21 ms·

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

267 points by EndXA 7y ago

zbjornson 7y ago
I'm amazed that there's not a movement to stop eating and being around animals as much world-wide, given that so much disease (and environmental damage) comes from consumption of and proximity to animals: - MERS-CoV: bats via dromedary camels - nCoV-2019: bats or snakes? - Influenza: pigs, birds - E. coli O157:H7: cows and other farm animals. ... (Edit: I mean along the lines of how safer sex is encouraged to prevent STDs, hand washing is encouraged to prevent food-borne illnesses, ... I haven't seen a call for the above.)
- maxerickson 7y ago
  There is a movement against industrial livestock production.
- cm2187 7y ago
  The worst thing you can do to the human immune system is to cease to expose it to pathogens.
  - ppseafield 7y ago
    It's not a dichotomy - removing animals from our diet does not leave a sterile environment for humans. Humans and their environment are plenty filthy on their own.
    - cm2187 7y ago
      Then this is purely a vegan argument unrelated to the virus.
      - nerdponx 7y ago
        Again, not a dichotomy. Humans will remain exposed to pathogens even if we eliminate one source of new and dangerous ones.
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    And the second worse thing is to expose it to completely novel viruses. How about we expose it to as many common viruses as we want, but try to prevent novel viruses from popping up?
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Clearly this is bullshit since exposing it to a sufficient load of HIV fucks it up proper. So we have an existence proof of at least one thing worse than "ceasing to expose it to pathogens".
- dghughes 7y ago
  Bats carry many viruses but are asymptomatic. Pigs can contract viruses from other animals, they mutate and then it's passed on to humans. A bat biting a pig is probably the cause of many weird viruses. You also have to wonder if the African Swine flu running rampant through China is also part of the cause.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    > wonder if the African Swine flu running rampant through China is also part of the cause You mean as in it having transformed and evolved from the swine flu?
    - khuey 7y ago
      The ASF and the 2019-nCoV viruses are not related at all.
    - dghughes 7y ago
      I guess it's actually called African Swine Fever aka Swine Flu. If pigs can be incubators of human and non-human viruses and ASF being rampant did it and whatever bat virus or seafood virus get together in a pig and create 2019-nCoV.
- suifbwish 7y ago
  Actually, I see a much greater risk being around other humans. It’s why I don’t live near a major city and work from home. There is a chance that a virus from an animal might mutate to be human communicable but literally every virus from a human is already human communicable. People see it as somehow natural to live in a city of millions of people and then we are viewing animals as the greatest threat?
  - simonswords82 7y ago
    You genuinely chose where to live on the basis that living in remote proximity to other humans could perhaps lower your chance of catching an illness from them?
    - suifbwish 7y ago
      There are other reasons I’ve moved here but that did play into why I moved my family away from cities. I don’t think it’s safe living near too many people. I prefer to know everyone I interact with in my life. That and I cannot stand the sound of traffic constantly. Additionally, there is more chance of dying in a car accident or in some sort of crime. Plus if there is a war, major cities will be the first targets. People who cluster together tend to assume everything is just going to work out and don’t think about possibilities of what could happen.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  I mean, we're talking for the most part about cases where people were having sustained contact with infected animals in wet market-type situations. It's not obvious to me that the problem is animal consumption in general, or if the issue is the prevalence of wet markets in SE Asia. And in any case, if there's a group of people who you're going to have trouble convincing to move away from animal consumption, folks who work in the animal industry are probably going to be the last ones to switch. E. Coli is also scary, but it doesn't spread as readily person to person, so it's not something that's going to move the needle for most people.
- Grazester 7y ago
  Lets not forget ebola
- hanniabu 7y ago
  But when you eat certain animal parts you gain extra powers like increased strength, intelligence, testosterone, and sexual prowess! /s
- legulere 7y ago
  Basically all human diseases started out as zoonosis as humans for a long time we’re too few to be a viable reservoir.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    The worst part is how the diseases from other animals are way too deadly to humans. The human-specific diseases like the common cold are a great example of a disease that is ideally adapted to its host. Its high adaptable (thus getting around our immune system), it spreads effectively, and crucially, it's very rarely fatal. Because it's not deadly, it can easily infect the same host over a hundred times throughout its lifetime. Viruses that are routinely deadly to the organisms catching them are not adapted well to their hosts. We see this with HIV (came from monkeys), the worse flus (came from birds), and all sorts of other stuff.
  - khuey 7y ago
    And we have the capacity to eliminate pathogens that don't have animal reservoirs. Smallpox is extinct and polio is relatively close.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Don’t forget AIDS, which has simian origins!
- stevens32 7y ago
  People who would pay attention to warnings like that are probably not the same demographic working in the wet-markets in the first place
- cies 7y ago
  Another reason we all should go vegan: prevent disease outbreaks. (besides: kindness to animals, lower climate impact, solve food scarcity, human health)
  - blackrock 7y ago
    I agree. It’s possibly a combination of the infected urine, feces, and blood from infected animals. And it mutated into something that transmitted to humans. And it doesn’t even have to be a wild animal. The wild animal could’ve just been the carrier, and was immune to the actual virus. And it was your house pet that got sick from it, and had infected bodily fluids. And then when you clean up your pet, your infected hands touched your mouth or eyes, and you got sick. Then you might’ve transmitted it to someone else with a weaker immune system, and they got sick, and so forth, and now we have a full blown pandemic. So it could have been a wild animal that transmitted their infected feces to your house pet, or to a stray dog or cat. And dogs urinate on every tree, and other dogs like sniffing and licking that urine. Then your dog licks you or your kids. Gross. Maybe it’s time I became a vegetarian. Although you can still get E. coli poisoning from unsafe industrial food processing. But that sweet meat and bbq sauce.. delicious.. I.. can’t.. resist..
    - cies 7y ago
      its the industrial scale that animals get exploited on that makes outbreaks like this a lot more likely. its also the industrial scale and treatment of animals that anger vegans the most.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Well there hasn't been much of a choice historically and a zoophobic approach would carry way too many other side effects.
iiian 7y ago
Awesome, can't read the article because NatGeo.
thisistheend123 7y ago
President Xi has warned that the virus is spreading. His intervention seems to be unprecedented. Is it worse than what it seems to be? They have quarantined whole cities and are building a hospital at war scale especially for this. Maybe the Chinese know something that the world doesn't know yet.
- akiselev 7y ago
  So far the virus is believed to have a two week incubation period with unknown transmissability during that time, which makes it particularly hard to contain, especially with a migration like Chinese New Year. The lockdown is unprecedented in China but the Soviet Union used to do similar lockdowns (at a smaller scale) during cholera outbreaks. 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.
  - chewz 7y ago
    In 1963 during last outbreak of smallpox epidemic in Europe Wroclaw in Poland had been quarantined for 47 days. [] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/6nhzqd/54_years_ago_in_wroclaw_was_declared_a_state_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/6nhzqd/54_years_ago...
    - perakojotgenije 7y ago
      Correction - 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak was the last in Europe [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Yugoslav_smallpox_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Yugoslav_smallpox_outbrea...
      - sadfklsjlkjwt 7y ago
        Actually it was in the UK. This was also (hopefully) the last death ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_smallpox_outbreak_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_smallpox_outbreak_in_the_...
monkpit 7y ago
Signup wall?
- fnord77 7y ago
  not for me. maybe cookie based? try a private/incognito window
sdiw 7y ago
From what I've read it came from bats. Most probably bats being eaten.[1] Bats have been the source of at least 4 pandemics. It's interesting to note that current coronavirus spreading in China and the SARS outbreak of 2003 have two things in common: Both are from the coronavirus family, and both were passed from animals to humans in a wet market.[2] I tried to put together a page for coronavirus in China here where I tried to gather all the information in one place in order for us to easily follow stuff (https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-media-coverage https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-media-coverage) and photos[3]. 1. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgqy3n/scientists-now-think-they-know-what-started-chinas-deadly-coronavirus-bats https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgqy3n/scientists-now-thi... 2. https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/experts-think-the-wuhan-coronavirus-jumped-from-bats-to-snakes-to-people-bats-have-been-the-source-of-at-least-4-pandemics-/articleshow/73569703.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/experts-think-th... 3. https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-gallery https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-gallery
- ptenk 7y ago
