Posted on 06/17/2020 12:03:38 AM PDT by Grandpa Drudge
“”SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) appears to be a man made chimeric virus” was the opening line of my first post in this thread.”
Yes. That was what appeared as your original headline before the admins changed it. Multiple people had a problem with that.
“Since you seen determined to twist and suggest the intent and motives of my post are somehow “fake” I submit this reply for the edifice of other readers of this thread.”
I twisted nothing. The formatting mistake is not the issue.
The issue is that your comment on Covid 19 being manmade was in no way supported by or stated in the article. Rather than admitting that mistake you are trying to BS your way around it. Edifice THAT my arrogant FRiend.
“And this PDF Check especially page 4 of the PDF”
So what is it on page 4 that you think is especially important?
That paper was submitted by group presenting a candidate vaccine for Covid-19. I didn’t see anything in that paper claiming SARS-CoV-2 was manmade, which is what you have been promoting.
Well aren’t you clever. It actually means that you don’t understand what’s in that paper any better than he does. Assuming that you tried to read it, which is doubtful.
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/03/26/genomic-research-points-to-natural-origin-of-covid-19/
NIH Directors Blog
Posted on March 26th, 2020 by Dr. Francis Collins
Genomic Study Points to Natural Origin of COVID-19
No matter where you go online these days, there’s bound to be discussion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Some folks are even making outrageous claims that the new coronavirus causing the pandemic was engineered in a lab and deliberately released to make people sick. A new study debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally.
The reassuring findings are the result of genomic analyses conducted by an international research team, partly supported by NIH. In their study in the journal Nature Medicine, Kristian Andersen, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA; Robert Garry, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans; and their colleagues used sophisticated bioinformatic tools to compare publicly available genomic data from several coronaviruses, including the new one that causes COVID-19.
The researchers began by homing in on the parts of the coronavirus genomes that encode the spike proteins that give this family of viruses their distinctive crown-like appearance. (By the way, “corona” is Latin for “crown.”) All coronaviruses rely on spike proteins to infect other cells. But, over time, each coronavirus has fashioned these proteins a little differently, and the evolutionary clues about these modifications are spelled out in their genomes.
The genomic data of the new coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 show that its spike protein contains some unique adaptations. One of these adaptations provides special ability of this coronavirus to bind to a specific protein on human cells called angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE2). A related coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in humans also seeks out ACE2.
Existing computer models predicted that the new coronavirus would not bind to ACE2 as well as the SARS virus. However, to their surprise, the researchers found that the spike protein of the new coronavirus actually bound far better than computer predictions, likely because of natural selection on ACE2 that enabled the virus to take advantage of a previously unidentified alternate binding site. Researchers said this provides strong evidence that that new virus was not the product of purposeful manipulation in a lab. In fact, any bioengineer trying to design a coronavirus that threatened human health probably would never have chosen this particular conformation for a spike protein.
The researchers went on to analyze genomic data related to the overall molecular structure, or backbone, of the new coronavirus. Their analysis showed that the backbone of the new coronavirus’s genome most closely resembles that of a bat coronavirus discovered after the COVID-19 pandemic began. However, the region that binds ACE2 resembles a novel virus found in pangolins, a strange-looking animal sometimes called a scaly anteater. This provides additional evidence that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 almost certainly originated in nature. If the new coronavirus had been manufactured in a lab, scientists most likely would have used the backbones of coronaviruses already known to cause serious diseases in humans.
So, what is the natural origin of the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic? The researchers don’t yet have a precise answer. But they do offer two possible scenarios.
In the first scenario, as the new coronavirus evolved in its natural hosts, possibly bats or pangolins, its spike proteins mutated to bind to molecules similar in structure to the human ACE2 protein, thereby enabling it to infect human cells. This scenario seems to fit other recent outbreaks of coronavirus-caused disease in humans, such as SARS, which arose from cat-like civets; and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which arose from camels.
The second scenario is that the new coronavirus crossed from animals into humans before it became capable of causing human disease. Then, as a result of gradual evolutionary changes over years or perhaps decades, the virus eventually gained the ability to spread from human-to-human and cause serious, often life-threatening disease.
Either way, this study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19. And that’s a good thing because it helps us keep focused on what really matters: observing good hygiene, practicing social distancing, and supporting the efforts of all the dedicated health-care professionals and researchers who are working so hard to address this major public health challenge.
Finally, next time you come across something about COVID-19 online that disturbs or puzzles you, I suggest going to FEMA’s new Coronavirus Rumor Control web site. It may not have all the answers to your questions, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction in helping to distinguish rumors from facts.
“Some folks are even making outrageous claims that the new coronavirus causing the pandemic was engineered in a lab and deliberately released ...”
These are two very different and separate questions.
If it was released, either accidentally or deliberately, is independent of whether it was engineered or a natural virus that was isolated from an animal host by the Wuhan lab.
That it is natural does not mean it was not released somehow by the lab.
A full audit of samples in the lab (assuming nothing was destroyed) would answer the question, but the Chinese government would never allow that.
“So what is it on page 4 that you think is especially important?”
My question as well.
If it is the term “inserts” it does not refer to insertions that were engineered.
The illustrations are sequence comparisons of certain regions of known Coronaviruses and insertions or deletions refer to differences in one sequence vs another.
It’s terminology, it does not mean these sequences were inserted - or it would be said they were inserted via evolution.
As for the other article, it’s been posted a lot. It is nonsense. A paper by computer scientists who do not know molecular biology. The very very short regions they found to match HIV match thousands of genes throughout all species. Sequences that small are found randomly throughout thousands of genomes.
Figure 1. Alignments of Corona virus Spike protein inserts.
Figure 1 shows 6 alignments with inserts. The first 5 inserts are pointed out by (Zhou et al., 2020) and located near/around position 72, 150, 250, 445, 471 while the insert around 680 is pointed out by (Coutard et al., 2020) as a furin-like cleavage site with cleavage between R and S. Apart from insert 4 and 5, these inserts are all basic inserts. The red arrows point out the basic amino acids. The green arrow and line point out the furin-like cleavage site.
I cant find the reference right now, but I remember reading a discussion that the changed cleavage site was the most effective to increase the infection rate of this virus to potential pandemic level.
Of course, this does not prove these changes were man made.
However, the 2016 research was all about making just such changes in it's effort, for the stated purpose of identifying potential future threats, and it actually created modified clones of various CoV viruses Including SARS-CoV, which is very similar to SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19), with specific focus on modifications of the spike protein and ACE2.
That's why I suggest the 2016 article is a "blueprint" for how to make these modifications, and warn that it was a cooperative effort between USA NIH and Wuhan Institute of Virology.
And I just was informed of this:
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