Nipate
Forum => Kenya Discussion => Topic started by: vooke on May 03, 2020, 03:02:53 AM
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Gain of Function (GoF) vide animal passage
The Institute began a program of gain-of-function research into bat coronaviruses in 2015. That involved taking selected strains and seeking to increase the ability of those viruses to transmit from one person to another. The gain-of-function research went hand-in-hand with the surveillance project. As scientists identified new classes of bat viruses that have the ability to infect human cells, that raised the question of what changes would have to arise in nature to make that virus transmissible in humans, which would pose a pandemic threat.
In 2015, the Wuhan lab performed a gain of function experiment using cut-and-paste genetic engineering, in which scientists take a natural virus and directly make substitutions in its RNA coding to make it more transmissible. They took a piece of the original SARS virus and inserted a snippet from a SARS-like bat coronavirus, resulting in a virus that is capable of infecting human cells. A natural virus altered with these methods would be easily flagged in a genetic analysis, like a contemporary addition to an old Victorian house.
A virus produced with animal passage methods would be much harder to spot. These viruses are not directly manipulated. When the virus passes from one animal to the next, it undergoes something similar to what would happen in the wild during the course of its evolution. A wild coronavirus passed through 10 ferrets would be difficult to identify as having been engineered or manipulated.
There is no published record of animal-passage work on coronaviruses in the Wuhan Institute. The lab got its first BSL-4 lab in 2018, which is now considered a requirement for this kind of work (though some work proceeds in BSL-3-enhanced labs). It's possible that researchers started animal passage work in the BSL-4 lab but didn't finish it in time to publish before the current pandemic, when China tightened up on publications. It's possible that the work was done in secret. It's possible that it never happened at all. But some scientists think it's unlikely that an expensive BSL-4 lab would not be doing animal-passage research, which by 2018 was not unusual.
https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments-that-may-have-started-coronavirus-pandemic-1500503
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It is very hard to get reliable information from China with Mandarin being official language. Likes of WHO and UN Security Council would need reforms to have powers to watch over these opaque governments for survival of human species.
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It is very hard to get reliable information from China with Mandarin being official language. Likes of WHO and UN Security Council would need reforms to have powers to watch over these opaque governments for survival of human species.
:D Unafahamu siasa na geopolitics kweli ?
LOL at a nuclear power being forced to give access to UN/NGO busybodies. Good luck with that.
Only African countries can be pushed around like that, even having their sitting elected leaders forced to attend the kangaroo court at the Hague. No Arab, Asian or European country would acquiesce to such nonsense.
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Once the social, economic and political effects of the corona virus become clear something will give. Japan was once a power to reckon with yet post war 'they are not supposed to have a combative army'. This virus will redefine local politics and geopolitics.
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Exactly - Now bioweapon will become the new nuclear - and Labs will become new Nuclear stations - WHO inspector will have to go round touring to make sure nobody is producing viruses - either deliberately - or otherwise - including supervising animals we eat.
It is very hard to get reliable information from China with Mandarin being official language. Likes of WHO and UN Security Council would need reforms to have powers to watch over these opaque governments for survival of human species.
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I dont believe China's death numbers. Am sure something like 200k plus died.