MIT and Harvard Understand SARS-CoV2 Geometric Progression

technologyreview |  After an outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease Covid-19 was found spreading through Boston's biomedical community, Harvard University said it will move classes online and is telling students not to return from spring break.

This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the coronavirus/Covid-19 outbreak. You can also sign up to our dedicated newsletter.

Online only: The nation’s oldest university said it plans to switch to online classes by March 23 and asked students not to return after spring break week, which begins on March 13.  (Update: later the same day MIT, in an email from its president Rafael Reif, asked its students to do the same, and canceled classes for the week of March 16 to 20. MIT's spring break is the week after Harvard's.)

Harvard has more than 6,500 undergraduates and more than 20,000 students overall.

“These past few weeks have been a powerful reminder of just how connected we are to one another—and how our choices today determine our options tomorrow,” said university president Lawrence Bacow in a statement posted to Harvard’s home page.

Preemptive step: Harvard said its actions “are consistent” with recommendations of leading health officials, who have started to urge older people to avoid travel and contacts, and for the rest of the country to practice social distancing to slow the pace of the pandemic.

“We are doing this not just to protect you but also to protect other members of or community who may be more vulnerable to this disease than you are,” Bacow said.

Disconnect:  Harvard’s move could prompt other universities to close as well, but stands in contrast to statements made yesterday by US president Donald Trump, who downplayed the need to restrict normal activities. 

“So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” Trump tweeted on March 9.

No gatherings: Harvard said the move to online classes is meant to avoid large gatherings and close contact between people. The campus will otherwise remain open and operating.

The move to online classes follows similar steps by west coast universities, including the University of Washington in Seattle.

Effects on science: Massachusetts has been hit by a coronavirus outbreak, with more than 40 cases so far. Many of those are linked to a recent meeting of executives from the biotech company Biogen, striking at the heart of the area's close-knit biomedical research community.

Harvard indicated work at its research laboratories would continue. In a message to staff, Harvard Medical School dean George Daley said that medical students would be staying on campus and continuing their rotations in the school's teaching hospitals.

Graduate students "can continue to pursue their laboratory research" after consulting with supervisors, Daley said.

KU and UMKC Got ZERO Coronavirus Phuggs For Its Students/Communities

bizjournal |  The University of Missouri-Columbia will suspend in-person classes and move to online instruction starting 5 p.m. Wednesday until March 30 in an effort to stem the growing coronavirus outbreak, the university announced.

In-person classes will resume March 30, after spring break, which is set for March 21-29.

An official with the University of Missouri-Kansas City said in an email Wednesday that classes would continue as scheduled and are not being moved online.

"Under the circumstances, however, making preparations to do so if necessary is the prudent course," John Martellaro, UMKC's director of media relations, said in the email. "We are providing instruction and resources to our faculty on how to change in-person courses to online courses if that becomes necessary at some point."

Effective immediately, all MU-related domestic and international travel is suspended until April 12, including previously approved travel, according to a university statement. That travel is canceled regardless of how it was to be funded.

All nonessential university events will be canceled until March 29. Small meetings and athletic events still will be held, and the school will be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, the statement said.

There are no confirmed cases of coronavirus at MU. Last weekend, several MU students and faculty attended a journalism conference in New Orleans where another attendee tested positive for the virus. 

The positive case was not part of the MU group, the university announced Wednesday. MU students and faculty who attended the conference are staying home, and none have shown symptoms, the university said in a Wednesday statement. The risk of those people developing the virus is low, the statement said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the University of Kansas had not announced any changes to in-person instruction.

The state of Missouri has one confirmed case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. A St. Louis woman tested positive after returning from a study abroad trip in Italy.

Washington University and Webster University, both in St. Louis, also announced they would move to online classes starting this month, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

March Madness in KillaCity: Phugg a Coronavirus...,

bizjournals |  The Big 12 men's and women's basketball tournaments still will have crowds in Kansas City, despite a decision by the NCAA to bar fans from coming championship events out of fears the coronavirus will spread at its events.

The ban includes the men's Division I basketball tournament known as March Madness. Big 12 Director of Media Services Joni Lehmann said in an email to the Kansas City Business Journal that as of Wednesday afternoon, fans would be allowed in Wednesday evening's games, beyond that, she said she could not offer any additional information.

The NCAA released a statement Wednesday afternoon that will effectively bar fans from attending any championship because of concerns about large crowds congregating as COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the U.S. The statement said, in part, that the games will have only essential staff and limited family attendance.

The NCAA statement made specific reference to the NCAA basketball tournament but did not mention the conference-specific tournaments that are taking place this week. Downtown Kansas City and Sprint Center have played host to the men's Big 12 basketball tournament for the past several years, and the event provides a big boost for regional tourism and hotels, while offering a spotlight for Sprint Center and the larger downtown area.

The women's Big 12 basketball tournament is returning to Kansas City and Municipal Auditorium for the first time since 2012. On Wednesday afternoon, fans in the Kansas City Power & Light District and the area around Sprint Center began gathering for Wednesday's games.

Many fans were in nearby bars and restaurants while small crowds began trickling in, awaiting a decision on the game. The men's tournament was set to begin its first round of games at 6 p.m. Wednesday with the tournament wrapping up Saturday. The women's tournament starts at 6 p.m. Thursday and is scheduled to end on Sunday.

