JasonC wrote:
You might be surprised. I just don’t like biased news, left or right.
Then how do you get your news. Subverse? It’s difficult to find any media without bias these days. I think I read something a while ago saying amongst the US news Fox ended up being the least biased.
kwlf wrote:
Arguably what you or I see as the more likely probability says more about us than it does about what actually happened.
Read further I put the papers in Time line so its more understandable.
.kwlf wrote:
The 2015 Nature news article specifically said that they created a virus that did not cause severe illness in mice and did not infect human cells in vitro.
Yes, that was the wild un Chimerically (genetically) altered Virus. If you continue reading after enhancing (genetically altering) the pathogenicity or “gain of function” that was no longer the case.
“Simon Wain-Hobson a virologist at the Pastier Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells. “If the virus escaped nobody could predict the trajectory.” he says"
Yes same publication in 2015
My feeling is that it was a DOD sponsored program but why they allowed the Chinese in on doing this type of research is beyond me. Perhaps they needed their know how. This is pure speculation on my part. The FBI is supposed to keep tabs on these foreign scientists while working on such sensitive projects. But hey, they have limited resources and if they use it up spying on opposing Political candidates well too bad. At least they caught the Harvard Professor and his Chinese colleague.
Off_Field wrote:
Then how do you get your news. Subverse? It’s difficult to find any media without bias these days. I think I read something a while ago saying amongst the US news Fox ended up being the least biased.
Mark Levin wrote a Great Book titled “Unfreedom of the Press” In it he details the US press from the forming of the country to the present. Papers have always had a bias. Usually there were two papers of opposing views supporting one of the two parties. You knew what you were getting just by looking at the front page. Each paper supported the their party. So people would buy both to get a sense where the center lay. Today the papers claim to be impartial when in actuality they are not and are pushing an agenda. You have no idea how much revenue is generated by politics and the ads leading up to an election. If you support the right party its a gravy train every 2 and 4 years. Eventually if the paper in your city is in a one party city you have to believe that papers would outdo the others in stroking the money train. That is a quick lesson on why bias occurs. Money.
kwlf wrote:
I don’t think there’s any doubt that many countries could engineer a virus similar to SARS-COV2 if they set their minds to it. But equally I don’t think there’s any doubt that the virus could have been passed to humans naturally
Are you sure about that? I am sure there were no epidemics before RNA/DNA were discovered 
I personally would be more relieved if SARS-COV2 is built in labs by some nasty secret services or innocent (dumb) scientists than the result of natural mutations, the former can be analysed and reversed, the latter tend to be random and hard to explain, it just happens !
Claims on growing things in lab will always fall short on a scalable population, this applies to everything: virus, treatments and vaccines
Leung, G. (06 Apr 2020) Lockdown Can’t Last Forever. Here’s How to Lift It. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opinion/coronavirus-end-social-distancing.html
Dr. Leung is an infectious disease epidemiologist and dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong.
Off_Field wrote:
think I read something a while ago saying amongst the US news Fox ended up being the least biased.
You must have read that in some Murdoch-owned publication.
NY Times is behind some sort of reg. Can someone post the essential bit of the article?
Yes, that was the wild un Chimerically (genetically) altered Virus. If you continue reading after enhancing (genetically altering) the pathogenicity or “gain of function” that was no longer the case.
Yes, you are correct, though you have posted a news article and not the original research. If you read the original paper it states that “Replication in [monkey derived] Vero cells revealed no deficit for SHC014-CoV relative to that for SARS-CoV (Fig. 3b); however, SHC014-CoV was significantly (P < 0.01) attenuated in primary [human derived] HAE cultures at both 24 and 48 h after infection (Fig. 3c).” So I grant you they will infect human cells but “Together, the results establish the viability of full-length SHC014-CoV, but suggest that further adaptation is required for its replication to be equivalent to that of epidemic SARS-CoV in human respiratory cells.”
The original paper also tested several approaches to vaccination against virulent coronaviruses, which seems a legitimate aim. And they explained why their experiments show that a virus similar to the current SARS-COV2 might be feasibly arise naturally as "the starting materials required for SARS-like emergent strains are currently circulating in animal reservoirs. "
Unfortunately neither approach to making a vaccine worked well – one approach actually made the disease worse.
Peter wrote:
Risk calculatorI don’t think the questions are anywhere near enough detailed.
Just filled this in. I am at the highest risk of catching it (probably because of my medical profession…although it does not actually ask that, but because of this I had to give a high number of “contacts” per week. I apparently am in the middle risk band of dying from it, which does not correlate with what I have so far learned about the virus (I’m under 40, non-smoker, no cardiorespiratory disease etc.)
I agree that it is not anywhere near detailled enough…
Peter wrote:
Risk calculator
It puts things into perspective. Suddenly GA is a low risk venture
