(from the discussion) posted:Understanding how viruses and their hosts co-evolve is central to revealing the nature of virus evolution and the determinants of disease emergence. In particular, we lack a quantitative understanding of whether some types of virus, such as those classified into different families or that possess genomes of different nucleic acid types, are better able to jump species boundaries compared to others. To investigate the comparative prevalence of cross-species transmission among viruses we measured the congruence between virus and host phylogenetic trees using a normalized tree topological distance-based approach (nPH85, [14]). If taxonomically related viruses have an evolutionary history of co-divergence with their hosts the virus and host phylogenetic trees should be similar in topology, whereas phylogenetic incongruence is the signature of species jumping. Overall, our analysis revealed absolute departure from co-divergence among all the virus families studied here (nPH85 ≥ 0.6 and supported by the reconciliation analysis) suggesting that cross-species transmission occurs frequently, at least at the level of virus family. Particularly striking was that even the most slowly evolving DNA viruses, which have previously been suggested to represent exemplars of virus-host co-divergence , exhibit relatively common cross-species transmission. Hence, at their most basic, these results indicate that viruses are often exposed to a variety of susceptible host species that provide opportunities for cross-species transmission.
[...]
Overall, we have observed frequent cross-species transmission across the virus families studied here, with relatively little evidence for virus-host co-divergence. Hence, our study suggests that, at the virus family scale in the data analyzed here, host switching plays a major role in the evolution and diversification of viruses and, importantly, that it can occur in viruses of all types. Interestingly, we found that increased sampling of viruses from different host species reveals more frequent species jumping events among viral families. As such, the discovery of new viruses is likely to reveal more instances of cross-species transmission. Undoubtedly, the analysis presented here should be extended to a wider range of data sets as they become available, particularly because increased taxon sampling results in a larger tree space and increases the statistical power of these analyses.
Meursault posted:Yeah that makes sense, that it'd be more likely to be identified there due to their familiarity with the subject. Guess it just made more sense for me to blame it on arrogant scientists rather than poor people who just wanted to chill and have some bad soup. But the disgusting poor people were at fault after all
One likely intermediate host is a pangolin strain, because it's got more similarities in the receptor binding domains (where a jump might happen) than the bat strain RaTG13, despite the bat strain being closer overall. Pangolin scales are used in Chinese traditional medicines so that seems more plausible to me than "bat soup" which isn't exactly a common dish or anything. Also it's mostly the rich in China who eat the "exotic" dishes.
shriekingviolet posted:the foreign Other place where they have the audacity to sell food that didn't come out of a frito-lay assembly line
I remember the good old days when meemaw and peepaw would bring me down to the farmer's market to help them look for that perfect cut of fresh pangolin
shriekingviolet posted:what the fuck is going on with people using these shit words as if they mean anything. i need a drink
sOcIaL diStAnCiNg
88888 posted:I remember the good old days when meemaw and peepaw would bring me down to the farmer's market to help them look for that perfect cut of fresh pangolin
don't exaggerate they were probably looking for chicken gizzards, homemade pork rinds, and unpasteurized goat milk
shriekingviolet posted:what the fuck is a wet market. what busted ass uncreative star trek planet have I landed on where 4 months ago someone decided they needed to invent a new special scary word to describe the foreign Other place where they have the audacity to sell food that didn't come out of a frito-lay assembly line. what the fuck is going on with people using these shit words as if they mean anything. i need a drink
Yeah that's what I'm saying, all the nyt/bbc/Guardian type outlets were pushing that phrase so hard, it seems so manufacturedly fake and racist, I assumed it was bullshit
88888 posted:I remember the good old days when meemaw and peepaw would bring me down to the farmer's market to help them look for that perfect cut of fresh pangolin
reminds me of a childhood memory, a local 'exotic zoo' sideshow visited my own town's farmers market. i was so excited and then inconsolably upset once i got up close, you could smell the suffering
time to get back to this article about the taxidermied tigers with custom fuckholes that netflix show guy had in his attic
i don't think characterizing fresh food markets as an escape from processed food options is accurate either. supermarkets are not in such a predominant position in the food supply infrastructure in china (or really anywhere in the developing/underdeveloped world) as they are in say the us or canada. stall markets are where most people globally get their food, most places don't even have fritolays to eacape from
https://rhizzone.net/forum/topic/15908/
Edited by Belphegor ()
https://sciencespeaksblog.org/2020/04/27/with-evidence-against-the-origin-of-covid-19-being-the-seafood-market-in-december-a-call-to-share-and-discuss-all-data-at-the-73rd-world-health-assembly-in-may/
The origin of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic is still not publicly known. It was initially proposed that the virus spilled over to humans from an animal in December 2019 in the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, then explosively spread outwards. Subsequent data, however, supports an alternative hypothesis that the original human infections began before December, and not in this seafood market.
