4:00 PM 4/26/2020 - We Still Dont Know How the Coronavirus Is Killing Us
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Michael Novakhov - SharedNewsLinks  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| We Still Dont Know How the Coronavirus Is Killing Us | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Omar Rodriguez organizes bodies in the Gerard J. Neufeld funeral home in Elmhurst on April 22. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Were committed to keeping our readers informed. Weve removed our paywall from essential coronavirus news stories. Become a subscriber to support our journalists. Subscribe now. Over the last few weeks, the country has managed to stabilize the spread of the coronavirus sufficiently enough to begin debating when and in what ways to reopen, and to normalize, against all moral logic, the horrifying and ongoing death toll thousands of Americans dying each day, in multiples of 9/11 even now with the virus seemingly under control. The death rate is no longer accelerating, but holding steady, which is apparently the point at which an onrushing terror can begin fading into background noise. Meanwhile, the disease itself appears to be shape-shifting before our eyes. In an acute column published April 13, the New York Times Charlie Warzel listed 48 basic questions that remain unanswered about the coronavirus and what must be done to protect ourselves against it, from how deadly it is to how many people caught it and shrugged it off to how long immunity to the disease lasts after infection (if any time at all). Despite the relentless, heroic work of doctors and scientists around the world, he wrote, theres so much we dont know. The 48 questions he listed, he was careful to point out, did not represent a comprehensive list. And those are just the coronaviruss known unknowns. In the two weeks since, weve gotten some clarifying information on at least a handful of Warzels queries. In early trials, more patients taking the Trump-hyped hydroxychloroquinine died than those who didnt, and the FDA has now issued a statement warning coronavirus patients and their doctors from using the drug. The World Health Organization got so worried about the much-touted antiviral remdesivir, which received a jolt of publicity (and stock appreciation) a few weeks ago on rumors of positive results, the organization leaked an unpublished, preliminary survey showing no benefit to COVID-19 patients. Globally, studies have consistently found exposure levels to the virus in most populations in the low single digits meaning dozens of times more people have gotten the coronavirus than have been diagnosed with it, though still just a tiny fraction of the number needed to achieve herd immunity. In particular hot spots, the exposure has been significantly more widespread one survey in New York City found that 21 percent of residents may have COVID-19 antibodies already, making the city not just the deadliest community in the deadliest country in a world during the deadliest pandemic since AIDS, but also the most infected (and, by corollary, the farthest along to herd immunity). A study in Chelsea, Massachusetts, found an even higher and therefore more encouraging figure: 32 percent of those tested were found to have antibodies, which would mean, at least in that area, the disease was only a fraction as severe as it mightve seemed at first glance, and that the community as a whole could be as much as halfway along to herd immunity. In most of the rest of the country, the picture of exposure we now have is much more dire, with much more infection almost inevitably to come. But there is one big question that didnt even make it onto Warzels list that has only gotten more mysterious in the weeks since: How is COVID-19 actually killing us? We are now almost six months into this pandemic, which began in November in Wuhan, with 50,000 Americans dead and 200,000 more around the world. If each of those deaths is a data point, together they represent a quite large body of evidence from which to form a clear picture of the pandemic threat. Early in the epidemic, the coronavirus was seen as a variant of a familiar family of disease, not a mysterious ailment, however infectious and concerning. But while uncertainties at the population level confuse and frustrate public-health officials, unsure when and in what form to shift gears out of lockdowns, the disease has proved just as mercurial at the clinical level, with doctors revising their understanding of COVID-19s basic pattern and weaponry indeed often revising that understanding in different directions at once. The clinical shape of the disease, long presumed to be a relatively predictable respiratory infection, is getting less clear by the week. Lately, it seems, by the day. As Carl Zimmer, probably the countrys most respected science journalist, asked virologists in a tweet last week, is there any other virus out there that is this weird in terms of its range of symptoms? You probably have a sense of the range of common symptoms, and a sense that the range isnt that weird: fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath have been, since the beginning of the outbreak, the familiar, oft-repeated group of tell-tale signs. But while the CDC does list fever as the top symptom of COVID-19, so confidently that for weeks patients were turned away from testing sites if they didnt have an elevated temperature, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, as many as 70 percent of patients sick enough to be admitted to New York States largest hospital system did not have a fever. Over the past few months, Bostons Brigham and Womens Hospital has been compiling and revising, in real time, treatment guidelines for COVID-19 which have become a trusted clearinghouse of best-practices information for doctors throughout the country. According to those guidelines, as few as 44 percent of coronavirus patients presented with a fever (though, in their meta-analysis, the uncertainty is quite high, with a range of 44 to 94 percent). Cough is more common, according to Brigham and Womens, with between 68 percent and 83 percent of patients presenting with some cough though that means as many as three in ten sick enough to be hospitalized wont be coughing. As for shortness of breath, the Brigham and Womens estimate runs as low as 11 percent. The high end is only 40 percent, which would still mean that more patients hospitalized for COVID-19 do not have shortness of breath than do. At the low end of that range, shortness of breath would be roughly as common among COVID-19 patients as confusion (9 percent), headache (8 to 14 percent), and nausea and diarrhea (3 to 17 percent). That the ranges are so wide themselves tells you that the disease is presenting in very different ways in different hospitals and different populations of different patients leading, for instance, some doctors and scientists to theorize the virus might be attacking the immune system like HIV does, with many others finding the disease is triggering something like the opposite response, an overwhelming overreaction of the immune system called a cytokine storm. The most bedeviling confusion has arisen around the relationship of the disease to breathing, lung function, and oxygenation levels in the blood typically, for a respiratory illness, a quite predictable relationship. But for weeks now, front-line doctors have been expressing confusion that so many coronavirus patients were registering lethally low blood-oxygenation levels while still appearing, by almost any vernacular measure, pretty okay. Its one reason theyve begun rethinking the initial clinical focus on ventilators, which are generally recommended when patients oxygenation falls below a certain level, but seemed, after a few weeks, of unclear benefit to COVID-19 patients, who may have done better, doctors began to suggest, on lesser or different forms of oxygen support. For a while, ventilators were seen so much as the essential tool in treating life-threatening coronavirus that shortages (and the presidents unwillingness to invoke the Defense Production Act to manufacture them quickly) became a scandal. But 80 percent of New York patients put on ventilators died. In China, the figure was 86 percent. On April 20 in the New York Times, an ER doctor named Richard Levitan who had been volunteering at Bellevue proposed that the phenomenon of seemingly stable patients registering lethally low oxygen levels might be explained by silent hypoxia the air sacs in the lung collapsing, not getting stiff or heavy with fluid, as is the case with the pneumonias doctors had been using as models in their treatment of COVID-19. But whether this explanation is universal, limited to the patients at Bellevue, or somewhere in between is not yet entirely clear. A couple of days later, in a pre-print paper others questioned, scientists reported finding that the ability of the disease to mutate has been vastly underestimated investigating the disease as it appeared in just 11 patients, they said they found 30 mutations. The most aggressive strains could generate 270 times as much viral load as the weakest type, the South China Morning-Post reported. These strains also killed the cells the fastest. That same day, the Washington Post reported on another theory gaining traction among American doctors treating the disease that one key could be the way COVID-19 affects the blood of patients, producing much more clotting. Autopsies have shown that some peoples lungs are filled with hundreds of microclots, the Post reported. Errant blood clots of a larger size can break off and travel to the brain or heart, causing a stroke or a heart attack. But the bigger-picture perspective the newspaper offered is perhaps more eye-opening and to the point: One month ago, as the country went into lockdown to prepare for the first wave of coronavirus cases, many doctors felt confident that they knew what they were dealing with. Based on early reports, covid-19 appeared to be a standard variety respiratory virus, albeit a very contagious and lethal one with no vaccine and no treatment. But theyve since become increasingly convinced that covid-19 attacks not only the lungs, but also the kidneys, heart, intestines, liver and brain.That is a dizzying list. But it is not even comprehensive. In a fantastic survey published April 17 (How does coronavirus kill? Clinicians trace a ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes, by Meredith Wadman, Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Jocelyn Kaiser, and Catherine Matacic), Science magazine took a thorough, detailed tour of the ever-evolving state of understanding of the disease. Despite the more than 1,000 papers now spilling into journals and onto preprint servers every week, Science concluded, a clear picture is elusive, as the virus acts like no pathogen humanity has ever seen. In a single illuminating chart, Science lists the following organs as being vulnerable to COVID-19: brain, eyes, nose, lungs, heart, blood vessels, livers, kidneys, intestines. That is to say, nearly every organ: And the disparate impacts were significant ones: Heart damage was discovered in 20 percent of patients hospitalized in Wuhan, where 44 percent of those in ICU exhibited arrhythmias; 38 percent of Dutch ICU patients had irregular blood clotting; 27 percent of Wuhan patients had kidney failure, with many more showing signs of kidney damage; half of Chinese patients showed signs of liver damage; and, depending on the study, between 20 percent and 50 percent of patients had diarrhea. On April 15, the Washington Post reported that, in New York and Wuhan, between 14 and 30 percent of ICU patients had lost kidney function, requiring dialysis. New York hospitals were treating so much kidney failure they need more personnel who can perform dialysis and have issued an urgent call for volunteers from other parts of the country. They also are running dangerously short of the sterile fluids used to deliver that therapy. The result, the Post said, was rationed care: patients needing 24-hour support getting considerably less. On Saturday, the paper reported that [y]oung and middle-aged people, barely sick with COVID-19, are dying from strokes. Many of the patients described didnt even know they were sick: The patients chart appeared unremarkable at first glance. He took no medications and had no history of chronic conditions. He had been feeling fine, hanging out at home during the lockdown like the rest of the country, when suddenly, he had trouble talking and moving the right side of his body. Imaging showed a large blockage on the left side of his head. Oxley gasped when he got to the patients age and covid-19 status: 44, positive.But the patients age wasnt the only abnormality of the case: As Oxley, an interventional neurologist, began the procedure to remove the clot, he observed something he had never seen before. On the monitors, the brain typically shows up as a tangle of black squiggles like a can of spaghetti, he said that provide a map of blood vessels. A clot shows up as a blank spot. As he used a needlelike device to pull out the clot, he saw new clots forming in real-time around it.These strokes, several doctors who spoke to the Post theorized, could explain the high number of patients dying at home four times the usual rate in New York, many or most of them, perhaps, dying quite suddenly. According to the Brigham and Womens guidelines, only 53 percent of COVID-19 patients have died from respiratory failure alone. Its not unheard of, of course, for a disease to express itself in complicated or hard-to-parse ways, attacking or undermining the functioning of a variety of organs. And its common, as researchers and doctors scramble to map the shape of a new disease, for their understanding to evolve quite quickly. But the degree to which doctors and scientists are, still, feeling their way, as though blindfolded, toward a true picture of the disease cautions against any sense that things have stabilized, given that our knowledge of the disease hasnt even stabilized. Perhaps more importantly, its a reminder that the coronavirus pandemic is not just a public-health crisis but a scientific one as well. And that as deep as it may feel we are into the coronavirus, with tens of thousands dead and literally billions in precautionary lockdown, we are still in the very early stages, when each new finding seems as likely to cloud or complicate our understanding of the coronavirus as it is to clarify it. Instead, confidence gives way to uncertainty. In the space of a few months, weve gone from thinking there was no asymptomatic transmission to believing it accounts for perhaps half or more of all cases, from thinking the young were invulnerable to thinking they were just somewhat less vulnerable, from believing masks were unnecessary to requiring their use at all times outside the house, from panicking about ventilator shortages to deploying pregnancy massage pillows instead. Six months since patient zero, we still have no drugs proven to even help treat the disease. Almost certainly, we are past the Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals stage of this pandemic. But how far past? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 11:47 AM 4/26/2020 - I think, that the Covid-19 infection was brought to Lombardy by the tourists returning from the Munich Oktoberfest in 2019. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 ___________________________________________________________________ - https://tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/1147-am-4262020-i-think-that-covid-19.html _________________________________________________________ To: Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna - AISE: <a href="mailto:info@sicurezzanazionale.gov.it">info@sicurezzanazionale.gov.it</a> Dear Sirs: I think, that the Covid-19 infection was brought to Lombardy by the tourists returning from the Munich Oktoberfest in 2019. I respectfully recommend to you to look into this connection and to explore it fully by tracing the contacts, among the other relevant avenues of investigations. See the details in my blogs. Sincerely, Michael Novakhov 11:47 AM 4/26/2020 _________________________________________ Blogs | In Brief
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| 10:47 AM 4/26/2020 - mikenov on Twitter: The STUPID Dogs of the FBI | RT @PressTV: President Rouhani: #Iran closely watching US moves | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
https://tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/1047-am-4262020-mikenov-on-twitter-rt.html
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| What went wrong? Italy tries to figure out why it got so battered by COVID-19 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ROME (AP) As Italy prepares to emerge from the Wests first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly clear that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europes hardest-hit country.
