Saturday, July 4, 2020
Newer variant of COVID-19-causing virus dominates global infections
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200702144054.htm
Research out today in the journal Cell shows that a specific change in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus virus genome, previously associated with increased viral transmission and the spread of COVID-19, is more infectious in cell culture. The variant in question, D614G, makes a small but effective change in the virus's 'Spike' protein, which the virus uses to enter human cells.
Bette Korber, a theoretical biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of the study, noted, "The D614G variant first came to our attention in early April, as we had observed a strikingly repetitive pattern. All over the world, even when local epidemics had many cases of the original form circulating, soon after the D614G variant was introduced into a region it became the prevalent form."
Geographic information from samples from the GISAID COVID-19 viral sequence database enabled tracking of this highly recurrent pattern, a shift in the viral population from the original form to the D614G variant. This occurred at every geographic level: country, subcountry, county, and city.
Two independent lines of experimental evidence that support these initial results are included in today's paper. These additional experiments, led by Professor Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., at the La Jolla Institute, and by Professor David Montefiori, Ph.D., at Duke University, showed that the D614G change increases the virus's infectivity in the laboratory. These new experiments, as well as more extensive sequence and clinical data and improved statistical models, are presented in the Cell paper. More in vivo work remains to be done to determine the full implications of the change.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus has a low mutation rate overall (much lower than the viruses that cause influenza and HIV-AIDS). The D614G variant appears as part of a set of four linked mutations that appear to have arisen once and then moved together around the world as a consistent set of variations.
"It's remarkable to me," commented Will Fischer of Los Alamos, an author on the study, "both that this increase in infectivity was detected by careful observation of sequence data alone, and that our experimental colleagues could confirm it with live virus in such a short time."
Fortunately, "the clinical data in this paper from Sheffield showed that even though patients with the new G virus carried more copies of the virus than patients infected with D, there wasn't a corresponding increase in the severity of illness," said Saphire, who leads the Gates Foundation-supported Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC).
Korber noted, "These findings suggest that the newer form of the virus may be even more readily transmitted than the original form -- whether or not that conclusion is ultimately confirmed, it highlights the value of what were already good ideas: to wear masks and to maintain social distancing."
Research partners from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Duke University, and the University of Sheffield initially published work on this analysis on the bioRxiv site in an April 2020 preprint. That work also included observations of COVID-19 patients from Sheffield that suggested an association of the D614G variant with higher viral loads in the upper respiratory tract.
"It is possible to track SARS-CoV-2 evolution globally because researchers worldwide are rapidly making their viral sequence data available through the GISAID viral sequence database," Korber said. Currently tens of thousands of sequences are available through this project, and this enabled Korber and the research team to identify the emergence of the D614G variant.
GISAID was established to encourage collaboration among influenza researchers, but early in the epidemic the consortium established a SARS-CoV-2 database, which soon became the de facto standard for sharing outbreak sequences among researchers worldwide.
The study, "Tracking changes in SARS-CoV-2 Spike: evidence that D614G increases infectivity of the COVID-19 virus" was supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC) part of UK Research & Innovation (UKRI the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR); Genome Research Limited, operating as the Wellcome Sanger Institute; CoVIC, INV-006133 of the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Wellcome; private philanthropic support, as well as the Overton family; a FastGrant, from Emergent Ventures, in aid of COVID-19 research; and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Interagency Agreement No. AAI12007-001-00000, and the Los Alamos Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.
Additional study authors included S. Gnanakaran, H. Yoon, J. Theiler, W. Abfalterer, N. Hengartner, E.E. Giorgi, T. Bhattacharya, B. Foley, K.M. Hastie, M.D. Parker, D.G. Partridge, C.M. Evans, T.M. Freeman, T.I. de Silva, C. McDanal, L.G. Perez, H. Tang, A. Moon-Walker, S.P. Whelan, C.C. LaBranche.
Story Source:
Materials provided by DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
B. Korber, W.M. Fischer, S. Gnanakaran, H. Yoon, J. Theiler, W. Abfalterer, N. Hengartner, E.E. Giorgi, T. Bhattacharya, B. Foley, K.M. Hastie, M.D. Parker, D.G. Partridge, C.M. Evans, T.M. Freeman, T.I. de Silva, C. McDanal, L.G. Perez, H. Tang, A. Moon-Walker, S.P. Whelan, C.C. LaBranche, E.O. Saphire, D.C. Montefiori, on behalf of theSheffield COVID-19 Genomics Group. Tracking changes in SARS-CoV-2 Spike: evidence that D614G increases infectivity of the COVID-19 virus. Cell, July 2, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.043
Dems Are Helping Liz Cheney Fortify Her Dad’s Endless War Policy
The first rule of Democratic Party politics should be: never work with a Cheney on war policy. The second rule should be: don’t ever ignore the first rule. Ever.