Joe Rogan: This Ain't No Coronavirus Blizzard - It's A Coronavirus Winter

Speaking Of Boggled Minds...,

realclearpolitics |  Joe Biden’s status as the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential race highlights the party’s hypocrisy when it comes to striking down Donald Trump, SKY News Australia "Outsiders" host Rita Panahi says.

Ms Panahi said it’s surprising the candidate, who is “so confused that he has trouble remembering where he is and why he’s there,” has not been discounted.

“Biden's cognitive issues have been evident for some time but just watch the same media who for four years have been declaring Donald Trump mentally and physically unfit for office have a collective meltdown when Biden's mental faculties are questioned,” she said.

“Can you imagine that man in a presidential debate with Donald Trump? There's not enough popcorn in the world.”

Geometric Progession Boggles The Mind

theautomaticearth |  The most striking characteristic of the virus may be, if not should be, its exponential (or quadratic, if you will) progress once it gets hold. Ben Hunt tweeted earlier today, in reaction to Rome shutting down a quarter of the entire country, that “Italy is a time machine that shows us our future. Why do we ignore it?” But it’s not just Italy. It’s a pattern, it’s a dynamic, it’s motion. All things that regular flu is not.

COVID19 is not a point in space, it’s not standing still. You can’t look at it and compare it to anything else around today, because it moves much faster. Let’s try this vein:

I would suggest we’re looking at something like this:
Wave 0: Wuhan/Hubei (11/58.5 million people)
Wave 1: Rest of China (1.375 million people, total China 1,435)
Wave 2: Italy, South Korea, Iran (59, 51 and 81 million people)

And the next wave could well be, given their development in new cases, countries that are following the early phases of the graphs for Italy and South Korea above:
Wave 3: US, Germany, France, Spain (?!) (330, 83, 67, 47 million people)

The UK is a candidate with its 66.8 million people, but it’s either cheating (don’t test) or it may “have to wait” for Wave 4. Note: the US doesn’t have all that many cases either, but its death rate is high.

I mention the numbers of inhabitants because Wave 3 may also include some countries with fewer people (Wave 3.5?):

Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands (8.5, 10.1, 11.5 and 17.1 million people) are all countries with relatively small populations and relatively high numbers of new cases that may well contain the same sort of clusters that have caused the explosion in cases in Wave 1 countries. We can not predict excatly what happens, but we can see trendlines.

The virus is a time machine in the sense that whereas we can -in theory- assume that the regular flu moves in human time, COVID19 very much appears to move in virus time. Almost something you would ask a quantum theorist to look into.

Meanwhile of course you can theorize about the possibility that this is a bioweapon, but first of all that doesn’t help any patients right now, and second it’s only interesting if you can find out whether it was made on purpose or by accident, released by accident or on purpose, and was it the Chinese, the Americans, the Russians, the British, or someone else, why did they do it, why does it target which group, etc etc.

This thing plays out today, not in an imaginary future where you may have found out the who what and why. In the meantime, people are dying.

If you look at the graphs for Italy and South Korea above, you can see your future. Not in a precise way, but certainly in a general one. You can see ahead. Time machine.     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Sex, Religion, Money - Jim Bakker's Lil'Pimphand Still In The Game

abcnews |  Two state attorneys general ordered a prominent televangelist to stop peddling an alleged coronavirus elixir on his show. 

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Jim Bakker for misrepresentations about the effectiveness of "Silver Solution" as a treatment for coronavirus. 

Schmitt's lawsuit came a week after the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a cease-and-desist order to Bakker, ordering him to stop promoting the supplement as a COVID-19 treatment.

 During a Feb. 12 episode of the "The Jim Bakker Show," guest Sherrill Sellman claimed the so-called Silver Solution was able to eliminate some strains of coronavirus. 

Asked if the Silver Solution would be effective against COVID-19, specifically, Sellman replied, "Let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it's been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and it has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours." 

According to the World Health Organization, there are no current cures or direct treatments for the novel coronavirus, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there's no known cure for other coronavirus variants that cause SARS and MERS. 

"Your show's segment may mislead consumers as to the effectiveness of the Silver Solution product in protecting against the current outbreak," the the New York cease-and-desist order said. "Any representation on the Jim Bakker Show that its Silver Solution products are effective at combating and/or treating the 2019 novel coronavirus violates New York law."

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch...,

SARS-CoV2 Situation Report From Italy

What China Had To Do To Reign In SARS-CoV2

DC Wrecked By One Infected Episcopal Rector...,

cbsnews |  The first person to test positive for coronavirus in Washington, D.C., is the prominent leader of a historic Episcopal church in Georgetown, the church said Sunday.

The Reverend Timothy Cole, rector of Christ Church Georgetown, was diagnosed at the hospital Saturday night and is in stable condition, according to the Reverend Crystal Hardin, the assistant to the rector, who spoke at a press conference outside the church Sunday. 

In an email to parishioners obtained by CBS News, Cole confirmed he has tested positive, and said services were suspended "out of an abundance of caution for the most vulnerable among us." All services were canceled Sunday, the first time the church has closed since a fire in the 1800s, Hardin said. 

