New Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Pandemic (aka WuFlu)

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

So how are you all ? I hope you are all fit and well.

Have all of your meetings and assemblies around the earth been cancelled ? and if so is it a government cancellation or an Org cancellation ? And has all door to door ministry been cancelled ? 

I hear that our dear Boris (UK PM) might put be putting folks like me (people over 70 years old) on complete lock down for more than a month. That would give me time to do some reading. Being 70 and having had pneumonia in 2015 maybe I've more chance of catching this thing, i don't know.  But I'm not in panic. My faith in God and the resurrection is enough to keep me happy. 

It would be nice to know how this is affecting JWs around the earth though. 

Keep well but more importantly keep faithful in God through Christ.. 

 

[JW Insider]

On 3/14/2020 at 3:27 AM, Space Merchant said:

prepares 6+ months, with the possibility of a Medical Marshal Law (a foreshadowing if more gov't based lockdowns are in place; currently eyes are on Washington, Cali, and more of NYC) for the scale is attempting to mirror Italy.

You are right. Although China made early mistakes, as expected, they were not as bad as the mistakes made in the United States (also, as expected). Today, the United States has officially reported more active cases than there are active cases in ALL OF CHINA. There are now less than 7,000 active cases in the province of Hubei alone, where the vast majority of Chinese cases had been. Now that the US has passed China and France in the number of active cases, it appears to be ready to pass up Iran, too, which will likely put the US on par with Italy very soon as the two nations with the highest number of cases.

Of course, there will also probably be lot of Americans who will selfishly think it's OK to just let this thing catch fire and then burn out. Some stock market analysts have already hoped it would just be allowed to infect the entire country quickly so that they can get back to trading. Others have said it would be good as a way to take care of excess population. And others just think it's the best way to dilute the virus, letting everyone go to school and work as if nothing had changed. Direct comparisons to the common flu often have one of more of these perspectives behind it.

I trust China's numbers, and South Korea's and Taiwan's numbers more than other countries so far, because they did more preparation and testing as soon as they knew what they were dealing with. Also, the Diamond Princess cruise ship ended up producing a kind of test lab, so that we know more about the virus in a fairly controlled environment. It seems pretty obvious that when there is a lot of testing, knowledge, communication, and preparation, that the virus will still kill up to 1% of those treated for the infection. Where there is a lack of preparation, testing, and communication, the virus will likely kill from 3% to 8% of those seriously infected.

Therefore allowing it to "burn" rapidly and hopefully fade is a recipe for upwards of 8% deaths among those officially tested/treated. But handling it like China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Germany, can keep deaths down to 1%. Germany, Austria, Czechia, Switzerland have remained well under 1% deaths so far. Korea and Taiwan (and Diamond Princess) have kept it close to 1%, as did China everywhere except the Hubei/Wuhan province for which they were not prepared, and ended up with 5% deaths for those infected.

People probably won't want to look at how well China handled this after the first few days of mistakes, because this is a perfect setup for racism. But other countries can at least look to Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, etc. Of course a lot of countries are evidently too full of hubris and too full of profit-mongers to focus clearly enough on solutions.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

Does anyone know if you get the coronavirus , and survive it, whether you now do or do not have future immunity to it?

 

[JW Insider]

7 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Does anyone know if you get the coronavirus , and survive it, whether you now do or do not have future immunity to it?

I don't really know. My youngest son speaks and writes Chinese fairly well and has been writing to some friends in China. They are working under the assumption that some persons CAN get it again, but that it was extremely rare and probably based on getting a variant the second time. South Korea has also reported second infections. 

Japanese "experts" have been reporting on NHK (like a Japanese "BBC") that the United States already had 4 or 5 variants of the virus, during the time that China did not yet have a second variant. Of course, even though Japan "hates" China, and is politically allied with the US, many Japanese have accepted as a "given" that this is evidence that the United States was already carrying the "first" and up to four branches of the virus, while China started out with only 1 of the branches in Wuhan, Hubei. Therefore, their "experts" are saying it must have come from the United States.

