Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Why don’t you address that with the people whom you thought made a mockery out of the situation. I certainly took this seriously.

Actually, in my opinion, I didn’t see the mockery. Mostly, I saw an appeal for calm. Hysteria tends to get us nowhere.

There was lots of humor pertaining to the Black Death. And people in the concentration camps during the Nazi Era engaged in “gallows humor”

Humor in the midst and face of disaster is a very HUMAN reaction, and inevitable. For many, it is essential, a mechanism of survival.

People can make jokes and also view something as serious. I mean look at how many jokes Stephen Colbert makes about Trump while at the same time he considers Trump to be a very serious problem. That is how it goes. There is no call to get all snippy. Especially with kraftie of all people. If you are frighted I am sorry. But do not take it out on others please.

https://theconversation.com/coronavirus ... lem-132489

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ine-le-pen

nationalists in blaming migrants for anything and everything shocker

There is a consistent trend towards at least 3 out of 4 people acquiring COVID-19 having mild symptoms; some cases do not produce symptoms at all.

We have to continue to practice vigilance. Especially in view of the fact that mildly affected people will more readily pass on the infection to others.

It’s best to practice the same precautions as we do during “flu season.”

And to make sure people traveling from affected areas get tested and perhaps quarantined.

And to not get in panic mode. Panic mode only makes things worse, and does not produce solutions.

I ran across an interesting article this morning that addresses the coronavirus vaccine development:

As the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic continues to spread -- and, at this point, it doesn't look to be stopping anytime soon -- pharmaceutical companies and governments are working together to make vaccines against it. How can that be accomplished?

In general, as described by the Department of Health & Human Services (and by NIAID), there are three major strategies for making a vaccine. The first is to use a live but weakened (attenuated) virus, such as found in the MMR and chickenpox vaccines. The second is to use a dead (inactivated) virus, such as found in the flu and polio shots. The third is to use only a piece (subunit) of the virus, such as found in the HPV and shingles vaccines.

The first two methods require growing the virus in a laboratory or factory. This isn't as easy as culturing bacteria, which usually grow just fine if provided the right types of food. Viruses can't live on their own and must infect another cell in order to reproduce. So, to culture viruses, scientists must first identify a cell type that can propagate them. Then, along with their host cells, the viruses can be grown inside large tanks (bioreactors). Alternatively, many (possibly including the new coronavirus) can be grown inside of embryonated eggs. For live-attenuated vaccines, there are various tricks (beautifully explained in Mental Floss) to weaken the virus; for inactivated vaccines, heat or a chemical like formaldehyde can kill the virus.

However, culturing viruses can be problematic. Sino Biological, a Chinese biotech firm, explains that growing coronaviruses poses a safety threat to lab workers. Also, if the virus is not properly attenuated or inactivated, it can actually cause disease and spread in the population. (This happens with polio, unfortunately. A story in The Scientist describes how vaccine-derived polio viruses are causing polio outbreaks in Africa.)

Subunit vaccines are the safest option, since they do not use whole viruses. (The downside is that these vaccines often require boosters.) Producing them requires greater knowledge of the virus, for instance, its genomic sequence. Once this has been acquired, standard biotechnological techniques can be used to produce viral proteins in the laboratory, which are then placed in the vaccine. The French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi is using this method to target COVID-19.

In addition to the major ones described above, there are newer methods to design vaccines, and several companies are testing them in the race against COVID-19. Johnson & Johnson is using genetic engineering to modify a harmless adenovirus to resemble COVID-19. Inovio is developing a DNA vaccine, while Moderna is creating an mRNA vaccine.

This diagram depicts how DNA and RNA vaccines work.


How Close Is a Coronavirus Vaccine?

Not particularly close. According to Nature, vaccine candidates may be in clinical trials within a few months, but it probably will take more than a year before they are widely available. Dr. Henry Miller, an ACSH advisor, takes a more pessimistic view: "[W]e should not pin our hopes on a vaccine for the foreseeable future."

Source: How To Make A Coronavirus Vaccine

Viruses from the Coronavirus group mutate and mutate often for this reason we don't even have a vaccine for the common cold which it a coronavirus

I wish they'd at least say how old the person is in Northern California that caught the virus. The person is now on a ventilator and is in serious condition. I'm assuming they can't even give the age of the person out because...privacy.

People don't end up on ventilators with the common cold or influenza as a matter of course.

Meanwhile, in Canada:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/ ... -cases-in/

News reports are very confusing.

The first possible COVID-19 case of unknown origin in a Solano County woman. The woman's illness marks the third confirmed case of person-to-person transmission in the U.S. Apparently this patient was just transferred to San Mateo County.

The Sacramento Bee reported that a student at the University of California, Davis, was showing “mild symptoms,” and that the student's three roommates were in isolation. Three students at UC Davis are being isolated as one undergoes testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for possible coronavirus. In a press conference held Thursday, university officials said the other two students are asymptomatic and are being isolated on campus, while the third has been moved off campus since Feb. 25. The three students are roommates who had been living in Kearney Hall.

I do not think this is the same person but these two stories may be interlinked because of the following statement:

Officials would not comment on whether the student being tested had any relation or contact with the woman in Solano County who tested positive for the virus in the first possible instance of community spread, but said they were aware of the student's origin of potential exposure.

I spoke to a friend who is still a micriobiologist and his take is that the CHinese were experimenting with recombining DNA between the HIV virus and common flu to create an airborne transmissable virus that once infected never leaves the body unless (like HIV) you are treated with very powerful antiviral medication.

The other alternative is that they were experimenting with a naturally occuring coronavirus from the Pangolin and injecting it in bats in a lab and one of the bats escaped and ended up in a wet market.

Either way In all likelihood it was accidentally released

My hope if that if it was a manufactured or virus altered or manipulated by the Chinese that they be held financially accountable to any victims, yes victims and their families as well as governments. $Billions? $Hundreds of billions? If it's your fault, pay up China. For real.

This would have to be demonstrated in some type of international court of law (like war crimes trials) and would require qualified investigators access to government Biolabs in Wuhan (the likely ground zero). My best guess is the Chinese would never allow foreign access so the question of culpability would remain speculation.

Why does your friend imagine these stories about it, rather than the simplest and most probable, which is that, as has previously happened, the virus transferred spontaneously from a wild animal to humans? ? Why is your friend hypothesising unnecessarily complicated scenarios? What is the reason for their preferring to believe that it is a bio weapon accidentally released from a lab rather than a naturally evolved new virus from the wild?

He's a virologist and it's just his theory. Yes it's also possible it's an "evolved" coronavirus that's jumped from it's animal host to a human.

There has been speculation for years that Ebola or HIV virus could combine with the common flu virus and became airborne. The genetic history behind the current COVID-19 remains a mystery.