Manic of a panic is geopolitical

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kriesel

The wife of the man killed by fish tank cleaner containing chloroquine phosphate is now presumably the subject of a homicide investigation. https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/p...ine-phosphate/

The story has the following appended:

UPDATE, April 29, 11:17 A.M.: After publication, a spokesman for the Mesa City Police Department told the Free Beacon that it is "normal protocol" for the homicide department to investigate "all death cases (other than obvious natural causes)" and that the death "has not been ruled a homicide at this time."

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by kriesel

Not only the bulk lens material, but the coatings may be an issue. Antireflection coatings are commonly designed to pass 400-700nm or 350 - 750 or so. Some consumer lenses have some UVA transmission, and UV blocking filters are offered as accessories.

Film would pick up UV and cause some distortion. So it has been quite common for photographers to put a UV filter on the front of their lenses. Also, the filter is a cheap and replaceable method of protecting the lens itself from impacts and scratches.

K1000 years forever!

[kriesel]

UN World Food Programme hunger pandemic projection related to Covid19 countermeasures https://www.wfp.org/
Possible early vaccine. https://covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/about

[Dr Sardonicus]

Drug proves effective against virus as economic damage rises

Scientists on Wednesday announced the first effective treatment against the coronavirus — an experimental drug that can speed the recovery of COVID-19 patients — in a major medical advance that came as the economic gloom caused by the scourge deepened in the U.S. and Europe.

The U.S. government said it is working to make the antiviral medication remdesivir available to patients as quickly as possible.

"What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious-disease expert. "This will be the standard of care."

[Dr Sardonicus]

Trump harshly blames China for pandemic; a lab 'mistake'?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday speculated that China could have unleashed the coronavirus on the world due to some kind of horrible "mistake," and his intelligence agencies said they are still examining a notion put forward by the president and aides that the pandemic may have resulted from an accident at a Chinese lab.

Trump even suggested the release could have been intentional.
<snip>
The U.S. was providing funding to the Wuhan lab for its research on coronaviruses, Michael Morell, former acting director and deputy director of the CIA, said Thursday.

He said State Department cables indicate that there have been concerns in past years among U.S. officials about the safety protocols at that lab. If the virus did escape from a Chinese lab, it not only reflects negatively on China but also on the United States for providing research funding to a lab that has safety concerns, Morell said during an online forum hosted by the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University.

"So if it did escape, we're all in this together," Morell said. "This is not a gotcha for China. This is a gotcha for both of us."

[kriesel]

UK year over year March death mildly increased; US is DOWN 15% per this source

https://www.grassfire.com/what_total...f_covid_impact

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by kriesel

UK year over year March death mildly increased; US is DOWN 15% per this source

I grabbed all the data that they had and plotted it. The red is this season, the bold blue line is the mean. I don't think there is anything to it. Just pick limited data and make sure there is a higher than average year in it. (And I am guessing that the drop is principally road deaths. But there is that spike afterward.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Trump harshly blames China for pandemic; a lab 'mistake'?

Anything for a distraction. "We're doing Great! We're testing more than the rest of the solar system combined! No! I never said that!" begins to wear thin. Then it's time to fall back on:

SORRY. YELLOW DOES NOT STAND OUT
¡¡¡¡¡THE YELLOW PERIL!!!!!

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Trump harshly blames China for pandemic; a lab 'mistake'?

Deflection-from-own-incompetence to be sure, but from what I've read, the lab-accident possibility should not be discounted. An NC reader offers this nugget:

The only actual evidentiary trail I’ve seen sourcing the Wuhan virus is this one. By an American long-term resident of Beijing, it documents a virology lab post-doc officially disappeared after contracting symptoms following an accident involving bat poo.
The US has given this lab $2.7 million in recent years (so it’s not just a doomsday lab), and criticized its containment practices in 2015. This story should sprout legs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

But if true, the lab in question was receiving some funding from the U.S. - if you didn't like their containment practices, you should've cut funding. (OTOH, there is the "if we cut off funding, the research will continue, possibly with worse safeguards" aspect.)

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Deflection-from-own-incompetence to be sure, but from what I've read, the lab-accident possibility should not be discounted. An NC reader offers this nugget:

But if true, the lab in question was receiving some funding from the U.S. - if you didn't like their containment practices, you should've cut funding. (OTOH, there is the "if we cut off funding, the research will continue, possibly with worse safeguards" aspect.)

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ob...han-lab-grant/
While it isn't unusual to see international cooperation in the field of virology, this claim stretches the truth.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by kladner

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ob...han-lab-grant/
While it isn't unusual to see international cooperation in the field of virology, this claim stretches the truth.

Oh, please, why bring Snopes and their inane partisan-colored "fact checking" into this? I said "the lab in question was receiving some funding from the US", and didn't mention any specific administration. Now your Snopes link, busily defending the "Obama legacy" from besmirchment:

"not all of that $3.7 million went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and not all of the funding took place under the Obama administration. Approximately $700,000 of the $3.7 million total was approved under Donald Trump."

None of which contradicts what I wrote, nor contributes anything meaningful to the discussion. In fact, Trump directed the NIH to terminate said grant, but that is meeting push-back as possibly illegal:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...es-critics-say

Note that Anthony Fauci also backed the research in question:

just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.

SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated in bats. U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus had occurred naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the Wuhan lab. (At this point most scientists say it's possible—but not likely—that the pandemic virus was engineered or manipulated.)

Dr. Fauci did not respond to Newsweek's requests for comment. NIH responded with a statement that said in part: "Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic.... scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory."

The NIH research consisted of two parts. The first part began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses, and had a budget of $3.7 million. The program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist at the Wuhan lab, and other researchers to investigate and catalogue bat coronaviruses in the wild. This part of the project was completed in 2019.

A second phase of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was run by EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group, under the direction of President Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. NIH canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24th, Politico reported. Daszak did not immediately respond to Newsweek requests for comment.

The project proposal states: "We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential."

In layman's terms, "spillover potential" refers to the ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that the virus be able to attach to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and other organs.

According to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail.

In that context, the NIH's "there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory" is highly disingenuous - so maybe it wasn't created in a lab from scratch, but the specific genetic enhancements that allowed it to jump into humans were in fact engineered in a lab? That is precisely what "gain of function" refers to, and note that, say, bringing together previously-separate viral strains in a lab animal in order to produce new viral hybrids would make such hybrids indistinguishable from "natural" ones. Yes, extraordinary claims require a high standard of evidence, but the blanket denials don't cut it here, given the lab in question was [a] near the epicenter of the outbreak and [b] was carrying out precisely the kind of research which produces "enhanced hybrids" such as the one that sparked the pandemic.