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Yes, man cannot make a virus of this sort, if by make you mean build it from scratch, using proteins, etc.
Not intending to stoke the "was the Wuhan coronavirus man-made" debate, man can and has constructed viruses from scratch, in the lab. It was done with a Pox virus, which is a much more complicated, DNA virus.
"man-made" and "zoonotic" are relative terms in this context.
Yes, man cannot make a virus of this sort, if by make you mean build it from scratch, using proteins, etc.
Yes, previous coronavirus have jumped from animals to humans.
This coronavirus was very likely engineered - the lab manipulated an existing bat virus backbone by combining it with a pangolin spike protein, then ran it through successive generations of ferrets, so as to make it appear natural, and to make it behave a certain way. No other coronavirus shows anywhere near the affinity for the ACE2 pathway that this one does. If you want to believe that Mother Nature was playing roulette, then go ahead. She must really hate humans if that's the case.
You underestimate Mother Nature. Do you think that smallpox and Ebola were also engineered by humans?
There is no way to run it "through successive generations of ferrets, so as to make it appear natural, and to make it behave a certain way."
Serial passage through an animal may actually attenuate the effects of a virus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill790
Not intending to stoke the "was the Wuhan coronavirus man-made" debate, man can and has constructed viruses from scratch, in the lab. It was done with a Pox virus, which is a much more complicated, DNA virus.
I'm really not trying to politicize this issue. History will judge Fauci on the way handled the coronavirus pandemic. Personally, I can't make a judgement on that at this point. But you have to measure Fauci's response in the context of a Trump presidency. Say what you will about Donald Trump, you have to admit he is not a man who likes to be disagreed with. By many accounts he was determined to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic until he saw (on TV) body bags being loaded onto reefer trucks in the back of a hospital in Queens.
"man-made" and "zoonotic" are relative terms in this context.
Yes, man cannot make a virus of this sort, if by make you mean build it from scratch, using proteins, etc.
Yes, previous coronavirus have jumped from animals to humans.
This coronavirus was very likely engineered - the lab manipulated an existing bat virus backbone by combining it with a pangolin spike protein, then ran it through successive generations of ferrets, so as to make it appear natural, and to make it behave a certain way. No other coronavirus shows anywhere near the affinity for the ACE2 pathway that this one does. If you want to believe that Mother Nature was playing roulette, then go ahead. She must really hate humans if that's the case.
Well Ruth-4-Truth's links article, and almost all articles from main stream scientific sources that I have read, disagree with you in terms of "very likely engineered"...in fact it's totally the opposite. Since it's the internet I am sure you can find various blogs and youtube video sources that disagree, the same with the bigfoot theories. I need some established mainstream sources that say it's man-made. Until then - I file this with Bigfoot and hybrid alien-humans.
I can buy that, but I'm convinced the researchers strayed from this original intent, and knowingly conducted years worth of gain of function experiments. Why they did that, is debatable. But there's no way something this destructive, this specific, could've evolved naturally. If that were possible, I'd vote to exterminate every single bat in existence, to prevent this from happening again.
Also, they could have been working with a naturally occurring virus -- IN THE LAB.
That's a viable theory and one that the feds/administration openly said it was investigating. However, the scenario was this Chinese lab was not working with the virus as any sort of weapon but investigating, ironically, how to manage and protect against a virus.
You mean like Mike Pence? Ringleader of the circus?
--
Fauci, the WHO & the CDC.
Why would one non-epidemiologist rely on another non-epidemiologist?
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