Our system detected that your browser is blocking advertisements on our site. Please help support FoxesTalk by disabling any kind of ad blocker while browsing this site. Thank you.
Jump to content
filbertway

Coronavirus Thread

Recommended Posts

5 hours ago, UpTheLeagueFox said:

I think it's impossible to have any kind of clear roadmap as so much changes at such short notice.

Don't know about anyone else, but I find myself spending less and less time thinking/worrying about this worldwide shitshow.

From a selfish point of view I'd like gyms to be open and to go off on a sunshine holiday but if it's not possible any time soon then so be it, I can't control it.

As horrible and frustrating as restrictions are I'm doing my best to focus on other happier thoughts.

If you watch the news channels every day or become a slave to this thread it's probably not good for mental well being.

The never ending match day thread. :frantics:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The variant chat is an ongoing management of expectations by the government.

 

It's being pushed to make us all think 'they did alright considering the circumstances'.

 

Virus mutations are normal. Don't let the media get you down. Everything will be fine.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Nod.E said:

The variant chat is an ongoing management of expectations by the government.

 

It's being pushed to make us all think 'they did alright considering the circumstances'.

 

Virus mutations are normal. Don't let the media get you down. Everything will be fine.

This is kind of my thinking, the headlines are all negative but then the content of the stories are based on a lof of ifs and buts.

 

It's like they see people are getting too happy so decide to try and squash it and kill the optimism.

 

Cases, deaths, hospitalisations all coming down. Vaccines looking to hit targets. All they've got left is to speculate on mutations and reporting on people that die after having the vaccine for a few months.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Blue-fox said:

I thought exactly the same. 
 

The reason the man said on the news that they say it’s unlikely is because there was no data that China provided that showed Covid was in the lab. Maybe after 12 months since it started they just deleted it all😂

They also didn’t want the journalists asking questions afterwards. Doesn’t feel legitimate to me. 

 

For there to be no data to show that covid was in the lab seems a little odd considering the point of  wiv is to study and mimic the behavior of sars like viruses.

 

 

 

"In 2005, a group including researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology published research into the origin of the SARS coronavirus, finding that China's horseshoe bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses.Continuing this work over a period of years, researchers from the Institute sampled thousands of horseshoe bats in locations across China, isolating over 300 bat coronavirus sequences.

In 2015, an international team including two scientists from the Institute published successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect HeLa. The team engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells.

In 2017, a team from the Institute announced that coronaviruses found in horseshoe bats at a cave in Yunnan contain all the genetic pieces of the SARS virus, and hypothesized that the direct progenitor of the human virus originated in this cave. The team, who spent five years sampling the bats in the cave, noted the presence of a village only a kilometer away, and warned of "the risk of spillover into people and emergence of a disease similar to SARS".

In 2018, another paper by a team from the Institute reported the results of a serological study of a sample of villagers residing near these bat caves (near Xiyang Township 夕阳乡 in Jinning District of Yunnan). According to this report, 6 out of the 218 local residents in the sample carried antibodies to the bat coronaviruses in their blood, indicating the possibility of transmission of the infections from bats to people"

Edited by yorkie1999
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, filbertway said:

On the China thing, I imagine the team that went to investigate were made to feel like it was in their best interests if they didn't find anything suspicious.

 

39 minutes ago, Nalis said:

Exclusive pictures of the latest WHO press conference confirming there was nothing suspicious found in China regarding the origins of Covid 19:

 

 

gun-to-his-head.jpg

Unfortunately, being often untrustworthy and almost always repressive bastards is not hard evidence of guilt in this particular matter.

 

Especially when the question of "cui bono" that usually surrounds such wrongdoing is in this case very unclear.

 

There are a great many good reasons to dislike the Chinese government. Something based on a lie would not be one of them.

Edited by leicsmac
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What is irrefutable, is that there have been no known studies conducted or publications surrounding the current strain, SARS-CoV-2. Indicating that far from the suggestions of social media fantasists that it was leaked from a laboratory or more particularly, The Wuhan Institute for Virology, it was indeed a novel viral pandemic owing to zoonotic spillover. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Line-X said:

What is irrefutable, is that there have been no known studies conducted or publications surrounding the current strain, SARS-CoV-2. Indicating that far from the suggestions of social media fantasists that it was leaked from a laboratory or more particularly, The Wuhan Institute for Virology, it was indeed a novel viral pandemic owing to zoonotic spillover. 

