Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

vesicles · Feb 16, 2021

taxiya said:
So the essential part is to grow large quality of virus for manufacturing takes longer time, right?

I believe so. You will also need to verify the newly inactivated viruses are still safe to human, which will also take time. Quality control will need to verify that you have effectively deactivated/killed the viruses. These are unadulterated whole viruses. If a small amount of them are still active, you are injecting live viruses into people, which will be disaster. This has happened before when the inactivation hasn't been carried out properly... That's when you hear about a bad batch of vaccines causing so many bad things...

supersnoop · Feb 16, 2021

vesicles said:
Vaccines don't kill viruses directly. Vaccines are coaches. They simulate actual viruses and train your immune cells how to attack actual viruses. They are like the dummy bombs. When a virus mutate enough to cause a modification of the vaccines, that means their spike proteins have changed to some extent. So your existing vaccine no longer works since your immune cells have only been trained to look for the old spikes. To train your immune cells against the new strain, you will need get ahold of that new strain and start growing them like crazy, like tons and tons. Then deactivate/kill them. Then package them for a new version of the vaccine. This will undoubtedly take some time.

For the RNA version, you will need a tiny bit of the new strain so that you can determine the new genetic sequence of the new strain. And typically this info already exists since the time when people find out about a new strain. Then you modify the sequence of your existing RNA vaccine. Input this into your production line. In a few days, you will be churning out millions of doses of new vaccines. Flexibility is a key advantage here.

Not related to vaccines, but I saw your posts from a few days ago regarding the origin. You mentioned that it is unlikely to originate outside China. I also read a theory from a scientific publication, that the actual location is kind of irrelevant (outside of research purposes). They mentioned that it is common for a virus to enter the population and mutate over time, such a mutation could occur anywhere. How true is this statement?

j17wang said:
I actually wish BioNTech the best, just remember that Fosun owns massive amounts of BioNTech shares as a result of their brilliant investment in the company back in March. Every dose of Pfizer injected into an American, Canadian, British, Australian is money straight into the pockets of China's pharmaceutical industry. China can't lose.

Something else I read. The largest manufacturer of medical-grade ultra low temperature freezers are Haier.

vesicles · Feb 16, 2021

supersnoop said:
Not related to vaccines, but I saw your posts from a few days ago regarding the origin. You mentioned that it is unlikely to originate outside China. I also read a theory from a scientific publication, that the actual location is kind of irrelevant (outside of research purposes). They mentioned that it is common for a virus to enter the population and mutate over time, such a mutation could occur anywhere. How true is this statement?

The sequence of SARS-CoV-2 is 96% same as local bat coronaviruses. As such, I would say it's most likely a virus found on a local bat species. I have not seen any additional comparisons with other coronaviruses in other parts of the world. I agree that mutations (needed for the virus to jump from bat to human and from human to human) would most likely take a long time to acquire, years, decades, centuries.

I do agree the actual location of the virus is irrelevant. This is why WHO prohibits the use of location in the naming of diseases. But if people keep speculating the actual location, China, the US, Europe, the Antarctic, etc. I would have to make my best guess based on the available data.

KYli · Feb 16, 2021

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Finally, they approved Sinovac vaccines. Now people can choose between Pfizer and Sinovac.

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What do you expect. Sinovac doesn't have the time to entertain your silly game.

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If you don't want these countries to use Chinese vaccines, then stop hoarding and start sharing.

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B.I.B. · Feb 16, 2021

vesicles said:
I believe so. You will also need to verify the newly inactivated viruses are still safe to human, which will also take time. Quality control will need to verify that you have effectively deactivated/killed the viruses. These are unadulterated whole viruses. If a small amount of them are still active, you are injecting live viruses into people, which will be disaster. This has happened before when the inactivation hasn't been carried out properly... That's when you hear about a bad batch of vaccines causing so many bad things...

The current Covid virus seems to be able to survive warmer temperatures. I wonder where it picked up that trait from.
I read an article posted in this forum that the FBI have started to look at cancer
researchers with a Chinese background so please take care if it is true.

AndrewS · Feb 16, 2021

caudaceus said:
I mean like the article said we are just in the dawn of mRNA. The next research questions will be how to make mRNA survive longer outside of freezer
, how to make it more stable and how to establish a cold chain infrastructure that is feasible to deploy in low income and low infrastructure countries. Maybe in 20 years we can have personalized mRNA based medical products that can be "printed" by your doctor on the spot? The possibility are limitless and China need to accelerate their research.

All very true.

And I don't doubt that there will be an explosion of Chinese companies moving into the mRNA field.

But the point I'm rebutting is that the USA will be exporting large amounts of mRNA vaccines globally.
In the future, the transport and storage requirements will be lessened, but that won't be happening for a while yet.

And the costs of establishing a cold chain in low-income and low-infrastructure countries will likely be prohibitive, when compared to the refrigerated vaccines.

plawolf · Feb 16, 2021

vesicles said:
The sequence of SARS-CoV-2 is 96% same as local bat coronaviruses. As such, I would say it's most likely a virus found on a local bat species. I have not seen any additional comparisons with other coronaviruses in other parts of the world. I agree that mutations (needed for the virus to jump from bat to human and from human to human) would most likely take a long time to acquire, years, decades, centuries.

I do agree the actual location of the virus is irrelevant. This is why WHO prohibits the use of location in the naming of diseases. But if people keep speculating the actual location, China, the US, Europe, the Antarctic, etc. I would have to make my best guess based on the available data.

And humans share 98% of our DNA with pigs.

That 96% is used to fool scientifically illiterate people into thinking that’s a ‘smoking gun’ level of proof when it’s to be expected that most coronavirus strains would have fairly high percentages of genetic similarities.

The primarily reason no detailed genetic comparison with coronavirus found elsewhere naturally in the world is because China is one of the few nations to have done much previous detailed dna analysis on coronaviruses due to SARS.

vincent · Feb 16, 2021

human and chimp DNA is 98.8 percent the same

AssassinsMace · Feb 16, 2021

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That's funny since the last I heard Mexico has a higher per capita income than China but somehow China is considered a rich country?

manqiangrexue · Feb 16, 2021

Hello my friends, let me just say how incredibly awesome I am at predicting things. This quite frankly might be the most accurate and specific long shot prediction in the whole COVID episode! On January 21st, I predicted that the US would cross the 500,000 death count line on February 17th (shown below).