TWiV 679: Mink, mutation, and myocytes

November 8, 2020

Daniel Griffin provides a clinical report on COVID-19, Slovlakia’s plan to test all adults for SARS-CoV-2 infection, viral variants arising in Danish mink and their potential threat to humans, why it is unethical to carry out challenge trials, Nipah virus dynamics in bats and spillovers into humans, and direct cardiac damage by spike-mediated cardiomyocyte fusion.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Brianne Barker

Guests: Daniel Griffin and Amy Rosenfeld

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Download TWiV 679 (94 MB .mp3, 157 min)
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Weekly Science Picks 2:14:46

DicksonCNN News
AmyI voted and Grace for President
AlanThe Story of More by Hope Jahren
RichOSIRIS-REx and 101955 Bennu
VincentThe Vexed Muddler

Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees

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13 comments on “TWiV 679: Mink, mutation, and myocytes

  1. Color me confused. Why are we allowing flights in and out of Denmark? Couln’t this compromise very expensive vaccine research? I’m not sure if I am missing something or if TWiV did. This is like catching Wuhan in December is it not?

  2. Good episode (still working through it!). Love Amy’s contributions— come back often! Here is a primer on Slovakia/Slovenia I recommend for you all:
    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-43419675
    Jon

  3. Scott Nov 8, 2020

    19,184 deaths,

    Texas US

    Passed California

  4. Dennis Mathias Nov 8, 2020

    You’re all becoming family. First thing I do Sunday morning is start the VLOG. But I watch it in segments. My watch keeps telling me to keep moving and watching means I have to be at my computer. It’s your expressions!
    I haven’t been out in public since March and it really doesn’t bother me that much since I’ll see you guys on Sunday. Dr. Daniel’s bit is always a good place to start.
    I really liked the batisode this installment!
    Lancaster County Nebraska
    30% positivity rate

  5. Primates are disgusting animals Nov 11, 2020

    HCS, ONLY with fully informed consent of all peer reviewed foreseeable risks, no fine-print or white lies AND with adequate compensation for any calculated injuries that occur. No more poisoning unwilling people at random. Any government that allows this behavior deserves to be overthrown and its leaders made extreme examples of. Bureaucratic and state employee violators whether virologists, microbiologists, even more so. Unfortunately, no governments currently meet this stupidly low ethical standard. If someone wants to be a lab rat with compensation so long as they are fully informed they will be injected with potentially deadly pathogens or toxins that is their choice.

  6. Gabrielle O'Kane Nov 11, 2020

    Fantastic episode! Thank you.
    No local Sars-Cov-2 in Australia today.
    Re distance traveled by bats: A recent report of flying foxes in Australia which can
    travel up to 6000 kms.
    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/australia-s-biggest-bats-fly-thousands-kilometers-year-farther-wildebeest-and-caribouel

  7. Jonas Nov 11, 2020

    Hello Vincent et Al,

    thanks for this great show!

    When I heard this episode, I, as a layman (just a brewer), asked myself the question whether the results of this paper on heart damage could also have consequences for mRNA vaccines.

    If I understood your explanations correctly, then perhaps the spike protein alone is sufficient to short-circuit myocytes against each other?

    Could this not be a problem with a spike-based mRNA vaccine? The mRNA of the vaccine is transcribed directly in human cells, so Spike would also be potentially present in heart cells.

    Or is it not an issue because the vaccine is given intramuscularly or the mRNA only codes for a part of Spike?

    Best regards from Germany
    Jonas

  8. Barb Green Nov 11, 2020

    You might want to correct your spelling of Slovakia (since you were so quick to jump on Dickson for his pronunciation of Bangladesh.)

  9. Emergency question to Dr Griffin:
    55 year old woman in Minsk Belarus, developed early symptoms and tested positive for Covid 2 and a half weeks ago, previously healthy. Takes low dose Aspirin.
    Weeks one/two no symptoms except for loss of taste and smell, week three: extremely high BP, headaches, nausea, chest pain left side.
    No access to quality healthcare. Might be possible to find oral Prednisone, although hard. Would it help? What else might help?

  10. Richard Cornell Nov 12, 2020

    Really!
    Back in 1966 warning labels appear on products that had nicotine in them as being hazard’s to your health. One would figure that it doom the tobacco industries. That within a year people would stopped using tobacco and that would be that. This year Illinois has made smoking pot legal. Guess it is what you smoke causes lung cancer and smoking weed is good for you. Really!
    Drinking of alcohol has been with us for eons and its effects are widely known, yet people done stupid things when they become drunk. One is drinking and driving or drinking and riding a horse, skating on a skate board, even drinking drunk and just walking. Yet over these centuries one would think people would learn. Really!
    The drink of beer and wine was to replace drinking out of the local river because it would make you sick. That somehow boil water to beer did not get you sick and wine held power to also keep you from dying. Today turning on a tap will bring you clean and healthy water. Many of today’s soda drinks are mostly water and sugar people still drink soda with high content of sugar in them while knowing that sugar is not good for them in those amounts. I do love my sweet soda. Really!
    This form of plague has been around since January and unless you were just hatch from a chicken egg everyone is aware of the danger this COVID-19 can do to one’s health, even very healthy people can die from this disease. Getting hospital sick means you’re in real trouble, that your body even when you over it will appear sluggish for months on end. It isn’t your common flu. Yet people do not mask and most of the current dead did not mask, or were in contact with others who did not mask. If I heard right that once your infected your able to spread this virus for the next 40 days. Yet people do not mask. Really!
    If you want to fight those who do not care about others, you fight them on their level.
    A friend of mine when he sees a person without a mask, walks up to that person telling him/she he spent 2 months in the hospital with COVID-19 and he is possible still a spreader. That since they care not about others that he cares not about them. He whips off his masked and coughs three times. Really!