  I’ve read virology reports that the virus originated most likely from bats but through an intermediary source — as to which animal, that’s unknown. Another thing I’ve been pondering is since bats have been the source of deadly, infectious diseases in humans for so long, that’s where the historical myth of vampires and the living dead come from.
  - monadic2 7y ago
    There’s plenty of actual research into the ancient origin of vampires you can read without resorting to baseless speculation. There is no single myth or origin and eastern europe has no vampire bats—in fact, the bats are named after the myth. The connection is likely due to them simply being nocturnal. EDIT: My tone came off as completely dismissing your thinking, which I don't mean to, I just mean to say that there's already a lot written on the topic.
    - sandworm101 7y ago
      Bat "bites" are only half the story. Bat scratches are really nasty. In ancient times they would look like bites and most always would become infected. Even today, in much of the world (ie usa) any contact with wild bat should be taken very seriously. The link between bats and disease is no myth.
moulei 7y ago
>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 for the Chinese New Year.
- akiselev 7y ago
  > Most Chinese people have no so much medical common sense, only a warning like this can stop them from trying to return home for the Chinese New Year. The most important factor during public health crises isn't common sense, it's trust. The quarantines are worthless if they cause over 50 million people to go into a panic because they don't trust the central authorities. The predominant commentary I'm seeing coming from both sides of the Pacific is currently "what are they not telling us? why shut down several cities during CNY if its only a thousand cases and a few dozen deaths?" Large quarantines are high risk and I doubt even the CDC, which has spent decades cultivating trust, could pull one off. If people start hiding symptoms and avoiding medical care because of the lockdown, this whole situation could spiral way out of control globally.
  - moulei 7y ago
    https://amp.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-people-china-turns-on-government-as-crisis-worsens-2020-1 https://amp.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-people-chi... "Wuhan's party secretary and governor cannot soothe the people's anger" Faith is losing but but only the local governments. The vast majority of ordinary people still believe that the central government is being hoodwinked by local governments, and taking their anger on them. They still trust the central government would be responsible for them. It's ridiculous, but it's true.
  - powerfoolx 7y ago
    It's not only thousand cases and a few dozen deaths. It's over a thousand cases over a few days of development from over a dozen. Learn your math, dude, especially on exponential growth. That multiply dangerously fast. Besides the confirmed cases, there would be at least few times more suspected cases, which could easily overload a handful of well-equipped hospitals. Once the the number of those infected go well beyond the capacity of the local hospitals. It will be the beginning of a an unstoppable disaster. So again, learn how exponential growth works.
EndXA 7y ago
Key quote from the article: > “If we were to shut the wildlife markets, a lot of these outbreaks would be a thing of the past,” says Ian Lipkin, director of Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity, whose lab worked with Chinese officials to develop early diagnostic tests for SARS. > That’s because both SARS and the new outbreak are zoonotic, meaning these diseases started in animals before spreading to humans. Zoonotic diseases rank among the world’s most infamous. HIV, Ebola, and H5N1 influenza, for example, all percolated in wildlife before close interactions with humans spawned international outbreaks. With SARS, food preparers and people who handled, killed, and sold wild animals made up nearly 40 percent of the first cases. The earliest episodes were also among people who were more likely to live within walking distance of wildlife markets.
- oiasdjfoiasd 7y ago
  And it would also take away the livelihood of a lot of people...
- wallflower 7y ago
  > The earliest episodes were also among people who were more likely to live within walking distance of wildlife markets. Also, the distance from the Wuhan wildlife market to the high-speed rail station is walking distance.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Nat Geo is making a lot of assumptions here based on official Chinese info. There is also a world class virology research center in Wuhan that opened in the last few years that was studying viruses just like this. I don't think it's a coincidence it broke out in Wuhan, as there are wildlife markets in other cities in China too.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Maybe (hopefully?) China will shut down these markets after this outbreak. They've been known to take serious measures in the past when necessary. Surely the benefit of these markets cannot outweigh their costs (including on the local wildlife, not just infectious diseases).
hisomehelppls 7y ago
Can someone explain https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?RID=2PUA1EJK114&CMD=Get https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?RID=2PUA1EJK114&CMD... to me? This is a comparison between 'bat SARS-like coronavirus' and 'Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus'. Under Alignments, it looks like the envelope proteins are identical. Wouldn't that be unlikely for a natural mutation? Would this not lead credence to this being a leak from their BSL-4 lab about twenty miles away from the Wuhan seafood market? Thanks!
- nexuist 7y ago
  I have no credibility to answer this question, and I don't even know what any of the words on that page mean, but is it possible that it was always the same virus and just documented under two different names? After all, pneumonia is a symptom of coronavirus, so wouldn't it make sense that people thought it was just the "Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus" until later reports and information indicated it would actually be a "bat SARS-like coronavirus"?
  - hisomehelppls 7y ago
    Nope, not a chance! The news of it being properly isolated, sequenced and placed in a tree directly under bat SARS-like coronavirus that shows they are considered separate: https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2020/01/13/novel-coronavirus/ https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2020/01/13/novel-coron... Another MAJOR key difference here: One is not transmissible to humans and the other is.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    There's no way that professional virologists are mistaking/conflating a pneumonia and a coronavirus.
  - lovehashbrowns 7y ago
    Pneumonia is just an infection of the lungs, and that can be caused by many things, including aspiration. So by your logic, all things that cause headaches are actually the same virus because they all cause headaches.
DevX101 7y ago
I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here, but I'd also like an real investigation into whether the virus actually originated from the Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory. It's the only level 4 (BSL-4 highest rating) lab in all of China designated to handle the most dangerous pathogens. And it's located 20 miles from the reported epicenter in the wildlife market. It was first opened two years ago and at the time multiple scientists worried that the lack of an open culture could lead to potential security problems. Was there some breach in containment security? Were experimented animals not disposed of properly? We don't know. There might be nothing here, but it's a hell of a coincidence and if there's some broader security problem, it should be acknowledged and fixed. Background on the lab: https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487 https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to...
- nexuist 7y ago
  > >The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent samples to China of what he said were some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w...
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
    Why is Canada sending Ebola to China?
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada So the question is what sort of controls are in place vs what sort of controls should be in place. It isn't Canada sending the samples, it's Canada not preventing them from being sent.
    - endorphone 7y ago
bobjordan 7y ago
Here is an article from the Daily Mail that shows in a bit more detail what having a bat for supper looks like: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7920573/Revolting-footage-shows-Chinese-woman-eating-bat-scientists-link-coronavirus-animal.html?fbclid=IwAR38vpNap67GZS5CTaaai_TErZW6MSrz-PLVHS2BQ0hPgCSu0eAD-8QIiaM https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7920573/Revolting-f...
- verroq 7y ago
  Here is a TV host forced to apologise for popularising bat soup. https://summit.news/2020/01/25/chinese-government-forces-tv-host-who-popularized-eating-bats-to-apologize/ https://summit.news/2020/01/25/chinese-government-forces-tv-...
- throw_54313 7y ago
  Those pictures reminded me of when my American friends posted a video of them making possum stew.
blackrock 7y ago
A recent Time article [1] is theorizing that the source may come from wet markets. It also theorized that the source of the SARS virus might have originated from an infected cat. And Ebola may have originated from infected bat feces, that might have landed on a girl’s toy, which she then put into her mouth. And the MERS virus in the Middle East may have come from an infected camel. This appears to be a logical and scientific deduction. So for this Coronavirus, it appears to follow the same pattern. Infected animal feces mutated into some virus, that made the transmission to humans. My theory, is that perhaps an infected animal’s feces, may have mixed with other fluids, like blood, from freshly slaughtered animals, and mutated into something that infected a human with a weakened immune system (easy target), who then transmitted it to other healthy humans by contact. On one hand, it does seem that the best way to guarantee that you’re sourcing your meat from a fresh and healthy animal, is to pick the animal that you want, and to slaughter it on the spot. This means that the meat vendor does not have to maintain a refrigeration system, and you don’t introduce other chemicals or salts to preserve your meat. But the problem is that you have to keep the animals in captivity, and the meat vendor must handle, and clean all their urine and feces. And when animals get sick, their feces and urine gets infected, thus you increase the probability of an outbreak like this. What’s the solution? Maybe China must begin eliminating wet markets, and eliminate the practice of keeping live animals in captivity, in order to minimize the incubation, mutation, and the transmission of such viruses. And instead, to begin using a refrigeration system, to preserve slaughtered animals. [1] https://time.com/5770904/wuhan-coronavirus-wild-animals/ https://time.com/5770904/wuhan-coronavirus-wild-animals/
