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High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

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Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#51

Post by nate_meurer »

echelon wrote: post #42
nate_meurer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paper describes how virologists in Wuhan engineered a "SARS-like" virus -- previously limited only to bats -- specifically to make it infective in humans via the ACE2 receptor. That's the same receptor used by the SARS-CoV-2 bug we're fighting now. Note that the paper was submitted 12 years ago. They've had a lot of time to work out the kinks, if they were so inclined. EDIT: I want to repeat what I've said in oth…

Why on earth would they do this? What sort of application does this have or serve? If it's a bioweapon, why was it published? Is there any concrete genetic or documented evidence to show COVID-19 is engineered? This is a big claim and has severe ramifications for China, if true.

According to the paper, they did it in order to figure out why SARS-CoV was able to infect humans, while numerous other SARS-like viruses are not. Their hyposthesis was that the critical feature is a particular sequence in the protein found on the "spike" that the virus uses to bind to host receptors. By constructing a new SARS-like virus with the desired spike protein, they were able to validate that hypothesis.

It seems to me that if there was any malign intent behind this work, they would not have published a paper on it. Obviously, that's doesn't preclude the possibility of an accidental release from the same lab twelve years later. As far as I know, there's no way to prove whether 2019's coronavirus was engineered in any way.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#53

Post by adrianN »

kijin wrote: post #44
Animats wrote: post #24

But not by enough. This epidemic has a growth rate (R) of at least 2. The article claims "One degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower R by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively." The March to July difference for New York City is only 19C. San Francisco, 9C. For both cities, humidity is relatively uniform year round. Even assuming this result is meaningful, it still leaves…

In many parts of China, it will be 30C hotter and 50%p more humid in the summer than it is now. The combination might reduce R to virtually nothing. In Japan, this could mean that it was the right decision to schedule the Olympics in the middle of summer after all.

I'm pretty sure that the Olympics will be cancelled. It's unlikely that we'll have a vaccine before then and Covid19 is well beyond containment at this point.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#54

Post by nate_meurer »

ploxiln wrote: post #40
nate_meurer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paper describes how virologists in Wuhan engineered a "SARS-like" virus -- previously limited only to bats -- specifically to make it infective in humans via the ACE2 receptor. That's the same receptor used by the SARS-CoV-2 bug we're fighting now. Note that the paper was submitted 12 years ago. They've had a lot of time to work out the kinks, if they were so inclined. EDIT: I want to repeat what I've said in oth…

SARS infected 8000 humans in 2002. It was a coronavirus. (That's why the current one gets the "-2" suffix.) Nature beat the researchers by a number of years (and they were presumably trying to figure out how).

According to the paper, you're exactly right.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#55

Post by spectramax »

thysultan wrote: post #50
Animats wrote: post #24

But not by enough. This epidemic has a growth rate (R) of at least 2. The article claims "One degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower R by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively." The March to July difference for New York City is only 19C. San Francisco, 9C. For both cities, humidity is relatively uniform year round. Even assuming this result is meaningful, it still leaves…

I think this serves to better explain the low case totals out of africa, but that might change in the near future.

Also, India which is not yet mentioned in the news, a country of 1+ billion people.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#56

Post by realusername »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #41

I am eagerly awaiting more studies into this subject. Something doesn't feel right about the relative lack of local transmission in e.g. Vietnam (temperatures over 30C at least in the south right now) compared to e.g. Italy (temperatures, what, 15C or lower in the north right now?). Cambodia's extremely low case count can easily be explained away by them not testing anyone, but Vietnam appears to be quite proactive w…

Vietnam has taken this epidemics 10x more seriously than Italy, that could just be the difference.

They are testing as much as they can, everybody who had contact with infected people are tracked down and quarantined, streets where you had infected people are closed down and disinfected, almost everybody wear masks, you have temperature checks & hydroalcoholic gel available in public areas, schools are fully closed since early January.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#57

Post by cambalache »

thysultan wrote: post #50
Animats wrote: post #24

But not by enough. This epidemic has a growth rate (R) of at least 2. The article claims "One degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower R by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively." The March to July difference for New York City is only 19C. San Francisco, 9C. For both cities, humidity is relatively uniform year round. Even assuming this result is meaningful, it still leaves…

I think this serves to better explain the low case totals out of africa, but that might change in the near future.

Why? Do you realize Africa is a huge continent with all kinds of weather right? https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/?continent=africa

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#58

Post by spectramax »

cambalache wrote: post #57
thysultan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this serves to better explain the low case totals out of africa, but that might change in the near future.

Why? Do you realize Africa is a huge continent with all kinds of weather right? https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/?continent=africa

Yes, but the average temperature in vast majority of the areas is higher than the avg temperature of say Europe. When we say Africa is warmer, it is a simplification simply by the virtue that its centroid closer to equator than Europe. Thus, we can say that it's warmer.

Side note: don't use rhetorical questions to respond to someone. It's demeaning. Rephrase "Why? Africa is a huge continent with all kinds of weather."

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#60

Post by dang »

svscam wrote: post #14
svscam wrote: post #11

Here's a likely related paper from 2007: https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899 In this study, a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-based pseudovirus system was employed to address these issues. Our results indicated that the SL-CoV S protein is unable to use ACE2 proteins of different species for cell entry and that SARS-CoV S protein also failed to bind the ACE2 molecule of the horseshoe bat, Rhinolophus pearsonii.…

Posts like this tend to get flagged quickly on HN. Meanwhile, you can freely conspiracy theorize all you like about the machinations of the CIA, NSA, etc., regardless of how little evidence you have. It's the same on other social media websites. Zero Hedge got deplatformed from Twitter for talking about this. The CCP is exerting a frightening chilling effect on public discourse, even in America.

> Meanwhile, you can freely conspiracy theorize all you like about the machinations of the CIA, NSA, etc., regardless of how little evidence you have

That's not true at all. Rather, there's randomness around what gets flagged and/or moderated. People read into that whatever patterns they want to see, or are already convinced are happening.

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