6 ms·

Detection of novel coronaviruses in bats in Myanmar

51 points by OrgNet 6y ago

acd 6y ago
Does bats have covid19 immunity serum?
- EamonnMR 6y ago
  The answer is even more fascinating then that: https://get21stnight.com/2020/03/30/why-do-we-keep-getting-diseases-from-bats/ https://get21stnight.com/2020/03/30/why-do-we-keep-getting-d...
  - kbrisso 6y ago
    Interesting article thanks.
throwanem 6y ago
A recent interview with the last author, Dr. Jonna Mazet, former director of the pandemic intelligence project disestablished by the current administration in September 2019: https://katz.substack.com/p/audio-edition-the-pandemic-prevention https://katz.substack.com/p/audio-edition-the-pandemic-preve...
natch 6y ago
Bats migrate. Migration brings species into contact with one another. (Even indirect contact such as sharing the same water source). With species in contact, viruses can spread. All this is perfectly normal. What’s new here is that climate is changing, causing migration patterns to change, causing new interactions between species that previously did not interact. Some of which are eventually brought into contact with humans. Again none of this is new either, except for the climate change part. All of this could and did happen already without climate change, but climate change can turn things up a few notches by making migration pattern changes much more wide ranging than before. So essentially what I am saying is it seems plausible that Covid-19 and its hit on the economy is one of the first “gifts” of global climate change. This seems to be right in front of our noses, but unnoticed by the whole world.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  I have seen a number of climate activists rushing to claim that the present crisis is a result of the same anthropogenic activities behind climate change. However, I feel that it is still too early to make such a claim. If Covid-19 did escape from a Wuhan lab (which remains a reasonable hypothesis, see [0] and feel free to follow up on its citations yourself), then it is not a case of human activists encroaching on a species and causing bats to migrate, but rather the result of human beings intentionally going out to catch bats in order to study them. I think that we can advocate for ways to reduce carbon output and habitat loss, while still holding off on claiming that this virus ties into that concern until its origin is better understood. [0] https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-trail-leading-back-to-wuhan-labs/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-tra...
  - KirinDave 6y ago
    The argument posted in your link seems best summarized as: "China had virologists and biologists studying coronaviruses and that is suspicious." It even admits in the first paragraph it has no evidence of a causal relationship. We'd expect a country that is appropriately prioritizing domestic viral threats to be profiling things like coronaviruses in animals, so it seems odd to count this as evidence. Unless I missed some key evidence in the text, it seems like the entire animus of this argument was that the Chinese government would be inclined to lie if the virus did escape from a lab, and since they said it didn't happen, that must be true. Doesn't that make it a simple conspiracy theory? I get that Americans are inclined to believe governments lie about these things, (after all, the US covered up its H1N1 strain outbreak by calling it "Spanish") but if we're trying to evaluate things in terms of evidence and probability, this argument seems contrived.
    - throwanem 6y ago
      The claim last month was that the virus was created in a Chinese lab, not merely that it was accidentally released from one, so I guess this counts as some kind of improvement, at least.
pengaru 6y ago
A speculative theory backed by purely circumstantial evidence gathered online of covid-19's origin is that chinese researchers investigating coronaviruses in bats working near the wet market in Wuhan had an accident and became infected, one who apparently disappeared and has been presumed dead. I don't know if that's pure conspiracy theory nonsense, but it certainly seems risky to be doing this kind of thing: > Free-ranging bats were captured, and rectal and oral swabs and guano samples collected for coronaviral screening Especially considering the potential for asymptomatic spread...
- __s 6y ago
  How do you suggest research be done?
  - decebalus1 6y ago
    With great care, in isolation and with full transparency. Tthere are protocols for how to deal with lab accidents or outbreaks and prior incidents show that all of these have lower priority than 'saving face' for the Chinese government.
  - mahesh_rm 6y ago
    In whatever fashion you might think of, which does not endanger the lives of millions of people?
  - pengaru 6y ago
    With great care and from a distance. If we're manually catching and swabbing wild bat rectums, I don't think we're doing a good job of keeping a distance, especially considering how far technology has progressed.
    - throwanem 6y ago
      Humans and bats aren't going to stop interacting, not least because guano is an excellent fertilizer and the easiest way to get it is by giving bats incentives to defecate over your fields. That being so, and given the utter implausibility of bat-butthole-swabbing robots or whatever, would you rather we had people taking the negligible additional risk of doing this kind of research, so that we have a chance of being able to prepare in advance for the arrival of zoonoses like SARS-CoV-2? Or would you rather be taken by surprise? Going by the current state of affairs in the world, I have to say that being taken by surprise seems to have very little to recommend it.
gus_massa 6y ago
Note that coronavirus is a big family of virus, only a few (2?) are transmisible from human to human and also potentially deadly for humans. Most of the virus in the coronavirus family don´t infect humans or are not harmful. You may get just a normal cold, and you are fine a week later. They found 6 new versions of coronavirus, but IIUC they are not harmful for humans. This is business as usual.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  FEIW, there are at least four common coronaviruses (229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1) that humans transmit, and based on the CDC's language there are other less common ones. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/general-information.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/general-information.html
  - throwanem 6y ago
    The larger point is that coronaviruses as a family are unusually good at mutation and recombination, especially in the facilitating environment of bats, which typically have a high viral load. That makes them of particular concern as a potential source of novel infectious diseases in humans.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

51 points by OrgNet 6y ago

acd 6y ago

Does bats have covid19 immunity serum?

