Coronavirus Thread: Worldwide Pandemic

FreedMind

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The pastor had shared a meme on Facebook slamming the media for causing unwarranted panic about the coronavirus. He compared the current media coverage to that of the H1N1 virus, and suggested that the H1N1 virus was worse but that the nation and media during that crisis were "totally chill".

:heh:



The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration

Great article by Chotiner exposing libertarian hack Richard A. Epstein, read the interview he was in complete meltdown.


Screenshot-20200329-224836-2.png


:laff:
 

tru_m.a.c

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Because people will cut off their nose to spite their face, and if right wing Italian politicians stoke a populist movement led on calls for leaving the EU, chances of the Union collapsing become bigger. Same thing with Spain and France. If the right wingers can pin these deaths on the government then things will get tenuous.

This isn't the thread to do a whole back and forth, but "if right wing Italian politicians stoke a populist movement" was literally a 2016-18 story in Italy
 

Red Shield

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I’m not convinced they will unless the mortgage system crashes. Knowing how this country operates, the banks will get the money, not the people.


this shyt gets worse.. what choice will they really have.

yeah big business/banks will get even more.. that is what it is at this point
 

Wild self

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Just gotta accept the fact that millions of brainwashed conservatives wanted this and their votes count more than the rest of us. They still support him despite all of this and they wanted a reality show president who “runs the company like a business” as if that’s a good thing.

Many of us knew who this dude was from the jump but we even have dudes on this board still defending him.

Their votes mean nothing outside of swing states. Trump had to run to Russia to even win against Hillary Clinton in 2016. The midterm elections proven that any Trump supporter outside of the deep South, lost their seats. The midwest doesn't even fukk with him.
 

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Brehs! Please prayers for a friend!

A 31yo teammate of mine was just rushed to the hospital after going into a seizure and falling unconscious. He ain't from America but we've worked together on projects in multiple countries and had another lined up for next year. I got a text from him just six hours ago and he was saying everything was fine where he's at, didn't mention any health problems at all.

Our mutual friend who took him to the hospital said he'd had a cough for ten days but it didn't seem like a big deal. Like I said he hadn't even bothered to mention that he'd been having any health issues and we've been in regular contact several times the last couple weeks all the way up to today. He's young and in good health but a year ago he caught TB on a project, even though he went through treatment and was supposed to be totally clear of TB, it's possible that maybe he is more vulnerable healthwise than the average young person. Please pray for the kid that he pulls through, this would be a huge huge loss. :mjcry:
 

Wild self

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People are aware the entire world is watching us right now and we getting exposed as a broken nation.

He has a few more months to play tough on TV. Which is why, I think the republicans tried to scam that stimulus package - because they know Trump is over soon

Yep, these handful of Republicans know Trump will be worse off than Bush Jr in November because once people start dying in genocidal rates, so they getting one last cash grab.
 

Wild self

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you know what can really make or break trump? if this fukkin thing tears through florida. some of these tweets and the sheer amount of retirees down there :huhldup:

It Will. That is why DeSantis is acting like a pawn to Trump, as always. He knows that FL population will turn against him when the bodies drop.
 

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Sorry, conspiracy theorists. Study concludes COVID-19 'is not a laboratory construct'



Sorry, conspiracy theorists. Study concludes COVID-19 'is not a laboratory construct'
Some have suggested the virus is actually an engineered biological attack.


By
Kate Holland

March 27, 2020, 5:00 AM
5 min read

Coronavirus explainedEarly cases of COVID-19 are believed to be linked to a live-animal market in Wuhan, China.
Conspiracy theories claiming COVID-19 was engineered in a lab as part of a biological attack on the United States have been gaining traction online in recent weeks, but a new study on the origins of the virus has concluded that the pandemic-causing strain developed naturally.

An analysis of the evidence, according to the findings first published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine, shows that the novel coronavirus "is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," with the researchers concluding "we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible."


"There’s a lot of speculation and conspiracy theories that went to a pretty high level," Dr. Robert Garry, a professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine and one of the authors of the study, told ABC News, "so we felt it was important to get a team together to examine evidence of this new coronavirus to determine what we could about the origin."

Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis.


Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, supported the study’s findings, writing on his blog, "This study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19."

Researchers concluded that the novel coronavirus is not a human creation because it does not share any "previously used virus backbone." It likely arose, the study said, from a recombination of a virus found in bats and another virus, possibly originating from pangolins, otherwise known as scaly anteaters.


MORE: Coronavirus live updates: US now leads world with over 82,000 cases

COVID-19 is 96% identical to a coronavirus found in bats, researchers said, but with a certain variation that could explain what has made it so infectious.

