Just curious, anyone have a plan, or preps for global pandemic?

[Saul]

My understanding is that the genetic structure of the virus is such, that it would be impossible that it was a virus that was modified in a lab.

I have no love of Communist China ( and no opinion of Faucci) -- but the "modified virus" hypothesis is IMO thoroughly implausible.

It's easy for an outraged US public to look for a demon to blame for the pandemic.

   --  Saul

[AlPater]

2 hours ago, Gordo said:

If there was a natural origin it seems like an awfully big coincidence that the epicenter just HAPPENED to be in the very location of this lab, haha.

It seems to me perfectly natural that the lab would be located near where the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome originated.  And where its cousin COVID-19 would originate naturally.

[Saul]

Yes.  It is a coincidence.

  --  Saul

[Gordo]

On 7/26/2021 at 9:22 PM, AlPater said:

It seems to me perfectly natural that the lab would be located near where the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome originated.  And where its cousin COVID-19 would originate naturally.

The SARS (2002) epidemic began in the Guangdong province.  Wuhan is in Hubei Province.  Wuhan was the epicenter of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.  The questionable lab screwing around with dangerous covid viruses was in Wuhan and they had serious known safety violations before the outbreak.

On 7/26/2021 at 6:59 PM, Saul said:

My understanding is that the genetic structure of the virus is such, that it would be impossible that it was a virus that was modified in a lab.

See: 

 

I don't have the expertise to evaluate it, but the journal nature is pretty reputable, and these researchers have provided an interesting, peer reviewed set of analysis that supports the lab leak theory.

In other news, India is now reporting that a whopping 2/3rds of their population likely have SARS-CoV-2 antibodies based on sampling data!  I guess that explains why the daily case numbers there have fallen off a cliff. UK case numbers also seem to be dropping fast.  All things considered, India's death toll is remarkably low if they really had that many infections.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Gordo

[Sibiriak]

 

47 minutes ago, Gordo said:

India's death toll is remarkably low...

Official Indian statistics are suspect.

Three New Estimates of India’s All-Cause Excess Mortality during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abhishek Anand , Justin Sandefur and Arvind Subramanian July 20, 2021

Download PDF

 

Quote

India lacks an authoritative estimate of the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic. We report excess mortality estimates from three different data sources from the pandemic’s start through June 2021.

First, extrapolation of state-level civil registration from seven states suggests 3.4 million excess deaths.

Second, applying international estimates of age-specific infection fatality rates (IFR) to Indian seroprevalence data implies a higher toll of around 4 million.

Third, our analysis of the Consumer Pyramid Household Survey, a longitudinal panel of over 800,000 individuals across all states, yields an estimate of 4.9 million excess deaths.

Each of these estimates has shortcomings and they also diverge in the pattern of deaths between the two waves of the pandemic.

Estimating COVID-deaths with statistical confidence may prove elusive.

But all estimates suggest that the death toll from the pandemic is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count of 400,000; they also suggest that the first wave was more lethal than is believed. Understanding and engaging with the data-based estimates is necessary because in this horrific tragedy the counting—and the attendant accountability—will count for now but also the future.

 

A bleak assessment by the great Indian writer Arundhati Roy:

Quote

The second wave of coronavirus has retreated, after leaving an estimated 4 million Indians dead. The official government figure for the number of deaths is a tenth of that – 400,000.

In Narendra Modi’s dystopia, even as the smoke dwindled in crematoriums and the earth settled in graveyards, gigantic hoardings appeared on our streets saying “Thank you Modiji”. (An expression of the people’s gratitude-in-advance for the “free vaccine” that remains largely unavailable, and which 95% of the population is yet to receive.)

As far as Modi’s government is concerned, any attempt to tabulate the true death toll is a conspiracy against India – as if the millions more who died were simply actors who lay down spitefully in the shallow, mass graves that you saw in aerial photos, or floated themselves into rivers disguised as corpses, or cremated themselves on city sidewalks, motivated solely by the desire to sully India’s international reputation.

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Sibiriak

[Saul]

8 hours ago, Gordo said:

the lab leak theory

Lab leak theory is of course possible --; that's not the same as "modified in a lab and accidentally released".  Again, the genetic structure of the virus is not that of a genetically modified organism.

Most probably, it simply came directly from an animal.

(BTW, a forum member  -- one the "genetically modified believers" -- posted an article, published in Nature, that indicated that the Ace receptor of the pangolin (a cat-like mammal) resembles that of humans fairly closely.  So, it may be that the coronavirus went from a bat  to a pangolin to people -- of course, with mutations occurring at each step..  Thankfully, North American bats, unlike Asian bats, so far house no coronaviruses. I've seen an article somewhere -- possibly Science News -- about efforts being made to keep it that way.)

