Covid-19 News

„When the paper was finally published this week, it sparked global headlines, largely thanks to former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. In a newspaper podcast interview he claimed the research was smoking-gun evidence the virus pandemic had ‘started as an accident’ when a man-made virus escaped from a Chinese lab.

The paper – co-authored by Professor Angus Dalgleish, a renowned oncologist and vaccine researcher who works at St George’s Hospital, University of London, and Birger Sorensen, a Norwegian virologist – contains none of the stark allegations that originally stunned its reviewers.

The initial paper that triggered wild rumours failed stringent tests of verification and is understood to have been rejected in April by eminent international journals such as Nature and the Journal of Virology. Biomedical experts from the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College London are said to have refuted its conclusions.

Then one of the paper’s co-authors, Dr John Fredrik Moxnes, chief scientific adviser to the Norwegian military, asked for his name to be withdrawn. This week, after numerous rewrites, the paper was published by the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery. And those original world-shaking conclusions have now withered to innuendo. No accusation of Chinese manipulation appears.

The rewritten paper describes the virus as a ‘chimera’ – this means it contains the viral genetic material of more than one virus. This may occur naturally when two viruses infect a living creature at the same time.

It is the reason leading investigators believe that the Covid-19 virus acquired its pandemic powers by jumping between species.„

https://www.trendswide.com/spy-chief-in-coronavirus-storm/

Quote from zorud

this means it contains the viral genetic material of more than one virus. This may occur naturally

Assigning a probabilty number to a natural chimera.versus a synthetic chimera . is a problem..

human testimony from a lab worker is a problem too... who would confess to mixing their viruses?

Also interesting is Dalgleish/Sorensen's advice about vaccine development

Dalgleish and Sorensen have some solid reasons based on their experience with HIV ,

why the vaccines targetting the spike protein (currently in development)

won't work and may actually increase infections..

They believe that their Biovacc-19 vaccine will work better.

"

We correctly predicted the failure of all three major HIV/AIDS vaccines over those years,

and specifically the danger of poor immune responses to conserved human-like domains and antibody enhanced infectivity to high mutating domains.

Earlier this year, the latest South African trial was terminated due to futility in preventing HIV transmission (UNAIDS, 2020).

From our past HIV experience, we therefore observe that in the present context, any vaccine design based on the whole Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2

may not be immunogenic due its high human similarity compared to a vaccine with specifically selected NHL epitopes, such as Biovacc-19,,,

. The possibility of inducing autoimmune responses or antibody-dependent enhancements,

needs to be carefully guarded against because there is published evidence that

an HIV candidate vaccine has actually enhanced infectivity (Duerr et al., 2012):

Conflicts of interest declarations

Birger Sørensen is an employee and shareholder of Immunor AS.
Angus Dalgleish is on the scientific advisory board of Immodulon, and has stock options in Immunor AS.

https://www.cambridge.org/core…ction_for_infectivity.pdf

Quote from PhysicsForDummies

Thanks for this interesting story. However the fact that they used "AI" to discover it is a red buzzword flag to me.

I have just one comment. The birthday paradox ....

Quote from RobertBryant

The possibility of inducing autoimmune responses or antibody-dependent enhancements,

needs to be carefully guarded against because there is published evidence that

an HIV candidate vaccine has actually enhanced infectivity (Duerr et al., 2012):

All the vaccine groups for COVID-19 are aware of this evidence, and therefore cautious. Here is some mainstream and accurate comment on the problem and the likelihood it will hit SARS-CoV2 vaccines.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-0323-4

COVID-19 vaccine design: the Janus face of immune enhancement

Although two phase I clinical trials conducted previously for SARS vaccines have not revealed early safety issues, there are concerns based on observations made either in vitro or in experiments where animals received SARS-CoV vaccines. Specifically, those studies identify two potential safety signals in immunized animals following virus challenge: cellular immunopathology; and antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). Here, we briefly summarize this dual or Janus-face of immune enhancement and offer our viewpoint on how this informs COVID-19 vaccine design.

Quote from RobertBryant

Dalgleish and Sorensen have some solid reasons based on their experience with HIV

If you want a vaccine for COVID-19, probably best to start with what experts in coronavirus vaccine development (SARS,MERS, etc) have achieved and learnt, not HIV which is a different type of virus.

