6 ms·
The Animal Origins of Coronavirus and Flu
- lowdose 7y agoThis virus looks engineered. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcT58RU6GlMRXnaptRd5Yj7yTDWnj6Q9pnUkwpvA7_Hfusgblp1B https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcT58R...
- ekianjo 7y agoBased on what? Gut feeling?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- adrr 7y agoIf its engineered as a bioweapon, it is a very terrible design. It kills old people and people with pre-existing health issues. The flu already does that.
- klmr 7y agoNothing in this image looks engineered. In fact, this is an illustration of a comparatively messy virus particle. Other viruses look a lot more regular and “artificial”. Check out the pictures (including actual SEM pictures) on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus. And if that doesn’t convince you, here’s what bacteriophages look like: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bacteriophage.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bacteriophage.jpg — Clearly nanobots, right?
- hammock 7y ago>In fact, this is an illustration of a comparatively messy virus particle. Other viruses look a lot more regular and “artificial”. Notwithstanding the main point you are making, why do you expect an engineered virus to look LESS messy? I would expect it to be a kludged-together frankenstein of different parts.
- klmr 7y agoI’m assuming that the comment I was replying to was using the perceived “tidiness” of the picture as the sole evidence for their claim that it looks engineered. What else could they mean? — Of course you’re right that an engineered virion wouldn’t necessarily look tidier than a natural one. My comment wanted to point out that the perceived tidiness isn’t evidence of engineering.
- nexuist 7y agoPreface: I am not a virologist. I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I would like to spark a discussion. https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899 https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899 This 2007 paper from the Wuhan Institute of Virology claims that an "HIV-based psuedovirus system" could be used to enable SARS-Like CoVs to jump to human hosts. As we recently discovered, SARS-CoV-2 has 4-5 "HIV inserts." Is it possible that SARS-CoV-2 was a byproduct virus engineered from this research? I don't buy the bioweapon theory, I don't think there is any hard evidence to prove that. What I do buy is that there were two different labs doing work on coronaviruses near the seafood market attributed to the breakout (and we now know a dozen or so patients did not visit the market, meaning it came from somewhere else...), and it is entirely possible that a failure in safety protocol could have led to an accidental release of research samples into the real world. It would not be the first time it has happened. I do still think it's entirely possible for it to have originated "in the wild" as well, but it would have to be a hell of a coincidence given the facts at hand.
- hirenj 7y agoOn the HIV inserts, may I point you to this informative comment from a previous thread? I'm afraid it's not good information. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206393
- nexuist 7y agoThank you for the correction. I do see OP's points. This however does not invalidate the alternative theory that the virus was extracted from a bat in the wild and somehow escaped. I wish there was a way to prove definitively if it escaped or not. Without the cooperation of the CCP or whistleblowers, we will never know for sure, at least until it can be traced to an exact animal at the market.
- w14 7y agoDo you have a source for the 4-5 HIV insert claim? Was it the paper referred to here? https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/03/retraction-faulty-coronavirus-paper-good-moment-for-science/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/03/retraction-faulty-corona...
- jacquesm 7y agoIt looks about as engineered as a jellyfish looks engineered. Stop spreading nonsense.
- jackfoxy 7y agoAnecdotal: I had a discussion yesterday with someone who has very close connection to someone inside one U.S. intelligence agency. I asked him about the circumstantial evidence of virus engineering. He told me that he recently directly asked his contact "is this virus engineered?" His contact could have answered "I can't discuss that", but the contact's answer was a direct "No".
- whatshisface 7y agoWhich must mean that it was engineered by the agency that his contact works for. ;)
- theseadroid 7y agoThere's already scientific research on whether it is engineered or not and the evidence so far is a strong no. http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/398 http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/3...
- jmull 7y agoAny particular reason we shouldn't dismiss you as a nutty conspiracy theorist, bot, shill, or other purveyor of BS? (The picture shows nothing. If you have anything besides crazy FUD, here's your chance to tell us about it.)
- nexuist 7y agoShould be noted that the numbers in the intro are a bit off, the U.S. now has 57 cases. https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/ https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus...
- nck4222 7y agoIs there any sense for how accurate the case numbers are? I've been thinking about it and I can't fathom how we would know of every case. What percentage of adults who get the seasonal flu go see a doctor and get diagnosed, 10%? Coronavirus symptoms mimic the flu and can even by asymptomatic in people, meaning people can easily attribute symptoms to a bad cold/flu or not even notice them. On average someone with coronavirus spreads it to 3-4 other people. It's estimated that the virus started infecting people in early January, but China didn't start quarantining people until 3 weeks later or so. I just don't see the math adding up, all it takes is a handful of people not seeking treatment in order for it to start spreading without our knowledge. There has to be thousands of additional cases around the world of that just aren't diagnosed, which is how we're suddenly seeing unexpected diagnoses in places without any previous outbreak like Iran.
- jacquesm 7y ago> It's estimated that the virus started infecting people in early January December 2019. That's why it is called COVID-19 to begin with, because it was first detected in 2019.
