Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

siegecrossbow

General
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Sources familiar with the initial report say that after three months of poring over data and raw intelligence, the intelligence community is still divided over two theories -- one suggesting the virus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, and the other suggesting it jumped naturally to humans from animals, the sources said. The report as it stands now contains "nothing too earth shattering," one source explained.

Complete waste of taxpayer money.
 

getready

Senior Member
There is ramping up of smearing of chinese and Russian vaccines currently. TIME basically denouncing the Chinese vaccine as ineffective and Russian as inadequate production and their associated failed vaccine diplomacy. My guess is cause of the coverage of reduced efficacy against delta variant of the Western vaccines they need a scapegoat to deflect the attention on Pfizer etc.
 

Bellum_Romanum

Brigadier
Registered Member
If the Chinese vaccines do work, then all this nonsense about Malaysians/Vietnamese etc looking down on these vaccines isn't neither sustainable or productive.

Am I missing something here? What do they aim to achieve by NOT taking Chinese vaccines and when only lower efficacy vaccines are the available rest? Fostering Sinophobia? Engaging in ethno nationalistic chest thumping?

The only brownie points they earn are more bullets in this Russian roullet. When they take a non-china vaccine and get infected, who are they going to blame?
That’s far ahead of the rest of the world, according to the AP tally of doses. Britain has delivered just 4.7 million, far short of the 30 million pledged, and the European Union has given 7.1 million and and another 55 million through COVAX contracts.

Once again the western countries are nothing but a bunch of lying hyenas and fake human rights supporters. Without China doing it's best to make a difference in actual covid-19 vaccines supply then our current pandemic worldwide problems would have been far more acute.
 

Strangelove

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The ancestor of SARS-CoV-2’s Wuhan strain was circulating in late October 2019​


By
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May 7 2021

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first reported in a case from Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and subsequently became the cause of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that is ravaging the world today. A new study in the journal
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tracks its variants all over the world since the onset of the pandemic.
Genomic sequencing has occurred using hundreds of thousands of viral genomic samples. The researchers used the best of these sequences to reveal how the virus has mutated and changed in different periods and regions of the pandemic.

Study: An evolutionary portrait of the progenitor SARS-CoV-2 and its dominant offshoots in COVID-19 pandemic. Image Credit: vchal / Shutterstock

Study:
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. Image Credit: vchal / Shutterstock

Using a new approach​

Conventional methods have not produced a reliable history of the emergence of this virus for several reasons. These include the numerous widespread sequencing errors in the available sequences, small degree of sequence divergence, and the fact that there are few sites that help to understand the descent of the virus.
Especially remarkable is the fact that all known early SARS-CoV-2 genomes from humans (up to January 2020) vary by less than 30 bases. Conversely, the most closely related non-human
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differ by over a thousand bases.
The importance of this is that “Without a reliable root of the SARS‐CoV‐2 phylogeny, the most recent ancestor sequence cannot be accurately reconstructed, and it is not possible to assess the genetic diversity of SARS‐CoV‐2 that existed at the time of its first outbreak.”
Moreover, the distance of the Wuhan samples from the progenitor will remain unknown, as will the direction and order of the first mutations that gave rise to the various strains and lineages of SARS-CoV-2.
They used computational methods originally designed to find how mutations occurred within tumor cells in a single patient. The approach used is called a mutation order approach (MOA) and can provide a direct picture of the ancestral variants and mutations in order of time.

What were the findings?​

MOA was employed on two sets of SARS‐CoV‐2 genomes, comprising almost 30,000 and 68,000 genomes, respectively, on two days three months apart. By tracing the mutational trail, inferred from the second genome set, they were able to understand how the virus is undergoing changes in different regions and at different times. They were able to track back to the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of SARS-CoV-2.

Common ancestor​

This progenitor viral genome has three bases that differ from the Wuhan strains. The researchers think that both the Wuhan and other of the earliest genomes to be sampled were actually variants of the progenitor coronavirus (CoV), which diverged into ν and α lineages.

Diversity pre-existing the earliest case​

The Wuhan strain underwent three consecutive mutations, α1, α2, and α3, but these are not found in the closely related CoVs, all of which have the same base at these three positions. The ν variants of the progenitor CoV do not show the other 47 variants at these positions, making them unlikely to be the ancestral lineage for the Wuhan-1 virus or other early samples. The first ν mutant was picked up almost two months after the Wuhan-1 strain.
There were multiple occurrences of the progenitor CoV, both in China and the USA, from January 2020 onwards. Synonymous progenitor CoV samples were found in many other samples collected within two weeks of the Wuhan-1 strain.
While these were mostly Chinese and Asian (almost 90/130), they were found in all continents sampled and persisted up to April 2020 in Europe.
These findings suggest that the progenitor CoV was already spreading extensively before and after the first official reports of the emergence of a novel coronavirus in China. In other words, the Wuhan-1 strain is unlikely to be the original SARS-CoV-2 ancestor from which all currently circulating strains are derived.
This is in contrast to earlier studies, probably because this analysis uses more samples from a global database, and thus identifies the very early ν lineage, which is nonetheless not the MRCA. The latter is thought to have preceded the Wuhan variant by 6-8 weeks, that is, late October 2019.
In fact, Italian scientists found a
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fragment from SARS-CoV-2 in Italy in early December, that exactly resembled the Wuhan-1 genome.
The analysis of the second set of genomes showed the same pattern leading to the same conclusions. Two new mutations were identified belonging to the ζ and η groups from the middle of March 2020.

