China’s only level 4 biolab is just 8 miles from origin of outbreak - coincidence?

submitted by magnora7 from i.redd.it

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[–]eremsee 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The virus is not that different in its genetic code than many other corona viruses - given the high volume of biomass in the area, it was bound to happen that this one would eventually jump. Honestly, I am surprised it doesn't happen MORE often. Look, back in 2006 we were talking about bird flu... coming from densely populated poultry farms in the Netherlands. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2796.2006.01711.x

[–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I've actually been reading that 2019-nCoV appears to have HIV genes injected in to the sequencing unlike most other types of coronavirus... it does not appear to be natural at all.

[–]eremsee 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Are you referring to this? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full.pdf

It looks like this geneticist repeated their results and found that these are not particularly significant alignments... "Looking at each "insert" in turn. We see that "insert 1" (GTNGTKR) is present in the closely related virus bat/Yunnan/RaTG13/2013. It is impossible that this sequence was "inserted" into the #nCoV2019 genome. 5/9" https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1223666856923291648?s=20

I'm a neuroscientist, not a geneticist, but these inserts are very small, generally at 5-7 amino acids. This is not enough material to make functional proteins. Further, according to this Twitterer at least, these proteins are in fact similar to other coronaviruses.

The reason HIV drugs work on it is because they work on pretty much all viruses.