We interpret these data to be most consistent with a naturally-occurring spillover infection from an animal species to humans at a different location in September-November. Once human-to-human transmission occurred, then infected persons brought the virus into the seafood market where other persons were then infected and brought it out of the market.
MarxUltor posted:theres a really weird aspect of right wing and religious american culture where they just really love repeating odd sounding words or phrases without having the slightest idea what they mean, and therefore make up and attach their own sinister significance.
*standing up to take a heroic bongrip even though i'm falling down drunk*
it's antimaterialism. the primacy of form over substance, symbolic over actual. in the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god (john 1:1, the revisionist fanfiction gospel.)
the obsessions with backmasking, subliminal messaging, Soviet mind control that surely must exist (how else could anything make sense?) are all part of this. evil spells hidden in your dungeons and dragons book. the Wrong Words send everything into chaos, this cult's gnostic heresy is of a Word that (though they wouldn't admit it) subordinates even the will of the Divine
we see here that even the loving mercy of our lord and savior is powerless before The Wrong Words, even the smallest unintentional slip leads to irrevocable damnation
if you're a garburator of diseased culture like myself, you can easily spectate the most naked examples of this unhinged ideology. watch the God's Not Dead (he is, sorry, rip) movies or the timeless classic Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas, or any other hilarious low budget screed faith film, and you'll see constant reinforcement that a smug white dude with The Right Words triumphs over the material for no good fucking reason every time despite not lifting a god damn finger to think or do anything relevant to the situation.
or for the democrat version just watch The West Wing. same thing.
intent, content, meaning, context, none of these are of any significance. everything is subordinate to the authority of the Word. if the words are wrong, everything is wrong. if the words are right, anything is permissible. this is both the root and the flower of exceptionalism: the world must be and shall be as it is spoken by the Word of authority. evidence doesn't matter, consequences don't matter, error and suffering and death don't matter. the Word is right and nothing in the world can gainsay it, any contradiction is a filthy unworthy thing.
and this translates into the deranged expectations of how they execute foreign policy objectives, the delusional "nation building" in Iraq, the people of Syria are going to overthrow Assad so we can move in and build pipelines freely any day now because why wouldn't they? 300 idiot volunteers will overthrow the entirety of Venezuela because the people will surely come to their aid, for some reason. what reason? well the Word is that we're right, so we must be right, and it must be self-evident to the rest of reality that we're right. any opposition is some kind of kantian deliberate evil for its own sake, no other explanation.
and what actually is the Word? well the Word is whatever I goddamn fucking tell you the Word is,
The idea that the virus came from that lab is yet another in an endless parade of examples of China being damned if they do and damned if they don't - scientists there were studying bat viruses because a future pandemic of this kind was predictable as fuck and they were trying to get out ahead of it. By all accounts (of actual scientists and not US diplomats) the lab followed the appropriate safety protocols and there is zero chance the virus came from there.
thirdplace posted:anyone know anything about actual bioweapons? my knowledge is limited to "listened to a podcast once" and "logic" but based on those the idea that someone would try to develop a bioweapon out of a coronavirus is risible, it's far too uncontrollable, and this particular one targets the wrong sorts of people
one thing that gets thrown around a lot is the term "weaponized" and there is this tacit assumption that this means something along the lines of genetically engineered (to be more virulent/deadly), when it doesn't.
to "weponise" a pathogen you basically have to select something suitable which has your desired virulence, mortality and longevity, then work out a way to store it for a long time in a delivery mechanism such that it will still be deadly when you pull the trigger decades later, and also create a delivery mechanism that wont just destroy your pathogen on activation and will actually spread it to people, or crops or livestock effectively. It's not an easy task but its a long way from gene coded plutoxin 7 or whatever
I have been reading this, about SARS: Shi Z, Wang LF. Evolution of SARS Coronavirus and the Relevance of Modern Molecular Epidemiology. Genetics and Evolution of Infectious Disease. 2011;711‐728. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-384890-1.00027-3
27.3. The Animal Link
Due to the rapid spread of the disease and the delay in the identification of the causative agent, there was no detailed epidemiological tracing done at the beginning of the outbreaks, and it was therefore impossible to trace the origin of the virus. However, through retrospective investigation, it emerged that the majority of the early index cases were limited in several cities of the Guangdong province and most of them have a history of contact directly or indirectly with wild animals, including handling, killing and selling them, as well as preparing and serving animal meat in restaurants (He et al., 2003, Xu et al., 2004a, Xu et al., 2004b).
