Posted on 04/21/2020 1:31:04 PM PDT by neverevergiveup
Virus isolation
The virus was isolated from nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal samples from putative COVID-19 patients. Oropharyngeal samples were diluted with viral transfer medium containing nasopharyngeal swabs and antibiotics (Nystadin, penicillin-streptomycin 1:1 dilution) at 1:4 ratio and incubated for 1 hour at 4°C, before being inoculated onto Vero cells. Inoculated Vero cells were cultured at 37°C, 5% CO2 in 1× Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM) supplemented with 2% fetal bovine serum and penicillin-streptomycin.
Virus replication and isolation were confirmed through cytopathic effects, gene detection, and electron microscopy. Viral culture of SARS-CoV-2 was conducted in a biosafety Level-3 facility according to laboratory biosafety guidelines of Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(Excerpt) Read more at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ...
My point in posting this is that this isn't a high-containment BSL-4 laboratory. This is a BSL-3 laboratory, that may or may not be diligent with BSL-3 criteria. I am essentially certain that this kind of research is common.
This is vanity, but I truly believe that science is 'broken', and is driven by ambition more than intellectual curiosity or ethical scienctific principles. I'm not singling out this South Korean group, who likely are very diligent, and produced a relatively good study. It's more about the breadth of the scientific 'community' these days. It's become 'Hollywood' for those (like me) who liked to play with chemistry sets as a kid. The problem is that the technology has advanced to the point that great harm can be done by individual labs.
I believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed by non-scientists and the scientific community. We may be suffering the results of this type of unethical science with the current Covid outbreak. Thoughts?
Someone could do that in their basement.
I am sure there are places in the world where that HAS happened.
I imagine that if I tried that in my basement I would arrested and thrown in jail.
If you knew someone who had this disease you could get them to blow their nose a dozen or so times, maybe cough up phlegm too, and freeze it. And the disease would live long enough to be thawed out someplace else?
It’s not like BSL-3 is willy nilly. It’s pretty solid containment. Really BSL-4 is only necessary for hardcore killers like Ebola.
Ambition and intellectual curiosity aren’t mutually exclusive. Science has long been ruled by people who want to find something first. Because that’s where the fun lies. And most scientists really fail on practical application, so forget ethics. Scientific ethics means no bombs. We make bombs.
Great harm has been able to be done in individual labs for a long time. And you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
Covid is natural. Don’t believe the conspiracy weenies.
Another genie that’s out of the bottle, on the streets and available for just about any suburban bio-hacker’s mom’s basement.
Bruce Sterling once wrote a bit (not the entire story, just a sort of “for example”) about some hackers engineering a virus what would activate melanocytes in white people making them, effectively, black.
A sort of bioengineered social justice worrier terrorist attack.
Now if someone could only do that for sleeping hair follicles the world would beat a pathway to his mom’s basement.
I would imagine if you put it in the proper solution and “fed it” properly you could easily transport it pretty much anywhere.
“It’s not like BSL-3 is willy nilly. It’s pretty solid containment. Really BSL-4 is only necessary for hardcore killers like Ebola.”
Years ago I worked at the Cummings Life Science Center, part of the University of Chicago on 58th street.
At the time it was a CDC Lv 3 Lab and there was only one Lv4 lab (Atlantia) at that time. IIRC.
The main difference is the Lv 4 exhaust air passed through a burner and heated before discharge into the atmosphere.
Photo of Cummings:
http://storage.lib.uchicago.edu/ucpa/series2/derivatives_series2/apf2-02046r.jpg
Back then residential buildings across the street. Now surrounded by U of C.
The odd-looking chimneys are building exhaust air, discharged above the roof.
Some of the floors had doors like on a large safe or from a submarine.
An architectural delight if you like brutalist towers.
“Now if someone could only do that for sleeping hair follicles the world would beat a pathway to his mom’s basement.”
LOL. It’s being worked on. I could see it going wrong and turning a bunch of guys into Sasquatch.