I would guess, BTW, the reason why Nature published the article, was the interesting information about how the ACE receptors of several animals resembled -- or didn't resemble -- the ACE receptors of people.

  --  Saul

[Todd Allen]

1 hour ago, Saul said:

Lab leak theory is of course possible --; that's not the same as "modified in a lab and accidentally released".  Again, the genetic structure of the virus is not that of a genetically modified organism.

Most probably, it simply came directly from an animal.

Led by Science: The COVID-19 Origin Story SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS Opening Remarks of Dr. Steven C. Quay, MD, PhD

https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Steven-Quay-Prepared-Remarks-26-June-2021-12-230-EST-FINAL.pdf

Quote

As inconvenient as it is, I believe the evidence conclusively establishes that the COVID pandemic was not a natural process but instead came from a laboratory in Wuhan China, and that it has the fingerprints of genetic manipulation through a process called ‘gain-of-function’ research. There are six undisputed facts that support this hypothesis.

 

[Gordo]

5 hours ago, Saul said:

Again, the genetic structure of the virus is not that of a genetically modified organism.

Based on what?  I don't know why you'd post such a statement without at least a link to some credible expert source that supports it.

Did you read: Lab leak theory, once 'political dynamite,' gains credibility in new study

or the associated study published in nature?

From that link: "the pangolin coronavirus does not resemble SARS-CoV-2. Crucially, it lacks a key genetic signature of SARS-CoV-2 called a furin cleavage site. Also, pangolins are rare and, contrary to reports from early 2020, are not traded in the wildlife markets of Wuhan. Last month, a joint research team from Chinese and Western institutions published a survey of 47,381 different individual animals, from 38 species, sold at Wuhan markets between May 2017 and November 2019. During that time, not a single pangolin or bat was sold in the entire city."

 

What virologists do have is genetic code. On June 6, physicist Richard Muller and physician Steven Quay published an article in the Wall Street Journal pointing out that the coronavirus contained a genetic sequence called double CGG that is a hallmark of laboratory experiments with viruses. That same sequence is rarely found in nature.

The double CGG sequence is found at the critical furin cleavage site — the very same feature that the Australians had found lacking in pangolin coronaviruses.

Fidopiastis, the CalPoly microbiologist, found the presence of that sequence curious as well. The coronavirus “doesn’t appear to have been circulating long enough prior to being noticed to have evolved a receptor so well optimized for human cells,” he told Yahoo News. “Thus, the lab manipulation scenario is far more likely than this happening by chance.”

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Gordo

[Saul]

Gordo, I didn't say that the native pangolin coronavirus was the ancestor of the Covid-19.  The possibility that a bat coronavirus first infected a pangolin,, mutated,, and later infected humans has been hypothesized.  One of the reasons this seems POSSIBLE is that the pangolin is the only animal that has been found to have an ACE RECEPTOR that resembles the human ACE receptor (not even monkey or ape ACE receptors come close to the human ACE receptor).

I don't believe -- or disbeleve -- that pangolins were the immediate intermediary host, from (probably) an Assian bat coronavirus. No one knows which animal was the original, or intermediate, source.

We  still don't know the exact path from animals to man of most deadly coronaviruses -- MERS, SARS, others.  We may never know it for Covid-19.

30 minutes ago, Gordo said:

Fidopiastis, the CalPoly microbiologist, found the presence of that sequence curious as well. The coronavirus “doesn’t appear to have been circulating long enough prior to being noticed to have evolved a receptor so well optimized for human cells

Yes.  That's why almost all virologists (not microbiolists) believe that there was probably one or more intermediate host(s)  between (most likely) some asian bats.  Whatever this microbioligist says, there are many coronaviruses in Asian (but not North American) bats.

  --  Saul

P.S.:  Virologists are (in a vast majority) in the belief -- from the genetic structure of the virus -- that it could not have had it's genome tweaked in a laboratory.  You can easily find "nay" sayers.  The political pressure of both democrats and republicans is to blame a Chinese laboratory.

But viruses aren't elected into existence.

😉

 

[AlPater]

Evidence for SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses circulating in bats and pangolins in Southeast Asia.
Wacharapluesadee S, et al. 
Nat Commun. 2021. 
PMID: 33563978 Free PMC article.
Abstract
Among the many questions unanswered for the COVID-19 pandemic are the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and the potential role of intermediate animal host(s) in the early animal-to-human transmission. The discovery of RaTG13 bat coronavirus in China suggested a high probability of a bat origin. Here we report molecular and serological evidence of SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses (SC2r-CoVs) actively circulating in bats in Southeast Asia. Whole genome sequences were obtained from five independent bats (Rhinolophus acuminatus) in a Thai cave yielding a single isolate (named RacCS203) which is most related to the RmYN02 isolate found in Rhinolophus malayanus in Yunnan, China. SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies were also detected in bats of the same colony and in a pangolin at a wildlife checkpoint in Southern Thailand. Antisera raised against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of RmYN02 was able to cross-neutralize SARS-CoV-2 despite the fact that the RBD of RacCS203 or RmYN02 failed to bind ACE2. Although the origin of the virus remains unresolved, our study extended the geographic distribution of genetically diverse SC2r-CoVs from Japan and China to Thailand over a 4800-km range. Cross-border surveillance is urgently needed to find the immediate progenitor virus of SARS-CoV-2.