As these epidemic regions have a unique dietary tradition favoring freshly slaughtered game meat, there is a huge trafficking and trading industry dedicated to live animal trading in specialized market, the “wet market.” So naturally, immediately after SARS-CoV was identified as the etiological agent of SARS, studies were conducted in those markets for evidence of SARS-CoV. One of the earliest and most important studies was conducted by a joint team from Hong Kong and Shenzhen in mainland China (Guan et al., 2003). In this investigation, out of 25 samples collected from market animals, SARS-CoV like viruses were isolated from 4 out of 6 masked palm civets (Paguma larvata) and one raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides). Antibodies against SARS-CoV were detected in masked palm civets, raccoon dogs, and Chinese ferret-badgers (Melogale moschata). Genome sequencing indicated that the viruses isolated from civets were almost identical to those from human, suggesting a highly possible zoonotic transmission of SARS-CoV from animal(s) to human (Guan et al., 2003). These data indicated that at least three different animal species were infected by a coronavirus that is closely related to SARS-CoV. This important study provided the first direct evidence that SARS-CoV existed in animals, pointing to an animal link of the SARS outbreaks.
Although three animals were identified as susceptible to SARS-CoV infection, the larger sale volume of civets in comparison to other animals in the market led to them being the focus of subsequent surveillance studies. The role of civets as a major carrier of SARS-CoV in the markets was further confirmed by serological studies involving much large samples (Tu et al., 2004, Kan et al., 2005).
The most detailed epidemiological data proving a direct civet to human transmission of SARS-CoV was obtained during the investigation of the second wave of SARS outbreaks during December 2003 and January 2004. There were two lines of evidences suggesting a direct transmission. First, all four independent cases had the history of direct or indirect contact with civets. Second, sequencing analysis indicated that sequences derived from human samples were more closely related to those in the civets during that period than those from human samples obtained in the major 2002–2003 outbreaks (Wang et al., 2005).
In summary, there is little doubt now that the civet to human transmission is a major source of SARS-CoV introduction into the human population (Wang et al., 2006, Wang and Eaton, 2007, Shi and Hu, 2008).
Synergy posted:for the economic wizards, if the government just bought all the corporate debt at once what would happen?
you can't buy your own debt
Synergy posted:for the economic wizards, if the government just bought all the corporate debt at once what would happen?
this is just me fucking around in the reply window but:
let's say there is one hypercorporation, ultramegazonsoftmart, and one bank, goldman sachs. the bank is complaining that UMZS is defaulting or is likely to default on the corporate debt previously issued, and the bank says this is a problem because whatever. maybe the bank says there's so much of this debt they were counting on, that without it their balance sheet will be fucked and lead to total failure.
regardless of whether or not GS is lying or not, the govt says ok sure. let's buy it. so new money is created, the total number of dollars in the world is 1.2 times what it was the moment before, and maybe this means all previous dollars are worth 1.0/1.2 = 0.83 what they were worth before that moment... but really, this value change is not actually that linear because these new dollars aren't really going anywhere.
the GS balances remain what they were pre-purchase, ultrafuckoffmart doesn't have to pay their debt, but they already couldn't and probably weren't planning to anyway because they were looking for that govt handout.
the mainstream argument is that now, the credit rating of the corporation will be negatively impacted and that's the slap on the wrist, but in a govt bailout situation that won't happen either.
what will happen, long term (but shorter term if it's a really massive amount of money) is that the purchasing power of dollars for large capital assets would go down, raising prices for the asset owning classes, house prices and such, but it would probably not affect in the least any of the consumer prices and worker wages. it would massively exacerbate the already growing gap between homeowners and tenants/homeless. this gets back to the Michael Hudson interview that was posted on the zzone recently which put this in Crystal clear stark terms. there are two "markets" now, the chasm is open, and money circulates in one or the other and almost never makes the leap.