David Sirota
Jul 3
The poisoned apple didn't fall far from the tree...
It’s not every day that you wake up in your blue state and learn that one of your newly elected Democratic congresspeople is joining with a Cheney to try to prolong the longest war in American history. But that’s what happened this week, when Colorado’s freshman Democratic Rep. Jason Crow teamed up with Republican Rep. Liz Cheney to advance legislation that would make it more difficult for any president to draw down troop deployments in Afghanistan.
I live in the same media market as Crow’s district. I can tell you that his 2018 campaign was focused on gun control. It was not a campaign promising voters that he would go to Washington to immediately make common cause with Liz Cheney, and help her efforts to glorify and fortify her daddy’s policy of endless war. But that’s exactly the goal of his bill, which was attached to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
“Crow’s amendment would block funding to dip below 8,000 troops and then again to below 4,000 troops unless the administration certifies that doing so would not compromise the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan, not increase risk for U.S. personnel there, be done in consultation with allies, and is in the best interest of the United States,” the Hill reports.
Never Work With A Cheney On War Policy
The first rule for every incoming freshman Democrat in Congress should be that you never work with a Cheney on war policy. The second rule for every freshman Democrat should be: re-read the first rule and make damn sure to follow it. As Adam McKay’s film Vice reminded us, Cheney initiatives that may seem superficially reasonable when calmly uttered by a Cheney usually have an insane ulterior motive.
In this case, that truism applies: The Crow-Cheney legislation may sound like it includes reasonable requests, but they are designed to make the Afghanistan deployment permanent. In practice, nobody can predict with 100 percent certainty what will ensue once a 19-year military occupation ends.
What we can know is that it’s a bad idea to continue a policy that isn’t working -- and there’s plenty of evidence that it isn’t.
“The War Had Become Unwinnable”
Last December, the Washington Post published its Afghanistan Papers report noting that military planners hid “unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”
That same month, the New York Times reported: “The cost of nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan will amount to more than $2 trillion (and) there is little to show for it….The Taliban control much of the country. Afghanistan remains one of the world’s largest sources of refugees and migrants. More than 2,400 American soldiers and more than 38,000 Afghan civilians have died…the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction described counternarcotics efforts as a ‘failure.’”
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna -- a co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign -- is trying to build a bipartisan coalition against the Crow-Cheney legislation. It’s a worthy effort, but as The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald notes, it may be overpowered.
“This left-right anti-war coalition is no match for the war machine composed of the establishment wings of both parties and the military and intelligence community that continue to use selective, illegal leaks to sabotage any plans to reduce the U.S. military presence around the world,” he writes. “That the Democrats have spent a full decade desperately recruiting former military and intelligence officials to serve as their Congressional candidates has only made the party even more militaristic...It should come as absolutely no surprise that House Democrats are finding common cause with Liz Cheney and other GOP warmongers to block any efforts to reduce even moderately the footprint of the U.S. military in the world or its decades-long posture of endless war.”
House and Senate Democrats could still use their power to strip the Crow-Cheney amendment out of the final NDAA. Keep your eye on whether or not they do.
HISTORY PROVIDES CLUES INTO ISRAEL’S WEST BANK ANNEXATION
By Miko Peled, Mintpress News.
July 2, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/history-provides-clues-into-israels-west-bank-annexation/
Learning From The Past.
Since 1948, Israel has annexed, occupied, taken, destroyed, built, and renamed everything from individual homes and property to public spaces, to historic monuments. And it has no intention, or reason, to stop.
Palestine has been annexed, occupied, stolen, and Palestinians have been dispossessed, exiled, caged, detained, subjected to an apartheid regime, and killed by the state of Israel for over seven decades. Every few years the world wakes up to protest some aspect of Israeli apartheid, occupation, or a massacre, and then it returns safely to its deep slumber.
Every so often, Israel manages to awaken the angst of the European Union and other international organizations with some announcement or another, a murderous attack on Palestinians, a declaration of annexation or “sovereignty,” and then, as if under the influence of a spell, the angst disappears just as fast as it arose. What usually follows is a long procession of world leaders coming to visit Israel or inviting the Israeli prime minister to their capital to bestow their love and respect for him and the so-called Jewish State.
This time seems to be no different. The Israeli annexation of the Palestinian Jordan River Valley has brought about the world’s displeasure. “A violation of human rights,” says Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. We hear that it is a violation of international law and the end of the prospect for peace, as though this is unprecedented and as though it was unexpected. It has long been clear that Israel would annex part of the West Bank, and it was obvious that the Jordan River Valley – the eastern part of the West Bank – was the most likely to be first.
