Coronavirus epidemic news

[Jerry Russell]

Applying ballpark rates of viral evolution, Rambaut estimates that the Adam (or Eve) virus from which all others are descended first appeared no earlier than Oct. 30, 2019, and no later than Nov. 29.

This information (originally posted by Emma Robertson from an article at Statnews) needs to be updated. This estimate was based on the first 24 samples of the virus to be sequenced, as of last Jan. 24th. Now over 100 samples have been sequenced, including many more samples from cases around the world.

The news is paradigm changing. The virus is several months older than we thought, and it didn't originate at the meat market in Wuhan, China. The information is contained within two recent scientific papers:

On the origin and continuing evolution of SARS-CoV-2 (Tang et al.)

Population genetic analyses of 103 SARS-CoV-2 genomes indicated that these viruses evolved into two major types (designated L and S), that are well defined by two different SNPs that show nearly complete linkage across the viral strains sequenced to date. Although the L type (~70%) is more prevalent than the S type (~30%), the S type was found to be the ancestral version. Whereas the L type was more prevalent in the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan, the frequency of the L type decreased after early January 2020.​

and:

Decoding evolution and transmissions of novel pneumonia coronavirus using the whole genomic data

In this study, we used 93 complete genomes of SARS-CoV-2 from the GISAID EpiFluTM database to investigate the evolution and human-to-human transmissions of SARS-CoV-2 in the first two months of the outbreak.... The 58 haplotypes (31 found in samples from China and 31 from outside China) were identified in 93 viral genomes under study and could be classified into five groups. By applying the reported bat coronavirus genome (bat-RaTG13-CoV) as the outgroup, we found that haplotypes H13 and H38 might be considered as ancestral haplotypes, and later H1 (whose descendants included all samples from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market) was derived from the intermediate haplotype H3. The population size of the SARS-CoV-2 was estimated to have undergone a recent expansion on 06 January 2020, and an early expansion on 08 December 2019. Phyloepidemiologic analyses suggested that the SARS-CoV-2 source at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was potentially imported from elsewhere.​

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The "Type S" ancestral strain discussed in the first paper, corresponds to haplotypes H13 and H38 in the second paper, and their descendants. The "Type L" strain that exploded suddenly into the Wuhan epidemic, is described in the 2nd paper as haplotype H1 and its descendants. These two strains are separated by two sequential genetic mutations, and the second paper identifies a haplotype H3 which is the intermediate step.

So the original strain (H13/H38) must have existed early enough for those two mutations to occur before the onset of the Wuhan epidemic.

The 2nd paper was analyzed by a virologist on a TV news show in Taiwan, and from there it was picked up by Larry Romanoff at Global Research:

China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?

Taiwan ran a TV news program on February,27,(click here to access video (Chinese), that presented diagrams and flow charts suggesting the coronavirus originated in the US. (6)​

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Below is a rough translation, summary and analysis of selected content of that newscast. (see map below)​

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The man in the video is a top virologist and pharmacologist who performed a long and detailed search for the source of the virus. He spends the first part of the video explaining the various haplotypes (varieties, if you will), and explains how they are related to each other, how one must have come before another, and how one type derived from another. He explains this is merely elementary science and nothing to do with geopolitical issues, describing how, just as with numbers in order, 3 must always follow 2.​

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One of his main points is that the type infecting Taiwan exists only in Australia and the US and, since Taiwan was not infected by Australians, the infection in Taiwan could have come only from the US.​

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The basic logic is that the geographical location with the greatest diversity of virus strains must be the original source because a single strain cannot emerge from nothing. He demonstrated that only the US has all the five known strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most of China have only one, as do Taiwan and South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, Singapore, and England, Belgium and Germany), constituting a thesis that the haplotypes in other nations may have originated in the US. ....​

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The Virologist further stated that the US has recently had more than 200 “pulmonary fibrosis” cases that resulted in death due to patients’ inability to breathe, but whose conditions and symptoms could not be explained by pulmonary fibrosis. He said he wrote articles informing the US health authorities to consider seriously those deaths as resulting from the coronavirus, but they responded by blaming the deaths on e-cigarettes, then silenced further discussion. …​

