Comments by "TJ Marx" (@tjmarx) on "Omicron: What we know so far about the new COVID-19 variant | DW News" video.

  1. Viruses don't have cells. They use cells. The mutations are not on the molecular level, they are structural to the virus.
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  2. @tipsy Bass  @ tipsy bass Wow, what a ridiculous lot of disjointed terms thrown together in the most absurd way. Ad hom straight off the bat followed by literal nonsense. Your sentence structure, forming and information are all atrocious. My original comment was just a series of factual corrections not a jab at you. I've been in medicine for 17 years, have epidemiology experience, public health education including correction of mistakes in comments is literally a part of job. Could I have put in more effort to the original comment, sure but really those corrections should be enough for you to bother to investigate further or clarify with me. You're online mate, you have access to the collective knowledge of all of humanity and you didn't even bother to look up what you're talking about before you replied. Instead you let your insecurity at being corrected force you into the rambling mess you call a comment. Let me guess, you're still in high school. Here's a new set of corrections for you; The changes do not take place in a host cell. The changes are physiological changes to the spike proteins on the virus itself. These physiological changes bring new characteristics to a virus and how in engages both with host cells and the immune system of the host. Contrary to your claim, an electron microscope does not view things at the *cellular level*. A standard optical microscope is very capable of doing that. I'm sure everyone here at least remembers viewing onion or plant cells under an entry level high school optical microscope in grade 7 - 9, depending on the country they live in. An electron microscope, as the name suggests, uses electrons (electricity as opposed to the light used in optical) to bombard a sample and form a image at the particle level. We are not looking at omicron under electron microscopy to determine changes to its protein structure. 🤣🤣 We use genome sequencing. In a report, sequencing displays DNA pairs, or RNA typically as lines or letters which correspond to proteins in the structure. Sequencing to 100 pairs was completed when SA reported Omicron (B.1.1.529). I have a copy of the sequencing for omicron sitting on my desk. Viral load is not a term which describes a cell exploding. Viral load is simply the term used to describe the amount of virus in a host. One needs a big enough initial viral load in order for a virus to successfully replicate. Limiting the ability for a significant enough viral load to be acquired is how social distancing and eradication through vaccination (colloquially so called "herd immunity") works. Apoptosis (you didn't even spell it correctly) is preprogrammed cellular death. That is to say, it's a condition where a cell dies purposefully. It is a mechanism by which your body controls cellular growth, division and discards unhealthy or unwanted cells. Where apoptosis fails, we see tumour growth. That is to say failed apoptosis is a primary factor in many cancers. Some viruses absolutely do hijack apoptosis by various mechanisms to replicate, however that is in no way specific to omicron and is not indicative of the changes present. The way HIV hijacks apoptosis is very different to the way coronaviruses do. I'm sorry that your uncle has HIV, but that does not excuse your distribution of misinformation. You acknowledge that you're not an expert, so perhaps instead of jumping to conclusions through insecurity in the future you might consider that a stranger correcting you might be an expert as in this case, and enquire further.
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  3. Does this distinction really matter? The reason we moved to using letters from the Greek alphabet to name variants of SARS-COV-2 is to make the point that the originating country is largely irrelevant. Look this is simple. Mutations is what happens when you don't have enough vaccinated people. The end. There's far too many countries with nowhere near the ballpark of enough vaccinated people, including Germany. So long as that is the case and transmission is not adequately controlled, we will see new variants. Keep going down the variant path long enough and it's inevitable that we get to a point where the vaccine is no longer effective. That's ultimately what we need to focus on. We need 95% total population in every country vaccinated asap. If you aren't fully vaccinated yet, you're part of the problem. Fix that.
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  4.  @lilywindermere5358  Yeah, everything after your first sentence is entirely false. In terms of your first sentence, that's why I said largely irrelevant. There is relevance for a relatively small group of experts. For the general population, there is no relevance. This isn't a movie, finding out where the variant came from isn't critical to much of anything. Certainly it's far less important than where it is going and how it is getting there.
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  5.  @lilywindermere5358  Unfortunately for you, this is not a discussion about whether "experts" need particular information or not. This is a discussion about the people in this thread and the general community being upset about South Africa being discussed in the context of Omicron. South Africa is highly relevant to the discussion, but more importantly those who need to know about origins are the same people who will find them out. So again, place of origin is largely irrelevant. Furthermore, contrary to your claim the rest of what you have said is not "based on current knowledge". It is indeed a wild fantasy.
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  6.  @tipsybass8948  That's one heck of an insecure chip on your shoulder there buddy. Perhaps it might be a good idea for you to have a lay down for a bit of something. You're projecting an awful lot and getting very worked up.
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  7.  @tipsybass8948 "Who's projecting" You are. Please stop using words you don't understand.
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  8.  @tipsybass7060  You're projecting quite a lot. But predominantly right now you're showing us that you have two separate accounts with the same name. AKA, you're a troll.
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