Posted on 01/31/2020 8:50:37 PM PST by catnipman
They found that all four of these spike protein inserts appear as matches to at least one sequence in at least one variant of the HIV virus. The sequences come from the gp120 and Gag proteins in HIV, the former of which is also a viral envelope recognition protein. This has led many to credulously assume that this is evidence, or even a strong indication, that 2019-nCoV was engineered from its bat ancestor by humans inserting HIV sequences.
But they’re wrong; it’s still not engineered. An analysis of the paper clearly reveals that:
1. There is nothing remarkable about the fact that 2019-nCoV’s sequence diverges from its nearest known relative, or that its unique sequences are conserved among cases of 2019-nCoV.
2. The sequence matches with HIV are very short and appear in hypervariable regions of both virus, and similar overlaps are seen between 2019-nCoV sequences and many other organisms.
3. The unique biological properties that HIV sequences could theoretically impart to another virus are completely missing from 2019-nCoV, and 2019-nCoV has no unique clinical properties that are outside what is known to be possible for a coronavirus.
In other words, the sequence overlap is not actually uncanny, and there is no big scoop here. The group in India fell prey to some of the pitfalls of bioinformatics research.
The 2019-nCoV genome does not contain remarkable genomic properties which need explaining, and for which we’d look to some kind of bioengineering as a cause.
2019-nCoV continues to give every appearance of being a wild coronavirus that jumped from bats to humans by way of an animal intermediary in the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan in late 2019.
(Excerpt) Read more at theprepared.com ...
In the absence of ubiquitous and reliable refrigeration, it makes sense to keep the food fresh on-the-hoof until ready to use.
We did that here. The local butcher would never have more than a day's worth of meat on the hook, and was expected to slaughter and dress on site.
Not pretty, but meat doesn't magically come in Styrofoam trays wrapped in Saran wrap...
We see the bug in people who have brought it to other venues. It doesn’t seem to be at all virulent beyond any other influenza type viruses. In fact, it seems to be less virulent. Perhaps the statistics we are getting are skewed drastically, and perhaps they are not. We don’t know. WHO is in there and the highest numbers they are reporting comport with the ones we’ve seen.
The authoritative regime in China is taking drastic steps to prevent its spread, far beyond what would be taken in the West. That’s what they do. They have the power to do it. We do not. Do they lie? Are they lying? Who knows. One would think that to justify their drastic actions they’d support them with numbers beyond what is being reported. They are not.
I do know that some of the hysterical photos of supposed “dead bodies in the streets” and “people dead at their desks” actually came from movies about epidemics that spread like wildfire, not from areas hit by the Novel Coronavirus. They are fake news, spread by kooks trying to spread fear.
I have NOT seen numbers from any authoritative source that lend any credence to this being anything more than what it is. Even if the highest number of 90,000 infected in Wuhan is true, that is just 0.6% , less than 1%, of the population of that very populous metropolitan area. Or 0.006% of the population of China.
I again repeat, this is not anything like a weaponized virus. A weaponized virus must have a high percentage fatality rate, but a long virulence stage so that it can spread before it kills the infected person. It also has to kill healthy, strong examples of the target population, not just the weak, elderly, young, and at risk members. This shows no signs of that. Reports are that most of the infected are recovering, and the fatalities are typically among the old, young, and at risk with compromised immune systems who die of a secondary bacteriological infection. Sorry, that is the case.
From all we’ve seen it has a much lower fatality rate than the influenza that hit the US last year that has as many as 90,000 deaths attributed to it and secondary infections in the US alone.
It is possible this did come out of one of those labs in Wuhan, as it might be a step toward a weaponized virus that has no payload yet. Perhaps it is merely a test of vector, although I can’t imagine why they would test it where it would get such publicity, especially on their own people.. I can see it would be an accidental release. Such a weaponized Coronavirus may be just one splice away from adding the payload. This one isn’t it.
Another possibility for why this Coronavirus genome contained four strands from HIV strands is that it may have mutated in a person who was infected with HIV and picked up those strands from the host. . . Viruses build their DNA from the DNA of the host cells, so it is entirely possible that broken strands get included.
A bioweapon would be used on everyone who didn't get the antidote.
Insane.
Last paragraph, DNA=RNA. Sorry, brain fart.
It appears to be highly contagious.
The oft repeated 2.2% assumes everyone merely sick will recover. The only <heavy sarcasm quote>reliable</heavy sarcasm quote> statistic, those died vs those recovered shows fatality rates of between 51 and 54%. IOW, anyone ending up in an ICU has a less than 50% chance of walking out.
Those people who've only been sick a few days or weeks don't count as dead, the disease hasn't run it's course, they are effectively Schrödinger's patients. Status to be determined when someone peeks inside their box.
It's virulent enough to shut down everything in cities with some 100 million or so people in the space of a little over a month.
It may yet crash the world economy.
How much more virulent does it need to be?
Thanks! Good to know!
Thanks very much for posting that debunking of the original article. I suspected as much. I was making the case this is not a “good” weaponized virus because it just isn’t “well designed” to be a weapon. No weaponized bioweapon would have its characteristics. It acts like a normal influenza infection. . .
However, real life is even more fascinating, and sometimes frightening.
