Covid-19 Outbreak of new SARS-like coronavirus (Covid-19)

[JGrimez]

I'm leaning towards this being an accidental leak from the Wuhan lab. Obviously news about a leak would make China look very bad so it explains them "disappearing" doctors and whistleblowers during the early stage of the outbreak. China govt tried to cover it up and failed so they blamed it on the food (which was convenient for them in the midst of shortages). Now it's difficult to explain the response of the rest of the world because evidence shows that this virus is not that bad but it does sound bad. That's where the media come in and spread fear while governments take advantage of the situation. The severity of the virus is not proportional to the economic reaction. But you know what they say "never let a good crisis go to waste"

 

[Captain.Heroin]

Obviously news about a leak would make China look very bad so it explains them "disappearing" doctors and whistleblowers during the early stage of the outbreak.

^this. I can easily wrap my mind around that. There's almost no reason to take out your workers unless they pose a real threat about the coverup. Especially in a communist system where it takes so much money, time and resources to educate people to Dr. level. 8(

If it was an accident we'll never know that it was an accident because there would really be no way to prove it, I guess?

 

[JessFR]

US, China, Japan and Russia all have germ warfare labs and the technical capabilities of what they could make far exceed the devastation of this virus.

It was a calculated move, all signs point to that considering it is mistakable for simple flu symptoms at first, 5 to 14 days where you can be contagious and show no symptoms...

You do realize Trump was very close to starting a war with Iran, right? It makes all the sense in the world to me that instead of fighting with missiles and bombs they just release a pandemic.

It still makes no sense you can't reliably control a pandemic like you can a bomb or missile or even a chemical weapon.

You can perhaps control a biological weapon if it kills both quickly and universally. But a disease like this is uncontrollable and can mutate in unanticipated ways. It'd be crazy to release it on purpose unless you were just trying to destroy everything for its own sake.

And nothing about this disease looks unnatural. It being mistakable for the flu and having an asymptomatic period isn't surprising. This argument seems to go "this virus is too bad to have happened by chance".

Except viruses mutate all the time, and inevitably one would have the characteristics to become a pandemic.

The only question from a statistics standpoint is if it's likely to happen by chance on human noticeable time scales.

And the answer is yes.

This isn't the first, it's not the second, it's not the third.

But no, instead it's argued that THIS time we COULD maybe have made it. Therefore natural diseases can't happen by chance anymore because.... Reasons.
Therefore it must be artificial.

It's the middle part where it makes no sense. A natural disease like this was inevitable. It should be the default assumption.

The ONLY evidence to the contrary is extremely circumstantial. And it's not logical to assume the less likely of two possibilities just because you can't rule it out entirely.

 

[novaveritas]

Jess is absolutely right, Deliberate biological weapons tend to be limited contagion, fast acting, high morbidity and the mortality doesn't matter. Think Anthrax, Pneumonic Plague, Marburg U, Q fever, Brucellosis, Tularemia and some oddities like hantaviruses. Or highly contagious with a vaccine, smallpox for example where you protect your side with the vaccine. Otherwise they will blow back.

Accidental lab leakages are a different matter, the last significant outbreak of smallpox happened due to a lab leak, several influenza strains were due to lab leaks, one for absolute certain and of course there is the infamous Sverdlovsk anthrax release, somebody forgot to refit a filter on a AHU. There are also question marks over the Sierra Leone Liberia Guinea ebola outbreak, the strain appears just a bit too similar to a really old strain from 1979, almost like it had been on ice for a long time...

I am unsure whether this was from a lab or not. In any case it wouldn't have been a deliberate release by the Chinese, you don't wage biological warfare by attacking your own people first.

 

[JessFR]

It's not gonna be deliberate. It's crazy.

It can't be entirely ruled out that it's a mistake. Or to be more accurate, none of us here are likely to be able to rule it out to our personal certainty. Most experts I've seen talk on the subject seem pretty convinced that it can be reliably ruled out.

But I don't know jack shit about genetic engineering or viral engineering, I don't know what they know. I trust that they do, but I can't be completely certain based purely on my own first hand knowledge.

But neither can any of us. So since there is nothing but very shakey circumstantial evidence that it might be accidentally released, and since it was inevitable to happen naturally, and since several experts have come out, who've seen the genome, and say that humans couldn't plausibly have engineered it.