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The Taiwanese doctor then stated the virus outbreak began earlier than assumed, saying, “We must look to September of 2019”.​

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He stated the case in September of 2019 where some Japanese traveled to Hawaii and returned home infected, people who had never been to China. This was two months prior to the infections in China and just after the CDC suddenly and totally shut down the Fort Detrick bio-weapons lab claiming the facilities were insufficient to prevent loss of pathogens. ​

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While the TV show was in Chinese, the virologist took his map and phylogenic tree (with notations in English) from the 2nd scientific paper linked above. (The first paper provides a very similar tree diagram, while the 2nd paper mentions that its classification the virus into 5 "Groups" can easily be further classified into two clades, "Clade I" and "Clade II". Thus it's clear to me that the two papers are reaching very similar conclusions from the data.)

Chris Martenson discussed the 1st paper yesterday in his daily podcast. Starting at about 23:40:

Martenson says:

All right, a lot of people sent me this. It's a recent study that came out. It's pretty intriguing because it talks about two different types, two different clades of groups of the coronavirus … Whereas the L type was more prevalent in the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan, the frequency of the L type decreased after early January 2020. So the L type looks to be more virulent, in the sense that it transfers faster more aggressively, and it actually causes higher levels of complications. So the L type, though, decreased after early January 2020. Human intervention may have placed more severe selective pressure on the L type. So: severe selective pressure means we're gonna stop this one. So if somebody got sick, they would be they would be quarantined right away. If somebody got sick, then everybody they were in contact with retraced, and they would all be quarantined right away. So because the L type presented itself more aggressively (right), and it spread more quickly, it was found faster. And so the L type would have gone away, because that one was contained and collapsed, right? So the quarantine found the L type right away. On the other hand, the S type, which is evolutionarily older and less aggressive, might have increased in relative frequency due to the relatively weaker selective pressure. Meaning, jeez you know, if you just had very minor symptoms or you were even asymptomatic; you didn't notice it; hey nobody would have come and quarantined you. You might have spread that one around. … If there is an L type and there is an S type, you might even want to encourage the S type to spread while you're doing everything you can to contain the L type.​

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So Martenson is saying, in other words, that the "S" type might work almost like a vaccination against the much more dangerous "L" type. And, the Taiwanese virologist is arguing that the "S" type has been multiplying and spreading throughout the USA since last September. If that's true, then it implies that the "S" type couldn't be too much more lethal than any other flu virus. If it was anything like the Wuhan coronavirus, there's no way it could have been here in the USA since September without creating a panic and collapsing our entire hospital system.

Now, it's important to notice that Romanoff titled his paper "Did the virus originate in the US?" with a Question Mark, indicating that this is all highly speculative. It's possible that H13/H38 originated in the US, but then again it's possible that the US has the greatest genetic diversity of the virus here because we have more flights connecting us everywhere in the world. Or there might be something else wrong with this long chain of scientific reasoning.

But if turns out that the US has basically been vaccinated against "Type L" by a largely asymptomatic, silent epidemic of "Type S" virus... maybe Trump knows what he's talking about when he says the threatened pandemic will disappear "like a miracle"?

 

[Richard Stanley]

But if turns out that the US has basically been vaccinated against "Type L" by a largely asymptomatic, silent epidemic of "Type S" virus... maybe Trump knows what he's talking about when he says the threatened pandemic will disappear "like a miracle"?

Yes, and it would explain why some company already has such a head start on getting a literal vaccine ready. Or, maybe the story about there being such a vaccine is somehow intended to provide some cover for the Type S virus, though I'm not quite sure how that would work.

I wonder if vaping technology can be used as a means to spread such a virus? The claim that Vitamin E was the culprit in those products seemed a little strange to me. This in light of how strangely American health officials have been behaving, both in their statements and (in)actions.

Maybe they are acting so because they know that the Type S virus is the 'inoculation'.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Maybe they are acting so because they know that the Type S virus is the 'inoculation'.

As I said when we got the news that this virus shares snippets of RNA with the HIV virus, enabling it to act similarly to HIV in attacking the immune system: it's totally reasonable to ask "what are the odds", and to speculate that perhaps this came out of a lab.