"I can now confirm that I am the individual who tested positive for the Coronavirus," Cole wrote in his email. "First, I want to assure you that I will be okay. I am receiving excellent care and am in good spirits under the circumstances. I will remain quarantined for the next 14 days as will the rest of my family."

The church was founded in 1817 and is a fixture of the upscale Washington community, with a congregation that includes many government officials. Cole has been rector of the church since 2016.

First Confirmed Case In Missouri (Catholic N-1 Might As Well Been a Shiite Licking Shit...,)

stltoday |  Villa Duchesne and Oak Hill School will close Monday after administrators learned that a St. Louis County woman infected with the coronavirus is the older sister of a Villa Duchesne student.

Moreover, a message from the schools to parents, circulating on social media, warns that the father and sister of the infected patient attended a school father-daughter dance Saturday night at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton. They also apparently attended a pre-dance gathering at the house of a Villa student.

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page said Sunday that the patient’s family had been told on Thursday to self quarantine at their home in Ladue. Page said the patient’s father had not followed health department instructions. Page spoke at a news conference Sunday evening.

County health officials told the man on Sunday, Page said, “that he must remain in his home or they will issue a formal quarantine that will require him and the rest of his family to stay in their home by the force of law.”

The Villa Duchesne message advises students and parents, “If you attended the dance, please be attentive to any symptoms you are experiencing.”

abcnews |   According to Missouri statute, someone who is issued a formal quarantine and "evades or breaks quarantine" could be found guilty of a class A misdemeanor. 

He called it "a tale of two reactions" and "a study of how people should and should not react to the coronavirus." 

"From everything we can gather, the patient had conducted herself responsibly and maturely and she is to be commended for complying with the health department's instructions," Page said. "The patient's father did not act consistently with the health department's instructions." 

The county is planning to implement state-of-the-art strategies and provide information through it's various channels including the hotline, website and social media to disseminate resources and updates on coronavirus. 

Page reiterated the importance of hand washing, covering mouths when sneezing or coughing, staying home if sick and following all the CDC recommendations -- especially if you have been in contact with anyone who is symptomatic. 

County health officials have communicated their expectations for the family in a letter and Page said he expects them to follow the quarantine guidelines. 

A similar case occurred in New Hampshire where one presumptive positive patient, who works at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, allegedly ignored a directive to self-isolate and attended an invitation-only event on Feb. 28, health officials said. Health Department officials then attempted to track down all the attendees and instruct them to follow the recommended 14-day self-isolation.

This Is No Way To Lick The Coronavirus

NYPost |  Shocking footage has emerged of Iranians tempting fate by licking the doors and a burial mound at the Fatima Masumeh Shrine in Qom, the epicenter of the Islamic Republic’s COVID-19 outbreak.

Journalist Masih Alinejad shared video of the disturbing practice, noting that officials have refused to shut down the religious shrines — while the death toll in the country stands at 66, with more than 1,500 infected.

“These pro-regime people are licking the shrines & encouraging people to visit them,” he said in a tweet. “Iran’s authorities are endangering lives of Iranians & the world.”

Pilgrims routinely kiss and lick religious shrines, including in Qom, which is considered a “place for healing,” according to the UK’s Daily Star.

Those who were photographed licking the doors said they “don’t care what happens,” the news outlet reported.

Despite restrictions on who is allowed in and out of Qom, the seventh-largest city in Iran, it has not been locked down during the medical crisis.

“The smell of disinfectants has become my nightmare. The city smells like a cemetery, a morgue,” said retired teacher Ziba Rezaie, according to the Star.

Meanwhile, it was reported Monday that a close adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died of the illness.

Two key officials also have been confirmed to be infected, including Masoumeh Ebtekar, a vice president better known as “Sister Mary,” who served as spokeswoman for the students who seized the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Is SARS-CoV2 Deadly Or Ain't It Deadly? Somebody Lying....,

endoftheamericandream |  COVID-19 is an extremely deadly virus, and nobody should be trying to downplay the severity of this outbreak.  By now, you have probably heard a lot of people try to convince you that COVID-19 is not that dangerous because the flu has killed far more people this winter.  And that is true.  But what they aren’t telling you is that the death rate from the flu is extremely low.  Tens of thousands of Americans die from the flu each year, but if this coronavirus spreads all over the planet the death toll will be in the tens of millions.  This coronavirus outbreak is likely only in the very early stages, and if it becomes as widespread as the flu, it will become a public health crisis unlike anything we have ever faced in modern times.

After taking a look at the numbers, hopefully you will understand what I am trying to say.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization announced that the global death rate for COVID-19 is now 3.4 percent…

World health officials said Tuesday the case fatality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%.
“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. In comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected, he said.

I have a feeling that number will continue to go up, but for the purposes of this article let’s assume that number if accurate.

As for the flu, the CDC says that there will be between 32 million and 45 million illnesses in the United States during this flu season, and somewhere between 18,000 and 46,000 deaths.

TeeRump Served Up A Double Order of Cheese Eating Kneegrows Advisors Today

Iran Says U.S. and Israel Waging Biological Warfare On a Massive Scale

jpost |  Iran’s Press TV, which represents the regime’s English-language propaganda, has been pushing antisemitic conspiracies about the coronavirus to distract from the mullah regime’s mishandling of the pandemic.

