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Novel Coronavirus Defies Conspiracy
Theories As Data Shows Its Coming Decline
By Moon Of Alabama
February 03, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - There are first signs
that the novel Cornoavirus (nCorV19) epidemic will
come to an end within a month or so. An analysis
from the Chinese media house Caixin
provides the
newest numbers (machine translated):
[O]n January 31, 2020, 2102 new cases of new
coronavirus were diagnosed nationwide, 46 deaths
were added, and 5019 suspected cases were added
which increased by 6.1%, 7.0%, and 4.3%
respectively compared with the previous day, and
increased by 21.8%, 29.0%, and 23.3%
respectively compared with the average of the
previous three days.
There are some 12.000 recognized infected persons
in total. More than 99.9% of all nCorV19 cases are
in China. The growth per day is still strong but not
exponential. With people now traveling less from, to
and within China the epidemic will likely stay
contained.
We had
documented in an earlier post that neither the
infectiousness nor the mortality of the novel
Cornoavirus are especially severe. This New York
Times graphic also
explains that.
bigger
More from
Caixin (machine translated):
As of January 31, the cumulative number of
severe cases accounted for 15.8% of the
confirmed cases, and the mortality rate
(accumulated death cases accounted for the
cumulative confirmed cases) has remained at the
level of 2.2% for 3 consecutive days.
Both numbers are relatively low and here are the
first signs that the epidemic is coming to a halt:
The current situation of the new coronavirus
epidemic situation is still serious, the
epidemic situation is still spreading and
spreading throughout the country, and the number
of newly diagnosed cases has increased.
At the same time, the growth rate of confirmed
cases nationwide has also shown signs of
decline. The number of newly
cured cases on the 30th and 31st days exceeded
the number of new deaths.
The declining growth rate proves that the quite
extreme quarantine measure China has taken are very
effective.
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New test kits for the novel coronavirus have been
developed and were approved by the Chinese regulator
NMPA (vid).
These new kits allow new patients to be tested in
just 30 minutes. People who have a normal flu can
now be early on distinguished from those who have
caught the virus.
The graph of new suspected cases per day (yellow)
is flattening while the number of newly confirmed
cases per day (red) is now linear and starts to show
a slight decrease.
Source:
Dxy - bigger
Unless something unforeseen happens we are now
coming near to the top of the epidemic. The number
of new infections per day may soon start to
decrease.
All this is good news. The Global Times
is already
pushing for new economic measures to increase
growth when the epidemic is over.
But there is also bad news in that some people
use the epidemic to profit from it.
There have been a number of conspiracy stories
which make totally unfounded claims that the virus
is a bio weapon or that it
escaped from a high security bio lab in Wuhan or
was
intentionally created or released by Chinese
researchers. To use such fantasies to
then dox a researcher is irresponsible.
The novel coronavirus is
NOT a bioweapon. No military will develop a
weapon that kills only 2% of those affected by it. A
real bio weapon would also spread much faster.
The Wuhan
Institute of Virology and the
Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory are first
class medical research institutions with many global
cooperation
agreements. The laboratory was built after China
had been hit by the SARS epidemic. It is the only
one in China that has a
Bio Safety Level of 4:
BSL-4 labs are rare. However some do exist in a
small number of places in the US and around the
world. As the highest level of biological
safety, a BSL-4 lab consists of work with highly
dangerous and exotic microbes. Infections caused
by these types of microbes are frequently fatal,
and come without treatment or vaccines. Two
examples of such microbes include Ebola and
Marburg viruses.
In addition to BSL-3 considerations, BSL-4
laboratories have the following containment
requirements:
- Personnel are required to change
clothing before entering, shower upon
exiting
- Decontamination of all materials before
exiting
- Personnel must wear appropriate personal
protective equipment from prior BSL levels,
as well as a full body, air-supplied,
positive pressure suit
- A Class III biological safety cabinet
A BSL-4 laboratory is extremely
isolated—often located in a separate building or
in an isolated and restricted zone of the
building. The laboratory also features a
dedicated supply and exhaust air, as well as
vacuum lines and decontamination systems.