Summary of important research on how COVID works, will eventually help us to find better treatments. Good to see speculation get replaced by more informed speculation!

https://www.biorxiv.org/conten…09.142125v1.full.pdf+html

Unravelling the debate on heme effects in COVID-19 infections

Following the deposition of a manuscript stating that SARS-CoV-2 attacks hemoglobin 1-β chain and
captures the porphyrin of its heme (Liu and Li, 2020), a heated debate arose about the scientific
substantiation of the truthfulness of the claims. In this context, one should ask: How realistic is it, in
view of the patients’ constitution that coronavirus components encounter heme and following up on
this, what might be the consequences of such an interaction, if any? Thus, in order to contribute to
the understanding of SARS-CoV-2, its strategies of infection, as well as the pathogenesis and the
course of disease in coronavirus patients, we combined our know-how and expertise for a joint
analysis of the aforementioned issue. On the one hand, we examine the possibility of a direct
interaction of heme with select SARS-CoV-2 proteins and specific host cell proteins by applying our
webserver HeMoQuest (Paul George et al., 2020) that is based on experimental data. One of the most
promising findings was the prediction of heme-binding motifs (HBMs) in the host cell proteins
ACE2 and TMPRSS2. On the other hand, by superimposing the two knowledge graphs, i.e. heme KG
(Humayun et al., 2020) and COVID-19 KG (Domingo-Fernández et al., 2020), we provide insights
into pathways that might play a role when considering heme in the context of COVID-19 infections.
Finally, our results suggest that proinflammatory pathways could connect the pathophysiology of
elevated heme with COVID-19 disease progression.

So expert THH has reasons why the experience with HIV is not applicable to SARS MERS?

Quote from THHuxleynew

what experts in coronavirus vaccine development (SARS,MERS, etc) have achieved and learnt, not HIV which is a different type of virus.

and also knowledge of the present efficacy of MERS SARS vaccines..

AFAIK there are none in the field.

THH might take some time to actually read the paper..before commenting on it..

and discover why the endocytosis mechanism is worthy inter alia of

the paper being accepted by Cambridge,org..

"

The SARS-CoV-2 spike is significantly different from any other SARS that we have studied (Lu et al, 2020)

. The additional charge it carries (SARS-CoV-2 S1, isoelectric point (pI) pI=8.24 versus human SARS-CoV S1, pI= 5.67)
will strongly improve the interactions with the receptor C-type lectin tail on CLEC4M/DC-SIGNR, which may, by itself,
mediate the endocytosis of pathogens by acting as an attachment receptor, as happens for a number of other highly
pathogenic viruses such as Ebolavirus, Marburg, HIV-1, Hepatitis C, Measles, human CytoMegalo Virus, Influenza
and others (Marzi et al., 2004; Uniprot – Q9N2X3; Uniprot – Q2NNX6).

Quote from Zeus46

So no real evidence behind the claim of a genetic marker bought from a lab in Germany then?

I'm not your Nanny. You can find the document on vortex-l around jan/feb this year.

Quote from zorud

This may occur naturally when two viruses infect a living creature at the same time.

You are obviously a dilettante or are you really willing to tell us which animal hosts an AIDS virus and at the same time as a SARS virus ??????

Quote from THHuxleynew

Finally, our results suggest that proinflammatory pathways could connect the pathophysiology of
elevated heme with COVID-19 disease progression.

To date the AIDS virus is the most infectious one we know as most likely a single virus is enough to trigger the illness. The SARS-CoV-19 virus does 100 times stronger bind to the Aace2 receptor than any other known virus thanks to the added AIDS details that as a chimera only could stem from a Wuhan lab personal with an AIDS infection. Even then very unlikely due to the high number (4) of identical inserts of exceptionally small chains.

Quote from RobertBryant

The SARS-CoV-2 spike is significantly different from any other SARS that we have studied (Lu et al, 2020)

Your fringe French doctor Roault already 2 months ago told the world about this fact (from an earlier paper). But for some people here at least two nannies are needed to convince them.

The same dilettante attitude we face here when we noted the people that Ivermectin in vitro extincts the virus in 3 days. In the usual case this would in fact be anecdotal because you would need to show the tested substance is enriched at the place of action, what includes a whole chain of actions.

