Guest post by Rud Istvan,
ctm posted my longish scientific commentary written last Sunday on Monday. The situation is still rapidly evolving. Much more is now known than last Sunday. This updates my previous commentary and the general knowledge about Wuhan, adding new factual information plus additional research. For those interested, the WSJ online (paywalled, but I am a subscriber) has added a new coronavirus section tracking Wuhan daily news because of the importance to China and global supply chains. I rely on it here using today’s WSJ noon update.
A special h/t to previous commenters Robert of Texas and Nicolas McGinley, who added much to my previous post with many erudite comments.
Origins and precedents
Wuhan is the third known transmission of a respiratory tract coronavirus infection from bats via an intermediary mammal to humans:
SARS 2003: The following information is derived from a special WHO report. 916 deaths from 8422 total infections, mortality 10.9%. Not transmissible prior to onset of symptoms (cough, fever); main transmission days 4 and 5 after symptom onset. Mode of transmission mainly contact, with an R0 about 3. Bat corona via live civet intermediate to humans in a Chinese wet market.
MERS 2012: 779 deaths from 2229 total infections, mortality 35.5%. Not transmissible prior to symptom onset. Bat corona via live camel intermediate to humans in a Saudi Arabian camel market.
Wuhan 2020: to today at noon (2/13/20), about 1300 deaths in about 59000 diagnosed cases, with about 5000 full recoveries. The implications are discussed below. Bat corona via live pangolin to humans in Wuhan’s Huanan wet market (since permanently closed) in December 2019.
Wuhan transmission and clinical progression
Many more case reports are now giving a clear clinical picture.
Transmission route is either contact or inhalation (of real concern, because more flu like than cold like—even with annual flu shots influenza R0 remains about 2 because of flu vaccine issues covered in the previous post). Based on SARS and influenza, this means the likely Wuhan R0 is 3ish, so very contagious. The significant inhalation route is now shown by both the Diamond Princess cruise ship experiment (more below) and by the fact that ordinary surgical masks proved ineffective in the Wuhan hospital setting (JAMA, previous post).
Incubation period is 7-10 days from initial infection. The good news is that the 14-day quarantine adopted pretty much universally last week should therefore be effective (with a margin of safety) at Wuhan containment. But in most of Southeast Asia outside China, Japan, and Singapore, or in Africa should Wuhan spread there, 14-day quarantine will be difficult or impossible to maintain so the possibility of a pandemic remains.
The bad news is that Wuhan IS transmissible during some later part of the symptomless incubation period. The definitive clinical proof (there was comment debate about the reliability of previous post evidence from Japan and Germany) is an age 50’s UK male who attended an about 100 person sales conference in Singapore 1/20-1/22 2020. A single individual from Wuhan also attended this conference and was–per Singapore Wuhan containment policies– symptomless on arrival (no fever, no cough). That either symptomless or very early symptomatic individual transmitted Wuhan to the UK citizen in Singapore. The UK individual then flew to France for a 4-day family ski vacation 1/24-1/28 at Le Contamines-Montjoie. During the 4-day vacation the UK male remained symptomless (entire incubation time Singapore plus France at most 8 days) but transmitted Wuhan to 11 other individuals, 5 later diagnosed in UK (family and friends), 5 later diagnosed in France, and 1 later diagnosed in Spain. Clearly this case is NOT family close proximity contact transmission. This case may be a “super spreader” outlier, BUT it means a symptomless R0 as high as 11 cannot be ruled out, with a symptomless transmission period of several days. By comparison, the R0 for measles (absent vaccination) is 12-18, so a horrific Wuhan symptomless R0 of 11 is within the realm of actual possibility.
This is VERY bad news, as the formal CDC guidance on URI’s is that transmission risk is highest with peak symptoms (equating to peak virion shedding)–as was the case with SARS. Not so with Wuhan, reinforcing the public health necessity of strict 14-day quarantine.
Disease progression is standard common cold symptoms for 7-10 days with one exception–used since yesterday for clinical diagnosis in Hubei Province, as both the Chinese and the experimental CDC US test kits are showing significant problems with a high rate of false negatives. Common colds from over 120 distinct serotypes from all three viral families (RNA naked Rhino, RNA enveloped Corona, and DNA enveloped Adeno) all evidence the same three symptoms: runny nose, sore throat, and cough. Influenza adds two: fever and muscle ache. Wuhan clinically shows four: runny nose, sore throat, cough, AND fever—but NOT muscle ache. As of today, Hubei switched to clinical diagnosis and today’s ‘new’ diagnosed Wuhan cases were 14840. Yesterday, using only test kits, it was 1638. This is not a leap in cases; it is a leap in diagnostics.
Unfortunately, this new fact means Wuhan has previously (as suspected but now proven) been severely under diagnosed and reported. And that unfortunately means the 1300 attributed deaths were also severely underreported. More on presently inferable mortality comes in a following section.
Wuhan then makes a now well-established clinical bifurcation. In 75-80% of cases, by symptom day 10 there is a normal ‘corona cold’ recovery lasting a few days. (In my own case last week, 3 recovery days in total, days 9-12 from symptom onset.)
In 20-25% of cases, by symptom day 10 Wuhan progresses to lower respiratory tract pneumonia, where death may occur with or without ICU intervention. The percentage of these deep pneumonias that are viral as opposed to a secondary bacteria infection is not known, but the NEJM clinical case report from Washington State discussed in the following paragraph strongly suggests viral (like SARS), not secondary bacterial treatable with antibiotics.
The new NEJM case report is so important it is summarized here because it leads to a hopeful culminating section below. The Seattle Wuhan case evidenced x-ray diagnosed lower respiratory tract pneumonia from days 9-11 from symptom onset. Supplemental oxygen was started day 9. IV antibiotics were started day 10 to no effect, so discontinued after one day. Importantly (more below), experimental antiviral remdesivir started day 11 by IV under a compassionate use exception, and the deep viral pneumonia fully resolved (per x-ray diagnosis) within 24 hours!
Diamond Princess ‘lab’ experiment
On Sunday, reported cases were 69 out of about 3700 total ship passengers and crew. Japan was removing people from the ship to hospital isolation as soon as symptoms (fever) showed, so the cruise ship became a somewhat artificial (close quarters) symptomless R0 experiment.
As of today, the ship’s website reports that 218 passengers have been positively diagnosed from 713 tested, all removed to hospital isolation. About 3500 passengers and crew remain on board as the ‘experiment’ continues. This suggests symptomless Wuhan R0 is greater than 2 (37 new cases per day for four days among a symptomless about 3500- 3600) and could be, like SARS, 3ish. Except SARS transmission was after symptom onset; this is before.
Per its website, ship offered today to begin removing symptomless passengers to shore quarantine at their expense, or to remain quarantined on the ship at Princess expense. In either event, full cruise refunds have been made.
Inferable Mortality
The news here is not good. We have mostly very poor data; both Hubei incidence and mortality were now provably severely under reported. But we do have one piece of usable comparable information. 1300 mortalities and 5000 recoveries amongst those who tested positive from the false negative test kits used until yesterday (the majority of cases have not yet resolved one way of the other). In the end, when the disease has run its course, there are only two outcomes: recovery or death. On the test kit basis, the mortality could be as high as 26%. That is horrible but not impossible since MERS was almost 36%.
My own ‘hunch’ is that Wuhan in the end will come in about 10% mortality; the mechanism is lower respiratory tract viral pneumonia just like 2003 SARS and the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’. There is no reason to think the mortality outcome would differ greatly from a very similar clinical mechanism.
Vaccine possibility
For sure, not any time soon.
The degree of difficulty is explained by the structural nature of Wuhan and its reproduction method. It is an enveloped non-segmented positive sense single strand RNA of about 30kb (the largest of any virus). The genome reads from the 5’ end. It first codes for (along about 20kb) the RNA protease ‘polyprotein’ that hijacks the host cell and causes replication. The remaining ~10kb code for 4 viral proteins separately needed to finally reassemble viable Wuhan virions: S, the pronounced spike from the envelope that gives the corona virus its generic name and enables further cell infection; N, the nucleocapsid (the capsid protein around the RNA core); M, the envelope membrane protein, and E, the envelope protein that protrudes from M but not nearly as far as S.
