Covid-19 in China

[Randy W]

more airport celebrations, from the Global Times on Facebook

Chinese epidemiologist Li Lanjuan and her team retreated from #Wuhan, on Tue, after successfully concluding their frontline duties. She was greeted with loud chants of "Shero" by the #Zhejiang medical aid team at the airport, as a mark of profound regard for her selfless efforts.

https://www.facebook.com/115591005188475/posts/3258489607507149

Edited June 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Laowhy86 has released a new video in which he claims to have identified the "source of the coronavirus". It seems to me that he is confusing the term "coronavirus" with what came to be called "novel coronavirus", or "2019-nCoV" by the WHO on Jan. 30, 2020.

 

But he does refer to "SARS-like coronaviruses", so it's unclear what his thinking really is.

 

A couple of job openings in Nov. and Dec. can't be used to indicate that the research center was staffing up for the new virus when research has been ongoing since 1968. From the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Sorry, but Botao Xiao's paper just seems like another conspiracy theory.

 

The word was introduced by a group of virologists as a short article "Coronaviruses" in the "News and Views" section of Nature (vol. 220, no. 5168, November 16, 1968, p. 650)

 

 

[Randy W]

Will we ever be able to play the violin again?

https://www.facebook.com/1570821646570023/posts/2601748860143958/

Edited June 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Greg.D.]

You’re right, nothing he presented is confirmatory. I take exception to his claim that job announcements for studying bat coronaviruses is somehow suspicious. This is an established field and that virology lab would naturally have an emphasis in an area for which it has a world renown leader on staff. I have felt that lab should not have been so close to the city center, however and I would need to hear first hand accounts about their ability and certification to work with select agents like that.

 

Based on phylogenetic analyses performed on publicly available sequence data, I see at least 5 major trunks of this virus already present in Wuhan on Dec 15 and the last or last two job postings could have been related to that. The missing researcher profile: she could be dead! Or, is being silenced, or, is working somewhere else. All possible. But why not use your fluent Chinese and ask the other lab members what’s going on?

 

He could be right but he wove together a “theory of everything”. That’s not science and it’s not journalism. It’s definitely one of the things that is wrong with the internet. This is why you can’t be your own producer or editor.

Edited April 2, 2020 by Greg.D. (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Both YouTubers Magnus Dettmar and Gweilo 60 got back in just under the wire, assuming they WANTED to be here - both are still under quarantine.

Edit: Matt Jayoe Nation is a 3rd, also under quarantine.

Quote

China will make preventing imported cases the top priority in the country's COVID-19 response at present and even for a "prolonged" period of time, President Xi Jinping said Wednesday during his inspection in east China's Zhejiang Province.

 

https://www.facebook.com/553929144732479/posts/2675943965864309/

Edited June 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

wuhan man seeks answers of father's death over COVID-19

 

 

[Allon]

The Wuhan research team sampled 400 people around the caves in Yunnan and found coronavirus antibodies in their blood. The antibodies matched with 95% accuracy the genetic information of the current COVID-19. IN 2005.

But it doesn't disprove other data that coronavirus has not been around long before in other variants.

The Chinese love their conspiracies and superstitions but there are some serious researchers in that country. I hope they don't end up in some prison. Or worse.

[Randy W]

#Shenzhen will ban #wildlife #consumption of all terrestrial wild animals whether captive-bred or wild caught starting May 1. Pigs, cattle, goats, sheep, donkeys, rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons and quails are allowed for eating. The eating of #cats and #dogs is banned.

From Shenzhen Pages on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/305447029839943/posts/1038008156583823/

Edited June 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Bert]

My wife says there is a second wave happening in China. I haven't seen anything in the news to suggest that, although I think that it never stopped. I have heard that China will start reporting non-symptomatic cases.

[Greg.D.]

I’ve not seen anything supporting that (yet). Wouldn’t necessarily be a shock or a failure. Fairly common and certainly natural.

 

Pretty clear that the official numbers are low. But, doesn’t matter now.

[Greg.D.]

How did covid-19 begin? Its initial origin story is shaky.

 

U. S. intelligence officials don’t think the pandemic was caused by deliberate wrongdoing. The outbreak that has now swept the world instead began with a simpler story, albeit one with tragic consequences: The prime suspect is “natural” transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets. But scientists don’t rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study.

