Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

[vesicles]

I don't think so at all.

If tigers were the intermediate host before man, then there should have been outbreaks in zoos among zoo keepers. If this disease had existed in tigers for a long time, they would have infected their keepers long before this year. Tigers haven't been hunted in China for decades.

The paper I posted analyzed the susceptibility of 5 critical residues on the ACE receptors to the S portein of SARS-CoV-2 and found feline, canine, and pangolin to be susceptible via in silica modelling. So while these animals may show no symptoms, they can be vectors, making them immune while still allowing viral replication and transmission.

The virus may not need to mutate at all to infect tigers if cats were a vector beforehand.

Zoos are isolated places for animals. Zoo animals are very well cared for. they get medical check ups and their food and water are all clean. And they don't see their wild buddies. So I wouldn't use zoo animals an examples for contracting contagions. This is why, this time at the NYC zoo, it's the zoo keeper infecting the tigers, not the other way around.

 

[siegecrossbow]

To the best of my knowledge, the big cats like tigers and lions are the first ones that actually respond to the COVID-19. This is very interesting. While the virus has been found on other pets like dogs and house cats, none of the animals has shown symptoms. This means, to the virus, these pets are simply surfaces to land on, like tables and elevator buttons.

However, tigers are different. They show symptoms, which means the virus is actively replicating and inflicting immune responses from the tigers. This mean the virus has successfully jumped from human to tiger. And the tiger is an actual host of the virus. With such a short period of time and such limited contact between a single zoo keeper and 6-7 big cats, it's almost impossible for the virus to mutate enough to fit the conditions in tigers and lions immediately after jumping from a human. And the tigers are showing the same symptoms as human, i.e. dry coughs, etc. That means that virus has not mutated since jumped from the zoo keeper to the tigers.

This could suggest one thing: the virus might have existed in tigers before! And it's very possible that the virus might have initially jumped from tigers to human! so tigers might be the missing linking between bats and human... At some time in the near past, this virus, which has existed in tigers for some time, jumped on human and mutated enough to make human its new host. And in the case of the NYC zoo, the virus simply jumped back to its original host, a tiger... Just a guess...

There is a large Bengal tiger population in the central China and the Chinese hunt tigers for their bones for Chinese medicine...

There is no wild tiger population in central China. Only Siberian tigers occasionally cross over in the North East.

 

[vesicles]

Here is the actual study about an old tuberculosis vaccination, Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) childhood vaccination. The study shows an interesting correlation between universal BCG vaccination and lower COVID-19 cases and lower fatality rates in many countries. Please also see some interesting comments left below the article.

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[vesicles]

There is no wild tiger population in central China. Only Siberian tigers occasionally cross over in the North East.

I might be wrong about the tiger populations in China. However, statistically speaking, the possibility of the tiger being an earlier host for the virus is a lot higher than the tiger suddenly becoming a new host... There have been much higher contact frequency between human and their pet dogs and house cats. No such mutation has occurred. Some very minimal contact between a single zoo keeper and a handful of tigers/lions, and Bingo! mutation and successful jump? Too coincidental, IMHO... Let's see how they proceed from here... I'm sure some epidemiologists might be interested. Then again, I've known to come up with crazy ideas...

 

[reservior dogs]

Looks like New York is the earth most infected area at the moment.

599 death / day in a 10 million area, it is very high , I think unprecedented .

And it is still in early phase.

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Any other plan ?

I mean, no one can live forever in lockdown .

If we are desperate enough, Trump can shorten the cycle for the most promising vaccine by indemnifying it from law suits. It is a given that due to the immaturity of the vaccine, a number of people will die as a result of taking the vaccine. A further number will not be protected when they get infected. Depending on how bad this thing gets, it might be worth the trade-off.

 

[hydrogenpi]

If we are desperate enough, Trump can shorten the cycle for the most promising vaccine by indemnifying it from law suits. It is a given that due to the immaturity of the vaccine, a number of people will die as a result of taking the vaccine. A further number will not be protected when they get infected. Depending on how bad this thing gets, it might be worth the trade-off.

The numbers are no longer exponentially rising and in fact Sunday it went down

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[vesicles]

If we are desperate enough, Trump can shorten the cycle for the most promising vaccine by indemnifying it from law suits. It is a given that due to the immaturity of the vaccine, a number of people will die as a result of taking the vaccine. A further number will not be protected when they get infected. Depending on how bad this thing gets, it might be worth the trade-off.

As I have argued several times before, you should never shorten the cycle of a vaccine. The trade-off may be millions of death by the vaccines vs. hundreds of thousands by the virus. It would be equivalent of a genocide...

 

[reservior dogs]

As I have argued several times before, you should never shorten the cycle of a vaccine. The trade-off may be millions of death by the vaccines vs. hundreds of thousands by the virus. It would be equivalent of a genocide...

While the number of newly infected for the states that do social distancing will eventually peak, it will move sideways for a while. Italy is the example that we can follow. Even with the kind of social distancing that we do, eventually, the number of infected will go down enough that techniques from South Korea, for example, could be tried. The issue is, can a society go on for six months or one year like this? Since different states have different policies, we will most likely also be staring down a situation where the early epicenters such as CA and NY, after huge sacrifices and long periods of social lock down, got it under control only to be reinfected by other states that don't practice social distancing. The longer the pain, the more likely people will start calling for herd immunity.

If a vaccine is 60% effective, while conferring various degree of protection to those that are still infected in terms of reduced symptoms, we may be able to see its lethality by having limited trials in heavily infected area such as New York, where the public may be willing to risk their own lives if the other danger is perceived to be big enough. Try it out on a large enough population to determine lethality should not take that long. I think determining effectiveness may take longer time, but that is not the point today if it confer some degree of protection.

I don't mean to say go use it today, but I think we can answer at least how much harm it will do to the healthy population in a relatively short time.

 

[getready]

Is NY still in early stage of the curve or peaking soon? This is bad if it's the former.

I guess California gets spared due to its bad public transportation ironically

 

[getready]

If some governments want to blame the Chinese for starting the outbreak, fine! they can do that. As Trump said, the virus did come from China. As of today, most of the genomic and epidemiological studies are consistent with this conclusion. To this day, I have not seen anything convincing to say otherwise. I don't care much about any of the conspiracy theories. I want to see hardcore scientific data. To this day, I have not seen any. Before I see that, the current conclusion still stands. The virus originated in China, maybe Wuhan and some other places.

Can anyone link the articles stating covid originated in China? As far as I know most scientist cannot confirm the origin and Chinese scientists including zhong nanshan said the wuhan wet market is unlikely tne source