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97% genetic similarity sounds like a hugely persuasive number but……………….
The human genome shares 60% similarity with fruit flies, 98% with gorillas and 99% with chimp and bonobo monkeys. Is it surprising that coronaviruses share genomic similarity with other coronaviruses? It gets more complex when you begin to consider protein coding genes which are a (relatively) small percentage of the whole genome versus the remainder of a genome which has a role in gene expression. It’s much more nuanced than just looking at the “headline” 97% figure.The latest releases by the US Energy Department and CIA seem to be more about raising anti-China sentiment than a genuine attempt to shed light on the issue. Release your data publically or GTFO.
My own view is still that the zoonotic origin is the most likely but still unproven. Until that pathway has been demonstrated and its intermediate host identified (or an alternative suitably plausible pathway) it’s going to remain unproven. That’s not to say that an accidental lab leak isn’t also plausible and should remain under active consideration. I personally think a deliberate leak is much less likely, and if it was such, they made a right mess of it.
Honestly, I don’t think people really care about covid anymore and I don’t think the vaccine is the commodity it was. Shares in Pfizer and Moderna (and others) have fallen considerably since 2021 highs.
@Clark,
The number of deaths ‘from’ or ‘of’ Covid is unknown. The statistics of ‘within 28 days’ don’t really tell us anything, they simply exaggerate to meet a political response. Remember, initially they wanted to report deaths within 6(?) months.Like it or not, elderly people die, it’s just what happens to us all eventually. ‘Underlying’ health conditions, particularly chest problems, are amongst the major cause of deaths in the elderly. Any infection could mean the difference between living and dying, Covid is just one of them.
You speak in praise of China, Australia and New Zealand. I ask anybody to look at Sweden and how they responded.
I’d pick Sweden. They responded with a pandemic plan previously agreed to by many other countries, and stuck to it; despite most all of the other countries who had agreed to it abandoning those policies.
These plans were formulated and finalised after over ten years of international chinwagging, and all expenses paid, conferences.As the revelations in the Telegraph show, many followed the politics, not the science…_
DiggerUK:
– “Like it or not, elderly people die, it’s just what happens to us all eventually.”
Indeed. But it is not normal for huge numbers of elderly people to die in the same fortnight.
As I said DiggerUK, you should cultivate your empathy more. The manner of people’s death matters just as much and I would say more than the mere fact of their death; there’s more to a human life than one datum among the national statistics. Our society purports to be civilised, so we shouldn’t just leave people to die of whatever might happen to them, in whatever unpleasant way nature or circumstance inflicts upon them. We try to give them a dignified, compassionate death.
When COVID-19 kills, it does so in a very distressing manner over the course of days or weeks, It causes “shortness of breath”, ie. an experience of partial suffocation, lowering blood oxygen concentration which in turn causes progressive organ failure.
Of course, the suffering can be ameliorated, but only if the sufferer can be got into hospital. Covid causes about 2% to 3% of those infected to require hospitalisation…
I’ll continue when I have time.
ET, I agree with your points, but it matters more to me that DiggerUK’s narrative be countered, even though it is off-topic on this thread. It was and continues to be promoted by the economic right wing for their own misguided purposes, it is plausible but superficial, and (with apologies to DiggerUK, from whom it did not originate) it is profoundly anti-social.
DiggerUK, please reflect upon the points I have made so far, remembering that the position I’m outlining is as yet incomplete.
@Clark,
“Our society purports to be civilised”…. so civilised, that a son comforting his mother at his father’s funeral was chastised for hugging her!… so civilised that you couldn’t hold a dying person’s hand and comfort them!… so civilised, that grandparents and siblings could not cuddle a new-born child?At this moment it is very important for us to work on our empathy; remember, it was banned not so very long ago.
Seems like a some people regret the restrictions being lifted.._DiggerUK:
– “Seems like a some people regret the restrictions being lifted..”
I object to this sort of insinuation; it is trolling, it is inflammatory, but more importantly it gives other readers misleading impressions. Restrictions are no longer appropriate, but I was never in favour of Westminster’s late, bungled, and protracted lockdowns. Australia and New Zealand did restrictions properly, thereby protecting their populations, economies and health services.
