Coronavirus outbreak - From China to the World.

[Aexodus]

Wellllll... hell. That’s gonna cause a storm sumskilz. I’m not really sure what to say.

If this actually escaped from a lab, and for some reason I hope it didn’t, the diplomat fallout will be incredible.

For some reason, publications seem to give a curious benefit of the doubt to China in this pandemic, with the virology lab, with the infection statistics etc

What do you make of the weight of media reports and scientific articles stating the virus did not originate from a lab?

What do you make of this? It’s Nature, so not exactly obscure or fringe. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

[sumskilz]

Wellllll... hell. That’s gonna cause a storm sumskilz. I’m not really sure what to say.

If this actually escaped from a lab, and for some reason I hope it didn’t, the diplomat fallout will be incredible.

For some reason, publications seem to give a curious benefit of the doubt to China in this pandemic, with the virology lab, with the infection statistics etc

What do you make of the weight of media reports and scientific articles stating the virus did not originate from a lab?

I don't know what's going on with that. Did Trump suggest it came from a lab maybe? If so, it would obviously be obligatory to believe otherwise.

What do you make of this? It’s Nature, so not exactly obscure or fringe. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

It's correspondence, so not peer-reviewed.

There are two parts to their argument, the first part:

It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for binding to human ACE2 with an efficient solution different from those previously predicted7,11.

So if it functions differently than they predicted, that doesn't mean that it doesn't function as someone else had predicted or arrived at through trial and error.

The second part:

Furthermore, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one of the several reverse-genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would probably have been used19. However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone20.

Except that this lab was able to synthesize SARS-CoV-2 from scratch - a methodology that leaves no evidence, or maybe the Chinese researchers simply used a backbone not previously used, or maybe they just artificially selected it in the lab, which would undermine both of the authors' arguments. It would be like arguing that golden retrievers evolved naturally because there is no direct evidence that their DNA has been tampered with.

They do note the insertion of the furin cleavage site, but say it's function is unknown. That's odd, because I know, but moreover, here are one, two, three, and four studies in which furin cleavage sites were inserted into SARS-CoV in order to study how much it increased its infectivity. And then we have this Chinese study from 2019, which I’ll quote:

Mutation of the S2' site of QX genotype (QX-type) spike protein (S) in a recombinant virus background results in higher pathogenicity, pronounced neural symptoms and neurotropism when compared with conditions in wild-type IBV (WT-IBV) infected chickens. In this study, we present evidence suggesting that recombinant IBV with a mutant S2' site (furin-S2' site) leads to higher mortality. Infection with mutant IBV induces severe encephalitis and breaks the blood–brain barrier.
…
In summary, our results demonstrate that the furin cleavage site upstream of the FP in S protein is an important site for CoV, modulating entry, cell–virus fusion, adaptation to its host cell, cell tropism and pathogenicity, but not antigenicity.

It's remarkable that the authors didn't know any of this. I'll quote Dr Ronen Shemesh again:

If I was trying to engineer a virus strain with a higher affinity and infective potential to humans, I would do exactly that: I would add a Furin Cleavage site directly at the original less effective and more cell specific cleavage site.

The authors believe the insertion, that is the insertion of code for four amino acids, evolved naturally. Though extremely unlikely in the time frame in my opinion, this is theoretically possible if it serves an evolutionary function, but none of the closely related coronaviruses that infect bats have it. It makes the virus extremely infectious in humans, but apparently doesn't help in bats, so how then would such a complicated change be naturally selected for in bats?

[Infidel144]

More than 100 scientists and clinicians have questioned the authenticity of a massive hospital database that was the basis for an influential study published last week that concluded the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat people with COVID-19 did not help and may have increased the risk of abnormal heart rhythms and death.


In an open letter addressed to The Lancet’s editor-in-chief, Richard Horton, and the paper’s authors, the scientists asked the journal to provide details about the provenance of the data and called for the study to be independently validated by the World Health Organization or another institution.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/coronav...lwi-story.html


Was this Lancet published study cited earlier in the thread?

NYT version here (paywall):
Scientists Question Validity of Major Hydroxychloroquine Study
Experts demanded verification of data and methods used in a study of drugs to treat Covid-19. The study suggested the drugs might have increased deaths.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/h...loroquine.html

[Surgeon]

Coronavirus ‘clinically no longer exists’ in Italy, doctor says

“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” Alberto Zangrillo, head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, told RAI television. “The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago.”

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

"It's going to disappear. One day — it's like a miracle — it will disappear."