The obvious vaccine antibody targets are primarily S and secondarily E. That is no different than H and N in influenza. Unfortunately also like influenza, in SARS it has been shown that both S and E undergo RNA transcription error mutation, and at higher rates than one might suspect from the specifics of RNA coronavirus. Thus, like influenza, it may not be possible to develop a general Wuhan vaccine, only one of limited effectiveness against circulating virus that Wuhan will then mutate around.
Drug therapy
Here, the very new news is hopeful. Gilead Science developed remdesivir for enveloped non-segmented negative sense single strand Ebola virus. In emergency human clinical trials in Africa, it proved safe but not effective. It has shown good in vitro efficacy against SARS and MERS. And the single NEJM case report above has a definite positive proof of principle human outcome.
Based on this, China has announced a full-scale random double blind placebo controlled trial in 761 patients. As of this writing China reports successful synthesis of sufficient remdesivir active, so human testing begins today.
Of note for potential future Gilead/China intellectual property conflicts, China announced yesterday that it has applied for a patent to use remdesivir to treat human Wuhan. WUWT?
Updated WUWT conclusions
Is Wuhan a serious public health concern? Yes.
Is Wuhan a serious pandemic threat? Not yet.
If containment mainly to China via travel restrictions and 14-day quarantine can be enforced, it is probably not a pandemic threat ever to North America or Western Europe or Australia. Africa and Southeast Asia outside China, Japan, and Singapore need careful watching. And as with 2009 Swine flu, South America will be hit or miss.
Is 14-day quarantine effective? Yes.
Is a vaccine on the horizon? No.
Is a drug therapy on the horizon? Yes.
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A quarantine period of two weeks means that people’s immune systems can quash the virus’s main effects in that time, but does it also mean that the virus in those people is now “dead”?
Is the virus’s residency on a doorknob also 14 days? Isn’t a home (or ship cabin) where someone has been quarantined an ideal place to catch the disease?
Indeed. Experiments have shown that 2019nCov can still be viable after 28 days on a surface.
Source?
There was a paper from a few years ago that used an attenuated Corona virus that reached the 28 day conclusion.
Having said that, I got the impression that the study turned into a game to see how long they could extend viability, and so may be of little use in real world situations.
https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(20)30046-3/fulltext
Gives a much better picture. 🙂
OK, Fanakan, thanks. For veterinary coronaviruses 28 days is mentioned in the study, for other human coronaviruses (not 2019-nCoV) just 9 days. Indeed a much better result:
“Human coronaviruses can remain infectious on inanimate surfaces at room temperature for up to 9 days. At a temperature of 30°C or more the duration of persistence is shorter. Veterinary coronaviruses have been shown to persist even longer for 28 d.”
The conclusion:
Human coronaviruses can remain infectious on inanimate surfaces for up to 9 days. Surface disinfection with 0.1% sodium hypochlorite or 62-71% ethanol significantly reduces coronavirus infectivity on surfaces within 1 min exposure time. We expect a similar effect against the 2019-nCoV.
Thanks for this.
“Having said that, I got the impression that the study turned into a game to see how long they could extend viability, and so may be of little use in real world situations.”
This is an important question, and everyone should be very interested in knowing what is true, not what can be asserted or speculated upon.
The real question is about what actually happens, about what the actual risk is to a person in everyday situations.
Obviously people get sick all the time, and while sick they are shedding enormous quantities of virus through breathe and fluids and excreta. These are settled onto surfaces by gravity, passed onto surfaces directly by hand contact or flying spittle droplets, and other readily identifiable processes.
And yet everyone who comes into contact with people who are known to be shedding virus does not get sick. Even people living in close contact do not always get sick.
One reason is that viruses start to die outside of their preferred environment, and they die quickly in certain conditions.
Another has to do with dose levels of those exposed, and how it compares to the minimal infective dose.
In other words…exactly how many virions enter an uninfected person body, what routes of entry allow for the virus to survive and make entry into cells or into the bloodstream (some viruses have to get into the respiratory tract, and some must get into the digestive tract, and some must get into the bloodstream), and over what period of time do the virions make such entry, and how many virions does it take to overcome the immune responses and mechanisms of the body?
Particles caught in thick sticky mucous that is then swallowed will not cause infection if it is a virus that only infects respiratory cells and such.
The airways have a system called the mucociliary escalator, which sweeps particles along to where they will be expelled, destroyed by stomach acids, surfactants, defensins, lysozyme, saliva, and/or mucus.
Cells of the innate immune system engulf and destroy virions (or whatever) by phagocytosis, and attack infected cells and mark them for destruction, but the amount of them is limited, and can be either suppressed or enhanced for any number of reasons.
Part of the innate immune system function is to rapidly ramp up the various processes that comprise the innate immune system, such as increasing mucus production, tears, saliva, blood flow, and signaling immune cells to travel to the site of any foreign organism or substance.
If a dose of virions which is below the minimum infective dose threshold enters the body and these virions are targeted by macrophages and dendritic cells, the process of antigen presentation and antibody production will nonetheless commence.
An understanding of such things makes it clear why people do not get sick whenever a virus capable of causing illness can be shown to be present, let alone possibly so.
It also makes it clear that there is no part of our body that is merely a passive target for infectious organisms.
We have numerous physical and chemical barriers on every bodily surface, inside and out, as well as many layers of active cellular defenses.
The various things we do to avoid exposure and/or minimize danger of infection are an enhancement of the other defenses we have which we are barely aware of.
It does not matter if someone is able to cause some virus to survive on some lab surface.
What matters is how much virus is on actual surfaces in places where sick people have been, and how likely is it that there is enough to cause an infection in someone who contacts those surfaces.
Being aware of a danger makes us safer if we know how to avoid it, but overestimation of danger can paralyze us needlessly.
What would be helpful, in my view, would be to identify the specific reasons why one person infected many others at a ski resort, while dozens of other people apparently infected no one else even with sitting next to them on long plane rides and performing various transactions with them en route from Wuhan to the US and other countries…even though these people who infected no one else were similarly infected as the person at the ski lodge.
Experiment done by who, when?
One exoeriment?
How was the virus tested for viabiluty?
On a person?
Assuming this experiment was just completed, how long ago must it have begun?
The most you can say is you read somewhere that someone said this.
Repeating dubious info without qualification as if it is a fact is exactly how people fool themselves.
The known timeline means that statement is not dubious, it is ridiculous.
What is known from other types of respiratory tract viruses, including corona viruses, and SARS in particular, is that active virus has not been found to persist on surfaces for more than a few hours to at most two days.
Once on a surface, many viruses start to die right away, and only surfaces with a high concentration to begin with have detectable viral genetic material more than a an hour to a few hours.
Drying and UV light destroys many viruses quickly.
Some sorts of virus have not been found to have ever caused a known infection except by direct contact with a sick person or certain of their bodily fluids or objects directly contaminated with bodily fluids.
Rhino viruses can survive for several days it is thought, but after about 25 hours on a nonporous surface that have lost the ability to cause infection.
On some types of objects they are said to become inactive after a matter of minutes to an hour.
I have not found one reference to any study that has found, or any infection thought to have been caused by, live virus for any respiratory infection surviving over periods of many days on surfaces.
And this is an area which is studied extensively, for obvious epidemiological reasons, as well as reasons pertaining to the safety of medical workers and hospital personnel.
IOW…this is something the people who study such things are very interested in knowing the truth about.
It is one thing for people to speculate on things like this, but there are people who are responsible for knowing what can actually be demonstrated to be true.
Certainly some infectious organisms can survive for long periods of time on surfaces or in any number of places.
Just as clearly, many do not.
A search of the CDC site search function turns up oodles of studies from single word queries, such as for the word “fomites” (fomites refers to infectious organisms on surfaces).
Many are very interesting and many are surprising and counterintuitive, and many give information completely at odds with what commenters here and elsewhere have declared to be the case.
