Coronavirus infection from China

[Rich Z]

Yep. I'm trying to figure out if it is worse than what I am reading and the truth is just being suppressed to avoid a panic, or it is a nothingburger that is just being hyped.

We've got extra supplies stocked away, just in case. Figure we could start early with the emergency hurricane supplies anyway.

Still, I'm not going to be going anywhere crowded with people for a while. I think there is a gunshow at the fairgrounds this weekend, but I'll pass on it.

[85vette]

Thinking of all that comes from China (everything) and knowing that Chinese people are handling it all.....

[Rich Z]

Yeah, I read last night that some people suspect that this virus can survive outside a host in some conditions for as long as 28 days.

Be careful driving around the country, Jeff.

I'm going to start thinking hard about how long Connie and I could stay holed up here with the gate locked if we need to wait this firestorm out.

There is evidence that this pathogen is especially virulent with people of Asian descent. China is really bad off if everything I am reading is true. Seems to be some evidence that this was a weaponized pathogen, but I doubt we will ever really know the truth if China is the sole holder of the truth.

[85vette]

Someone had this posted on Facebook today, allegedly linking the article to this virus. Interesting that the lab in China is the same place that the virus is running rampant. Hmmm....

https://whdh.com/news/harvard-univer...-government-2/

[85vette]

MRE's Rich. They last well over 5 years!

https://www.thereadystore.com/mre

[85vette]

And we just quit our job yesterday! We've been hired by another company (out of Canada) to haul pharmaceuticals here in the states. Ultra light loads, lots more money per mile, better benefits and more time off! We fly to Toronto on the 23rd!

[Rich Z]

Well now, this is darn interesting reading.

Logistical and technical analysis of the origins of the Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

Posted on January 31, 2020 by harvard2thebighouse

This report is the product of a collaboration between a retired professional scientist with 30 years of experience in genomic sequencing and analysis who helped design several ubiquitous bioinformatic software tools, and a former NSA counterterrorism analyst. It considers whether the Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is the result of naturally emergent mutations against the possibility that it may be a bio-engineered strain meant for defensive immunotherapy protocols that was released into the public, most likely by accident since China’s rate of occupational accidents is about ten-times higher than America’s, and some twenty-times more than Europe’s – the only other regions with high-level virology labs.

This mistake was likely precipitated by the need to quickly finish research that was being rushed for John Hopkin’s Event 201 this past October, as well as possibly being hurried due to meet deadlines before the impending Chinese New Year – the timing of these events point to increased human error, not a globalist conspiracy. Beijing has had four known accidental leaks of the SARS virus in recent years, at present there is absolutely no reason to assume that this strain of the Wuhan Coronavirus didn’t accidentally leak out as well.

Given that the Chinese horseshoe bat’s habitat covers an enormous swath of the region containing scores of cities and hundreds of millions people, the fact that this Wuhan Coronavirus strain emerged in close proximity to the only BSL-4 virology lab in China, now notoriously located in Wuhan, which in turn was staffed with at least two Chinese scientists – Zhengli Shi and Xing-Yi Ge – both virologists who had previously worked at an American lab which already bio-engineered an incredibly virulent strain of bat coronavirus – the accidental release of a bio-engineered virus meant for defensive immunotherapy research from Wuhan’s virology lab cannot be automatically discounted, especially when the Wuhan Strain’s unnatural genomic signal is considered.

– In 2002, Stony Brook first assembled a virus from scratch, building a polio-virus, and providing proof-of-concept for the creation, alteration, and manipulation of viral genomes.

– By 2015, conducting research that was challenged with an enormous amount of concern, scientists at UNC had successfully created a “chimeric, SARS-like virus” by altering the viral genome of a Chinese bat coronavirus’s spike-protein genes – sequences that code for the spikes that poke out from surface of viruses and allow them to unlock entry into hosts, in this case making the bio-engineered virus incredibly contagious. A virologist with the Louis Pasteur Institute of Paris warned: “If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,”

– Scientists have expressed concern about China’s ability to safely monitor this BSL-4 lab in Wuhan since it opened in 2017: “an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. ‘Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important.'” This lab is at most 20 miles from the wet market where the virus had been assumed to have jumped from animal to human. However the idea that a Chinese lab could have a viral sample escape is well-documented – as mentioned, one lab in Beijing has had four separate incidents of the SARS virus leaking out accidentally.