Italy had the bad luck of being the first Western nation to be slammed by the outbreak, and its total of 26,000 fatalities lags behind only the US in the global death toll. Italys first homegrown case was recorded February 21, at a time when the World Health Organization was still insisting the virus was containable and not nearly as infectious as the flu. But theres also evidence that demographics and health care deficiencies combined with political and business interests to expose Lombardys 10 million people in ways unseen anywhere else, particularly the most vulnerable in nursing homes. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up Virologists and epidemiologists say what went wrong there will be studied for years, given how the outbreak overwhelmed a medical system considered one of Europes best. In neighboring Veneto, the impact was significantly more controlled. Prosecutors are deciding whether to lay any criminal blame for the hundreds of dead in nursing homes, many of whom arent even counted in Lombardys official death toll of 13,269. By contrast, Lombardys front-line doctors and nurses are being hailed as heroes for risking their lives to treat the sick under extraordinary levels of stress, exhaustion, isolation and fear. Even after Italy registered its first homegrown case, doctors didnt understand the unusual way COVID-19 could present itself, with some patients experiencing a rapid decline in their ability to breathe. This was clinical information we didnt have, said Dr. Maurizio Marvisi, a pneumologist at the San Camillo private clinic in hard-hit Cremona.  Lombardy region president Attilio Fontana arrives to attend a news conference presenting a new hospital Ospedalefieramilano to treat coronavirus patients in Milan, Italy, March 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)Italy was forced to rely on home care in part because of its low ICU capacity: After years of budget cuts, Italy went into the emergency with 8.6 ICU beds per 100,000 people, below the average of 15.9 within the developed countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Since only those showing strong symptoms were being tested because Lombardys labs couldnt process any more, these family doctors didnt know if they themselves were positive, much less their patients. The doctors also had no guidelines on when to admit the sick or refer them to specialists and didnt have the same access to protective equipment as hospitals. Some 20,000 Italian medical personnel have been infected and 150 doctors have died. Two days after Italy registered its first case in the Lombardy province of Lodi, sparking a quarantine in 10 towns, another positive case was registered more than an hours drive away in Alzano in the province of Bergamo. By March 2, the Superior Institute of Health recommended Alzano and nearby Nembro be sealed off like the Lodi towns. But political authorities never implemented that recommendation, allowing the infection to spread for a second week until all of Lombardy was locked down March 7. Asked why he didnt seal off Bergamo province sooner, Premier Giuseppe Conte argued that Lombardys regional government could have done so on its own. Lombardys governor, Attilio Fontana, said if there was a mistake, it was made by both. I dont think that there was blame in this situation.  In this April 16, 2020 file photo, medical staff tend to a patient in the emergency COVID-19 ward at the San Carlo Hospital in Milan, Italy. (AP Photo/Antonio Calann)Probably for political reasons, it wasnt done, he told reporters. Unions and mayors of some of Lombardys hardest-hit cities now say the countrys main industrial lobby group, Confindustria, put enormous pressure on authorities to resist production shutdowns, claiming the economic cost would be too great in a region responsible for 21% of Italys GDP. On February 28, a week into Italys outbreak and well after more than 100 cases had been registered in Bergamo, the provinces branch of Confindustria launched a social media campaign aimed at reassuring skittish investors. It insisted the outbreak was no worse than elsewhere and that production in provincial steel mills and other industries were unaffected. Even after the national government locked down all of Lombardy March 7, it allowed factories to stay open, sparking strikes from workers worried that their health was being sacrificed. It was a huge error. They should have taken the example where the first cluster was found, said Giambattista Morali of the metalworkers union in the Bergamo town of Dalmine. While the regional government focused on finding new ICU beds, its testing capacity lagged and Lombardys nursing homes were left to fend for themselves. Of particular attention to Milan prosecutors investigating deaths in care facilities was the March 8 decision by the regional government to allow recovering COVID-19 patients to be housed in nursing homes to free up hospital beds. Another regional decree March 30 told nursing home directors to not hospitalize sick residents over 75 if they had other health problems and avoid further risking their health during transport.
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| 2:18 PM 4/25/2020 » Did the COVID-19 virus originate from a lab or nature? Examining the evidence for different hypotheses of the novel coronavirus origins 25/04/20 10:24 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Coronavirus Puts Italys Most Vicious Mobsters Back on the Street https://www.thedailybeast.com/coronavirus-puts-italys-most-vicious-mobsters-back-on-the-street?source=twitter&via=desktop via @thedailybeast _______________________________________________________________ https://tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/did-covid-19-virus-originate-from-lab.html _____________________________________________________________ Blogs | In Brief
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» mikenov on Twitter: #Tweets And #News - From #MichaelNovakhov: #COVID19 #Crisis Has #Exposed #US #Weaknesses to Biote... tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid-
25/04/20 12:29 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) #Tweets And #News - From #MichaelNovakhov: #COVID19 #Crisis Has #Exposed #US #Weaknesses to Biote... tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid- Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 4:29pm mikenov on Twitter
» COVID-19 Crisis Has Exposed US Weaknesses to Bioterror - Saturday April 25th, 2020 at 10:41 AM
25/04/20 12:28 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks Michael_Novakhov shared this story from Tweets And News - From Michael Novakhov. <a href="https://tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid-19-crisis-has-exposed-us.html" rel="nofollow">https://tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid-19-crisis-has-exposed-us.html</a> COVID-19 Crisis Has Exposed US Weaknesses to Bioterror Saturday April 25 th ,...
» mikenov on Twitter: Coronavirus Puts Italys Most Vicious Mobsters Back on the Street thedailybeast.com/coronavirus-pu via @thedailybeast
25/04/20 11:59 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Coronavirus Puts Italys Most Vicious Mobsters Back on the Street thedailybeast.com/coronavirus-pu via @thedailybeast Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 3:59pm mikenov on Twitter
» COVID-19 Crisis Has Exposed US Weaknesses to Bioterror
25/04/20 10:41 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks Michael_Novakhov shared this story from Comments on: COVID-19 Crisis Has Exposed US Weaknesses to Bioterror. People wearing face masks are seen in the Times Square subway station during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19,)...
» mikenov on Twitter: COVID-19 Crisis Has Exposed US Weaknesses to Bioterror algemeiner.com/2020/04/24/cov
25/04/20 10:41 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) COVID-19 Crisis Has Exposed US Weaknesses to Bioterror algemeiner.com/2020/04/24/cov Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 2:41pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Sinaloa Cartel Shares Food Bags Bearing Bin Ladens Face in Mexican Border State breitbart.com/border/2020/04 via @BreitbartNews
25/04/20 10:35 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Sinaloa Cartel Shares Food Bags Bearing Bin Ladens Face in Mexican Border State breitbart.com/border/2020/04 via @BreitbartNews Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 2:35pm mikenov on Twitter
» German Biological Weapons
25/04/20 10:28 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks Michael_Novakhov shared this story . The First World War was a period of transition between the pre-modern and modern ages of warfare. The war saw cavalries but also trench warfare, the beginning of air and tank use, and multilateral inv...
» mikenov on Twitter: German Biological Weapons globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/germ
25/04/20 10:28 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) German Biological Weapons globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/germ Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 2:28pm mikenov on Twitter
» Did the COVID-19 virus originate from a lab or nature? Examining the evidence for different hypotheses of the novel coronavirus origins
25/04/20 10:24 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks Michael_Novakhov shared this story from Comments on: Did the COVID-19 virus originate from a lab or nature? Examining the evidence for different hypotheses of the novel coronavirus origins. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak i...
» mikenov on Twitter: Did the COVID-19 virus originate from a lab or nature? Examining the evidence for different hypotheses of the novel coronavirus origins - Health Feedback healthfeedback.org/did-the-covid-
25/04/20 10:23 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Did the COVID-19 virus originate from a lab or nature? Examining the evidence for different hypotheses of the novel coronavirus origins - Health Feedback healthfeedback.org/did-the-covid- Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020...
» mikenov on Twitter: hypothesis for natural zoonosis is the one that fits all available evidence, is most parsimonious, and best satisfies the concept of Occams Razorthat the simplest solution is most likely the right one. healthfeedback.org/did-the-covi
25/04/20 10:23 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) hypothesis for natural zoonosis is the one that fits all available evidence, is most parsimonious, and best satisfies the concept of Occams Razorthat the simplest solution is most likely the right one. healthfeedback.org/did-the-covid-...
» mikenov on Twitter: Did the COVID-19 virus originate from a lab or nature? Examining the evidence for different hypotheses of the novel coronavirus origins healthfeedback.org/did-the-covid- via @HealthFeedback
25/04/20 10:21 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Did the COVID-19 virus originate from a lab or nature? Examining the evidence for different hypotheses of the novel coronavirus origins healthfeedback.org/did-the-covid- via @HealthFeedback Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 20...
» mikenov on Twitter: New York state's coronavirus death toll surpasses 16,000 nypost.com/2020/04/24/new via @nypmetro
25/04/20 10:20 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) New York state's coronavirus death toll surpasses 16,000 nypost.com/2020/04/24/new via @nypmetro Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 2:20pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: New COVID-19 vaccine shows promise in monkeys. Next step: humans. livescience.com/experimental-c
25/04/20 10:07 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) New COVID-19 vaccine shows promise in monkeys. Next step: humans. livescience.com/experimental-c Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 2:07pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Department of Corrections gives plan to release around 2,000 inmates during COVID-19 wset.com/news/coronavir
25/04/20 10:05 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Department of Corrections gives plan to release around 2,000 inmates during COVID-19 wset.com/news/coronavir Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 2:05pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Coronavirus: Nearly 90% of Brits say they're coping well during the COVID-19 outbreak news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-yo
25/04/20 10:03 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Coronavirus: Nearly 90% of Brits say they're coping well during the COVID-19 outbreak news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-yo Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 2:03pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Plans are in the works to close the field hospital at the Javits Center and send the USNS Comfort hospital ship home, as cases in the city decline, according to a Federal Emergency Management Agency official connectradio.fm/2020/04/24/
25/04/20 10:02 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Plans are in the works to close the field hospital at the Javits Center and send the USNS Comfort hospital ship home, as cases in the city decline, according to a Federal Emergency Management Agency official connectradio.fm/2020/04/24/co...
» mikenov on Twitter: Photos of the Brooklyn Bridge empty, eerie during coronavirus outbreak - Business Insider businessinsider.com/brooklyn-bridg
25/04/20 09:58 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Photos of the Brooklyn Bridge empty, eerie during coronavirus outbreak - Business Insider businessinsider.com/brooklyn-bridg Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 1:58pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Mutual mistrust will wreck Netanyahu-Gantz coronavirus emergency government haaretz.com/israel-news/.p
25/04/20 09:54 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Mutual mistrust will wreck Netanyahu-Gantz coronavirus emergency government haaretz.com/israel-news/.p Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 1:54pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Coronavirus outbreak strikes another U.S. Navy ship news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-ou
25/04/20 09:47 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) Coronavirus outbreak strikes another U.S. Navy ship news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-ou Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 1:47pm mikenov on Twitter
» Coronavirus outbreak strikes another U.S. Navy ship
25/04/20 09:47 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks Michael_Novakhov shared this story from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines. Another COVID-19 outbreak at sea has forced a U.S. Navy destroyer to return to port. Eighteen sailors from the Kidd, a destroyer underway in the eastern Pa...
» mikenov on Twitter: COVID toes,' odd rashes: Health care professionals explore role skin problems could have in coronavirus diagnosis - cleveland.com cleveland.com/news/2020/04/c
25/04/20 09:44 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) COVID toes,' odd rashes: Health care professionals explore role skin problems could have in coronavirus diagnosis - <a href="http://cleveland.com" rel="nofollow">cleveland.com</a> cleveland.com/news/2020/04/c Posted by mikenov on Saturday, April 25th, 2020 1:44pm mikenov on Twitter | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| COVID-19 Crisis Has Exposed US Weaknesses to Bioterror - Saturday April 25th, 2020 at 10:41 AM | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 https://tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid-19-crisis-has-exposed-us.html
People wearing face masks are seen in the Times Square subway station during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19,) in New York City, April 17, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Jeenah Moon.
Preparation failures combined with the fast spread of the COVID-19 virus have exposed Americas vulnerabilities to terrorists, several bioterrorism specialists told the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
These failures have included an inadequate inventory of ventilators, personal protective equipment such as face shields, gloves and gowns, and an inability to handle the patient onslaught in cities like New York that have been in terrorists crosshairs for decades.
I think that people are certainly observing what is happening with COVID-19 and how it is spread, and thinking about how to use that [information] tactically, said Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. ISIS and al-Qaida, and presumably other terrorist organizations, they are pursuing biological agents, and they are pursuing chemical weapons for terrorist purposes.
Pandemic and bioterrorism preparedness are inseparable, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2013.
