New virus created in a Boston lab - 80% fatality potential
 

So, what the hell were they thinking?




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WTZo9ieBKY

Here is a perfect example of human beings acting like a tribe of monkeys trying to figure out how a lighter works while standing among enormous leaking tanks of gasoline. :face_palm_02:

Personally, I think they should just nuke that lab and everyone involved.

And just think what publishing their paper did. Anyone malicious entity interested in creating a perfect doomsday biological weapon now has a template of how to do exactly that.

Way to go you damned idiots.

Just a thought, hopefully incorrect, but if the creators already have the appropriate vaccine on hand prior to release, creating more virulent diseases might be an enormous economic incentive.
Could that happen? Hopefully not, but when it comes to money, people sometimes make unethical choices.

They were investigating the role of the spike protein mutations in the ability of Covid variants to evade immune response so that we can design more effective vaccines and better understand the inevitable future mutations. So, they were engaging in scientific research in order to plan ahead for future expected disease developments, and likely to gain deeper understanding of the workings of viruses generally.

Here's the paper:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....512134v1.full

Abstract:"The recently identified, globally predominant SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (BA.1) is highly transmissible, even in fully vaccinated individuals, and causes attenuated disease compared with other major viral variants recognized to date1–7. The Omicron spike (S) protein, with an unusually large number of mutations, is considered the major driver of these phenotypes3,8. We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant. The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the receptor-binding motif (RBM), yet unlike naturally occurring Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells. In K18-hACE2 mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%. This indicates that while the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by mutations in S, major determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of S."

What the sensationalized media reports minimize or don't mention at all is that the original Covid19 strain was shown to be 100% fatal to mice in similar tests -- so this version is actually less virulent. Interestingly, the reports that seem ashamed of this fact seem to be...uh...on one side of the political fence mostly.

Someone who understands how people tend to respond to percentages and probabilities can be a very effective deceiver. That's why the news reports don't say "this new strain is 20% less virulent than the original strain", even though this is more suitable for a news article since it contains more information than the "80%" claim; it contains two facts in one simple to comprehend passage. The problem with the "20%" locution is that it isn't scary.

As an interesting aside, the original news ("news") report that blew this up (link to Daily Mail) wouldn't display at all on my very secure Firefox browser; I had to use an out of date version of Safari with no tracker blockers installed to view it.

Don't believe everything you read out there, folks. There are a lot of reasons for a lot of people to scare you into believing things that simply aren't true. ;)

So, your opinion is that an artificially created virus from an already artificially created virus that combines the increased infectiousness of the Omicron variety with the much more lethal original Wuhan strain is of no concern?

We will have to agree to disagree on that one.

In MY opinion, humanity is just lucky that the SARS-CoV-2 virus did not retain it's original lethality during the mutations that made it much more contagious. And here we have some bozos in a lab trying to do just that.

The claim that the virus was artificial is pretty much toast at this point based on multiple criteria. For a overview of the pro and con arguments see

Yee, Shermaine et al. “SARS-COV-2 as an artificial creation: scientific arguments and counterarguments.” Journal of medicine and life vol. 14,1 (2021): 118-120. doi:10.25122/jml-2020-0175
free access at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...ef-list-1title

Ed

I'm of the opinion that focusing attention on details of research that promote a specific political agenda, while ignoring the goals of that bit of research and also being ignorant of scientific methodology generally is of much more concern than the controlled development, for specific and limited purposes, of a theoretically easy to distribute and quite lethal agent (of which the world already has plenty, and one sort of which the agitator in chief over in Russia is threatening to release unless we all keep our heads screwed on tight).

I'm of the opinion that "nuke that lab and everyone involved" isn't nearly as humorous or harmless as it might have been intended, given the state of things in the US (which are spilling out into countries that have historically been a lot more mentally stable than US) and the seemingly increasing tendency of folks with weapons to use them to make themselves famous and/or take the edge off their mental illness.

I'm of the opinion that calling people who are playing a central role in keeping us out of a dystopian plotline "bozos" is unwarranted and hurtful. Research of "bozos" like that have kept me alive on occasion, and also and more importantly have done the same for those few people I care about dearly. Without those sorts of "bozos", I and many of us might be very alone right now. I'm of the opinion that they deserve public and private recognition and praise for these reasons.

I'm of the opinion that in an ideal society, discussions and decisions about which research to pursue would indeed be public ones. It is also a fact that the US is roughly as equipped to do this as a roomful of toddlers are to design the replacement for the James Webb Space Telescope.

For Pete's sake.

The knowledge on making a doomsday microbe has pretty much been available to anyone capable of reading a microbiology textbook, and a good blender. It's basic microbiology knowledge that bacteria readily pick up and incorporate DNA from the environment so if you have a bacteria you want to modify say E. coli to produce the exotoxin from Clostridium botulinum (botulism causing bacteria), you filter out enough botulinum and blend them up to break up the cells freeing and breaking up the DNA, and add it to the E.coli cultures. Then you just need to screen and repeat the E.coli cultures until you get the results you want and introduce the resulting bacteria to your target population.
The reason it hasn't happened is because it's inefficient, extremely expensive, and once released can't be restricted to a specific target.
Modifying a viral pathogen has more layers of difficulty (not as much since the advent of crisper but still a pain) as you need to also be able to culture cells in which the virus can reproduce.

Ed

I an unconvinced of your opinions to be swayed to think anything contrary or altering to my original statements expressing my own opinions.

To those having faith in government based and funded reports, and the agencies involved as well as the general unbiased accuracy and honesty of the mainstream media, well, more power to you. I do not share your faith and trust. Whether that be ignorance on my part, or yours, could certainly be subject to some debate, of course.

Perhaps relevant, or perhaps just as a potential irrelevant aside (depending on your own perspective), I STRONGLY recommend interested readers to take the time to obtain and read the book The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I believe it may open your eyes somewhat, or keep them closed, again depending on your own personal perspective of the details covered. IMHO, of course.

One of the reasons I trust the peer reviewed science is that the researchers who do the reviews are not necessarily in the same country and are kept anonymous from the author(s) so it makes the arguments that the papers represent the government's positions because of funding a bit of folklore.
It's easy to dismiss a paper listed and accessed via a government site without reading it because you're biased against the government but the researchers aren't US researchers and are very unlikely to be funded by the US government.
Are you suggesting that all of the world governments are funding research for the same results which would mean that an overreaching global government is already in place so why tolerate any dissent?

Ed

Perhaps you missed my suggestion about that book to read?