 

On Sunday, Iran’s Health Ministry reported 49 new coronavirus deaths, the highest single-day toll of those killed by COVID-19 in the country since mid-February. As of press time, Tehran has acknowledged 194 Iranians have died from the fast-spreading disease. But observers believe the true number may be far higher.
 

Over the last several days, Iran has pushed several reports claiming that “Zionists” were behind the coronavirus. Press TV also quoted the same website that was at the center of an antisemitic article from 2017 that claimed “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.”
 

On March 5, Press TV claimed that “Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of coronavirus against Iran.” Although the report claimed to reference a foreign “academic,” it fits the pattern of Iran using foreign experts to give the regime’s own views a patina of authority. The agenda of Tehran has been three-fold since the coronavirus outbreak began to affect Iran in mid-February. Iran initially denied that there was a virus outbreak so that it could increase voter turnout for the February 21 election.
 

In late February, it turned out that some of Iran’s leading politicians and key insiders were infected because the virus had spread from the holy city of Qom to Tehran. To make up for the initial cover-up, the regime shifted its narrative to blaming US sanctions for its inability to control the virus. Already regime leaders were beginning to compare the virus to sanctions.
 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had first downplayed the virus, claiming that like sanctions, it looked worse than it was. Then on March 7, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif argued that the sanctions had “drained Iran’s resources needed in the fight against” the virus. He called it “medical terrorism.”

Most People Aren't Aware of the Risk of Systemic Healthcare Failure

I'm NOT The Only Cat Seriously Fixated On The Low-Hanging Cornucopia Of SARS-CoV2 Fruit

harvardtothebighouse |  Some of the dystopian carnage creeping across China may be due to the fact that much of China’s population may have already been exposed to coronavirus infection via SARS or other less notorious strains, which would allow the Wuhan Stain COVID-19 to use antibody-dependent enhancement to much more efficiently enter into cells, and then become much more virulent since this enhancement hijacks the body’s preexisting immune response to coronavirus infections and allows easier entry. However whether or not people have been exposed to a coronavirus infection before, once it’s been circulating in a population for long enough the Wuhan Strain may be able to reinfect its own past hosts and use this molecular hijacking on antibodies left from its own previous infection to become far more virulent, regardless of whether or not someone has been exposed to other coronaviruses before COVID-19. And early reporting from Chinese doctors indicates that re-infections of the Wuhan Strain are far more lethal than the first.

– Additionally, although another since-retracted pre-print noted several very short genomic sequences in COVID-19’s spike-protein gene that look far more similar to sequences found in HIV than to other coronaviruses – critics quickly pointed out that the shared homology didn’t reach statistical significance. However a closer look at the data reveals that there were a few small shared genomic segments that, despite being physically separated from each other along each strand of DNA, all worked together to code for the Wuhan Strain’s protein-spike’s crucial receptor binding site. Something that is highly unlikely to have happened by chance. And despite most of its protein-spike being shared with SARS, these substituted segments weren’t shared at all – nor were they found in any other coronavirus. One possible but likely reason for these HIV-like segments is that they were meant to be epitopes, or molecular flags meant to mark intruders for a vaccine to target. It is mathematically possible for this to happen in nature – but only in a ten-thousand bats chained to ten-thousand Petri dishes and given until infinity sense. Alternatively, it could also be produced by infecting a room full of ferrets with a bespoke coronavirus vaccine and sifting through the wreckage for your genomic needle.

– Critics have brushed off the Wuhan Strain’s shared homology with HIV as statistically insignificant, however clinical reporting indicates that the Wuhan Strain may be using this shared HIV homology to attack CD4 immune cells just like HIV does, as an unusually high percentage of patients are showing low white blood cell counts, especially the sickest ones. This pathogenicity may well be due to the unique HIV-live genomics of the Wuhan Strain, as one white-paper by LSU’s professor emeritus of Microbiology, Immunology, and Parasitology who’s also a Harvard-educated virologist with a PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics notes: “This is the first description of a possible immunosuppressive domain in coronaviruses… The three key [mutations] common to the known immunosuppressive domains are also in common with the sequence from [the spike-protein]. While coronaviruses are not known for general immunosuppression of the style shown by HIV-1, this does not rule out immunosuppression at the site of active infection in the lung, which would prolong and potentially worsen infection at that site.” And early research has indicated that this unique region may make COVID-19 up to 1,000 times more likely to bind to human cells than SARS.

– Even more troubling, a peer-reviewed study noted that one particular part of the Wuhan Strain’s spike-protein genome also wasn’t found in any of its relatives, “and may provide a gain-of-function to [COVID-19] for efficient spreading in the human population.”  And according to that paper, this particular type of furin cleavage site makes similar viruses both more pathogenic and more neurotoxic.

– Evidence for the Wuhan Strain’s neurotoxicity arrived in late February, in a published paper which notes that “the most characteristic symptom of COVID‐19 patients is respiratory distress, and most of the patients admitted to the intensive care could not breathe spontaneously.” Combined with the observation that “some COVID‐19 patients also showed neurologic signs such as headache, nausea and vomiting,” this paper asserts that since SARS was found heavily concentrated in the brainstems of its autopsied victims, COVID-19 is also probably crossing the blood-brain barrier and killing its victims not just via pneumonia, but also by causing neurological respiratory failure.