I'm inclined to presume it's natural.

 

[novaveritas]

Me too.

kind of lucky the virus appeared in the city with one of the most capable labs in the world, in a country where they learned from SARS which is why we know a hell of a lot about it. If it initially appeared in Sydney or New York the reality is we still would know absolutely nothing about it. so it goes.

 

[JessFR]

However it was always more likely to appear somewhere like where it did. Sydney and New York don't have the same kind of human animal interaction that gives such viruses a perfect environment to jump to a new species.

Also taking away the odds that it would appear somewhere with a high level of human interaction with infected animals, you'd still be a lot more likely to at least see it come from China or India just by sheer population size.

It'll always be more likely to happen where the opportunity for it to happen is highest.

 

[novaveritas]

However it was always more likely to appear somewhere like where it did. Sydney and New York don't have the same kind of human animal interaction that gives such viruses a perfect environment to jump to a new species.

Also taking away the odds that it would appear somewhere with a high level of human interaction with infected animals, you'd still be a lot more likely to at least see it come from China or India just by sheer population size.

It'll always be more likely to happen where the opportunity for it to happen is highest.

It can and does happen anywhere, Nipah is a potential problem in Northern Australia for example. Hendra already is, hanta viruses from pet rats or some pretty nasty illnesses from pet birds. there are plenty of fruit bats in metropolitan AUS cities, and so on.

If it had happened in India we would know nothing for months, India supposedly has something like 1 case of covid 19 in a population of 1bn it also has no toilet roll. The biggest absolute threat is where humans are encroaching on formerly pristine environment, so Africa and South America and therefore coming into contact with new viruses and then there is transport down river.

don't take your eye off the ball.

 

[Blowmonkey]

This is kind of a cool article, just for the title alone.

How China’s ‘Bat Woman’ Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus

Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there

www.scientificamerican.com

Was this posted already? Dunno, might be a repost:

Enhanced isolation of SARS-CoV-2 by TMPRSS2-expressing cells

A novel betacoronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which caused a large respiratory outbreak in Wuhan, China in December 2019, is currently spreading across many countries globally. Here, we show that a TMPRSS2-expressing VeroE6 cell line is highly susceptible...

www.pnas.org

 

[JessFR]

It can and does happen anywhere, Nipah is a potential problem in Northern Australia for example. Hendra already is, hanta viruses from pet rats or some pretty nasty illnesses from pet birds. there are plenty of fruit bats in metropolitan AUS cities, and so on.

If it had happened in India we would know nothing for months, India supposedly has something like 1 case of covid 19 in a population of 1bn it also has no toilet roll. The biggest absolute threat is where humans are encroaching on formerly pristine environment, so Africa and South America and therefore coming into contact with new viruses and then there is transport down river.

don't take your eye off the ball.

Of course it can happen anywhere, I never said otherwise. Just that it's not equally likely to happen anywhere.

 

[S.J.B.]

The total number of cases outside of China has now overtaken the number of cases in China.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

It still makes no sense you can't reliably control a pandemic like you can a bomb or missile or even a chemical weapon.

You can perhaps control a biological weapon if it kills both quickly and universally. But a disease like this is uncontrollable and can mutate in unanticipated ways. It'd be crazy to release it on purpose unless you were just trying to destroy everything for its own sake.

And nothing about this disease looks unnatural. It being mistakable for the flu and having an asymptomatic period isn't surprising. This argument seems to go "this virus is too bad to have happened by chance".

Except viruses mutate all the time, and inevitably one would have the characteristics to become a pandemic.

The only question from a statistics standpoint is if it's likely to happen by chance on human noticeable time scales.

And the answer is yes.

This isn't the first, it's not the second, it's not the third.

But no, instead it's argued that THIS time we COULD maybe have made it. Therefore natural diseases can't happen by chance anymore because.... Reasons.
Therefore it must be artificial.

It's the middle part where it makes no sense. A natural disease like this was inevitable. It should be the default assumption.

The ONLY evidence to the contrary is extremely circumstantial. And it's not logical to assume the less likely of two possibilities just because you can't rule it out entirely.

OF COURSE A PANDEMIC CAN'T BE CONTROLLED.

Just like the RUSSIA NUCLEAR MISSILE THAT GOES 28 TIMES THE SPEED OF SOUND, if it were to ever not turn off and grow a mind of its own... there would be no humanly way to stop it.

