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NIH restarts bat virus grant

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Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#201

Post by shon »

criticalmass2 wrote: post #128
shon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The downside would be no vaccines for any diseases, as all vaccines are derived from "gain of function" research. There is also not conclusive evidence that this latest pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident. Every other catastrophic pandemic in human history emerged "naturally", and many more will continue to do so.

To clarify: are you saying that it is not possible to do [any] vaccine research in general without this specific type of gain-of-function research? Citations? Looking to educate myself.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#202

Post by [deleted] »

baja_blast wrote: post #194
criticalmass2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside would be no vaccines for any diseases, as all vaccines are derived from "gain of function" research. There is also not conclusive evidence that this latest pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident. Every other catastrophic pandemic in human history emerged "naturally", and many more will continue to do so.

But vaccine development can only be done with existing viruses circulating in humans. The mutations to the existing virus to test immunity escape are minimal and less risky. But mutating unknown animal/bat viruses to be transmissible towards humans to see how infectious it can possibly be only creates new risks, because if any of those viruses get out of the lab there will be no vaccine (since you can't test the effe…

[deleted]

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#203

Post by jMyles »

Name_Chawps wrote: post #198
jMyles wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand. But they're not unrelated. Sometimes a fact pattern reveals a conspiracy.

Your previous response indicates that you did not understand, and you are now backtracking.

Yes, I misinterpreted.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#204

Post by runsWphotons »

jjoonathan wrote: post #155
runsWphotons wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Countries which did little had better results. Arguable that all efforts outside protecting nursing homes were futile or harmful.

By "many countries" do you mean "Sweden, if you cut off the data right before their big wave"?

It isn't just Sweden and even where you may have some questions about the data, it is no small thing for countries which put fewer restrictions to have rates which are of the same magnitude as those with heavier restrictions, given the huge costs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rate...

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#205

Post by revelio »

shon wrote: post #201
criticalmass2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside would be no vaccines for any diseases, as all vaccines are derived from "gain of function" research. There is also not conclusive evidence that this latest pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident. Every other catastrophic pandemic in human history emerged "naturally", and many more will continue to do so.

To clarify: are you saying that it is not possible to do [any] vaccine research in general without this specific type of gain-of-function research? Citations? Looking to educate myself.

It's nonsense, GoF didn't seem to play any role in vaccine development. It's what virologists tell themselves and each other.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#206

Post by op00to »

willcipriano wrote: post #188
op00to wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think you're getting at - and please correct me if I'm wrong - but we should only protect citizens from external health risks greater than the most healthy young adult can bear. If you are disabled, ill, or otherwise more at risk for illnesses, you are not worthy to protect. Certainly not as much as a young adult.

At no point does any of that say that. Really none of what I said is even opinion at all, no idea how you got to that conclusion.

The initial great, great grandparent comment said something like "Florida had a horrible response to COVID". Your response was to state Florida has more elderly than other states, apparently refuting the fact that Florida's response to COVID was horrible. Why? Because it seems like mostly only old people died. This indicates that adequate precautions were not taken to protect the elderly.

The type of trolling you're doing isn't cute.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#207

Post by criticalmass2 »

shon wrote: post #201
criticalmass2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside would be no vaccines for any diseases, as all vaccines are derived from "gain of function" research. There is also not conclusive evidence that this latest pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident. Every other catastrophic pandemic in human history emerged "naturally", and many more will continue to do so.

To clarify: are you saying that it is not possible to do [any] vaccine research in general without this specific type of gain-of-function research? Citations? Looking to educate myself.

Quoting Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases:

"Some want to pass a law: All gain-of-function should be stopped. But if all gain-of-function stops, you will have no vaccines for flu. You will have no vaccines for any of the other diseases, because all of that manipulates a virus or a pathogen to gain a certain function to be able to make a vaccine."

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#208

Post by criticalmass2 »

defen wrote: post #189
criticalmass2 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't tell if this is a serious question, but the answer is: yes, obviously. Without the decades of research the death toll would have been orders of magnitude higher. Consider the platform technology revolution in how vaccines are made (and the highly effective vaccines). Structure-based immunogen design, that also helped with the rapid development of antivirals. Consider for example that there are zero recorded dea…

I'm not talking about virus research in general, I'm talking about the specific type of research EcoHealth Alliance was doing. You're not arguing that their research helped us develop hospital PPE, are you? My question is whether pre-pandemic research into hybrid coronaviruses was essential for the development of the vaccines or other treatments for COVID-19.

The purpose of the research was to contribute to our understanding of emergent viruses. I mentioned several other contributions of that class of research, namely vaccine and antiviral development. Understanding how viruses mutate also informs our understanding of what PPE is necessary to prevent the spread of infection. So yes actually, this type of research does help us develop appropriate hospital protocols with respect to PPE.

With respect to EcoHealth specifically, consider the following statement from the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases:

"And if you look at the viruses that the $120,000-a-year grant was given through EcoHealth to the Wuhan Institute to do surveillance on, and you look at the viruses that they studied that they published in the literature, and that was in all of their progress reports, those viruses could not possibly ever turn into SARS-CoV-2, even if they tried to turn them into SARS-CoV-2, because they were evolutionarily so far from SARS-CoV-2 that anybody who knows anything about virology would say there’s nothing you could do to those viruses that would turn them into SARS-CoV-2. Yet what gets conflated is that the N.I.H. funded them, therefore you are liable for the lab leak if it’s a lab leak. It had nothing to do with what we did, because the viruses were unable to be made into SARS-CoV-2."

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