– And it should be noted that SARS – much ballyhooed as a close relative to the Wuhan Strain – didn’t notable effect white blood cell counts.  Additionally, clinical treatment guides published online in late January by established Chinese medical sources note the progressive reduction of white blood cells, as well as the importance of monitoring this decline. And reporting from Thailand indicates that adding a cocktail of two different anti-HIV drugs to the typical flu treatment regime seemed to effectively knock back the Wuhan Strain. Additionally, one of the only autopsies performed outside of China to date found that the deceased had a severely depleted white blood cell count. These lowered counts may come from this shared similarity with HIV, or it could also be the result of antibody-dependent enhancement as well, since this phenomenon primarily targets white blood cells for its hijackings and may help explain why consecutive infections are so lethal.

– In a highly concerning turn, scientists have noted that the Wuhan Strain can have a “striking” short term rate of mutation which doesn’t indicate an artificial origin but captures the unique threat posed by this coronavirus regardless of its providence, since a faster mutation rates makes it more likely this virus can dodge testing and neutralize vaccines. Something there is already early evidence for. Further concerning are reports out of China that even patients who appear cured still harbor COVID-19 in their system, and although the full implications of this are not yet known – none of them are good.

– One of the worst possible scenarios for COVID-19’s mutation rate would be if it falls into the Goldilocks range that would allow it to form mutant viral swarms: too many mutations will cause a virus to eventually implode, not enough allows host immune systems to catch-up, but if things are just right mutant swarms can form and spread across host populations, burrowing into host nervous systems and causing permanent neurological damage. Mutant swarms form when a virus produces mutationally-damaged copies of itself inside a host, some of which aren’t infectious but find their way into the nervous system where they burrow in causing damage, and others that combine with complimentary broken copies inside host cells to produce working infectious copies of the virus. So a host can not only become crippled with neurological issues, but also still be producing infectious copies of the virus. And it seems as if COVID-19 has many characteristics that indicate the potential to form mutant swarms: the “striking” mutation rate mentioned above and the fact a second widespread mutated strain seems to have already emerged in Washington State with many other isolated strains reported elsewhere, crossing between species is another factor and a dog in Hong Kong appears to have tested positive, the fact that the Wuhan Strain can infect not only the respiratory tract but feces as well – multi-organ involvement is an important contributor to viral swarms, and finally the markedly viral load rate of COVID-19 compared to SARS – SARS produced a viral load several times lower which decreased over time, while COVID-19 produces a “very high” viral load that appears to increase over time and can peak several orders of magnitude higher than SARS was measured to reach. And alarming evidence that this phenomenon is occurring emerged from a Chinese pre-print which noted that over one-third of the roughly 200 patients studied has some neurological symptoms, with nearly half of the most severe patients exhibiting neurological issues.

– Another exceptional trait of the Wuhan Strain COVID-19 is that not only does it form its own clade, it’s calculated to have diverged from SARS and its other sister coronaviruses some 260 years ago. And yet in all that time, while it every other branch of the coronavirus tree was busy branching-off into countless variants, if it emerged naturally, COVID-19 somehow spent a quarter of a millennium as the lone known example of its clade, somehow not mutating into related lineages in all that time. Another simpler explanation is that this apparent hereditary distance and genetic uniqueness is the just the result of being altered in a lab. And although two distinct strains of COVID-19 have been identified, there’s no reason to believe this mutational differentiation happened before contact with humans in December of 2019. Additionally, when neutral sites, the specific points in the genome which most reliably show evolutionary change, were examined: COVID-19 looks even more evolutionarily distant from any of its possible relatives.

– Also giving credence to the idea that the Wuhan Strain was bio-engineered is the existence of a patent application registered to a scientist from Wuhan that looks to modulate a coronavirus’ spike-protein genes – the precise region altered by Zhengli Shi at UNC to make a hyper-virulent strain of coronavirus, and whose alteration and adaptation would explain the Wuhan Strain’s unusual behavior as discussed above.

SARS-CoV2: Justification For The Ultimate "Stop and Frisk"?

banditoblog |  For those eternal optimists (and state trolls) who choose to believe that the PTB are not currently making their move with bio-weapons, take a look at the interview in this video, which was recorded in 2014:

If you’re too busy to watch it all (10 or so minutes), go to 7:45 and listen to the 2014 prediction of exactly what is happening today.

Russia: Handling Bidnis and Holding Coronavirus Down

Meduza |  The number of COVID-19 cases detected per day outside of China has long surpassed the recorded infection rate within Chinese borders. Nonetheless, since 2020 began, Russia has reported only four confirmed cases of the disease. Only one of those cases was found in Moscow, the second-largest city in Europe after Istanbul. Meanwhile, in Italy, France, and Germany, there are currently 3,089, 337, and 444 confirmed cases, respectively. This is despite the fact that the number of passengers who have traveled to those countries from China by air is comparable to the number traveling to Russia. While it’s impossible to say with certainty how this disparity arose, it is possible to offer a few potential explanations. Whether you believe them is up to you.

Hypothesis 1: Russia closed its borders fast enough that almost nobody infected with the virus could get in

The Russian government first increased its control over individuals arriving in the country from China on January 23, 2020, but it did not limit any means of transport until January 31. On that day, Russian officials closed off direct trains from Moscow to Beijing and closed its ground border with China to foot traffic and automobiles.