But, as you suggested previously, viruses mutate. Would it not therefore be possible that a virus they we're trying to replicate or were studying, could have mutated into the virus we have now?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

But, as you suggested previously, viruses mutate. Would it not therefore be possible that a virus they we're trying to replicate or were studying, could have mutated into the virus we have now?

You appear to be confusing mutations, variants and strains

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, Line-X said:

I struggle to understand this continual preoccupation with 'government' and 'media' when you can simply follow the science directly.

 

As you say, all viruses naturally mutate over time, and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease being no exception. In the main, these changes are 'silent' - so minute that they have little impact on the virus but occasionally a virus mutates in a way that can benefit it, for example allowing it to spread more quickly. These are changes in the genome and this is why the sequencing capability has been so crucial - to monitor changes in the genome of the virus over time. It's important to clarify that the number of mutations has little actual relevance because many mutations emerge and disappear continuously. Understand that science uses the words ‘variants’ to describe viruses with mutations that are transmitting in the general population - and far from being government spin or the media scaremongering that you refer to, we absolutely need to take this seriously.

 

Of those that have been in the news, the South African variant (501Y.V2), the Brazilian variant (P.1) and the Kent variant (B117) all contain a range of mutations, some of which are justify the concern. As I'm sure you know, both the South African variant and the Kent variant contain a mutation called N501Y, which is believed to make the virus more contagious than older variants. The South African variant also contains mutations known as E484K and K417N, and early evidence suggests that these make the virus better able to evade neutralising antibodies produced by the body, meaning that current Covid vaccines will prove less effective against this variant. There is also the possibility that the emergence of different variants may increase the chance of someone getting Covid a second time.

 

In spite of all this, known mutations make it easier to predict how a new variant might behave. This then means that vaccines can be tweaked to take into account common newly evolved mutations and boost protection against several new variants at once. Also on the plus side, as the virus becomes more adapted to us, and more transmissible, it might well cause less disease, not more disease as has been found to historically be the case with some other viruses.

 

None of this has anything to do with either the "government" agenda or "media" narrative that you perceive. 

Thanks. Good comments.

 

Do you think there is there a risk at all of, like bacteria vs antibiotics, immunisation against current variants is more likely to propel the virus mutations in another direction? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Unfortunately, being often untrustworthy and almost always repressive bastards is not hard evidence of guilt in this particular matter.

 

Especially when the question of "cui bono" that usually surrounds such wrongdoing is in this case very unclear.

 

There are a great many good reasons to dislike the Chinese government. Something based on a lie would not be one of them.

I suppose the main benefit now, in my opinion is that if it something had initially been covered up out of panic, then it's not going to look very good if it was found to be covered up. 

 

I don't really have an opinion on the chinese government but I wouldn't put it out of the realms of possibility that they could quite easily wipe something and any evidence from history if they so chose.

 

All I'll leave it on is that if something went wrong during research, then for me, that country isn't guilty. If they have tried to clean up the mess and it's been allowed to spread without giving any warning until it was to late, then that's something much different..

 

A bit like when I accidentally dropped my chewing gum in the milk when drinking from the bottle as a kid. That's a mistake, it happens. I didn't tell anyone and someone got some sour milk in the coffee, the fact I didn't tell anyone meant I got in trouble. I bet this is exactly like my childhood story! lol

 

 

Anyway I don't want to detract this thread and don't want to start coming across as some mad conspiracy theorist, so I'll leave  it at that :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, filbertway said:

I suppose the main benefit now, in my opinion is that if it something had initially been covered up out of panic, then it's not going to look very good if it was found to be covered up. 

 

I don't really have an opinion on the chinese government but I wouldn't put it out of the realms of possibility that they could quite easily wipe something and any evidence from history if they so chose.

 

All I'll leave it on is that if something went wrong during research, then for me, that country isn't guilty. If they have tried to clean up the mess and it's been allowed to spread without giving any warning until it was to late, then that's something much different..

 

A bit like when I accidentally dropped my chewing gum in the milk when drinking from the bottle as a kid. That's a mistake, it happens. I didn't tell anyone and someone got some sour milk in the coffee, the fact I didn't tell anyone meant I got in trouble. I bet this is exactly like my childhood story! lol

 

 

Anyway I don't want to detract this thread and don't want to start coming across as some mad conspiracy theorist, so I'll leave  it at that :D

I certainly wouldn't put it out of the realms of possibility either - it's certainly within their capability and their motivation to do so.