Here is one passage from one article dealing with modes of transmission for influenza, rhinovirus, and RSV, respiratory syncytial virus, which is a very common virus that infects nearly all infants and small children:
“A prodigious volume of work at the Common Cold Research Unit in Salisbury, England, following World War II established that colds could be produced by inoculating secretions into the nose or eye of volunteers (33). These rather crude experiments were replicated with nasal inoculation of small concentrations of rhinovirus once the specific viral agents that cause the common cold were elucidated (34). Presumably, therefore, persons might acquire rhinovirus by touching their nasal or ocular mucosa with contaminated fingers. A study by Hendley et al. at the University of Virginia demonstrated that health-care workers are not immune to practices that might promote self-inoculation (35). One third of grand-rounds attendees picked their nose, and one in 2.7 rubbed their eyes during a 1-hour lecture. Subsequent work demonstrated that it was difficult to transmit rhinovirus by kissing (36), and that exposure to cold did not increase the likelihood of “catching a cold” (37).
These studies could not answer the central question of whether rhinovirus is transmitted primarily by direct contact, indirect contact, droplet contact, or droplet nuclei. Unfortunately, considerable additional investigation has not resolved the issue completely (38). Essentially, two experimental approaches, both highly contrived, have come to different conclusions. Work by Hendley and Gwaltney at the University of Virginia generally has supported transmission by hand contact and self-inoculation, while experiments by Dick at the University of Wisconsin have favored spread by large droplets, droplet nuclei, or both.
The Virginia group demonstrated that adults with experimental rhinovirus colds readily contaminated their hands and that rhinovirus could be recovered from 43% of plastic tiles they touched with their contaminated fingers (39). Adults with natural rhinovirus colds contaminated their hands in 39% of cases, and virus was found on 6% of objects in their homes (35,40). Virus could survive from a few hours to as long as 4 days on nonporous surfaces, and for at least 2 hours on human skin (35). Volunteers who had contact with contaminated objects or with fingers of persons with rhinovirus colds had a high rate of infection when they intentionally touched their eyes or nose. Infection generally could be prevented by treating contaminated surfaces with disinfectant or applying iodine to fingers (39).
In a labor-intensive, randomized clinical trial, the Virginia group found that treating mothers’ fingers with iodine reduced the rate of secondary infection (38). Specifically, as soon as a cold occurred in another member of the family, mothers were instructed to dip their fingers in iodine or placebo when they awoke in the morning, every 3 to 4 hours during the day, and after activities that might wash the iodine from the skin. The investigators counted on the well-established residual activity of iodine to kill virus on contact. Over the 4-year study period, the secondary attack rate for colds in the intervention group was 7%, versus 20% in the control group. In the iodine-treated group, no confirmed rhinovirus infection occurred in susceptible mothers who had been exposed to 11 index cases. In contrast, five infections occurred after 16 exposures in the placebo group, although this difference was not significant.
These studies provide considerable evidence for indirect contact transmission by contaminated fomites and fingers. In other experiments, the Virginia investigators found little support for transmission via large respiratory droplets or droplet nuclei. Exposure of susceptible volunteers to highly symptomatic volunteers across a small table (droplet contact and droplet nucleus transmission) or a double-wire barrier (droplet nucleus spread) resulted in infections in 1 of 12 and zero of 10 subjects, respectively (39). These rates of transmission were far less than the 11 infections among 15 persons (73%) who self-inoculated their mucous membranes with contaminated fingers.”
“Meanwhile, the Wisconsin group was developing models to study transmission of rhinovirus colds, building on observations showing high attack rates among men crowded together in a small hut in Antarctica (41). In one such model, symptomatic volunteers were housed with susceptible volunteers in a room approximately 12-by-6-by-3 m (42). The subjects played various board, card, and video games during the study period. Since viral titers in nasal secretions fall as symptoms diminish, volunteers were replaced with highly symptomatic persons as soon as they experienced reduced rhinorrhea or sneezing. The average length of exposure required for transmission was very high, 200 hours of exposure to achieve a 50% attack rate. Based on these results, Dick et al. suggest that exposure times in the Virginia studies were too short to exclude droplet and airborne transmission.
In additional experiments, the Wisconsin group extended these studies by having volunteers play poker for 12 hours while sitting at round tables (43). Three experiments were performed involving 24 symptomatic “donors” and 36 susceptible “recipients.” Half of the recipients were fitted with restraints, either arm braces that allowed them to reach their cards but not touch their face, or a plastic shield that left their hands free but did not allow them to reach their eyes or nose. Despite these barriers, the attack rates were 56% and 67%, respectively, strongly favoring transmission by air since self-inoculation was impossible. Moreover, when 12 additional susceptible volunteers were brought to a separate room to play poker with chips and cards that were literally soaked with contaminated secretions from donors, no rhinovirus infections occurred. In addition, little virus was found on the chips and cards. The Wisconsin group suggested that the relatively high attack rates seen in the self-inoculation studies conducted by the Virginia group might be attributable to intensive exposure to fresh wet secretions (e.g., the volunteers literally blew their noses into their hands).”
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/7/2/70-0249_article
The way such viruses are spread is poorly understood, even when studied carefully by committed researchers.
Results are often contradictory and puzzling.
But it does seem to be the case that in some situations, some people can spread disease very effectively, while other people are not shown to have infected anyone, even those in close contact and even intimate contact.
A passage from one study:
“As the outbreak developed, epidemiologic evidence suggested that SARS-CoV was transmitted by respiratory droplets or direct contact with infected patients and possibly by fomites (9–12). In certain circumstances, transmission of SARS-CoV was particularly efficient and resulted in individual patients infecting large numbers of people (referred to as “super-spreading events”), whereas in other situations, no secondary transmission was observed”
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/2/03-0734_article
Mods, I seem to have one or more comments in moderation.
Thanks,
Nicholas McGinley,
Thanks for these detailed summaries of experiments in virus transmission. I appreciate the down-to-earth writing.
My daughter returns to her job teaching in Beijing in a few weeks. Prior to Beijing, she taught in Xian, now under lock-down.
Affairs in China under the cloud of Corona virus are bizarre to say the least – what appear to be the largest mobilization for a disease in human history, with 60 million Chinese under quarantine. Regardless of how we in the West rate China’s and the WHO’s efforts – is it too much? too little? too late? ineffective? — the numbers of “confirmed cases” and dead do not begin to suggest a typical harvest of seasonal flu victims in the U.S. Most of us take such a threat in stride, and I confess I demurred last time I was instructed to get flu vaccine.
I know the implications of this do not bode well for the good of the world order, but I accept the risk. 🙂
Best regards.
You are welcome, and thank you Bill.
This subject has brought out the worst in some people.
What most amazes me, even though I should be used to it, is the people that do not bother to read what someone wrote and make sure they have the gist of it correct.
But Brad Keyes showed us all that many times…some people do not read, they skim, and they decide what they think someone said without actually making sure of it.
Anyway, I appreciate the kind words.
It is for people like you that I take the time to write.
Note that Cambodia reported one “case” well over a week ago… then no more
reported.
North Korea isn’t reporting any cases, but with their military-enforced quarantines
and tight control of the media, their silence speaks volumes.
Indonesia is another non-reporting country.
The World Health Organization (WHO) isn’t pressing these countries to report on
what’s happening within their borders… and doesn’t seem interested in sending
anyone in to investigate the lack of information.
Cambodia, still probably 50 years away from rectifying the socialising efforts of Pol Pot and his gang.
North Korea, something that Dear Leader has no power over, squelch that.
Indonesia, probably have good intentions, but the area and spread of the state will defy their capabilities.
I doubt even the sham that is the WHO can make what is not possible, come to pass ?
Interestingly, that cruise ship, the Westerdamm, that had been refused docking in was if 5 countries ? was allowed to dock in Cambodia and disgorge its passengers. Rather odd considering that Cambodia’s infrastructure for dealing with any cases must be close to non existant ?
Update on the Westerdamm, docked and passengers disembarked. One group flying to Malaysia immediately produced an older American lady infected with nCoV.
Ohh, and the Prime Minister of Cambodia personally greeted the disembarking passengers with a hand shake. Wonder if he washed his hands afterwards. 🙂
North Korean official breaks quarantine…immediately shot
https://www.pressreader.com/
“Of note for potential future Gilead/China intellectual property conflicts, China announced yesterday that it has applied for a patent to use remdesivir to treat human Wuhan.”
“During the 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Shi and twelve other Institute scientists formed an expert group on the research of Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).[7][8] In February 2020, researchers led by Shi Zhengli published an article in Nature titled “A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin”,[9] and in a post on bioRxiv, said that the Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is in the same family as SARS and closest to one found in bats.[10][11] In February 2020, her team published a paper in Cell Research showing that [remdesivir], an experimental drug owned by Gilead Sciences, had a positive effect in inhibiting the virus in vitro, and applied for a patent for the drug in China on behalf of the WIV.”