reaperducer 7y ago
For those of you into charts and graphs, here's a little tool from a reputable source that shows the risk of each country getting a case: https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/e693c1f9-13fa-42f6-86e6-c637b159a742/page/CIXCB https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/e693c1f9-13fa-42...
throwawaylolx 7y ago
How common is for SARS coronaviruses to share the same envelope proteins? I downloaded 200 CoV envelope proteins from NCBI, and I couldn't find any pair of identical proteins. As someone unfamiliar with virology, I'm curious if there are any explanations for how come the protein envelope of 2019-nCoV[1] is the same as the protein envelope described by the Institute of Military Medicine Nanjing Command 2 years ago in the unpublished paper "Genomic characterization and infectivity of a novel SARS-like coronavirus in Chinese bats"[3]? Is it just a coincidence? The bats used in the paper were from Zhejiang not Hubei. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/YP_009724392.1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/YP_009724392.1 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/AVP78033.1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/AVP78033.1 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6135831/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6135831/
- lol768 7y ago
  Some additional information: this paper cites the unpublished paper you mention ("Genomic characterization and infectivity of a novel SARS-like coronavirus in Chinese bats"): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30154-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... With regard to ZC45, which your paper discusses, it states: > The genome of our virus strains are phylogenetically closest to the bat SARS-related coronaviruses first found in the Chinese horseshoe bats, Rhinolophus sinicus, captured in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, China, between 2015 and 2017. The full virus genome had about an 89% nucleotide identity with bat-SL-CoVZC45, which makes it a new species. Moreover, the Spike protein of our virus has an 84% nucleotide identity with the bat-SL-CoVZC45 coronavirus and an 78% nucleotide identity with the human SARS coronavirus. Doesn't answer your question as to how common this is, but provides some additional context on the extent of similarities.
- throwawaylolx 7y ago
  Quick update: after analyzing about 3,500 strains of coronaviruses, I found several that shared the same envelope proteins despite being different strains e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ipg/?term=ABP38309.1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ipg/?term=ABP38309.1 My quick-and-dirty estimate from my data is that about 0.1% share the same envelope protein with other viruses, but this was just rushed amateur work, so don't take the number too seriously.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
What exacerbates the spread of these viruses is the lack of indoor heating in South China during the winter. I wonder how much china could reduce these problems by just allowing people to heat their homes the way they do up north?
leeshire 7y ago
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.
- Zod666 7y ago
  We're talking about a place where this is common practice. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zrv78nG9R04&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zrv78nG9R04&feature=youtu.be
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Supposedly the Chinese government is paying for the output from this sewage/gutter oil process (for combustion in power plants) in order to prevent it from ending up in the food supply chain as cooking oil. Attempts at being resourceful can have some unintended consequences/second order effects. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/et981n/this_is_how_chinese_recycle_sewage_oil_into/fff8d1o/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/et981n/this_is_how_...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- jjallen 7y ago
  Food is still a large share of many people's incomes. It is not surprising to me that some people may want to eat free or cheaper food, still in 2020. Some of us may have plenty of food - heck many of us have way too much. But if you travel around the world really at all you would quickly understand why some may eat non-commercially produced food. Also, still in the US people eat animals like squirrels, raccoons or feral pork.
- auggierose 7y ago
  There is a reason why "Contagion" starts in China ...
  - 7y ago
nodemaker 7y ago
I'm surprised no one has commented on how unhealthy, unhygienic and to some level immoral the consumption of genetically similar animals is. One more reason we should only eat creatures very genetically dissimilar to us. Eating bats, cows, rats, pigs etc will give you nasty results indeed because their pathogens can attack you very easily as opposed to a fish. (Actually eating undercooked fish can give you a nasty thing called liver flukes so even thats not safe)
jamesblonde 7y ago
According to a former Harvard public health researcher, the Wuhan coronavirus has a R0 value of 3.8. That is significantly higher than SARS (estimated at between 2-4). This means is will spread rapidly unless transport in/out of Wuhan is completely stopped: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1220919589623803905.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1220919589623803905.html
- jamesblonde 7y ago
  The source article is here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v...
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  That 3.8 may have since been revised downward....looking for the link again.
  - jamesblonde 7y ago
    Just looking again - Imperial College are saying 2.6. But Neil Ferguson, part of that study from ICL, says on Twitter "we need to plan for the possibility that containment of this epidemic is not possible". https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1221134886825873409/photo/1 https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1221134886825873409/ph...
    - Fomite 7y ago
      Okay...a few notes on R0. 1) Neil Ferguson knows his business, but part of that is knowing that, like economists predicting recessions, there's little penalty for being wrong. I'm sure you can find a quote that's similar from him for any recent outbreak. Why? Because of course we need to plan for that possibility. It's a low risk statement to make. 2) R0 is not a biological constant. It's a combination of contact rates and probabilities of transmission. Neither one of those is actually fixed.
      - 7y ago
runawaybottle 7y ago
I saw this map on Reddit today, and I’m probably going to add to ignorant hysteria: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... I just can’t believe the real number of infected is as low as the reported confirmed number based on that map. It’s got to be all of over China if the confirmed cases are all over like that (not to mention it made to NA and Europe).
aaron695 7y ago
Normal HN racism. Of the 41 people in the initial cohort at the hospital the ~1/3 from the market all did what? They all kissed the same snake? Or did one person catch it and then spread it at one of the most packed locations in the area? And since it's a market it also contains farmers that easily could have brought it from out of the city. Saying it comes from markets is like saying it comes from airplane meetups. Their reasons for saying it comes from snakes I assume is genetic, the fact they are all quickly traced to such packed locations proves nothing. I know snakes are used to feed omnivorous livestock in some countries for instance. It can also be spread from fecal matter. It doesn't mean everyone eats poo. It means poor people live among animals. [edit] More on patient zero (Not from the market according to SCMP, no surprise) https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047646/no-link-seafood-market-first-case-china-coronavirus-chinese https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047646/no-l...
Datsundere 7y ago
Need I say More? https://twitter.com/chenqiushi404/status/1219885244670607361 https://twitter.com/chenqiushi404/status/1219885244670607361
- MiroF 7y ago
  Yes, that video isn't an argument. Just because bats are eaten isn't proof positive that that is where the xeno barrier was crossed
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    It isn't, but is an opportunity for that to happen. The eating of 'bush meat' is how lots of Zoonosis events happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis
    - bhk 7y ago
      The list in the article you linked indicates that eating undercooked meat is a mode of transmission only for parasites, prion-based diseases, and a couple of bacterial diseases. It doesn't seem plausible for a viral disease, especially a respiratory one. On the other hand, capturing, keeping, butchering, and preparing bats could present a risk. With Ebola, butchering of bush meat was cited as a likely vector.
      - khuey 7y ago
        Eating bush meat is what causes people to do all those other things you list.
- _byed 7y ago
  > Need I say More? Yes, actually. Can you demonstrate how this actually resulted in the pandemic rather than subtly shaming a cultural practice you don't agree with? (I don't agree with it either, but "need I say more" pointing to the specific practice is not the same thing as "here's a resource which links bat game consumption to outbreaks." The tone is ever so slightly edging in the wrong direction.)
busymom0 7y ago
