SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19

[RallyMo]

15 minutes ago, Kevin said:

I was skeptical but then I saw the siren emoji in his tweet. Shit just got real.

lol

BREAKING, HUGE SIRENS!!!!!!

What a doofus. The info speaks for itself.

[Jason]

50 minutes ago, Chuckster70 said:

 

 

24 minutes ago, RallyMo said:

This quote (from a person at a great place) is what I've been thinking all along.

"As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley."

I'm starting to think China sucks and is the biggest global threat we face

[St1ck]

2 minutes ago, Jason said:

I built a bitching new gun but it got lost in a boating accident 

Are you a pirate or something? What were you doing with a gun on a boat?

[RallyMo]

1 minute ago, st1ckboy said:

Are you a pirate or something? What were you doing with a gun on a boat?

...and why was the gun complaining?

[UndertheHalo]

3 minutes ago, Jason said:

I built a bitching new gun but it got lost in a boating accident 

 

[St1ck]

1 minute ago, RallyMo said:

...and why was the gun complaining?

It gets motion sickness.

[UndertheHalo]

Does it have to be Benny that we get the article from ? 

[Chuck]

5 minutes ago, Jason said:

I'm starting to think China sucks and is the biggest global threat we face

 

[Chuck]

Just now, UndertheHalo said:

Does it have to be Benny that we get the article from ? 

No. It literally could have come from anyone. 

The point still remains. 

China sucks and they need to be held accountable. We also need to start creating jobs that were over there here in the US. 

We need to pull out like Japan! 

[UndertheHalo]

[red321]

Should be noted, that this was an op-ed. But went through some interesting background and details. Based on what was written, China really needs to come clean on the origins of the virus. Worse part is, it appears what they were researching, how to identify and combat potential virus pandemics may have lead to what they were trying to prevent.

Also should be noted, US embassy and science advisors were on record warning this exact scenario could occur back in 2018 and suggesting the US provide more support..

This definitely needs to be investigated more, from multiple angles.

 

In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.

What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)

The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.

As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.

“Most importantly,” the cable states, “the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention.”

The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.

[red321]

6 minutes ago, UndertheHalo said:

Does it have to be Benny that we get the article from ? 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

[Jason]

11 minutes ago, st1ckboy said:

Are you a pirate or something? What were you doing with a gun on a boat?

testing it's durability with rust

[UndertheHalo]

If it was a fuck up in a lab that was trying to prevent it.  I mean that’s obviously bad.  To me that seems less ominous then the wet market bat eating stuff though.  Much more easily preventable from being a problem in the future.  Imo China definitely has a problem with consumption of things that people shouldn’t consume.  There was a study a few years back out of Hong Kong that basically said that this kind of thing was time bomb out of those wet markets.  Not because of the wet markets themselves, but because of some of the shit that people buy and eat out of them.  

I'm not sure how this equates into China is  the worlds greatest threat.  Ehh.  They research dangerous things all over the place.  If it is, in fact the result of a laboratory mishap.  I mean holy shit.  But at the same time.  Hopefully there is some lesson learned here. 

Edited April 14, 2020 by UndertheHalo

[St1ck]

6 minutes ago, Jason said:

testing it's durability with rust

Probably pretty fucking rusty now.

[UndertheHalo]

Also, people eat disgusting and highly non hygienic things all over the place. 

[Blarg]

17 minutes ago, UndertheHalo said:

Does it have to be Benny that we get the article from ? 

The article is actually from Josh Rogin at the Washington Post. Benny is just the newsboy selling it on the Twitter corner. 

 

[Chuck]

How do you guys feel about Google and Apple tracking your whereabouts as it relates to social distancing?

 

[St1ck]

1 minute ago, Chuckster70 said:

How do you guys feel about Google and Apple tracking your whereabouts as it relates to social distancing?

 

They already track your location. That's how the traffic alerts on Google maps works.

[UndertheHalo]

4 minutes ago, Blarg said:

The article is actually from Josh Rogin at the Washington Post. Benny is just the newsboy selling it on the Twitter corner. 

 

Yes, yes I know.  It was an unnecessary post. 

[red321]

1 minute ago, Chuckster70 said:

How do you guys feel about Google and Apple tracking your whereabouts as it relates to social distancing?

 

Not sure, need to read and get more details...but I will say, if people think the country is going to start "re-opening" it's going to involve testing, testing, testing...and contract tracing to quickly identify who an infected person might have come into contact with...and the more testing testing testing.

Alternative is we are right back to large shelter in place orders when outbreaks occur again. 

[UndertheHalo]

2 minutes ago, Chuckster70 said:

How do you guys feel about Google and Apple tracking your whereabouts as it relates to social distancing?

 

I don’t believe that they’ve just started doing this.  We live in the times we live in.  

[Vegas Halo Fan]

7 minutes ago, red321 said:

Alternative is we are right back to large shelter in place orders when outbreaks occur again. 

This is the biggest danger, and what concerns me most about Trump not listening to anyone who knows about disease transmission and prevention.

[red321]

10 minutes ago, Vegas Halo Fan said:

This is the biggest danger, and what concerns me most about Trump not listening to anyone who knows about disease transmission and prevention.

That's why you have some regions going off on their own. (CA/OR/WA) and a group of states in the Northeast saying they are going to go off and outline how those regions are going to brings things back online. 

[RallyMo]

21 minutes ago, Chuckster70 said:

How do you guys feel about Google and Apple tracking your whereabouts as it relates to social distancing?

 

This is already happening and has been for years.