At any rate, if the United States is carrying more variants, then it's more likely to suffer second infections (on the variant theory). [I assume, but don't know enough about it, that if an infected "variant 2" coughs on an infected "variant 4" that this is one way that a "variant 5" might be produced.] It's not known how well the antibodies built up from one (survived) infection might help fight a second. Also, it's possible that before testing was widely available, that some who were counted among the infected, were actually coincidentally suffering from another type of flu during the "first" infection.

Tentatively, these Chinese friends of his say that they have all been through weeks of self-quarantine, and several provinces are finally going back to work. But they know that the outbreaks could happen anytime, anywhere. Even if second infections were NOT possible, there are still over a billion Chinese people who never got it in the first place, and are just as susceptible as those who already got it earlier.

[CrownRoyalAD]

If a person developed antibodies after receiving COVID-19, it will be highly unlikely that person would get it again, since the antibodies would kill the virus. This doesn’t mean, a person can’t get influenza by other factors or morphs into other strains.

If the COVID-19 morphs into COVID-20 or worse, then a person that has recovered from COVID-19 would be susceptible to a new infection.

 

Handbook on biological warfare preparedness-Academic Press (2020)

With the advancements in the field of virology, other viruses such as Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Hanta virus, West Nile virus, Dengue virus, Rift valley fever virus, Nipah virus, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus are also appealing biothreat agents for terrorists…(Morse and Meyer, 2017). Various viral biological warfare agents along with their category, mode of dissemination, and vectors involved in their transmission are given in Table 2. P.67

The A to Z of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare-2009

VIAN FLU. Avian flu, also called “bird flu,” refers to viral influenza primarily affecting birds. Some human deaths have been attributed to exposure to avian flu virus. These deaths appear to have occurred mainly in cases where individuals have lived or worked in proximity to poultry. Its spread in recent years has led to concern that a highly infectious strain, such as the H5N1 strain, could combine with the common cold virus and result in a human pandemic…The spread of avian flu has highlighted the vulnerability of humans to disease outbreaks, whether from natural causes or deliberate releases. See also SMALLPOX. P.23

https://www.verywellhealth.com/why-did-i-get-sick-after-a-flu-shot-770535

 

[JW Insider]

On 3/20/2020 at 8:46 AM, CrownRoyalAD said:

Handbook on biological warfare preparedness-Academic Press (2020)

 Thanks for pointing out this book. I just looked at the 150+ pages available here: https://www.elsevier.com/books/handbook-on-biological-warfare-preparedness/flora/978-0-12-812026-2

The cases included are presented as if complete, but appear to be selectively chosen for a Western audience. (The book appears to have been rushed to the publisher, as you can see from several typos, and inconsistent presentation of evidence, where historical cases can be considered unlikely based on lack of evidence just a paragraph or two before it is used a clear-cut example.) It's interesting that the book, though published in 2020, knows nothing of the COVID-19 coronavirus. I guess it was published very early in the year. It does have a section called: "Synthesis of SARS-like Coronavirus."

The second book you referenced is previewed here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_A_to_Z_of_Nuclear_Biological_and_Che/yNJtYLW4IiwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

I didn't look through this one very closely yet, but flipping through the pages I found it much more comprehensive, at least up to 2009, where it ends.

I have found some very curious data on the COVID-19. And more on Swine and Bird flu. I am going to try to grab some content before the old versions of the Wikipedia pages change, for example, which usually happens.

I found this, which I think will become important later: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339351990_Decoding_evolution_and_transmissions_of_novel_pneumonia_coronavirus_SARS-CoV-2_using_the_whole_genomic_data

It indicates that the family of the virus found in the Wuhan market, although named H1, is a "child" of H13 and H35, its ancestors. This is one of the reasons that many in China and Japan believe that "Trump" dropped this off in Wuhan.

