Coronavirus COVID-19

[Limo]

15 minutes ago, ghsotword said:

Well, already before the COVID-19 pandemic happened, it was public information that the Wuhan lab was researching bat coronaviruses, and even working with mutant coronavirus strains. The Wuhan lab had published research papers on these topics. For example, they were co-authors on this paper from 2015: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/. So it is not possible for them to completely deny that they were working with bat coronaviruses. If they were guilty of leaking the virus from the lab, the best they could do to cover it up would be to say that they were worried that it could have come from their lab but then they checked the sequences and they didn't match.

Ok, fair.

 

[Candiru]

1 hour ago, auxien said:

define 'they' here. to whom specifically are you referring. 

Oooh, an opportunity for a riddle. The main people responsible for such a global fuckup could include one of the following:

1. The 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls

2. Tom Hanks and Idris Elba

3. Roseanne Barr 

4. The Chinese Government 

5. Buzz Lightyear and Tupac’s hologram

[Rubin Farr]

13 hours ago, iococoi said:

Amen II - a squirt too far

Also good for killing vampires

[custom knob]

Surely If it was a deliberate move on the part of the Chinese government it would have emerged on Hong Kong first. Or Taiwan 

 

All we know for sure is that it’s Obama’s fault

 

 

 

[zlemflolia]

the cause doesn't matter except in the extent to which it relates to the present material conditions and how we can react to them.  what has a bigger material affect upon our wellbeing than whether there are secret biological research facilities in wuhan which leaked this on purpose to kill people (or whatever other extreme ends conspiratorial thinking can reach) is how our local governments and the groups of governments with which they fraternize treat this crisis for members of our class, the working class.  if your country does not have a well oiled free medical system, the ability to house everyone even when they aren't getting income, and the ability to hold accountable those who try to take economic advantage of this situation through pushing their agendas, your government is a farce which needs to be overthrown and replaced with a government which workers for the laborers of your country, the vast majority of people, rather than the elite. 

covid-19 is yet more proof that revolutionary activity comes not from the psychological call to action of the minds of any individual but rather the material conditions of reality itself which force into being the actions caused by whatever revolutionary interpretation of the material conditions that the masses of people have been conditioned to think throughout their lifetime.  whether it's a correct or incorrect interpretation relates solely to how strongly based on the material conditions is their analysis which led to that interpretation.

those at the top of the hierarchical power structure of our societies are exploiting this crisis for their material gain and are going to continue stripping more and more of our power from us to protect themselves because they're pussy ass bitches who haven't worked a job in their lives, and because the workers are scared to admit that they are workers, and that they actually, through their numbers, hold the power

the legal systems of our countries enforce this mental submission through bullshit laws like the illegality of drugs, graffiti, and even the most benign forms of public civil disobedience, no matter how harmless these actions are

in summary if you don't support a dismantling of private property you are a class traitor

[sweepstakes]

19 hours ago, Zeffolia said:

in summary if you don't support a dismantling of private property you are a class traitor

So I shouldn't keep my MPC1000? Who's gonna take it from me?

[Silent Member]

Socialism

[ignatius]

[goDel]

On 5/25/2020 at 10:18 PM, ghsotword said:

Well, already before the COVID-19 pandemic happened, it was public information that the Wuhan lab was researching bat coronaviruses, and even working with mutant coronavirus strains. The Wuhan lab had published research papers on these topics. For example, they were co-authors on this paper from 2015: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/. So it is not possible for them to completely deny that they were working with bat coronaviruses. If they were guilty of leaking the virus from the lab, the best they could do to cover it up would be to say that they were worried that it could have come from their lab but then they checked the sequences and they didn't match.

Nobody denied they were researching bat virusses.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/

(first published in march)

Quote

Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7

Quote

As a laboratory investigating CoV, we first used pan-CoV PCR primers to test these samples¹³, given that the outbreak occurred in winter and in a market—the same environment as SARS infections. We found five samples to be PCR-positive for CoVs. One sample (WIV04), collected from the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), was analysed by metagenomics analysis using next-generation sequencing to identify potential aetiological agents. Of the 10,038,758 total reads—of which 1,582 total reads were retained after filtering of reads from the human genome—1,378 (87.1%) sequences matched the sequence of SARSr-CoV (Fig. 1a). By de novo assembly and targeted PCR, we obtained a 29,891-base-pair CoV genome that shared 79.6% sequence identity to SARS-CoV BJ01 (GenBank accession number AY278488.2). High genome coverage was obtained by remapping the total reads to this genome (Extended Data Fig. 1). This sequence has been submitted to GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) (accession number EPI_ISL_402124). Following the name given by the World Health Organization (WHO), we tentatively call it novel coronavirus 2019 (2019-nCoV). Four more full-length genome sequences of 2019-nCoV (WIV02, WIV05, WIV06 and WIV07) (GISAID accession numbers EPI_ISL_402127–402130) that were more than 99.9% identical to each other were subsequently obtained from four additional patients using next-generation sequencing and PCR (Extended Data Table 2).