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=Get 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 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 China" > A Canadian government scientist at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg made at least five trips to China in 2017-18, including one to train scientists and technicians at China's newly certified Level 4 lab, which does research with the most deadly pathogens, according to travel documents obtained by CBC News. > Xiangguo Qiu — who was escorted out of the Winnipeg lab in July amid an RCMP investigation into what's being described by Public Health Agency of Canada as a possible "policy breach" — was invited to go to the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences twice a year for two years, for up to two weeks each time. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/national-microbiology-lab-scientist-investigation-china-1.5307424 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/national-microbiolog... > Canadian lab's shipment of Ebola, Henipah viruses to China raises questions. Shipment may be part of RCMP investigation into researchers evicted from National Microbiology Lab. Scientists at the National Microbiology Lab sent live Ebola and Henipah viruses to Beijing on an Air Canada flight March 31, and while the Public Health Agency of Canada says all federal policies were followed, there are questions about whether that shipment is part of an ongoing RCMP investigation. Ebola and Henipah are Level 4 pathogens, meaning they're some of the deadliest viruses in the world. They must be contained in a lab with the highest level of biosafety control, such as the one in Winnipeg. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/ebola-henipah-china-1.5232674 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/ebola-henipah-china-... "Wuhan" is the center of this outbreak too. It's too much of a coincidence. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w... > Mr. Shoham, now with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel, said the virology institute is the only declared site in China known as P4 for Pathogen Level 4, a status indicating it uses the strictest safety standards to prevent the spread of the most dangerous and exotic microbes being studied. > The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent samples to China of what he said were some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus. In a July article in the journal Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Mr. Shoham said the Wuhan institute was one of four Chinese laboratories engaged in some aspects of the biological weapons development. He identified the secure Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the institute as engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses. The Wuhan virology institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. But certain laboratories within it “have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defense establishment,” he said. In 1993, China declared a second facility, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, as one of eight biological warfare research facilities covered by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) which China joined in 1985. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-lab-studying-SARS-Ebola-Wuhan-outbreaks-center.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-la... > China built a lab to study SARS and Ebola in Wuhan - and US biosafety experts warned in 2017 that a virus could 'escape' the facility that's become key in fighting the outbreak > The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is the only lab in China designated for studying dangerous pathogens like SARS and Ebola > Ahead of its January 2018 opening, biosafety experts and scientists from the US expressed concerns that a virus could escape the lab > In 2004, a SARS virus 'leaked' from a lab in Beijing > Experts say the coronavirus that's infected more than 800 people mutated in animals and became capable of infecting humans at the Wuhan seafood market > But a 2017 article warned of the unpredictability of lab animals that scientists at the Wuhan lab intended to inject with viruses
tzs 7y ago
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?
- tomrod 7y ago
  Doorknobs, mail and Amazon delivery, sneezes upwind from your house, mosquitoes, rats, and such.
- rukittenme 7y ago
  This may upset you... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206090650.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206090650.h...
- JoshGlazebrook 7y ago
  > 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. These may not be that much better - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/29/mcdonalds-touchscreen-kiosks-in-uk-contain-traces-of-feces.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/29/mcdonalds-touchscreen-kiosks...
- mprev 7y ago
  Are you avoiding human contact because you are worried about infection?
mrb 7y ago
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 https://twitter.com/hhh05146721/status/1220953373622534145 [1] https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30154-9/fulltext https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(... [2] https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(... [3] https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1 https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1
- secondo 7y ago
  I don’t know if you do this intentionally or if Hanlon’s razor, but you intermix source backed claims with made up ones. Nature does not claim the mortality rate is 11%. They do make a comparison to SARS’ mortality rate which was about 11% and argue that Wuhan coronavirus is lower in that regard[1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00166-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00166-6
  - mrb 7y ago
    You are right, I misremembered Nature's video (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00209-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00209-y claimed SARS, not nCoV-2019, had an 11% mortality rate.) I edited the comment.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
Very strange. Given HK is the 2nd most affected (and most affected last time) why it was not mentioned. As regards to the source we really hoped it is not from the lab in Wu han, one of the few la e in the world with category 4 lab handling sars etc.
MichaelRazum 7y ago
Let's assume the worst-case scenario. It has a high mortality rate and is spreading with a high reinfection rate. Other cities will lock off shortly like in china. What are the steps to survive? How do you think the world will react? Will this lead to collapse? At least in the first step for tourism.
ggm 7y ago
Is HN now part of the misinformation bubble? The paranoia, national agenda anti China hate brigade are strong here. Seriously, can people take a chill pill and stop spreading fud? I read https://promedmail.org https://promedmail.org and I'm waiting for them to panic before I invoke contagion metaphors. It's way too early to state the infection and mortality rates
inred9 7y ago
the darkest time of coronavirus crisis is over，https://wubigo.com/post/the-darkest-time-of-coronavirus-crisis-is-over/ https://wubigo.com/post/the-darkest-time-of-coronavirus-cris...
sergiotapia 7y ago
Started from chinese people eating bats. Uma delicia. https://www.instagram.com/p/B7q4ZwnpTWu/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B7q4ZwnpTWu/
nopinsight 7y ago
Neil Ferguson, an epidemologist at Imperial College, suggested that the 2019 novel coronavirus’ Basic Reproduction Number (R0) [1] is about 2.5, which aligns with figures from other research groups. The 1918 pandemic-causing flu’s R0 was between 2 and 3 [1] while seasonal flu’s figure is only 1.3 [2]. This is not to say everyone should panic as the strict containment policy that China and the Chinese adopted should help reduce the R0 significantly. However, the asymptomatic period is long, thus it remains to be seen what the full impact of this virus will be. Other countries may need a better policy to track high-risk individuals already in their territories. “Neil_ferguson @neil_ferguson R0 estimates for flu pandemics lie in the 1.5-2.5 range. Yes, Measles is much higher (10-15). An epidemic with an R0 of 2.5 could still infect between 60% and 90% of the population, depending on contact patterns and assuming no prior immunity. Not all might be symptomatic though.” https://mobile.twitter.com/neil_ferguson/with_replies https://mobile.twitter.com/neil_ferguson/with_replies [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number [2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2231333-what-are-the-symptoms-of-the-new-coronavirus-and-how-deadly-is-it/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2231333-what-are-the-sy...
- philliphaydon 7y ago
  > as the strict containment policy that China adopted should help reduce the R0 significantly What strict containment policy?
  - nopinsight 7y ago
    Quarantine of 12 cities and 35 million residents. Suspension of tour groups out of the whole country. What more can you do? https://qz.com/1790891/china-expands-quarantine-to-12-cities-and-35-million-residents/ https://qz.com/1790891/china-expands-quarantine-to-12-cities... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/world/asia/china-coronavi...
    - philliphaydon 7y ago
      They quarantined Wuhan, and announced it 8 hours before they did it, they estimated 200k people left Wuhan in a rush. Yet people are still entering and exiting Wuhan for CNY. So as far as I'm concerned this quarantine is just political face.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
Latest figure is 56 death out of 1900. About 3%. Not high but that is the problem. The spread and low death rate meant widespread. Hope closing the cities would work.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
This strikes of subtle provincial pearl-clutching, nationalism and racist dog-whistling. Large-scale meat agriculture and aquafarming are far worse in terms of risks of pandemic evolution: - hundreds to tens of thousands of animals crammed into cages or pens - all of their bodily wastes mixed together and mixed with the animals and humans taking care of them. Orders-of-maginitudes more pandemics are just one of the negative consequences of billions of people eating meat. That has to stop, not just for the climate change reasons, but pandemic, antibiotic resistance and cruelty just to name a few.
ageofwant 7y ago
I get a fair number of mail and packages from China, living in Australia. Some virus' can survive quite a while on non-porous surfaces like plastic, especially if the contents itsef is contaminated. I now open packages outside of the house and spray the contents down with alkohol. Yea keep those sneaky vectors in mind.
fulldecent2 7y ago
The official name for this is 2019-nCoV. And for Twitter that is #2019nCoV. Using the correct name (or including it in parenthesis somewhere) is a way to help your publications stay connected to the wider discussion.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