The U.S. has at least
13 such labs. Some of those are used by the
military and may be used for bio weapon research.
But most are medical research facilities.
The laboratory in Wuhan is specialized on viruses
that are typical for the larger area. Some of its
leaders are researching why bats are not affected by
the viruses that they carry and which can kill
people. SARS is known to have emerged from bats.
Knowing how a bat's protection mechanism works could
help to create better vaccines.
To jump from those facts to
unfounded speculations and to accusing the
researchers of having developed the nCorV19 or of
spreading it is truly nefarious.
Aside from conspiracy nutters there is one
serious suggestion that the novel coronavirus may
indeed be something special.
A number of Indian researchers have
self-published a paper that claims that the
'building plan' of the novel coronavirus, its RNA,
contains elements of the HIV-1 Aids virus RNA. The
paper was NOT peer reviewed and two researchers in
microbiology I have contacted have, like me, doubts
about its conclusions.
The paper confirms that the novel coronavirus is
related to the virus that caused the SARS epidemic:
Our phylogentic tree of full-length
coronaviruses suggests that 2019-nCoV is closely
related to SARS CoV [Fig 1]. In addition, other
recent studies have linked the 2019-nCoV to SARS
CoV.
The researchers then sequenced 6 strings which
form a part of the RNA of the novel corona virus.
They find that there are four short insertions that
distinguish it from the SARS virus:
We then translated the aligned genome and found
that these inserts are present in all Wuhan
2019-nCoV viruses except the 2019-nCoV virus of
Bat as a host [Fig.S4]. Intrigued by the 4
highly conserved inserts unique to 2019-nCoV we
wanted to understand their origin. For this
purpose, we used the 2019-nCoV local alignment
with each insert as query against all virus
genomes and considered hits with 100% sequence
coverage. Surprisingly, each of the four inserts
aligned with short segments of the Human
immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1) proteins.
The inserts in the 1387 units long string which
also occur in HIV-1 have a length of 6 to 8. They
are in my estimate too few and too short to make a
statistically viable case. But the researchers
suggest, without providing a statistical model or
calculations, that these are not only significant
but probably artificial:
Although, the 4 inserts represent discontiguous
short stretches of amino acids in spike
glycoprotein of 2019-nCoV, the fact that all
three of them share amino acid identity or
similarity with HIV-1 gp120 and HIV-1 Gag (among
all annotated virus proteins) suggests
that this is not a random fortuitous finding.
In other words, one may sporadically expect a
fortuitous match for a stretch of 6-12
contiguous amino acid residues in an unrelated
protein. However, it is unlikely that
all 4 inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike
glycoprotein fortuitously match with 2 key
structural proteins of an unrelated virus
(HIV-1).
The math that would support the assertion that it
is unlikely that short sequences in parts of nConV19
and HIV-1 amino acid strings are identical is not in
the paper. I doubt that the researchers made the
necessary calculations.
The researchers then show that the insertions may
help to form a part of the binding structure that
allows the virus to attach to a host cell. They
conclude:
This uncanny similarity of novel inserts in the
2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag
is unlikely to be fortuitous.
and
Taken together, our findings suggest
unconventional evolution of 2019-nCoV
that warrants further investigation.
What those researchers found is interesting. It
suggests that something modified the SARS virus RNA
by adding four small elements from HIV-1 to create
nCorV19. If this is proven correct it might help to
find a vaccine against nCorV19.
But the conclusions are in my view too strong and
not substantiated enough to make them fully
acceptable. While the similarities may not be
'fortuitous' they may make evolutionary sense and
may have evolved through some natural process which
is not 'unconventional'. If a host (a bat or human)
carries the HIV-1 virus and the SARS virus might the
replications of those viruses mix?
The presented paper nowhere tests or discusses
that hypothesis.
The authors may well deserve more research money
for the 'warranted further investigations' but that
should be decided only after other experts have
discussed their proposition.
This article was
published by "Moon
Of Alabama" -
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your comment here
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