EamonnMR 6y ago
The answer is even more fascinating then that: https://get21stnight.com/2020/03/30/why-do-we-keep-getting-diseases-from-bats/ https://get21stnight.com/2020/03/30/why-do-we-keep-getting-d...
- kbrisso 6y ago
  Interesting article thanks.

throwanem 6y ago

A recent interview with the last author, Dr. Jonna Mazet, former director of the pandemic intelligence project disestablished by the current administration in September 2019: https://katz.substack.com/p/audio-edition-the-pandemic-prevention https://katz.substack.com/p/audio-edition-the-pandemic-preve...

natch 6y ago

Bats migrate. Migration brings species into contact with one another. (Even indirect contact such as sharing the same water source). With species in contact, viruses can spread. All this is perfectly normal. What’s new here is that climate is changing, causing migration patterns to change, causing new interactions between species that previously did not interact. Some of which are eventually brought into contact with humans. Again none of this is new either, except for the climate change part. All of this could and did happen already without climate change, but climate change can turn things up a few notches by making migration pattern changes much more wide ranging than before. So essentially what I am saying is it seems plausible that Covid-19 and its hit on the economy is one of the first “gifts” of global climate change. This seems to be right in front of our noses, but unnoticed by the whole world.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
I have seen a number of climate activists rushing to claim that the present crisis is a result of the same anthropogenic activities behind climate change. However, I feel that it is still too early to make such a claim. If Covid-19 did escape from a Wuhan lab (which remains a reasonable hypothesis, see [0] and feel free to follow up on its citations yourself), then it is not a case of human activists encroaching on a species and causing bats to migrate, but rather the result of human beings intentionally going out to catch bats in order to study them. I think that we can advocate for ways to reduce carbon output and habitat loss, while still holding off on claiming that this virus ties into that concern until its origin is better understood. [0] https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-trail-leading-back-to-wuhan-labs/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-tra...
- KirinDave 6y ago
  The argument posted in your link seems best summarized as: "China had virologists and biologists studying coronaviruses and that is suspicious." It even admits in the first paragraph it has no evidence of a causal relationship. We'd expect a country that is appropriately prioritizing domestic viral threats to be profiling things like coronaviruses in animals, so it seems odd to count this as evidence. Unless I missed some key evidence in the text, it seems like the entire animus of this argument was that the Chinese government would be inclined to lie if the virus did escape from a lab, and since they said it didn't happen, that must be true. Doesn't that make it a simple conspiracy theory? I get that Americans are inclined to believe governments lie about these things, (after all, the US covered up its H1N1 strain outbreak by calling it "Spanish") but if we're trying to evaluate things in terms of evidence and probability, this argument seems contrived.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    The claim last month was that the virus was created in a Chinese lab, not merely that it was accidentally released from one, so I guess this counts as some kind of improvement, at least.

pengaru 6y ago

A speculative theory backed by purely circumstantial evidence gathered online of covid-19's origin is that chinese researchers investigating coronaviruses in bats working near the wet market in Wuhan had an accident and became infected, one who apparently disappeared and has been presumed dead. I don't know if that's pure conspiracy theory nonsense, but it certainly seems risky to be doing this kind of thing: > Free-ranging bats were captured, and rectal and oral swabs and guano samples collected for coronaviral screening Especially considering the potential for asymptomatic spread...

__s 6y ago
How do you suggest research be done?
- decebalus1 6y ago
  With great care, in isolation and with full transparency. Tthere are protocols for how to deal with lab accidents or outbreaks and prior incidents show that all of these have lower priority than 'saving face' for the Chinese government.
- mahesh_rm 6y ago
  In whatever fashion you might think of, which does not endanger the lives of millions of people?
- pengaru 6y ago
  With great care and from a distance. If we're manually catching and swabbing wild bat rectums, I don't think we're doing a good job of keeping a distance, especially considering how far technology has progressed.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Humans and bats aren't going to stop interacting, not least because guano is an excellent fertilizer and the easiest way to get it is by giving bats incentives to defecate over your fields. That being so, and given the utter implausibility of bat-butthole-swabbing robots or whatever, would you rather we had people taking the negligible additional risk of doing this kind of research, so that we have a chance of being able to prepare in advance for the arrival of zoonoses like SARS-CoV-2? Or would you rather be taken by surprise? Going by the current state of affairs in the world, I have to say that being taken by surprise seems to have very little to recommend it.

gus_massa 6y ago

Note that coronavirus is a big family of virus, only a few (2?) are transmisible from human to human and also potentially deadly for humans. Most of the virus in the coronavirus family don´t infect humans or are not harmful. You may get just a normal cold, and you are fine a week later. They found 6 new versions of coronavirus, but IIUC they are not harmful for humans. This is business as usual.

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
FEIW, there are at least four common coronaviruses (229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1) that humans transmit, and based on the CDC's language there are other less common ones. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/general-information.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/general-information.html
- throwanem 6y ago
  The larger point is that coronaviruses as a family are unusually good at mutation and recombination, especially in the facilitating environment of bats, which typically have a high viral load. That makes them of particular concern as a potential source of novel infectious diseases in humans.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]