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Decoding evolution and transmissions of novel pneumonia coronavirus
- sahin-boydas 7y agoWhat was it?
- dangrossman 7y agoThat's not known.
- bulutsuzku 7y agoProbably the chinese researcher in a Canadian BSL4? Where are the intel agencies when we need them....
- sahin-boydas 7y agoThen what is the probable possible sources? If someone separate them by media says, twitter says, science says, conspiracy says? It will be great.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pbourke 7y agoThese viruses have a reservoir in bats and they jump to humans through an intermediary animal. In the case of the virus that caused SARS[1], which was another coronavirus within the same family as the current virus of interest, there is some evidence that it went bats -> palm civets -> humans. Palm civets are/were sold at wet markets in China. It's not definitive that the palm civet was the source, however, as they subsequently found the virus in other animals. For the current virus[2], the time and place of transfer is unknown, but the current thinking seems to be that it followed the same chain as SARS (bats -> some animal -> humans). There is absolutely zero evidence from credible scientists of any kind of "escaped from the lab" or "bioweapon" source. These are just conspiracy theories. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
- wetpaws 7y agoWithout jumping into conspiracy bandwagon, I still can't see how "originated from bats" is better then "bioweapon" if neither has concrete evidence or proof.
- fhars 7y agoOne has plausibility and some evidence from DNA sequencing and mutation rates on its side, the other hasn‘t.
- wetpaws 7y ago>the other hasn‘t Just because some people don't believe that is likely, that does not mean it is not _plausable_ Is it plausible that there could be a biological lab in Wuhan? Yes, in fact, there is one. Is it plausible that some countries do research on biological weapon? Yes, in fact there are multiple cases of such occasions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Biological_Warfare_Laboratories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Biological_... Is it plausible that biological lab can leak bioweapon? Yes, in fact this happened before, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
- pbourke 7y agoThere is ample proof of a connection to bats, including a 96% similarity of SARS-CoV-2 to a sampled bat coronavirus in Hubei province. Numerous papers, with ample evidence in that direction. Just not enough to speak definitively and categorically. There is --zero-- evidence of a bioweapon. So it's better in the sense that it's reflective of reality, which also happens to not inflame international relations at a crucial time.
- chrisco255 7y agoIt doesn't have to be a bioweapon but there's no evidence to confirm or deny that this escaped from the Wuhan Virology Institute. It could have very easily infected a worker from the lab if safety precautions were not followed. And the CCP would never disclose it.
- brianberns 7y agoI’m confused. SARS and COVID-19 (the current coronavirus outbreak) aren’t the same, right? Which one are we talking about here?
- Proven 7y agoSARS-COV-2 = COVID-19 (SARS v2)
- leesec 7y agoCOVID-19 is the name of the disease SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the new gene.
- JPLeRouzic 7y agoFrom Wikipedia [0] I think that you are right that COVID-19 is the name of the disease, but SARS-CoV-2 is the name of a coronavirus, not the name of a gene: Citation: " During the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) originally recommended use of the temporary designation "2019-nCoV" (2019 novel coronavirus) to refer to the virus. However, this led to concerns that the absence of an official name might lead to the use of prejudicial informal names, and in common parlance the virus was often referred to as "the new coronavirus", "Wuhan coronavirus", or simply "coronavirus". Per 2015 WHO guidelines on the naming of viruses and diseases, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) announced that it would introduce a suitable official name for the virus. On 11 February 2020, the ICTV introduced the name "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" (SARS-CoV-2) to refer to the virus strain previously known as 2019-nCoV. Earlier the same day, the WHO officially renamed the disease caused by the virus strain from "2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease" to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). " [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sschueller 7y ago"On February 11, 2020, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, charged with naming new viruses, named the novel coronavirus, first identified in Wuhan, China, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, shortened to SARS-CoV-2. As the name indicates, the virus is related to the SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) that caused an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002-2003, however it is not the same virus." [1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html
- MilnerRoute 7y agoThat's not the actual headline. We have no way of assessing the credibility of this research.
- zoomablemind 7y agoIndeed, not the original title. Speculatively stated like a click-bait.
- dang 7y agoWe've changed the title to the original now, as the site guidelines ask: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) (Submitted title was "Genomic analysis suggests seafood market was not SARS-CoV-2 source". )
- 1_over_n 7y agoSorry, i posted the link and the full title was too long to fit in the field. I did editorialize it as the intention was to draw attention to the claim. Noted for future posts. Edited to include claim in journal below: "This suggests that the source of the coronavirus in the Hua Nan market was imported from elsewhere"
- 1_over_n 7y agoOf all the possible HN users out there, stating there is no way of assessing the credibility of this research is quite a big statement. The point of journal articles is that the methods and data can be evaluated. Hopefully, someone with experience in this technique can give their position on this research and given it's a hot topic, I'm sure it won't be long until the broader scientific community has some input.
- anonsivalley652 7y agoIt came across to me as stereotyping to just assume certain people engaged in something very specific without any evidence in order to look down on them. Furthermore, it's also impossible to prove where it didn't come, also without evidence, because you can't prove a negative.
- jacquesm 7y agoThat may be so, but bush meat has been positively identified as the source of quite a few outbreaks.
- dTal 7y agoAs an aside, I always found it strange that eating wild land animals is looked down upon as "bushmeat" and unsustainable and unhygienic, while eating wild sea creatures is just "seafood" (with farmed aquafauna looked down upon as the inferior product).