– Notably, the first three known cases from early December had no contact with that market, and roughly one-third of the initial exposed cohort had no direct ties to Wusan’s wild meat market, the presumptive source of the virus.

– Since its discovery, scientists have been unable to fully determine the zoological source of 2019-nCoV, it was initially thought to have passed through snakes, but now all that’s agreed upon is that it’s mostly bat in origin. This inability to derive a zoological origin is exactly what would be expected if the virus had been artificially engineered to target humans as UNC already has, this doesn’t prove an artificial nature – but it is consistent with one.

– Early research found that this coronavirus targets the ACE2 receptor, which is found in Asians at roughly five-times the rate of other global populations, indicating that 2019-nCoV was likely in development as part of a defensive project likely linked to immunotherapy – never meant to leave the lab, but meant to serve as a Red Team to fight back against, not as an offensive weapon since the virus is likely wired to be much more virulent among Asian populations. Further support for this is the fact that the Wuhan BSL-4 virology lab was already actively looking into the risks posed from bat coronaviruses, and actively researching coronavirus treatments – by definition both of these projects would require live virulent strains of coronavirus.

– The Wuhan Strain of coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, appears to be transmissible even before its host shows any symptoms at all, making temperature-scanning at airports ineffective since hosts appear to be contagious for about a week before any symptoms emerge. This is in stark contrast with SARS, whose hosts weren’t contagious until they were symptomatic, allowing for its relatively quick containment. A recent pre-print now gives 2019-nCoV a rating of R4, meaning each host passes the virus on to four new victims, a rate significantly higher than any past global viral outbreak.

– Following the aforementioned bat coronavirus bio-engineering research that was critiqued for being too risky in 2015, in the paper from UNC eventually published the next year that describing their successful bio-engineering of a highly-virulent coronavirus derived from bats, researcher #8 is listed as one “Zheng-li Shi” attached to the “Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.”

– Zhengli Shi seems to have returned to Wuhan at some point since 2016, since she then appears in this September 2019 paper on the human behaviors most likely to lead to bat-borne coronavirus exposure in southern China, and in this pending preprint on the current outbreak of 2019-nCoV – just a sample of the dozens of coronavirus-related papers she’s published over a three decade career. And not only does she provide a direct chain of expertise tying the already successful bio-engineering of a virulent bat-based coronavirus at UNC directly to the BSL-4 virology lab in Wuhan, but back in January 2014 she’d received a $665,000 grant from NIH for a study titled The Ecology of Bat Coronaviruses and the Risk of Future Coronavirus Emergence (NIAID R01 AI1 10964) as well as $559,500 more from USAID for a study titled Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT_2China (Project No. AID-OAA-A-14-00102). Beyond this American funding specifically into viral diseases zoonotically transferring from animals to humans, over the years she’s also received around $3 million in grants to study these zoonotic viruses from China and other countries, and has served on the editorial board of several virological research magazines. More of her research into the intersection of coronaviruses like the Wuhan Strain and their epidemic potential was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Threat Reduction Agency, and U.S. Biological Defense Research Directorate of the Naval Medical Research Center.

– And so a scientist who’s been prolifically involved with studying the molecular interaction of coronaviruses and humanity, spending decades and millions of dollars, and having even helped build a hyper-virulent coronavirus from scratch at UNC – just so happens to be working at the only BSL-4 virology lab in China that also just so happens to be at the epicenter of this outbreak.

– Another Chinese virologist, Xing-Yi Ge, appears as an author on the 2016 UNC paper and is also attached to the lab in Wuhan. Previously in 2013, he’d successfully isolated a SARS-like coronavirus from bats which targets the ACE2 receptor, just like our present virus, the Wuhan Coronavirus 2019-nCoV.

– Numerous videos purportedly from inside hospitals in Wuhan depict a crisis that is far greater than the numbers released by China to date. Example 1. Example 2. Example 3. Example 4. Chinese language social media also reflects a sense of panic and desperation that is highly discordant with the numbers being released by the Chinese government. Who, notably, are refusing any assistance from the American CDC.