That doesn't mean doomsday devices aren't being built by several very powerful nation states.

I know you are aware of this I'm sure. "But, like, Captain, they don't want to wipe all humans off the world..." You aren't thinking like a Kim Jong Un, Putin, Trump or Xi Jinping. They don't care about human life and I think it's abundantly clear from a humanist perspective.

 

[What 23]

I don't have a Facebook account, but share a computer with someone who does. I saw this posted by someone. I haven't verified anything of it - yet, but it sounds pretty interesting if true. Perhaps irresponsible to even share this.

 

[JessFR]

I just spent 10 minutes trying to verify that with no success.

There is a snopes article about a similar trump claim, however it's stated to be false.

Does Trump Own Stock in a Company CDC Uses for COVID-19 Tests?

The U.S. president’s finances are complex, but does Donald Trump actually benefit from the CDC’s testing procedures for the new coronavirus?

www.snopes.com

I've found nothing specific to this though.

There's plenty of easily proven ways trump has been totally stupid about all of this. But this doesn't appear to be an example to the best I've been able to determine.

Trump does hold a lot of blame here though. Sure it's not his fault the virus happened. But it's his fault he failed to take it seriously. It's his fault his administration has been removing and cutting the budget of health and pandemic preparedness for years. It's his fault he keeps saying things that within a day turn out to be totally misleading. If not outright lies. Creating uncertainty and feeding panic.

I honestly believe that for America, this is probably one of the worst presidents for this to have happened under. He's done a lot to hurt the response, he's done little to help it.

 

[Deleted member 521610]

Everybody stocking up on supermarket supplies while im sitting here stocking up enough drugs to starve away this boredom, recession and job losses for the year to come.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

if you live the jobs will be thriving man

everyone gonna waste their $ on "get my groceries, clean up my sick, disinfect everything" coronaparanoia.

Things are slowing down for everyone now but will soon pick up again.

 

[Deleted member 521610]

been through bird flu and swine flu and no one acted like this last time unless my memory is shot to shit. Something about cornavirus the government is not telling us which is why they are putting in such drastic measures to stop its spread.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

been through bird flu and swine flu and no one acted like this last time unless my memory is shot to shit. Something about cornavirus the government is not telling us which is why they are putting in such drastic measures to stop its spread.

the top->down panic is self-evident.

 

[JessFR]

been through bird flu and swine flu and no one acted like this last time unless my memory is shot to shit. Something about cornavirus the government is not telling us which is why they are putting in such drastic measures to stop its spread.

No. We know exactly what the difference is.

Bird flu had a mortality rate very high, but wasn't very transmissible.

Swine flu was transmissible, but the mortality rate was very low

Covid19 however is MUCH more likely to kill than the regular flu, but highly transmissible. And people can have it, show no symptoms, and spread it.

The reason for alarm this time is obvious. If you truly can't see the difference, I really don't know what else to say.

I mean it's obvious. A virus that can't transmit isn't a big threat. A virus that can but doesn't kill almost anyone isn't a big thread.

One that can transmit like crazy but kills as potentially many as 1-2 in a hundred of everyone it infects is an enormous threat.

 

[novaveritas]

most countries learned the lessons of 2009 H1N1, and came up with a plan based on the science.

Some countries have stuck to the particular flavor of plan they came up with, some countries have adapted their plans reactively and there are some countries have thrown the plan out of the window and are running around with their hair on fire because of people shreiking and collective hysteria demanding do something!
Excessive lock downs will not work particularly early on.

Jess we do not know the difference right now, As with H1N1 we get some early clues and a partial picture and like H1N1 we will only know the truth in 1-2 years time.
One clue is in the cruise ships, these are perfect models with a more vulnerable than usual population. I don't expect you to do the math. I expect you to parrot the public mainstream positions with a few appeals to authority here and there. I can get that information directly without a parrot, what is more interesting to me is your own ideas and insights should you choose to share them, I am more than willing to hear them

With coronavirus we have a perfect environment, a fake debt based economic expansion that was running out of steam, a price war on energy, a huge geopolitical shift and then a virus appears which enables the politicians to point and say look squrirel and distract the populous whilst their weasel buddies position to make lots of money and the politicians gain more power from a frightened population.
Goebbels had a lot of interesting things to say on the subject.