Actually the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)… which claims to hold the largest database of bat viruses.
Remdesivir is a prodrug…which uses nanoparticles in its makeup…
Shi Zhengli was quoted in a couple of articles as stating…
“I swear with my life, [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab [ The first BSL level 4 Lab in Wuhan Institute of Virology]”, and when asked by the SCMP to comment on the attacks, Shi responded: “My time must be spent on more important matters”.
She has further stated…
“The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits. I, Shi Zhengli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory”
Strange…and then there is that that Harvard nanoparticles and biology Professor…… a lieutenant of the PLA working on skullduggery and corporate espionage — and a virologist who stole some 21 vials of mysterious substances from a Biosafety lab level 3 or 4 which house such things a coronaviruses and that research are all in this together somehow…
The Liber group is financed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), DARPA, Office of Naval Research (ONR), Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
” […] Dr. Lieber who has served as the Principal Investigator of the Lieber Research Group at Harvard University, which specialized in the area of nanoscience, has received more than [$15,000,000 in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense (DOD).] ”
“[Wuhan University of Technology] (WUT) in China and was a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan from in or about 2012 to 2017. China’s Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruit plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity, and national security. These talent programs seek to lure Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts to bring their knowledge and experience to China and reward individuals for stealing proprietary information. [Under the terms of Lieber’s three-year Thousand Talents contract, WUT paid Lieber [$50,000 USD] per month, living expenses of up to 1,000,000 Chinese Yuan (approximately [$158,000]USD at the time) and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT.]”
“The Lieber group is focused broadly on science and technology at the nanoscale, harnessing the unique physical properties of novel nanomaterials to push scientific boundaries in biology and medicine.”…
This whole thing stinks for some reason…Remdesivir is a failed Ebola prodrug, that has been breathed new life, with a patent owned now by Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) alone that would make huge money — Gilead has been controversial for its extravagant prices on drugs especially new tech drugs. In China, with a growth potential globally that is a wet dream for big pharma in these halcyon days of a new paradigm.
Why do these SOB’s always sell-out to Chin
I’m waiting for the claim the Climate Change has made this COV outbreak worse.
That it occurred during the Chinese New Years celebration where many Chinese travel home long distances to family certainly had a role in it early spread.
The BBC are on the case, Joel.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51237225
The article mentions climate change at least three times. I don’t think they go so far as to actually state it caused the current problem, but their intention is clearly to draw that link in the reader’s mind. They have no shame.
They also have no credibility.
Yeah they have been usually quiet…
Some updates.
https://multimedia.scmp.com/infographics/news/china/article/3047038/wuhan-virus/index.html?src=article-launcher
Apparently not updated past February 13th, yet:
https://covid19info.live/
Some good news; for vampires and wannabe vampires:
Masks neither protect nor prevent contamination absolutely:
Some bad news:
Wow, human guinea pigs…I guess also “The Thousand Talents Plan” of the Chinese government will be ramping up full steam, all those foreign students heading back…that why all the brain-drain in America, they are leaving for China and leaving us all, the flourishing of pinko zombie snowflakes.
Plasma derived antibodies are what is otherwise called immunoglobulins.
These have been used for many decades against all sorts of illnesses.
Two of the most useful ones are the rabies specific and the tetanus specific immunoglobulins.
The drawbacks to them are that they are expensive to produce, and therefore generally available in limited quantity, and are helpful for a limited amount of time. The idea is to bridge the gap, at least partially, between showing up with a dire condition and the time it takes for a vaccine to elicit an immune response that results in sufficient titer of circulating antibody to be protective.
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
Two explanations on origins of 2019nCOV— 1) an improbable species jump OR
2) “Chinese scientists failed to follow correct sanitation protocols possibly while in a rush during their boisterous holiday season, something that had been anticipated since the opening of the BSL-4 lab and has happened at least four times previously, and accidentally released this bio-engineered Wuhan Strain – likely created by scientists researching immunotherapy regimes against bat coronaviruses, who’ve already demonstrated the ability to perform every step necessary to bio-engineer the Wuhan Strain 2019-nCov – into their population, and now the world. As would be expected, this virus appears to have been bio-engineered at the spike-protein genes which was already done at UNC to make an extraordinarily virulent coronavirus. Chinese efforts to stop the full story about what’s going on are because they want the scales to be even since they’re now facing a severe pandemic and depopulation event. No facts point against this conclusion.”
The article lays out a detailed summary of the virus structure that makes it appear to be bio-engineered; along with accounts of key personnel involved and their research areas.
You decide
Worth remembering that the last outbreak of Foot and Mouth in the UK, something that may rate as the cloven hoof equivalent of nCoV, was as a result of a leak from a government lab.
Whilst the lab leak speculation may still be in the realm of conspiracy, its not that difficult to imagine it becoming a fact.
Correct. It’s not uncommon at all for dangerous agents and infected test animals to escape from bio-weapons lab.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/05/28/biolabs-pathogens-location-incidents/26587505/
Nonetheless, a certain class of dullards will ignore the facts and insist it’s all a conspiracy theory
From the article:
“…nobody was sickened in the CDC accidents or in the historically low numbers of serious infections among lab workers generally, or that infections spreading into communities surrounding labs have been rarer still.”
The gist of this article is about the opposite of the observation that “It’s not uncommon at all for dangerous agents and infected test animals to escape from bio-weapons lab.”
For one thing, these are not “bio weapons labs”.
And the opening blurb of the article, conflating safety violations and accidents with near misses, and making at open ended and unquantified statement about people being put at risk, may not be actual yellow journalism, but it is hardly a sober and balanced examination of facts.
You expect transparency and honesty in the biological/medical community?
You must think the Dem “primaries” are 100% fine!
Nicholas, you wrote:
“The gist of this article is about the opposite of the observation that “It’s not uncommon at all for dangerous agents and infected test animals to escape from bio-weapons lab.”’
That’s a misreading of my post. Indeed, the USAT article, and others similar in content confirms that dangerous pathogens and biologic agents and test animals have escaped bio research and weapons labs. I never claimed that the public was harmed by these breaches… yet.
Wuhan may be the first big exception. Some top notch virologists seem to think that’s a distinct possibility
Lots of things can be said to be “distinct possibilities”.
That says nothing at all about probabilities, or what actually happened in this case.
As for what “some top notch virologists” have for opinions, someone else could as readily point out that some top notch virologists discount that idea as paranoid and unfounded.
Some “top notch” climate researchers think the world’s temperature is controlled by a small trace of CO2 in the air, and that we have a few years before tens of millions of climate refugees flood our shores, coastal communities are drowning, the human race and the whole Earth have “a distinct possibility” of extinction, and that we are even know having a climate emergency.
It is actually impossible to disagree that something unknown is a possibility.
The question could be reframed as several questions, such as did it happen, how does anyone know, are there other possibilities, and how likely are the respective chances of each?
The USA Today article makes it sound like a few hundred incidents over several hundred labs and over many years is objectively an awful record.
It makes statements that are unsupported, such as that one off events such as sending out the wrong vials of anthrax, rather than a terrible mistake by possibly one person under unexplained circumstances, implicates the entire community of researchers and that by definition they are suffering from “systemic safety problems”.
I have no confidence in the sober judgement of someone who tells a reporter “”What the CDC incidents showed us … is that the very best labs are not perfectly safe…” .
Large facilities that have large numbers of people doing all sorts of work every day under all sorts of conditions and pressures…are not perfectly safe?
Golly.
Let’s get rid of them, shall we, unless they are perfectly safe, seems to be the opinion of the writer of this article.
Who are the writers?
One is a style writer, the other an “investigative journalist”, whatever that is. Neither have any apparent scientific, medical, or biology credentials.
And it shows.
Would we be better off if there was no one studying these things?
How does anyone know how the organisms behave?
Maybe because people are studying them?
Could the writers, or the critics they interview, do better…maybe provide some suggestions for how human beings working all over the country in hundreds of labs could from now on be “perfectly safe”?
Is that a rational standard for actual human beings?
