OT: COVID-19 thread #4

[Jimako10]

"A team of World Health Organization scientists said on Tuesday in China that the coronavirus had probably first spread to humans through an animal and was “extremely unlikely” to have been the result of a lab accident.

The findings, delivered after 12 days of field work by the team visiting Wuhan, China, were the first step in a painstaking process to trace the pandemic’s origins, a question that is critical to helping prevent a recurrence.

“All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir,” said Dr. Peter K. Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist with the W.H.O. who is leading the team of experts. He was speaking at a news conference in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus was first discovered late in 2019."

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/09/world/covid-19-coronavirus

This would be a good time for Mike Pompeo to come forth with the "enormous evidence" he claimed he had that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory. Or was that just another lie told by the US govt for political purposes? The problem when govt. continually lies to its people (see reasons for going to war with Iraq) is that it produces cynicism and mistrust.

There isn't even a consensus on where the 1918 flu pandemic started, I doubt they'll find anything definitive about the origins of covid anytime soon. Only 12 days of field work, a year after it started, in China of all places, doesn't seem super reliable. My bet is that the administration was presented more than one possibility for its origins, and Pompeo/Trump picked the one they liked the most politically and ran with it.

[Michael Jackson]

"A team of World Health Organization scientists said on Tuesday in China that the coronavirus had probably first spread to humans through an animal and was “extremely unlikely” to have been the result of a lab accident.

The findings, delivered after 12 days of field work by the team visiting Wuhan, China, were the first step in a painstaking process to trace the pandemic’s origins, a question that is critical to helping prevent a recurrence.

“All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir,” said Dr. Peter K. Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist with the W.H.O. who is leading the team of experts. He was speaking at a news conference in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus was first discovered late in 2019."

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/09/world/covid-19-coronavirus

This would be a good time for Mike Pompeo to come forth with the "enormous evidence" he claimed he had that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory. Or was that just another lie told by the US govt for political purposes? The problem when govt. continually lies to its people (see reasons for going to war with Iraq) is that it produces cynicism and mistrust.

There isn't even a consensus on where the 1918 flu pandemic started, I doubt they'll find anything definitive about the origins of covid anytime soon. Only 12 days of field work, a year after it started, in China of all places, doesn't seem super reliable. My bet is that the administration was presented more than one possibility for its origins, and Pompeo/Trump picked the one they liked the most politically and ran with it.

Clearly they were going to pick the one that made the most political sense for them. That being said, Occam's razor to me is that it jumped from nature to us like this study said. It is literally how every other disease has done it. Mother nature is merciless, ie we all die. In all seriousness though it is the most reasonable solution because this is nothing out of the ordinary in regards to history. Released from a lab, would have less historical support, well unless we are going to the SCYFY channel for history.

[dice]

"A team of World Health Organization scientists said on Tuesday in China that the coronavirus had probably first spread to humans through an animal and was “extremely unlikely” to have been the result of a lab accident.

The findings, delivered after 12 days of field work by the team visiting Wuhan, China, were the first step in a painstaking process to trace the pandemic’s origins, a question that is critical to helping prevent a recurrence.

“All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir,” said Dr. Peter K. Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist with the W.H.O. who is leading the team of experts. He was speaking at a news conference in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus was first discovered late in 2019."

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/09/world/covid-19-coronavirus

This would be a good time for Mike Pompeo to come forth with the "enormous evidence" he claimed he had that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory. Or was that just another lie told by the US govt for political purposes? The problem when govt. continually lies to its people (see reasons for going to war with Iraq) is that it produces cynicism and mistrust.

There isn't even a consensus on where the 1918 flu pandemic started, I doubt they'll find anything definitive about the origins of covid anytime soon. Only 12 days of field work, a year after it started, in China of all places, doesn't seem super reliable. My bet is that the administration was presented more than one possibility for its origins, and Pompeo/Trump picked the one they liked the most politically and ran with it.