My girlfriend came to stay with me over the second English lockdown. She is a tennis fan, and was watching the Australian Open from Melbourne. In the middle of a match play was stopped and an announcement came over the PA: “Immediate lockdown. Clear the court”. There was a little booing (a tiny minority), so the announcement continued; “The public must clear the court. Play will be suspended until the public leave”.
Later I asked my girlfriend what had happened. Five covid tests in Melbourne had shown positive that day, over the previous baseline of zero. Not five deaths, not five hospital admissions, just five positive tests. Melbourne was immediately locked down – just Melbourne, not the whole of Australia, nor even the Administrative Territory – and Melbourne was placed under travel restrictions.
But just one week later I noticed that I could hear the crowd again in the court. “What happened to that lockdown?” I asked. Trace and test had been performed until the trails found no further cases; fifty people had been placed in quarantine, and the lockdown lifted just five days after it had been imposed.
This was how to control covid. Trace and test cannot be effective when even just 5% of the population are infected, but lockdown at the first sign will facilitate effective trace and test. People and businesses can withstand short, effective lockdowns. Meanwhile, in Europe, we suffered three month, nationwide lockdowns that were invariably imposed too late, and were consequently a fraction as effective.
If you get an infestation of rats, you wipe them out. You don’t attempt to maintain the infestation at a “manageable level”. If a fire breaks out in your home, you extinguish it immediately. You don’t um and aah about getting the furniture wet, and propose a house meeting for tomorrow afternoon to discuss what you might do about it. Seconds count, so you act immediately and thoroughly. You don’t decide “oh the carpet’s getting soggy so we’ll leave it where it’s smouldering in the corners”; that’s a recipe for even more water damage when the fire picks up again.
But that time has passed. When covid arrived in the UK in 2020, none of the population had ever encountered it before. None of the population had any resistance so it spread, literally, like wildfire. But now, almost everyone has had covid, and almost everyone has been vaccinated. Consequently, covid cannot spread nearly as fast as it initially did, so it has become merely another background circulating infection.
– – – – – – –
DiggerUK, please try to think more and repeat things you’ve read elsewhere less. I shouldn’t have to spend my time explaining things such as the above; you should be able to work them out for yourself. Covid makes about 2% to 3% of those infected ill enough to require hospitalisation. Please ask yourself: what response from the authorities would be appropriate if 2% of the population were to require hospital treatment all in the same month? You can’t possibly get 2% of the population into hospital, you can manage maybe about a tenth of that, so do you post security or troops around hospitals to send away those who seem to have covid? Shut down the hospitals entirely? Humanely euthanise all who look like they might die if they don’t receive treatment? Or just let chaos ensue, let the medical staff handle it as best they can, and let half a million or more suffer protracted, painful and distressing deaths that go on for a week or more, with no drugs or treatment even to alleviate the suffering? What a reward for a lifetime of work and paying one’s taxes! Remember, doing nothing is a choice nonetheless.
The death rate of covid is not a property of the virus. The death rate is the outcome of the interaction between the virus and society. If everyone who needs treatment can be given it, the death rate works out to about 0.5%. But how many of those 2% die if they can’t be treated due to the health services being overwhelmed? Are you really saying that a doubling or quadrupling of the death rate would have been better?
And I haven’t even mentioned the long-term damage yet. Over a million people in the UK have reported lingering or recurrent symptoms, and at the societal level, our health service is trashed, and staggering under the attrition. Try thinking less about your personal risk and start considering the effects upon society as a whole.
“Of or with covid”, “28 days”, “Sweden”. It’s amazing how these memes continue to circulate, despite their plausibility being entirely superficial. I guess some people just can’t be bothered to check facts and don’t enjoy thinking for themselves.
So far as I’m aware, “of or with” has never been applied to anything but covid.