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| COVID-19 Crisis Has Exposed US Weaknesses to Bioterror | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
People wearing face masks are seen in the Times Square subway station during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19,) in New York City, April 17, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Jeenah Moon.These failures have included an inadequate inventory of ventilators, personal protective equipment such as face shields, gloves and gowns, and an inability to handle the patient onslaught in cities like New York that have been in terrorists crosshairs for decades. I think that people are certainly observing what is happening with COVID-19 and how it is spread, and thinking about how to use that [information] tactically, said Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. ISIS and al-Qaida, and presumably other terrorist organizations, they are pursuing biological agents, and they are pursuing chemical weapons for terrorist purposes. Pandemic and bioterrorism preparedness are inseparable, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2013.  April 24, 2020 12:04 pmGeorge attributes the current lack of preparedness to the apathy of the policymakers responsible for funding and implementing bioterrorism and pandemic countermeasures. who never thought a pandemic like COVID-19 would happen. From the standpoint of risk analysis, recency bias that is, an overwhelming focus on events that have happened most recently is one of the most nefarious psychological blinders, an October Security magazine article warned. It nudges us toward considering what is important now but can prevent both a thorough review of the past and an imaginative look into the future. Our immediate past has elevated issues such as cybersecurity and drones to the top of risk forecasts. These are critical, but biological threats (or biothreats) deserve our attention more than ever. The failure of prior 21st century pandemics, including SARS, the bird flu, H1N1 and Ebola, to live up to fears lulled security professionals into a state of complacency, the article said. As a culture, were good at saying, Well, were really good responders, and so well just respond. What were finding out now is that it just doesnt work, George said. Worryingly, terrorists sought chemical and biological weapons long before COVID-19. In 2014, journalists recovered an ISIS operatives laptop containing information on bioweapons, and documents justifying their use. Some of the files detailed how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals. If Muslims cannot defeat the kafir [unbelievers] in a different way, it is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction, one of the documents said. A 2018 ISIS propaganda video called on Muslims living in Western countries and Russia to carry out biological attacks, noting that biological weapons are silent killers in contrast to bombs or the airliners used in the 9/11 attacks. It discussed using inhaled viruses and bacteria. Islam prohibits the use of this type of mass terrorism [but] allows it in the exception of repelling aggression and reciprocity, the video said. With simple equipment, extract harmful viruses and bacteria then release them. Several ISIS-linked plots involving biological weapons have been foiled. Kenyan authorities broke up a 2016 anthrax attack plot by an ISIS-linked group. A Wisconsin woman, Wabeha Dais, pleaded guilty last year to providing ISIS supporters with a recipe to produce the toxic chemical ricin, which the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) lists as a bioweapon. Al-Qaeda attempted to create biological weapons in Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001. You can spread [some biological agents] the same way that this particular organism is spreading whether it is natural or otherwise just by human-to-human transmission, where it infects a lot of people, said former CIA operative Sam Faddis, who headed the agencys counter-terrorism unit that tracked weapons of mass destruction. Why would a group like ISIS care? If you use tactics routinely where you strap explosives to your body and blow yourself up and are willing to blow up synagogues, churches and mosques, why would you not be willing to infect your own people? Diseases such as the pneumonic plague that are spread via coughing could have a similar impact because its spread by droplets transmitted by coughing, Faddis said. Using an infected person on a suicide mission of infecting others is not out of the question, George said. Some biological agents are available on the Dark Web. Utah authorities arrested a Salt Lake City woman, Janie Lynn Ridd, in December on charges that she attempted to obtain a bioweapon. She used $300 in bitcoin to buy an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that causes staph infections. That sort of stuff has been going on forever on a scale that most people arent aware of, and is going on now at an even greater rate, Faddis said. If you are looking at biological warfare and you are looking at the kind of crude mechanisms that terrorists use its not that hard to work with biological organisms and all you really need is a good lab tech. RAND Corporation bioterrorism scholar David Gerstein, who served as acting undersecretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, shares concern that terrorists could use the Dark Web to facilitate a bioterrorism plot. I think anytime youve got the Dark Web and youve got information thats out there and becomes available to people who might misuse it, thats a concern, Gerstein said. I think we know that many of these capabilities are becoming more available and more democratized, hence their chance of misuse. However, research has shown that creating designer viruses is harder than many people think. In bioterrorism, there are some nuances that make it complex for a terrorist to do, Gerstein said. Could you create a biological mess? Yes. But you may kill yourself in the process, so there are some disincentives along the way. Lab security has come under scrutiny in recent years. A security breach may have been linked to the 2001 anthrax attack against Senate offices, the Supreme Court and NBC News. FBI investigators concluded that Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist at United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMARIID), was responsible. He committed suicide in 2008 before he could be charged. In 2004, the World Health Organization (WHO) cited China for allowing SARS to escape a government lab in Beijing on two separate occasions. Failings exposed by the COVID-19 crisis have long been known to bioterrorism researchers. The Bush, Obama and Trump administrations all developed detailed bioterror action plans, but this current pandemic shows they were not implemented this time. The government comes up with these strategies, and some of them are pretty good, Gerstein said. But what happens is that they sort of put out these strategies but forget that a strategy is not just the objectives; its also the resources to accomplish the objectives. So, most of these strategies simply do not come to fruition. A shortage of surgical masks occurred during the 2009 H1N1 Swine flu pandemic just as it has in the current COVID-19 outbreak. In 2010, a Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism report card gave US bioterrorism preparedness an F. There was no national plan to coordinate federal, state, and local efforts following a bioterror attack, and the United States lacks the technical and operational capabilities required for an adequate response, it said. Obama-era budget battles resulted in a failure to replenish the surgical masks that contributed to the current lack of preparedness. We werent prepared the day Donald Trump came into office. We werent prepared at any time during the Obama administration, Faddis said. This is not a political thing. This is not a somebody else got it right and somebody else screwed it up kind of a thing. We have focused on this the way we have focused on so many things in Washington. We build a bureaucracy. We draw a line diagram. We throw a lot of money. And thats just kind of assumed therefore that equals accomplishment. COVID-19 presents a call for planners and policymakers to shift to being proactive to save lives during the next bioterrorist attack or pandemic, George said. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| German Biological Weapons | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The German biological weapons program is best described as a sabotage program. Its aim was to undermine the enemy's economic capacity to wage war. The program appears to have been independent of civilian oversight and was undertaken despite the General Staff's position that biological warfare was illegal. Notwithstanding, there was widespread agreement that anti-human pathogens should not be developed. Consequently, the German program considered only anti-animal and anti-crop pathogens; there is no evidence that Germany attempted to infect humans with any type of biological agent. Germany's main targets were neutral nations that supplied the Allied Powers. The most extensive efforts were directed against the US (prior to its entry into World War I), although Argentina, Romania, Norway, and possibly Spain were also targeted. Despite Germany's use of biological weapons during the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles- which specifically prohibited the use of chemical weapons-did not mention biological weapons. After WWI both Germany and France continued their biological weapons research and development, and many other nations began programs. Although many foreign powers assumed that Germany had an active and advanced biological weapons program during the inter war years, this was not the case. Although Germany did pursue rearmament, despite prohibitions following World War I, German biological weapons efforts were sporadic at best. Indeed, Germany's offensive program may have been undertaken solely in response to suppositions that France and the USSR were interested in developing their own BW programs. The evidence suggests that Germany did not pursue formal biological weapons research during this period. The biological weapons programs of the inter-war period continued throughout World War II. Among German intelligence had evaluated the Canadian, British, US, and Soviet programs, and were able to gain information on dissemination techniques after the fall of France in 1940. In addition, several Soviet deserters provided Germany with information about the Soviet program, leading Germany to conclude that the USSR had an advanced program that encompassed as many as eight facilities and test sites. Germany also believed that the USSR was experimenting with a number of agents, including those that cause anthrax, glanders, and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). Similarly, Germany determined that the UK was working with anthrax, dysentery, glanders, and plague. German intelligence reports had also reached similar conclusions about Canadian research. Finally, Germany gained information about the US program in Edgewood Arsenal (Maryland) and Pine Bluff (Arkansas), indicating that anthrax and FMD, among others, were being studied and tested. Despite these numerous intelligence reports, Hitler reaffirmed his opposition to biological warfare- even as a tool of retaliation. Instead, Hitler directed research towards defensive measures in the event of a BW attack by an Allied Power. The Nazis performed experiments on prisoners in their concentration camps. Prisoners were infected with Rickettsia prowazekii, Rickettsia mooseri, the Hepatitis A virus, and Plasmodia spp. Experiments were done primarily to aid in the development of preventive vaccines.
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| Did the COVID-19 virus originate from a lab or nature? Examining the evidence for different hypotheses of the novel coronavirus origins | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Although none of the individual pieces of evidence described below definitively identify the virus origin, the preponderance of evidence when taken together currently points to a natural origin with a subsequent zoonotic transmission from animals to humans, rather than a bioengineering or lab leak origin. Contents
This hypothesis began circulating in February 2020. To date, it has been largely rejected by the scientific community. Some of the early claims have their roots in a preprint (a study in progress which has not been peer-reviewed or formally published) uploaded to ResearchGate by Chinese scientists Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, who claimed that somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.
However, the only piece of evidence the authors provided to support their conclusion was the proximity of both the Wuhan Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to the seafood market. The authors later withdrew their article, saying that their speculation about the possible origins was not supported by direct proofs. Copies of the original article can still be found online.The withdrawal of the preprint did not stop this hypothesis from spreadinginstead it continued to grow in complexity, with some claiming that the virus showed signs of genetic engineering. Some of these claims were based on a preprint uploaded to BioRxiv, purporting to show that genetic material from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) had been inserted into the novel coronavirus. This study was found to have significant flaws in design and execution and was also later withdrawn, as reported in our review explaining that No, HIV insertions were not identified in the 2019 coronavirus. However, the poor quality of the preprint did not prevent this baseless speculation from being promoted by blogs such as Zero Hedge, Infowars, Natural News, and even some scientists like Luc Montagnier, a French virologist who co-discovered HIV, but has recently become a promoter of numerous unsupported theories. Indeed, scientists who examined the preprint highlighted that these so-called insertions are very short genetic sequences which are also present in many other life forms, such as the bacterium Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum, the spider Araneus ventricosus, and the parasites Cryptosporidium and Plasmodium malariae, which cause cryptosporidiosis and malaria, respectively[1,2]. Trevor Bedford, virologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and professor at the University of Washington, explained on Twitter that a simple BLAST of such short sequences shows [a] match to a huge variety of organisms. No reason to conclude HIV. [] These inserts are nothing of the sort proposed by the paper and instead arose naturally in the ancestral bat virus. In other words, the sequences analyzed by the study authors were so short that it is easy to find similarities to a wide variety of organisms, including HIV. An analogy would be to search for a short and commonly-used word, like sky, in a search engine and claim that the search results show content that is identical or similar to each other solely because of that one word. Another version of the engineered-virus story stated that a pShuttle-SN sequence is present in the novel coronavirus. The pShuttle-SN vector was used during efforts to develop candidates for a SARS vaccine[3] and was therefore used to support claims of human engineering. These claims appeared in blogs such as Infowars, Natural News, and The Epoch Times. However, analysis of the genomic sequence of the novel coronavirus showed that no such man-made sequence was present, as reported in our review. Other claims regarding the purported manmade origins of the virus have linked it to bioweapons research. These have appeared in articles such as a 22 February 2020 story by the New York Post, which we also reviewed and scientists found to be of low scientific credibility. The article provided no evidence that the novel coronavirus is linked to bioweapons research. On 17 March 2020, a group of scientists published findings from a genomic analysis of the novel coronavirus in Nature Medicine[4], which established that SARS-CoV-2 is of natural origin, likely originating in pangolins or bats (or both) and later developing the ability to infect humans. Their investigation focused mainly on the so-called spike (S) protein, which is located on the surface of the enveloping membrane of SARS-CoV-2. The S protein allows the virus to bind to and infect animal cells. After the 2003-2005 SARS outbreak, researchers identified a set of key amino acids within the S protein which give SARS-CoV-1 a super-affinity for the ACE2 target receptor located on the surface of human cells[5,6]. Surprisingly, the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 does not contain this optimal set of amino acids[4], yet is nonetheless able to bind ACE2 with a greater affinity than SARS-CoV-1[7]. Taken together, these findings strongly suggest that SARS-CoV-2 evolved independently of human intervention and undermine the claim that it was manmade[1]. This is because if scientists had attempted to engineer improved ACE2 binding in a coronavirus, the best strategy would have been to harness the already-known and efficient amino acid sequences described in SARS-CoV-1 in order to produce a more optimal molecular design for SARS-CoV-2. The authors of the Nature Medicine study[4] concluded that Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus. In summary, the hypothesis that the virus is manmade or engineered in any way is unsupported and inconsistent with available evidence, leading Bedford to assess the probability of this hypothesis being correct as extremely unlikely. Kristian Andersen, professor at the Scripps in San Diego declared during an online seminar, I know there has been a lot of talk about Chinese bioweapons, bioengineering, and engineering in general. All of that, I can say, is fully inconsistent with the data. Like Andersen, other scientists have repeatedly explained that there is no evidence to support the claim that the virus was human engineered. In a statement published on 19 February in The Lancet, 27 eminent public health scientists in the U.S., Europe, the U.K., Australia, and Asia cited numerous studies from multiple countries which overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife[8-15] as have so many other emerging pathogens. [Back to top]
Many have pointed out that even though the virus was unlikely engineered, it still might have been purposely or accidentally released from a lab. Claims about a possible laboratory release often point to
a laboratory in China
as the source, more specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), given that
one of its laboratories studies bat coronaviruses
. Similarly speculative claims have also implicated laboratories in
the U.S.
and
Canada
.
