4 ms·

The coronavirus may not have originated in China, says Oxford professor

7 points by noobrunner 6y ago

noobrunner 6y ago
Here we go... paper link here https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v...
aritmo 6y ago
All these test kits would check for the presence of small fragments of RNA. If you are applying the test on lots of sewage, it is likely to find some weird false positive that is not COVID-19 in the first. I would find it even more interesting if there were specific agents in sewage, irrelevant from COVID-19, that would cause a false positive.
- noobrunner 6y ago
  Do you know what the false positive rates of these tests are ?
thescribbblr 6y ago
A few day ago an another study said that the first case was reported in Spain.
- noobrunner 6y ago
  Do you have link to the paper ?
Arnt 6y ago
What's this about a corona case in the Falklands in February? I cannot find any mention of that elsewhere? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-falkland-islands-coronavirus-case.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-falkland-islands-coro... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_Falkland_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_Falkl...
- Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago
  I'm glad that I'm not the only one scratching their heads slightly. According to the article " claims to have found the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genomes in a Barcelona sewage sample from 12 March 2019[1]. Further reading of [1] says that zilch (zero, nill, nothing) was found in samples taken on the 11 March 2019 (the day before) and that equally zilch was found on 13 March 2019 (the day afterwards)[2] and yet the article casually makes the assertion " have found the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genomes in a Barcelona sewage sample from 12 March 2019". Uhmm yeah, no. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v... [2] "archival WWTP samples from January 2018 to December 2019 (Figure 2). All samples came out to be negative for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genomes with the exception of March 12, 2019". I'm not an expert (or anything even close to being one in this domain) but let's not post anything that has yet to be properly peer reviewed. Not a dig at the submitter, but an eye-roll at the article.

7 points by noobrunner 6y ago

Here we go... paper link here https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v...

aritmo 6y ago

All these test kits would check for the presence of small fragments of RNA. If you are applying the test on lots of sewage, it is likely to find some weird false positive that is not COVID-19 in the first. I would find it even more interesting if there were specific agents in sewage, irrelevant from COVID-19, that would cause a false positive.

noobrunner 6y ago
Do you know what the false positive rates of these tests are ?

thescribbblr 6y ago

A few day ago an another study said that the first case was reported in Spain.

noobrunner 6y ago
Do you have link to the paper ?

Arnt 6y ago

What's this about a corona case in the Falklands in February? I cannot find any mention of that elsewhere? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-falkland-islands-coronavirus-case.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-falkland-islands-coro... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_Falkland_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_Falkl...

Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago
I'm glad that I'm not the only one scratching their heads slightly. According to the article " claims to have found the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genomes in a Barcelona sewage sample from 12 March 2019[1]. Further reading of [1] says that zilch (zero, nill, nothing) was found in samples taken on the 11 March 2019 (the day before) and that equally zilch was found on 13 March 2019 (the day afterwards)[2] and yet the article casually makes the assertion " have found the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genomes in a Barcelona sewage sample from 12 March 2019". Uhmm yeah, no. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v... [2] "archival WWTP samples from January 2018 to December 2019 (Figure 2). All samples came out to be negative for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genomes with the exception of March 12, 2019". I'm not an expert (or anything even close to being one in this domain) but let's not post anything that has yet to be properly peer reviewed. Not a dig at the submitter, but an eye-roll at the article.