"We know from the study of other coronaviruses that they’re able to acquire this [variation] and they can then become more pathogenic," Garry told ABC News. "This is a good explanation as to why this virus is so transmittable and has caused this pandemic."


coronavirus-gty-jt-_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg

camera.svg

This handout illustration image taken with a scanning electron microscope shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19isolated emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab.
This handout illustration image taken with a scanning electron microscope shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19isolated emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab.Handout/National Institutes of Health/AFP via GettY Images


The mutation in surface proteins, according to Garry, could have triggered the outbreak of the pandemic, but it’s also possible that a less severe version of the illness was circulating through the population for years, perhaps even decades, before escalating to this point.

"We don’t know if those mutations were picked up more recently or a long time ago," Garry told ABC News. "It’s impossible to say if it actually was a mutation that triggered the pandemic, but either way, it would have been a naturally occurring process."

And while many believe the virus originated at a fish market in Wuhan, China, Garry said that is also a misconception.

"Our analyses, and others too, point to an earlier origin than that," Garry said. "There were definitely cases there, but that wasn’t the origin of the virus."








Genomic Study Points to Natural Origin of COVID-19
Genomic Study Points to Natural Origin of COVID-19

Posted on March 26th, 2020 by Dr. Francis Collins



Sscanning electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2 (round blue objects) emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab.


]No matter where you go online these days, there’s bound to be discussion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Some folks are even making outrageous claims that the new coronavirus causing the pandemic was engineered in a lab and deliberately released to make people sick. A new study debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally.

The reassuring findings are the result of genomic analyses conducted by an international research team, partly supported by NIH. In their study in the journal Nature Medicine, Kristian Andersen, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA; Robert Garry, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans; and their colleagues used sophisticated bioinformatic tools to compare publicly available genomic data from several coronaviruses, including the new one that causes COVID-19.

The researchers began by homing in on the parts of the coronavirus genomes that encode the spike proteins that give this family of viruses their distinctive crown-like appearance. (By the way, “corona” is Latin for “crown.”) All coronaviruses rely on spike proteins to infect other cells. But, over time, each coronavirus has fashioned these proteins a little differently, and the evolutionary clues about these modifications are spelled out in their genomes.

The genomic data of the new coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 show that its spike protein contains some unique adaptations. One of these adaptations provides special ability of this coronavirus to bind to a specific protein on human cells called angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE2). A related coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in humans also seeks out ACE2.

Existing computer models predicted that the new coronavirus would not bind to ACE2 as well as the SARS virus. However, to their surprise, the researchers found that the spike protein of the new coronavirus actually bound far better than computer predictions, likely because of natural selection on ACE2 that enabled the virus to take advantage of a previously unidentified alternate binding site. Researchers said this provides strong evidence that that new virus was not the product of purposeful manipulation in a lab. In fact, any bioengineer trying to design a coronavirus that threatened human health probably would never have chosen this particular conformation for a spike protein.


The researchers went on to analyze genomic data related to the overall molecular structure, or backbone, of the new coronavirus. Their analysis showed that the backbone of the new coronavirus’s genome most closely resembles that of a bat coronavirus discovered after the COVID-19 pandemic began. However, the region that binds ACE2 resembles a novel virus found in pangolins, a strange-looking animal sometimes called a scaly anteater. This provides additional evidence that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 almost certainly originated in nature. If the new coronavirus had been manufactured in a lab, scientists most likely would have used the backbones of coronaviruses already known to cause serious diseases in humans.

So, what is the natural origin of the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic? The researchers don’t yet have a precise answer. But they do offer two possible scenarios.

In the first scenario, as the new coronavirus evolved in its natural hosts, possibly bats or pangolins, its spike proteins mutated to bind to molecules similar in structure to the human ACE2 protein, thereby enabling it to infect human cells. This scenario seems to fit other recent outbreaks of coronavirus-caused disease in humans, such as SARS, which arose from cat-like civets; and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which arose from camels.

The second scenario is that the new coronavirus crossed from animals into humans before it became capable of causing human disease. Then, as a result of gradual evolutionary changes over years or perhaps decades, the virus eventually gained the ability to spread from human-to-human and cause serious, often life-threatening disease.


Either way, this study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19. And that’s a good thing because it helps us keep focused on what really matters: observing good hygiene, practicing social distancing, and supporting the efforts of all the dedicated health-care professionals and researchers who are working so hard to address this major public health challenge.

Finally, next time you come across something about COVID-19 online that disturbs or puzzles you, I suggest going to FEMA’s new Coronavirus Rumor Control web site. It may not have all the answers to your questions, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction in helping to distinguish rumors from facts.

Reference:
[1] The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 . Andersen KG, Rambaut A, Lipkin WI, Holmes EC, Garry RF. Nat Med, 17 March 2020. [Epub ahead of publication]


 

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