I could give examples from my own personal experience of how far from perfect real people in the real world are, or how anyone who works in an area with known hazards which are intrinsic to the domain…such as people working on high voltage underwater electrical machinery, or biohazardous materials and infectious diseases, are supposed to know that they ought not trust that everyone else in the world is always even competent, let alone ever, EVER, perfectly safe.
There are no situations where people are perfectly safe,
People who do dangerous work that most people would not even consider doing, I can say with certainty, will never be perfectly safe.
Think about what is written about the guy who was working in a level 2 biolab on a strain of a dangerous bacteria, who got sick and dizzy with a fever while out to dinner one night, and nevertheless went home and did not seek any medical help until he called a friend the next morning when he reached the point of being unable to move.
Somehow, when the blame was being doled out, no mention was made of the fact that a scientist working with a dangerous bacteria got really sick one night after work and thought nothing of it.
I did not see anything that was written that implicates the entirety of a biohazard research industry.
If it is a revelation that such places exist, and that such work is dangerous, I can only think of how naïve anyone could be.
Driving down the road or crossing the street is dangerous. 35,000-40,000 dead/year. almost 100 times that many are injured in over 5 million accidents/year. 2 million are permanently injured.
Taking a shower is dangerous. 235,000 hospital visits/year.
Walking on stairs is dangerous. 12,000 dead/year in the US alone
Biohazard labs?
Yeah…dangerous.
This article conflates a lot of disparate sorts of labs and events, and approaches the issue from an alarmist point of view.
I see no effort to educate or help anyone understand what is going on in such places, why they exist, how important are they, or what is the relative risk to anyone, compared with, for example, if no one was willing to do this sort of work or if no such research was ongoing.
And again, I just want to point out again…I see nothing about any “bioweapons labs”.
There were some mentions of labs working with things that were “potential bio terror agents”.
There was one mention I saw of a defense department lab.
What exactly do you mean by the phrase “bio weapons lab”?
I do not want to misread your post…just read it.
You said:
“It’s not uncommon at all for dangerous agents and infected test animals to escape from bio-weapons lab.”
Which is wholly unsupported and a mischaracterization, IMO.
Nicholas… pretty long-winded fulguration…
When some of China’s leading virologists PUBLISHES concern that the COVID-19 was bioengineered and released from a bioweapons lab in Wuhan, I’m going to pay attention to him. Not you. When they publish in a major Chinese science journal (with implied government approval), I’m going to pay attention to them. Not you.
At the moment the proposal that COVID-19 is a bio-engineered pathogen that was released from the BSL-4 lab in Wuhan is a more viable hypothesis than the proposal that the virus emerged naturally from a vastly improbable species-to-species jump to humans and was transmitted from a a Wuhan wet-market.
Of course you discount the former as impossible and embrace the latter, well, because that’s what you heard on CNN. So it must be true.
The basic facts surrounding the structure of this highly infectious COVID-19 virus are bizarre and unseen in nature… especially when sophisticated commentators observe that:
““Perhaps most notably, a genetic analysis of the spike-protein genes – the exact region that was bio-engineered by the UNC lab in 2015, where Zhengli Shi and Xing-Yi Ge previously isolated a batty coronavirus that targets the ACE2 receptor just like this 2019-nCoV strain of the coronavirus does – indicates an artificial and unnatural origins of the Wuhan Strain’s spike-protein genes when they are compared to the genomes of wild relatives. Instead of appearing similar and homologous to its wild relatives, an important section of the Wuhan Strain’s spike-protein region shares the most genetic similarity with a bio-engineered commercially available gene sequence that’s designed to help with immunotherapy research. It is mathematically possible for this to happen in nature – but only in a ten-thousand bats chained to ten-thousand Petri dishes and given until infinity sense.”
Deadly pathogens escape from labs all the time. Usually we get lucky.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/20/18260669/deadly-pathogens-escape-lab-smallpox-bird-flu
Maybe in Wuhan, they didn’t.
Now who is misreading?
I went out of my way to respond to the article and only the article you posted, plus what you said.
You did not address what I asked, or speak to your justification for using the language you use.
Instead, you did exactly what you told me not to do.
I never once have said that it is impossible that the COVID 19 virus was escaped from a lab.
I do not even consider it far fetched.
What I am doing is sticking to what can be shown to be true, and what we know from past events.
And now here you are, the Adam Schiff of WUWT…making up ridiculous crap and then putting those words you made up into my mouth.
That is patently offensive, and it was not by mistake…you meant to do it because I asked you a question you had no answer for, or else you felt embarrassed for making statements or using language you could not defend or stand behind…so you make up crap about CNN.
You are the one with the fake news and putting words in peoples mouths.
You probably do not even read more than a few words of what someone else writes before deciding you know what they said…or you would never mistake me for someone who would get my information from the MSM, or ever watch CNN even if I was stuck in an airport.
Typical warmista behavior…believe in something for which nothing like enough evidence to know one way or another, and then claim you are the one being scientific.
As a community, WUWT is reasonably free from conspiracy theories. Let’s try and keep it that way.
These are not theories, and have little to suggest conspiracy.
It is storytelling and making crap up.
I am embarrassed for the people here encompass along this drivel.
The ones who spin together disparate threads of drivel are bordering on the paranoid delusional.
…who pass along this drivel…
Damn autocorrect. Kindle and iPads are the worst.
Does it matter? The result is the same. I still think this is Nature. I have a friend who was in the middle of the SARS virus and he and his family emigrated because he was horrified by the government response. SARS came out of those markets. For a short time the government cracked down on the illegal live markets but as soon as the crisis was over the local corrupt officials turned a blind eye when the markets started up again in spite of all warnings from their scientists. Maybe the lab was put in Wuhan so they would be ready to deal with the next inevitable outbreak of a new virus while those markets were open. Not all scientists in China are monsters. And again I ask (to quote one my my least favourite people), what difference does it make at this point? The virus is loose.
Thank you for the update.
As I have commented before, their are too many problems wrt the numbers coming out of China. Other nations, though, are dealing with much smaller numbers of infection. Is the aggregate number of non-China infections large enough to produce meaningful statistics? I would trust those numbers much more.
The cruise ship ‘experiment’ is very troubling, though. Being in a retirement home (ok, ‘dependent living facility’), prison, mental illness facility, etc. would be very risky if the virus is introduced, and possibly a dearh sentence.
their=there. Fingers working faster than the mind,
Day 21.
Got a vitamin D Shot.
Pneumonia vaccine.
No symptoms.
Stay safe folks
You, too, Mosh. Wash hands, wear gloves. Be well.
Mosher
The extant pneumonia vaccines are only effective against bacterial pneumonias, not viral. Whistling in the dark!
No symptoms? Reminds me of the joke about the drunk blowing a whistle to keep the pink elephants away.
In this case, the virus does not cause the pneumonia, it creates an enviroment suitable for the pneumonial agent to propogate/
That is true for some illnesses that lead to pneumonia, but it is not true in all cases.
Notably, it is not true in the case of MERS, SARS, and now most likely COVID19.
The tell is people dying of pneumonia while in intensive care hospital situation.
This is the whole thing with the antivirals.
IOW, these and some other viral respiratory infections do cause pneumonia that is not caused by secondary infection of a bacteria, but by the virus itself.
Even influenza virus causes some cases of pneumonia.
About 1.3 of cases of pneumonia are in fact viral, not bacterial and not secondary infections.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/viral-pneumonia#1
Here is the CDC page on causes for pneumonia.
https://www.cdc.gov/pneumonia/causes.html
Many common viruses and a few bacteria can cause pneumonia.
It is one of the leading causes of death of the very young, the very old, and people who have other medical conditions.
It is a long list, and includes at least 19 specific viruses and types of bacteria.
Pneumonia is one reason why about 1 or 2 cases of measles winds up being fatal.
Whooping cough, chicken pox, rhinovirus, chlamydia, adenoviruses, RSV, Legionnaires Disease, and of course, Corona viruses, including the run of the mill kind that cause about 1 in 3 common colds…all can cause pneumonia by themselves.
Many of these viruses and bacteria have vaccines readily available.