[Infidel144]

t

Now that some credentialed experts have spoken up, I can leave it to them:

If you get a chance, would you address it in response to this:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...kyuXCm-UmZWGd8

[Pontifex Maximus]

It is imperative that we run cover for the CCP in absolutely ruling out any culpability it has in the global pandemic. Since orange man is so bad, let's just blame him.

@sumskilz

oof, imagine running cover for the CCCP.

[sumskilz]

More than 100 scientists and clinicians have questioned the authenticity of a massive hospital database that was the basis for an influential study published last week that concluded the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat people with COVID-19 did not help and may have increased the risk of abnormal heart rhythms and death.


In an open letter addressed to The Lancet’s editor-in-chief, Richard Horton, and the paper’s authors, the scientists asked the journal to provide details about the provenance of the data and called for the study to be independently validated by the World Health Organization or another institution.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/coronav...lwi-story.html


Was this Lancet published study cited earlier in the thread?

NYT version here (paywall):
Scientists Question Validity of Major Hydroxychloroquine Study
Experts demanded verification of data and methods used in a study of drugs to treat Covid-19. The study suggested the drugs might have increased deaths.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/h...loroquine.html

Yeah, that study had a major impact, the WHO and several countries changed their policies based on it, and yet it now appears to have been completely fraudulent.

If you get a chance, would you address it in response to this:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...kyuXCm-UmZWGd8

Andersen, the expert witness there, is the lead author of the correspondence I addressed in my last post. When the article quotes him as saying "there's no evidence for this, but there is plenty of evidence against it" and then doesn't bother to tell the reader what the actual evidence against it is, he is referring to what I addressed in my last post. If you consider his cited evidence persuasive, then you must logically also accept that humans weren't responsible for this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There is a conflict of interest here. Experts on gain of function research are inevitably involved in gain of function research, therefore if the public becomes aware that such research may have inadvertently led to a global pandemic, these experts' careers are in jeopardy.

Another example, here is a Vox article entitled "Why these scientists still doubt the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab". The expert witness being interviewed is "Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance and a disease ecologist who has studied emerging infectious diseases with colleagues in China". The following is from a transcript of an email written by the National Institutes of Health to Daszak:

EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. is the recipient, as grantee, of an NIH grant entitled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” It is our understanding that one of the sub-recipients on this grant is the Wuhan Institute of Virology (“WIV”). It is our understanding that Wuhan Institute of Virology studies the interaction between corona viruses and bats. The scientific community believes that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans likely in Wuhan where the COVID-19 pandemic began. There are now allegations that the current crisis was precipitated by the release from Wuhan Institute of Virology of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. Given these concerns, we are pursuing suspension of Wuhan Institute of Virology from participation in federal programs.

While we review these allegations during the period of suspension, you are instructed to cease providing any funds to Wuhan Institute of Virology. This temporary action is authorized by 45 C.F.R. §75.371(d) (“Initiate suspension or debarment proceedings as authorized under 2 C.F.R. part 180”). The incorporated OMB provision provides that the funding agency may, through suspension, immediately and temporarily exclude from Federal programs persons who are not presently responsible where “immediate action is necessary to protect the public interest.” 2 C.F.R. § 180.700(c). It is in the public interest that NIH ensure that a sub-recipient has taken all appropriate precautions to prevent the release of pathogens that it is studying. This suspension of the sub-recipient does not affect the remainder of your grant assuming that no grant funds are provided to WIV following receipt of this email during the period of suspension.

Daszak was involved in gain of function research in collaboration with WIV. The Vox article goes on:

Some have speculated that perhaps the new coronavirus is derived from RaTG13. Yet virologists say it’s very unlikely: A 4 percent difference in genome is actually huge in evolutionary terms.

“The level of genome sequence divergence between SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 is equivalent to an average of 50 years (and at least 20 years) of evolutionary change,” said Edward Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney who has published six academic papers this year on the genome and origin of SARS-CoV-2, in a statement. “Hence, SARS-CoV-2 was not derived from RaTG13.”

Another questionable assumption is that the mere existence of a related virus in the lab signals the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was also there.

Daszak, who collaborates with the Wuhan bat coronavirus researchers and has co-authored papers with them, says this is false.

Except speeding up evolution is exactly what gain of function researchers are doing, so that argument doesn't really make any sense. Edward Holmes was also one of the coauthors of the correspondence I addressed in my last post. You can read about his research in this article about how China’s People’s Liberation Army have been kindly providing him data.

You will see the same handful of of expert witnesses in every article supposedly debunking the "conspiracy theory", but you can see in the article I posted that expert witnesses with nothing to lose are remarkably more open minded, some are suspicious, and for good reason.

From the Washington Post:

Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.

In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.

What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)

[Infidel144]

Thanks for the info.