Viral genomic fingerprints allow tracking over time and region​

The mutational history led to a collection of genetic fingerprints extending from the progenitor CoV to the current strain. Each is named for the major variants included.
Both this progenitor genome and its branches have since led to an array of lineages or strains, some of which (e.g., D614G) have rapidly ascended to global or regional dominance in a very short time.
The North American strains have all belonged to the same lineages for the major part of the pandemic period. These were mostly αβ along with its mutant (αβγδ), which has remained dominant since April 2020.
Mutational history graph of SARS-CoV-2 from the 29KG dataset. Thick arrows mark the pathway of widespread variants (frequency, vf = 3%), and thin arrows show paths leading to other common mutations (3% > vf > 1%). The pie-chart sizes are proportional to variant frequencies in the 29KG dataset, with pie-charts shown for variants with vf > 3% and pie color based on the world

Mutational history graph of SARS-CoV-2 from the 29KG dataset. Thick arrows mark the pathway of widespread variants (frequency, vf = 3%), and thin arrows show paths leading to other common mutations (3% > vf > 1%). The pie-chart sizes are proportional to variant frequencies in the 29KG dataset, with pie-charts shown for variants with vf > 3% and pie color based on the world's region where that mutation was first observed. A circle is used for all other variants, with the filled color corresponding to the earliest sampling region. The co-occurrence index (COI, black font) and the bootstrap confidence level (BCL, blue font) of each mutation and its predecessor mutation are shown next to the arrow connecting them. Underlined BCL values mark variant pairs for which BCLs were estimated for groups of variants (see Materials and Methods) because of the episodic nature of variant accumulation within groups resulting in lower BCLs (<80%; dashed arrows). Base changes (n.) are shown for synonymous mutations, and amino acid changes (p.) are shown for nonsynonymous mutations along with the gene/protein names.
 

Strangelove

Colonel
Registered Member

In Asia and Europe, the rate of change in dominant strains is high, converging to αβε by July to August 2020, and later αβεη. These then shifted to αβζ, beginning at three weeks from the first ε variant samples. Many strains continue to circulate at high frequencies in both Asia and North America.
The South African variant has the αβγδ genetic fingerprint, and the UK variant the αβε genetic fingerprint. Both have the N501Y spike mutation, and both show identical properties of higher infectiousness. At the time of the study, the αβζ fingerprint was dominant, while today, probably the UK variant has taken over.

What are the conclusions?​

The researchers have identified the MRCA for the SARS-CoV-2 variants circulating today, which is probably not the Wuhan-1 virus but its progenitor. This implies “that none of the earliest patients represent the index case or gave rise to all the human infections.”
The MOA approach used here yielded the progenitor CoV genome, which gives a better rooted phylogenetic tree, mutational order and divergent mutations in genomic sequences. The approach will be relevant to any such pathogenic outbreaks, even with larger samples which may, in fact, yield more accurate results.

Its continued application to SARS‐CoV‐2 genomes and other pathogen outbreaks will produce their ancestral genomes and their spatiotemporal dynamics, improving our understanding of the past, current, and future evolution of pathogens and associated diseases.”
The researchers have set up a dashboard that will be constantly updated with newly emerging mutations and will reflect the trends of viral spread over time and by region. In addition, a simple tool is provided to classify any given genome by key mutations (
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).
 

Sardaukar20

Captain
Registered Member
If the Chinese vaccines do work, then all this nonsense about Malaysians/Vietnamese etc looking down on these vaccines isn't neither sustainable or productive.

Am I missing something here? What do they aim to achieve by NOT taking Chinese vaccines and when only lower efficacy vaccines are the available rest? Fostering Sinophobia? Engaging in ethno nationalistic chest thumping?

The only brownie points they earn are more bullets in this Russian roullet. When they take a non-china vaccine and get infected, who are they going to blame?
I can answer for Malaysia. Short answer is just pure stupidity.

Long answer is that they are:
1) Fooled by the lies from the Western MSM.
2) Rabidly Sinophobic and will never accept any facts that credits China.
3) Have a sense of superiority complex. Thinking that they deserve better than Chinese vaccines.
4) Milk Tea Alliance anti-PRC crusaders.
5) All of the above
6) Fence sitters who got peer pressured into rejecting Chinese vaccines.


That being said. There is another side of Malaysia where people readily accept Chinese vaccines. Most of them are mildly political and just don't mind. A smaller number of them are political Wumaos like me who actively seek to get Chinese vaccines. This group is large, but much less vocal. So it's hard to determine how big it is.
 

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
Some Vietnamese people chose to leave after being informed that the vaccine used for them is Sinopharm. In the clip, one medical worker said "What more do you wanna ask when there's vaccine for you?", the man reply "Will you be responsible if I take the jab and die?".

np they can keep their delta wave and continue losing business to China as the Vietnamese industrialization fades before it even starts.

This is indicative of the overall calibre of their management capabilities as a whole.

Remember they're in their 36th year of Doi Moi and what do they have to show for it?

In 36th year of China's reforms it was 2015 and China already had SMIC producing 28 nm chips for Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, Huawei leading the world in 4G deployment and 5G research, Alibaba becoming the world's #1 ecommerce giant, etc.

Anyone know a single brand from Vietnam in their 36th year of reforms?
 

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
np they can keep their delta wave and continue losing business to China as the Vietnamese industrialization fades before it even starts.

This is indicative of the overall calibre of their management capabilities as a whole.

Remember they're in their 36th year of Doi Moi and what do they have to show for it?

In 36th year of China's reforms it was 2015 and China already had SMIC producing 28 nm chips for Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, Huawei leading the world in 4G deployment and 5G research, Alibaba becoming the world's #1 ecommerce giant, etc.

Anyone know a single brand from Vietnam in their 36th year of reforms?

To be fair Vietnam doesn’t need its own brands. Just taking over a portion of manufacturing jobs is sufficient to provide the country with middle income jobs.
 
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