You don’t have to look at the “28 day” figures; you can see the death rate go through the roof in the deaths from all causes (as I’d already pointed out). Nonetheless, the covid tests predicted the peaks in hospital admissions and deaths, by about one week and two weeks respectively. And in any case, the UK used two different measures to gauge covid mortality, and each followed the other pretty damn closely.
And Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, the darling of those who’d trivialise covid or deny it altogether, and all because its constitution prevented its government from imposing lockdowns. Firstly, per head of population, Sweden did worse than its Scandinavian neighbours by large factors. And despite having “no lockdown”, many restrictions were imposed, and travel metrics of population mobility (from public transport and mobile phone data, for instance) show that the public treated the health department’s “voluntary recommendations” as if they were mandatory – Sweden was under lockdown in all but name.
Please stop misleading readers with such tired, long refuted nonsense.
@Clark,….. “Please stop misleading readers with such tired, long refuted nonsense.”
OK, I promise. I’ll shut up and leave them to make their own comments and do their own research.As to empathy, I have learned much from this personal account of Bell Mooney in the Daily Mail. It is a piece on the death of her father from over two years ago.
I will add that the claimed figures for Covid deaths in the article of 120,000, have reached nearly 220,000 now. The figures will no longer be announced from the end of this month…. It will be like this all never happened…_(Two clicks will stop the cookies)
“Do their own research”, as in, decide to what extent the death rate of a suspiciously infectious and never seen before illness has been either over or underestimated, by reading a single, partial case history: a Daily Mail’s agony aunt’s emotive account of the death of her father, which is medically ambiguous, and references contrarian retired pathologist John Lee, who had absolutely nothing to do with the case, but has written several anti-lockdown pieces, also for the Daily Mail. Sure; doesn’t look the slightest bit dodgy to me :-/
Just don’t read any expert statisticians directly. They have technical skills and link to their data sources, so they’re not to be trusted, eh?
https://twitter.com/COVID19actuary
ET, here’s my reply to your comment on the COVID-19 in 2022 thread, at this link:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/covid-19-in-2022/page/14/#post-100368
…where you wrote:
– This is all difficult to penetrate stuff. The wiki on RATG 13 states:
“RaTG13 has not been confirmed to exist in nature, to have been cultured or isolated in any laboratory,[12] or to be a viable human pathogen…”Here is the specific revision of that page because it will probably change. This is from the vanilla Wiki site, because your link to the site for tablet devices (‘en.m.’) doesn’t obviously offer article History pages:
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RaTG13&oldid=1229721737
This seems to contradict another statement in that article:
– To uncover a possible cause of the infection, different animals (including bats, rats, and musk shrews) were also sampled in and around the mining cave. Between 2012 and 2015, Shi Zhengli and her group isolated 293 different coronaviruses (284 alpha- and 9 beta-coronaviruses) from bat feces samples in the cave. One of the samples collected in 2013 from Rhinolophus affinis (the intermediate horseshoe bat) contained a novel sequence of ribonucleic acids later identified as “RaTG13”.
Observations:
1) RaTG13 probably shouldn’t even have a Wiki page of its own because, apart from the origins debate, it is not notable. As such it may well get deleted.
2) RaTG13’s Wiki page is Extended Protected, quite a high editing restriction at Wikipedia.
3) The Talk page of that article, and the lab leak article, contain an extensive reading list for those who wish to delve further.
AG, some observations of the New York Times article:
U.S. Suspends Funding for Group at Center of Covid Origins Fight
Paragraph 12:
– EcoHealth has also faced suspicion over a federal grant proposal that it made in 2018 to team up with the same Wuhan virology lab on coronavirus experiments that Republicans believe could have led to the pandemic, despite that project’s never receiving funding.
Just because the project wasn’t funded doesn’t mean the experiments, or similar experiments, were never done. Often, sample experiments are done to get results that then secure further funding. We can see that there was plenty of money sloshing about.
Remember too that the big money isn’t the grant funding; it’s selling the results to the pharmaceutical corporations. This is an example of how the public sector funds the private sector; many innovations start life with taxpayer funding, but end up making vast profits in the private sector.
