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Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

sciencemag.org

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Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#121

Post by corporate_shi11 »

yurlungur wrote: post #52

The market resides in the heart of the city so it could be that there was some other route of transmission through carriers without symptoms, animals etc. To claim that this came from a lab certain requires more evidence than its mere existence. The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic.

>"The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic."

This is no longer true. See:

'Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag'

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1

These are findings from IIT researchers who have found "uncanny" similarities between nCov and HIV which could increase virality.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#122

Post by ianburrell »

tgtweak wrote: post #100
jmccorm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control. I believe this was based on the activities of those first infected along with matching environmental samples at the market. Hope this helps explain the attribution better.

Have they seen this strain among animal populations? It seems logical to establish that animal populations can carry it, and in doing so it should be traceable there. It seems in the avian flu they had established very early on the lineage of it. It seems very unlikely that they will not be able to identify patient zero. There was a very far out article on zerohedge (not making any claims as to the legitimacy of the…

This coronavirus is close to some found in bats and 80% similar to SARS which came from bats through civets. Wouldn’t expect exact strain to be found in wild cause have to mutate to jump to humans. The question is how got to humans from bats since don’t think was direct connection. One paper suggested snakes but others don’t think that is likely.

https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu-theo...

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#123

Post by longtom »

corporate_shi11 wrote: post #121
yurlungur wrote: post #52

The market resides in the heart of the city so it could be that there was some other route of transmission through carriers without symptoms, animals etc. To claim that this came from a lab certain requires more evidence than its mere existence. The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic.

>"The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic." This is no longer true. See: 'Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag' https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1 These are findings from IIT researchers who have found "uncanny" similarities between nCov and HIV which could increase vir…

This finding has been debunked in the meanwhile though. The suspicious inserts are fairly short and NOT unique to HIV.

See these threads:

https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1223337991168380928

https://twitter.com/bblarsen1/status/1223343688400527360

Seems the entire publish and peer-review cycle occurs on the scale of hours or days now, lol.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#124

Post by hcheung »

superzamp wrote: post #29
allovernow wrote: post #2

There is a recently opened P4 biolab in Wuhan within miles of the seafood market in question, with researchers who have recently been working with and publishing on the topic of Corona viruses, including research on human transmission. Not to be sensationalist, and personally I think the title is alarmist, but are a number of suspicious elements to this story that are worth examining: https://medium.com/@siradrianbon…

Currently reading a (French) book regarding France-China industrial espionage and relations that was published well before the virus outbreak. Funnily enough, the author describes quite extensively how this P4 in Wuhan came into existence and all the subsequent problems faced by France to get China to honor the deal. I quote/translate: "In the course of these fifteen years, China has several times failed to live up t…

Would be an interesting read if there is an English version of the book available.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#125

Post by [deleted] »

ggffryuuj wrote: post #101
svara wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of days ago I posted a link to the BLASTN sequence alignment between the 2003 SARS virus and the Wuhan virus in a comment on one of the other discussions here. You can see they are closely related, at about 88% sequence identity. There are point mutations spread more or less evenly over the entire genome. This is how evolution works on genomes, and basically rules out genetic engineering, since researchers w…

The community is dying. I’ve been here since 2013. Lobste.rs is currently the place to be but it’s small and is only for programming topics.

[deleted]

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#126

Post by [deleted] »

sjwalter wrote: post #112

The idea of this being an engineered virus wittingly unleashed on the world by some malevolent Party conspirators strains credulity--the notion is preposterous, especially from a country as obsessed with internal stability as China. However, the Wuhan pathogen research laboratory is still a worthy source to consider relating to this virus. Accidents DO happen, and China has a history of making mistakes leading to dan…

[deleted]

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#127

Post by mrscottson »

sjwalter wrote: post #112

The idea of this being an engineered virus wittingly unleashed on the world by some malevolent Party conspirators strains credulity--the notion is preposterous, especially from a country as obsessed with internal stability as China. However, the Wuhan pathogen research laboratory is still a worthy source to consider relating to this virus. Accidents DO happen, and China has a history of making mistakes leading to dan…

Looking at the recent history of the US, UK, and South Africa engineering biological weapons and assassinating the head of the UN, this seems plausible.

https://youtu.be/N7ZZCDCD1-E

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#128

Post by droithomme »

yurlungur wrote: post #52

The market resides in the heart of the city so it could be that there was some other route of transmission through carriers without symptoms, animals etc. To claim that this came from a lab certain requires more evidence than its mere existence. The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic.

> so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic

True, it's no single expert. It's experts. The HIV-1 insertions, made at functional points, are reasonably suspicious and worthy of further analysis.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#129

Post by IIAOPSW »

ajross wrote: post #102
perennate wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read anything in the posted article that indicates that the China-based researchers think it came from a lab or looks synthetic. So I didn't understand why you are responding to a claim that they aren't making.

The virology lab thing is a very popular conspiracy theory. Really the only evidence is that the virus started in the general viscinity of the lab, and that the lab was (somewhat vaguely, but not completely implausibly) suspected of doing bioweapons research. It's worth rebutting. The nonsense is a little out of control.

A conspiracy theory is a symptom of what people already suspect and believe about those in positions of authority. In this case the suspicion is that the epidemic is a result of a preventable accident and the incompetence and corner-cutting of the lab is being covered up to save face. People believe it because safety endangering corruption, saving face, and covering up industrial accidents are all very prevalent in Chinese society. In recent memory there's been high profile cases like the tainted milk powder, the HSR accident (that was literally buried), the explosion in tian jin etc.
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