By then, 9,923 cases of COVID-19 had already been registered worldwide, both in China and in Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Even in Finland, which has a very small interchange of transit passengers with China and a large one with Russia, had registered cases. All this means that at least in theory, the new coronavirus had every opportunity to enter Russia before transportation to and from China was limited. In fact, it did just that: The first two infections recorded in Russia were detected on January 31 in two Chinese citizens traveling as tourists.

SARS-CoV2: A Biological Referendum On Competing Political Cultures and Economies

WaPo | On Friday, the Iranian government finally began to acknowledge what the world already knows: the covid-19 virus has hit that country extremely hard and it’s likely to get much worse.

In a televised news conference, the spokesman for Iran’s coronavirus task force announced that 4,700 cases of the virus have now been confirmed, including more than 1,200 in the previous 24 hours. The official death count stands at 124.

The ways in which key leaders’ responses differ from those of ordinary citizens tell you everything you need to know about the deepening gulf between the Iranian people and their government and how it might contribute to the spread of the disease.

The sudden sense of alarm contrasts starkly with how Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other officials initially downplayed the threat.

In the early stages of the virus story, officials in Tehran were worried about turnout in the Feb. 11 parliamentary elections. They feared that low voter turnout — which, as anticipated, was aggravated by the Iranian military’s shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger jet in January — would further undermine the notion of public support for the system. Authorities prioritized their political concerns over the risk of the virus spreading.

Now, though, the news that an increasing number of ministers and lawmakers have tested positive for the virus — two of whom have already died from it — has shattered what was left, if anything, of the government’s credibility.

“Today, the country is engaged in a biological battle,” Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said. “We will prevail in the fight against this virus, which might be the product of an American biological [attack], which first spread in China and then to the rest of the world.”

Did SARS-CoV2 Already Do Neuroinvasive Brain Salad Surgery On Joe Biden?

caitlinjohnstone |  It’s very bizarre and dissonant how there are currently two separate and non-overlapping lines of criticism going on against the campaign of establishment-anointed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. There are the perfectly accurate criticisms regarding the right-wing, militaristic policy positions of the politician Joe Biden used to be, and then there are the equally accurate criticisms of Biden’s handlers and Democratic Party leadership for wheeling out the dementia-addled husk of a man he currently is to run for the world’s most powerful elected office.

These two debates do not interweave, because they are not relevant to one another. It doesn’t matter what political positions a dementia victim once had; what matters is taking care of him and keeping him away from hazards, like sharp objects and nuclear launch codes. It’s impossible to know what actual political convictions still remain held within a mind that can no longer lucidly string thoughts together anyway.

I hate doing this. I hate repeatedly writing about the obvious and undeniable fact that an old man is exhibiting obvious and undeniable symptoms of incipient dementia. It isn’t fun, and it doesn’t feel good. But the alternative is laying down and allowing the Democratic party and its allied media to gaslight people into believing it’s not a thing, as they are doing currently.

Have Han Elites Set the Stage for Collapse?

charleshughsmith |  Threats, propaganda and the Orwellian dissolution of social trust cannot stop a withdrawal from the status quo.

Longtime readers know I've had an active interest in what differentiates empires/nations that survive crises and those that collapse. There is a lively academic literature on this topic, and it boils down to three general views:

1. Collapse is typically triggered by an external crisis that overwhelms the empire's ability to handle it. Absent the external shock, the empire could have continued on for decades or even centuries.

2. Crises that could have been handled in the "Spring" of rapid expansion are fatal in "Winter" when the costs of maintaining complex systems exceeds the empire's resources.

3. Civilization is cyclical and as population and consumption outstrip resources, the empire becomes increasingly vulnerable to external shocks.

External shocks include prolonged severe drought, pandemics and invasion. In many cases, the empire is beset by all three: some change in weather that reduces grain harvests, a pandemic introduced by trade or military adventure and/or invasion by forces from far-off lands with novel diseases and/or military technologies and tactics.

More controversial are claims that political structures become sclerotic and top-heavy after long periods of success, and these bloated, brittle hierarchies lose the flexibility and boldness needed to deal with multiple novel challenges hitting at the same time.

We lack internal-political records for most empires that have collapsed, but those records that have survived for the Western and Eastern Roman Empires suggest that eras of stability breed political sclerosis which manifests as a bloated, parasitic bureaucracy or as ruthless competition between elites that were once united in the expansive "Spring" phase.

By the "Winter" phase, the elite hierarchy is willing to sacrifice the unity needed to survive for its own short-term advantage.

All of this applies directly to China, which is experiencing not just a public health crisis (Covid-19 pandemic) but a host of overlapping crises triggered by the epidemic.

The external shock of the coronavirus has revealed the fragilities and weaknesses of China's social, political and financial orders. These include:

1. Healthcare system crisis. The system is a patchwork that leaves non-government workers largely on their own. One doctor in Wuhan reported that a pregnant woman in his care died when the family ran out of cash for her care. (The central government announced it would cover all costs shortly after the patient died.)

The for-profit nature of much of the healthcare system is not widely understood outside China. If you want high-quality care without long waits, you must have cash.

Additionally many of the "doctors" are trained only in traditional Chinese medicine, so there is a shortage of trained personnel and facilities.

2. Food system crisis. It's not just Swine Fever that's straining the system; shortages are widespread and rising costs have been crimping working-class household budgets for the past few years.