This time, we're looking at the theory that just two specific SNP mutations were enough to cause this dramatic change in the behavior of the virus. And, that the mutations would occur just as the disease arrived in China. The above quoted articles discuss that the virus might have mutated again in its manifestation in Iran, making it even more deadly.

But, there are no studies as of yet that would elucidate the verifiable differences between the "Type S" and "Type L" clades, nor is there any proof that "Type S" has been circulating since September in any human population anywhere on the globe. Nor is there any proof that an infection with "Type S" provides any immunity against "Type L". That's why Martenson didn't come right out and say anything. He just left it to us to speculate about what he might be implying with his remark that one might want to "encourage the S type to spread."

I was appalled this morning, to see that the alternate media site "off-guardian.org" is doubling down on their position that COVID-19 is "just a virus -- and a comparatively minor one", but more importantly: "A power play for draconian social control in the name of public health." They've consistently downplayed the problem with this virus, which is that it's virulently contagious and that a large percentage of the victims get pneumonia requiring expensive hospitalization. If the epidemic gets out of control, hospitals will get overloaded and the death rate will skyrocket. They've never really even acknowledged that argument, much less come to grips with it. And it's one thing to challenge the science, and the evidence from China, and claim that the dangers are overestimated or misunderstood. But my impression is that the editors at off-guardian just don't understand how exponential growth works.

So today, OffGuardian editor Kit Knightly is crowing that the rate of new cases and deaths is declining, and touting that trend as a vindication of their position! And darkly warning that "if the virus continues to decline, the powers that be – and their talking heads – will simply claim (as many already are) that China’s total authoritarian control saved lives." Well, no duh! Isn't it obvious that the epidemic was contained in China because of the extraordinary quarantine measures imposed by the Chinese government? Did it simply disappear "like a miracle?" Who is going to buy that theory?

Meanwhile, Knightly is completely ignoring that cases reported outside of China are over 20,000 now, and doubling every four days. And that only South Korea and Singapore are following in China's footsteps, while the rest of the world is failing to come to grips with the situation.

The wsws, meanwhile, is continuing to get the story right. And this morning, they're discussing how the "one percent" in Western countries are preparing to deal with the epidemic:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/06/rich-m06.html

Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson post selfies fitted with designer N95 facemasks that can filter for viruses as they board private jets to dash off to their isolated cabins in Aspen or yachts off the coast of Italy to essentially weather out the pandemic. These exclusive masks have been sold out from surgical department stores and people are on waiting lists to purchase them.​

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A new luxury-based industry is popping up out of the maelstrom caused by the pandemic that is gathering momentum—luxury brand hand sanitizers with floral notes packaged in designer shaped dispensers. Fanny pack survival kits containing an assortment of first-aid supplies and biohazard bags are selling for $50 to $100. Private jet companies are offering coronavirus-free flights to destinations of choice. Mid-sized jets across the country are going for $20,000.​

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Concierge medical services are offering wealthy members private VIP emergency room services. Doctors make house calls to the Hamptons to treat the wealthy so they can avoid the risk of being exposed in crowded hospitals. They are stocking their homes with antiviral Tamiflu, cold medicines like Sudafed, asthma medication like albuterol and powerful antibiotics. They are also making their bids to be first in line to have access to any vaccines that might be developed while they hole themselves in their vacation homes looking forward to spring skiing.​

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Sollis Health, an exclusive New York-based private health service, is providing home delivery of respiratory masks that include custom fitting. There have also been reports of an eccentric heiress in Southampton, New York, building a high-grade medical isolation room, stocked with kitchen, foods and medical supplies, designed with a self-contained negative pressure ventilation system. This is the prototype for virus “Safe Rooms” that will come into vogue.​

Haha, this is me! Stocking up with masks and hand sanitizer, antivirals (though I prefer elderberry and vitamins over Tamiflu), and thinking about ventilation systems for my safe room. Conferring with my concierge doctor. And I'm even married to an eccentric heiress with milk cows.

