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

nationalgeographic.com

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

#171

Post by busymom0 »

nneonneo wrote: post #167
busymom0 wrote: post #160

Comparison between "Bat SARS-like coronavirus" and the "Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus" seems to show a 100% match: https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?RID=2PUA1EJK114&CMD... Bat SARS-like coronavirus WIV1 has been known since at least 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_SARS-like_coronavirus_WIV1 In 2019, CBC reported "Canadian government scientist under investigation trained staff at Level 4 lab in C…

Sorry, this is wild speculation, not fact. The “100% match” you cited is for one protein (and a small one, at that - just 75 amino acids long) which proves absolutely nothing (individual proteins can often be highly conserved - and amino acid alignment doesn’t guarantee that the underlying genes are even the same). SARS and MERS, highly similar viruses which emerged over the last 20 years, have a very similar emergen…

> Wuhan lab had anything to do with this outbreak

The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is the only lab in China designated for studying dangerous pathogens like SARS and Ebola. What are the chances of coincidence that Wuhan is also the center of this current outbreak?

Maybe one of the lab animals somehow leaked and ended up in the food market.

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

#172

Post by thinkingemote »

nneonneo wrote: post #169
jeffdavis wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that contradict the idea that a similar virus was found and then modifed in the lab?

So...the Wuhan scientists are modifying viruses in their BSL-4 lab (which is no joke when it comes to safety standards) and then just letting these things escape? Sorry, that’s very far fetched. Why can’t people accept that a virus like this could evolve naturally?

Its more likely to be accidentally released like by a worker with stuff on them as has happened previous times with SARs etc in similar viral lab in China ( and happened in other cases and countries including the UK) than intentionally released.

But it's also a hundred times more likely that the source is nature. However we should not discount the possiblity that viruses get out by accident as it's not uncommon even with top bio safety labs.

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

#173

Post by tzs »

Viruses are scary. My company switched to work at home maybe 18 months ago, so I no longer am exposed to the viruses of my coworkers.

At the grocery stores at which I buy most of my food I use the self checkout, so no interacting with humans there.

At McDonalds I order and pay at the kiosks, so no human interaction there except when they hand me the bag with my food. At Burger King and Wendy's I do order at the counter, so I am talking to another human who is maybe a meter or so in front of me.

Every three months I have to pick up prescription re-fills so deal with a human at the pharmacy, and perhaps stand in line there with other humans.

I live in a house in a low density neighborhood, with no other house nearer than 40 meters, although my neighbors on one side have an RV in their front yard that is only about 15 meters from me, with an older couple (their parents presumably) living in it. No human interaction here other than occasionally waving at someone walking their dog on the street in front of my house (about 20 meters away).

Yet I still get the occasional cold-like or flu-like illness in the winter. Who is passing on these viruses to me?

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

#174

Post by SubiculumCode »

jamesblonde wrote: post #138
SubiculumCode wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 3.8 may have since been revised downward....looking for the link again.

Different research groups are providing different estimates. But the estimates of estimates (model averaging) indicates that this epidemic has a good chance of sweeping the globe. Containment is needed to prevent it sweeping the globe, so we are at the mercy of the Chinese authorities...

We could pause international travel...but no one will make that decision until its already here..so

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

#175

Post by mrb »

tunesmith wrote: post #151
tempsy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be more concerned if the ones that are outside of China were dying at high rates. So far I haven’t heard any of those quarantined people actually dying. The ones in the US have been listed in fair condition and recovering.

General consensus so far seems to be about twice as fatal as the annual flu. (Which says nothing about transmissibility rate / R0, which they are still figuring out.) Really rough numbers, annual flu is around 0.1% , while the spanish flu was more like 2.5% So, not a pandemic in terms of fatality. General sense so far seems to be it's more of a big deal than the (run-of-the-mill) flu, less of a big deal than SARS. (K…

Care to quote a source for "twice as fatal as the flu"? Everything indicates it's way worse.

6 of the first 41 identified patients have died. That's a mortality rate of 15%. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Caveat: 41 is a very small sample, and the first patients are likely to have been the most severe cases (pre-existing conditions, weak immune systems, etc).

And when you take publicly reported statistics, 42 deaths out of 1441 confirmed cases, that's a mortality rate of 2.9%. But the confirmed cases are probably under-reported (but so are deaths)...

15% or 2.9% are 150-30 times worse than the flu mortality rate.

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

#176

Post by tomrod »

tzs wrote: post #173

Viruses are scary. My company switched to work at home maybe 18 months ago, so I no longer am exposed to the viruses of my coworkers. At the grocery stores at which I buy most of my food I use the self checkout, so no interacting with humans there. At McDonalds I order and pay at the kiosks, so no human interaction there except when they hand me the bag with my food. At Burger King and Wendy's I do order at the count…

Doorknobs, mail and Amazon delivery, sneezes upwind from your house, mosquitoes, rats, and such.

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

#177

Post by throwaway9193 »

blackrock wrote: post #168
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 You are displaying your ignorance here, with this statement. What is your quantification of "most"? Is it 75%? 90%? 95%? or 99%? Do you know "most" Chinese people? There are 1.4 billion people in China. Can you even fathom that number? Have you ever been to China? Do you even speak the language to make such a judgment? Let's be scientific here. The reality is…

Have you been to China? I think you would find that most people's (i.e. the vast majority of people you talk to) approach to health and medicine revolves around hot and cold energy (i.e. nonsensical superstition) and very little thought appears (from how people act) to be given to viruses/bacteria and how they might spread disease.

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

#178

Post by rukittenme »

tzs wrote: post #173

Viruses are scary. My company switched to work at home maybe 18 months ago, so I no longer am exposed to the viruses of my coworkers. At the grocery stores at which I buy most of my food I use the self checkout, so no interacting with humans there. At McDonalds I order and pay at the kiosks, so no human interaction there except when they hand me the bag with my food. At Burger King and Wendy's I do order at the count…

This may upset you... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206090650.h...

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

#179

Post by mr_toad »

leeshire wrote: post #118

I don't understand why people eat monkey or bats? if they have all these virus or diseases in them. It's 2020 we have more food in the world than we did years ago no need to eat a bat just grab an apple.

I’d rather catch a coronavirus than something like mad cow disease, anthrax, or tuberculosis, which all come from animals westerners eat.

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

#180

Post by mrb »

Based on documented facts and best epidemiological guesses about the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV, I think it will probably turn into a pandemic affecting most countries. Let's review:

  • human-to-human transmission while asymptomatic, truly the killer feature [1]
  • 15% mortality rate in first patients (6 of 41 are dead) [2]
  • cases/deaths doubling every 2 days [public data]
  • epidemiologist predicts 100x more infections in 10 days [3]
Caveats:

• mortality rate sample is small (41) and the first patients are likely to be the most severe cases (pre-existing conditions, weak immune systems, etc); so the true rate could be less.

• public reports of cases/deaths could be increasing slower than reported because Chinese authorities could be trying to be more truthful (IOW reported numbers are finally catching up w/reality); or alternatively public reports could be lagging reality because authorities could be increasingly hiding the facts or simply be less and less able to report and monitor as Wuhan is turning into a bigger unmanageable chaos every passing day

• availability of medicine may limit the outbreak. The pulmonologist who discovered the SARS coronavirus says they have several medicines ready: https://twitter.com/hhh05146721/status/1220953373622534145

[1] https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(...

[2] https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(...

[3] https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1

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