Briareos H on 14/1/2021 at 10:42
The only conspiracy theory that makes a lick of sense is that the virus is natural but could have been released from a lab.
faetal on 14/1/2021 at 12:10
Quote Posted by Cipheron
This stuff is almost identical to naturally occurring bat viruses:
This won't stop a dedicated conspiracy nut. They'll just link (
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1) really tenuous and bad research which they think proves that gene manipulation was used to boost virulence in humans (paper refuting that (
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7033698/) here).
Quote:
Ok, so let's review the logic. They did some engineering on a bat virus, got it to infect humans *without* also having humans test subjects, all to make a super-virus, but one that doesn't show any actual signs of anyone tampering with it. Making the actual virus is next-level, being able to know *what to make* is several levels above that. We can't even consistently predict what simple molecules will do to people, let alone how to engineer a super-virus from scratch in a lab.
I mean, we can predict what simple molecules will do to people, as shown by the entire pre-clinical pharma product development pipeline. This ranges from computer modeling, through to human cell line cultures and up to humanized mouse models. Before we get to first in human trials, there's a decent idea of what the range of outcomes could be. It's not air tight, but enough to work with. If someone wanted to mess with virus coat proteins to make them more virulent to humans, it is entirely possible they could. Just not sure why anyone would want to as even from a biological warfare perspective it is like setting fire to the apartment under yours because your neighbour stole your newspaper.
Quote:
However, if the above is true, then why on Earth would they have started with a bat virus when they could have just used human viruses as the basis and pulled the same shit?
Because it is much more simple to add human receptor affinity (handful of simple genes / sequences) to a virulent animal virus, than it is to add virulence (varied, complex genes, sequences, loci) to a human virus. Look no further than the source of most of the harmful pandemics which come our way - how many are from animal viruses which have mutated to cross the species barrier vs. human viruses which which become more virulent? Highest frequency = fewer steps needed to get there.
I'm all for refuting nut cases with logic, but better for it to be based on biology rather than speculation. Otherwise the nutjobs can google up a "well actually" and reinforce their own beliefs (not that they don't also do that for actual science...).
Pyrian on 14/1/2021 at 14:27
Quote Posted by Briareos H
The only conspiracy theory that makes a lick of sense is that the virus is natural but could have been released from a lab.
There's a theory floating around that it was collected in humans in a hospital, taken to the Wuhan lab, and escaped that lab. Relatively plausible on the face of it, but also means that it was already spreading in the population when it got out of the lab, i.e., the lab would be a secondary source at best.
Azaran on 14/1/2021 at 15:28
Quote Posted by hopper
All of which is to say "The article says vitamin D deficiency may be linked to long COVID" is a reasonable takeaway from the article for the medically untrained.
I concede the article doesn't explicitly link the two, but the inflammation link is a logical deduction.
In any case, the (
https://vdmeta.com/) 37 trial results for Vitamin D supplementation are finally in, and they show very positive results on death and severity rates
Quote Posted by Briareos H
The only conspiracy theory that makes a lick of sense is that the virus is natural but could have been released from a lab.
There was a story floating around that a lab technician or doctor got unknowingly infected by a sample, and then brought it to his family, which kicked off this whole thing. It's not implausible
faetal on 14/1/2021 at 16:12
Quote Posted by Azaran
I concede the article doesn't explicitly link the two, but the inflammation link is a logical deduction.
It's a logical possibility, but a research paper linking the 2 would do so explicitly, along the lines of "thus vitamin D deficiency may have a role in susceptibility to long COVID".
Quote:
In any case, the (
https://vdmeta.com/) 37 trial results for Vitamin D supplementation are finally in, and they show very positive results on death and severity rates
I am supplementing vit D myself on the basis of this, was only contesting whether the article was claiming a link between vit D & long COVID, not severity or general outcome.
Quote:
There was a story floating around that a lab technician or doctor got unknowingly infected by a sample, and then brought it to his family, which kicked off this whole thing. It's not implausible
Possible, but virus escaping from lab vs virus mutating in the wild to cross species barrier (as is expected of coronaviruses in general), is a bit zebra vs horse in response to hoofbeats.
Pyrian on 15/1/2021 at 05:12
Sea World San Diego operated as a zoo for several months (we're pass members and went a couple times but it really isn't the same with the whole kids area closed) but even that isn't allowed anymore since Californians are dying in droves. So, they've made a creative new move: They're now a drive-thru! Lol. ...Most of the exhibits absolutely won't work with this so I think it's going to be kind of sad and pathetic, but I'm still curious enough to give it a go.
(
https://seaworld.com/san-diego/events/sesame-street-parade-of-lights/)
SubJeff on 18/1/2021 at 19:13
Early days.