Caronavirus & Tokyo 2020

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Regarding the various conspiracy theories that this thing was engineered or escaped from a lab:

See here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9



The authors are an international group of scientists from San Diego, New Orleans, Edinburgh, and Sydney Australia. Analysis of several aspects of the genome and the interaction of the S-protein with ACE-2 show it is definitely not engineered by people. It has none of the features one would expect for an engineered virus. It is also quite unlikely it escaped from a research lab because features in the SARS-Cov-2 genome not found in SARS, MERS, or other human coronaviruses were very recently found (i.e. after the emergence of the Covid-19 disease) in SARS-CoV-like coronaviruses from pangolins. It is highly likely that it was zoonotic transmission (jumping from animals to people, something that is a quite common occurrence). There may have been a period of unrecognized transmission of SARS-Cov-2 in humans after the initial zoonotic event but then a mutation occurred and the virus acquired something called a polybasic cleavage site which markedly enhanced its infectivity and which through natural selection became the dominant form.



The article is very technical and not particularly easy to read for people not deep into genomics. That is just how these things are sometimes. It took me a long time to slog my way through this and this is my job. (I constantly had to go stop, look up something, and then resume reading).



Quoting from the summary:


SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms[SUP]6[/SUP]. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.

Conspiracy theories sell ads and inflame emotions. Real science, not so much.

I think very few people would try to argue that it was a genetically engineered virus...but a more common argument is that the lab in Wuhan has indeed been studying not just the known strains of coronavirus- SARS and MERS, but many other strains that had been isolated directly from bats. There was a paper published towards the start of the emergence of this SARS-CoV2 pandemic that stated a 95% similarity to a particular strain of bat coronavirus, compared to aaround 80% to the 1st SARS. Although still highly unlikely that it could've escaped from these highly secure labs, due to the nature of what that lab is studying, it's not completely out of the question based on the information available.

The only logical argument that must be true to prove this to be completely impossible is if these labs simply have 0% chance for any agent to escape, which no one could ever know if that's true or not.
 
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I don't want to blame anyone, but I hold the CCP completely responsible for hiding the truth, causing the world to develop a false sense of security. We will revisit the question where the virus originally came from in the future when we finally have a cure for it. For now we will concentrate on how to deal with the virus from our national and international levels. What are the needed solutions; vaccines developments, drugs, social distancing or lock-down strategy, improving world economics, jobs, etc. ? These things are more of interests to me than reading CCP propaganda machine and Trump bashing/promoting in this forum.
 
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I have been playing with the idea of closing this thread and opening a new thread with the subject:

SARS-CoV-2 - CoVID-19 - Coronavirus Updates

The idea would be:

1) Making it about Updates people would be interested in about the disease, its spread, and possible treatments.
2) Leaving out the subject of the Olympics since the delay, for now, seems to be settled.
3) Trying to make this about the disease and treatments and trying to make the thread as A-Political as possible. Something not backward looking. Something not about blame. Something forward looking, about things that we can and should do to slow the progress of the disease and possible treatments and vaccines that may be on the horizon.

Any thoughts before I do it?

Baal, Zeio, Langel, NextLevel, Yoass, FreeBird, any thoughts?

Sure. But if I see some more anti-science coming out of our government about this pandemic or propagation of weird conspiracy theories I'm going to point it out.

I closed a similar thread at MyTT for the same reason.
 
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Sure. But if I see some more anti-science coming out of our government about this pandemic I'm going to point it out.

I closed a similar thread at MyTT for the same reason.

Yeah. There is no way around pointing certain things out. But if the main movers in the thread are focused on science and useful information it will be a thread that is worthwhile. I do think that has been happening here. I also think there are some who just want to sling mud. So, hopefully the new thread will start from where we are.

I will wait a while and then do it.
 
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