Clearly they were going to pick the one that made the most political sense for them. That being said, Occam's razor to me is that it jumped from nature to us like this study said. It is literally how every other disease has done it. Mother nature is merciless, ie we all die. In all seriousness though it is the most reasonable solution because this is nothing out of the ordinary in regards to history. Released from a lab, would have less historical support, well unless we are going to the SCYFY channel for history.

let's say that they eventually discover that it was created in a lab and then somehow released. than what? it just seems like the circumstances would have to have been really extraordinary

is it common for deadly viruses to be created and studied in labs? would this then be banned?

[coldfish]

There isn't even a consensus on where the 1918 flu pandemic started, I doubt they'll find anything definitive about the origins of covid anytime soon. Only 12 days of field work, a year after it started, in China of all places, doesn't seem super reliable. My bet is that the administration was presented more than one possibility for its origins, and Pompeo/Trump picked the one they liked the most politically and ran with it.

Clearly they were going to pick the one that made the most political sense for them. That being said, Occam's razor to me is that it jumped from nature to us like this study said. It is literally how every other disease has done it. Mother nature is merciless, ie we all die. In all seriousness though it is the most reasonable solution because this is nothing out of the ordinary in regards to history. Released from a lab, would have less historical support, well unless we are going to the SCYFY channel for history.

let's say that they eventually discover that it was created in a lab and then somehow released. than what? it just seems like the circumstances would have to have been really extraordinary

is it common for deadly viruses to be created and studied in labs? would this then be banned?

From 2015. Modified in 2020 by the source to say this is not proof that covid19 is manmade.

An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.

In an article published in Nature Medicine1 on 9 November, scientists investigated a virus called SHC014, which is found in horseshoe bats in China. The researchers created a chimaeric virus, made up of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and to mimic human disease. The chimaera infected human airway cells — proving that the surface protein of SHC014 has the necessary structure to bind to a key receptor on the cells and to infect them. It also caused disease in mice, but did not kill them.

https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787

[2018C3]

A little off subject, but my father this morning just gave me a big verbal licking while we were talking current political subjects.

This morning I stopped by my parents house early in the morning to shovel the driveway, After I was done shoveling I walked inside, and they were listening to a webcast Tuesday morning bible study.

I then sat down, in the living room with them, and grabbed a old college year book from 1965. I started flipping though the pages during a pastors sermon.

After the sermon was over my dad and I started talking political talk, and I mentioned that I only saw three black people in the college year book. This observation completely set him off, and he proceeded to give me a ear full for even noticing that.

He said one of the black guys I noticed in the year book was his college roommate, and the first of his friends to show up at the hospital the day I was born. He was absolutely pissed at the divide we are seeing today, and said back then he could have never imagined things would get worse.

Even when I was in college, I thought race relations were improving, and thought my generation was going to be the one that could move past previous problems from earlier generations.

I do believe race relations were better in the 80's/90's, and early 2000's than they are today.

Back then the majority of my fellow students were white, but other nationalities were absorbed into the same social group regardless of color. (Asians, Blacks, Whites, Middle Eastern's, and Mexicans all hung out together and cross dated without any issues).

I think maybe things haven't got any worse, and its just the media who is actively trying to push the perception of a divide. Racial stories get clicks from the extremists, and the media is actively pushing a agenda that the majority of this country does not want to see.

[molepharmer]

is it common for deadly viruses to be created and studied in labs? would this then be banned?

There are labs specifically designed to handle extremely deadly organisms (e.g. a virus). I've worked in a BSL-1 and had access to a BSL-2. BSL-3 and especially BSL-4 labs are very limited (google says there are 54 bsl-4 labs in the world).



If you're going to try to combat a highly deadly organism, you have to be able to study how that organism works; e.g. what systems it effects on a cellular level.

[Dresden]

The Biden admin should have access to whatever intel Pompeo claimed to have about the origins of the virus. They should come forth and set the record straight- either reveal what evidence they have now, or make a statement to the effect that the last administration was lying when they made that announcement.

[Dresden]

A little off subject, but my father this morning just gave me a big verbal licking while we were talking current political subjects.

This morning I stopped by my parents house early in the morning to shovel the driveway, After I was done shoveling I walked inside, and they were listening to a webcast Tuesday morning bible study.

I then sat down, in the living room with them, and grabbed a old college year book from 1965. I started flipping though the pages during a pastors sermon.

After the sermon was over my dad and I started talking political talk, and I mentioned that I only saw three black people in the college year book. This observation completely set him off, and he proceeded to give me a ear full for even noticing that.