However, there is no evidence in either scientific publications or public announcements indicating that a virus resembling SARS-CoV-2 had been studied or cultured in any lab prior to the outbreak. While this of course does not rule out the possibility that scientists were working on it in secret, as of today, this claim is speculative and unsupported by evidence.A January 2020 study in The Lancet, which found that about one-third of the initial round of infections had no connection to the Huanan seafood market[15], has been suggested as evidence that the virus may have leaked from a nearby lab. Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers, said in this CNN article: It is absolutely clear the market had no connection with the origin of the outbreak virus, and, instead, only was involved in amplification of an outbreak that had started elsewhere in Wuhan almost a full month earlier.Ebright also told CNN that The possibility that the virus entered humans through a laboratory accident cannot and should not be dismissed. Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor at Flinders University who specializes in vaccine development, also supported the hypothesis that the virus could have escaped from a lab. In this article, he stated that no corresponding virus has been found to exist in nature and cited as-yet unpublished work, saying that the hypothesis is absolutely plausible. Petrovsky suggested that the virus could have escaped [the biosecure facility in Wuhan] either through accidental infection of a staff member who then visited the fish market several blocks away and there infected others, or by inappropriate disposal of waste from the facility that either infected humans outside the facility directly or via a susceptible vector such as a stray cat that then frequented the market and resulted in transmission there to humans. Some have argued that instead of originating in nature, the virus could have been generated through simulated evolution in the lab. Christian Stevens, from the Benhur Lee lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, explained in this article the extreme unlikelihood of this scenario. Briefly, the mutations in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the S protein in SARS-CoV-2 resembles that of some pangolin coronaviruses. These mutations are also what make SARS-CoV-2 much better at infecting humans compared to SARS-CoV-1. Such mutations could be evolved in the lab through simulated evolution, however the likelihood of simulated natural selection stumbling on the near exact RBD from a previously unknown pangolin coronavirus is mathematically unlikely, said Stevens. Furthermore, scientists would have had to know about these mutations in the S protein of some pangolin coronaviruses before the outbreak, and then tried to evolve a bat coronavirus with the same characteristics through animal experiments. As these mutations in pangolin coronaviruses were not identified until after the outbreak[16], it does not make sense for scientists to have performed such experiments in the lab, as there would have been little to no scientific justification for doing so. Other considerations are the polybasic cleavage site and the O-linked glycan additions to the S protein, which have not been identified in bat betacoronaviruses nor the pangolin betacoronaviruses sampled so far. However, evidence indicates that these features are much more likely to have arisen in the presence of an immune system, suggesting that this is a natural adaptation by the virus to a live host, either an animal or a human. Because lab-based cell cultures do not have immune systems, Stevens explained that it is extremely unlikely that the virus would have developed such features using cell culture approaches, thereby undermining the lab-generated claims that some have proposed. What about using animal models for evolution, which would provide selective pressure from an immune system? Stevens also examined this possibility and explained that there is no known animal model that would allow for selection of human-like ACE2 binding and avoidance of immune recognition. This strongly suggests that SARS-CoV-2 could not have been developed in a lab, even by a system of simulated natural selection. In other words, the overall combination of features observed in SARS-CoV-2 is extremely unlikely to have arisen through experiments, even simulated evolution, because the experimental tools are not available at the moment. Zhengli Shi, the head of the laboratory studying bat coronaviruses at the WIV, clarified in a Scientific American report published on 11 March, that during the early days of the outbreak, she had her team check the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 against the bat coronavirus strains being studied in her lab to ensure that the outbreak had not resulted from any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. They found that none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. However, this testimony has not satisfied those who allege a cover-up of a lab accident due to inadequate biosecurity, intentional release, or plain carelessness. Recent opinion pieces published by the Washington Postone on 2 April 2020 and another on 14 April 2020have also fueled speculation that the virus was accidentally released from a laboratory at the WIV due to biosafety lapses reportedly documented in diplomatic cables from 2018. The authors of these opinion pieces were careful to distance themselves from earlier claims that the coronavirus was bioengineered or resulted from deliberate wrongdoing, as one author stated. In any event, the accidental release scenario is currently being considered by scientists and U.S. intelligence and national security officials. Indeed, despite safeguards, laboratory accidents can and do occur, and some have even caused outbreaks. In 2007, an outbreak of hand-foot-mouth (HFM) disease among livestock in the U.K. was linked to a faulty gas valve connected to labs involved in researching and producing HFM vaccines. And in 2004, a re-emergence of SARS occurred in Beijing, China, as a result of two lab accidents. Scientists assessments of the likelihood of Hypothesis 2In an article published on 6 April, experts expressed skepticism at the lab leak hypothesis. Vincent Racaniello, a professor of virology at Columbia University, said I think it has no credibility. And Simon Anthony, an assistant professor at Columbia who studies the ecology and evolution of viruses, stated, it all feels far-fetched [] Lab accidents do happen, we know that, but [] theres certainly no evidence to support that theory.In an April 10th article, Amesh Adalja from Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security stated that he thought the lab leak hypothesis had a lower probability than the pure zoonotic theory. I think as we get a better understanding of where the origin of this virus was, and get closer to patient zero, that will explain some of the mystery. Bill Hanage, associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said If there is evidence to really support this theory beyond the coincidence of the location of the lab, then I havent seen it, and I dont make decisions on the basis of coincidence. Several scientists have taken to Twitter to ponder the lab leak hypothesis made by the Washington Post opinion articles: Overall, we have virus group, molecular features, market association, and environmental samples all pointing strongly towards zoonosis. The location in Wuhan is the only thing at all suggestive of lab escape. I see strength of evidence entirely for zoonosis.Trevor Bedford We dont know how this virus emerged, but all evidence points to spillover from its natural reservoir, whether that be a bat or some other intermediate species, pangolins or otherwise. Pushing this unsupported accident theory hinders efforts to actually determine virus origin.Angela Rasmussen The bottom line is that those vague diplomatic cables do not provide any specific information suggesting that [SARS-CoV-2] emerged from incompetence or poor biosafety protocols or anything else.Angela Rasmussen [referencing the 14 April Washington Post opinion piece] Most likely either 1) virus evolved to its current pathogenic state via a non-human host and then jumped to humans, or 2) a non-pathogenic version of the virus jumped from an animal into humans then evolved to a pathogenic state.Josh Michaud All current data supports that the ancestral station strain of the virus is in batsthey serve as the zoonotic reservoir. Then a spillover event occured into humans, perhaps aided by another mammal, although thats debatable.Ryan McNamara There is strong evidence that the #SARSCoV2 #coronavirus is NOT an engineered bioweapon.Carl T. Bergstrom In summary, the hypothesis that the virus escaped from a lab is supported largely by circumstantial evidence and is not supported by genomic analyses and publicly available information. In the absence of evidence for or against an accidental lab leak, one cannot rule it out as the actual source of the outbreak. I dont think we have real data to say when these things began, in large part because the data are being held back from inspection, said Gerald Keusch, associate director of the Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, in this LiveScience article. Given allegations of a cover-up, it appears that only an open and transparent review of the laboratory activities at WIV can allow us to confirm or reject this unlikely hypothesis. [Back to top]
Virologists explain that the most likely hypothesis is that the outbreak started with a naturally-occurring zoonotic infectionone that is transmitted from animals to humansrather than a lab breach. This is largely due to what we know of the virus genomic features, which strongly indicate a natural origin. For example, if a virus had escaped from a laboratory, its genome would likely be most similar to those of the viral strains cultured in that lab. However, as shown in this phylogenetic tree by Bedford (see figure below), SARS-CoV-2 does not cluster in the same branch as the SARS-like coronavirus WIV1 (WIV1) and SARS-CoV-1, which are commonly cultured lab strains with the closest similarity to SARS-CoV-2 at the WIV facility, which is the lab that some have suggested might be a potential source of a lab leak. Instead, SARS-CoV-2 aligns most closely with coronaviruses isolated in the wild from bats and pangolins, indicating that it is more likely to have come from a natural source than from a lab:
 FigurePhylogenetic tree showing evolutionary relationships between different coronavirusesmostly bat coronaviruses and some pangolin coronaviruses (by Trevor Bedford). Different lab strains of SARS-CoV-1 (referred to as SARS-CoV here) are represented by yellow dots. WIV1, another common lab strain, is indicated with a black arrow. Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 displays evolutionary features which suggest that the virus originated in animals and jumped to humans. The closest sequenced ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 is RaTG13, a bat coronavirus with about 96% genome sequence identity[8]. But SARS-CoV-2 also has features that distinguish it from RaTG13 and other SARS-like coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-1. As mentioned in the previous section, these features are: mutations in the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the S protein, a polybasic cleavage site, and a nearby O-linked glycan addition site in the S protein[4]. The mutations in the RBD of the S protein resemble those of some pangolin coronaviruses, suggesting that the virus made a jump from bats to an intermediate (perhaps pangolins), and then later to humans. To briefly re-cap from the previous section discussing the hypothesis of a lab origin, Christian Stevens explained in this article that the polybasic cleavage site and the O-linked glycan additions to the S protein have not been identified in bat betacoronaviruses nor the pangolin betacoronaviruses sampled so far. However, evidence indicates that these features are much more likely to have arisen in the presence of an immune system, suggesting that this is a natural adaptation by the virus to a live host, either an animal or a human. And again, there is no known animal model that would allow for selection of human-like ACE2 binding and avoidance of immune recognition, Stevens explained. This strongly suggests that SARS-CoV-2 could not have been developed in a lab, even by a system of simulated natural selection. In other words, the overall combination of features observed in SARS-CoV-2 is extremely unlikely to have arisen through experiments, even simulated evolution, because the experimental tools are not available at the moment. Finally, Christian Stevens highlighted that the Ka/Ks ratio of the virus strongly indicates that the virus did not come from lab-simulated evolution. The Ka/Ks ratio calculates the level of synonymous mutations (which do not produce any functional change in proteins) and non-synonymous mutations (which produce functional changes in proteins). Non-synonymous mutations are more likely to occur in the presence of selective pressure, such as a need to adapt to a new environment: Because synonymous mutations should have no effect, we expect them to happen at a relatively consistent rate. That makes them a good baseline that we can compare the number of non-synonymous mutations to. By calculating the ratio between these two numbers we can differentiate between three different types of selection:An analysis by Bedford demonstrates that the level of non-synonymous mutations between SARS-CoV-2 and the naturally occurring RaTG13 are highly similar, standing at 14.3% and 14.2%, respectively. Both of these numbers indicate a purifying selection, with very few non-synonymous changes. This holds true across the entire genome with no part of it showing Darwinian selection. This is a very strong indicator that SARS-CoV-2 was not designed using forced selection in a lab, Stevens concluded. [Back to top]
Taken together, the information presented here suggests that it is much more likely that SARS-CoV-2 was generated naturally and transmitted zoonotically, without any engineering or lab growth. Especially given the fact that the
prior probability
for the zoonotic hypothesis is high. Indeed,
zoonotic infections
(transmission of pathogens from animals/insects to humans) are not only plausible but common throughout the world, and have also caused outbreaks in the past. For example,
the SARS outbreak
, which began in 2002, was linked to civet cats. Outbreaks of
Middle East respiratory syndrome
have been linked to contact with camels.
Nipah virus infection
has been linked to fruit bats and caused outbreaks in Asia. Mosquitoes transmit viruses such as
Zika
,
dengue
, and
chikungunya
, while ticks also carry a range of pathogens, such as
Lyme disease
and
Rocky Mountain spotted fever
. In fact,
according to the World Health Organization
, about 60% of emerging diseases are zoonotic infections.
In summary, the hypothesis that the virus escaped from a lab is supported largely by circumstantial evidence and is not supported by publicly available information. In the case of the hypothesis that the outbreak began with zoonotic infection, at the moment genomic analyses are consistent with a natural origin for the virus and support the idea that the outbreak began zoonotically. Unlike the manmade virus and lab escape hypotheses, there is no compelling evidence against the hypothesis for natural zoonosis. As Stevens concluded, the hypothesis for natural zoonosis is the one that fits all available evidence, is most parsimonious, and best satisfies the concept of Occams Razorthat the simplest solution is most likely the right one.[Back to top] READ MOREChristian Stevens from the Benhur Lee lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine has provided a comprehensive explanation of the multiple scientific studies examining the origin of the coronavirus.Scientists explained in this 23 April NPR article why they found the lab accident hypothesis unlikely. In fact, the article states that there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as result of a laboratory accident in China or anywhere else. REFERENCES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Coronavirus outbreak strikes another U.S. Navy ship | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Another COVID-19 outbreak at sea has forced a U.S. Navy destroyer to return to port.