But in the case of Ivermectin there is no need to show this as it has been done for 3 different virus already (shown to work fine) and all critical steps are thus covered. But even the education of doctors today forces the spill out of dumb people unable to draw conclusions from know facts & mechanisms. This is intentional as the ruling mafia likes to herd obedient man just receiving orders (called recommendations..).

Wyttenbach: I'm eternally grateful you weren't my nanny, as god knows how I'd have turned out!

And I did a little better than searching the archives of vortex-L... I performed a search of the whole internet, and guess what... nada, zilch, zero, F- all.

Although I wasn't that surprised - It's been a recurrent theme when googling your crazed proclamations.

Don't you think something this momentous would have been picked up by the world's media by now? ...Or the news-mafia, if you prefer?

EDIT: Just for a laugh, I tried to find the post on Vortex-L you describe, but due to the nested post structure, poor search facilities, and having to individually click on a large number of unrelated posts, its impossible to find anything.

And that's Rather Handy for you, as lets face it: "Genetic markers bought from a German lab" is just another dose of your nonsense, of which it appears even you are unable to find any link that would pass the most basic of sniff tests... And obviously so... As it would only taken 10 seconds to have googled and posted a link yourself.

(Although I am also grateful to you for pushing me into reading the vortex thread where F. Zdarsnic claims to have been given debris from the Roswell 'crash site' only for it to become apparent that it was only a broken catalytic converter. Brilliant.)

'Glad they do, as it takes a lot of fuel to get here', as one wag said.

Quote from zorud

The rewritten paper describes the virus as a ‘chimera’ – this means it contains the viral genetic material of more than one virus. This may occur naturally when two viruses infect a living creature at the same time.

It is the reason leading investigators believe that the Covid-19 virus acquired its pandemic powers by jumping between species.„

I've never heard of a chimera that hasn't been artificially created. It such has been found in nature I would like to know about it.

Recombination between two different but largely homologous viruses can occur in a host cell, but this is not a chimeric virus as commonly understood.

As far as I'm aware, the closest known relative to the SARS CoV-2 virus is a coronavirus found in a horseshoe bat in southern China, and taken back to the Wuhan institute around 2013, with its sequence published only after the outbreak in 2020. In terms of natural evolution it is at least 20 years removed from the SARS CoV-2 virus. Those who are curious should be wondering how it is that no genetically intermediate viruses have been found. But greatly accelerated evolution can occur in the laboratory by selective passaging through cell cultures and animal hosts.

Quote from Alan Smith

Matt Hancock said today that 85% of contacts had been traced. This is deeply misleading as it relates only to the 5,407 individuals who were reached by contact tracers and ignores the 75% of new cases that were simply not found.

In other words, "simply not found" is the wrong way to put it. They were simply not looked for.

I do not know what the problem is, and why they are only trying to track 25% of cases. My guess is that they do not have enough people. I have read that tracking is labor intensive and you have to have many people per case. Estimates in the U.S. are that 150,000 to 300,000 trackers will be needed. That is to handle 20,000 to 30,000 cases per day. So it takes 10 trackers per case. I guess some of them are talking to the patients while others are trying to find the people they have come in contact with. I guess some cases take more than one day to follow up.

Many of the people in charge of the tracking programs have been doing this for years, mainly for STD, especially AIDS. They say it is much easier to get the patients to talk about coronavirus than STD, because there is nothing shameful about it. They say the most important step in dealing with patients and people who may be infected is to establish trust.

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/4/2…contact-tracing-jobs-apps

Quote from Mark U

I've never heard of a chimera that hasn't been artificially created. It such has been found in nature I would like to know about it.

Recombination between two different but largely homologous viruses can occur in a host cell, but this is not a chimeric virus as commonly understood.

There is also a long interview with Luc Montagner (French TV) where he explains the AIDS inserts and why the virus is lab made. But Luc is the only Nobel that must be a conspiracy story teller ( as for sure some here will believe) as he currently is doing non mainstream research regarding interesting details of DNA replication.

We (Zuerich region 1.4 mio.) had 3 days with 0 infections and today 3 newcones. What a boring job case tracker must be...

We (Switzerland) over all so far had one single corona death with age below 30. A new born baby they brought to Switzerland 2 weeks ago... Conspiracy!!

But for older people tested positive the death rate was over 25%...

