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

#81

Post by throwawaylolx » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

corporateslave5 wrote: post #68

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) (28284:285…

What is this trying to say? It has been clear that the virus is SARS-like since the analysis published by the Shanghai team: http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCLS/doi/10...

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

#82

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #72

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't have a source per se, just somewhat high level of confidence based on the following (weak, circumstantial) evidence:

- There was a lot of bioweapons R&D done in the XX century[0]; it all seems to have been abandoned between the 70s and the 90s, but since the desire for it is not gone, it would be atypical for humanity if it really all ended;

- Biological sciences keep progressing; each year, developing bioweapons is easier than it was the year before, and since our control over biological systems grow, so (I believe) the allure of a controlled bioweapon.

- You have people like John Sotos - Intel's Chief Medical Officer and a colonel in the Air National Guard - delivering talks like [1], going all serious about the threat of future bioweapons. He seems to think that this is a real danger.

- My general tried and true heuristic that if something is within realms of technological feasibility and promises a clear economic or political benefit, it will be attempted, no matter how horrible it is.

--

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#List_of_BW_...

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY

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

#83

Post by svara » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

hisomehelppls wrote: post #26

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…

Here's the alignment between the complete nucleotide sequences for "bat SARS-like coronavirus" and the "Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus": https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Get&RID=2T49U0F...

As you can see, they are highly related (88.7% identity), but there are point mutations all over the place. The envelope protein is very short, and given this rate of mutations it is not unlikely to find an identical stretch of this length, particularly if the coding sequence is under selective pressure. In fact, the nucleotide sequences for the envelope protein differ in 3 silent point mutations (you can go to alignment view, the sequence starts with "ATGATGAACCGAC" and ends with "TGGTCTAA", total length is 228 nucleotides.)

So no, this is not evidence of this being artificially generated, just that they're highly related.

Edit: To put this in perspective, the original SARS virus from 2003 is 84.9% identical to the "bat SARS-like coronavirus" (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Get&RID=2T5DXWU...) and 82.3% identical to the Wuhan seafood market virus (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Get&RID=2T5GRS8...).

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

#84

Post by Aperocky » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:14 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…

> I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here

Yes.

All of the initial cases are people who have been to a specific seafood market, which also sells wild animals.

You would be suggesting that somehow Biosafety Laboratory dropped it's virus specifically in that market, which sold animals known to naturally carry the coronavirus.

I call bs based on principal: Simple explanation is almost always right over complex ones.

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

#85

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

verroq wrote: post #79

CydeWeys wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't underestimate how effectively a totalitarian and surveillance state like China can be in discouraging behaviors they don't want. People aren't willing to risk their lives just to eat exotic animals. And that could be what's at stake here; witness what happened to some of the people involved in the melamine baby milk formula scandal.

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

#86

Post by Enginerrrd » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #72

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is a good question. The answer is pretty definitive, that yes, this is a thing that superpowers have been confirmed to do in the past. There's much less to go on about current work, but we can look at the type of specialized equipment that is getting built or purchased by various nations and make inferences, and trust that intelligence agencies are making substantiated conclusions. To excerpt from a Congressional Research Service report[0] in 2008:

"No nation publicly acknowledges either an offensive biological weapons (BW) program or stockpile. Examination of unclassified sources indicates that several nations are considered, with varying degrees of certainty, to have some BW capability. These are: China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Taiwan."

The most data exists on the Soviet Union. Defectors from the soviet union had a lot to say about Biopreparat.[1] Not all of the rumors have been substantiated, but they did have a number of incidents that strongly suggest they had the souped up versions of several agents defectors claimed they did like anthrax[2], smallpox[3] and marburg[4]. In particular, the smallpox incident[3] that occurred had a high percentage of cases that progressed to the hemorrhagic form which indicates unusual virility in the strain.

There is also evidence of at least ongoing research on those agents. One researcher at vector died in 2004 from pricking herself with a needle filled with Ebola[5]. Whether that's offensive in nature is very difficult to determine. However there's definitely some transparency issues that have increased with time at this facility after a change in leadership in ~2004 or 2005.

[0] http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles/CRS_2-20-08.pdf

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopreparat

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_smallpox_incident

[4] Placeholder. Having a hard time finding where the info on Dr. Ustinov came from. This might be worth a read: https://weaponews.com/history/65348565-strain-u-the-tragedy-...

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/world/russian-scientist-d...

Most subject matter experts seem pretty convinced this is happening.

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

#87

Post by throw_54313 » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

bobjordan wrote: post #33

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...

Those pictures reminded me of when my American friends posted a video of them making possum stew.

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

#88

Post by newnewpdro » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:22 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…

If your population is largely inoculated, which you can do secretly by spiking "flu shots" and having a high %age of cooperation in getting said shots, then you can use those viruses as weapons without threatening your own people.

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

#89

Post by stevens32 » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

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…

People who would pay attention to warnings like that are probably not the same demographic working in the wet-markets in the first place

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

#90

Post by moralestapia » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #84

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'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here Yes. All of the initial cases are people who have been to a specific seafood market, which also sells wild animals. You would be suggesting that somehow Biosafety Laboratory dropped it's virus specifically in that market, which sold animals known to naturally carry the coronavirus. I call bs based on principal: Simple explanation is almost always right over complex…

Points of view ... for me the simplest explanation seems to be one linked to the other.

The good news is that we are rational and able to find explanations based on evidence. Let's see what comes out in a few weeks.