 

[Richard Stanley]

 

[Richard Stanley]

As Chief Squawattle continues to urge his lemmings to attend large social gatherings, especially his political rallies, and take lackadaisical health measures, his related policies are chaotic, at best. Now his VP, his SecState, and McConnell have attended a large AIPAC conference, while he and Pence attended CPAC, where each is now known to have been attended by infected individuals.

Washington (AFP) - Two people have tested positive for the new coronavirus after taking part in a pro-Israel lobby group's conference in Washington which Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and dozens of lawmakers also attended.​

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The influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in an email to attendees, speakers and congressional offices that the infected pair had traveled from New York to go to the March 1-3 event.​

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"We have confirmed that at least two Policy Conference attendees from New York have tested positive for the Coronavirus," AIPAC said in the message, posted to its Twitter account. ...​

https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-confirmed-two-attendees-us-pro-israel-summit-014428574.html​

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President Donald Trump says he isn't concerned "at all" about the coronavirus getting closer to the White House after the nation's capital reported its first case Saturday.​

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Maryland officials warned Saturday that a person who attended the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in the suburb of Oxon Hill had tested positive for the virus.​

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Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the conference. The White House said Saturday there was no indication that either had met or were in "close proximity" to the infected attendee.​

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Asked if he was concerned about the virus getting closer, Trump said: "No, I'm not concerned at all. No, I'm not. We've done a great job."​

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When asked whether his thousand person campaign rallies would would continue in light of the CPAC case, the president replied, "We'll have tremendous rallies."​

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Trump held his most recent campaign rally last Monday in Charlotte, North Carolina.​

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12314896​

The attendees at these transmission vector events are mostly older white people, among those most at risk of dying. Maybe this is Chief Squawattle's means to get Social Security and Medicare costs under long term control?

 

[John]

Fintan Dunne adds a bit of perspective.

Richard >>> "The attendees at these transmission vector events are mostly older white people, among those most at risk of dying. Maybe this is Chief Squawattle's means to get Social Security and Medicare costs under long term control?"

Yeah, according to Karl Denninger's numbers, the US hits the wall by 2024, so TPTB better step up its game. He does a nice job showing that the US debt increase last year goes directly into GDP and once published numbers on that metric are adjusted, the US is very close to a negative 2% growth rate and more disturbingly a purchasing-power loss of 6%. Guy McPherson is probably hoarding Qualudes at this point. Carl Safina is firing his photographer, and the Regen Ag guys are buying copies of Gentle Rebels by Gerald McCathern. Update at 11:00

BTW - have you ever anagram'd "Donald Trump". Could the elites have planned that far ahead re: name change - just to spoof us with that imagery? There's an extra "D" but who's counting.

 

[Richard Stanley]

So far I have:

• Old Man Trup (for trap?)
• Dan Rump Lot, or Dan Lot Rump
• Land to Rump
• Land o Trump
• Dump Land Rot (uses the extra 'd')
• Trump Do Land (")
• Ptol Dan Rum
• Ptol Run Mad

?

 

[John]

Picture Alfred E Neumann in a Yeshiva with a Playboy Magazine inside his holy book

 

[Jerry Russell]

Coronavirus and HIV homology in RaTG13 strain

Cottrell misses the point of the HIV homology in the Wuhan coronavirus. It's not just a few short snippets of RNA (of very marginal statistical significance) but also their arrangement in the spike protein code, which seems to create a homologous functional capability.

He looks for the same sequences in RaTG13 bat coronavirus, finds that some exist and some don't, and that they've been shifted in location along the genome. Why wouldn't these small changes and shifts have functional consequences? There's no evidence that the bat coronavirus has the same ability to attack T-cell receptors.

Cottrell is skeptical about which came first, the Wuhan strain or the RaTG13 strain. But the argument that the Wuhan strain is new, comes from analysis of the various haplotypes of the Covid-19 virus. They're all within a few SNP's of each other, so they have only been diverging for a few months. The RaTG13 strain is about a 96% match to Covid-19, which means it's different at about 4% of base pairs, which is about 1200 base pairs. Those changes aren't necessarily all SNP-type mutations, there could be recombination events or other transcription errors. But a divergence of 1200 base pairs indicates that Covid-19 is separated from RaTG13 by many years of evolution. Also it's highly likely that both Covid-19 and RaTG13 descended from some unknown common ancestor. There's no reason to believe that either one of them is directly descended from the other.