– Although it has not yet passed peer-review, a full-genome evolutionary analysis of 2019-nCoV rejects the hypothesis of emergence as a result of a recent recombination event, since it seems that this novel coronavirusis not a mosaic of previously known coronaviruses, but instead draws from distant, discrete parts of the coronavirus family tree – not what usually happens. And notably, a genetic analysis of the spike-protein genes – the exact coronavirus gene that was bio-engineered by the UNC lab in 2015, where Zhengli Shi and Xing-Yi Ge previously isolated a batty coronavirus that targets the ACE2 receptor just like 2019-nCoV – indicates the very likely artificial and unnatural origins of 2019-nCoV’s spike-protein genes when they are compared to the genomes of wild relatives. Instead of appearing similar to its wild relatives, the 2019-nCoV’s spike-protein genes look most similar to bio-engineered commercially available gene sequences that are designed to help with immunotherapy research.

– Additionally, another pre-print noted several very short genomic sequences in 2019-nCoV’s spike-protein gene that look far more similar to sequences found in HIV than to other coronaviruses – further bolstering support for the idea that the Wuhan Strain of this coronavirus was originally meant as part of a defensive immunotherapy research. However, this report does leave questions because it doesn’t disclose exactly which of HIV’s highly-variable regions the Wuhan Strain was compared against. And reporting from Thailand indicates that adding a cocktail of two different anti-HIV drugs to the typical treatment regime is the best defense against the Wuhan Strain, further indicating a close genetic homology with HIV.

– Giving further credence to the idea that the Wuhan Strain was bio-engineered is the existence of a patent application that looks to modulate a coronavirus’ spike-protein genes – the precise region altered by Zhengli Shi at UNC to make a hyper-virulent strain of coronavirus, and whose alteration and adaptation towards HIV would explain the Wuhan Strain’s unusually behavior as discussed above.



Given the above facts, either:

– A coronavirus spontaneously mutated and jumped to humans at a wet market or deep in some random bat cave which just so happened to be 20 miles from China’s only BSL-4 virology lab, a virus with an unusually slippery never-before-seen genome that’s evading zoological classification, and whose spike-protein region which allows it to enter host cells appears most like a bio-engineered commercial product, that somehow managed to infect its first three and roughly one-third of its initial victims despite them not being connected to this market, and then be so fined-tuned to humans that it’s gone on to create the single greatest public health crisis in Chinese history with approaching 100 million citizens locked-down or quarantined – also causing Mongolia to close its border with its largest trading partner for the first time in modern history.

– Or, Chinese scientists failed to follow correct sanitation protocols possibly while in a rush during their boisterous holiday season, something that had been anticipated since the opening of the BSL-4 lab and has happened at least four times previously, and accidentally released this bio-engineered Wuhan Strain – likely created by scientists researching immunotherapy regimes against bat coronaviruses, who’ve already demonstrated the ability to perform every step necessary to bio-engineer 2019-nCov – into their population, and now the world. As would be expected, this virus appears to have been bio-engineered at the spike-protein genes which was already done at UNC to make an extraordinarily virulent coronavirus. Chinese hesitancy to disclose the full story about what’s going on are because they want the scales to be even since they’re now facing a severe pandemic. No facts point against this conclusion.

SOURCE: https://harvardtothebighouse.com/202...rus-2019-ncov/

[Rich Z]

Originally Posted by 85vette

MRE's Rich. They last well over 5 years!

https://www.thereadystore.com/mre

Heck, Connie and I are such picky eaters, that we would likely wind up throwing that stuff away after the expiration date. As it is, we buy supplies that have a pretty good shelf life, and when that shelf life is getting close, we eat it then replace it with some newer product. That way it's not being wasted.

Honestly, if some EOLAWKI hits that wipes out enough structure to our civilization for 5 years, I'm not sure I'm all that keen to be one of the survivors. I'll be 70 in July. That's too old to be fighting (literally) for a living (literally).

[Rich Z]

Well, isn't this just special...... So I could have suspected cases with potential victims in quarantine for testing nearby, and wouldn't be told about it? Nothing like, "Anyone having had contact with ___________ in the past 48 hours please call this number immediately: ______________". Sheesh. Do these people even know what steps to take in order to try to contain a potential epidemic?

