Live data from Hacker News

New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

nationalgeographic.com

41–50 of 350 posts

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#41
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far the virus is believed to have a two week incubation period with unknown transmissability during that time, which makes it particularly hard to contain, especially with a migration like Chinese New Year. The lockdown is unprecedented in China but the Soviet Union used to do similar lockdowns (at a smaller scale) during cholera outbreaks. I think this is just a massive overcorrection due to China's 2003 SARS out…

In 1963 during last outbreak of smallpox epidemic in Europe Wroclaw in Poland had been quarantined for 47 days. [] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/6nhzqd/54_years_ago...

Correction - 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak was the last in Europe

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Yugoslav_smallpox_outbrea...

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#42
post #30

I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here, but I'd also like an real investigation into whether the virus actually originated from the Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory. It's the only level 4 (BSL-4 highest rating) lab in all of China designated to handle the most dangerous pathogens. And it's located 20 miles from the reported epicenter in the wildlife market. It was first opened two years ago and at the time multi…

Also from Nature (2017):

"Bat cave solves mystery of deadly SARS virus — and suggests new outbreak could occur"

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9

(Wuhan lab apparently carried out the research)

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#43
post #22

>I think this is just a massive overcorrection due to China's 2003 SARS outbreak but we'll start seeing more and more of these large scale quarantines as our civilization comes to terms with the realities of cheap air travel. I don't think is an "overcorrection". Lockdown is a top-level warning. Most Chinese people have no so much medical common sense, only a warning like this can stop them from trying to return home…

> Most Chinese people have no so much medical common sense, only a warning like this can stop them from trying to return home for the Chinese New Year.

The most important factor during public health crises isn't common sense, it's trust. The quarantines are worthless if they cause over 50 million people to go into a panic because they don't trust the central authorities.

The predominant commentary I'm seeing coming from both sides of the Pacific is currently "what are they not telling us? why shut down several cities during CNY if its only a thousand cases and a few dozen deaths?" Large quarantines are high risk and I doubt even the CDC, which has spent decades cultivating trust, could pull one off. If people start hiding symptoms and avoiding medical care because of the lockdown, this whole situation could spiral way out of control globally.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#44

Can someone explain https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?RID=2PUA1EJK114&CMD... to me? This is a comparison between 'bat SARS-like coronavirus' and 'Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus'. Under Alignments, it looks like the envelope proteins are identical. Wouldn't that be unlikely for a natural mutation? Would this not lead credence to this being a leak from their BSL-4 lab about twenty miles away from the Wuhan…

I have no credibility to answer this question, and I don't even know what any of the words on that page mean, but is it possible that it was always the same virus and just documented under two different names? After all, pneumonia is a symptom of coronavirus, so wouldn't it make sense that people thought it was just the "Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus" until later reports and information indicated it would actually be a "bat SARS-like coronavirus"?

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#45
post #30

I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here, but I'd also like an real investigation into whether the virus actually originated from the Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory. It's the only level 4 (BSL-4 highest rating) lab in all of China designated to handle the most dangerous pathogens. And it's located 20 miles from the reported epicenter in the wildlife market. It was first opened two years ago and at the time multi…

The odds of this naturally occurring in China are probably close to 1 in 4. And the odds of it happening in Wuhan are probably close to 3%. The odds of the Chinese government making a super virus based on Coronavirus seem smaller than that, and the odds of it escaping the laboratory might be decent, but when you combine them, it's pretty slim. If this were some super strain of Smallpox, that would make a more convinc…

> The odds of the Chinese government making a super virus based on Coronavirus seem smaller than that, and the odds of it escaping the laboratory might be decent, but when you combine them, it's pretty slim.

I don't think anyone is arguing that this is an outbreak of an unusually dangerous virus. It's just an unexpected outbreak of a new flu-levels-of-dangerous virus, and it happened suspiciously close to a BSL-4 facility. A facility like that stores dangerous viruses and works on them, it's not at all implausible somebody fucked up and something escaped containment.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#46
post #5

I'm amazed that there's not a movement to stop eating and being around animals as much world-wide, given that so much disease (and environmental damage) comes from consumption of and proximity to animals: - MERS-CoV: bats via dromedary camels - nCoV-2019: bats or snakes? - Influenza: pigs, birds - E. coli O157:H7: cows and other farm animals. ... (Edit: I mean along the lines of how safer sex is encouraged to prevent…

The worst thing you can do to the human immune system is to cease to expose it to pathogens.

And the second worse thing is to expose it to completely novel viruses. How about we expose it to as many common viruses as we want, but try to prevent novel viruses from popping up?

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#47

Here is an article from the Daily Mail that shows in a bit more detail what having a bat for supper looks like: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7920573/Revolting-f...

Here is a TV host forced to apologise for popularising bat soup.

https://summit.news/2020/01/25/chinese-government-forces-tv-...

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#48

President Xi has warned that the virus is spreading. His intervention seems to be unprecedented. Is it worse than what it seems to be? They have quarantined whole cities and are building a hospital at war scale especially for this. Maybe the Chinese know something that the world doesn't know yet.

My guess is, this is done because of Chunjie. For Chinese New year, people usually travel home to visit relatives. If the Chinese government wants to limit that, they need a very good reason, otherwise people will freak. So they have to exaggerate the danger, in order to be able to keep social peace when they quarantine cities.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#49
post #21

From what I've read it came from bats. Most probably bats being eaten.[1] Bats have been the source of at least 4 pandemics. It's interesting to note that current coronavirus spreading in China and the SARS outbreak of 2003 have two things in common: Both are from the coronavirus family, and both were passed from animals to humans in a wet market.[2] I tried to put together a page for coronavirus in China here where…

I've heard the bat eating theory, but the virus is airborne and infects the lungs. So it seems that eating a bat probably didn't cause this.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#50
post #30

I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here, but I'd also like an real investigation into whether the virus actually originated from the Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory. It's the only level 4 (BSL-4 highest rating) lab in all of China designated to handle the most dangerous pathogens. And it's located 20 miles from the reported epicenter in the wildlife market. It was first opened two years ago and at the time multi…

I dont know how much is conspiracy theory at this point, but it was said that they had small sars outbreak there before.
Post reply on HN