Yeah, that study had a major impact, the WHO and several countries changed their policies based on it, and yet it now appears to have been completely fraudulent.

WHO reversed its change in policy yesterday.
https://time.com/5847664/who-hydroxy...uine-covid-19/

[Exarch]

The lack of scientific aptitude in this thread is painful, never mind what an 'ex MI6' spy has to say.

If we had the technology to genetically engineer viruses, we would already have the cure for cancer.

If this virus was genetically engineered, then we could also genetically engineer a cure.

ffs. We could cure AIDS tomorrow with this supposed tech rather than the fevered imaginations of white anglo racial holy war white supremacists

[sumskilz]

The lack of scientific aptitude in this thread is painful, never mind what an 'ex MI6' spy has to say.

If we had the technology to genetically engineer viruses, we would already have the cure for cancer.

If this virus was genetically engineered, then we could also genetically engineer a cure.

ffs. We could cure AIDS tomorrow with this supposed tech rather than the fevered imaginations of white anglo racial holy war white supremacists

Viruses are genetically engineered all the time.

[Exarch]

Viruses are genetically engineered all the time.

That's like saying dogs are domesticated and therefore expecting a dog to be able to do your taxes.

Can it happen in the future? Maybe, given breeding, training and genetic engineering of dogs. Can it happen now with current technology? Laughable.

[sumskilz]

That's like saying dogs are domesticated and therefore expecting a dog to be able to do your taxes.

Can it happen in the future? Maybe, given breeding, training and genetic engineering of dogs. Can it happen now with current technology? Laughable.

I have no idea what you're talking about. In post #1702, I linked four studies dating back to 2006 which involved inserting furin cleavage sites into SARS-CoV. What is it that you think genetic engineering means?

[Exarch]

Are you confirming that SARS-Cov-2 was a bioweapon released by the americans against the Chinese?

[Cyclops]

Viruses are genetically engineered all the time.

Indeed, some viruses have been engineered to savagely eliminate (sometimes at the cost of the life of the host) some cancers in an incredibly short period of time. The report I saw on the state news service here mentioned a young girl who spent over a week in an induced coma, and lost approximately a kilo of aggressive cancer from her bones. 100% cancer free.

Can't find the program online but here's a source on the tech: https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/c...o-treat-cancer

I was implausibly happy to see these promising treatments successfully undertaken on terminal patients, many of whom survived the massive fevers through induced comas despite being late stage (in the case of the young girl she had about a week left to live tops IIRC).

I was also reminded of this.



...but its true, they have found a cure for cancer albeit one that has to be recrafted for each of the hundreds of different types. They are using horrific stuff like polio, AIDS and herpes, ripping out their guts and sending them into the body to rewrite the immune response to cancer cells, and the good old white blood cells do the rest.

Its wonderful to see, but of course my paranoia doesn't stop at suspecting we're about to be in a Will Smith movie (the horror). I have no doubt the same tech is being weaponised so they can infect people with a virus that resets the immune system to dissolve the victims brain or other wonderful things like that. Imagine a virus that could make you an alcoholic, or change your sexual preferences, or turn you orange.

[sumskilz]

Are you confirming that SARS-Cov-2 was a bioweapon released by the americans against the Chinese?

I'm sure we'd be capable of making a bioweapon that lame, if we considered the elderly and the obese to be the greatest threat to our security.

[Aexodus]

I have no idea what you're talking about. In post #1702, I linked four studies dating back to 2006 which involved inserting furin cleavage sites into SARS-CoV. What is it that you think genetic engineering means?

How could the virus have been genetically engineered if it has been confirmed that gene editing was not used on SARS CoV 2?

https://www.newscientist.com/term/coronavirus-come-lab/

Researchers led by Shan-Lu Liu at the Ohio State University say there is “no credible evidence” of genetic engineering (Emerging Microbes & Infections, doi.org/dpvw). The virus’s genome has been sequenced, and if it had been altered, we would expect to see signs of inserted gene sequences. But we now know the points that differ from bat viruses are scattered in a fairly random way, just as they would be if the new virus had evolved naturally.

[Ludicus]

Covid Reference, top articles, June 4

Davies NG, Kucharski ADJ, Eggo RM, et al. Effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 cases, deaths, and demand for hospital services in the UK: a modelling study. Lancet, June 02, 2020. Full-text: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30133-X


Herd immunity? Forget it. Using a stochastic age-structured transmission model to explore a range of intervention scenarios, tracking 66 million people in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, the authors projected a median unmitigated burden of 23 million (95% prediction interval 13–30) clinical cases and 350,000 deaths (170,000–480, 000) due to COVID-19 in the UK by December, 2021. Bad news because extreme measures are probably required to bring the epidemic under control.

