Re: COVID-19 Origins & Research
Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2021 4:39 pm
Off Topic
to peek behind the WaPo paywall --> I still have a number of free 1-month subscriptions to give away - pm thru my profile if interested
Falsehoods Unchallenged Only Fester and Grow
http://thefogbow.com/forum/
Origin
Origins of human coronaviruses with possible intermediate hosts
The most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all coronaviruses is estimated to have existed as recently as 8000 BCE, although some models place the common ancestor as far back as 55 million years or more, implying long term coevolution with bat and avian species.[72] The most recent common ancestor of the alphacoronavirus line has been placed at about 2400 BCE, of the betacoronavirus line at 3300 BCE, of the gammacoronavirus line at 2800 BCE, and the deltacoronavirus line at about 3000 BCE. Bats and birds, as warm-blooded flying vertebrates, are an ideal natural reservoir for the coronavirus gene pool (with bats the reservoir for alphacoronaviruses and betacoronavirus – and birds the reservoir for gammacoronaviruses and deltacoronaviruses). The large number and global range of bat and avian species that host viruses have enabled extensive evolution and dissemination of coronaviruses.[73]
Many human coronaviruses have their origin in bats.[74] The human coronavirus NL63 shared a common ancestor with a bat coronavirus (ARCoV.2) between 1190 and 1449 CE.[75] The human coronavirus 229E shared a common ancestor with a bat coronavirus (GhanaGrp1 Bt CoV) between 1686 and 1800 CE.[76] More recently, alpaca coronavirus and human coronavirus 229E diverged sometime before 1960.[77] MERS-CoV emerged in humans from bats through the intermediate host of camels.[78] MERS-CoV, although related to several bat coronavirus species, appears to have diverged from these several centuries ago.[79] The most closely related bat coronavirus and SARS-CoV diverged in 1986.[80] The ancestors of SARS-CoV first infected leaf-nose bats of the genus Hipposideridae; subsequently, they spread to horseshoe bats in the species Rhinolophidae, then to Asian palm civets, and finally to humans.[81][82]
Unlike other betacoronaviruses, bovine coronavirus of the species Betacoronavirus 1 and subgenus Embecovirus is thought to have originated in rodents and not in bats.[74][83] In the 1790s, equine coronavirus diverged from the bovine coronavirus after a cross-species jump.[84] Later in the 1890s, human coronavirus OC43 diverged from bovine coronavirus after another cross-species spillover event.[85][84] It is speculated that the flu pandemic of 1890 may have been caused by this spillover event, and not by the influenza virus, because of the related timing, neurological symptoms, and unknown causative agent of the pandemic.[86] Besides causing respiratory infections, human coronavirus OC43 is also suspected of playing a role in neurological diseases.[87] In the 1950s, the human coronavirus OC43 began to diverge into its present genotypes.[88] Phylogenetically, mouse hepatitis virus (Murine coronavirus), which infects the mouse's liver and central nervous system,[89] is related to human coronavirus OC43 and bovine coronavirus. Human coronavirus HKU1, like the aforementioned viruses, also has its origins in rodents.[74]
Researchers have discovered coronaviruses lurking in Laotian bats that appear to be the closest known relatives to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, found to date, according to news reports.
In a new study, researchers from the Pasteur Institute in France and the University of Laos captured 645 bats from limestone caves in northern Laos and screened them for viruses related to SARS-CoV-2. They found three viruses — which they dubbed BANAL-52, BANAL-103 and BANAL-236 — that infected horseshoe bats and shared more than 95% of their overall genome with SARS-CoV-2.
One of the viruses, BANAL-52, was 96.8% identical to SARS-CoV-2, according to Nature News. That makes BANAL-52 more genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2 than any other known virus. Previously, the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 was RaTG13, which was found in horseshoe bats in 2013 and shares 96.1% of its genome with SARS-CoV-2, Nature News reported.
What's more, all three of the newly discovered viruses are more similar to SARS-CoV-2 in a key part of their genome — called the receptor binding domain (RBD) — than other known viruses. The RBD is the part of the virus that allows it to bind to host cells. With SARS-CoV-2, the RBD binds to a receptor known as ACE2 on human cells, and the virus uses this receptor as a gateway into cells.
Critically, the new study found that BANAL-52, BANAL-103 and BANAL-236 can bind to ACE2 and use it to enter human cells. So far, other candidates proposed as ancestors of SARS-CoV-2 found in bats, including RaTG13, haven't been able to do this, the researchers said. The three viruses could bind to ACE2 about as well as early strains of SARS-CoV-2 found in Wuhan, they said.
"The receptor binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 looked unusual when it was first discovered because there were so few viruses to compare it to," Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney, who wasn't involved in the research, told Bloomberg. "Now that we are sampling more from nature, we are starting to find these closely related bits of gene sequence," Holmes said.
The authors say their findings support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 resulted from a recombination of viral sequences existing in horseshoe bats.
Still, even though the newly discovered viruses are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, all three viruses lack a sequence for what is known as the "furin cleavage site," which is seen in SARS-CoV-2 and aids the virus's entry into cells, according to Nature News. This means that in order to better understand the origins of SARS-CoV-2 further research is needed to show how and when the furin site was introduced.