The most vulnerable to getting them are the very young, who have little to no immune system to speak of when born, and only gradually acquire the ability to fight off infections…and this is why they give vaccines to little babies. Doctors know that a lot of babies get sick and die from common ailments. They know that with so many vaccines now available, some of which take multiple doses to build up a sufficient amount of antibodies to be protective, many parents fail to keep up with the scheduled or recommended visits to get the shots. People are busy. They forget. They put it off.
And so shots are made with multiple vaccines in one.
They add adjuvants because it is well known that these reduce to amount of vaccine needed to produce a response. How do they know?
Many many clinical trials and careful reviews of the numbers.
Most people do not see fatal automobile accidents very often. But police see them every single day.
Most people do not know anyone who has had a baby die of a common and easily preventable disease, but people in hospitals see them dying every single day.
Oops, one to three cases per 1000 of measles winds up being fatal.
One in 1000 who gets measles gets encephalitis, a dangerous swelling of the brain that is one of the leading causes of deafness in the world, and a leading cause of mental disability
One in five who are unvaccinated and gets measles are hospitalized.
One on twenty gets pneumonia from the measles.
Nearly 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children who become infected with measles will die from respiratory and neurologic complications.
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/symptoms/complications.html
Measles used to be considered a JOKE.
Measles is almost always benign in 1st world countries for healthy children.
Do you deny these well known facts?
What else do you deny?
You are seriously mentally ill.
And have no idea what you are talking about, at all.
You obviously have no medical knowledge or ability to learn about history.
Measles was one of many many diseases that were endemic.
Still waiting for you to either say one thing that is not insanely stupid, or just shut the hell up…but I know you will do neither.
Just know it…you are a very stupid and emotionally unstable person.
“Early in the 20th century, measles was a universal childhood illness. The annual number of measles deaths in the United States fluctuated between 2000 and 10,000, and the death-to-case ratio (DCR; the number of reported deaths per 1000 reported cases) generally exceeded 10”
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/189/Supplement_1/S69/2082538
“In 1962, immediately preceding the licensure of the first measles vaccines in the United States, when measles was a nearly universal disease, Alexander Langmuir described the medical importance of measles to the country and put forth the challenge of measles eradication [1]. Although most patients recovered without permanent sequelae, the high number of cases each year made measles a significant cause of serious morbidity and mortality Langmuir showed that >90% of Americans were infected with the measles virus by age 15 years [1]. This equated to roughly 1 birth cohort (4 million people) infected with measles each year. Not all cases were reported to the public health system; from 1956 to 1960, an average of 542,000 cases were reported annually.By the late 1950s, even before the introduction of measles vaccine, measles-related deaths and case fatality rates in the United States had decreased markedly, presumably as a result of improvement in health care and nutrition. From 1956 to 1960, an average of 450 measles-related deaths were reported each year (∼1 death/ 1000 reported cases), compared with an average of 5300 measles-related deaths during 1912–1916 (26 deaths/ 1000 reported cases) [2]. Nevertheless, in the late 1950s, serious complications due to measles remained frequent and costly. As a result of measles virus infections, an average of 150,000 patients had respiratory complications and 4000 patients had encephalitis each year;”
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/189/Supplement_1/S1/820569
Before a vaccine was available, medical books described measles as almost always benign for healthy children in France.
The French people and the Americans considered measles as a joke. It’s apparent in old American TV shows. Now the Hollywood-Big Pharma complex is trying to take these jokes back as a thing that never meant anything. Show me a show joking about polio. You can’t. You have NOTHING. I have humiliated you, as always.
Also, you are an enabler of an FBI MOST WANTED felon. You are sucking up to criminals. (Like the Clinton enablers.)
You are yet unable to cite real evidence of the usefulness of ANY vaccine.
From China- devastating report from prestigious China science publication on 2019-nCOV being a bio-engineered virus that escaped from a Wuhan based lab.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/smoking-gun-chinese-scientist-finds-killer-coronavirus-probably-originated-laboratory-wuhan
FYI.
‘a “smoking gun” report from a scientist at the prestigious South China University of Technology in Guangzhou China. A pre-print published by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, titled “The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus” which concludes…
“somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”
Commentators note the politics of publishing such a paper in China:
“But what is far more interesting, and important, is that the paper was supported by China’s National Natural Science Foundation, which means that the paper would likely never see the light of day if someone in Beijing did not stand to gain politically by endorsing the contrarian theory that a Wuhan biolab was indeed the source of the infection.
Which begs the question: is China’s political elite set to change the narrative it has been spinning since day one about the origins of the coronavirus, and in order to appease an increasingly angry population, points the finger to one or more scientists at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention and/or Wuhan Institute of Virology. Perhaps even the same scientists we highlighted two weeks ago, and which led to our twitter ban?”
It could also be China is looking for a scapegoat to shoot rather than have corrupt officials who looked the other way while this market was open in spite of the warnings of the scientists.
The idea that a Wuhan wet market is the cause of the nCoV19 epidemic is pretty well debunked by now. It is far more incendiary if the virus was a) bio-engineered; and b) escaped the lab due to carelessness; and c) this fact has been completely hushed up
I sense a degree of Western Superiority Complex at play here. A virus has no boundaries and this is not about hygiene or what we eat or how. We eat plenty of wild animals in the West too. They don’t need to be wild neither. China got unlucky.
Our health facilities would cope better? I don’t buy it. Our health services run at near capacity. Add even 25% more demand and they will be swamped. Also, take into account the protection precautions health workers would need to take. That could cut efficiency by 30% Nurses could legitimately and legally refuse to attend the infected. Authorities’ ability to trace and contain is limited.
The WHO has been very concerned over this outbreak. Why? Here is’ my take:
– Viral infection of the respiratory system ( hard to treat, antibiotics wont work)
– This virus is susceptible to mutation?
– Here is an important test and learn exercise for the global community?
– They are under pressure from Big Money who have a lot to lose?
– Short of a gradual reduction in infectiousness, isolation will only slow the spread IMO ( Spanish Flu took 2
years to fizzle out)
This virus has one important difference to Spanish Flu. SF killed the young and healthy the theory being that their immune systems over-activated. To date covid-19 kills the already medically compromised (we hope as I see no real data on this).
My conclusion is that it will behave and spread and kill along the lines of common flu (75% chance). Even then there will be a huge overreaction (?) by authorities which will disrupt economies – especially Western ones. We are the soft underbelly.
A team I once worked with were discussing these threats some years ago. A guy from Kenya said, ” I was born in a swamp and grew up in a slum. It takes a lot to kill me”. 🙂
PS: The viral weapon conspiracy is BS. Who would let loose a weapon that knows no boundaries?
Cheers
M
Hygiene should play some role.
“I sense a degree of Western Superiority Complex at play here.”
…too funny Michael Carter.
“We eat plenty of wild animals in the West too. They don’t need to be wild neither.”
…Can’t blame people for in the woods for dogs and cats to eat.
You forgot opportunistic human microbiota like Staphylococcus aureus is a normal bacterium found in all human microbiota. It is opportunistic in lowered and weaker immunity — as in extremely polluted Chinese cities, and is immunomodulating. And why was this important…Staphylococcus aureus causes viral pneumonia.
The “Cytokine Storm” coming to a theatre near you…
“PS: The viral weapon conspiracy is BS. Who would let loose a weapon that knows no boundaries?”
…You do know that Mao Zedong killed 60 million of his own people?
A bacteria causes a viral illness?
You need to stick to something you know a little about.
Besides that, why are you so gung ho on speculative drivel?
The bacteria Staphylococcus aureus can cause fast pneumonia. Staphylococcus aureus is in human microbiota, normally it is commensal. But in immunocompromised individuals, MRSA ( methicillin-resistant S. aureus ) can take hold in hospitals and through a cytokine storm that causes very fast pneumonia. This pneumonia is highly air-polluted Chinese cities is happening by the hundreds of thousands, regardless, and without a coronavirus. You come late to conversation arsehole! I owe you nothing
“…so gung ho on speculative drivel?”
So full of piss and vinegar and without anything to add the conversation. You need to go rub your ducky slick…
Commensal
You come late to conversation arse hole
Mods,
Some of these people are all the way over the top.
There is no way to converse with people who make stuff and then start in with this sort of thing.
Trying to neutralize the worst of the outright lies and obvious nonsense gets to be burdensome, but it has to be done or a thread like this will be unreadable to anyone serious minded, and too loaded up with anti-science to be useful for anyone trying to learn anything.