Eighteen sailors from the Kidd, a destroyer underway in the eastern Pacific Ocean, have tested positive, the Navy announced Friday. The ship, which has a crew of about 350, is returning to port, according to Navy spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Megan Isaac, who said operational security prevented her from identifying the destroyers destination. Its home port is Everett, Wash. The Kidd is the second Navy ship to be sidelined by COVID-19, following the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, which was forced to extend a previously scheduled port call in Guam because of an outbreak that ultimately infected more than 800 sailors. The destroyer left its last port of call, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on March 20, according to Isaac. The more than one-month gap between its departure from Pearl Harbor and the first COVID-19 diagnosis suggests that one or more sailors were infected while in Hawaii, but asymptomatic. The ship had previously visited Guam in mid-February, according to a Navy news release. The Kidd was conducting independent counter-narcotic operations when the drama began Thursday, according to Isaac. After a sailor aboard the ship began displaying symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, he was medically evacuated to San Antonio, where he tested positive, Defense Department spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said Friday. Based on lessons learned from its Theodore Roosevelt experience, within 24 hours the Navy sent an eight-person specialized medical evaluation team to the ship, where the team began testing the rest of the crew and doing contact tracing, according to Hoffman. By Friday morning, 17 more sailors had tested positive, according to the Navy. Testing continues, and we expect additional cases, a Navy statement said. All measures are being taken to evaluate the extent of the COVID-19 transmission on the ship. The ship is preparing to quickly return to port, where [the team] will undertake efforts to clean the ship, they will remove a portion of the crew from the ship and work to get everybody back to health and get the ship back to sea, Hoffman said. After the ship has been cleaned and disinfected in accordance with guidance from the Navy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, onboard test results will inform operational decisions, the Navy statement said. The sailor who was medically evacuated Thursday is already improving and will self-isolate, said Rear Adm. Don Gabrielson, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command and U.S. Fourth Fleet, in the Navy statement. We are taking every precaution to ensure we identify, isolate, and prevent any further spread onboard the ship. Click here for the latest coronavirus news and updates. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please refer to the CDCs and WHOs resource guides. Read more: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Officials Continue To Investigate Coronavirus As Bioweapon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Written by Dana SanchezThe Defense Department has recently shifted its focus toward monitoring the possibility more closely, three people familiar with the matter told Politico. The U.S. has reported 912,010 coronavirus cases and 51,453 deaths. Senior Navy leaders still dont know where the outbreak originated that spread like wildfire through the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. At least 840 crew members have been infected. Capt. Brett Crozier was accused of poor judgment and fired after the Washington Post obtained an email of his warnings about the spread of the virus on board. COVID-19 temporarily crippled the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the middle of a Pacific deployment. Crozier was infected, the vessel has been out of service for weeks and the crisis went all the way up the Navy chain of command. Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced a 60-day moratorium on all international and domestic troop travel in March, delaying deployments and temporary duty assignments. Service members must do 14-day quarantines if they have to travel, including submarine crews and special operations units. There are limitations, Esper told reporters in March. Tell me, how do I do six-feet distancing in an attack submarine? Or how do I do that in a bomber with two pilots sitting side by side? Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 70: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin goes solo to discuss the COVID-19 crisis. He talks about the failed leadership of Trump, Andrew Cuomo, CDC Director Robert Redfield, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and New York Mayor de Blasio. The Navy has evacuated more than 4,200 crew members from the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Thats more than 85 percent of the crew, and theyre in quarantine, just as Crozier urgently called for. The risk of coronavirus being repurposed as an offensive weapon increases as more is learned about the disease, and thats likely one reason why the national security community has begun to take the possibility seriously, said Andy Weber. Weber served as assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs under President Barack Obama. In terms of bioterrorism, COVID is very accessible, he said. Samples are available all over the world. The risk of COVID-19 being weaponized on a large scale is low, biodefense experts said. Because it is so infectious, attempts to spread it would likely backfire on whoever tries. But the FBI has warned local police agencies that members of extremist groups are encouraging one another to spread the virus. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Italy's coronavirus epidemic began in January, study shows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ROME (Reuters) - The first COVID-19 infections in Italy date back to January, according to a scientific study presented on Friday, shedding new light on the origins of the outbreak in one of the worlds worst-affected countries.
Cases and deaths immediately surged, with scientists soon suspecting that the virus had been around, unnoticed, for weeks. Stefano Merler, of the Bruno Kessler Foundation, told a news conference with Italys top health authorities that his institute had looked at the first known cases and drawn clear conclusions from the subsequent pace of contagion. We realized that there were a lot of infected people in Lombardy well before Feb. 20, which means the epidemic had started much earlier, he said. In January for sure, but maybe even before. Well never know, he said, adding that he believed the immediate surge in cases suggested the virus was probably brought to Italy by a group of people rather than a single individual. A separate study based on a sample of cases registered in April said 44.1% of infections occurred in nursing homes and another 24.7% spread within families. A further 10.8% of people caught the virus at hospital and 4.2% in the workplace. Italy was the first major western country to face the viral disease, which originated in China late last year and has spread around the world. Italian authorities have recorded some 190,000 confirmed cases and 25,500 deaths. In a bid to prevent the outbreak, Italy halted air traffic to and from China on Jan. 31 after two Chinese tourists tested positive in Rome. But scientists say it was probably too late. Another team of Italian scientists has said the coronavirus may have reached Italy from Germany, not directly from China, in the second half of January.
Reporting by Angelo Amante, editing by Gavin Jones and Philippa Fletcher
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| First coronavirus cases in Italy happened 'much earlier' than previously thought, according to new ... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
With nearly 200,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, Italy has been atop of a global list of infections and deaths caused by the new coronavirus since ... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How Far-Right Extremists Are Exploiting Pandemic | Voice of America | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Far-right extremists have been linked to bombing plots tied to the coronavirus pandemic, spotted holding anti-Semitic signs at protests outside state capitols, and seen trafficking on fringe platforms in all manner of conspiracy theories about the virus.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage millions of lives and paralyze much of the economy, these right-wing activists in the United States are seizing every opportunity to reach out to thousands of potential followers and expand their ranks. Take, for example, the recent hack of nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords belonging to the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and other organizations combating the pandemic. When the hackers released the information this week, online activists swung into action. On Telegram, a popular messaging app, at least a dozen so-called terrorgrams published links to the leak Wednesday, encouraging users to read the emails to support conspiracy theories about Chinese and Israeli ties to the virus. "People are scouring their emails and just found stuff related to HIV being spliced into COVID-19. This is big," one poster wrote. Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University in North Carolina who researches online extremism, said the far right is exploiting the pandemic to push propaganda. "The memes are flowing pretty freely," she said. "They're definitely working every angle, from the Chinese virus stuff to a Jewish plot to control the world and all that sort of thing." The pandemic has set off a perfect storm of fear, anger and uncertainty generated by the loss of 26 million jobs and seemingly endless lockdowns over a deadly virus that as of late Thursday had killed nearly 50,000 Americans. With people staying home to slow the spread of the coronavirus, extremists are bound to find easy targets for propaganda and recruitment, said Jeff Schoep, the former commander of the National Socialist Movement, one of the nation's largest neo-Nazi organizations. "I know most of the groups are using this as an opportunity to recruit," Schoep, who left the group last year, told VOA. Recent rallies over shelter-in-place orders presented another opportunity for recruitment, according to Schoep, who is widely credited with building NSM into the nation's largest neo-Nazi organization. "I can say that if I was still running the organization, we would probably have people passing out business cards at those demonstrations," Schoep said. Extremism thrives in times of economic distress. A 2015 study of nearly 100 financial crises going back to 1870 found that after every financial crash "voters seem to be attracted to the political rhetoric of the extreme right, which often attributes blame to minorities and foreigners." Podcasts Once boasting hundreds of members around the country, the NSM is a ghost of its former self after Schoep's departure and a leadership breakup last year. But its current leader, Burt Colucci, says he has had no trouble luring listeners who believe Jews are responsible for their plight. On a recent podcast, Colucci boasted that his weekly call-in show was drawing in as many as 400 listeners, up from 250. "It is taking off, not just on the computer, not just on the internet," Colucci said. "It is taking off in public, too. These are good signs." VOA could not independently verify his claim. Asked whether he sees the pandemic as a propaganda and recruitment opportunity, Colucci wrote via email, "As far as COVID-19 being an opportunity to recruit, it's very possible." Anti-lockdown rallies Last week, protesters converged in several state capitals to protest stay-at-home orders. At least one notorious member of the NSM was spotted holding an anti-Semitic sign at an anti-lockdown rally in front of the statehouse in Ohio. A number of other white supremacists were seen at similar protests in Idaho, Michigan and North Carolina. Squire said the protests are creating opportunities for "some boots on the ground" but the number of white supremacists showing up at the anti-shutdown demonstrations remains small. "It's pretty mild right now," she said. "Just the NSM guy showing up or the Proud Boys acting out." While anti-hate groups have tracked a spike in extremist propaganda during the pandemic, the extent of the increase remains unclear. According to data compiled by the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue and shared with <a href="http://Time.com" rel="nofollow">Time.com</a>, users of right-wing extremist channels on Telegram grew by 6,000 in March. But Squire said there has been no "unusual increase" during the crisis. Regardless, law enforcement officials are warning that the growing extremist chatter could spill over offline, leading to a surge in racially and ideologically motivated attacks. Harassment, assault Last month, the FBI's New York field office issued an alert after right-wing extremists urged COVID-19-infected cohorts to spread the virus to police officers and Jews. And in a leaked intelligence assessment, the bureau warned that anti-Asian hate crimes will spike because of the pandemic, "endangering Asian American communities." "Spreading these untruths puts communities at risk of real physical harm and must stop," Attorney General William Barr said in a statement last week, referring to coronavirus-fueled xenophobia targeting Asians and Asian Americans. Blamed for spreading the virus, Asian Americans have reported being kicked, punched and spat on in New York, California, Texas and other states. The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council says it has received more than 1,600 reports of verbal harassment, shunning and physical assault in recent weeks. Officials have also tied several recent terrorist plots to the pandemic. Last month, a man suspected of planning to blow up a hospital in Missouri was killed when FBI agents tried to arrest him. The FBI said the man, who had ties to two neo-Nazi groups, had considered other targets, including a synagogue and a mosque, but decided to blow up a hospital because of the increased "media attention on the health care sector" during the pandemic. This month, FBI agents arrested a Massachusetts man tied to a white supremacist group on charges of planting a homemade bomb at a Jewish assisted-living center. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in reference to the timing of the plot that in times of crisis, "hatred based on religion often blossoms into violence." Schoep, the former NSM leader, noted that most extremist groups disavow violence in order to avoid criminal prosecution. But rhetoric can nonetheless inspire violence, he said. "They're saying, 'Look, we need to do something. We need to do something.' And some of these people get this idea in their head that 'do something' means something violent," he said. It is a concern that law enforcement has long harbored. The perpetrators of a spate of recent attacks blamed on the far right from the mosque massacres at Christchurch, New Zealand, to a deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue were right-wing extremists with no formal affiliation with any group but plenty of exposure to their propaganda. Brian Levin, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, warned that fear and uncertainty spawned by the pandemic could lead to new forms of do-it-yourself extremism. "You will not only see extremist groups exploit this, but you will also see unstable people with wild card ideologies that we haven't heard much before," Levin said. "We might see medical personnel, journalists, public officials get harassed." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How COVID-19 kills: Blow-by-blow account of scourges majestic march through body The Sun Nigeria | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
How COVID-19 kills: Blow-by-blow account of scourges majestic march through bodyClinicians trace virus rampage from brain to toes, declaring its ferocity is breathtaking and humbling