[Gordo]

29 minutes ago, Saul said:

The political pressure of both democrats and republicans is to blame a Chinese laboratory.

Given that the US government was funding this lab, and it was originally built and jointly operated by the French, I'm sure there is a lot of political pressure to find a NATURAL ORIGIN story to save face for everyone involved (including Fauchi).  The fact that the Chinese have bent over backwards to prevent anyone from investigating the lab may be telling (or maybe they just don't like foreigners poking around their labs who knows).  And you still have the issue of "the coronavirus contained a genetic sequence called double CGG that is a hallmark of laboratory experiments with viruses. That same sequence is rarely found in nature".

Of all the possible places where the epidemic could have started in China, it just happened to be in THE very city where this sketchy lab was known to be doing research and experiments on collected bat coronaviruses... and you aren't the least bit skeptical about that coincidence?   China is a big country with over 100 cities that have >1 million population.  Unless there are similar labs screwing around with collected coronaviruses all over China that I don't know about, the odds seem pretty low on a natural origin outbreak originating from this particular location.  I'm not saying its impossible but come on man...

 

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Gordo

[Saul]

45 minutes ago, Gordo said:

maybe they just don't like foreigners poking around their labs

Yes. China is very transparent.

😃

Ha Ha.

  --  saul

[mccoy]

2 hours ago, AlPater said:

Although the origin of the virus remains unresolved,

That's it, at the end the zoonotic hypothesis remains unproven.

[AlPater]

4 hours ago, mccoy said:

7 hours ago, AlPater said:

Although the origin of the virus remains unresolved,

That's it, at the end the zoonotic hypothesis remains unproven.

Although the origin of the virus remains unresolved,  our study extended the geographic distribution of genetically diverse SC2r-CoVs from Japan and China to Thailand over a 4800-km range. Cross-border surveillance is urgently needed to find the immediate progenitor virus of SARS-CoV-2."

I think neither the zoonotic nor "the Chinese scientists screwed up" hypothesis will ever be proven.  Hypotheses are not proof.

[mccoy]

4 hours ago, AlPater said:

I think neither the zoonotic nor "the Chinese scientists screwed up" hypothesis will ever be proven.  Hypotheses are not proof.

I agree that both are presently hypotheses, but maybe one day there might be some conclusive evidence. Maybe.

[Gordo]

Looks like things are getting interesting again in China, despite the low number of cases reported by the STATE RUN media, they are already doing significant lockdowns and have even completely shut down one international airport.

China hit by worst Covid outbreak since Wuhan

Worldometer is showing quite a large worldwide spike in new cases over the last 24 hours.  It seems to me at this time that the delta variant is probably going to sweep through every country that hasn't had it yet, and the result will probably be similar to the UK in countries with high vaccination rates, and similar to India in countries with low vaccination rates.  Either way, I'd expect most people to be exposed to it, and if we're lucky, the whole thing will just flame out pretty fast and we can be done with it.  

[Saul]

1 hour ago, Gordo said:

and similar to India in countries with low vaccination rates.

China falls into that category -- and the Chinese vaccines are not very effective.

  --  Saul

[mccoy]

On 7/30/2021 at 8:20 PM, Gordo said:

Either way, I'd expect most people to be exposed to it, and if we're lucky, the whole thing will just flame out pretty fast and we can be done with it.  

In Italy they say it now constitutes 95% of the infected cases. We maybe lucky, or we may be unlucky and hit another more lethal variant: the epsilon, the zeta, the eta, the theta....

I'm often thinking about a virus with the characteristics of both SARSCOV2 and ebola. That would mean something like a doomsday, considering the relatively non-lethal SARSCOV2 resulted in what we know. 

[Ron Put]

On 7/3/2021 at 12:03 PM, AlPater said:

Did you read the "Limitations" section on the second paper you present, Ron?  And the first paper is a mouse study.  Really, Ron?

Yeah, Al, really...  Did you bother to read them before you opined to slam them, without addressing any of the substance?

These are real studies based on research and facts, as opposed to the fearmongering opinion piece you posted, to which I responded initially. You can disagree with their conclusions, but you need to address them and explain why, if you do.