He said one of the black guys I noticed in the year book was his college roommate, and the first of his friends to show up at the hospital the day I was born. He was absolutely pissed at the divide we are seeing today, and said back then he could have never imagined things would get worse.

Even when I was in college, I thought race relations were improving, and thought my generation was going to be the one that could move past previous problems from earlier generations.

I do believe race relations were better in the 80's/90's, and early 2000's than they are today.

Back then the majority of my fellow students were white, but other nationalities were absorbed into the same social group regardless of color. (Asians, Blacks, Whites, Middle Eastern's, and Mexicans all hung out together and cross dated without any issues).

I think maybe things haven't got any worse, and its just the media who is actively trying to push the perception of a divide. Racial stories get clicks from the extremists, and the media is actively pushing a agenda that the majority of this country does not want to see.

That's interesting that your dad would feel that way, because 1965 was the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the year the Watts riots took place, a year after the Mississippi Freedom Summer, after the Birmingham church bombing. Many people at that time thought the country was coming apart at the seams due to racism, and that set the stage for Richard Nixon to win the presidency three years later pledging to champion "the silent majority" (those who did not want change).

[dice]

is it common for deadly viruses to be created and studied in labs? would this then be banned?

There are labs specifically designed to handle extremely deadly organisms (e.g. a virus). I've worked in a BSL-1 and had access to a BSL-2. BSL-3 and especially BSL-4 labs are very limited (google says there are 54 bsl-4 labs in the world).



If you're going to try to combat a highly deadly organism, you have to be able to study how that organism works; e.g. what systems it effects on a cellular level.

alright, so if it is necessary science, and we discover that COVID-19 leaked from a lab, what are we looking at as a reasonable reaction? new safety protocols? some sort of punishment for the individual(s)/lab?

it just seems to me that, short of some sort of chinese gov. plot to release the virus, the origin story is more curiosity than anything else

[dice]

A little off subject, but my father this morning just gave me a big verbal licking while we were talking current political subjects.

This morning I stopped by my parents house early in the morning to shovel the driveway, After I was done shoveling I walked inside, and they were listening to a webcast Tuesday morning bible study.

I then sat down, in the living room with them, and grabbed a old college year book from 1965. I started flipping though the pages during a pastors sermon.

After the sermon was over my dad and I started talking political talk, and I mentioned that I only saw three black people in the college year book. This observation completely set him off, and he proceeded to give me a ear full for even noticing that.

He said one of the black guys I noticed in the year book was his college roommate, and the first of his friends to show up at the hospital the day I was born. He was absolutely pissed at the divide we are seeing today, and said back then he could have never imagined things would get worse.

Even when I was in college, I thought race relations were improving, and thought my generation was going to be the one that could move past previous problems from earlier generations.

I do believe race relations were better in the 80's/90's, and early 2000's than they are today.

Back then the majority of my fellow students were white, but other nationalities were absorbed into the same social group regardless of color. (Asians, Blacks, Whites, Middle Eastern's, and Mexicans all hung out together and cross dated without any issues).

I think maybe things haven't got any worse, and its just the media who is actively trying to push the perception of a divide. Racial stories get clicks from the extremists, and the media is actively pushing a agenda that the majority of this country does not want to see.

it's mostly the result of "leaders" giving racists license to be more vocal about it

[Dresden]

is it common for deadly viruses to be created and studied in labs? would this then be banned?

There are labs specifically designed to handle extremely deadly organisms (e.g. a virus). I've worked in a BSL-1 and had access to a BSL-2. BSL-3 and especially BSL-4 labs are very limited (google says there are 54 bsl-4 labs in the world).



If you're going to try to combat a highly deadly organism, you have to be able to study how that organism works; e.g. what systems it effects on a cellular level.

alright, so if it is necessary science, and we discover that COVID-19 leaked from a lab, what are we looking at as a reasonable reaction? new safety protocols? some sort of punishment for the individual(s)/lab?

it just seems to me that, short of some sort of chinese gov. plot to release the virus, the origin story is more curiosity than anything else

I would think it would be critically important to find out how it originated for a number of reasons- but mainly for prevention.