 

....

To be clear: U.S. intelligence officials think there’s no evidence whatsoever that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory as a potential bioweapon. Solid scientific research demonstrates that the virus wasn’t engineered by humans and that it originated in bats.

But how did the outbreak occur? Solving this medical mystery is important to prevent future pandemics. What’s increasingly clear is that the initial “origin story” — that the virus was spread by people who ate contaminated animals at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan — is shaky.

Scientists have identified the culprit as a bat coronavirus, through genetic sequencing; bats weren’t sold at the seafood market, although that market or others could have sold animals that had contact with bats. The Lancet noted in a January study that the first covid-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the seafood market.

...

There’s a competing theory — of an accidental lab release of bat coronavirus — that scientists have been puzzling about for weeks. Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China, for study to prevent future illness. Did one of those samples leak, or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?

Richard Ebright, a Rutgers microbiologist and biosafety expert, told me in an email that “the first human infection could have occurred as a natural accident,” with the virus passing from bat to human, possibly through another animal. But Ebright cautioned that it “also could have occurred as a laboratory accident, with, for example, an accidental infection of a laboratory worker.” He noted that bat coronaviruses were studied in Wuhan at Biosafety Level 2, “which provides only minimal protection,” compared with the top BSL-4.

Ebright described a December video from the Wuhan CDC that shows staffers “collecting bat coronaviruses with inadequate [personal protective equipment] and unsafe operational practices.” Separately, I reviewed two Chinese articles, from 2017 and 2019, describing the heroics of Wuhan CDC researcher Tian Junhua, who while capturing bats in a cave “forgot to take protective measures” so that “bat urine dripped from the top of his head like raindrops.”

....

And then there’s the Chinese study that was curiously withdrawn. In February, a site called ResearchGate published a brief article by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao from Guangzhou’s South China University of Technology. “In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories,” the article concluded. Botao Xiao told the Wall Street Journal in February that he had withdrawn the paper because it “was not supported by direct proofs.”

Accidents happen, human or laboratory. Solving the mystery of how covid-19 began isn’t a blame game, but a chance for China and the United States to cooperate in a crisis, and prevent a future one.

[Randy W]

I had posted the SCMP article on the virus' origins here -

http://candleforlove.com/forums/topic/50020-wuhan-pnuemonia-becomes-covid-19/?p=644643

The two articles it references were in Natural Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal

The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2

and the NIH blog of Dr Francis Collins, director of the US National Institute of Health

Genomic Study Points to Natural Origin of COVID-19

The SCMP article primarily discusses Dr. Collins' "second scenario" that it had potentially evolved "over decades".

 

Edited June 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Greg.D.]

No, Francis Collins is just reviewing the first article from Nature Medicine. There is zero evidence for a mildly virulent ancestor of Covid-SARS-2 occurring in humans (which would later become super virulent). They said extant serological evidence of covid infection isn’t specific for one of the SARS like coronaviruses.

 

Both articles just try to assure you that they aren’t lab-created Frankenstein strains. The David Ignatious WaPo article I quoted in the previous post clearly says nobody thinks that but instead invites you to consider that it is an accidental release from the Wuhan Virology lab collection.

 

Which is very possible, especially compared to the likelihood of a multiple locus set of mutations in a single Pangolin.

[Randy W]

The origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are simply speculative, until a thorough study can be made, if ever. The only scientific study I've seen was the one published in Nature Medicine -

 

The study, conducted by Kristian Andersen from the Scripps Research Institute in California, Andrew Rambaut from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Ian Lipkin from Columbia University in New York, Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney, and Robert Garry from Tulane University in New Orleans, was published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine on March 17.

 

 

Dr. Collins' NIH blog, based on the study, pointed out 2 potential scenarios which the study left open.

 

Just further reading material, if you're interested.

[Randy W]

. . . and more, from National Review, which picked up on Matt's video

 

The Trail Leading Back to the Wuhan Labs

 

 

“Recently there has been fake information about Huang Yanling, a graduate from our institute, claiming that she was patient zero in the novel coronavirus.” Press accounts quote the institute as saying, “Huang was a graduate student at the institute until 2015, when she left the province and had not returned since. Huang was in good health and had not been diagnosed with disease, it added.” None of her publicly available research papers are dated after 2015.