“There are 2 labs in Wuhan.”
And three pekingese poodles.
The 3D model is much more convincing.
3 of the inserted regions appear to be conserved on the same ‘finger’ of the spike protein. They aren’t randomly distributed throughout. Which would make sense, even IF this was a natural occurrence.
I find it unlikely, myself, that 4 inserted regions (from any other source, not just HIV-1) of the length involved here (not the 5aa one poster insinuated, more like 8 or 10aa) would simultaneously result in a gain of function mutant. Things work the other way, generally. Ie, significant insertion/SNP breaks the thing altogether. (see sickle cell).
HIV connection is debunked here:
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing
Public Health scientist / Epidemiologist / Health Economist / Harvard ‘07 + Johns Hopkins ‘04 / Taught Harvard SPH 15years
Good reading if you seek a Phd.’s input on the Coronavirus and the purported HIV connection.
Uh, no, it’s not. SARS had a 9.8% death rate. This Novel Coronavirus has a mere 2.2% death rate. SARS, according to the CDC had only 8,098 total infections worldwide during its entire 8 months run, mostly confined to China, while this one has so far approximately 13,000 in two months, mostly in Wuhan, China, so it is apparently a bit more virulent. However, SARS origination point was a much more rural area of China, not a major city such as Wuhan, which may account for the lower numbers and slower spread. At it’s highest spread SARS reached 22 countries.
the four HIV inserts are unlikely to be natural.
On the contrary, in RNA, random mutations often replicate strands of RNA that mimic other virus’ strands. Whether they are in significant areas of the code or not is what’s important to their ability to do anything. These are in areas that are “junk” code. Insignificant. Areas that are highly mutagenic and often get false duplicates. Viruses mutate, that’s how they survive. See MD Expat in PA’s debunking above in Reply #45. As the poster noted, “uncanny” is not a scientific term.
There are various videos out there and comments that folk’s relatives have died of pneumonia or whatever that are not included in the virus totals.
You don’t shut down entire cities of 11+ million people over a few hundred deaths. (NYC is 8.5 million).
Do the Chinese have the antidote?
China kept the lights on and the doors open for SARS.
She just destroyed her economy, blocked off cities, and is telling people to kill and bury their pets.
Different emperors, but they are not acting like this is mild. They are acting like this is a slate cleaning event and are trying to get ahead of it.
I may have misread it. I thought it implied that the virus binds to the same receptors that the HIV virus does. That level of virology is entirely over my head.
You dont’ take something you intend to create a bioweapon from and ‘poof’, make one change and it’s got 90% virulence.
It’s a step by step process.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191
Read that paper.
Healthy 35yr old male non smoker.
6ish days after admission, while on lots of antibiotics (they STARTED him on vanc) he STILL developed serious pneumonia. Serious enough to need supplemental O2. Developed this almost overnight. I’ve had pneumonia several times, never needed O2. Ditto hubby and lots of people I know.
So, he apparently had the symptoms of a bad cold, was able to be ambulatory the whole time, up until he developed pneumonia serious enough to need supplemental O2 literally overnight.
The good news is, once they gave him that Gilead molecule things improved just as quickly.
Let’s hope we have a couple hundred million rounds of that Gilead molecule and that we don’t depend on China or India for its manufacture (not holding my breath here).
So it looks like the demographic picture we’ve gotten from China (just the old and sick are affected) might NOT actually be true. They might be saying this for THEIR own population’s consumption.
Read the paper, it’s interesting.
And then pray we have enough of that Gilead molecule and this virus doesn’t mutate significantly enough that that cmpd no longer works...
These aren’t molecular modelers.
They’re looking at the 2D representation of this protein.
The 3D is convincing.
All but one of these insertions are in the ‘fingertip’ region of this protein.
And the idea that you’d have any number of significant insertions and end up with a gain of function mutant is dodgy itself.
Scientists, especially the younger ones, use ‘unscientific’ terms all the time. Once us old farts die off, who knows what will appear in professional journals...it will be the end of the world, i’m sure.
A few of years ago, a study of scientific and scholarly papers was done of papers published in various peer-reviewed journals was undertaken and it discovered that an amazingly high percentage of them were bogus, and the peer-reviews were bogus as well!
If I recall correctly something on the order of 70% were found to be unsubstantiated, false, or just downright fiction. In many instances the peer-reviewers did not even exist, did not have the qualifications they claimed, or were friends of the authors who were back-scratching for authors who had peer-reviewed articles the author had peer-reviewed bogus articles for them. It was an incestuous circle-jerk of peer-reviewing of non-serious work. The editors of some of these journals —some were considered very serious journals—would accept almost anything that was written in obscure enough prose or murky enough math to appear technical, or scholarly, or filled with the proper jargon, enough to pass their muster.
I recall that some of these investigators succeeded in getting some totally made up papers accepted by journals that were completely bogus, and even got them peer-reviewed and published, before they revealed the absurdities of their papers.
They seem to say it wasn’t engineered:
“But they’re wrong; it’s still not engineered. An analysis of the paper clearly reveals that: - snip - The 2019-nCoV genome does not contain remarkable genomic properties which need explaining, and for which we’d look to some kind of bioengineering as a cause. “
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