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VIEWSAs the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 surges past 2.2 million globally and deaths surpass 150,000, clinicians and pathologists are struggling to understand the damage wrought by the coronavirus as it tears through the body. They are realizing that although the lungs are ground zero, its reach can extend to many organs including the heart and blood vessels, kidneys, gut, and brain. [The disease] can attack almost anything in the body with devastating consequences, says cardiologist Harlan Krumholz of Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital, who is leading multiple efforts to gather clinical data on COVID-19. Its ferocity is breathtaking and humbling. Understanding the rampage could help the doctors on the front lines treat the fraction of infected people who become desperately and sometimes mysteriously ill. Does a dangerous, newly observed tendency to blood clotting transform some mild cases into life-threatening emergencies? Is an overzealous immune response behind the worst cases, suggesting treatment with immune-suppressing drugs could help? What explains the startlingly low blood oxygen that some physicians are reporting in patients who nonetheless are not gasping for breath? Taking a systems approach may be beneficial as we start thinking about therapies, says Nilam Mangalmurti, a pulmonary intensivist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). What follows is a snapshot of the fast-evolving understanding of how the virus attacks cells around the body, especially in the roughly 5% of patients who become critically ill. Despite the more than 1000 papers now spilling into journals and onto preprint servers every week, a clear picture is elusive, as the virus acts like no pathogen humanity has ever seen. Without larger, prospective controlled studies that are only now being launched, scientists must pull information from small studies and case reports, often published at warp speed and not yet peer reviewed. We need to keep a very open mind as this phenomenon goes forward, says Nancy Reau, a liver transplant physician who has been treating COVID-19 patients at Rush University Medical Center. We are still learning. How the infection begins When an infected person expels virus-laden droplets and someone else inhales them, the novel coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, enters the nose and throat. It finds a welcome home in the lining of the nose, according to a preprint from scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and elsewhere. They found that cells there are rich in a cell-surface receptor called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Throughout the body, the presence of ACE2, which normally helps regulate blood pressure, marks tissues vulnerable to infection, because the virus requires that receptor to enter a cell. Once inside, the virus hijacks the cells machinery, making myriad copies of itself and invading new cells. As the virus multiplies, an infected person may shed copious amounts of it, especially during the first week or so. Symptoms may be absent at this point. Or the virus new victim may develop a fever, dry cough, sore throat, loss of smell and taste, or head and body aches. If the immune system doesnt beat back SARS-CoV-2 during this initial phase, the virus then marches down the windpipe to attack the lungs, where it can turn deadly. The thinner, distant branches of the lungs respiratory tree end in tiny air sacs called alveoli, each lined by a single layer of cells that are also rich in ACE2 receptors. Normally, oxygen crosses the alveoli into the capillaries, tiny blood vessels that lie beside the air sacs; the oxygen is then carried to the rest of the body. But as the immune system wars with the invader, the battle itself disrupts this healthy oxygen transfer. Front-line white blood cells release inflammatory molecules called chemokines, which in turn summon more immune cells that target and kill virus-infected cells, leaving a stew of fluid and dead cellspusbehind. This is the underlying pathology of pneumonia, with its corresponding symptoms: coughing, fever, and rapid, shallow respiration. Some COVID-19 patients recover, sometimes with no more support than oxygen breathed in through nasal prongs. But others deteriorate, often quite suddenly, developing a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Oxygen levels in their blood plummet and they struggle ever harder to breathe. On x-rays and computed tomography scans, their lungs are riddled with white opacities where black spaceairshould be. Commonly, these patients end up on ventilators. Many die. Autopsies show their alveoli became stuffed with fluid, white blood cells, mucus, and the detritus of destroyed lung cells. An invaders impact In serious cases, SARS-CoV-2 lands in the lungs and can do deep damage there. But the virus, or the bodys response to it, can injure many other organs. Scientists are just beginning to probe the scope and nature of the harm. The more we look, the more likely it becomes that blood clots are a major player in the disease severity and mortality from COVID-19. In the lungs, blood vessel constriction might help explain anecdotal reports of a perplexing phenomenon seen in pneumonia caused by COVID-19: Some patients have extremely low blood-oxygen levels and yet are not gasping for breath. Its possible that at some stages of disease, the virus alters the delicate balance of hormones that help regulate blood pressure and constricts blood vessels going to the lungs. So oxygen uptake is impeded by constricted blood vessels, rather than by clogged alveoli. One theory is that the virus affects the vascular biology and thats why we see these really low oxygen levels, Levitt says. If COVID-19 targets blood vessels, that could also help explain why patients with pre-existing damage to those vessels, for example from diabetes and high blood pressure, face higher risk of serious disease. Recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on hospitalized patients in 14 U.S. states found that about one-third had chronic lung diseasebut nearly as many had diabetes, and fully half had pre-existing high blood pressure. Mangalmurti says she has been shocked by the fact that we dont have a huge number of asthmatics or patients with other respiratory diseases in HUPs ICU. Its very striking to us that risk factors seem to be vascular: diabetes, obesity, age, hypertension. Scientists are struggling to understand exactly what causes the cardiovascular damage. The virus may directly attack the lining of the heart and blood vessels, which, like the nose and alveoli, are rich in ACE2 receptors. Or perhaps lack of oxygen, due to the chaos in the lungs, damages blood vessels. Or a cytokine storm could ravage the heart as it does other organs. Were still at the beginning, Krumholz says. We really dont understand who is vulnerable, why some people are affected so severely, why it comes on so rapidly and why it is so hard [for some] to recover. Multiple battlefields The worldwide fears of ventilator shortages for failing lungs have received plenty of attention. Not so a scramble for another type of equipment: dialysis machines. If these folks are not dying of lung failure, theyre dying of renal failure, says neurologist Jennifer Frontera of New York Universitys Langone Medical Center, which has treated thousands of COVID-19 patients. Her hospital is developing a dialysis protocol with different machines to support additional patients. The need for dialysis may be because the kidneys, abundantly endowed with ACE2 receptors, present another viral target. According to one preprint, 27% of 85 hospitalized patients in Wuhan had kidney failure. Another reported that 59% of nearly 200 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Chinas Hubei and Sichuan provinces had protein in their urine, and 44% had blood; both suggest kidney damage. Those with acute kidney injury (AKI), were more than five times as likely to die as COVID-19 patients without it, the same Chinese preprint reported. The lung is the primary battle zone. But a fraction of the virus possibly attacks the kidney. And as on the real battlefield, if two places are being attacked at the same time, each place gets worse, says Hongbo Jia, a neuroscientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciencess Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology and a co-author of that study. Viral particles were identified in electron micrographs of kidneys from autopsies in one study, suggesting a direct viral attack. But kidney injury may also be collateral damage. Ventilators boost the risk of kidney damage, as do antiviral compounds including remdesivir, which is being deployed experimentally in COVID-19 patients. Cytokine storms also can dramatically reduce blood flow to the kidney, causing often-fatal damage. And pre-existing diseases like diabetes can increase the chances of kidney injury. There is a whole bucket of people who already have some chronic kidney disease who are at higher risk for acute kidney injury, says Suzanne Watnick, chief medical officer at Northwest Kidney Centers. Buffeting the brain Another striking set of symptoms in COVID-19 patients centers on the brain and central nervous system. Frontera says neurologists are needed to assess 5% to 10% of coronavirus patients at her hospital. But she says that is probably a gross underestimate of the number whose brains are struggling, especially because many are sedated and on ventilators. Frontera has seen patients with the brain inflammation encephalitis, with seizures, and with a sympathetic storm, a hyperreaction of the sympathetic nervous system that causes seizurelike symptoms and is most common after a traumatic brain injury. Some people with COVID-19 briefly lose consciousness. Others have strokes. Many report losing their sense of smell. And Frontera and others wonder whether in some cases, infection depresses the brain stem reflex that senses oxygen starvation. This is another explanation for anecdotal observations that some patients arent gasping for air, despite dangerously low blood oxygen levels. ACE2 receptors are present in the neural cortex and brain stem, says Robert Stevens, an intensive care physician at Johns Hopkins Medicine. But its not known under what circumstances the virus penetrates the brain and interacts with these receptors. That said, the coronavirus behind the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemica close cousin of todays culpritcould infiltrate neurons and sometimes caused encephalitis. On 3 April, a case study in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, from a team in Japan, reported traces of new coronavirus in the cerebrospinal fluid of a COVID-19 patient who developed meningitis and encephalitis, suggesting it, too, can penetrate the central nervous system. But other factors could be damaging the brain. For example, a cytokine storm could cause brain swelling, and the bloods exaggerated tendency to clot could trigger strokes. The challenge now is to shift from conjecture to confidence, at a time when staff are focused on saving lives, and even neurologic assessments like inducing the gag reflex or transporting patients for brain scans risk spreading the virus. Last month, Sherry Chou, a neurologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, began to organize a worldwide consortium that now includes 50 centers to draw neurological data from care patients already receive. The early goals are simple: Identify the prevalence of neurologic complications in hospitalized patients and document how they fare. Longer term, Chou and her colleagues hope to gather scans, lab tests, and other data to better understand the virus impact on the nervous system, including the brain. Chou speculates about a possible invasion route: through the nose, then upward and through the olfactory bulbexplaining reports of a loss of smellwhich connects to the brain. Its a nice sounding theory, she says. We really have to go and prove that. Most neurological symptoms are reported from colleague to colleague by word of mouth, Chou adds. I dont think anybody, and certainly not me, can say were experts. Reaching the gut In early March, a 71-year-old Michigan woman returned from a Nile River cruise with bloody diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Initially doctors suspected she had a common stomach bug, such as Salmonella. But after she developed a cough, doctors took a nasal swab and found her positive for the novel coronavirus. A stool sample positive for viral RNA, as well as signs of colon injury seen in an endoscopy, pointed to a gastrointestinal (GI) infection with the coronavirus, according to a paper posted online in The American Journal of Gastroenterology (AJG). Her case adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting the new coronavirus, like its cousin SARS, can infect the lining of the lower digestive tract, where the crucial ACE2 receptors are abundant. Viral RNA has been found in as many as 53% of sampled patients stool samples. And in a paper in press at Gastroenterology, a Chinese team reported finding the virus protein shell in gastric, duodenal, and rectal cells in biopsies from a COVID-19 patient. I think it probably does replicate in the gastrointestinal tract, says Mary Estes, a virologist at Baylor College of Medicine. Recent reports suggest up to half of patients, averaging about 20% across studies, experience diarrhea, says Brennan Spiegel of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, coeditor-in-chief of AJG. GI symptoms arent on CDCs list of COVID-19 symptoms, which could cause some COVID-19 cases to go undetected, Spiegel and others say. If you mainly have fever and diarrhea, you wont be tested for COVID, says Douglas Corley of Kaiser Permanente, Northern California, co-editor of Gastroenterology. The presence of virus in the GI tract raises the unsettling possibility that it could be passed on through feces. But its not yet clear whether stool contains intact, infectious virus, or only RNA and proteins. To date, We have no evidence that fecal transmission is important, says coronavirus expert Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa. CDC says that based on experiences with SARS and with the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome, another dangerous cousin of the new coronavirus, the risk from fecal transmission is probably low. The intestines are not the end of the diseases march through the body. For example, up to one-third of hospitalized patients develop conjunctivitispink, watery eyesalthough its not clear that the virus directly invades the eye. Other reports suggest liver damage: More than half of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in two Chinese centers had elevated levels of enzymes indicating injury to the liver or bile ducts. But several experts told Science that direct viral invasion isnt likely the culprit. They say other events in a failing body, like drugs or an immune system in overdrive, are more likely driving the liver damage. This map of the devastation that COVID-19 can inflict on the body is still just a sketch. It will take years of painstaking research to sharpen the picture of its reach, and the cascade of cardiovascular and immune effects it might set in motion. As science races ahead, from probing tissues under microscopes to testing drugs on patients, the hope is for treatments more wily than the virus that has stopped the world in its tracks. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| covid-19 neurological symptoms - Google Search | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Neurological Implications of COVID-19 Raise Concerns ...
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Apr 9, 2020 - Such neurological symptoms can result from systemic disease, but coronaviruses can infect neurons. The incidence of neuronal infection in ...
COVID-19: First Data Confirm Neurologic Symptoms Common
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Apr 16, 2020 - COVID-19 is strongly associated with neurologic manifestations, including acute cerebrovascular diseases, impaired consciousness, and ...
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Apr 6, 2020 - US neurologists are now reporting that COVID-19 symptoms may also include encephalopathy, ataxia, and other neurologic signs.
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| The coronavirus, made from the AIDS virus? Professor Montagnier's highly contested thesis | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Search ResultsWeb resultsNobel laureate Luc Montagnier inaccurately claims that the ...
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Claim: this coronavirus genome contained sequences of another virus [] the HIV virus (AIDS virus)
Claimed by: Luc Montagnier
Fact check by Health Feedback: Inaccurate
A Nobel Laureate Said the New Coronavirus Was Made in a ...
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2 days ago - It is surprising to have a scientist of Montagnier's stature utter such questionable statements although Montagnier himself is a controversial ...
French Virologist, Who Discovered HIV, Says Coronavirus ...
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5 days ago - French virologist & Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier has claimed that Coronavirus originated in a lab. Montagnier's research was based on the ...
Coronavirus created in an attempt to find AIDS vaccine, Nobel ...
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4 days ago - Another French virologist Etienne Simon-Loriere of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, claimed this week that Montagnier's argument "doesn't make ...
Nobel winning scientist claims Covid-19 virus was man-made ...
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5 days ago - France's Luc Montagnier says SARS-CoV-2 virus was the result of an ... The Wuhan city laboratory has specialized in these coronaviruses ...
