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.
Last paragraph, DNA=RNA. Sorry, brain fart.
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.
That number came from the nurse. She said that was for the province (60 million people). The spread of this virus, after about 8 weeks, seems minimal, except for the possibility of a lot more unreported cases with mild symptoms.
A weaponized virus must have a high percentage fatality rate
Sword, there are rumors that the Chinese are doing what they did in ‘89 by cremating the bodies and, presumably, flushing the ashes down the sewers to hide the true numbers from their public for obvious reasons.
Maybe it isn't a weaponized virus. Maybe it was a mistake, or a mutation from an originally engineered virus.
Maybe the Chinese scientist in Canada took samples to China and somehow the little buggers got out. Or some scientist passed on the documentation to the Chinese and they created some, which got out.
Final point: Regardless to how it came to be, it is out. After it's under control, maybe they can figure out how it really started.