I do not think anyone wants to have to read this sort of comment from Michael Burns.
Not to mention, if someone is gonna use this sort of language, at least make it amusing.
I was insulted more cleverly back in third grade.
“There is no way to converse with people who make stuff”
Stuff like claim no explosion of MS in France?
Or measles was considered very bad in the 70ties?
Or polio was always a well defined disease?
Or vaccine skepticism is related to only one person and that person recanted?
All of these lies were perpetuated by you and your vaxxers buddies.
The claim is that it escaped, not that it was deliberately released.
If you are going to shoot down conspiracy theories, at least check to be sure the conspiracy actually exists.
Do mean taking note of that old chestnut about not attributing conspiracy to that which can be caused by incompetence ? 🙂
Agreed. People tend to forget the Spanish Flu originated in the USA, migrating duck to pig to pig handlers to soldiers.
That is one hypothesis, but probably not the case. We might know soon whether the flu already existed in 1916 or not.
For every such assertion, are many that flatly contradict it.
No one knows where it originated, or even exactly when it emerged.
But there are lots of ideas.
And many people who write books leave out anything that does not support the case they are trying to make.
Here’s an Oxford Academic-published paper from last year on the origin of the Spanish flu pandemic. The study examines the three main origin hypotheses, then offers a persuasive hypothesis as to why it killed healthy people around the age of 28. The H1N1 virus which caused the pandemic appears to have arisen before the cases cited in Kansas, France and China. The avian portion does however look North American in origin.
Lead author Michael Worobey is a fearless, indomitable old virus hunter, who showed that HIV was circulating before infamous “Patient 0”:
https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2019/1/18/5298310#
The origins of the great pandemic
Michael Worobey, Jim Cox, Douglas Gill
Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Volume 2019, Issue 1, 2019, Pages 18–25, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eoz001
Published: 21 January 2019
Abstract
The timing and location of the first cases of the 1918 influenza pandemic are still controversial, a century after the pandemic became widely recognized. Here, we critically review competing hypotheses on the timing and geographical origin of this important outbreak and provide new historical insights into debates within military circles as to the nature of putative pre-1918 influenza activity. We also synthesize current knowledge about why the 1918 pandemic was so intense in young adults. Although it is still not clear precisely when and where the outbreak began and symptom-based reports are unlikely to reveal the answer, indirect methods including phylogenetics provide important clues, and we consider whether intense influenza activity as far back as 1915 in the USA may have been caused by viral strains closely related to the 1918 one.
Chinese firm copies Gilead’s remdesivir, the most promising drug against the new coronavirus
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma-asia/chinese-firm-copies-gilead-s-remdesivir-most-promising-drug-against-new-coronavirus
For what it is worth:
https://news.yahoo.com/gilead-drug-prevents-type-coronavirus-224458283.html
Intriguing, if this Remdesivir does prove to be a magic bullet, and given the scale of the threat, I’m wondering if it will prove any sort of a massive windfall for Gilead ?
Thinking back to Penicillin, I believe I’m correct in thinking that no major Pharma/Co made royalties from its manufacture and distribution. Companies such as Eli lilly merely being paid costs ?
Then again Penicillin was discovered in 26 or 28, so maybe the patent was long out by 43 when it was finally decided it was a good thing.
Baron Florey was advised by Sir Henry Dale not to patent penicillin, as to do so would be unethical.
Merck and Pfizer learned how to mass produce it during the war, when need was urgent.
The best strain for mass production was found just in time in 1943 on a moldy cantaloupe in Peoria, IL.
I lived in a brutalist modern building named for Baron Florey, an Oz Rhodes Scholar, owned by Queens College, for part of my time up at Oxford. I doubt that he’d have approved of the architecture.
Gilead has been working with Chinese health authorities for over a month on this.
Gilead conferred with them to work out protocols for the two (at least) clinical trials now underway in which remdesivir is being given to several hundred each of moderately ill and gravely ill patients with COVID19.
Gilead sent them sufficient drug to treat these patients, and did so free of charge.
Gilead shut down at least one production line for another drug here in the US so they could manufacture a large supply of the drug, which is well underway. They also contracted out to an overseas manufacturer to rapidly make a large supply.
Gilead has been doing this sort of thing for a long time, and they do it better than any other company in many cases.
The came up with the first and safest single pill treatment for Hepatitis C, and then improved it to a pill which treated all known variants and is nearly 100% effective, even in patients coinfected with HIV, and even in patients with cirrhosis. They licensed out the manufacture to drug makers all over the world and more or less gave it away. Then they made another pill that treats anyone who has failed on prior treatments and has highly resistant strains of Hepatitis C virus.
They came up with the best and safest HIV antivirals, and then came up with a single pill anti HIV antiviral that is nearly 100% effective.
Then they made another that was even better.
Then they made another one again, and again made it more effective still.
And another, better and safer and more easily tolerated…again.
They made a treatment for people who are at risk of being infected but are not, which is, as far as anyone can tell, 100% effective at preventing infection to begin with.
They give away massive amounts of these drugs for free to people in need.
They license them out to numerous manufacturers abroad, some for a token royalty, some for free.
Virtually everyone in the world that needs one of these drugs can get them, regardless of resources or ability to pay.
It is very hard to think of another company which has done so much to help so many who previously had no hope.
Inventing and testing these sorts of drugs is incredibly difficult and incredibly expensive, and yet it seems the more they do, they more stunning the success they have had, the worse becomes the criticism, at least from some quarters.
I really do not think the main thing they are worried about is patents, although of course they do what they can to maintain rights to their intellectual property and to get compensated for the work they have done and need to continue with.
They tested remdesivir against corona viruses starting years ago, and applied for patents for this use…in the US and also IN CHINA!
They developed it with treating Ebola and Marburg virus in mind, but since the way the drug works makes it far more broadly active that just these two viruses, they have subsequently tested it and found evidence of activity against “respiratory syncytial virus, Junin virus, Lassa fever virus, Nipah virus, Hendra virus, and coronaviruses (including MERS and SARS viruses)”
Studies are ongoing for usage against three of the above viruses.
It was/has been tested in multiple Ebola epidemics. Last Summer, the last of these were halted, and the reason was not exactly that it was ineffective, but that two other new treatments were proven to be more effective…specifically at least two different monoclonal antibodies against Ebola which have been developed. These MABs have reduced mortality in Ebola patients from somewhere around 70% to about half of that.
It should be noted that th4e MABs are thought to be unlikely to be effective against at least three other strains of Ebola which have caused outbreaks in the past…so remdesivir may yet have at least some usage against Ebola.
Also, since even the MABs found to be more effective only reduce the mortality by about half to between 29and 34%.
It should be noted that people who received the MABs soon after becoming infected survived at a rate close to or above 90%.
I am not sure why ZMAPP and remdesivir were discarded, having been found to reduce mortality to 49% and 53% respectively, rather than trying a multi drug therapy approach by combining the two drugs which have different modes of action. Or if they took the approach to gave ZMAPP or remdesivir to people who failed to improve enough to survive with the MABs alone?
Seems like a no brainer to me, if people are still dying, throw the kitchen sink at the virus.
Just to be clear, the approach to Ebola that would seem to me to be the next step in treatment trials would be to combine one of the monoclonal antibody treatments with a direct acting antiviral like remdesivir.
This multidrug approach, combination therapy, is what has led to such a high rate of success with other viral illnesses such as HCV and HIV, as well as, soon I hope, against Hepatitis B and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
Just posted on JoNova’s site:
“Coronavirus — early rates of severe cases in Hong kong and Singapore are over 10%”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/02/coronavirus-early-rates-of-severe-cases-in-hong-kong-and-singapore-are-over-10/
“Alan says: Here in Hong Kong, we have around seven or eight thousand deaths of pneumonia every year. And everyone is freaking out over one or two deaths from this corona thingie. Of course they can “confirm” any number of coronovirus cases they want, simply by testing (or non-testing) sick people with faulty test criteria.”
Based on SARS and influenza, this means the likely Wuhan R0 is 3ish, so very contagious.
3ish in China. Different sanitary conditions (spitting etc.) elsewhere can change that.
The Wuhan virus is the reductio ad absurdum of globalism.
