drill down. When it comes to viruses, the taxonomy makes the human taxonomy look really simple. See the following table from Nature.com to get a glimpse of it. The complete 8,000-word article is here.

To put the complexity in perspective, consider SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the pandemic, is one of 6,828 virus species which have been named. Researchers say they know of hundreds of thousands more species. Some believe there may be trillions waiting to be found. This is the virosphere.

The good news is there are a number of profound research projects underway to deal with the world of viruses. This is incredibly important because viruses are not going away. Some experts are saying a new and different virus will appear next year or even later this year. Hopefully, we will be ready. The wake up call this time was so loud and clear, I believe we will be prepared.

One new approach under development is the use of synbio, as described in last week’s e-brief. A vaccine made from synthetic ingredients can potentially offer some significant advantages. The big one is scalability. Synbio vaccines could be produced efficiently for millions or even billions of doses. Synbio vaccines are developed using computer models, not flasks and test tubes. With billions of calculations, a nanoparticle can be designed which has the exact properties desired. The really big breakthrough with synbio is the attachment of multiple different viral molecules to the nanoparticle and thereby create a universal coronavirus vaccine. One vaccine for all corona viruses. That will be the breakthrough.

Another positive development in the silver lining of the coronavirus cloud is tech companies large and small are jumping in the boat to help. For example, IBM is collaborating with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Department of Energy to launch the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. The Consortium will provide supercomputing power to researchers developing predictive models to analyze the coronavirus progression and identify potential treatments. Researchers from around the world can submit proposals, and the Consortium will select the projects which could have the most immediate impact. Other partners in the consortium include NASA, MIT, and the Argonne National Laboratory.

Another significant Covid-19 effort is taking place at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. As of November 2019, Oak Ridge had the fastest supercomputer in the world. It is capable of performing one thousand million million (1015) operations per second.

Scientists at Oak Ridge have deployed the massive supercomputer to look for compounds which can bind to the “spike protein” of the virus. It is the spike protein which the virus uses to infect host cells. The right compound could render the spike protein ineffective, and the virus would be stopped from spreading. Using digital models, the supercomputer can simulate how particles in the viral protein would react to different drug compounds. The researchers started with a list of 77 compounds and narrowed it down to the top seven most promising candidates which could become effective treatments for covid-19. The research is at the early stage but I believe we can be hopeful.  

John Patrick is available for virtual and in-person keynotes. The post The World of Viruses appeared first on johnpatrick.com.

*For a complete list of speakers on this topic "contact us”.