Also note how genomes get registered in a database. And the paper was published the 3rd of februari. Open access. So, if it was a so-called bioweapon, they put it out in public space. A lot of transparency for a secret/self-made weapon, don't you think?

Quote

Sequence data that support the findings of this study have been deposited in GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) with accession numbers EPI_ISL_402124, EPI_ISL_402127–EPI_ISL_402130 and EPI_ISL_402131; GenBank with accession numbers MN996527–MN996532; National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (https://bigd.big.ac.cn/databases?lang=en) with accession numbers SAMC133236–SAMC133240 and SAMC133252.

And another publication from 2015 about changing an existing virus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

Quote

Therefore, to examine the emergence potential (that is, the potential to infect humans) of circulating bat CoVs, we built a chimeric virus encoding a novel, zoonotic CoV spike protein—from the RsSHC014-CoV sequence that was isolated from Chinese horseshoe bats¹—in the context of the SARS-CoV mouse-adapted backbone. The hybrid virus allowed us to evaluate the ability of the novel spike protein to cause disease independently of other necessary adaptive mutations in its natural backbone. Using this approach, we characterized CoV infection mediated by the SHC014 spike protein in primary human airway cells and in vivo, and tested the efficacy of available immune therapeutics against SHC014-CoV. Together, the strategy translates metagenomics data to help predict and prepare for future emergent viruses.

There's really no secret here.

Around here, experts report the virus is highly likely originated from nature. And given the transparency, I can only assume they're right. Perhaps it escaped from the facilities in Wuhan. But if they were researching this specific virus, I'd expect the genome to be present in a database.

[Psychotronic]

 

[ghsotword]

44 minutes ago, goDel said:

Nobody denied they were researching bat virusses.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/

(first published in march)

I didn't say they denied researching bat viruses. What I said is that if the virus escaped from the lab by accident, it would not be possible for the lab staff or the Chinese government to deny that they were working with bat viruses because this information was already public.

46 minutes ago, goDel said:

Also note how genomes get registered in a database. And the paper was published the 3rd of februari. Open access. So, if it was a so-called bioweapon, they put it out in public space. A lot of transparency for a secret/self-made weapon, don't you think?

I never said this was a bioweapon. I think it is unlikely it was a bioweapon and even less likely that the virus was deliberately released in the public. However, I think the idea that the virus accidentally escaped from the lab is plausible.

48 minutes ago, goDel said:

There's really no secret here.

Around here, experts report the virus is highly likely originated from nature. And given the transparency, I can only assume they're right. Perhaps it escaped from the facilities in Wuhan. But if they were researching this specific virus, I'd expect the genome to be present in a database.

Not all genomes that are sequenced get uploaded to public databases. Also, the time interval from sequencing a genome to uploading it to public databases can be quite long, e.g. one year. Besides this, researchers often want to delay the uploading of a newly sequenced genome to public databases until they have written up a research paper that goes along with the genome.

[goDel]

50 minutes ago, ghsotword said:

Not all genomes that are sequenced get uploaded to public databases. Also, the time interval from sequencing a genome to uploading it to public databases can be quite long, e.g. one year. Besides this, researchers often want to delay the uploading of a newly sequenced genome to public databases until they have written up a research paper that goes along with the genome.

So the one virus that leaked just happened to be one of the newer/unpublished ones? The likelihood is shrinking and shrinking.

Is this really a scenario worth investing your time/energy? I think it's a waste of time. Gonna be difficult to keep this secret if it indeed leaked. There's also the possibility of extraterrestrials leaking this in Wuhan to consider. Seriously...

[ignatius]

27 minutes ago, goDel said:

So the one virus that leaked just happened to be one of the newer/unpublished ones? The likelihood is shrinking and shrinking.

Is this really a scenario worth investing your time/energy? I think it's a waste of time. Gonna be difficult to keep this secret if it indeed leaked. There's also the possibility of extraterrestrials leaking this in Wuhan to consider. Seriously...

this is another case for the Watmm mock UN. 

[caze]

4 hours ago, ignatius said:

He clearly doesn't know what the phrase means. And no, it isn't a phrase rooted in slavery:

It doesn't refer to people, it refers to their skills and knowledge, etc.

