Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2022
Volume 67, Number 3
Monday–Friday, March 14–18, 2022; Chicago
Session A13: Physics of Covid 19Invited Live Streamed Undergrad Friendly
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Sponsoring Units: FGSA Chair: Sachin Satish Bharadwaj, New York University (NYU) Room: McCormick Place W-183A |
Monday, March 14, 2022 8:00AM - 8:36AM |
A13.00001: Immune driven evolution of SARS-CoV-2 within and across hosts Invited Speaker: Benjamin Greenbaum Observing the role of the immune system in the evolution of emerging pathogens can provide rare windows into both virus evolution and indicate therapeutic vulnerabilities. We study the between host evolution of dinucleotide motifs in emerging SARS-CoV-2 strains for evidence of whether pressure to avoid presentation of CpG dinulceotides was a factor in either host transmission or early adaptation. We model the problem as a competition between selective and entropic forces as we had previously done for influenza and other RNA viruses. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that T Cell responses are both a critical factor in vaccine response and severe COVID. To study this in a controlled manner we look at the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 evolution, T cell evolution and COVID severity in a cohort of patients with impaired B Cell responses. We find that while the T cell machinery is a critical determinant of outcomes in these cases. |
Monday, March 14, 2022 8:36AM - 9:12AM |
A13.00002: The modes of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses: What we know now, and how to protect ourselves Invited Speaker: Jose Jimenez The modes of transmission of COVID-19 have been the subject of intense controversy. Overwhelming evidence now supports that COVID-19 transmission is airborne: some infected people (those with high viral load) exhale espiratory aerosols, little balls of respiratory fluid or saliva that contain the virus, float in the air like an invisible smoke, and follow air currents. Aerosols infect when we inhale them, and easily explain substantial transmission in close proximity, superspreading events, less frequent long-distance transmission and why transmission indoors is far larger than outdoors. Surface transmission is difficult, and not a single case of surface transmission has been demonstrated. A small fraction of transmission may go through ballistic “WHO” droplets, mostly important when an infected person coughs or sneezes on someone else's face. “Droplet transmission” is mostly a historical error, confusing the real effect of dilution with a mostly imagined effect of gravity. The roots of the extreme resistance from WHO, CDC (and other Public Health authorities) to airborne transmission are rooted in a century of denial of (till 1962) and resistance (afterwards) to airborne transmission, since American public health luminary Charles V. Chapin in 1910 successfully changed the previous paradigm. |
Monday, March 14, 2022 9:12AM - 9:48AM |
A13.00003: Irvin Oppenheim Award (2022): Investigating the Functional Benefits of Criticality in Cell Sensing Invited Speaker: Michael P Vennettilli
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Monday, March 14, 2022 9:48AM - 10:24AM |
A13.00004: Physics of respiratory infections: do we understand it? Invited Speaker: Lidia Morawska The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how unprepared the world has been to address the basic question: How can we minimize the risk of airborne infection transmission for any respiratory viruses in a countless number of buildings where most of the population spends a substantial fraction of the day? This question goes far beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic: every year acute respiratory illnesses, such as colds and influenza infections strike, sicken millions, kill thousands and cause economic loses of billions of dollars. Scientists have been pointing to a larger body of evidence on the significance of the airborne transmission by inhalation of virus-laden respiratory aerosols that are generated during all human respiratory activities. Aerosolization in the various parts of the respiratory tract is how they are generated, and once in the air their fate depends on their size and the forces acting on the. Therefore, flow physics plays a key role in: generation of the virus-laded particles from human respiratory activities, detection and measurements of these particles, what happens to the particles in the air - transport and removal dynamics and deposition of the particles in the respiratory tract and upon inhalation. The presentation will discuss the current state of the art of physics of respiratory infections and its application in infection risk management. |
Monday, March 14, 2022 10:24AM - 11:00AM |
A13.00005: Modeling rapidly-evolving viral infections within hosts generates lifelike infection classes Invited Speaker: Greyson R Lewis Viruses, especially RNA viruses, are subject to high levels of mutation, leading to the generation of closely-related offspring ("quasispecies") in diseases ranging from polio to COVID-19. Viral diseases arise from a wide range of infection types, from opportunistic (e.g., CMV) to chronic (e.g., Hepatitis C) to acute (e.g., Flu). How can host-quasispecies interactions lead to different types of diseases? In this work we model within-host infections of many cells by quasispecies, subject to differing levels of host immunity, ease of viral entry (permissivity), and other pressures. Using simulations, we study immunity-permissivity space and find that it consists of three different phases separated by a transition of varying order and crossover regions. Examination of the steady-state and dynamic properties of the phases suggests a natural mapping of each phase onto a different class of infection. We also find interesting physical behavior near the transition, including the presence of multiple and distinct quasispecies, as well as glassy dynamics. Using perturbation theory, we derive steady-state probability distributions and viral loads for very low permissivity that validate our simulation results. |
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