267 points by EndXA 7y ago

I'm amazed that there's not a movement to stop eating and being around animals as much world-wide, given that so much disease (and environmental damage) comes from consumption of and proximity to animals: - MERS-CoV: bats via dromedary camels - nCoV-2019: bats or snakes? - Influenza: pigs, birds - E. coli O157:H7: cows and other farm animals. ... (Edit: I mean along the lines of how safer sex is encouraged to prevent STDs, hand washing is encouraged to prevent food-borne illnesses, ... I haven't seen a call for the above.)

maxerickson 7y ago
There is a movement against industrial livestock production.
cm2187 7y ago
The worst thing you can do to the human immune system is to cease to expose it to pathogens.
- ppseafield 7y ago
  It's not a dichotomy - removing animals from our diet does not leave a sterile environment for humans. Humans and their environment are plenty filthy on their own.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    Then this is purely a vegan argument unrelated to the virus.
    - nerdponx 7y ago
      Again, not a dichotomy. Humans will remain exposed to pathogens even if we eliminate one source of new and dangerous ones.
- sudosysgen 7y ago
  And the second worse thing is to expose it to completely novel viruses. How about we expose it to as many common viruses as we want, but try to prevent novel viruses from popping up?
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Clearly this is bullshit since exposing it to a sufficient load of HIV fucks it up proper. So we have an existence proof of at least one thing worse than "ceasing to expose it to pathogens".
dghughes 7y ago
Bats carry many viruses but are asymptomatic. Pigs can contract viruses from other animals, they mutate and then it's passed on to humans. A bat biting a pig is probably the cause of many weird viruses. You also have to wonder if the African Swine flu running rampant through China is also part of the cause.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  > wonder if the African Swine flu running rampant through China is also part of the cause You mean as in it having transformed and evolved from the swine flu?
  - khuey 7y ago
    The ASF and the 2019-nCoV viruses are not related at all.
  - dghughes 7y ago
    I guess it's actually called African Swine Fever aka Swine Flu. If pigs can be incubators of human and non-human viruses and ASF being rampant did it and whatever bat virus or seafood virus get together in a pig and create 2019-nCoV.
suifbwish 7y ago
Actually, I see a much greater risk being around other humans. It’s why I don’t live near a major city and work from home. There is a chance that a virus from an animal might mutate to be human communicable but literally every virus from a human is already human communicable. People see it as somehow natural to live in a city of millions of people and then we are viewing animals as the greatest threat?
- simonswords82 7y ago
  You genuinely chose where to live on the basis that living in remote proximity to other humans could perhaps lower your chance of catching an illness from them?
  - suifbwish 7y ago
    There are other reasons I’ve moved here but that did play into why I moved my family away from cities. I don’t think it’s safe living near too many people. I prefer to know everyone I interact with in my life. That and I cannot stand the sound of traffic constantly. Additionally, there is more chance of dying in a car accident or in some sort of crime. Plus if there is a war, major cities will be the first targets. People who cluster together tend to assume everything is just going to work out and don’t think about possibilities of what could happen.
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
I mean, we're talking for the most part about cases where people were having sustained contact with infected animals in wet market-type situations. It's not obvious to me that the problem is animal consumption in general, or if the issue is the prevalence of wet markets in SE Asia. And in any case, if there's a group of people who you're going to have trouble convincing to move away from animal consumption, folks who work in the animal industry are probably going to be the last ones to switch. E. Coli is also scary, but it doesn't spread as readily person to person, so it's not something that's going to move the needle for most people.
Grazester 7y ago
Lets not forget ebola
hanniabu 7y ago
But when you eat certain animal parts you gain extra powers like increased strength, intelligence, testosterone, and sexual prowess! /s
legulere 7y ago
Basically all human diseases started out as zoonosis as humans for a long time we’re too few to be a viable reservoir.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  The worst part is how the diseases from other animals are way too deadly to humans. The human-specific diseases like the common cold are a great example of a disease that is ideally adapted to its host. Its high adaptable (thus getting around our immune system), it spreads effectively, and crucially, it's very rarely fatal. Because it's not deadly, it can easily infect the same host over a hundred times throughout its lifetime. Viruses that are routinely deadly to the organisms catching them are not adapted well to their hosts. We see this with HIV (came from monkeys), the worse flus (came from birds), and all sorts of other stuff.
- khuey 7y ago
  And we have the capacity to eliminate pathogens that don't have animal reservoirs. Smallpox is extinct and polio is relatively close.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
Don’t forget AIDS, which has simian origins!
stevens32 7y ago
People who would pay attention to warnings like that are probably not the same demographic working in the wet-markets in the first place
cies 7y ago
Another reason we all should go vegan: prevent disease outbreaks. (besides: kindness to animals, lower climate impact, solve food scarcity, human health)
- blackrock 7y ago
  I agree. It’s possibly a combination of the infected urine, feces, and blood from infected animals. And it mutated into something that transmitted to humans. And it doesn’t even have to be a wild animal. The wild animal could’ve just been the carrier, and was immune to the actual virus. And it was your house pet that got sick from it, and had infected bodily fluids. And then when you clean up your pet, your infected hands touched your mouth or eyes, and you got sick. Then you might’ve transmitted it to someone else with a weaker immune system, and they got sick, and so forth, and now we have a full blown pandemic. So it could have been a wild animal that transmitted their infected feces to your house pet, or to a stray dog or cat. And dogs urinate on every tree, and other dogs like sniffing and licking that urine. Then your dog licks you or your kids. Gross. Maybe it’s time I became a vegetarian. Although you can still get E. coli poisoning from unsafe industrial food processing. But that sweet meat and bbq sauce.. delicious.. I.. can’t.. resist..
  - cies 7y ago
    its the industrial scale that animals get exploited on that makes outbreaks like this a lot more likely. its also the industrial scale and treatment of animals that anger vegans the most.
Nasrudith 7y ago
Well there hasn't been much of a choice historically and a zoophobic approach would carry way too many other side effects.

iiian 7y ago

Awesome, can't read the article because NatGeo.

thisistheend123 7y ago

President Xi has warned that the virus is spreading. His intervention seems to be unprecedented. Is it worse than what it seems to be? They have quarantined whole cities and are building a hospital at war scale especially for this. Maybe the Chinese know something that the world doesn't know yet.

akiselev 7y ago
So far the virus is believed to have a two week incubation period with unknown transmissability during that time, which makes it particularly hard to contain, especially with a migration like Chinese New Year. The lockdown is unprecedented in China but the Soviet Union used to do similar lockdowns (at a smaller scale) during cholera outbreaks. 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.
- chewz 7y ago
  In 1963 during last outbreak of smallpox epidemic in Europe Wroclaw in Poland had been quarantined for 47 days. [] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/6nhzqd/54_years_ago_in_wroclaw_was_declared_a_state_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/6nhzqd/54_years_ago...
  - perakojotgenije 7y ago
    Correction - 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak was the last in Europe [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Yugoslav_smallpox_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Yugoslav_smallpox_outbrea...
    - sadfklsjlkjwt 7y ago
      Actually it was in the UK. This was also (hopefully) the last death ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_smallpox_outbreak_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_smallpox_outbreak_in_the_...

monkpit 7y ago

Signup wall?