No, SARS-CoV-2 does not contain HIV genetic code!
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6 days ago - of the coronavirus of the bat, someone added sequences, in particular of HIV, the virus of AIDS. [] It is not ... So professor Montagnier is right?
Coronavirus man-made in Wuhan lab, says Nobel laureate ...
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6 days ago - Montagnier's claims come at a time when the US has alleged the possibility of the virus originating in a lab in China. The theory that COVID-19 ...
French Nobel prize winner claims coronavirus came from ...
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4 days ago - French Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier stirred controversy after he claimed in an interview with French CNews channel that the coronavirus has ...
Luc MontagnierDiscoverer of the AIDS Virus - Mayo Clinic ...
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French virologist Luc Antoine Montagnier and American physician-scientist Robert Charles Gallo (1937-) are credited with discovering the cause of the acquired ...coronavirus is lab grown, nobel prize winner says - Ponderwall
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6 days ago - Professor Luc Montagnier, a French Nobel Prize winner, said in an interview that the Covid-19 virus is partially lab grown. It contains ...
Coronavirus man-made in Wuhan lab: Nobel laureate | India ...
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6 days ago - Another French virologist Étienne Simon-Lorière of the Institut Pasteur in Paris, however, rubbished Montagnier's claims. That (His claims) does ...
(BREAKING) Nobel Prize Winning Scientist: Coronavirus was ...
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5 days ago - According to Montagnier, the coronavirus was said to have grown in the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory . The Wuhan city laboratory has ...
Coronavirus Is a Man Made Virus "manipulated" for HIV ...
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6 days ago - However, many scientists are not buying Luc Montagnier's claim. Dr Jean-
French prof sparks furor with lab leak claim - Asia Times
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7 days ago - French professor Luc Montagnier believes the coronavirus was manufactured and leaked from Wuhan lab. Credit: En24News. A theory put ...
Jump to Coronavirus pandemic - According to Montagnier, the "presence of elements of HIV and germ of malaria in the genome of coronavirus is highly ...
Institutions: Pasteur Institute; Shanghai Jiao To...
Fields: Virology
Known for: Co-discovery of HIV
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6 days ago - Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier maintains that novel coronavirus had elements of HIV, and such modifications can only be made in a lab.
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4 days ago - London: French Nobel prize winning scientist Luc Montagnier has ... HIV in the genome of the Coronavirus and even elements of the "germ of ...
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6 days ago - Montagnier's analysis has not been peer-reviewed. In recent years the Frenchman has been involved with controversial research that's been ...
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| Wuhan laboratory scientists 'did absolutely crazy things' to alter coronavirus | Daily Mail Online | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A leading Russian microbiologist has claimed the coronavirus is the result of Wuhan scientists doing 'absolutely crazy things' in their laboratory.
World renowned expert Professor Petr Chumakov claimed their aim was to study the pathogenicity of the virus and not 'with malicious intent' to deliberately create a manmade killer.
Professor Chumakov, chief researcher at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, said: 'In China, scientists at the Wuhan Laboratory have been actively involved in the development of various coronavirus variants for over ten years.
'Moreover, they did this, supposedly not with the aim of creating pathogenic variants, but to study their pathogenicity.
World renowned expert Professor Petr Chumakov (pictured) claimed their aim was to study the pathogenicity of the virus and not 'with malicious intent' to deliberately create a manmade killer
'They did absolutely crazy things, in my opinion.
'For example, inserts in the genome, which gave the virus the ability to infect human cells.
'Now all this has been analysed.
'The picture of the possible creation of the current coronavirus is slowly emerging.'
He told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper: 'There are several inserts, that is, substitutions of the natural sequence of the genome, which gave it special properties.
'It is interesting that the Chinese and Americans who worked with them published all their works in the open (scientific) press.
Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov (left) warned this week against allegations that coronavirus was manmade
'I even wonder why this background comes to people very slowly.
'I think that an investigation will nevertheless be initiated, as a result of which new rules will be developed that regulate the work with the genomes of such dangerous viruses.
'It's too early to blame anyone.'
He said the Chinese scientists created 'variants of the virus without malicious intent' possibly aiming for an HIV vaccine.
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Professor Chumakov is also connected to Russia's Federal Research Centre for Research and Development of Immunobiological Preparations.
Vladimir Putin's spokesman warned this week against allegations that coronavirus was manmade.
'In the situation where there is not enough information that has been supported and checked by science ... we think it is unacceptable, impossible, to groundlessly accuse anyone,' said Dmitry Peskov.
Veronika Skvortsova (pictured), head of Russia's Federal Medical-Biological Agency (FMBA) has said a 'very thorough' study is needed to determine if the virus is manmade
Earlier Veronika Skvortsova, head of Russia's Federal Medical-Biological Agency (FMBA) and Putin's ex-health minister, was asked if the pandemic virus could be manmade.
'This question is not that easy. It demands a very thorough study,' she said on Russia's Channel One.
'None of the versions can be ruled out.'
She said: 'We can see that a fairly large number of fragments distinguishes this virus from its very close relative, SARS.
'They are approximately 94 per cent similar, the rest is different
'I think that we must conduct a very serious research.'
Trump says US conducting examination into coronavirus origin
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| "Китайцы создали коронавирус, пытаясь сделать вакцину от ВИЧ" - МК | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Мир активней «загудел» на тему искусственного происхождения COVID-19. Стрелы сомнений и предположений летят в сторону Китая, который проводил странные эксперименты в Уханьской лаборатории и, возможно, допустил утечку рукотворного коронавируса в мир. На прошлой неделе лауреат Нобелевской премии за открытие ретровируса ВИЧ Люк Монтанье в интервью другому ученому - доктору медицинских наук Жану-Франсуа Лемуану, он привел свои веские доводы об искусственном происхождении заразы. Слова Монтанье нам прокомментировал член-корреспондент РАН Петр Чумаков.
фото: <a href="http://pixabay.com" rel="nofollow">pixabay.com</a>
Вспомним, о чем говорили Люк Монтанье и Жан-Франсуа Лемуан.
Нобелевского лауреата, который когда-то преуспел в расшифровке генома ВИЧ, очень заинтересовал коронавирус, вызвавший пандемию. Он решил познакомиться с ним поближе, пригласив в помощники математика Жана-Клода Переза специалиста в вычислительной биологии.
«Индусы раскрыли тайну вируса первыми»
Люк Монтанье вспомнил также, что еще до них в мельчайших деталях РНК-секвенции разбирались специалисты из Индии: «Они провели анализ генома и показали, что в полном геноме этого коронавируса, имелась последовательность иного вируса, и это сюрприз для меня это была секвенция вируса иммунодефицита (СПИД)». Они (индусы) опубликовали, точнее: попытались опубликовать результаты своей работы. Однако их заставили дезавуировать свой анализ, отказаться от него, на них было оказано колоссальное давление, понимаете? Никто не хочет, чтобы истина увидела свет». (Критики работы, опубликованной, а затем удаленой индийскими исследователями, утверждали, что те привели в пример столь ничтожные сегменты РНК COVID-19, что подобное сходство можно было бы обнаружить и в массе других вирусов - "МК").На вопрос Лемуана, не могла ли последовательность ВИЧ возникнуть в вирусе естественным путем, Монтанье категорически мотает головой: «Нет. Если вы хотите, чтобы в геноме коронавируса возникла бы последовательность вируса иммунодефицита, нужно обладать соответствующими инструментами на молекулярном уровне, это не может произойти естественно. В этом должен участвовать сотрудник лаборатории. Раньше для этого требовалась очень высокая квалификация, подобная манипуляция была по плечу очень немногим. Но уже несколько лет, как этот процесс очень упростился История с рыбным рынком это красивая сказка, но она не соответствует действительности, это слишком маловероятное развитие событий. Собственно говоря, у них был вирус летучей мыши, они над ним трудились, они его модифицировали». Дальше Монтанье делает предположения о том для чего создавался химерный коронавирус. Наиболее правдоподобной ему представляется гипотеза о производстве вакцины от заражения вирусом иммунодефицита человека. «Они хотели произвести вакцину используя коронавирус. Коронавирус может быть ослаблен, чтобы не угрожать здоровью (жизни), и его в данном случае использовали в качестве вектора (носителя) для антител вируса, вызывающего СПИД. И таким образом это в итоге могло бы стать вакциной». Но в какой-то момент что-то пошло не так, уханьские ученые «не вполне поняли, что есть еще фактор природы, а она не терпит, когда делают что-то, что противоречит ее логике».
Природа сама рано или поздно убьет COVID-19, но можно ей помочь
Именно в наличие множества мутаций коронавируса Монтанье видит свидетельство того, как природа пытается избавиться от него. ««Отваливаются» от него те кусочки, которые были помещены в него искусственно, кусочки вируса иммунодефицита, именно от них природа и пытается постоянно отделаться. Вирус передается от одного пациента другому, кусочков, вставленных в коронавирус, становится все меньше и меньше».По мнению ученого, даже если мы ничего не будем делать, в итоге все придет в норму. Но эта нормализация обернется многочисленными смертями "Мы можем ускорить процесс возвращения к норме, используя принцип РНК-интерференции, уничтожая последовательность РНК этого вируса, даже если человек уже заражен", - сказал Монтанье. Высказать свое мнение по поводу выступления Люка Монтанье, мы попросили профессора, члена-корреспондента РАН, главного научного сотрудника Института молекулярной биологии им. В.А. Энгельгардта РАН, сотрудника ФНЦ исследований и разработки иммунобиологических препаратов им. М. П. Чумакова. Петра Чумакова. В Китае ученые Уханьской лаборатории на протяжении более 10 лет активно занимались разработкой различных вариантов коронавируса. Причем они это делали, якобы не с целью создания болезнетворных вариантов, а для изучения их патогенности. Они делали совершенно безумные, на мой взгляд, вещи: к примеру, вставки в геном, которые придавали вирусу способность заражать клетки человека. Сейчас это все было проанализировано. Картина возможного создания нынешнего коронавируса потихоньку вырисовывается. 
