Probability of Covid escape from lab

Originally Posted by ChuangTzu Covid-19 has been extremely lethal to the global economy.

Exactly. The global economy. We all live on the globe. Who would want to attack the global economy? Aliens?

Not saying this is what happened, but to rule it out as impossible is rather narrow minded.

Of course, you can't rule anything out as impossible. Not even aliens.

Also, please research the rate at which natural viruses mutate, it takes much longer then this current virus,

False, from what I can find. https://www.healthline.com/health-ne...n-and-covid-19 claims "The new coronavirus is mutating, but very slowly". https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsan...lem-for-humans says "It acquires about two mutations a month during this process of spread, [...] about one-third to one-half the rate of the flu."


https://journals.plos.org/plosbiolog...l.pbio.3000003 shows a range of about 10^-3 to 10^-6 mutations per site/replication for viruses in general. It also says

researchers and clinicians can increase RNA virus mutation rates using nucleoside analogues, and a 3–5-fold increase in mutation rate causes lethal mutagenesis in human-infecting viruses like poliovirus and influenza [12, 13]. The exogenous mutagen causes enough additional mutations, which are often deleterious, so that the progeny RNA viruses are of lower fitness, eventually leading to ecological collapse of the population

So if covid-19 really had a higher mutation rate, it probably would have died out already.

Originally Posted by ChuangTzu also takes much longer for animal viruses to infect humans.

How long do you think it took the current virus to infect humans? That is, when do you start the clock? If you have something more than hand-waving, I'll take a look.

Originally Posted by jefro If it were a natural bat cave and bats have been studied for hundreds of years then why has there never been an outbreak?

Why do you think there has never been an outbreak? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7102861/

In the last two decades, several high impact zoonotic disease outbreaks have been linked to bat-borne viruses. These include SARS coronavirus, Hendra virus and Nipah virus. In addition, it has been suspected that ebolaviruses and MERS coronavirus are also linked to bats.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics...virus-mutation

Emergence of Henipa viruses Phylogenetic analyses show that Nipah and Hendra viruses are old viruses,33,50 which suggests that their emergence in the 1990s was due to ecologic factors rather than virus mutations.51 Ecologic change that drew flying foxes closer to horses, pigs, and humans was probably the largest contributor to the emergence of Hendra and Nipah viruses. Deforestation has caused flying foxes to move into suburban and urban areas to use the trees in these regions for roosting. Climate change is likely to be causing an expansion of the geographic areas that are suitable for the bat host species of henipaviruses.52

Originally Posted by ntubski Exactly. The global economy. We all live on the globe. Who would want to attack the global economy? Aliens?

Anyone with enough 'money' to buy the parts of the globe that are getting smashed the hardest.
The economy is global, but not the overall levels.

Also,
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
What works for real estate works at a higher level, too.

Real estate prices can be fudged, prices driven up and down, artifically.
Who says 'country' prices can't be?

And covid seems to be a little bit like an engine, I just don't know about it, I see it more convenient for high level (aka zoomed up/out) shenanigans than not.
Anything with division is an engine, 'nomaskers' vs 'maskers', vaccinators vs antivaccinators, and the conspiracy theorists vs the "conspiracy theorists" (aka people who think are 'rational and fact and evidence based')
(both camps tend to more or less, I don't want to say blindly, because there is often method to either madness, but the camps still tend to believe in things outside of their actual sphere of veracity? Verificability?

Can't check the entire deal, Science and 'reason' can be a golden calf, too, etc.

I can vaguely think of many angles to mess with the economy and the general thought of people, that may or may not result in positive effects for some more high level entities with more funds.

Nice enough to deliver to the US and Europe. https://www.biospace.com/article/mut...re-contagious/


"Mutated COVID-19 Viral Strain in U.S. and Europe 10 Times More Contagious than Original Strain"

" because the patients with the new mutation appeared to have a higher viral load when infected with the tougher strain, meaning higher amounts of virus circulating in their body." = death

Thanks.

Originally Posted by jefro " because the patients with the new mutation appeared to have a higher viral load when infected with the tougher strain, meaning higher amounts of virus circulating in their body." = death

The article also says

the genetic mutations do not seem to make the virus more—or less—deadly. The spike protein does not appear to have anything to do with the virus’ ability to reproduce (replicate) once it infects a cell. But it does make it easier for the cell to be infected.

Yet they say...

"They believe that the mutation not only makes it easier for the virus to infect people, but more likely to spread, partially because the patients with the new mutation appeared to have a higher viral load when infected with the tougher strain, meaning higher amounts of virus circulating in their body."

Seems pretty bad to me.

Everywhere else suggests that one reason some may not fall victim to this is their viral load. Less load gives the person time to build defense.

"does make it easier for the cell to be infected."

That's not good news either is it?

So, most of the world outside Europe and US have the less viral version.