fnord77 7y ago
not for me. maybe cookie based? try a private/incognito window

sdiw 7y ago

From what I've read it came from bats. Most probably bats being eaten.[1] Bats have been the source of at least 4 pandemics. It's interesting to note that current coronavirus spreading in China and the SARS outbreak of 2003 have two things in common: Both are from the coronavirus family, and both were passed from animals to humans in a wet market.[2] I tried to put together a page for coronavirus in China here where I tried to gather all the information in one place in order for us to easily follow stuff (https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-media-coverage https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-media-coverage) and photos[3]. 1. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgqy3n/scientists-now-think-they-know-what-started-chinas-deadly-coronavirus-bats https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgqy3n/scientists-now-thi... 2. https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/experts-think-the-wuhan-coronavirus-jumped-from-bats-to-snakes-to-people-bats-have-been-the-source-of-at-least-4-pandemics-/articleshow/73569703.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/experts-think-th... 3. https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-gallery https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-gallery

ptenk 7y ago
I’ve read virology reports that the virus originated most likely from bats but through an intermediary source — as to which animal, that’s unknown. Another thing I’ve been pondering is since bats have been the source of deadly, infectious diseases in humans for so long, that’s where the historical myth of vampires and the living dead come from.
- monadic2 7y ago
  There’s plenty of actual research into the ancient origin of vampires you can read without resorting to baseless speculation. There is no single myth or origin and eastern europe has no vampire bats—in fact, the bats are named after the myth. The connection is likely due to them simply being nocturnal. EDIT: My tone came off as completely dismissing your thinking, which I don't mean to, I just mean to say that there's already a lot written on the topic.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    Bat "bites" are only half the story. Bat scratches are really nasty. In ancient times they would look like bites and most always would become infected. Even today, in much of the world (ie usa) any contact with wild bat should be taken very seriously. The link between bats and disease is no myth.

moulei 7y ago

>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 for the Chinese New Year.

akiselev 7y ago
> Most Chinese people have no so much medical common sense, only a warning like this can stop them from trying to return home for the Chinese New Year. The most important factor during public health crises isn't common sense, it's trust. The quarantines are worthless if they cause over 50 million people to go into a panic because they don't trust the central authorities. The predominant commentary I'm seeing coming from both sides of the Pacific is currently "what are they not telling us? why shut down several cities during CNY if its only a thousand cases and a few dozen deaths?" Large quarantines are high risk and I doubt even the CDC, which has spent decades cultivating trust, could pull one off. If people start hiding symptoms and avoiding medical care because of the lockdown, this whole situation could spiral way out of control globally.
- moulei 7y ago
  https://amp.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-people-china-turns-on-government-as-crisis-worsens-2020-1 https://amp.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-people-chi... "Wuhan's party secretary and governor cannot soothe the people's anger" Faith is losing but but only the local governments. The vast majority of ordinary people still believe that the central government is being hoodwinked by local governments, and taking their anger on them. They still trust the central government would be responsible for them. It's ridiculous, but it's true.
- powerfoolx 7y ago
  It's not only thousand cases and a few dozen deaths. It's over a thousand cases over a few days of development from over a dozen. Learn your math, dude, especially on exponential growth. That multiply dangerously fast. Besides the confirmed cases, there would be at least few times more suspected cases, which could easily overload a handful of well-equipped hospitals. Once the the number of those infected go well beyond the capacity of the local hospitals. It will be the beginning of a an unstoppable disaster. So again, learn how exponential growth works.

EndXA 7y ago

Key quote from the article: > “If we were to shut the wildlife markets, a lot of these outbreaks would be a thing of the past,” says Ian Lipkin, director of Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity, whose lab worked with Chinese officials to develop early diagnostic tests for SARS. > That’s because both SARS and the new outbreak are zoonotic, meaning these diseases started in animals before spreading to humans. Zoonotic diseases rank among the world’s most infamous. HIV, Ebola, and H5N1 influenza, for example, all percolated in wildlife before close interactions with humans spawned international outbreaks. With SARS, food preparers and people who handled, killed, and sold wild animals made up nearly 40 percent of the first cases. The earliest episodes were also among people who were more likely to live within walking distance of wildlife markets.

oiasdjfoiasd 7y ago
And it would also take away the livelihood of a lot of people...
wallflower 7y ago
> The earliest episodes were also among people who were more likely to live within walking distance of wildlife markets. Also, the distance from the Wuhan wildlife market to the high-speed rail station is walking distance.
chrisco255 7y ago
Nat Geo is making a lot of assumptions here based on official Chinese info. There is also a world class virology research center in Wuhan that opened in the last few years that was studying viruses just like this. I don't think it's a coincidence it broke out in Wuhan, as there are wildlife markets in other cities in China too.
CydeWeys 7y ago
Maybe (hopefully?) China will shut down these markets after this outbreak. They've been known to take serious measures in the past when necessary. Surely the benefit of these markets cannot outweigh their costs (including on the local wildlife, not just infectious diseases).

hisomehelppls 7y ago

Can someone explain https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?RID=2PUA1EJK114&CMD=Get https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?RID=2PUA1EJK114&CMD... to me? This is a comparison between 'bat SARS-like coronavirus' and 'Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus'. Under Alignments, it looks like the envelope proteins are identical. Wouldn't that be unlikely for a natural mutation? Would this not lead credence to this being a leak from their BSL-4 lab about twenty miles away from the Wuhan seafood market? Thanks!

nexuist 7y ago
I have no credibility to answer this question, and I don't even know what any of the words on that page mean, but is it possible that it was always the same virus and just documented under two different names? After all, pneumonia is a symptom of coronavirus, so wouldn't it make sense that people thought it was just the "Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus" until later reports and information indicated it would actually be a "bat SARS-like coronavirus"?
- hisomehelppls 7y ago
  Nope, not a chance! The news of it being properly isolated, sequenced and placed in a tree directly under bat SARS-like coronavirus that shows they are considered separate: https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2020/01/13/novel-coronavirus/ https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2020/01/13/novel-coron... Another MAJOR key difference here: One is not transmissible to humans and the other is.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  There's no way that professional virologists are mistaking/conflating a pneumonia and a coronavirus.
- lovehashbrowns 7y ago
  Pneumonia is just an infection of the lungs, and that can be caused by many things, including aspiration. So by your logic, all things that cause headaches are actually the same virus because they all cause headaches.

DevX101 7y ago

I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here, but I'd also like an real investigation into whether the virus actually originated from the Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory. It's the only level 4 (BSL-4 highest rating) lab in all of China designated to handle the most dangerous pathogens. And it's located 20 miles from the reported epicenter in the wildlife market. It was first opened two years ago and at the time multiple scientists worried that the lack of an open culture could lead to potential security problems. Was there some breach in containment security? Were experimented animals not disposed of properly? We don't know. There might be nothing here, but it's a hell of a coincidence and if there's some broader security problem, it should be acknowledged and fixed. Background on the lab: https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487 https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to...

nexuist 7y ago
> >The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent samples to China of what he said were some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w...
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  Why is Canada sending Ebola to China?
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada So the question is what sort of controls are in place vs what sort of controls should be in place. It isn't Canada sending the samples, it's Canada not preventing them from being sent.
  - endorphone 7y ago

bobjordan 7y ago

Here is an article from the Daily Mail that shows in a bit more detail what having a bat for supper looks like: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7920573/Revolting-footage-shows-Chinese-woman-eating-bat-scientists-link-coronavirus-animal.html?fbclid=IwAR38vpNap67GZS5CTaaai_TErZW6MSrz-PLVHS2BQ0hPgCSu0eAD-8QIiaM https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7920573/Revolting-f...

verroq 7y ago
Here is a TV host forced to apologise for popularising bat soup. https://summit.news/2020/01/25/chinese-government-forces-tv-host-who-popularized-eating-bats-to-apologize/ https://summit.news/2020/01/25/chinese-government-forces-tv-...
throw_54313 7y ago
Those pictures reminded me of when my American friends posted a video of them making possum stew.