The video also questions whether the S strain is really ancestral to the L strain. Cottrell darkly states that the Chinese paper has an agenda. But, the data for this paper comes from many international sources. The information can also be viewed at an interactive dashboard at nextstrain.org. The argument in Tang et al (referenced above) that the correct root of the tree is H13/H38 and not H1 seems clear enough: a single SNP mutation from H38 yields H3. Let's call this "Mutation One". Haplotype H3 has many descendants including H1, which is a single mutation away from H3, which we might call "Mutation Two". If we apply "Mutation One" to H1, we get a haplotype which does not exist and has no known descendants. So, it follows that "Mutation One" happened first, and then "Mutation Two". All twelve authors of Tang et al. presumably reviewed this, and so did the four authors of Yu et al.

However, I see that there's been another response to Tang et al., by Oscar MacLean and colleagues at University of Glasgow. Their complaint is mainly that the data isn't sufficient to conclude anything about selection pressures, and that Tang et al. haven't considered the possibility of sequencing errors. I don't see anything in this MacLean paper that specifically addresses Tang et al's conclusion that the S and L types exist, or that the S type is the ancestral one.

Fintan Dunne adds a bit of perspective.

Fintan Dunne also completely misses the point. The coronavirus (at least in its more virulent strains, if indeed there is any functionally important genetic divergence) is fully capable of causing pneumonia in people of all ages. And if someone of any age gets a serious case of pneumonia, they go to the hospital. So if this epidemic gets off the ground, the hospitals will be overwhelmed, and healthy young people are going to be dying because they can't get treatment.

And, at age 63, I'm not ready to be written off yet. Not to mention that Fintan Dunne doesn't look like such a spring chicken either.

Dunne says it's the mass media, pharmaceutical companies and the government that are whipping up the hysteria. From what I've seen: up until recently, USG was mostly ignoring the problem (Trump still says it will disappear like a miracle), mass media was saying it's just another flu, and pharmaceutical companies were promising to come up with a vaccine in plenty of time. From January through mid February, the only "hysteria" I was seeing (if that's what it was) came from independent media sources like Chris Martenson, John Campbell and Dr. Seheult at MedCram. It's just the last few days that the CDC and local governments are starting to look hysterical, because there are good reasons for them to panic.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Just saw this on Facebook and wanted to share it:

View attachment 686

<list of 15 fear-based agendas that turned out to be duds, ending with the coronavirus>

Even though this was posted in the "Futurist Apocalypse" thread, I'm going to answer it here because it seems the Coronavirus is the real target.

Out of the list above, North Korea 2013 is the only one that belongs in the category of an "existential threat". Tensions between nuclear powers could turn into a full-scale nuclear exchange. It's an ever present threat. Fortunately, our rulers still seem to have some minimal level of sanity and instinct for self-preservation, that has always brought them back from the brink. So far.

According to the apocalyptic re-capitulation theory, the end of a millennial age is always accompanied by the beginning of a new age. The new bosses are the same as the old bosses, and the kingdom of heaven on earth is really no closer than it was before, unless you happen to be one of the globalist elite. I feel that it's possible, in this modern age, that some problem could get out of hand to "kill us all". But surely this would not be something the Illuminati would want to see, any more than anyone else.

I don't believe any serious scientist is worried that any virus is going to "kill us all." All infectious diseases are subject to self-limiting factors, as well as active opposition by human actions. Nor is any economic collapse going to "kill us all".

But that doesn't mean that these aren't serious threats!

And, this covid-19 virus has a combination of virulent contagiousness, high complication rate and high case fatality rate that we haven't seen before. Anthrax, West Nile Virus, SARS, bird flu, and Ebola are all much harder to catch than this coronavirus. E. Coli is usually harmless, rarely fatal, and relatively easy to treat with antibiotics when it does cause trouble, so I don't know why it's even on this list. Swine flu turned out have the same low case fatality rate as any other flu. Zika was only dangerous to pregnant mamas living near to mosquito-infested waters. We have lots of herd immunity against Disney measles, as well as readily available vaccine.