 

But that's just a hunch on my part, and hunches aren't evidence. And without evidence, I'm going to believe the WHO as there is (again) no evidence that they would lie. Burden of proof and all that.

 

I'll leave it at that too. :thumbup:

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

Thanks. Good comments.

 

Do you think there is there a risk at all of, like bacteria vs antibiotics, immunisation against current variants is more likely to propel the virus mutations in another direction? 

Well this really isn't my background - but I can tell you, historically, human vaccines have not been undermined by microbial evolution. There haven’t been significant failures for human vaccines yet, but we know that viruses, bacteria and parasites can evolve or are evolving in response to vaccination. Escape mutants that are able to evade vaccine-induced immunity are regularly seen in the microbes that cause hepatitis B for example. In the case of influenza, vaccines have been hard or impossible to develop because the microbes that cause those diseases evolve so fast. In veterinary science though, animal vaccines are frequently undermined by viral evolution.

 

I mentioned the flu virus, because it is the most obvious example. Immunity works when antibodies or immune cells bind to molecules on the surface of the virus. If mutations in those molecules on the surface of the virus alter, antibodies can’t grab on to them as tightly and so the virus is able to evade capture. This process explains why the seasonal flu vaccine needs updating each year. If this happens, a COVID vaccine would similarly need frequent updating a scenario that is prepared for. But as you suggest, such evolution might head off in other directions. As I mentioned before on this thread, a successful virus is a stealthy one that doesn't wish to kill its host and infiltrates undercover by mimicking other cells to evade detection. Or by reproducing slowly and even hiding in organs where immunity is less active. Many pathogens that cause barely noticeable chronic infections have employed this strategy. They avoid detection because they do not cause acute disease which obviously would be benign in terms of threats to public health. A more dangerous possibility would be if the virus evolved a way to replicate more quickly than the immunity generated by the vaccine or in response, to target the immune system and dampen vaccine-induced immunity. That's scary.

 

The key is producing evolution-proof vaccines which by nature are highly effective at suppressing viral replication. This stops further transmission. Essentially, no replication, no transmission, no evolution. It would also induce immune responses that attack several different parts of the microbe at the same time which means immune escape requires many separate escape mutations to occur simultaneously, which is almost impossible. I was reading yesterday that his has already been demonstrated in laboratory conditions for SARS-CoV-2. There the virus rapidly evolved resistance to antibodies targeting a single site, but struggled to evolve resistance to a barrage of antibodies each targeting multiple different sites. Evolution-proof vaccinations also protect against all extant circulating strains, so that no others can fill the void when competitors are removed. Think of a dictator rushing to fill the power vacuum following a coup or regime change lol

 

Your concern is valid - particularly since the world already has experienced insecticide-resistant mosquitoes and crop pests, herbicide-resistant weeds, and the growing concerns about antibiotic resistance. Fortunately, vaccine trials are increasingly evaluating whether the vaccine will be evolution-proof. By swabbing people who have received the experimental vaccine, it can be determined the extent that virus levels are suppressed. By analysing the genome of any virus in vaccinated people, it may even be possible to see evolutionary escape in action. Also, blood samples from the vaccinees may also show how many sites on the virus are being attacked by vaccine-induced immunity.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I certainly wouldn't put it out of the realms of possibility either - it's certainly within their capability and their motivation to do so.

 

But that's just a hunch on my part, and hunches aren't evidence. And without evidence, I'm going to believe the WHO as there is (again) no evidence that they would lie. Burden of proof and all that.

 

I'll leave it at that too. :thumbup:

I really thought my gum in the milk argument would sway you :( :D

 

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

A variant is a mutation.

I should really have put variant/mutation, The language is nebulous and imprecise. Mutations were originally defined as heritable changes in phenotype - but that was prior to the discovery of DNA. A mutation is a heritable change in DNA sequence, NOT a change in phenotype.  All genetic variants are due to a mutation. There is great contention and clinical debate about the application of either term. There has been an evolving shift in the application of 'mutation' and 'variant' in which the latter has supplanted for the former. The terminology conundrum has been tackled by experts who have preferred the term “variant” so as to avoid the negative connotations that have accrued from the lay perspective. But it is actually more complex than that. 

 

In response to you original post, neither term is the same thing as a strain which is crucially where your confusion lay. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...