[sumskilz]

How could the virus have been genetically engineered if it has been confirmed that gene editing was not used on SARS CoV 2?

https://www.newscientist.com/term/coronavirus-come-lab/

Researchers led by Shan-Lu Liu at the Ohio State University say there is “no credible evidence” of genetic engineering (Emerging Microbes & Infections, doi.org/dpvw). The virus’s genome has been sequenced, and if it had been altered, we would expect to see signs of inserted gene sequences. But we now know the points that differ from bat viruses are scattered in a fairly random way, just as they would be if the new virus had evolved naturally.

This is the code for the spike protein compared to the closest known relatives:


Source

You can see that the resulting amino acids in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 are identical to Bat RaTG13 except for the consecutive insertion of four amino acids, which just happen to form the cleavage site that makes the virus so infectious in humans. Does that look random to you?

Keep in mind, that is the complete code for four amino acids inserted consecutively with no other changes in the spike protein.

It is almost certainly not random, that is a ridiculous assertion. It is either the product of selection or artificial insertion. If it is the product of selection, the question then becomes whether it was natural selection or human guided selection. If it was natural selection, it represents 50 years of adaptation to a human host (20 years minimum according to those who are claiming it's natural). I don't find it likely that it could have been circulating in the human population for 20 to 50 years without making anyone ill and then suddenly it becomes super infectious in one geographic area. Ironically right next to the only lab in the world that has its closest relative, rather than near where it was found in the wild.

There are some seemingly random point mutations elsewhere in the genome however. This is more consistent with selection (natural or artificial) than it is with artificial editing. That is assuming RaTG13 is its closest relative. The information on RaTG13 comes entirely from the Wuhan lab. If I recall correctly they said they collected it in 2013, but they didn't publish it until January 23rd, 2020 after the disease was already spreading. If they had a closer strain, I doubt they would have or would have been allowed to publish it.

[Ludicus]

Indeed, some viruses have been engineered to savagely eliminate some cancers in an incredibly short period of time... here's a source on the tech: https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/c...o-treat-cancer.To date, only one oncolytic virus—a genetically modified form of a herpesvirus for treating melanoma...

I wish it was true...sorry, no.

Melanoma is a deadly disease.Survival rates at 5 years for people with melanoma that has spread to the nearby lymph nodes is 65%.If melanoma has spread to other, distant parts of the body, the survival rate is lower, about 25%

TVEC is administered by local injection into cutaneous, subcutaneous or nodal melanoma sites.The response rate of distant metastases is lower than in injected tumor.Positive responses in lung or visceral sites are uncommon.Combinations therapies are needed.
Talimogene laherparepvec: First in class oncolytic virotherapy
Talimogene laherparepvec: review of its mechanism of action ...
---
There are also metastatic cancers with unknown primary site (CUP) . In 15-25% of cases of CUP, the primary site cannot be identified even on postmortem examination...sadly,it happens a lot in melanoma cases- and other cancers.The anxiety and fear of the patients is great, median survival in patients with cancer of unknown primary origin ranges from +- 11 weeks to +- 11 months.

[Aexodus]

This is the code for the spike protein compared to the closest known relatives:


Source

You can see that the resulting amino acids in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 are identical to Bat RaTG13 except for the consecutive insertion of four amino acids, which just happen to form the cleavage site that makes the virus so infectious in humans. Does that look random to you?

Keep in mind, that is the complete code for four amino acids inserted consecutively with no other changes in the spike protein.

It is almost certainly not random, that is a ridiculous assertion. It is either the product of selection or artificial insertion. If it is the product of selection, the question then becomes whether it was natural selection or human guided selection. If it was natural selection, it represents 50 years of adaptation to a human host (20 years minimum according to those who are claiming it's natural). I don't find it likely that it could have been circulating in the human population for 20 to 50 years without making anyone ill and then suddenly it becomes super infectious in one geographic area. Ironically right next to the only lab in the world that has its closest relative, rather than near where it was found in the wild.

There are some seemingly random point mutations elsewhere in the genome however. This is more consistent with selection (natural or artificial) than it is with artificial editing. That is assuming RaTG13 is its closest relative. The information on RaTG13 comes entirely from the Wuhan lab. If I recall correctly they said they collected it in 2013, but they didn't publish it until January 23rd, 2020 after the disease was already spreading. If they had a closer strain, I doubt they would have or would have been allowed to publish it.

I see.

Let's take the yellow P acid. What is the probability for that one alone to appear, that is to say, how many other acids could have been there instead in a natural selection environment?