New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by reaperducer » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

neffy wrote: post #39

DevX101 wrote: 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 think it's a perfectly valid question, although the wildlife market is equally valid on the evidence we have. We know that the Chinese Government is hugely overreacting to public information at this point in time - terrible as the published numbers are they are not that out of whack with a normal bad flu epidemic, which also causes significantly higher death rates. So it's either the actual death rates are higher (…

We know that the Chinese Government is hugely overreacting

Do we know that? All of the criticism I've seen has been of the government under-reacting. In fact, in a speech yesterday Xi told the local authorities that they weren't doing enough.

Non-Chinese estimates (as of 24 January) are that there's 6,000 people infected vs. 1,300 from the Chinese government.

The 6,000 figure comes from the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems at Northeastern University in Boston: https://www.mobs-lab.org/2019ncov.html

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

#62

Post by khuey » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #15

zbjornson wrote: post #2

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…

Basically all human diseases started out as zoonosis as humans for a long time we’re too few to be a viable reservoir.

And we have the capacity to eliminate pathogens that don't have animal reservoirs. Smallpox is extinct and polio is relatively close.

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

#63

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #51

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I really hope nobody is working on the (insanely irrational) idea of creating a super virus. There's no way in hell you could use that as a weapon of war because there's no way you could ensure it doesn't leave the target country. And even the act of trying to make one is insanely dangerous; if it accidentally gets out, which is easily possible, now you're killing all your own people. I want to say that all governmen…

There are powers definitely working on it. "Super" just doesn't mean "kills as much people as efficiently as possible". Ability to control the destruction is a crucial feature of any weapon. In the past, this perhaps meant viruses that fizzle out quickly, so they could be deployed on enemy territory. Today, with recent breakthroughs in genetic engineering, that likely means aiming for high selectivity - targeting ethnicity or lineage.

Ultimately, people will be working on it no matter what, because bioweapons are to molecular biology as nuclear weapons are to nuclear physics. A crude and violent application of a field of knowledge of vital, cross-cutting importance to many areas of life.

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

#64

Post by khuey » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #12

dghughes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bats carry many viruses but are asymptomatic. Pigs can contract viruses from other animals, they mutate and then it's passed on to humans. A bat biting a pig is probably the cause of many weird viruses. You also have to wonder if the African Swine flu running rampant through China is also part of the cause.

> wonder if the African Swine flu running rampant through China is also part of the cause You mean as in it having transformed and evolved from the swine flu?

The ASF and the 2019-nCoV viruses are not related at all.

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

#65

Post by rdtsc » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #40

DevX101 wrote: 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…

China has had wet markets since forever basically, how often do outbreaks of this magnitude occur in other such markets in other cities without those kind of labs. If this was a regular occurrence it might not be significant.

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

#66

Post by moulei » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #43

moulei wrote: 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 f…

https://amp.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-people-chi...

"Wuhan's party secretary and governor cannot soothe the people's anger"

Faith is losing but but only the local governments. The vast majority of ordinary people still believe that the central government is being hoodwinked by local governments, and taking their anger on them. They still trust the central government would be responsible for them. It's ridiculous, but it's true.

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

#67

Post by adamiscool8 » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #61

neffy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a perfectly valid question, although the wildlife market is equally valid on the evidence we have. We know that the Chinese Government is hugely overreacting to public information at this point in time - terrible as the published numbers are they are not that out of whack with a normal bad flu epidemic, which also causes significantly higher death rates. So it's either the actual death rates are higher (…

We know that the Chinese Government is hugely overreacting Do we know that? All of the criticism I've seen has been of the government under-reacting. In fact, in a speech yesterday Xi told the local authorities that they weren't doing enough. Non-Chinese estimates (as of 24 January) are that there's 6,000 people infected vs. 1,300 from the Chinese government. The 6,000 figure comes from the Laboratory for the Modelin…

It seems like the local government under-reacted, and now the central government is (hopefully) over-reacting.

