More of a joke than a comment but ability to hear high frequencies decreases significantly with years aged even in young, "healthy" individuals (i.e. Wang et al, 2021) so it might very well both be new kind of mosquitos and a (slight? subclinical except for those damn mosquitos?) decrease in hearing compared to the year before :)

@ChrisH Capsaicin does not activate taste buds though, it works via TRPV1 channels and at least in humans is part of the nociceptive system via the N. trigeminus, not the olfactory system via the Nn. olfactorii. @S Pr we might actually be able to taste water in itself because of its dilution of acids and interactions with carboanhydrases

[cont’d] the Case Fatality Rate of Malaria is much lower than the apparent CFR of Covid-19, so the overall risk in the malaria setting is substantially lower than that in a proposed SARS-CoV-2 study. Even in the 20-45 year old group, case fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be around 0.2 which means 2 of 1000 infected will die. // Dr. Eyal outlines circumstances under which a SARS-CoV-2 human challenge trial would be ethical, but I do not think we have reached these circumstances yet.

From the preprint, it appears that the key point in whether or not such studies are ethical is if they propose an increased risk to participants. It is not yet clear if social isolation and curfew will contain SARS-CoV-2, so I am not sure if at this moment the argument can be made that most volunteers will be affected at some point in time and as such they are not facing an increased risk. Regarding the recent malaria study, this was only conducted with existing treatment of malaria. To this date, no trial of Covid-19 treatment delivered convincing evidence of effectiveness. Furthermore,

This is correct, but a very short summary of a very complex (and cool) process. To expand a bit: After T-cell dependant B-cell activation through an antigen to the B-cell receptor, the B-cell divides into a few very short-lived plasma cells and centroblasts. The latter undergo somatic hypermutation and rapid cell expansion to result in many different B-cells which produce similar, but different antibodies). With the help of follicular T-cells, only centroblast with the antibody with the highest affinity to the antigene survives and this one undergoes clonal expansion.

Ah, this does consider the cyst though, not the trophozoite. My point about inserting boiling hot water/heating your ear up to 65 degree remains valid though.

To see how these data compare with those obtained in the semiquantitative tests, the ex- posure times for a 99.9% cyst destruction were extrapolated from the survival curves in Fig. 2 and came out as 65, 26, 17, and 3 min at 55, 57, 60, and 65C, respectively.. 3 minutes in 65 degree water might be more severe than 100 degree steam. Note that if the habitat of the bacteria surpasses 65 degrees, the sinus area also is hotter than 65 degrees for 3 minutes.