Annexing the entire eastern part of the West Bank means Palestinians will be cut off from the international border with Jordan and will be surrounded by Israel on all sides. Israel wants access to that land, which currently provides West Bank Palestinians some 50 percent of their agricultural products, and wants complete access to the Jordan River.
What It Will Mean
What exactly is the declaration of sovereignty and annexation? No one seems to know for sure. Israeli military experts admit they were not informed as to the details of the move. Israeli politicians are vague and Palestinians, well, no one talked to them, and in any case, people in positions of power don’t care what they think.
Saeb Erikat, who still holds to the title of Palestinian Chief Negotiator, said in an interview with the Israeli television channel Ynet, that “the situation is very severe.” “I have never seen it more severe than I see it now.”
Much of the Israeli press is focused on what the potential Palestinian response may be, and particularly if Israelis should expect violence. Considering the fact that for over seven decades now, Palestinians have been on the receiving end of Israeli violence, it is a cynical thing to ask. According to leaks from a meeting of Israel’s top security chiefs though, the answer to that question is unclear. While the army and Shabak (Israel’s secret police) chiefs claim there will be a violent reaction and that Israelis will see “terrorism” rise, the Mossad chief claims that scenario is unlikely. Either way, Israel never cared much for what Palestinians think and is not concerned with their reactions.
Knowing all too well where his support lies in the United States, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech to Christians United for Israel (CUFI). CUFI is amongst the largest pro-Israel groups in the United States. Netanyahu spoke of the annexation of in biblical terms. He spoke of biblical lands and what he called “Israeli sovereignty over Jewish communities.”
He also made the point that these areas are also a part of what he called, “Christian identity,” and part of “Our common civilization.” His speech, like previous comments he’s made on the topic, did not clarify what the annexation will entail.
Who Wants Annexation?
Israel’s most influential political block, known as the Right Block, wants all of the Palestinian West Bank to be annexed and for Israeli sovereignty to be declared on all of its Jewish settlements. Israel’s political right is made up largely, though not exclusively, of religious Zionists, and settling the West Bank is their number one priority. Annexation will not only give them a political boost, it will make the construction of new Jewish settlements much easier. Whereas today, construction of new Jewish settlements in the West Bank must be approved by the prime minister, Israel’s declaration of sovereignty would make it a matter for local councils.
Learning From The Past
In 1948, the Western part of Jerusalem was conquered by Israeli forces and Palestinian residents were forcibly exiled. Not a single Palestinian was permitted to remain or return and overnight, the city became the capital of Israel. The world stood still then, and it stood still when the eastern part of the city was taken in 1967.
Then, in 1980, Israel announced its sovereignty over East Jerusalem, or in other words, annexed the eastern part of the city. The UN Security Council reacted by passing resolution 476, which among other things reaffirmed that “acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible.” The resolution stated that the Security Council was “Gravely concerned over the legislative steps initiated in the Israeli Knesset with the aim of changing the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem.” Furthermore, it stated that it “Strongly deplores the continued refusal of Israel, the occupying Power, to comply with the relevant resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly.” It also reiterated that “all such measures which have altered the geographic, demographic and historical character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with the relevant resolutions of the Security Council.”
A year later, in 1981, Israel declared its sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights. The UN security council passed resolution 497 which states, among other things, that it is once again “Reaffirming that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible, in accordance with the United Nations Charter, the principles of international law, and relevant Security Council resolutions.” The Security Council declared that it “Decides that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction, and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect. It even “Demands that Israel, the occupying power, should rescind forthwith its decision.” Israel, of course, did not adhere to the UN resolutions, and no action was taken to sanction Israel.
There Is No Israel Proper
In 1948, the Zionist movement created the state of Israel in Palestine. By year’s end, 78 percent of Palestine had become Israel, and close to one million Palestinians were forcibly exiled. The rest of Palestine became Israel in 1967. Israel has annexed, occupied, taken, destroyed, built, and renamed everything from individual homes and property to public spaces, to historic monuments. And it has no intention, or reason, to stop.
The issue at hand is not a “proper Israel” doing something that is illegal. It is an illegal entity that has planted itself in Palestine continuing its pursuit of illegal activity. The race to create the mythical Greater Israel in Palestine, with the new temple in place of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in its center has been going on in full force. It is a never-ending project that is well funded, well planned, and very well executed. Only isolation, boycotts sanctions, and divestment have the ability to stop it and to save Palestine.
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