Be happy to debate you on that one from a molecular perspective. What are the odds that a novel highly pathogenic coronavirus just happens to have its index case in a city in China, at which the ONLY BSL-4 virology institute in China is based, and at which the director of this institute has spent a good portion of her ‘career’ working on coronavirus (specifically ‘gain of function’ mutations in coronavirus), and that these facts are unrelated? Really? I've engineered viruses. If you are going to be dismissive about the possibility that this virus is related to the Wuhan institute, please elucidate why.
Oh, and BSL-3 might not be ‘willy nilly’, but it isn't sufficient to be culturing a virus that is responsible for a current pandemic that is shutting down the economies of the world.
“We may be suffering the results of this type of unethical science with the current Covid outbreak. Thoughts? “
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Why was “Gain of Function” authorized for this virus after it was prohibited and strongly advised against?
There is nothing to debate. It is natural. Period. Anybody thinking otherwise is being silly. The odds of a novel pathogen indexing out of China, given it’s largely 3rd world conditions, high pollution, high population, and high connectivity to the rest of the world are about 100%. This is China’s 3rd big scary this century. And there will be another. And another. And another. China is the perfect petrie dish. With high levels of contact between live animals, and live animals and humans, and humans and humans, and retarded immune system in everything from the smog, and the world’s manufacturing focused there.
BSL-4 is for things that if you get them you die. CV19 is not on that list.
As far as BSL3 vs BSL4 for Covid-19 goes, BSL-4 is also for those infectious agents that are emerging/new, can cause death, and about which not a lot is known. Covid-19 fits that criteria.
No there isn’t. There’s conspiracy whack jobs and there’s truth. That’s not debate. Yes Luc Montagnier, and all the other guys who are waving around certificates without ACTUALLY EXAMINING THE VIRUS are silly.
Once must also keep in mind on facilities that you get what you’ve got. When ebola breakouts happen they setup their tents and equipment and get to work. It’s not possible in those mobile conditions to get past BSL2, and they’re working with a BSL4 pathogen. But it’s what they do, because they have to. If all you’ve got is a BSL3 facility then that’s all you have. You work with it.
Before she was silenced, Shi Zhengli, who directs the Wuhan lab, stated that she had been worried that the virus had originated in the lab. She then said that after they ‘checked the sequences’ she found that it wasn't from the lab. Given the lack of straightforward answers from China to date, who knows whether her comments about the sequences were truthful or managed. More to the point, is that even she admitted to the possibility that a pathogen could escape from that facility.
Dogma and truth are rarely compatible.
It most definitely is a conspiracy theory to speculate without proof. And that’s what they’re doing. Oh look more “speculation”. The favorite ting of conspiracy junkies. you’re the one with the dogma. Taking all the random BS and “speculation” as the truth that fits what YOU WANT TO BELIEVE. Meanwhile, out here in reality. Bugs come out of China on a fairly regular basis, and this one is showing no signs of being any different. A natural mutation of a shared bug between humans and other mammals that came out kind of nasty.
Whatever you want to believe is your decision. Assuming that this virus spontaneously mutated in bats and jumped to humans is also speculative. The sequencing that has been done to date does not provide ‘proof’ of either ‘natural’ mutation or of genetic manipulation - although there are sequences in Covid-19 that raise questions/suspicions of genetic engineering.
It’s not ‘conspiracy’ that Dr. Shi Zhengli was doing gain of function research on coronavirus. That’s documented.
But Dr Shi’s speculation, more importantly YOU acting like that’s absolute proof, IS conspiracy. That’s the thing with the conspiracy crowd. You’re completely fed by confirmational bias. Every “maybe” that agrees with you becomes total proof. Meanwhile we know how this works. We know how it worked with SARS, we know how it worked with bird flu, we know how it works with ebola, we know how it worked with swine flu. Anything saying this isn’t like every single other damned one of these bugs is an extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary proof. And some guy we don’t even know if he’s gotten sample to work with saying “I think maybe” ain’t extraordinary proof.
Stay safe and well.
Oh look appeal to authority. Give extraordinary proof for your extraordinary claim.
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