Covid ‘was spreading virulently in Wuhan’ as early as summer 2019, report suggests
Chinese government spent nearly twice the amount on PCR tests in 2019, compared to 2018, shows data compiled by Australian cyber security firm
Namita Singh
Labs in China’s Wuhan city dramatically increased the procurement of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) equipment in the second half of 2019, indicating that Covid-19 was “spreading virulently” months before the government reported the first case to the WHO in December 2019, according to a new report.
Data compiled by Internet 2.0, an Australian cyber security company, found that the Chinese government spent nearly twice the amount on PCR tests — used to detect certain viruses — in 2019, compared to the previous year. While China procured the PCR equipment for 36.7m yuan (£4.1mn) in 2018, it spent 67.7m yuan (£7.6m) in 2019.
The report also found that the total PCR procurement contracts rose from 89 in 2018 to 135 in 2019.
The “notable, significant and abnormal” increase in purchases was mainly from four institutions — the People’s Liberation Army Airborne Army Hospital, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, and the Hubei Province Districts Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Robert Potter, chief executive and founder of Internet 2.0, told the Australian that some of the procurement data may be benign. “But taken together it gives us a trend that comprehensively challenged the official narrative that the pandemic started in December,” Mr Potter, also one of the authors of this study, said.
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/chin ... 32574.html
Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh found that convalescent plasma treatment is "futile" to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients, according to findings from a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Convalescent plasma treatment involves taking blood containing antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients and infusing it into people who are currently fighting the virus.
The antibodies were thought to have some ability to help with the recovery process for active infections. Though the treatment style was successful for Ebola, it was deemed ineffective for most critically ill patients with COVID-19, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, I dunno, but could have autoimmune components.Tiredretiredlawyer wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 10:34 am I have a friend who has been diagnosed with and received disability for rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. She had covid. She no longer has symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia. She is working full time and very active.
2020 seems so long ago.... I forgot there was also water sampling. Some water departments kept samples of the waste water, which were later tested for covid. And there it was. I don't remember the dates other than finding it in 12/19 & 1/20 - which were earlier than the first diagnosis in those countries. I *think* Italy, Spain and Washington State reported the findings.Sam the Centipede wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:46 am I don't remember anything about exhumations, but I remember hearing/reading about tests of stored blood samples that had been taken from patients who died during that period and some showed signs of the virus.
In Italy, a COVID-19 epicenter in the earliest days of the pandemic, it became clear that the blood sugar levels of people who were hospitalized with COVID-19 were out of whack. Fiorina became interested in investigating these effects in April 2020. At the time, he was the chief of endocrinology at a hospital in Milan, which saw upwards of 20,000 new cases of COVID-19 on a daily basis—and held one funeral every hour.
One day, a pathologist remarked to Fiorina how strange it was that so many of the patients who had died were hyperglycemic, meaning that their blood sugar was too high—a sign that the pancreas wasn’t doing its job. “I know that people with diabetes are more prone to dying,” Fiorina recalls telling the pathologist at the time. “But there might be something else.”
Fiorina decided to investigate. In May 2021, he published a study of 551 patients with no prior history of diabetes showing that 46 percent were newly hyperglycemic. COVID-19 had completely disrupted the hormone profile of these patients—although their levels had been normal before their infection, now their glucose was dangerously high as their body had become less efficient at using insulin.
Around the same time, autopsies of people who died from COVID-19 also showed that the virus had infected the pancreas—which researchers confirmed in a set of studies published in the journal Cell Metabolism. Jackson, who was among those researchers, found that SARS-CoV-2 infects and kill the beta cells that produce insulin. It’s thought that these cells are not easily replenished—and losing them makes you more susceptible to diabetes.
I don't know about 'historical' sampling, but every authority in Australia is testing waste water constantly and using it as a guide to focus testing surges. I have to assume that is happening all over the world.Lani wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:38 pm2020 seems so long ago.... I forgot there was also water sampling. Some water departments kept samples of the waste water, which were later tested for covid. And there it was. I don't remember the dates other than finding it in 12/19 & 1/20 - which were earlier than the first diagnosis in those countries. I *think* Italy, Spain and Washington State reported the findings.Sam the Centipede wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:46 am I don't remember anything about exhumations, but I remember hearing/reading about tests of stored blood samples that had been taken from patients who died during that period and some showed signs of the virus.
It should be. Then we'd know when another covid surge is incoming.keith wrote: ↑Fri Dec 17, 2021 10:57 pmI don't know about 'historical' sampling, but every authority in Australia is testing waste water constantly and using it as a guide to focus testing surges. I have to assume that is happening all over the world.Lani wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:38 pm2020 seems so long ago.... I forgot there was also water sampling. Some water departments kept samples of the waste water, which were later tested for covid. And there it was.Sam the Centipede wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:46 am I don't remember anything about exhumations, but I remember hearing/reading about tests of stored blood samples that had been taken from patients who died during that period and some showed signs of the virus.