 

4 hours ago, mccoy said:

3 hours ago, mccoy said:

In Italy they say it now constitutes 95% of the infected cases. We maybe lucky, or we may be unlucky and hit another more lethal variant: the epsilon, the zeta, the eta, the theta....

I'm often thinking about a virus with the characteristics of both SARSCOV2 and ebola. That would mean something like a doomsday, considering the relatively non-lethal SARSCOV2 resulted in what we know. 

None of the variants are likely to be resistant to the immunity acquired through infection or vaccines. Coronaviruses, including this one, are slow mutators, as they possess a primitive "spellcheck" preventing wild mutations. Again, those who had SARS-1 are fully immune to SARS-2, all these years later, and the difference between the two is much larger than the differences among the variants spawned by SARS-2.

It's fearmongering, pure and simple. It's driven mostly by politics and by seeking clicks and eyeballs. I've been traveling for a month or so and it's been interesting to observe how different countries are dealing with the now seemingly endless pandemic. The Nordics appear to have forgotten it (with no mask in sight to remind them), as have the Eastern Europeans. The Germans, where election posturing is full swing, appear to take their cue from the Democrat wing in the US and I kept hearing the CDC being quoted. I didn't go to France, but it's clear that Macron is milking the fear and using it to shore up his previously waning support. The Greeks are drinking their ouzo and hoping that the tourists came back (and to an extent, they seem to be back - I certainly enjoyed the islands).

Things haven't changed much in the US, the Democrats would love to stretch this to the 2022 elections, and they appear to be poised to do it. Biden is comparing the Delta variant to chickenpox, while NPR is now alternating identity-baiting stories with dire reports of Florida's latest infection numbers, and calls for vaccine mandates and masking for everyone, including the vaccinated.

The variant fearmongering is largely based on the now tried and true method of reporting infection numbers every 30 minutes and creating a sense of doom. But there is no "science" behind it, other than cherrypicked small mound surveys turned into mountains by the media and politicians.

The mortality rate of the Delta variant appears to be 0.1%, similar to the average flu year, while the vaccine effectiveness against it is in the vicinity of the effectiveness against the earlier variants.

See for example this:

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England

 

 

[Saul]

Ron, I spoke to a leading virology here in Rochester.  I said the same thing that you did: although RNA viruses mutate quickly, and coronaviruses are RNA viruses, their CORONA structure makes their mutation speed slower.

The virology said:  Yes and No.

Why the No? 

Because the slower mutation rates for coronaviruses is true for those that have been with us for thousands of years -- not for one that only recently jumped to man -- so expect mutations to continue to appear for at least several decades before Covid-19 mutations slow down.

[Gordo]

Third time's a charm? 😎

Pfizer data suggest third dose of Covid-19 vaccine 'strongly' boosts protection against Delta variant

[Saul]

I've gotten into an NCSD controlled study, to study totally vaccinated subjects given a jab of a DIFFERENT Covid-19 vaccine: in my case, I had both Pfizer vabs, and the study gave me a jab of the Moderna. Controls get three jabs of the same vaccine.

The study is unusual, in that all subjects are told exactly what they're getting (so not double blind).

Also, I'm told that it is likely that they'll tell us the amount antibodies that we have.

They're drawing copious amounts of blood at each visit.

  -- Saul

[KHashmi317]

"If you can make people believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities."

- Voltaire

Quote

The media have tried to bury the reality for nearly a year and a half now - but the truth will out. You cannot fool all of the people all of the time. This is an open and free speech discussion with a panel of experts and is by definition non-censorable in a Western democratic free society.
Here we delve into the facts of the matter - enjoy and share! (contents index to follow). 

 

[Gordo]

Wow 

CORONAVIRUS

Editor-in-Chief of Germany’s Top Newspaper Apologizes For Fear-Driven COVID Coverage

[Sibiriak]

Study Finds Falsehoods About Delta Variant May Spread Twice As Easily As Original Covid Misinformation

Quote

ATLANTA—Warning that the new inaccuracies were considerably more contagious than previous varieties, a Centers for Disease Control study released Wednesday found that falsehoods about the Delta variant may spread twice as easily as the original Covid-19 misinformation.

“Our data indicate that the transmissibility of the initial Covid fallacies and conspiracy theories pales in comparison to dubious statements concerning the Delta variant,” said CDC director Rochelle Walensky, explaining that even those who had been vaccinated were still capable of spreading misleading and erroneous comments.

“We were already struggling under the early waves of unreliable statistics, and the Delta strain of misinformation is making our job even harder. Once these unverified memes and bogus claims break through and infect the minds of large portions of the population through Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, they’re nearly impossible to control.”

The report concluded that the efficacy of booster data to combat the spread of Delta variant lies was still unconfirmed

.

Edited August 5, 2021 by Sibiriak