Coronavirus: Florida says it can’t reveal information, but experts disagree

By Cindy Krischer Goodman
South Florida Sun Sentinel |
Feb 06, 2020 | 10:19 PM


Florida health officials say state law prevents them from telling the public about suspected cases of coronavirus, yet the state regularly revealed that information during the Zika crisis three years ago.

The state put out daily updates about the Zika virus, informing the public of suspected as well as confirmed cases. The law was the same then.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, who was Florida’s governor at the time, said Florida should be as transparent now with coronavirus as it was with Zika. Scott is urging the same transparency for federal officials.

Daniel Dawes, a lawyer and professor of complex health systems at Nova Southeastern University, said he too would like to see more openness with the coronavirus, which originated in China and now has spread to 28 countries.

“I understand [Florida health officials] not wanting to get folks too concerned or scared, but as a citizen, I want to know if there are pending cases out there,” Dawes said. “If there are more pending cases in one part of the state than the other, I want to know that. If a test doesn’t lead to positive, I want to know that, too. I think Florida owes it to its citizens to be open with information so they can protect themselves.”

States are divided on how much information to share with the public about the rapidly spreading coronavirus, now with 28,000 confirmed cases in China and 12 in the U.S.

While authorities in California, Illinois and New York regularly disclose information on suspected as well as confirmed cases, officials in other large states — including Florida — have opted to withhold information on suspected cases until they are confirmed.

“We are unable to comment on potential coronavirus cases because of a state statute that prohibits us from doing so,” said Alberto Moscoso, communications director for the Florida Department of Health.

But three health lawyers, asked by the South Florida Sun Sentinel to review the law, said the state can release that information — if it chooses to. The statute says information from disease reports is exempt from public records laws and should be made public only when necessary to protect public health “due to the highly infectious nature of the disease.”
RELATED: South Florida doctors trying to stop anxiety over coronavirus »

“It’s a judgment call whether or not it’s necessary to the public health to release that information,” said Timothy Monaghan, a health care attorney with Shutts & Bowen in West Palm Beach. “Public officials may argue we are trying to avoid panic, but I think most people would say we need to know if it’s here in Florida so we can take precautions.”

Joey Zumpano, founder and managing shareholder of Zumpano Patricios, a law firm that represents large health systems, agrees that holding back information from the public is a choice the state is making.

“Clearly what the statutory framework is intending to achieve is a balance between patient privacy and public health,” Zumpano said. “The statute leaves the judgment to the state. But the status of a highly contagious public health threat may be fundamental to any public health efforts centered on prevention."

Tests are pending on 72 possible cases of coronavirus nationwide. The Sun Sentinel reported a patient who arrived in the emergency room of Memorial Hospital on Friday had been tested, though officials would not discuss the case and have emphasized that no cases of coronovirus in Florida have been confirmed.

RELATED: A patient at a South Florida hospital was tested for coronavirus. The public remains in the dark.

“There are no confirmed cases of coronavirus in Florida,” state Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees said in a written statement. "However, if any were to arise, we are prepared to contain this new infection, help any individuals sickened by the virus and keep Florida safe.”

In the U.S., the 12 cases of coronavirus are in Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington and Wisconsin.

Moscoso said if and when there is a confirmed case in Florida, the state will “make the information available as quickly as possible.”

“The Department is coordinating closely with our local partners to investigate, confirm, contain and report any suspected cases, should they occur,” he said. “The current guidance from the CDC is for the general American public, the immediate health risk from coronavirus is considered low at this time.”

Florida’s approach to releasing information on coronavirus differs from how health officials handled the 2016-17 Zika virus outbreak. With Zika, the Florida Department of Health reported positive and negative samples and pending results by county. It also put out daily updates that included maps of confirmed cases.

Scott said Florida and the federal government should be as transparent now.

“I encourage you to use the lessons we learned from Florida’s handling of the Zika virus by distributing as much information about the virus as possible to keep Americans and local officials informed,” Scott wrote in a Feb. 5 letter to President Donald Trump.

SOURCE: Coronavirus: Florida says it can’t reveal information, but experts disagree

But I guess having the tourist season potentially negatively impacted has priority, eh?