blackrock 7y ago

A recent Time article [1] is theorizing that the source may come from wet markets. It also theorized that the source of the SARS virus might have originated from an infected cat. And Ebola may have originated from infected bat feces, that might have landed on a girl’s toy, which she then put into her mouth. And the MERS virus in the Middle East may have come from an infected camel. This appears to be a logical and scientific deduction. So for this Coronavirus, it appears to follow the same pattern. Infected animal feces mutated into some virus, that made the transmission to humans. My theory, is that perhaps an infected animal’s feces, may have mixed with other fluids, like blood, from freshly slaughtered animals, and mutated into something that infected a human with a weakened immune system (easy target), who then transmitted it to other healthy humans by contact. On one hand, it does seem that the best way to guarantee that you’re sourcing your meat from a fresh and healthy animal, is to pick the animal that you want, and to slaughter it on the spot. This means that the meat vendor does not have to maintain a refrigeration system, and you don’t introduce other chemicals or salts to preserve your meat. But the problem is that you have to keep the animals in captivity, and the meat vendor must handle, and clean all their urine and feces. And when animals get sick, their feces and urine gets infected, thus you increase the probability of an outbreak like this. What’s the solution? Maybe China must begin eliminating wet markets, and eliminate the practice of keeping live animals in captivity, in order to minimize the incubation, mutation, and the transmission of such viruses. And instead, to begin using a refrigeration system, to preserve slaughtered animals. [1] https://time.com/5770904/wuhan-coronavirus-wild-animals/ https://time.com/5770904/wuhan-coronavirus-wild-animals/

reaperducer 7y ago

For those of you into charts and graphs, here's a little tool from a reputable source that shows the risk of each country getting a case: https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/e693c1f9-13fa-42f6-86e6-c637b159a742/page/CIXCB https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/e693c1f9-13fa-42...

throwawaylolx 7y ago

How common is for SARS coronaviruses to share the same envelope proteins? I downloaded 200 CoV envelope proteins from NCBI, and I couldn't find any pair of identical proteins. As someone unfamiliar with virology, I'm curious if there are any explanations for how come the protein envelope of 2019-nCoV[1] is the same as the protein envelope described by the Institute of Military Medicine Nanjing Command 2 years ago in the unpublished paper "Genomic characterization and infectivity of a novel SARS-like coronavirus in Chinese bats"[3]? Is it just a coincidence? The bats used in the paper were from Zhejiang not Hubei. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/YP_009724392.1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/YP_009724392.1 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/AVP78033.1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/AVP78033.1 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6135831/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6135831/

lol768 7y ago
Some additional information: this paper cites the unpublished paper you mention ("Genomic characterization and infectivity of a novel SARS-like coronavirus in Chinese bats"): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30154-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... With regard to ZC45, which your paper discusses, it states: > The genome of our virus strains are phylogenetically closest to the bat SARS-related coronaviruses first found in the Chinese horseshoe bats, Rhinolophus sinicus, captured in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, China, between 2015 and 2017. The full virus genome had about an 89% nucleotide identity with bat-SL-CoVZC45, which makes it a new species. Moreover, the Spike protein of our virus has an 84% nucleotide identity with the bat-SL-CoVZC45 coronavirus and an 78% nucleotide identity with the human SARS coronavirus. Doesn't answer your question as to how common this is, but provides some additional context on the extent of similarities.
throwawaylolx 7y ago
Quick update: after analyzing about 3,500 strains of coronaviruses, I found several that shared the same envelope proteins despite being different strains e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ipg/?term=ABP38309.1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ipg/?term=ABP38309.1 My quick-and-dirty estimate from my data is that about 0.1% share the same envelope protein with other viruses, but this was just rushed amateur work, so don't take the number too seriously.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

What exacerbates the spread of these viruses is the lack of indoor heating in South China during the winter. I wonder how much china could reduce these problems by just allowing people to heat their homes the way they do up north?

leeshire 7y ago

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.

Zod666 7y ago
We're talking about a place where this is common practice. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zrv78nG9R04&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zrv78nG9R04&feature=youtu.be
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Supposedly the Chinese government is paying for the output from this sewage/gutter oil process (for combustion in power plants) in order to prevent it from ending up in the food supply chain as cooking oil. Attempts at being resourceful can have some unintended consequences/second order effects. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/et981n/this_is_how_chinese_recycle_sewage_oil_into/fff8d1o/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/et981n/this_is_how_...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
jjallen 7y ago
Food is still a large share of many people's incomes. It is not surprising to me that some people may want to eat free or cheaper food, still in 2020. Some of us may have plenty of food - heck many of us have way too much. But if you travel around the world really at all you would quickly understand why some may eat non-commercially produced food. Also, still in the US people eat animals like squirrels, raccoons or feral pork.
auggierose 7y ago
There is a reason why "Contagion" starts in China ...
- 7y ago

nodemaker 7y ago

I'm surprised no one has commented on how unhealthy, unhygienic and to some level immoral the consumption of genetically similar animals is. One more reason we should only eat creatures very genetically dissimilar to us. Eating bats, cows, rats, pigs etc will give you nasty results indeed because their pathogens can attack you very easily as opposed to a fish. (Actually eating undercooked fish can give you a nasty thing called liver flukes so even thats not safe)

jamesblonde 7y ago

According to a former Harvard public health researcher, the Wuhan coronavirus has a R0 value of 3.8. That is significantly higher than SARS (estimated at between 2-4). This means is will spread rapidly unless transport in/out of Wuhan is completely stopped: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1220919589623803905.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1220919589623803905.html

jamesblonde 7y ago
The source article is here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v...
SubiculumCode 7y ago
That 3.8 may have since been revised downward....looking for the link again.
- jamesblonde 7y ago
  Just looking again - Imperial College are saying 2.6. But Neil Ferguson, part of that study from ICL, says on Twitter "we need to plan for the possibility that containment of this epidemic is not possible". https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1221134886825873409/photo/1 https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1221134886825873409/ph...
  - Fomite 7y ago
    Okay...a few notes on R0. 1) Neil Ferguson knows his business, but part of that is knowing that, like economists predicting recessions, there's little penalty for being wrong. I'm sure you can find a quote that's similar from him for any recent outbreak. Why? Because of course we need to plan for that possibility. It's a low risk statement to make. 2) R0 is not a biological constant. It's a combination of contact rates and probabilities of transmission. Neither one of those is actually fixed.
    - 7y ago

runawaybottle 7y ago

I saw this map on Reddit today, and I’m probably going to add to ignorant hysteria: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... I just can’t believe the real number of infected is as low as the reported confirmed number based on that map. It’s got to be all of over China if the confirmed cases are all over like that (not to mention it made to NA and Europe).

aaron695 7y ago

Normal HN racism. Of the 41 people in the initial cohort at the hospital the ~1/3 from the market all did what? They all kissed the same snake? Or did one person catch it and then spread it at one of the most packed locations in the area? And since it's a market it also contains farmers that easily could have brought it from out of the city. Saying it comes from markets is like saying it comes from airplane meetups. Their reasons for saying it comes from snakes I assume is genetic, the fact they are all quickly traced to such packed locations proves nothing. I know snakes are used to feed omnivorous livestock in some countries for instance. It can also be spread from fecal matter. It doesn't mean everyone eats poo. It means poor people live among animals. [edit] More on patient zero (Not from the market according to SCMP, no surprise) https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047646/no-link-seafood-market-first-case-china-coronavirus-chinese https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047646/no-l...

Datsundere 7y ago

Need I say More? https://twitter.com/chenqiushi404/status/1219885244670607361 https://twitter.com/chenqiushi404/status/1219885244670607361

MiroF 7y ago
Yes, that video isn't an argument. Just because bats are eaten isn't proof positive that that is where the xeno barrier was crossed
- jacquesm 7y ago
  It isn't, but is an opportunity for that to happen. The eating of 'bush meat' is how lots of Zoonosis events happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis
  - bhk 7y ago
    The list in the article you linked indicates that eating undercooked meat is a mode of transmission only for parasites, prion-based diseases, and a couple of bacterial diseases. It doesn't seem plausible for a viral disease, especially a respiratory one. On the other hand, capturing, keeping, butchering, and preparing bats could present a risk. With Ebola, butchering of bush meat was cited as a likely vector.
    - khuey 7y ago
      Eating bush meat is what causes people to do all those other things you list.
_byed 7y ago
> Need I say More? Yes, actually. Can you demonstrate how this actually resulted in the pandemic rather than subtly shaming a cultural practice you don't agree with? (I don't agree with it either, but "need I say more" pointing to the specific practice is not the same thing as "here's a resource which links bat game consumption to outbreaks." The tone is ever so slightly edging in the wrong direction.)