[molepharmer]

alright, so if it is necessary science, and we discover that COVID-19 leaked from a lab, what are we looking at as a reasonable reaction? new safety protocols? some sort of punishment for the individual(s)/lab?

it just seems to me that, short of some sort of chinese gov. plot to release the virus, the origin story is more curiosity than anything else

I would think it would be critically important to find out how it originated for a number of reasons- but mainly for prevention.

I'd think both gov't officials and scientists would agree with prevention as primary reason.

Gov't officials are probably more interested in answering If this came from a lab accidentally by human error. I imagine "they" would determine what safety protocol was breached and act accordingly. I don't know who "they" are or if "they' would be the body that decides punishment (e.g. license suspension or termination). Or if "they" are multiple bodies from different countries, a bureaucratic cluster****.

But I think scientists would be more interested in the origin because something may also be learned on a more genetic / molecular level as to how this happened; especially if it came from another unexpected animal species or through some previously undiscovered process.

[dice]

There are labs specifically designed to handle extremely deadly organisms (e.g. a virus). I've worked in a BSL-1 and had access to a BSL-2. BSL-3 and especially BSL-4 labs are very limited (google says there are 54 bsl-4 labs in the world).



If you're going to try to combat a highly deadly organism, you have to be able to study how that organism works; e.g. what systems it effects on a cellular level.

alright, so if it is necessary science, and we discover that COVID-19 leaked from a lab, what are we looking at as a reasonable reaction? new safety protocols? some sort of punishment for the individual(s)/lab?

it just seems to me that, short of some sort of chinese gov. plot to release the virus, the origin story is more curiosity than anything else

I would think it would be critically important to find out how it originated for a number of reasons- but mainly for prevention.

i can't imagine that, if we find out that it leaked, there aren't already measures in place pretty much everywhere to prevent what happened. either it will have been intentional or some sort of egregious human error

[Dresden]

alright, so if it is necessary science, and we discover that COVID-19 leaked from a lab, what are we looking at as a reasonable reaction? new safety protocols? some sort of punishment for the individual(s)/lab?

it just seems to me that, short of some sort of chinese gov. plot to release the virus, the origin story is more curiosity than anything else

I would think it would be critically important to find out how it originated for a number of reasons- but mainly for prevention.

i can't imagine that, if we find out that it leaked, there aren't already measures in place pretty much everywhere to prevent what happened. either it will have been intentional or some sort of egregious human error

It would have a lot of ramifications though. Errors like that should NEVER happen- the same way that certain errors in flying an airplane should never happen. If it did, a new series of safety checklists might be developed. And if it was intentional, obviously you'd want to pursue who and why was behind it, and possibly develop new safety procedures so that wouldn't happen again. When millions of lives are at stake, no amount of safety is too much.

But it's much much more likely it originated outside of a lab, and this is also very important to know. It could lead to different animal handling procedures, it would point to new directions for epidemiologists to study, it would highlight the presence of new pathogens in whatever region it came from- there are all kinds of things this information might lead to.

[Dresden]

Only 64K new cases yesterday, with just 1,080 deaths reported. The numbers have dropped so far since early January. Let's hope the trend continues and doesn't get pushed back up by the new variants, or when things start to open up a bit due to the lower numbers.

[Dresden]

Top medical journal blames Trump's policies for tens of thousands of deaths

https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-medical-journal-blames-trumps-policies-for-tens-of-thousands-of-deaths-100053943.html

A damning new study by the Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, found that Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic while he was president exacerbated problems that had been accruing over four decades of government neglect, leading to Americans dying of COVID-19 at a higher rate than people in other high-income nations.

The report commissioned by the Lancet, a British publication, laid out how years of declining spending on public health and an increase in wealth inequality combined with COVID-19 to cause avoidable deaths in the United States, with a disproportionate effect on minority communities. The authors found that 40 percent of the more than 400,000 American virus deaths as of mid-January could have been averted if the U.S. had a mortality rate in line with those of the other G-7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.)

...Instead of galvanizing the US populace to fight the pandemic, President Trump publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, and eschewed international cooperation,” read the report. “His refusal to develop a national strategy worsened shortages of personal protective equipment and diagnostic tests. President Trump politicized mask-wearing and school reopenings and convened indoor events attended by thousands, where masks were discouraged and physical distancing was impossible."