- davidw 7y agoWe can't even test for it properly in the US right now: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/25/cdc-coronavirus-test/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/25/cdc-coronav... And yeah, there are going to be a bunch of people here who won't seek help unless it gets really bad, and who will go to their jobs even if they feel crummy because they need the money, thus spreading it farther and more rapidly. BTW, we were warned: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-trump-administration-is-ill-prepared-for-a-global-pandemic/2017/04/08/59605bc6-1a49-11e7-9887-1a5314b56a08_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-t...
- ptah 7y agoi thought humans are just another animal. why the surprise about diseases jumping from other animals to humans
- klmr 7y agoThere’s no surprise, zoonotic viruses are well known. That said, viruses are usually highly adapted to a specific host. Jumping host species isn’t trivial, and the mechanisms for how this happens are worth exploring.
- jacquesm 7y agoThe bulk of our diseases are zoonotic in nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis Has the figure at 61%.
- robbrown451 7y agoSure, but here is a key line from the Wikipedia article you reference: "Most human diseases originated in other animals; however, only diseases that routinely involve non-human to human transmission, such as rabies, are considered direct zoonosis" You aren't going to catch the current coronavirus from your dog.
- jacquesm 7y agoTrue. But you could catch Rabies.
- Symmetry 7y agoBut usually zoonotic diseases are especially deadly since killing the host is not in a parasites best interest but new diseases haven't worked out an equilibrium with the victim species yet. https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accident-than-assassination https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accid...
- maxerickson 7y ago
- hirenj 7y agoFun fact: Coronavirus also recognises sialic acids (but they need an extra acetylation on top). Fun fact 2: Sialic acids are important for protecting your gut / balancing the microbiome. Fun fact 3: Bats apparently have a much simpler microbiome (less weight, better flying), and can tolerate low levels of coronavirus infection. I would bet the closest non-flying relative of a bat would get respiratory infections too.
- dcolkitt 7y agoBats really do seem to serve as viral reservoirs at an exceptionally high rate[1]. SARS, MERS, coronavirus and ebola all likely seem to have originated in bats. One thing we may have to consider is a policy of bat eradication. At least in populated areas. It would have some ecological consequences, but the risk of mass pandemic probably outweighs that cost. [1]https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JnBpAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA195&dq=bats+as+viral+reservoirs&ots=NnUojPhgh5&sig=9eFGutqoVZGppcEs-SO6hoWfMmg#v=onepage&q=bats%20as%20viral%20reservoirs&f=false https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JnBpAgAAQBAJ&oi=...
- jmnicolas 7y agoYou could also replace "bats" by "humans" in your sentence ;)
- dahfizz 7y agoGetting people to stop eating bats would get us 95% of the benefit for 5% the effort.
- pvaldes 7y agoRemoving bats would create millionary damages in agriculture and would hit specially hard the tropical fruitculture. Kiling millions from famine and collapsing the ecology of tropical rainforests just to avoid a disease with a 96% probability of surviving is a really bad idea.
- jschwartzi 7y agoWhat's your opinion on Kudzu or Himalayan Blackberry as erosion control devices?
- throwGuardian 7y agoAs with other attempts at sparking discussions on the origin [1], I'm not a virologist, just a bystander whose curiosity was piqued by the proximity of the sole lab in all of China that's equipped to handle/research extremely infectious viruses and that of the outbreak. My observations (all facts) 1. Proximity of outbreak to sole advanced virology lab in all of China, suspicious 2. Publications ( https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899 https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899 )from lab suggest they were dealing with CoVid-19 like viruses for a while. 3. State of China would strongly deny/cover-up the lab to be the cause of outbreak, even if that did happen. I'm not suggesting they engineered the virus, just suggesting that they were researching animals with the virus, and a freak case of violating safety protocol let to the virus leaking to the nearby seafood market. Again - attributing this to clumsiness, not malice Given the above, I think an investigative journalist would find the circumstances fertile enough for a deep investigation. Given how hard it is to identify patient zero of the outbreak, I think journalists need to go down this path of investigation [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22424013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22424013
- beepboopbeep 7y agoGiven the above, I think you're grasping at straws.
- theseadroid 7y agoThere are US based researches on it already, and the evidence so far is it's not engineered. Your observations don't include all relevant facts, hence the conclusion can still be wrong. Like scientists in 18th century had all kind of weird ideas based on the facts they observed about the world. In today's world, for most of us, especially non experts on the fields, what really matters is all the facts out there that we don't know (or chose to ignore). http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/398 http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/3...
- seagullz 7y agoAn early 2019 review paper[0] by Chinese authors has this to say in its abstract: During the past two decades, three zoonotic coronaviruses have been identified as the cause of large-scale disease outbreaks–Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome (SADS). SARS and MERS emerged in 2003 and 2012, respectively, and caused a worldwide pandemic that claimed thousands of human lives, while SADS struck the swine industry in 2017. They have common characteristics, such as they are all highly pathogenic to humans or livestock, their agents originated from bats, and two of them originated in China. Thus, it is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China. Therefore, the investigation of bat coronaviruses becomes an urgent issue for the detection of early warning signs, which in turn minimizes the impact of such future outbreaks in China. The purpose of the review is to summarize the current knowledge on viral diversity, reservoir hosts, and the geographical distributions of bat coronaviruses in China, and eventually we aim to predict virus hotspots and their cross-species transmission potential. Is this prescient or purely coincidental or something else? [0] https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/11/3/210/htm https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/11/3/210/htm