Paragraph 14:
– Federal health officials have said repeatedly that the viruses being studied with taxpayer funding at the Wuhan lab bore no resemblance to the one that set off the coronavirus outbreak, making it impossible that they had been responsible for the public health crisis.
That refers to the virus studies for which records exist. Not all records have been released and some have been deliberately concealed by China. Last time I looked these issues were still a point of contention. Maybe one of the benefits to EcoHealth of outsourcing research to Wuhan Institute of Virology was that China’s secrecy could be used as cover.
Paragraph 15:
– Many scientists, including some whose criticisms of EcoHealth have been cited by House lawmakers in recent weeks, say that early cases and viral genomes point to a different origin for the pandemic: an illegal wild-animal market in Wuhan. Samples collected from the market were revealed last year to contain genetic material from the coronavirus and from animals like raccoon dogs, a scenario that scientists have said is consistent with a market origin.
This looks like deliberate diversion / obfuscation. Last time I looked, the wet market hypothesis had been ruled out years previously, and I hadn’t heard that it had been resurrected. And as for finding coronaviruses there, it would be far more surprising to find none; coronaviruses are everywhere, four of them cause common colds in humans.
…side note since we talked about:
During the Harris-Trump live TV debate this very minuts while I am typing this Harris attacked Trump for – ahem – being too soft on evil Chinese Pres. Xi on Covid origin. The very same POTUS who called it the China Virus…– “…Harris attacked Trump for – ahem…”
And we call this democracy? It’s just a rhetorical blame game.
new study arguing in favour of Covid being of natural origin/Zoonosis:
“Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic”
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2here only the pdf download works, the text itself is not shown properly, for that see:
https://archive.is/IBqtFAh, so the wet market proposal has been resurrected.
Twenty-three authors, four of whom make up four of the five authors who submitted the apparently deliberately overstated yet highly influential letter to Nature, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2”, referred to in Wade’s article “Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?”.
Not sure if this is the correct spot but since Fauci was mostly mentioned in the “origin”-context:
naked capitalism blog has a longer entry on the legacy of Fauci –
“Fauci “Shares Insights on His Career” and the (On-Going) Covid Pandemic”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/09/fauci-shares-insights-on-his-career-and-the-on-going-covid-pandemic.htmlAG, thanks for the link about the interview of Fauci. Well informed and insightful analysis by Lambert Strether, who made various points that have occurred to me throughout the pandemic. Strether’s analysis is much better than the original interview, which completely failed to hold Fauci to account – or possibly even avoided doing so.
There’s an old saying; “two heads are better than one”. Fauci was director of NIAID for 38 years! A comment beneath the article describes him as “a sharp-elbowed bureaucrat who got to the top of the pile and kicked down on anyone trying to dislodge him”. Our world needs better systems of government, something more inclusive and consensus-based. The whole concept of having a leader is flawed, hopelessly outdated in such a technological society that increases in complexity so fast. What we need are the best ideas, concepts and understanding rather than a handful of the “right people”; there are no “right people”, everyone has faults.
AG, returning to your comment #100679, September 20, 19:08, “new study arguing in favour of Covid being of natural origin/Zoonosis”; two points.
There have been other similar studies, but they are all dependent upon the records of genetic sequences supplied by Chinese authorities, who have refused to permit forensic analysis of the relevant database, not even to the WHO covid origins investigation.
There is also the other lab that everyone seems to have forgotten about, the Chinese CDC lab right next door to the animal market. The CDC lab also worked on bat viruses and cooperated extensively with the WIV, with staff back and forth all the time.
The only way lab origin could be either proven or ruled out would be unrestricted access to all laboratory records – records which were and remain concealed, and which by now have probably been altered or destroyed. Lab escapes are common; there needs to be an ongoing, international, publicly verifiable monitoring system, and far more rigorous isolation including routine quarantine for staff. But we’ll never get that in an environment of commercial competition. As the pandemic has comprehensively demonstrated, biological materials can be far more dangerous than even nuclear material, which is very closely monitored by the IAEA.