Originally Posted by jefro "They believe that the mutation not only makes it easier for the virus to infect people, but more likely to spread, partially because the patients with the new mutation appeared to have a higher viral load when infected with the tougher strain, meaning higher amounts of virus circulating in their body." Seems pretty bad to me.

It sounds bad in theory, but I gather the "not more deadly" part is from direct observation. When observation conflicts with theory, re-examine the theory.

"does make it easier for the cell to be infected." That's not good news either is it?

Well no. Even it's not more deadly invidually, just by infecting more people it will cause more deaths in total.

This report from Snopes would seem to be germane to this thread: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fa...esearch-grant/

An excerpt:

Although scientists believe that the novel coronavirus, the virus causing the COVID-19 disease pandemic, had animal origins before it infected humans, the Trump administration has promoted an unfounded conspiracy theory that the disease originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, where it was originally detected in the winter of 2019.

Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes
https://news.yahoo.com/covid-19-may-...143843488.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...-emerged-asia/

I don't doubt the fact that some folks could have had the virus in 2019 and have been in Spain, who exactly originally owned that product I can't say.

Can't really say how or why they test poop samples in those countries and how accurate that data is. Personally I kind of think it stinks but who knows.

The next part of the question is "if this lab has been studying SAR's virus's for 20 years, why no helpful data to cure this???" I mean 20 years is a lot of time to blow on a huge lab project. I know they goof off once in a while.

Yep, like Spanish flu and many of the illnesses in the world, they do seem to just dis-appear. Spanish flu took two years and maybe 5 million or more people.

There was a tour of one of the Austin/Travis county sewage treatment plants. It was like a billion gallons a week. Every kind of waste could have been in there from medical, manufacturing and what not to include birds leaving product down vent pipes. Austin has one of the largest urban bat populations.

It's one thing to have a large bat population but quite another to actually eat them.. and numerous other wild "exotic" beasts.

It's one thing to have a large bat population but quite another to actually eat them.. and numerous other wild "exotic" beasts.

I've wondered about that. Same as simian HIV. They must not be completely cooking the meat. High enough temperature should kill anything in the meat. Or maybe they catch the pathogens from it by handling it when it is raw, and they have a cut in their skin or they touch their mouth or nose without washing the hands good.

Bi-valves can have fluke worms in them, if you eat oysters raw you can get infected. If you cook them good you are fine. Same a Pork with trichinosis. Those are parasites, but I would think that 180F(82C) would kill anything.

Although there is a certain bacteria that lives in those hot pools at Yelowstone national park, just below boiling.

It's not the eating, strictly speaking, that causes the problem. It's everything that goes with it. You have bushmeat markets where animals of different species are crowded together, allowing viruses to spread between species. You have live animals kept in cages in crowded slums after purchase, waiting to be killed and cooked. It's the whole business of killing, skinning, butchering and cooking them. Even without this, the trade is vile. It involves gross cruelty and threatens many species with extinction. Many have described covid-19 as the revenge of the pangolins, and God knows they're due some revenge!

Where money as well as cultural habits are involved, any change involving even reduction is at a snail's pace if at all. It is highly unlikely to effect change so dppely rooted with just an emotional appeal vis a vis cruelty. The simple fact that everyone who lives around wild species knows is that living wild is cruel. No wild animal is going to die easy and prey animals live lives of fear and tragedy many being eaten while still alive or suffering from terminal disease for very long periods.

What should motivate those dependent on the income or food from wild species is continuation of the species (extinction prevention) for the animals and good health for those humans involved. Some species are relatively free from disease that can cross to humans, others, like swine, seem to transfer regularly and with ease. I would be very cautious handling wild swine and after Covid (actually, even before it in my case) I'd not truck in bats

I don't think humans have ever caught a disease from wild swine. We do regularly get flu pandemics from domestic pigs, but they get it from poultry, mostly ducks. All influenza strains start in birds of one kind or another and most stay there. Again, it's the blasted Chinese who cause the problem. Chinese peasants regularly keep ducks and pigs together. The pigs wallow and defecate in the duckpond and this causes an overgrowth of pondweed. The ducks feed and fatten on the weed. As an example of recycling, it can't be faulted. It's also a tried and tested formula for spreading flu. The pigs pick it up from the ducks and convert it into a form that can infect humans and spread among them.

Coronaviruses all come originally from bats, but like flu they have to pass through another animal host before they become able to infect us. The "Russian Flu" of the 1890s was probably caused by a coronavirus, and that is definitely known to have crossed over from cattle. Covid-19 may have come from pangolins, which probably picked it up while foraging for insects under bat roosts. There were certainly pangolins for sale in that wildlife market in Wuhan where it all started, and this particular coronavirus is known to be excreted in faeces.

Thank you hazel. Now I have something a bit more than conjecture. I've been wondering about the long term effects of the explosion in wild pig population in the US South, especially Texas iirc. They get into everything apparently and I wondered if they could be agents since they travel so freely... possibly not likely. Good!