it may even be better to picture it as two fully different currencies. the dollars that are used to buy out corporate debts are not the dollars that you or I will ever see or use.
you could begin to unwind the gap a little by doing mass personal debt purchases by a central bank, but there are so many people who don't even have debt because they can't get on the credit wagon because they don't fit the bank's idea of a stable person. so even that would be middle class bullshit.
imo you need to be going back to some presumably good moment, looking at the total money circulation by social class, and injecting enough money (literally giving it away, probably) into working class accounts so that the balance is reset. and maybe forcing people to buy assets with that money. free $600,000 to everyone who doesn't have a house, applicable only to buy a house, shit like that. and simultaneously make new price control laws to fix house prices from inflating any further.
something like that. idk. I wrote too long of a post. I am going for a walk. I don't know anything about economics.
But now that the shit has hit the fan for the second time, and Quantitative Easing continues, it seems likely that nothing good will come of any of this. It would take some actually radical act by a government to retake said steering wheel in any meaningful sense.
i really hope this all comes to nothing. but the concern is that this now seems to be the trump admin strategy - establish China as the scapegoat for all US coronavirus deaths and misery, push to reopen the economy quickly and recklessly, then point to the scapegoat as the death toll inevitably climbs into the hundreds of thousands, upping the rhetoric in direct proportion to the amount of horror and anguish being felt by the amerikkkan people... well, let's just say this could get uglier.
Meursault posted:The virus definitely came from a lab though right? Like the US's handling of it was criminal and everyone in the Trump admin should go to jail forever and they're just trying to deflect from how guilty they are, and the US definitely shouldn't do sanctions or war or otherwise 'punish' China, but it seems silly to believe that it sprung up randomly like 10 minutes away from the lab doing tests on the same viruses in the same way that we know scientists have mutated them in that past. Or am I missing something
amerikkka was doing at the very least the same research on them and was predicting the outbreak back in like september. china has in the past been victim of brutal genocidal biological attacks, the perpetrators of which were recruited by the US for their own biological weapons programs. The US is also of course founded on biological warfare and has repeatedly introduced infectious diseases to even its own population, events always revealed long after the fact.
(armchair economist viewpoint: you can't actually do that & also it would be war, but they're still gonna talk about it)
chickeon posted:Meursault posted:The virus definitely came from a lab though right? Like the US's handling of it was criminal and everyone in the Trump admin should go to jail forever and they're just trying to deflect from how guilty they are, and the US definitely shouldn't do sanctions or war or otherwise 'punish' China, but it seems silly to believe that it sprung up randomly like 10 minutes away from the lab doing tests on the same viruses in the same way that we know scientists have mutated them in that past. Or am I missing something
amerikkka was doing at the very least the same research on them and was predicting the outbreak back in like september. china has in the past been victim of brutal genocidal biological attacks, the perpetrators of which were recruited by the US for their own biological weapons programs. The US is also of course founded on biological warfare and has repeatedly introduced infectious diseases to even its own population, events always revealed long after the fact.
Haha I didn't say anything about China doing biological warfare, I don't know why you all think getting weirdly defensive about China and replying to stuff you made up in your head is a convincing posting strategy
The US was testing on H1N1 probably as a biological weapon when that leaked out in the 70s, they turned H5N1 airborne in a lab in the Netherlands in 2012, obviously viruses can do zoonotic leaps spontaneously but it happens a lot faster if you're doing it on purpose. https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/ This is the blog post I read about this stuff on, there's a lot of stuff I don't know anything about either way, but the 'wet market' narrative the media was pushing, the weak Nature/Scientific American articles where they say for certain that it's not man-made, that stuff seemed like bullshit and this lays out an alternative for how it could have been done. It's from January so maybe it;s all out of date, or maybe it's just the ramblings of a crank. They don't ever suggest it's a weapon or that China is doing biological warfare, just that everyone is developing these viruses and they leak out and we should probably stop
And one more time: America is bad, I do not think America is good, you don't have to respond to me like I'm saying America is good and China is bad, unless you just like doing it for the practice
招瑤 posted:i like to reply to folks like they're saying china is good
It is, and I agree.
drwhat posted:cancelling every treasury bond China owns somehow, in revenge for coronavirus, definitely seems to be high on the pipe dream list
(armchair economist viewpoint: you can't actually do that & also it would be war, but they're still gonna talk about it)
