The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 453 (953)

Feel different almost three years into the pandemic? Rather stay home than go out? Feeling stuck in a rut? The pandemic has induced some personality traits in some of us, particularly those under the age of 30. In general, we are now less extroverted, creative, agreeable, and conscientious. The sharpest drops in conscientiousness and agreeableness were in people under 30. The changes are supposedly equal to about one decade of normative change. Don't worry too much; these changes could be temporary.

If you're still feeling nervous about the research at Boston University that combined virus bits from different variants, more news has come out. It seems that the manipulated strain was really less lethal than the original. The strain of mice used in the research is very sensitive to covid and widely used in covid research. The original viral strain killed 100 percent of the mice who received it, meaning that the 80 percent for the combined strain was an improvement. 

 While the government has reprimanded Boston University, it has ignored similar research at other labs including some at NIH. The oversight policy for such research is known as Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight or P3CO. According to a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, "...the P3CO framework needs to be overhauled pretty dramatically. The whole process is kind of a black box that makes it really difficult for researchers." A committee of government advisors is expected to deliver updated recommendations around the end of this year. That board is also looking at risk from computer software that can figure out how to change pathogens and not in a good way. This all sounds hunky-dory except that research not funded by the government does not have to follow federal guidelines. One suggestion is that the policy be modeled on the Federal Select Agent Program. Under that program, anyone working with certain substances such as anthrax must register with the federal government no matter who is funding the research. 

After that bit of laboratory research news, another laboratory study has shown that influenza and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) can fuse to form a hybrid virus that can evade the immune system, infect lung cells, and result in viral pneumonia. The supervisor of the research reports, "This kind of hybrid virus has never been described before. We are talking about viruses from two completely different families combining together with the genomes and the external proteins of both viruses. It is a new type of virus pathogen." Influenza usually infects cells in the nose, throat, and windpipe while RSV prefers windpipe and lung cells. The RSV tends to go lower in the lung than influenza, and the lower it goes, the more serious the resulting infection. The research supervisor notes that "influenza is using hybrid viral particles as a Trojan horse." He went on to say that the research could be extended to other viruses as well as whether it can happen with animal viruses. I wonder what level of biosafety this research will merit.