President Trump has more or less declared that the pandemic is over. On June 8 he said:

"So we want the continued blanket lockdown to end for the states. We may have some embers or some ashes or we may have some flames coming, but we’ll put them out. We’ll stomp them out. We understand this now. We’ll stomp them out and we’ll stomp them out very, very powerfully."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/bri…rump-jobs-numbers-report/

This is incorrect. The number of cases and deaths per day have not declined much since the peak, and they have not declined at all since the beginning of May. Cases and death in a few states in the northeast decreased by a very large amount, but in many other states they have increased enough to make up for the decline in the northeast. Overall there has been no improvement. The Federal government is doing nothing to "stomp out" the epidemic. Some state governments are.

This is also incorrect because the "blanket lockdown" ended for nearly all states a month ago, and it ended in most districts of the remaining states, such as New York, a month ago. So it wasn't a blanket lockdown.

In Georgia, the 7-day rolling average for cases and deaths are both higher than they were when the Shelter in place rules ended. (https://www.ajc.com/news/coron…d/jvoLBozRtBSVSNQDDAuZxH/) So we definitely have more than embers and ashes. There is still a full-blown epidemic going on in Georgia, and the U.S. Per capita cases and deaths roughly ~200 times higher than most other first-world countries.

Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said: "I think right now, most Americans are not ready to lock back down, and I completely understand that. Here's the bottom line, though, which is that -- I understand people are willing to live alongside this virus. It means that between 800 and 1,000 Americans are going to die every single day. We're going to get another 100,000 deaths by September. So, that's a catastrophic cost."

I disagree with Jha. I do not think people are willing to live alongside this virus. I think they do not realize what is happening. States with increasing cases are doing nothing to stop these cases or control the virus. Some of them are back to doubling every 6 days. The hospitals are again filling up, and under strain. They are running out of supplies again, because the Federal government has done nothing to increase production of masks and other essential supplies. Sooner or later, people will see that family member, a relative, or co-worker has been left an overcrowded hospital hallway to die. They will realized that getting the disease even when you are 25 years old means you have 1 in 5 chances of joining the crowd of hapless patients in the hallway. People will again panic. The economy will shut down again, tighter than before. It is not really open here in Atlanta, where our major industry is travel, conventions, hotels, the airport and so on. That business remains down by 95%. Restaurants and malls are down 75%. If the number of cases and deaths continues to climb in Georgia, the remaining 5% to 25% of these businesses will drop to zero.

Some people say that Trump and the GOP have been focussed on the economy. Some accuse them of being willing to sacrifice lives to help the economy or hold the Dow up. I find that argument problematic. After all, we sacrifice lives for money and convenience all the time, for example in allowing cars to go 65 mph on highways, when a 55 mph speed limit would save thousands of lives. We must trade off some number of lives for money, or civilization will come to a halt. But we do not normally sacrifice a thousand lives a day, indefinitely, when this can easily be prevented. We do not normally sacrifice because leaders are paralyzed by indecision, or because they are ignorant, or stupid. Take Trump's lawyer Giuliani, who does not understand the difference between cancer and contagious disease. He thinks you can "trace" non-contagious diseases. He said: "We should trace everybody for cancer, and heart disease. And obesity. I mean, a lot of things kill you more than Covid-19. So, we should be traced for all those things." Trump is equally stupid, thinking that you can treat lung disease by ingesting disinfectant. It is a mistake to assume that national leaders and influential people are smart, or that they understand as much as a normal 12-year-old child would. Anyone familiar with the history of cold fusion will have put aside that notion decades ago.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/24…am-coronavirus/index.html

If Trump's goal was to save the economy, his strategy is a drastic failure. It had the opposite effect. It made the economy much worse. By doing nothing to reduce the epidemic, and doing nothing during the lockdown, he caused the first economic collapse, and he is now causing the second round of damage, which will surely follow if the cases and deaths begin to increase significantly again, as they are in many states. Or even if they remain stuck at 1,000 deaths per day. In other words, there was never a choice between controlling the epidemic and saving the economy. You must do both. When national leaders ignore the epidemic, or falsely claim it is finished except for "embers," that in itself destroys the economy.

Quote from Alan Smith

Fox News is a bit too political really. So politicians lie? Who' would have thought that possible. Problem is they all lie all the time.

But “Group Think Red” will still believe what they are told to believe from Fox, just like

“Group Think Blue” believes what they are told to believe from CNN.

Blind political automatons, mercy.