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

nationalgeographic.com

71–80 of 350 posts

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

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eth…

Do you have a source about people working on it?

Or is this a blacks op kind of thing so no one would admit to it publicly anyway, thus making it an unfalsifiable statement?

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

#73

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…

Yes. There’s a biology from Harvard who has noticed this. I think people are catching on it’s from the lab. I’ve seen PhD level biologists on twitter making the same observations

Here it is:

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 ?"

This was a lab break.

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

#74
How common is for SARS coronaviruses to share the same envelope proteins? I downloaded 200 CoV envelope proteins from NCBI, and I couldn't find any pair of identical proteins. As someone unfamiliar with virology, I'm curious if there are any explanations for how come the protein envelope of 2019-nCoV[1] is the same as the protein envelope described by the Institute of Military Medicine Nanjing Command 2 years ago in the unpublished paper "Genomic characterization and infectivity of a novel SARS-like coronavirus in Chinese bats"[3]? Is it just a coincidence? The bats used in the paper were from Zhejiang not Hubei.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/YP_009724392.1

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/AVP78033.1

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6135831/

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

#75
post #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 actu…

Pneumonia is just an infection of the lungs, and that can be caused by many things, including aspiration. So by your logic, all things that cause headaches are actually the same virus because they all cause headaches.

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

#76
post #39
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 (…

It seems like they are reacting too late, and under-reporting.

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

#77
What exacerbates the spread of these viruses is the lack of indoor heating in South China during the winter. I wonder how much china could reduce these problems by just allowing people to heat their homes the way they do up north?

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

#78

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…

Yes. There’s a biology from Harvard who has noticed this. I think people are catching on it’s from the lab. I’ve seen PhD level biologists on twitter making the same observations Here it is: 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…

Thank you, exactly the informed reply I was hoping for. Now let's hope the rest of HN sees this buried half-way down the thread.

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

#79
post #23

Key quote from the article: > “If we were to shut the wildlife markets, a lot of these outbreaks would be a thing of the past,” says Ian Lipkin, director of Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity, whose lab worked with Chinese officials to develop early diagnostic tests for SARS. > That’s because both SARS and the new outbreak are zoonotic, meaning these diseases started in animals before spreading t…

Maybe (hopefully?) China will shut down these markets after this outbreak. They've been known to take serious measures in the past when necessary. Surely the benefit of these markets cannot outweigh their costs (including on the local wildlife, not just infectious diseases).

Won’t that just drive it underground? Then nobody would even know where it started when the next outbreak happens.

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

#80

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.

I have a friend who teaches in China and according to him everyone is extremely worried. People aren't going out, wearing masks when they do, and so forth.
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