5 ms·

Why are you asking?

war1025 7y ago
There has been speculation I've overheard that the virus is particularly deadly to Asian people. Seems like a bogus theory to me, but I suspect that was the reason for the question. Largely plays into the "escaped bioweapon" theory.
- rolph 7y ago
  there is a basis for the recombinant selection of specificity to histocompatability type [in simple terms that can mean race] I have a gut feeling it would be impossible to contain or manage the media if this virus or any other pathogen was killing only those of asian heritage so we would know if it actually was happening. There is no indication any one particular ethnic group is hit harder at this time as there is no adequate comparison between the asian and other than asian people
- knzhou 7y ago
  This is a great example of how misinformation spreads. All of the speculation comes from a single non peer reviewed paper, which had literally one data point. That paper was posted to a preprint server where scientists could comment on it. And the first comment was somebody doing a quick followup study with 100x more data, which found no significant difference. Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1
  - allovernow 7y ago
    What you're saying isn't entirely untrue, but there has also been at least one other paper from about 10 years ago floating around which, following SARS, looked at genetic markers for ACE2 receptors and found that they are significantly overrepresented in Han Chinese and Japanese genes. So there is still some credibility to the speculation.
  - rolph 7y ago
    this preprint needs a pass with occams chainsaw to get rid of some loaded terms that verbally modify the data
klohto 7y ago
Are we forbidden to even ask this?
- rolph 7y ago
  this is one of the problems with research or any sort of policy. we all have different physical properties but we all have a human consciousness in common. So some people may have different constituative expression of particular properties such as a cellular receptor protien [eg ACE2] and this information could be used to predict the degree of deleterious effect a virus may have for any one person. with that being said, there is no need to suspect this is a bioweapon, as a serial passaging of mutable pathogens will begin to create a selective effect [naturally of its own ]. ordinarily communicability is the direction of drift as lethality or debilitating morbidity inhibits communicability [in the simplest scenario] a bioweapon cant be quite so communicable to everyone that has ACE2 receptors as it must be strategically controlled so its lethel effect will only go so far.
  - klohto 7y ago
    I’m afraid you’re responding to the wrong comment. I do not suspect a bioweapon and agree with your points. I was just angry that people assume racists intent when asking simple question as this.

Why are you asking?

There has been speculation I've overheard that the virus is particularly deadly to Asian people. Seems like a bogus theory to me, but I suspect that was the reason for the question. Largely plays into the "escaped bioweapon" theory.

rolph 7y ago
there is a basis for the recombinant selection of specificity to histocompatability type [in simple terms that can mean race] I have a gut feeling it would be impossible to contain or manage the media if this virus or any other pathogen was killing only those of asian heritage so we would know if it actually was happening. There is no indication any one particular ethnic group is hit harder at this time as there is no adequate comparison between the asian and other than asian people
knzhou 7y ago
This is a great example of how misinformation spreads. All of the speculation comes from a single non peer reviewed paper, which had literally one data point. That paper was posted to a preprint server where scientists could comment on it. And the first comment was somebody doing a quick followup study with 100x more data, which found no significant difference. Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1
- allovernow 7y ago
  What you're saying isn't entirely untrue, but there has also been at least one other paper from about 10 years ago floating around which, following SARS, looked at genetic markers for ACE2 receptors and found that they are significantly overrepresented in Han Chinese and Japanese genes. So there is still some credibility to the speculation.
- rolph 7y ago
  this preprint needs a pass with occams chainsaw to get rid of some loaded terms that verbally modify the data

klohto 7y ago

Are we forbidden to even ask this?

rolph 7y ago
this is one of the problems with research or any sort of policy. we all have different physical properties but we all have a human consciousness in common. So some people may have different constituative expression of particular properties such as a cellular receptor protien [eg ACE2] and this information could be used to predict the degree of deleterious effect a virus may have for any one person. with that being said, there is no need to suspect this is a bioweapon, as a serial passaging of mutable pathogens will begin to create a selective effect [naturally of its own ]. ordinarily communicability is the direction of drift as lethality or debilitating morbidity inhibits communicability [in the simplest scenario] a bioweapon cant be quite so communicable to everyone that has ACE2 receptors as it must be strategically controlled so its lethel effect will only go so far.
- klohto 7y ago
  I’m afraid you’re responding to the wrong comment. I do not suspect a bioweapon and agree with your points. I was just angry that people assume racists intent when asking simple question as this.