G
George Herold
Guest
On Friday, March 13, 2020 at 2:31:14 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
viruses are pretty simple and I think they sequence the whole thing...
and won't that give some clue as to the origin?
George H.
(mostly clueless, counting on experts.)
Yeah IDK. What you suggest sounds possible. Again knowing nothing,On 2020-03-13 14:20, David Brown wrote:
On 13/03/2020 18:52, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-13 13:23, David Brown wrote:
On 13/03/2020 16:51, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-13 11:05, George Herold wrote:
On Friday, March 13, 2020 at 10:24:51 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-13 09:34, George Herold wrote:
On Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 10:17:54 PM UTC-4, Winfield Hill
wrote:
Today I got emails from the CEOs of three companies about their
actions to protect us against Covid-19. Walmart said their stores
are cleaned daily, with sanitizing solutions. Subway said they're
cleaning most-touched surfaces once per
hour. A local pub- restaurant, Tavern in the Square, uses
disinfectant wipes to clean and sanitize all tables, phones, POS-
screens, check presenters, booths, chairs and menus in between
guest's seatings. Plus five other items.
-- Thanks, - Win
Sam Harris had a nice talk with Amesh Adalji.
https://samharris.org/podcast/
Where he says that hand stuff is fine, but that the virus is
mostly spread by water droplets we breath out... say it don't
spray it... with a range of a few meters. Which I guess,
then face masks would help you from not spreading it... by
stopping some of your spray.
He also predicts that in ~ 1 year 30-50% of the US will have had
the virus. And we should be preparing for the medical overload.
George H.
IIRC about ten years ago it was discovered that all endemic 'flu
bugs are descended from the 1918 'flu.
Hmm I have no idea. I'm guessing all the infectious disease books
on amazon are 'sold out' along with the hand sanitizers. :^)
The experts mostly talk about mutations from some animal virus.
The fact that the Wuhan market is only a block away from the Level 4
biocontainment facility strongly suggests that it came from there.
China's a big place--what are the odds of that being an accident?
Especially since the first dozen or so patients hadn't ever been to
that market?
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidity.
I'm not attributing it to malice. When I say "what are the odds of that
being an accident", I'm talking about the _spatial_ coincidence, not the
apparent fact of (accidental) release. There are an awful lot of city
blocks in Wuhan, and a lot more blocks in other cities in China where
all sorts of unsanitary things happen, just like Wuhan.
And an awful lot of these will have other facilities in the
neighbourhood - hospitals, pharmaceutical labs, military installations,
"secret government facilities", or whatever else.
The Chinese biotech folk at not infallible, but they are not idiots
- they take great precautions in dealing with pathogens, just like
in any other country.
Except that in other countries you don't put Level 4 labs in the middle
of fantastically crowded cities. _That_ is certainly stupid. And
precautions sometimes fail--e.g. the Ebola outbreak in Reston, VA, where
the disease returned even after all the monkeys were destroyed and the
entire building fumigated with formaldehyde.
Maybe the Chinese don't release Ebola from their labs? Maybe they don't
have much of that sort of thing in the lab? Maybe there are perfectly
good reasons for the lab being where it is. Maybe it was bad planning.
I think the one think we can be confident about is that neither you, I,
or anyone else here has anywhere close to enough information to suggest
it is anything other than coincidence.
The Reston outbreak didn't come from a biosafety facility, it came from
a bunch of monkeys imported from Africa (or maybe Mindanao). But the
cleanup was conducted by the Fort Detrick folks, who are the best in the
business. (Ask James Arthur--his dad used to run the place.)
China is worse than other countries at this. A Nature article from two
years ago states, "Many staff from the Wuhan lab have been training at a
BSL-4 lab in Lyon, which some scientists find reassuring. And the
facility has already carried out a test-run using a low-risk virus."
"But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped
from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in
Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and
Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture
is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this
will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. 'Diversity of
viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up, and
openness of information are important,' he says."
https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487
Their live animal markets, on the other hand, are swarming with all
sorts of creatures captured illegally by smugglers from all sorts of
places, with no concept of hygiene or infection safety.
But the first dozen or so patients had no connection with the market.
Epidemiology 101, first semester.
Any comments on this?
viruses are pretty simple and I think they sequence the whole thing...
and won't that give some clue as to the origin?
George H.
(mostly clueless, counting on experts.)
There are no guarantees here, but without new incriminating evidence,
the odds are orders of magnitude on side of it having jumped from an
animal host to a human at the live food market in Wuhan.
How many orders, and how did you calculate that?
Gut feeling. It is good enough for Trump, and it is good enough for
people jumping to blame the Wuhan lab.
Okay, so you admit you have nothing.
The ignorant, paranoid, xenophobic and Trumpists of the world would be
happier to believe it is the result of Chinese biowarfare. But that
does not make it realistic.
Pure ad hominem. You've got nothing, so you rag on people you despise.
I don't despise you or anyone else. I despise the "don't think - find
someone to blame" attitude.
Strange way to talk about people you have no strong feelings about, that.
I'm not super fond of the "move along, now, don't get upset, we're all
going to die sometime anyway, and it's all Trump's fault" attitude.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com