More grist for the propaganda mill, for inducing fear, obedience to authorities, and more profits for drug and vaccine makers.
COVID-19 : COrona Virus Infectious Disease -19, first identified in 2019
It would be interesting to know the ethnicity of the infected people outside of China. There are a few in the USA but I have not seen any mention of ethnicity. If this is mainly dangerous to people of east Asian ancestry, that would be important data. It’s odd that there is never any mention of the ethnicity of the sick or of the deceased.
Not that odd at all: It is impermissible to think such thoughts, to protect you it is thus impermissible to publish information that might lead to such thoughts.
ACE2 Expression in Kidney and Testis May Cause Kidney and Testis Damage After 2019-nCoV Infection
Caibin Fan1, Kai Li1, Yanhong Ding1, Wei Lu2, Jianqing Wang1*
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022418v1.full.pdf
The other human coronaviruses (flu, cold etc) mutate every year into slightly new forms. In the case of the flu, only one or two each year, but in the case of the cold (Rhinovirus), there are many new forms every year (that’s why there will never be a vaccine for the cold). So it is safe to assume that like the other human coronaviruses, this one will also mutate into new forms each year. Thus, the situation is FAR worse because there will be a new COVID-19 each and every year, just like the flu – except it will be 10 times deadlier.
Their capacity for rapid evolution, and the huge role that viruses have played in evolution of other domains of life, convinces me that they are alive. Their lack of metabolism and need to hijack cellular machinery in order to reproduce have often led biologists to consider them less than living organisms.
I beg to differ. They satisfy an essential reqirement for life, ie the ability to evolve via genetic inheritance. Their life cycle involves the free-“living” virion stage and the parasitic cellular invasion stage. Where does it say that to count as alive, you need to meet all possible qualifications?
Prions, not so much.
“Prions, not so much”
Well, yes, in an abstractly philosophical framework one has to draw a line between living and non-living somewhere. Between viruses and prions seems a reasonable place.
But that doesn’t mean that at a pragmatic level, Prions aren’t infectious and can’t kill you.
My mom’s cousin died from CJD.
Prions are deadly, but I agree that between them and viruses is where to draw the line. A misfolded protein that can cause other proteins to fold incorrectly doesn’t seem to me alive.
There used to be a show called “My So-Called Life”, which I never saw but I understand was about a teenage girl suffering through the teen angst period of her so-called Hell.
I think it is pretty clear that girls life was an actual life, not a “so-called” one.
Maybe they can make a sequel about a virus who is having an identity crisis, and sits around fretting about the validity of it’s so-called life!
What is alive and what is not is a question of semantics, or how one defines the word “alive”, if it is important to make some sort of a decision about it.
I have had trouble discerning any practical implication for such a definition, either way.
To me a far more important question is…where the hell did they come from?
Did they evolve down from more complex entities, in a process that stripped away more and more and left a core from what had been a nucleus?
Or maybe they were created by cells as part of the ongoing biochemical warfare of life against life that is waged at every level?
Or a better question yet…Can we find or make phages, the viruses that infect bacteria, that can work for us to fight diseases?
Let put them suckers to work…give them a job so they can do something useful with their half assed so-called lives!
ggm
From what I have read, many diseases, such as syphilis, started out being much more deadly when first introduced into the population. However, dead people don’t spread a disease as effectively as live people do. Thus, there was selective environmental pressure to weed out the most virulent forms. Natural selection favored the less virulent mutations, thus sustaining the organism instead of it burning out. So, while ‘Wuhan’ may well survive and come back to haunt us, my money is on the proposition that it won’t be “10 times deadlier.”
He’s saying that the corona virus is 10 times deadlier than the flu.
That’s what happened with myxomatosis and rabbits, combined effect of the evolution of a less virulent form of the virus and developing resistance among the rabbits. Known as host-pathogen coevolution.
WR: As I understand a continuous 100% containment of the most virulent forms of a virus – in order to let those virulent forms die out – will make ‘the virus’ weaker: only the less virulent forms will survive.
A 100% containment of forms that are visible (sick people) will make that only less virulent forms can spread.
Those less virulent forms will create antibodies in infected people and will diminish the susceptibility of a whole population for the type of virus.
Time will permit less virulent forms to spread spontaneously.
I am not familiar with possibilities to create antibodies in main parts of populations in a safe way.
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Infectious-Disease-Paul-Ewald-ebook/dp/B00WA223UQ#customerReviews
Ok, diary thing…neither flu or rhinovirus are coronaviruses.
Try to start out with factual information.
It makes speculation slightly less worthless.
A pity the link to the NEJM article doesn’t work (page error 404). Can anyone give me a working link or a reference, so I can get it from the Library at the Royal College of Surgeons of England without having to run a literature search?
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191
Thanks, John. I have now been able to read the paper, which is most interesting. One should stress, as the authors do, that one case report does NOT prove either the efficacy or safety of the novel antiviral employed. We do not yet know enough about the viral pneumonitis to say whether typical milder cases might develop similar lung changes and see them resolve again spontaneously over two or three days. Watch this space.
You’re welcome.
Of course you’re right that the patient might have recovered just as soon and fully without the antiviral treatment, but IMO it’s still grounds for optimism.
Cats are wearing coronavirus masks in China
https://www.foxnews.com/health/cats-wearing-coronavirus-masks-china
Too funny. Who walks their cat on a leash?
Compliant Cats in China ? The Cats I have experience of would have that mask off in an instant 🙂
As for the Leash, Hmmmmmm I heard they have odd things on the menu over there, so I doubt you can let your moggy run free.
Let me know when they have taught the cats to wash their paws after visiting the litter box.
My neighbor walks their cat on a leash.
I’m getting this second or third hand so …
People quite remote from the actual quarantine area report that they have to stay at home. I’m not sure if they have to stay at home because they’re afraid or because someone told them to stay home. It could be that quite a few more than 60 million people are under quarantine, or not.
In an effort to cope with the boredom of being cooped up, folks are playing a lot more video games. link
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/china-disintegrating-steel-demand-property-sales-traffic-all-approaching-zero
This could have serious repercussions. Final production of many goods happens elsewhere other than China. The trouble is that China makes a bunch of stuff that is necessary for building things like computer chips. That’s going to be hard to replace quickly.
Example – We can still get our smart phones from Samsung in Korea but many of its supply lines eventually lead to China.
Which means the parts of our computers that get to see all our plain text data are made under the control of a communist regime.
If they control those, they almost don’t need to control the ISP devices.
Deaths are deaths.
Presumably there has not been a very large number of unattributed deaths. So if deaths stay the same but the number of infections jumps 10 fold the known mortality rate must go down 10 fold.
This is good news.
The fact that the death rate is still not known as it lags the infection rate by 14 days is not good though.
The old 1000 in 40000 was 2 and 1/2 % with the potential for 2-3 doublings in the death rate I.e. 10-20%.
–
“the mechanism is lower respiratory tract viral pneumonia just like 2003 SARS and the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’. There is no reason to think the mortality outcome would differ greatly from a very similar clinical mechanism.”
–
One begs to differ.
Smallpox and cowpox share the same clinical expression.
Give me the second any day.
The mortality outcome is a direct result of the severity of the viral pneumonia , not the mechanism itself.
We do not know yet but it seems bad.
WHO Feb 14 situation report
No #coronavirusus cases have been reported in new nations since Feb 4.
A total of 505 cases reported so far outside China, with 2 deaths (Feb 1 in the Philippines and in Japan yesterday).
Other than those on the quarantined Japanese cruise ship (blue below), there have been few new cases reported in the past 5 days. See the graph:
https://twitter.com/FabiusMaximus01/status/1228437346527346690/photo/1
I feel maybe it is best to get virus early in some countries before the hospitals fill up.
In North Korea it will be really bad because people won’t seek medical help, as likely they will be put into some camp that has horrible conditions. They will hide their illness.
Few days ago I looked for more basic and easy to understand info about viruses and came across a BSc course in Microbiology which I found very informative.
https://www.slideshare.net/raiuniversity/bscmicro-i-em-unit-35-viruses
click on slide presentation at the top, or scrawl further down for bullet points points description
Stupidity . . .
Corona-viruses = exterminate bats = won’t happen = death = profit for some.
Bushfires = remove gum-trees from your town = won’t happen = death = profit for some.