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

#68

Post by corporateslave5 » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

DevX101 wrote: 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…

Take this with a grain of salt, copied from reddit:

Read this website:

http://virological.org/

Specifically this one:

http://virological.org/t/ncovs-relationship-to-bat-coronavir...

and this one:

http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345

Basically

Wuhan virus is essentially SARs

http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345

"Anyone notice two ‘accessory’ ORFs not annotated in nCoV? Orf13 (aka 9b) (28284:28577) and Orf14 (28734:28955) . One is ~ 70% ID and other ~ 90% to syntenous ORFs in BAT SARS 2017 ?"

Translation:

Some very specific parts of the genome are matching almost exactly, which only occurs in almost identical viruses. The ORFs are tagged parts of genes, this researcher is discussing how Chinese researchers "omitted" parts of their gene annotation. Some back story is the gene sequences have been shared openly so they can be studied, Chinese messed with how they annotated the sequences.

To understand this better, here is the wikipedia definition of 'accessory gene' (ORF is just a chunk of the gene):

"The variable or accessory genome (also: flexible, dispensable genome) refers to genes not present in all strains of a species. These include genes present in two or more strains or even genes unique to a single strain only, for example, genes for strain specific adaptation such as antibiotic resistance."

The researcher is saying specific strain markers are matching between the 2017 virus and this one. Which is impossible, unless...

Not only that, its extremely similar to a SARs taken from bats in 2017! The comment on this linked thread is from a Harvard researcher, she is hinting at a biological link to a lab strain. This virus escaped from Wuhan lab

Another hint from another researcher

The comment on this page from Kristian G. Andersen is mildly disturbing (http://archive.is/O1vhN)... As Associate Professor, Scripps Research, Director of Infectious Disease Genomics, SRTI etc etc I assume he knows what he's talking about when he states: "That means that the outbreak was detected almost immediately after the first case, which - given that this is flu season in China - is just amazing. Detecting an outbreak of pneumonia (similar to flu) of a novel coronavirus that fast is truly impressive."

Basically they are saying its weird to have found this to be a novel virus so fast. Its so uncommon, how could they have done this? Its an oddity

Washington Times article

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w...

UPDATE

More evidence this virus came from a lab!!!!

Read through this Harvard biologists twitter:

https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1220377043210317831

Specifically:

"Even has almost identical accessory genes to 2018 bat ‘SARS’ (not all in new database annotations)"

Shes saying this virus has already been seen and is logged in a database!

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

#69

Post by scarejunba » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #5

zbjornson wrote: post #2

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.

Clearly this is bullshit since exposing it to a sufficient load of HIV fucks it up proper. So we have an existence proof of at least one thing worse than "ceasing to expose it to pathogens".

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

#70

Post by blackrock » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

A recent Time article [1] is theorizing that the source may come from wet markets.

It also theorized that the source of the SARS virus might have originated from an infected cat. And Ebola may have originated from infected bat feces, that might have landed on a girl’s toy, which she then put into her mouth. And the MERS virus in the Middle East may have come from an infected camel.

This appears to be a logical and scientific deduction.

So for this Coronavirus, it appears to follow the same pattern. Infected animal feces mutated into some virus, that made the transmission to humans.

My theory, is that perhaps an infected animal’s feces, may have mixed with other fluids, like blood, from freshly slaughtered animals, and mutated into something that infected a human with a weakened immune system (easy target), who then transmitted it to other healthy humans by contact.

On one hand, it does seem that the best way to guarantee that you’re sourcing your meat from a fresh and healthy animal, is to pick the animal that you want, and to slaughter it on the spot. This means that the meat vendor does not have to maintain a refrigeration system, and you don’t introduce other chemicals or salts to preserve your meat.

But the problem is that you have to keep the animals in captivity, and the meat vendor must handle, and clean all their urine and feces. And when animals get sick, their feces and urine gets infected, thus you increase the probability of an outbreak like this.

What’s the solution? Maybe China must begin eliminating wet markets, and eliminate the practice of keeping live animals in captivity, in order to minimize the incubation, mutation, and the transmission of such viruses. And instead, to begin using a refrigeration system, to preserve slaughtered animals.

[1] https://time.com/5770904/wuhan-coronavirus-wild-animals/