фото: <a href="http://ru.wikipedia.org" rel="nofollow">ru.wikipedia.org</a>
Вы изучали последовательность генома SARS-CoV-2? Там действительно есть искусственные вставки? Так что выводы Монтанье не беспочвенны, за ними стоят очень серьезные подозрения. Сейчас рано кого-то осуждать. Наверняка, варианты вируса создавались без злого умысла, возможно, как говорит Монтанье, в Ухане хотели создать вакцину от ВИЧ. Хотя никто не исключает, что за спиной ученых стояли кураторы, которые направляли действия в другом, нужном им направлении. Ведь известно, что лаборатория частично финансировалась небезызвестным фондом Джорджа Сороса, имеющим неоднозначную репутацию в мире. Так как же мог вирус вырваться наружу? Кто знает? Может, им инфицировали мышь, а она вырвалась из вивария и улетела. Тут можно сколько угодно сценариев строить. Как вы считаете, Китай допустит комиссию по расследованию в Ухань, если такая будет создана? Они вынуждены будут допустить. На фоне того, что уже сейчас раздаются голоса со стороны президента США о возможной денежной компенсации за содеянное, в интересах Китая будет доказывать свою непричастность к заражению всего мира коронавирусом. Возможно, во всем обвинят лишь отдельных людей, но не исключено, что среди виновных могут оказаться и американские консультанты. По мнению Монтанье, вирус ослабевает по мере распространения, «теряя вставки ВИЧ». Чем это объясняется? Там нет собственно вставок ВИЧ, это похожие на них элементы, которые делают вирус опасным для человека. Когда вирус начинает мутировать, эти вставки становятся не нужны, и вирус их теряет, избавляется от них. Почему вирусу не нужны опасные вставки? Потому что он не должен убивать. Убийство организма своего хозяина противоречит его природе. Как мило. А что же ему нравится? Самое лучшее для вируса это вызывать бессимптомную инфекцию, когда он спокойно может размножаться, переходя от человека к человеку. Поэтому болезнетворный вариант вируса среди людей постепенно утрачивает свою патогенность и превращается в безвредный вариант. Нобелевский лауреат вспомнил про такой способ борьбы с опасными вирусами, как РНК-интерференция. Можете пояснить, что это? Я думаю, что имелась в виду интерференция вирусов. Интерференция это подавление, противодействие одного другому. Если в организм человека впустить один вирус, не вызывающий симптомов болезни, то другому, даже самому «злому», места уже не будет. Мы в начале 70-х годов предложили во время сезонной эпидемии нового вируса гриппа похожий вариант. А именно, мы иммунизировали население полиомиелитной вакциной (вам, наверное, давали в школе такие сладкие капельки на куске сахара). Так вот после нее люди не заболевали гриппом в течение двух недель. Заболеваемость тогда упала в 3-4 раза, что даже лучше чем при применении противогриппозных вакцин. Тот же метод можно было бы использовать и сейчас. Живую вакцину против полиомиелита? - Да, как показала практика, она может противостоять короткое время против любых болезнетворных вирусов. Когда мы сталкиваемся с новыми инфекциями, для которых не создано ни лекарств, ни вакцин, это средство можно использовать для защиты определённых групп населения. К примеру, тех, кто стоит на переднем фланге борьбы с вирусом, тех же медиков в больницах. А если человек уже заражен, только пока не знает об этом? Наши исследования показали, что если симптомы отсутствуют, то полиомиелитная вакцина поможет побороть попавший, но не развившийся новый вирус, и человек не заболеет. - Почему же тогда этот метод сейчас на применяют? Мы боремся за это, пишем письма в Минздрав. Дело в том, что исследования эти проходили так давно, что сегодня и специалистов-то, участвовавших в них, по-видимому кроме меня уже никого не осталось. Сейчас я активно рассылаю нашим чиновникам свои прежние статьи на этот счет. Читайте также: "Ученые обнародовали результаты вскрытия умерших от коронавируса"
Наталья Веденеева
Заголовок в газете: Кто выпустил вирус из бутылки? Опубликован в газете "Московский комсомолец" 28248 от 24 апреля 2020 Тэги: Нобелевская премия, Наука, Коронавирус, Грипп, Лекарства, Анализы Организации: Министерство здравоохранения Места: Китай, США, Индия | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Russian microbiologist claims coronavirus to be outcome of crazy experiments in Wihan | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Delhi/London: A leading microbiologist from Russia has claimed that the novel coronavirus, which originated in Chinas Wuhan city, is the outcome of "crazy" experiments conducted by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In an interview to Russian daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, translated in a report by the UK-based Daily Mail, noted scientist Professor Peter Chumakov said, "They did absolutely crazy things, in my opinion." He said the Chinese scientists created "variants of the virus without malicious intent", possibly aiming for an HIV vaccine. The statement comes even as Russian President Vladimir Putin's government has been warning against conspiracy theories which claim that coronavirus is laboratory-engineered. Chief researcher at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, Chumakov in the interview, however, said that the picture of the possible creation of the current coronavirus is slowly emerging. Scientists at the Wuhan Laboratory, he said, have been actively involved in the development of various coronavirus variants for over 10 years. "Moreover, they did this, supposedly not with the aim of creating pathogenic variants, but to study their pathogenicity," he said. According to the microbiologist, there are "several inserts, that is, substitutions of the natural sequence of the genome, which gave it special properties." "For example, inserts in the genome, which gave the virus the ability to infect human cells. Now all this has been analysed... The Chinese and Americans who worked with them published all their works in the open (scientific) press," Chumakov said. However, the academic, who is also connected to Russia's Federal Research Centre for Research and Development of Immunobiological Preparations, said it was too early to blame anyone. After an investigation is initiated, new rules will be developed that regulate the work with the genomes of such dangerous viruses, he said. Earlier, Veronika Skvortsova, head of Russia's Federal Medical-Biological Agency (FMBA), and Putin's ex-health minister, was asked on Russia's Channel One if the pandemic virus could be manmade. "This question is not that easy. It demands a very thorough study. None of the versions can be ruled out," she had responded, adding, "We can see that a fairly large number of fragments distinguishes this virus from its very close relative, SARS. They are approximately 94 per cent similar, the rest is different. I think that we must conduct a very serious research." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 10:09 AM 4/24/2020 - Give some LYSOL to THE IDIOT!!! Cleanse yourself, America! Long overdue! ...Donald Trump may try to delay November election | US news | The Guardian | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
https://tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/give-some-lysol-to-idiot-cleanse.html
______________________________________________________________ 10:09 AM 4/24/2020 
https://tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/herd-immunity-why-some-think-it-could.html
 Michael Novakhov - Posts on Twitter - 250 | Page _____________________________________
» mikenov on Twitter: Herd immunity: Why some think it could end the coronavirus pandemic - CNN cnn.com/2020/04/23/hea
23/04/20 21:40 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Herd immunity: Why some think it could end the coronavirus pandemic - CNN cnn.com/2020/04/23/hea Posted by mikenov on Friday, April 24th, 2020 12:40am mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Nursing homes linked to up to half of coronavirus deaths in Europe, WHO says washingtonpost.com/world/europe/n
23/04/20 19:44 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Nursing homes linked to up to half of coronavirus deaths in Europe, WHO says washingtonpost.com/world/europe/n Posted by mikenov on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 10:44pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Nursing homes, struggling to care for coronavirus patients, face increased scrutiny | RiverheadLOCAL riverheadlocal.com/2020/04/23/nur
23/04/20 19:44 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Nursing homes, struggling to care for coronavirus patients, face increased scrutiny | RiverheadLOCAL riverheadlocal.com/2020/04/23/nur Posted by mikenov on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 10:44pm mikenov on Twitter
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 The New Abwehr punishes Italy with Covid-19 for betrayal of Nazi Germany in WW2 Coronavirus in Italy Coronavirus superspreading events in Italy Coronavirus superspreading events locations are also the major locations of the end of WW2 Coronavirus superspreading events locations are also the major locations of the end of WW2 in Italy Italy and Germany in WW2 __________________________________________________________________ Michael Novakhov - Posts on Twitter - 250 | Page _____________________________________
» mikenov on Twitter: Autopsies find first U.S. coronavirus death occurred in early February, weeks earlier than previously thought washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04
22/04/20 21:51 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Autopsies find first U.S. coronavirus death occurred in early February, weeks earlier than previously thought washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04 Posted by mikenov on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 12:51am mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Canadian police say 22 victims after rampage in Nova Scotia katu.com/news/nation-wo
22/04/20 20:20 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Canadian police say 22 victims after rampage in Nova Scotia katu.com/news/nation-wo Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 11:20pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Moscows coronavirus offensive politi.co/2Vst1bC via @politico
22/04/20 20:17 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Moscows coronavirus offensive politi.co/2Vst1bC via @politico Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 11:17pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Iran, North Korea, Russia: America's adversaries emboldened to flex their muscles amid coronavirus usatoday.com/story/news/wor via @usatoday
22/04/20 18:39 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Iran, North Korea, Russia: America's adversaries emboldened to flex their muscles amid coronavirus usatoday.com/story/news/wor via @usatoday Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 9:39pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Russia Is Testing US Military for Weaknesses Amid Pandemic, General Says | Military.com military.com/daily-news/202
22/04/20 16:32 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Russia Is Testing US Military for Weaknesses Amid Pandemic, General Says | <a href="http://Military.com" rel="nofollow">Military.com</a> military.com/daily-news/202 Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 7:32pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Coronavirus 'has mutated 30 times with deadlier strain infecting Europe', scientists discover the-sun.com/news/714317/co
22/04/20 16:13 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Coronavirus 'has mutated 30 times with deadlier strain infecting Europe', scientists discover the-sun.com/news/714317/co Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 7:13pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: New Rochelle NY and La Rochelle in France: Coronavirus and WW2 images.app.goo.gl/5pwWKdLtvUoMFx
22/04/20 14:07 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) New Rochelle NY and La Rochelle in France: Coronavirus and WW2 images.app.goo.gl/5pwWKdLtvUoMFx Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 5:07pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: New Rochelle NY and La Rochelle in France: Coronavirus and WW2 - Google Search google.com/search?q=New+R
22/04/20 14:06 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) New Rochelle NY and La Rochelle in France: Coronavirus and WW2 - Google Search google.com/search?q=New+R Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 5:06pm mikenov on Twitter
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 "ZIZ iz zi real Victory Parade, und ziz iz zi real 75th Anniversary of the end of the WW2, und ziz iz zi real COMMEMORATION!!!", zayz zi New Abwehr. "Take your crowns off, PUPPETS!!! Und my new Viruz-z-z will help you wiz ZIZ!!!" - 12:19 PM 4/22/2020 ____________________________________________________________________ Commemoration by the NEW ABWEHR: Coronavirus superspreading events locations are also the major locations of the end of WW2 - Google Search - 4.22.20 Search ResultsWeb results
Jun 24, 2017 - A memorial stone commemorating Nazi spies sits in storage at the ... The Abwehr was the German intelligence service in the World War II period. ... [Most read] Coronavirus in Illinois updates: Officials report 1,151 new known ... "The location is a little bit confusing," he said, "and I think deliberately so.".
Missing:
Apr 12, 2020 - 12/04/20 14:41 from TWEETS BY MIKENOV from mikenova (1 sites) ... Top stories - Google News: NYC school buildings closed until end of school ... Coronavirus Pandemic: New Abwehr - Gerhard Schroeder plot to ... mikenov on Twitter: there have been multiple reports of superspreading events (SSEs), ...
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| Herd immunity: Why some think it could end the coronavirus pandemic - 23/04/20 21:40 | Michael Novakhov - Posts on Twitter - 250 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
https://tweetsandnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/herd-immunity-why-some-think-it-could.html
Michael Novakhov - Posts on Twitter - 250 | Page _____________________________________
» mikenov on Twitter: Herd immunity: Why some think it could end the coronavirus pandemic - CNN cnn.com/2020/04/23/hea
23/04/20 21:40 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Herd immunity: Why some think it could end the coronavirus pandemic - CNN cnn.com/2020/04/23/hea Posted by mikenov on Friday, April 24th, 2020 12:40am mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Nursing homes linked to up to half of coronavirus deaths in Europe, WHO says washingtonpost.com/world/europe/n
23/04/20 19:44 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Nursing homes linked to up to half of coronavirus deaths in Europe, WHO says washingtonpost.com/world/europe/n Posted by mikenov on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 10:44pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Nursing homes, struggling to care for coronavirus patients, face increased scrutiny | RiverheadLOCAL riverheadlocal.com/2020/04/23/nur
23/04/20 19:44 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Nursing homes, struggling to care for coronavirus patients, face increased scrutiny | RiverheadLOCAL riverheadlocal.com/2020/04/23/nur Posted by mikenov on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 10:44pm mikenov on Twitter | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The New Abwehr punishes Italy with Covid-19 for betrayal of Nazi Germany in WW2 - 3:19 AM 4/23/2020 - Google Searches | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The New Abwehr punishes Italy with Covid-19 for betrayal of Nazi Germany in WW2 Coronavirus in Italy Coronavirus superspreading events in Italy Coronavirus superspreading events locations are also the major locations of the end of WW2 Coronavirus superspreading events locations are also the major locations of the end of WW2 in Italy Italy and Germany in WW2 __________________________________________________________________ Michael Novakhov - Posts on Twitter - 250 | Page _____________________________________
» mikenov on Twitter: Autopsies find first U.S. coronavirus death occurred in early February, weeks earlier than previously thought washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04
22/04/20 21:51 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Autopsies find first U.S. coronavirus death occurred in early February, weeks earlier than previously thought washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04 Posted by mikenov on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 12:51am mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Canadian police say 22 victims after rampage in Nova Scotia katu.com/news/nation-wo
22/04/20 20:20 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Canadian police say 22 victims after rampage in Nova Scotia katu.com/news/nation-wo Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 11:20pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Moscows coronavirus offensive politi.co/2Vst1bC via @politico
22/04/20 20:17 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Moscows coronavirus offensive politi.co/2Vst1bC via @politico Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 11:17pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Iran, North Korea, Russia: America's adversaries emboldened to flex their muscles amid coronavirus usatoday.com/story/news/wor via @usatoday
22/04/20 18:39 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Iran, North Korea, Russia: America's adversaries emboldened to flex their muscles amid coronavirus usatoday.com/story/news/wor via @usatoday Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 9:39pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Russia Is Testing US Military for Weaknesses Amid Pandemic, General Says | Military.com military.com/daily-news/202
22/04/20 16:32 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Russia Is Testing US Military for Weaknesses Amid Pandemic, General Says | <a href="http://Military.com" rel="nofollow">Military.com</a> military.com/daily-news/202 Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 7:32pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: Coronavirus 'has mutated 30 times with deadlier strain infecting Europe', scientists discover the-sun.com/news/714317/co
22/04/20 16:13 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) Coronavirus 'has mutated 30 times with deadlier strain infecting Europe', scientists discover the-sun.com/news/714317/co Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 7:13pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: New Rochelle NY and La Rochelle in France: Coronavirus and WW2 images.app.goo.gl/5pwWKdLtvUoMFx
22/04/20 14:07 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) New Rochelle NY and La Rochelle in France: Coronavirus and WW2 images.app.goo.gl/5pwWKdLtvUoMFx Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 5:07pm mikenov on Twitter
» mikenov on Twitter: New Rochelle NY and La Rochelle in France: Coronavirus and WW2 - Google Search google.com/search?q=New+R
22/04/20 14:06 from Michael Novakhov on Twitter from Michael_Novakhov (1 sites) New Rochelle NY and La Rochelle in France: Coronavirus and WW2 - Google Search google.com/search?q=New+R Posted by mikenov on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 5:06pm mikenov on Twitter |
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