[ignatius]

7 minutes ago, caze said:

He clearly doesn't know what the phrase means. And no, it isn't a phrase rooted in slavery:

It doesn't refer to people, it refers to their skills and knowledge, etc.

iT DoEsN't RefEr To PeOpLE, iT ReFErS tO tHeIr sKilLS aNd KnOwLeDgE, eTc.

ftfy

[zero]

Guys c'mon, the answEr is so fuckin obvious...Obama created corona virus in a Kenyan lab, flanked by HRC laughing hysterically. Dems were in on it, Chuck & Nancy knew. All designed to get trump to lose 2020. Bats ain't got shit to do with it

 

[caze]

The concept of human capital was defined by Adam Smith:

Quote

..the acquired and useful abilities of all the inhabitants or members of the society. The acquisition of such talents, by the maintenance of the acquirer during his education, study, or apprenticeship, always costs a real expense, which is a capital fixed and realized, as it were, in his person. Those talents, as they make a part of his fortune, so do they likewise of that of the society to which he belongs. 

The stock of human capital is traits and abilities of people, not the individuals themselves, this is a well established concept in economics. Hassett obviously wasn't paying attention when they covered this in university. It's got literally nothing to do with slavery.

[hijexx]

Gotta love woke culture and making a mountain out of a mole hill.

[cwmbrancity]

this cannabliss is excellent

[ignatius]

30 minutes ago, zero said:

Guys c'mon, the answEr is so fuckin obvious...Obama created corona virus in a Kenyan lab, flanked by HRC laughing hysterically. Dems were in on it, Chuck & Nancy knew. All designed to get trump to lose 2020. Bats ain't got shit to do with it

 

you forgot the saudis being involved and how this impacts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 

anyway.. i posted that twitter screen grab about human capital because it's funny to me. it fits the "reopen the states regardless of human cost"

anyone who's alive today knows how that's going to read to people these days. every economist nerd should know better and dial back their favorite phrases from adam smith. because everyone remembers reading wealth of nations in high school  

we've known for a long time now that there is absolutely no room for nuance in the media. on all sides of every issue. people can't appear to be tone deaf w/o the internet going bananas. the media too... it's how out of context reporting works. 

but really.. seeing that i lol'd because you know exactly what is going to happen and how people will take it. 

mountain -> mole hill. 

but even saying all that.. i'm sure there's an argument either way as to what he meant. but who fucking cares beyond funny haha eat some popcorn. 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by ignatius

[zlemflolia]

6 hours ago, sweepstakes said:

So I shouldn't keep my MPC1000? Who's gonna take it from me?

that is personal property

[zlemflolia]

34 minutes ago, caze said:

The concept of human capital was defined by Adam Smith:

The stock of human capital is traits and abilities of people, not the individuals themselves, this is a well established concept in economics. Hassett obviously wasn't paying attention when they covered this in university. It's got literally nothing to do with slavery.

In your race to justify every right wing talking point you miss the obvious difference here which is that the speaker applied a verb to "human capital" meaning he was speaking about actual humans, not the abstract concept.  He says the "human capital" is ready to get back to work, not "the people" are ready to get back to work.  This dehumanizing language is a hallmark of slavers throughout history, from long ago up to even in the present capitalist wage slave conditions

[caze]

Just now, Zeffolia said:

In your race to justify every right wing talking point you miss the obvious difference here which is that the speaker applied a verb to "human capital" meaning he was speaking about actual humans, not the abstract concept.  He says the "human capital" is ready to get back to work, not "the people" are ready to get back to work.  This dehumanizing language is a hallmark of slavers throughout history, from long ago up to even in the present capitalist wage slave conditions

Read what I wrote again dumbass, he's using the term wrong, I'm not justifying what he said. The phrase is not rooted in slavery just because this guy is an idiot.

[zlemflolia]

Just now, caze said:

Read what I wrote again dumbass, he's using the term wrong, I'm not justifying what he said. The phrase is not rooted in slavery just because this guy is an idiot.

I read what you said perfectly clearly, using dehumanizing language to refer to groups of workers does in fact have something to do with slavery regardless of whether the speaker used the term wrong.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Zeffolia

[caze]

Just now, Zeffolia said:

I read what you said perfectly clearly, dehumanizing language does in fact have something to do with slavery regardless of whether the speaker used the term wrong.

You clearly didn't, you obviously have very poor reading comprehension. I was talking about the origin of the phrase and it's actual meaning, not what he said. Maybe if I shout you'll understand: I WAS NOT DEFENDING WHAT HE SAID, I WAS CALLING HIM DUMB.