2020: Coronavirus isn't going to kill everyone. But it packs one helluva punch. It has the potential to kill tens or hundreds of millions, and leave the survivors with an unprecedented economic predicament. The idea that the USA has been pre-inoculated, could well be nothing but wishful thinking on my part and Trump's. And even if the USA is safe, that doesn't mean Iran and Europe will be spared. I wouldn't lump Coronavirus together with those other nothing-burgers.

 

[John]

Our local hospital was doing triage two weeks ago when my mother-in-law and I did two round-trips over three days. They were so packed with respiratory illness they used emergency rooms for overnight stays, but only for those needing IV-drips. They had a positive on one of her blood-cultures so potential sepsis brought her back in for an overnight stay. She's almost 95 and has bounced back. They functioned and communicated quite well under stressful conditions, but I can only imagine what a 2X or 3X increase would look like.

 

[Jerry Russell]

That is, what we have here is an epidemic of a new disease (now called Covid-19) characterized by flu-like symptoms which progress to very serious pneumonia in about 20% of cases, and a death rate of around 2% even with excellent hospital care.

There's been a debate at the Martenson site forum today about this. Based on the Diamond Princess, the numbers may be lower. It's now believed that a large percentage of the total cases on the ship got started before quarantine was declared on Feb. 5th. The quarantine was far from perfect, but it was good enough to dramatically reduce the transmission rate. So a high percentage of the cases on the ship have now resolved themselves. Out of 3700 people on the ship, 700 tested positive for the virus, but only about half ever had any symptoms. There were about 40 serious pneumonia cases, and 7 deaths. And, the population on the ship was heavily skewed towards people in their 60's, 70's and 80's, the most vulnerable population.

In most situations, asymptomatic cases are fairly unlikely to even get tested. So out of the symptomatic cases, the rate of serious complications was about 10% (not 20%) and the death rate was about 2%. And this among a high-risk population.

These numbers are scary, but not as bad as the numbers that were coming out of Wuhan.

 

[John]

A one-percent rate of death per total infected in such a controlled setting seems pretty low. Is there any way to compare to Wuhan?

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar20/China-crises3-20.html

One has to wonder at the natural processes that check abnormal human behavior.

 

[Richard Stanley]

While Rome burns: https://postflaviana.org/community/index.php?threads/just-saying-whos-trumping-der-fuhrer.1548/post-15028

 

[John]

Cottrell misses the point of the HIV homology in the Wuhan coronavirus. It's not just a few short snippets of RNA (of very marginal statistical significance) but also their arrangement in the spike protein code, which seems to create a homologous functional capability.

He looks for the same sequences in RaTG13 bat coronavirus, finds that some exist and some don't, and that they've been shifted in location along the genome. Why wouldn't these small changes and shifts have functional consequences? There's no evidence that the bat coronavirus has the same ability to attack T-cell receptors.

Cottrell is skeptical about which came first, the Wuhan strain or the RaTG13 strain. But the argument that the Wuhan strain is new, comes from analysis of the various haplotypes of the Covid-19 virus. They're all within a few SNP's of each other, so they have only been diverging for a few months. The RaTG13 strain is about a 96% match to Covid-19, which means it's different at about 4% of base pairs, which is about 1200 base pairs. Those changes aren't necessarily all SNP-type mutations, there could be recombination events or other transcription errors. But a divergence of 1200 base pairs indicates that Covid-19 is separated from RaTG13 by many years of evolution. Also it's highly likely that both Covid-19 and RaTG13 descended from some unknown common ancestor. There's no reason to believe that either one of them is directly descended from the other.

