Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

vesicles

Colonel
They published the virus genome dna code, but what if there are more aggresive or deadly strains that either jumped/developed in parallel or later mutated or mutates. Any chance for a chrono virus strand to end up a civilization ender?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Well, think of it this way. We’ve been trying to target and kill cancer cells, genetically very vastly different from normal cells, for decades. We’ve spent trillions and trillions of dollars and countless bright minds have been tirelessly working on it. Yet, we still cannot do it. Nowadays, we can have pinpoint accuracy on which gene(s) a cancer patient has mutated. Yet, we still cannot do anything about it.

Now, let’s come back to viruses. Is it actually feasible to come up with something that can have such specificity to target only a single group? My answer would be a big NO.

A civilization ender only exists in sci-fi novels and movies. Keep in mind that we have evolved for billions of years, during which time we have been attacked by countless viruses and bacteria. And we, the modern human, are the offspring of the survivors of all those attacks. Our ancestors have given us immune systems well-equipped to defend against such attacks. Some will perish, yes. However, our civilization will continue to go on.

Also, every time our cells divide, they introduce some small variations. So our genes are different enough that we will have plenty people who will be comfortably handle certain kind of viral and/or bacterial attacks. Our genomes contain enough variations to handle exactly this kind of situation. So as a group, we will be fine.
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
I understand people are cautious and vigilant and some people think the timing of this is "suspicious," but I'm seriously considering just straight up deleting any posts insinuating that there is any deliberate or malicious man made element of this virus.

We have no evidence to suggest there was any foreign power involved and no evidence to suggest there has been any kind of deliberate man made element.
If tomorrow the Chinese govt and national health authorities come out and say something to the contrary, then sure, we can start talking about it then. But right now our discussion needs to be evidence based.

Further entertaining conspiracy ideas only devalues the quality of this forum and adversely effects our collective credibility.



This is not a conspiracy forum.
 

obj 705A

Junior Member
Registered Member
Contrast this with something that should be taken seriously but isn't: influenza. Influenza hospitalizes between 140,000 to 810,000, and kills between 12,000 and 61,000 annually.

meaningless & misleading comparison, when a young patient with no underlying health issues gets influenza does he go to the hospital to get treated? no ofcourse not when I get influenza I would do nothing & just wait for it to pass & I would get better automatically, but if I got the Wuhan flu.. if I do not go to a hospital & wait for it to pass will I just automatically get well & survive?
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
meaningless & misleading comparison, when a young patient with no underlying health issues gets influenza does he go to the hospital to get treated? no ofcourse not when I get influenza I would do nothing & just wait for it to pass & I would get better automatically, but if I got the Wuhan flu.. if I do not go to a hospital & wait for it to pass will I just automatically get well & survive?

You both make good points.

Basically at this stage we don’t know how fatal the new corona virus is yet. At present it seems the majority of people that have suffered greatest mortality have been the elderly and people with comorbidities.

We do not yet know how fatal the new virus is, so direct comparisons with influenza or other infectious diseases are only preliminary and likely subject to change. We will likely get a better grasp of how lethal this virus is with time. Until then, comparisons with other diseases are flawed at best, and misleading at worst.
 

SamuraiBlue

Captain
If I recall and just checked with Wiki, the Coronavirus we are all talking about is the same virus that causes the common cold. SARS official name is, SARS coronavirus, a variant of the Conona virus. I guess this variant jumped host from another species that is why it has a high mortality rate but since it is the same type of virus as the common cold, humans will eventually develop an immune system against this virus as well.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
meaningless & misleading comparison, when a young patient with no underlying health issues gets influenza does he go to the hospital to get treated? no ofcourse not when I get influenza I would do nothing & just wait for it to pass & I would get better automatically, but if I got the Wuhan flu.. if I do not go to a hospital & wait for it to pass will I just automatically get well & survive?

Im sorry, but it’s your reply that is meaningless and misleading.

If you do get this new Coronavirus and wait for it to pass without going to a hospital, and provided you are young and healthy, your survival odds are extremely good. So far the overwhelming majority of fatalities have been amongst the old, and those with underlying health problems who would have been at risk even from regular flu and influenza outbreaks.

If anything, this new Coronavirus is not as dangerous as regular flu and influenza because so far, there have not been any fatalities amongst the very young, who are also a high risk group for fatalities from regular flu.

The entirety of your argument does not rest with reasonable and rational facts, but instead you are irresponsibly and irrationally trying to extrapolate a higher degree of danger based seemingly purely on the extent of China’s efforts to contain this outbreak.

If it makes you feel safer, you can rest assured that if there is a similar outbreak as you are seeing in China in a western developed country, said country would not be taking anything like as strong a set of countermeasures (can you imagine a major western city like Manchester, LA, Munich etc being quarantined over a Coronavirus?), and if you did catch the virus after thousands of confirmed cases in multiple cities in a western country, odds are you will be sent home if you are young and fit to get over it yourself, and the western MSM would be full of comparisons to regular flu and influenza to assurance the population that this isn’t anything that much more worrisome.
 

SampanViking

The Capitalist
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
There has been a lot to talk this morning about pre-symption infectiousness and conjecture of the true level of cases being much more than the reported figure.

So lets state the obvious. If the level of contagion is far higher than reported, but the level of fatalities still the same (not an unlikely scenario) then the virulence and lethality of the virus is obviously less than has been initially thought.
Yes obviously there is need for concern and vigilance over the emergence of anew virus, but also please, a sense of proportion and not cheap sensationalism..
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
There has been a lot to talk this morning about pre-symption infectiousness and conjecture of the true level of cases being much more than the reported figure.

So lets state the obvious. If the level of contagion is far higher than reported, but the level of fatalities still the same (not an unlikely scenario) then the virulence and lethality of the virus is obviously less than has been initially thought.
Yes obviously there is need for concern and vigilance over the emergence of anew virus, but also please, a sense of proportion and not cheap sensationalism..

Exactly, the western MSM is constantly trying to eat their cake and have it when it comes to their China reporting, wanting to cherry pick the worst figures and scenarios without any thought as to how absurd and self contradictory their line of reasoning is.
 
Top