busymom0 7y ago

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=Get 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 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 China" > A Canadian government scientist at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg made at least five trips to China in 2017-18, including one to train scientists and technicians at China's newly certified Level 4 lab, which does research with the most deadly pathogens, according to travel documents obtained by CBC News. > Xiangguo Qiu — who was escorted out of the Winnipeg lab in July amid an RCMP investigation into what's being described by Public Health Agency of Canada as a possible "policy breach" — was invited to go to the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences twice a year for two years, for up to two weeks each time. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/national-microbiology-lab-scientist-investigation-china-1.5307424 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/national-microbiolog... > Canadian lab's shipment of Ebola, Henipah viruses to China raises questions. Shipment may be part of RCMP investigation into researchers evicted from National Microbiology Lab. Scientists at the National Microbiology Lab sent live Ebola and Henipah viruses to Beijing on an Air Canada flight March 31, and while the Public Health Agency of Canada says all federal policies were followed, there are questions about whether that shipment is part of an ongoing RCMP investigation. Ebola and Henipah are Level 4 pathogens, meaning they're some of the deadliest viruses in the world. They must be contained in a lab with the highest level of biosafety control, such as the one in Winnipeg. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/ebola-henipah-china-1.5232674 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/ebola-henipah-china-... "Wuhan" is the center of this outbreak too. It's too much of a coincidence. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w... > Mr. Shoham, now with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel, said the virology institute is the only declared site in China known as P4 for Pathogen Level 4, a status indicating it uses the strictest safety standards to prevent the spread of the most dangerous and exotic microbes being studied. > The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent samples to China of what he said were some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus. In a July article in the journal Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Mr. Shoham said the Wuhan institute was one of four Chinese laboratories engaged in some aspects of the biological weapons development. He identified the secure Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the institute as engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses. The Wuhan virology institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. But certain laboratories within it “have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defense establishment,” he said. In 1993, China declared a second facility, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, as one of eight biological warfare research facilities covered by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) which China joined in 1985. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-lab-studying-SARS-Ebola-Wuhan-outbreaks-center.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-la... > China built a lab to study SARS and Ebola in Wuhan - and US biosafety experts warned in 2017 that a virus could 'escape' the facility that's become key in fighting the outbreak > The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is the only lab in China designated for studying dangerous pathogens like SARS and Ebola > Ahead of its January 2018 opening, biosafety experts and scientists from the US expressed concerns that a virus could escape the lab > In 2004, a SARS virus 'leaked' from a lab in Beijing > Experts say the coronavirus that's infected more than 800 people mutated in animals and became capable of infecting humans at the Wuhan seafood market > But a 2017 article warned of the unpredictability of lab animals that scientists at the Wuhan lab intended to inject with viruses

tzs 7y ago

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?

tomrod 7y ago
Doorknobs, mail and Amazon delivery, sneezes upwind from your house, mosquitoes, rats, and such.
rukittenme 7y ago
This may upset you... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206090650.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206090650.h...
JoshGlazebrook 7y ago
> 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. These may not be that much better - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/29/mcdonalds-touchscreen-kiosks-in-uk-contain-traces-of-feces.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/29/mcdonalds-touchscreen-kiosks...
mprev 7y ago
Are you avoiding human contact because you are worried about infection?

mrb 7y ago

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 https://twitter.com/hhh05146721/status/1220953373622534145 [1] https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30154-9/fulltext https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(... [2] https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(... [3] https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1 https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1

secondo 7y ago
I don’t know if you do this intentionally or if Hanlon’s razor, but you intermix source backed claims with made up ones. Nature does not claim the mortality rate is 11%. They do make a comparison to SARS’ mortality rate which was about 11% and argue that Wuhan coronavirus is lower in that regard[1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00166-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00166-6
- mrb 7y ago
  You are right, I misremembered Nature's video (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00209-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00209-y claimed SARS, not nCoV-2019, had an 11% mortality rate.) I edited the comment.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

Very strange. Given HK is the 2nd most affected (and most affected last time) why it was not mentioned. As regards to the source we really hoped it is not from the lab in Wu han, one of the few la e in the world with category 4 lab handling sars etc.

MichaelRazum 7y ago

Let's assume the worst-case scenario. It has a high mortality rate and is spreading with a high reinfection rate. Other cities will lock off shortly like in china. What are the steps to survive? How do you think the world will react? Will this lead to collapse? At least in the first step for tourism.

ggm 7y ago

Is HN now part of the misinformation bubble? The paranoia, national agenda anti China hate brigade are strong here. Seriously, can people take a chill pill and stop spreading fud? I read https://promedmail.org https://promedmail.org and I'm waiting for them to panic before I invoke contagion metaphors. It's way too early to state the infection and mortality rates

inred9 7y ago

the darkest time of coronavirus crisis is over，https://wubigo.com/post/the-darkest-time-of-coronavirus-crisis-is-over/ https://wubigo.com/post/the-darkest-time-of-coronavirus-cris...

sergiotapia 7y ago

Started from chinese people eating bats. Uma delicia. https://www.instagram.com/p/B7q4ZwnpTWu/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B7q4ZwnpTWu/

nopinsight 7y ago

Neil Ferguson, an epidemologist at Imperial College, suggested that the 2019 novel coronavirus’ Basic Reproduction Number (R0) [1] is about 2.5, which aligns with figures from other research groups. The 1918 pandemic-causing flu’s R0 was between 2 and 3 [1] while seasonal flu’s figure is only 1.3 [2]. This is not to say everyone should panic as the strict containment policy that China and the Chinese adopted should help reduce the R0 significantly. However, the asymptomatic period is long, thus it remains to be seen what the full impact of this virus will be. Other countries may need a better policy to track high-risk individuals already in their territories. “Neil_ferguson @neil_ferguson R0 estimates for flu pandemics lie in the 1.5-2.5 range. Yes, Measles is much higher (10-15). An epidemic with an R0 of 2.5 could still infect between 60% and 90% of the population, depending on contact patterns and assuming no prior immunity. Not all might be symptomatic though.” https://mobile.twitter.com/neil_ferguson/with_replies https://mobile.twitter.com/neil_ferguson/with_replies [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number [2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2231333-what-are-the-symptoms-of-the-new-coronavirus-and-how-deadly-is-it/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2231333-what-are-the-sy...

philliphaydon 7y ago
> as the strict containment policy that China adopted should help reduce the R0 significantly What strict containment policy?
- nopinsight 7y ago
  Quarantine of 12 cities and 35 million residents. Suspension of tour groups out of the whole country. What more can you do? https://qz.com/1790891/china-expands-quarantine-to-12-cities-and-35-million-residents/ https://qz.com/1790891/china-expands-quarantine-to-12-cities... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/world/asia/china-coronavi...
  - philliphaydon 7y ago
    They quarantined Wuhan, and announced it 8 hours before they did it, they estimated 200k people left Wuhan in a rush. Yet people are still entering and exiting Wuhan for CNY. So as far as I'm concerned this quarantine is just political face.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

Latest figure is 56 death out of 1900. About 3%. Not high but that is the problem. The spread and low death rate meant widespread. Hope closing the cities would work.

anonsivalley652 7y ago

This strikes of subtle provincial pearl-clutching, nationalism and racist dog-whistling. Large-scale meat agriculture and aquafarming are far worse in terms of risks of pandemic evolution: - hundreds to tens of thousands of animals crammed into cages or pens - all of their bodily wastes mixed together and mixed with the animals and humans taking care of them. Orders-of-maginitudes more pandemics are just one of the negative consequences of billions of people eating meat. That has to stop, not just for the climate change reasons, but pandemic, antibiotic resistance and cruelty just to name a few.

ageofwant 7y ago

I get a fair number of mail and packages from China, living in Australia. Some virus' can survive quite a while on non-porous surfaces like plastic, especially if the contents itsef is contaminated. I now open packages outside of the house and spray the contents down with alkohol. Yea keep those sneaky vectors in mind.

fulldecent2 7y ago

The official name for this is 2019-nCoV. And for Twitter that is #2019nCoV. Using the correct name (or including it in parenthesis somewhere) is a way to help your publications stay connected to the wider discussion.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]