The video also questions whether the S strain is really ancestral to the L strain. Cottrell darkly states that the Chinese paper has an agenda. But, the data for this paper comes from many international sources. The information can also be viewed at an interactive dashboard at nextstrain.org. The argument in Tang et al (referenced above) that the correct root of the tree is H13/H38 and not H1 seems clear enough: a single SNP mutation from H38 yields H3. Let's call this "Mutation One". Haplotype H3 has many descendants including H1, which is a single mutation away from H3, which we might call "Mutation Two". If we apply "Mutation One" to H1, we get a haplotype which does not exist and has no known descendants. So, it follows that "Mutation One" happened first, and then "Mutation Two". All twelve authors of Tang et al. presumably reviewed this, and so did the four authors of Yu et al.

However, I see that there's been another response to Tang et al., by Oscar MacLean and colleagues at University of Glasgow. Their complaint is mainly that the data isn't sufficient to conclude anything about selection pressures, and that Tang et al. haven't considered the possibility of sequencing errors. I don't see anything in this MacLean paper that specifically addresses Tang et al's conclusion that the S and L types exist, or that the S type is the ancestral one.



Fintan Dunne also completely misses the point. The coronavirus (at least in its more virulent strains, if indeed there is any functionally important genetic divergence) is fully capable of causing pneumonia in people of all ages. And if someone of any age gets a serious case of pneumonia, they go to the hospital. So if this epidemic gets off the ground, the hospitals will be overwhelmed, and healthy young people are going to be dying because they can't get treatment.

And, at age 63, I'm not ready to be written off yet. Not to mention that Fintan Dunne doesn't look like such a spring chicken either.

Dunne says it's the mass media, pharmaceutical companies and the government that are whipping up the hysteria. From what I've seen: up until recently, USG was mostly ignoring the problem (Trump still says it will disappear like a miracle), mass media was saying it's just another flu, and pharmaceutical companies were promising to come up with a vaccine in plenty of time. From January through mid February, the only "hysteria" I was seeing (if that's what it was) came from independent media sources like Chris Martenson, John Campbell and Dr. Seheult at MedCram. It's just the last few days that the CDC and local governments are starting to look hysterical, because there are good reasons for them to panic.

Fintan is a bit of a jester, no doubt, but I think he may address some of your criticisms in this one. If you can find fault in his decoding the numbers, and how they represent panic-mongering in the media, I'm open to thinking about what he's missing. I ran across him years ago when he started his site and was outing the likes of Alex Jones and claiming an intention to get to the bottom of 9-11, which he never did. If Fauci wrote what Fintan presents, then what are the lock-downs really all about?

 

[Richard Stanley]

The way I have seen this explained by Martenson is fudging in the opposite direction, in that fatality numbers are lagging considerably from the infection numbers because of the long incubation times being claimed, therefore there are games being played in lowballing the rates. This is similar to if one refuses to do testing, then you cannot know what the true infection picture is, which will distort the fatality rates yet again.

We the public are, once again, subject to whom to believe about either facts or the interpretation thereof. Hence the markets are collapsing, needing to take worst-case thinking into mind. Cui bono?

There is also the potential motive to begin enforcing a cashless society. I watched a report about how well cashless payment systems have been working in Wuhan in limiting the spread of infection via this means. How convenient to have all that techology in place there.

We are left with problems of execution such as the failure to produce test kits and refusing other agencies to do their own testing when they have the capability to do so. This is independent criminality from however lethal this virus and its secondary infections are.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Fintan is a bit of a jester, no doubt, but I think he may address some of your criticisms in this one.

The discussion with Neil Ferguson is confusing. But I agree with Martenson, that the deaths we see today reflect the cohort that got infected roughly 15 to 25 days earlier, when the epidemic was much smaller. So when you correct for this factor, you need to take the raw death rate (deaths divided by total reported cases on a given date) and multiply it by a correction factor, not divide.

On the other hand, both Ferguson and Fauci are pointing out that there are many undetected cases of covid-19. I'm not so sure: it's said that the Chinese did millions of tests, and very aggressive contact tracing, so their numbers might be pretty good. South Korea has performed over 100,000 tests. China has a death rate over 3%. South Korea is about 0.7 percent so far, but many cases are still critical.

Common flu viruses also cause many asymptomatic or very mild cases. I doubt if all those cases are counted into the flu fatality rate, either. The Fauci quote says that the CFR of covid-19 might be more akin to a seasonal flu (0.1%) or a pandemic flu, than it is to SARS (9%) or MERS (36%). That's painting with a really broad brush, and it seems likely that the mortality rates in 1957 and 1968 were a bit higher than usual.