...

The study also found that the pandemic increased the mortality gap between Black and white Americans by 50 percent and cut the life expectancy of Latinos by nearly four years. It stated that “the fact that COVID-19 affects Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people disproportionately has reinforced longstanding health inequities driven by racially patterned disparities in housing, wealth, employment, and social and political rights.”“The disturbing truth is that many of President Trump’s policies do not represent a radical break with the past but have merely accelerated the decades-long trend of lagging life expectancy that reflects deep and longstanding flaws in US economic, health, and social policy,” read the report. “These flaws are not only evident in faltering longevity — and the especially sluggish progress in reducing deaths amenable to health care — but also in the widening gaps in mortality across social class and geography and the chronically high mortality of Black and Indigenous people."

[Dresden]

The more data we get, the more it seems vaccinated people aren't spreading the coronavirus

"...Evidence is coalescing around the idea that people who get these vaccines don't spread the virus after all.

"There have been some studies that are pointing into a very favorable direction," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a briefing last week.

...

"... data suggests Moderna's vaccine blocks about 91% of transmission."


https://www.yahoo.com/news/more-data-more-seems-vaccinated-221739183.html

[dice]

just passed a small restaurant walking home from the gym...dozens of people, nobody wearing masks. i'd noticed the lack of mask wearing at this place in the past, but there were never a lot of people

[lemonmellow]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-suggests-a-wuhan-lab-leak-11622995184

But the most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science. In particular, consider the genetic fingerprint of CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for the disease Covid-19.

In gain-of-function research, a microbiologist can increase the lethality of a coronavirus enormously by splicing a special sequence into its genome at a prime location. Doing this leaves no trace of manipulation. But it alters the virus spike protein, rendering it easier for the virus to inject genetic material into the victim cell. Since 1992 there have been at least 11 separate experiments adding a special sequence to the same location. The end result has always been supercharged viruses.

In fact, in the entire class of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, the CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here. A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus.

Now the damning fact. It was this exact sequence that appears in CoV-2. Proponents of zoonotic origin must explain why the novel coronavirus, when it mutated or recombined, happened to pick its least favorite combination, the double CGG. Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?

Yes, it could have happened randomly, through mutations. But do you believe that? At the minimum, this fact—that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers—implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/05/28/covid-19-david-asher-mike-pompeo-world-health-organization/

A Wall Street Journal story on Sunday reported that three Wuhan lab workers were hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, before the first confirmed case of COVID-19 on Dec. 8. The story’s main findings, that WIV workers had possible COVID-19 symptoms in fall 2019, before the first confirmed case, were already in a State Department statement on COVID-19’s origins released in the last days of the Trump administration.

The lab workers appear to have been more likely to have had COVID-19 than the flu, Asher said.

“How many normal people in their 30s-40s get so sick from influenza that they have to be hospitalized? Lab workers, I am told, are almost certainly getting flu shots.

“Moreover, what are the odds that several workers — who happen to be the researchers on enhancing the pathogenicity of COV RaTG13 and associated COVS all fall very sick together?” Asher noted, referring to coronaviruses.

China has blocked interviewing the previously ill researchers at the WIV, the January State Department statement said.

The wife of a Wuhan lab researcher working on coronaviruses died of what appeared to be COVID-19 in December 2019, the leader of a State Department investigation under the Trump administration told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-inside-the-fight-to-uncover-covid-19s-origins

Dr. Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, said that from the very first reports of a novel bat-related coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, it took him “a nanosecond or a picosecond” to consider a link to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Only two other labs in the world, in Galveston, Texas, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, were doing similar research. “It’s not a dozen cities,” he said. “It’s three places.”

Within the scientific community, one thing leapt off the page. Wade quoted one of the world’s most famous microbiologists, Dr. David Baltimore, saying that he believed the furin cleavage site “was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus.” Baltimore, a Nobel Laureate and pioneer in molecular biology, was about as far from Steve Bannon and the conspiracy theorists as it was possible to get. His judgment, that the furin cleavage site raised the prospect of gene manipulation, had to be taken seriously.

[lemonmellow]

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