Israel's SARS-CoV2 Response Also Worth Microscopic Scrutiny

i24News |  More than 100,000 Israelis have been ordered into self-quarantine so far

Israeli health officials have confirmed that 17 people have been diagnosed with the deadly coronavirus. 

The man being treated for the virus is reportedly from the northern town of Tiberias and was admitted to the hospital Thursday afternoon. 

More than 100,000 Israelis have been ordered into self-quarantine since the outbreak was first reported in early February. 

Meanwhile, Israel has temporarily barred visitors traveling from a growing list of countries including France,  Switzerland, Spain, Germany and Austria.

Jerusalem had previously announced bans on Asian nations such as China, South Korea, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam when spread of the novel coronavirus first began to make headlines in early February.

Rich Folks and SARS-CoV2: Should Be Particularly Instructive To See How This Situation Evolves...,

whiteplains |  Dear White Plains Residents,

We continue to work with State, County and White Plains Hospital officials, community organizations, and others to ensure an effective and coordinated response to the coronavirus outbreak.

According to the Westchester County Department of Health there are now up to 18 confirmed cases of Coronavirus in Westchester County. As has been widely reported, there are three confirmed cases associated with a private school in White Plains, Westchester Torah Academy. The three students who tested positive are the children of the man who is a friend of and spent time with the original patient. Westchester Torah Academy has been closed until March 16 and the NY State Department of Health has required all students, faculty, and staff to isolate themselves at home through that date. The re-opening of the school is conditional on whether any new positive COVID-19 cases are identified.

My staff and I met with White Plains Hospital officials and representatives from Empress Ambulance Service on Wednesday morning to discuss their monitoring, preparation, and response efforts. Everything from hospital staff education about the virus to patient transport protocols to information sharing to availability of supplies is being worked on.

White Plains Hospital has established a Coronavirus hotline. The hotline number is (914) 681-2900. It is available 24 hours/day. This hotline will be updated by the Hospital regularly with information about the virus. It also gives callers the option of connecting with a White Plains Hospital representative if they are concerned that they are exhibiting symptoms or might have been exposed to the virus. We thank the Hospital for establishing this hotline for our community.

We continue to urge everyone to take the common sense approach to this virus outlined by the Westchester County Department of Health and other trusted sources, such as the CDC. Residents should also be advised that Westchester County is taking steps to ensure that all Bee-Line buses are sanitized daily.

This has been a rapidly evolving public health issue and there is no doubt that it will remain so for the foreseeable future. The guidance and common sense protocols offered by our public health officials is our best protection. We will continue to keep residents updated as developments occur and continue to pass on information from State and County public health officials as we receive it.
Thank you, Mayor Tom Roach

What Institutional Composites Are Protecting Prince Andrew From L'Affaire Epstein Consequences?

strategic-culture |  The royal family in the UK is having its very foundations shaken by both the controversial departure of Prince Harry and Meghan and now startling new revelations which compromise Prince Andrew even further, since his “car crash” interview with BBC, over his alleged relationship with a sex-trafficked child prostitute working for Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew had always denied any link whatsoever with the then named Virginia Roberts who was in just 17 when the main allegation – that Epstein flew her to London in March 2001 for her to have sex with the British royal – was brought against him. Central to that allegation was a photo taken by Ghislaine Maxwell in her London home on the same night in question which Andrew claims is fake.

Roberts claims that she was forced into the act by Epstein and Maxwell and has gone on the record to talk about the intimate details of the incident, but her case have been light on witnesses or those who can corroborate her allegations. Until now.

Her shocking claims are that Maxwell and Epstein were running a high class sex trafficking organisation which targeted powerful, influential individuals, which some might speculate was part of a Mossad run ‘honey trap’ – a blackmail ring which made Epstein hugely powerful and in a position to ask from the same targets favours, or for highly valuable information which could support its agenda.

In just a few days in mid February, Prince Andrew already feeble case which he was clinging on to – that he had no link whatsoever with Roberts – was shattered though, which in itself raises a number of questions over who is protecting the British royal. And at what price?

First off came the accusation by a palace security guard in London who has challenged Andrew’s claim to be in another part of the country (far from the capital) on the night of the alleged sexual incident. According to the security officer, Andrew returned to Buckingham Palace in the early hours and shouted at the top of his voice at the palace gates for them to be opened.

But far more damning is the testimony of a telecoms man who was employed by Epstein on his private Caribbean island who a British tabloid interviewed days later, who identifies both Prince Andrew and Roberts being intimate with one another and how she appeared to be like a child “hiding behind an adult” sometime around 2001 or thereafter.

There is nothing quite so powerful in a legal case which Roberts (now Giuffre) is preparing than eye witnesses who can stand in the witness box. And the emergence of Steve Scully will be seen as a massive blow to Andrew’s claims now. The FBI too will find it hard to ignore Scully’s allegations.

Or will it?

Conspiracy Theorizing Is A Privilege Exclusive to Those Inside The Institutional Class

rutherford |  Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expands its powers.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

Now we find ourselves on the brink of a possible coronavirus contagion.

I’ll leave the media and the medical community to speculate about the impact the coronavirus will have on the nation’s health, but how will the government’s War on the Coronavirus impact our freedoms?