I have seen this explained by Martenson is fudging in the opposite direction,

About the Martenson forum: the Romanoff article about possible US origin of the S-type coronavirus came up for discussion today. Rather than address the technical aspects, somebody named "timot78" jumped on Chussodovsky's Global Research website as "Chinese Global Research" (when actually it's Canadian) and then Dave Fairtex piled on, saying this was a CCP disinfo campaign backed by "a steady stream of CCP trolls" visiting the forum.

Fairtex concluded by arguing that the inept US response to the epidemic, proves we couldn't have invented it!

No, Dave: if the US invented the entire scheme, then they know they don't need to test, because they know the disease has been here in its innocent "S" form since September. So, Dave, all you've proven is that you didn't bother to actually read the article before attacking it.

Dave Fairtex is a Martenson employee and he can count on the admin staff to back him up when he makes these baseless claims that forum members are agents of foreign governments. Ask me how I know.

And, there's been a constant theme in Martenson's videos, claiming that the Chinese government is lying about the epidemic. He's always claiming that they're understating, and that the epidemic is worse than they're admitting. But then he accepts most or all their scientific and clinical reports. It seems inconsistent. I feel it's very possible that the Chinese are doing the best they can to accurately report the situation, although of course they can't detect, diagnose and treat every case.

If indeed the Chinese are lying, it's just as likely that they're overstating the seriousness of the epidemic to support draconian social controls. It's very possible that the Wuhan epidemic is masking cases of pollution induced pneumonia, and that the social controls are useful for suppressing protests against the horrible environmental conditions, as Kit Knightly says at Off-Guardian. I've never seen this analysis discussed at the Martenson site.

 

[Richard Stanley]

Ask me how I know.

OK, you're asked.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Fairtex writes a daily column for the website and I recall it's been mentioned that he gets paid for it. How do I know that Dave Fairtex has a license for troll hunting at Martenson's site?

Example 1: I forgot to post the link to the above-mentioned thread.

https://www.peakprosperity.com/forum-topic/coronavirus-originated-in-us/

Besides the new member 'Cribbage' attacked here, who else posted this information recently? "reflector", member since 2011 with 256 posts.

Example 2:

https://www.peakprosperity.com/deconstructing-the-green-new-deal/#comment-95883

Dave goes attacking new member 'amalisa'. His evidence? She talks about 'American spirit' and mis-spells Martenson's name.

Example 3 is pretty bizarre. Dave goes troll hunting without naming who he's talking about. A vigorous discussion ensues: who's the troll? Dave then points to a post that hadn't even appeared yet as of when he made the accusation.

https://www.peakprosperity.com/the-wests-reckless-rush-towards-war-with-russia/#comment-61090

Example #4 seems to have disappeared from the site. In this example, Dave accused Yours Truly of being a Russian troll. Unlike the above examples, I vigorously defended myself, and eventually a moderator appeared to say that I was behaving inappropriately. I said that Dave started the argument, and opined that the entire discussion ought to be deleted from the point that Dave accused me of being a Russian. At the time, the exchange was allowed to stand on the website, but it seems to have disappeared now. I believe this was the thread:

https://www.peakprosperity.com/daily-digest-4-28-terrorism-vs-natural-disasters-learning-to-speak-shrub/

Or perhaps my search skills aren't up to the task of finding the episode that I'm recalling.

 

[Richard Stanley]

So, not being an observer of PP, do you think that Martenson has some agenda, and if so, what is it?

That asked, it does appear, as par for the course, that the political rhetoric and claims on both the anti-Trump and pro-Trump divide over Covid-19 are full of half-truths and such, which only serve to further polarize, at a time when this needs to stop.

For example, the following is a Trumpist attempt to clear the waters, but to only a little good IMHO. Whatever the cause, we still have no effective testing, and now the virus is in the wild. Sardonically, Trump's new Chief of Staff (and other Trumpublicans) are now in self-quarantine, some after shaking Trump's hand.