Latest discussion on the Talk page of Wikipedia’s “COVID-19 lab leak theory” article, which I regard as a damage limitation exercise:
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:COVID-19_lab_leak_theory&oldid=1247739726#New_Cell_paper
New Cell paperThe new Cell study [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] definitively proves COVID-19 originated from wildlife, via raccoon dogs at the Wuhan market, and exposes the lab leak theory as a racist conspiracy aimed at blaming the scientific community, scaremongering about gain of function research and vilifying Chinese people. The evidence is conclusive, and it’s essential we update this article now to reflect this consensus and eliminate any mention of lab leak claims as serious science. There are a lot of papers in the top science journals dispelling the myth that this virus ‘leaked’ from a lab GoF experiment via an infected lab worker. It’s molecularly impossible. 103.120.115.2 (talk) 12:43, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
I don’t think it “definitively proves” it, but it moves the science closer to certainty. The thing is though, this new research is really about the (actual) origin of SCV2, and does not bother with any nonsense about lab leaks. We’d really need some decent secondary source (i.e. not just news) making the connection for it to be worth mentioning here. Bon courage (talk) 12:53, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Agreed, this looks like synthesis, we can’t say it has been proven until RS say so. Slatersteven (talk) 13:08, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Indeed if it did say “proved”, we would immediately have to tag it as pseudoscience. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:48, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
No it’s just the latest red herring pumped out to keep everyone’s scent off the trail. The lab leak is all but proven. Scientists initial reaction to COVID was the Furin Cleavage Site looked inserted. And since then we’ve learned that Ecohealth Alliance had an interest in inserting cleavage sites into Coronaviruses.
That likelihood that that is a coincidence is very close to zero. 212.58.121.54 (talk) 17:47, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Your belief is bolstered by rumours spread by conspiracy theorists, but it is still a belief. Wikipedia prefers reliable sources instead. –Hob Gadling (talk) 17:59, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
It’s not a belief. We have factual and reliable reliable FOI’d sources showing scientists initial reaction to the sequence…
“I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to nCoV where you insert exactly 4 amino acids 12 nucleotide that all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function—that and you don’t change any other amino acid in S2? I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.”
The DEFUSE proposal was a factual and reliable source…“We will analyze all SARSr-CoV S gene sequences for appropriately conserved proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and for the presence of potential furin cleavage sites’””°. SARSrCoV S with mismatches in proteolytic cleavage sites can be activated by exogenous trypsin or cathepsin L. Where clear mismatches occur, we will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in Vero cells and HAE cultures.”
It doesn’t take much theorising to put those 2 things together. This is damning evidence supporting the lab leak and should be highlighted in the article. 212.58.121.54 (talk) 20:27, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
“”doesn’t take much theorising”” ← just the classic conspiracy theorising that multiple sources detail. Scientists considered LL; scientists changed their mind in the light of evidence; science moves on. Wikipedia reflects that as relayed in the best quality sources. Meanwhile both the US and Chinese versions of LL have become calcified into the racist/conspiracists tropes among the believers in their respective nations. We reflect what sources say about that too. Bon courage (talk) 20:32, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
No they didn’t change their mind in light of evidence. They have offered no plausible reason for changing their mind so dramatically. 212.58.121.54 (talk) 21:42, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Is there any point to this? There are plenty of reliable sources setting out what happened and Wikipedia relays them. This is WP:NOTAFORUM for airing conspiracy theories. Bon courage (talk) 21:44, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
My point was here in case you missed it… “This is damning evidence supporting the lab leak and should be highlighted in the article” 212.58.121.54 (talk) 10:55, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
No, it’s just LL conspiracist lore, unless of course you have some good RS (of equivalent quality to the sources we already use) stating otherwise. Scientists make mistakes and change their minds all the time. It’s called science. For LL however, in contrast …
While the proposed scenarios are theoretically subject to evidence-based investigation, it is not clear that any can be sufficiently falsified to placate lab leak supporters, and they are fed by pseudoscientific and conspiratorial thinking.
We make this point already. Bon courage (talk) 11:09, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
Again in what way is a FOI release lacking in quality? 212.58.121.54 (talk) 19:01, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