For a hint of what’s in store, you can look to China—our role model for all things dystopian—where the contagion started.....

....We’re not quite there yet. But that moment of reckoning is getting closer by the minute.

In the meantime, we’ve got an epidemic to survive, so go ahead and wash your hands. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. And stock up on whatever you might need to survive this virus if it spreads to your community.

We are indeed at our most vulnerable right now, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s the American Surveillance State—not the coronavirus—that poses the greatest threat to our freedoms.

Seriously - Am I The Only Cat Fixated On This LOW HANGING SARS-CoV2 FRUIT?!?!?!

thescientist |  Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, last week (November 9) published a study on his team’s efforts to engineer a virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice, according to the team’s results, which were published in Nature Medicine.

The results demonstrate the ability of the SHC014 surface protein to bind and infect human cells, validating concerns that this virus—or other coronaviruses found in bat species—may be capable of making the leap to people without first evolving in an intermediate host, Nature reported. They also reignite a debate about whether that information justifies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-function research. “If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature.

In October 2013, the US government put a stop to all federal funding for gain-of-function studies, with particular concern rising about influenza, SARS, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). “NIH [National Institutes of Health] has funded such studies because they help define the fundamental nature of human-pathogen interactions, enable the assessment of the pandemic potential of emerging infectious agents, and inform public health and preparedness efforts,” NIH Director Francis Collins said in a statement at the time. “These studies, however, also entail biosafety and biosecurity risks, which need to be understood better.”

Baric’s study on the SHC014-chimeric coronavirus began before the moratorium was announced, and the NIH allowed it to proceed during a review process, which eventually led to the conclusion that the work did not fall under the new restrictions, Baric told Nature. But some researchers, like Wain-Hobson, disagree with that decision.

The debate comes down to how informative the results are. “The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk,” Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefence expert at Rutgers University, told Nature.

But Baric and others argued the study’s importance. “[The results] move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger,” Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which samples viruses from animals and people in emerging-diseases hotspots across the globe, told Nature.

The United States Owes China An Apology, and The World Owes China a Gratitude

xinhua |  Not only that, the U.S. government also announced that restricting the entry of Chinese and foreigners who have visited China into the U.S. is actually an indirect declaration of a travel ban on China, which isolates other countries in the world from China, and has a great economic impact on China. of.

　　These practices in the United States are very unkind. They can be described as falling into the ground and killing people while they are ill. Now China's new crown pneumonia epidemic has been controlled. Except for Wuhan, new confirmed cases have been added in single digits. But it's getting worse.

　　If China retaliates against the United States at this time, in addition to announcing a travel ban on the United States, it will also announce strategic control over medical products and ban exports to the United States. Then the United States will be caught in the ocean of new crown viruses.

　　According to the US CDC officials, most masks in the United States are made in China and imported from China. If China bans the export of masks to the United States, the United States will fall into the mask shortage, and the most basic measures to prevent the new crown virus are Can't do it.

　　Also according to the US CDC officials, most of the drugs in the United States are imported, and some drugs are imported from Europe. However, Europe also places the production base of these drugs in China, so more than 90% of the US imported drugs are Related to China. The implication is that at this time, as long as China announces that its drugs are as domestic as possible and banned exports, the United States will fall into the hell of the new crown pneumonia epidemic.

　　However, there is a great love in the world. The Chinese people and the Chinese government have never done so. They have not insulted the United States, nor have they banned the export of masks and medicines to the United States. As China ’s new crown pneumonia epidemic is gradually controlled, China ’s ability to export masks and medicines Will be greatly enhanced, and the United States is one of the demand side. US government officials, such as Secretary of Commerce Rose, US Secretary of State Pompeo, and US White House Economic Adviser Navarro, have publicly gloated over China's new crown pneumonia epidemic, saying that the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in China is good for the United States and will help companies return to the United States. It also called on companies around the world to consider the risks of China's supply chain. Even the infamous "Wall Street Journal" published an infamous article "China is a real patient in Asia", and the "New York Times" in the United States also published a document condemning the closure of Wuhan in China as a violation of human rights. The American culture of falling rocks is really shameless. Today, Feng Shui is taking turns, and the United States has become a victim of the new crown pneumonia epidemic. At this time, China has not fallen into rocks and has not condemned the United States. At this time, the United States should be more mistakes for the past. Apologize to China for your actions.

　　During this time, a voice deliberately speculated that China owes the world an apology, which is very ridiculous. In order to fight the new crown pneumonia epidemic, China has made huge sacrifices, paid huge economic costs, and cut off the new crown virus. The route of transmission. No country has made such a great sacrifice and effort in this new crown pneumonia epidemic.

　　Moreover, according to the research of Academician Zhong Nanshan, although the new crown pneumonia epidemic broke out in China, the source may not necessarily be in China. Many studies have also pointed out that the origin of the new crown virus may come from other countries. Many confirmed cases of new crown pneumonia in the United States, Italy, Iran and other countries without a history of Asian contact have demonstrated this, so China has no reason to apologize.

　　Now we should rightfully say that the United States owes China an apology, and the world owes China a gratitude. Without China ’s huge sacrifice and dedication, it would not be possible to win a precious time window for the world to fight against the new crown pneumonia epidemic. The hard-to-find new crown pneumonia epidemic has been blocked for a long time, it is really shocking, crying ghosts!