Background. The outbreak of COVID-19 started in mid-December 2019 in Wuhan, Central China. Up to February 18, 2020, SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 70,000 people in China, and another 25 countries across five continents. In this study, we used 93 complete genomes of SARS-CoV-2 from the GISAID EpiFluTM database to decode the evolution and human-to-human transmissions of SARS-CoV-2 in the recent two months. Methods. Alignment of coding-regions was conducted haplotype analyses using DnaSP. Substitution sites were analyzed in codon. Evolutionary analysis of haplotypes used NETWORK. Population size changes were estimated using both DnaSP and Arlequin. Expansion date of population size was calculated based on the expansion parameter tau (τ) using the formula t=τ/2u. Findings. Eight coding-regions have 120 substitution sites, including 79 non-synonymous and 40 synonymous substitutions. Forty-two non-synonymous substitutions changed the biochemical property of amino acids. No evident combination was found. Fifty-eight haplotypes were classified as five groups, and 31 haplotypes were found in samples from both China and other countries, respectively. The rooted network suggested H13 and H35 to be ancestral haplotypes, and H1 (and its descendent haplotypes including all samples from the Hua Nan market) was derived H3 haplotype. Population size of SARS-CoV-2 were estimated to have a recent expansion on 6 January 2020, and an early expansion on 8 December 2019. Interpretation. Genomic variations of SARS-CoV-2 are still low in comparisons with published genomes of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. Phyloepidemiologic analyses indicated the SARS-CoV-2 source at the Hua Nan market should be imported from other places. The crowded market boosted SARS-CoV-2 rapid circulations in the market and spread it to the whole city in early December 2019. Furthermore, phyloepidemiologic approaches have recovered specific direction of human-to-human transmissions, and the import sources of international infectious cases.

Also, a well-written general article on the topic is found in the Atlantic: "Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful" [SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19]

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/biography-new-coronavirus/608338/

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

Having grown up reading my Father's U.S. Navy books on Atomic, Biological and Chemical Warfare, I often, when my children were at home, lamented that they could not get a smallpox vaccination, like I got when very young.

I still have the scar on my left shoulder.

I hope that someone who is profiteering off of this crisis, and there are milliuouns (... apologies to  Carl Sagan ) who would with a reintroduction the Smallpox vaccine to the world market, and not just a rip-off, I hope they become multi-millionaires..

I have often lamented that a person who knows how, could wipe out most of the population of the East Coast of the United States, with two cartons of eggs.

[CrownRoyalAD]

On 3/20/2020 at 9:45 PM, JW Insider said:

Thanks for pointing out this book.

You're welcome. The point of these to books is to give credence to how a virus can "morph" into something more deadly and with little to no cure. The basic types that come out of influenza A-D.

Since people can easily edit Wikipedia, I don't have trust for the internet encyclopedia. But a good play to start would be with Orthomyxoviridae.

The best thing is to have the complete books in your library.

[JW Insider]

25 minutes ago, CrownRoyalAD said:

The best thing is to have the complete books in your library.  [A.S.]

That would be nice. But these books on this particular topic are rather expensive, and it's not really one of my topics. My three adult children have all taken a stronger interest, two of them were biochemistry majors, and one went on to law school instead of sticking with chem/med. Another was a physics major and he's currently trying to do some extra COVID research on the side. They still have good access to books on the topic, but I don't have the same access nor the time for this particular topic.

I'm glad people like you are pointing out some interesting resources.

By the way, where was that map from? The one with the line from Hubei to Hong Kong?

[CrownRoyalAD]

[CrownRoyalAD]

1 minute ago, JW Insider said:

By the way, where was that map from? The one with the line from Hubei to Hong Kong?

Google map with a probability, since we don't know for sure if COVID-19 is natural or man-made. With the problems mainland china is having with the people of Hong Kong, Wuhan is close enough in its disbanded air force base to use as a chemical and biological station. Just saying.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

If protection against Covid-19 is cost prohibitive for you, I am in the process now of inventing a device that will instantaneously break the protein coat of ANY virus, and is equally effective with Coronavirus, or Covid-19, and projected MSRP is only $19.95.

My inventian bypasses and overcomes the natural or acquired resistance virii have to things like hexochloroquinine, or chloroquinine phosphate.

I am testing it on myself, now, laying down on my stomach, on an impervious, non absorbent  surface, like a wood floor, or linoleum ... not something fragile, like ceramic tile, and using an asthma rescue inhaler as an initiator, with by head turned to the side and parallel to the floor, coughing onto the floor.

Then I hit it the virii with a hammer.

Guaranteed to work EVERY time.