- jacquesm 7y agoThat's a good point. There is plenty of seafood that when not dealt with properly will happily kill you or make you at a minimum severely ill. Mussels, shellfish, oysters are best avoided unless you are very sure about where they came from and how they were prepared. Besides that, due to the liquid environment anything in the sea that is poisonous is usually so in a very potent fashion. Species jumping viruses are rare when it comes to regular fish but marine mammals are a risk.
- corporateslave5 7y agoInterestingly enough, most information/speculation about the viruses origins are actively suppressed by google/twitter/reddit.
- vincnetas 7y agoHow do you know that? Care to share more details?
- z92 7y agozerohedge's twitter account was blocked permanently for sharing a post on the origin of the virus. For one.
- MilnerRoute 7y agoThey banned them for doxing a researcher. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/01/twitter-zero-hedge-coronavirus/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/01/twitter...
- kolanos 7y agoIs it doxing if they just republished already public information on the virology lab's website?
- oasisbob 7y agoDebatably not, but that's not what Zero Hedge published: The Zero Hedge post questioned the involvement of a virology institute in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak began. It listed the name, photograph and contact information for a researcher at the institute, and called on readers to “pay [him] a visit” if they want to “find out what really caused the coronavirus pandemic.”
- daemonk 7y agoInteresting paper. I haven't dug into the methods/data in depth. But the gist of their interpretation is: - Out of the initial 41 cases, 27 were linked to the seafood market. The first identified cases + 12 others had no link to the market. - Phylogenetic analysis suggests two potential ancestral haplotypes. None of the seafood market haplotypes were the two potential ancestral. - The very first initial cases (family from Shenzhen) was one of the two potential ancestral haplotype. I am a bioinformatics phd and know enough about phylogenetic analysis to say that it can sometimes be ambiguous and have some elements of subjectivity, especially with low sample sizes. So I wouldn't be too fast to jump on these results. However, I haven't gone through the data in detail to really give a good opinion.
- JPLeRouzic 7y agoThanks, it is really helpful. If the patient zero is from Shenzen, doesn't that weaken the hypothesis of an origin in a bat virus? (Population density = 6,100/km2)
- zoomablemind 7y agoThe paper cites GISAID db as their datasource. I wonder if at present the db includes sufficient number of early samples prior to the mentioned Dec 8), given the widely described massive efforts by official China to silence the early reports of the outbreak [0]? 0: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-information-crackdown-on-wuhan-coronavirus-2020-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-information-crackdown-...
- 7y ago
- MilnerRoute 7y agoI worry that we may be spreading misinformation. https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/02/21/2257228/scientists-condemn-conspiracy-theories-about-origin-of-coronavirus-outbreak https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/02/21/2257228/scientis...
- T-A 7y agoYour link is about "Conspiracy Theories About Origin of Coronavirus Outbreak" on social media which may cause "real consequences, including threats of violence that have occurred to our colleagues in China". Parent's link is to a genomic analysis of COVID-19 trying to reconstruct its evolution, authored by researchers all working in China. Unless you think that no attempt should be made to determine the origins of the virus because of what trolls might make of it, I don't see the problem. If you do think that trolls should have that power, it's pretty late to worry about it: the official narrative about it all having started in Wuhan's seafood market has been known to be incomplete at best for a while now: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market...
- MilnerRoute 7y ago"Known to be"? I really take issue with that phrase. As maddening as it may be, we DO NOT KNOW the origins of the virus. And after reading a new paper -- we still do not know. We have to stop acting like we do.
- T-A 7y ago> "Known to be"? > I really take issue with that phrase. That's your phrase, not mine. What I wrote is "the official narrative about it all having started in Wuhan's seafood market has been known to be incomplete at best for a while now". > As maddening as it may be, we DO NOT KNOW the origins of the virus Yes. That's what I said. You are arguing against your own position, not mine.
- diogenescynic 7y agoCan we just keep it shut down regardless? They were torturing rare/endangered species at these places. The animals deserve better. No one needs to be eating koalas, wolf puppies, foxes, pangolins, or any of the other animals that were there. Also, if you have to torture your food to death to eat it, you're a monster--many of these mammals were being boiled alive or having their fur stripped while they were still alive. China's unflinching animal cruelty is shockingly callous and inhumane.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zed88 7y agoTotally agree. And here is a video to prove it https://youtu.be/rbHxeOQA1Mc https://youtu.be/rbHxeOQA1Mc CCP is also lying on the numbers of deaths and treatment of people in quarantine. Where their apartments are sealed from outside and they are left to die. I saw several videos from Wuhan where seemingly normal people are collapsing in the street and dying.
- hrjdkkforl 7y agoThen there is this: https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coronavirus-may-have-leaked-from-a-lab/ https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coro...
- MilnerRoute 7y agoThis is in the "LIVING" section of the New York Post. (That's why it's got all these colloquisms like "Read that again!" and "You heard me right!") It was written by Steven Mosher, a founding member of "The Committee on the Present Danger: China." And he's flogging a discredited conspiracy theory. https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/02/21/2257228/scientists-condemn-conspiracy-theories-about-origin-of-coronavirus-outbreak https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/02/21/2257228/scientis...
- jacquesm 7y agoThat page is full of shit, please don't help spreading this kind of junk.
- Reelin 7y agoResearchGate wasn't linking me back to the original point of publication, and the DOI doesn't seem to be valid (yet?). It turns out this was uploaded to the Chinese arXiv equivalent on the 19th. http://www.chinaxiv.org/abs/202002.00033 http://www.chinaxiv.org/abs/202002.00033
- stallmanite 7y agoHow have I never heard of chinaxiv? Thanks for bringing this to my attention.