[FRIAM] Coronavirus vs Flu

[_ Bruno W]

Hey George, First of all, thanks for hosting the wonderful party and thanks
to Sherry too!

I agree with your statement.  I'm hopeful this thing will pan out much like
SARS did.
I've followed with interest the "conspiracy theories" that the virus
actually leaked from
the BSL 4 lab there which houses hundreds of bats, presumably for SARS
corona virus research.
Over a dozen of the initial 44 cases have no link to the fish market, and
it's thought the common ancestor
of those cases dates back to October 2019.  When I was at LANL I analyzed
the SARS genome and
it actually had a cloning site (which could have happened by chance, but
most coronaviruses didn't have it).
There was a university research lab at that time near the center of the
outbreak that was doing cross
species infection experiments between chickens and monkeys.  The SARS virus
had similarity to both
kinds of corona virus.  That theory got knocked down when I found other
sequences in GenBank from pig that
looked more similar to SARS than anything else, and eventually when the
Chinese isolated SARS in bats.  But I thought
it was strange that a year after the outbreak when the WHO was worried it
might come back, China seemed sure
it would not and lifted the restrictions on civet cats in the markets.

On Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 4:20 PM George Duncan <gtduncan at gmail.com> wrote:

> "I think it is likely we'll see a global pandemic," Harvard T.H. Chan
> School of Public Health professor Marc Lipsitch told the Journal. "If a
> pandemic happens, 40% to 70% of people worldwide are likely to be infected
> in the coming year.
>
> My son-in-law who is an infectious disease doc at Harvard Medical School
> says Marc Lipsitch is the world-leading authority on pandemics.
>
> If Lipsitch is right we are in the early stages of Covid-19 and so
> comparisons with current levels of the flu are irrelevant.
>
> George Duncan
> Emeritus Professor of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University
> georgeduncanart.com
> See posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
> Land: (505) 983-6895
> Mobile: (505) 469-4671
>
> My art theme: Dynamic exposition of the tension between matrix order and
> luminous chaos.
>
> "Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may
> then be a valuable delusion."
> From "Notes to myself on beginning a painting" by Richard Diebenkorn.
>
> "It's that knife-edge of uncertainty where we come alive to our truest
> power." Joanna Macy.
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 10:21 AM Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net>
> wrote:
>
>> I'm reading an NYTimes piece
>> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/world/asia/coronavirus-risk-interpreter.html>
>> on the Coronavirus containing:
>>
>> But one of the attendees, a public health student, had had enough.
>> Exasperated, she rattled off a set of statistics.
>>
>> The virus had killed about 1,100 worldwide and infected around a dozen in
>> the United States. Alarming, but a much more common illness, influenza,
>> kills about 400,000 people every year, including 34,200 Americans last flu
>> season and 61,099 the year before.
>>
>>
>> I had looked that up previously and was also puzzled .. Flu is way more
>> deadly .. those numbers are staggering.
>>
>> The article was less on the mortality rates etc but on:
>>     Coronavirus ‘Hits All the Hot Buttons’ for How We Misjudge Risk
>> .. and goes on to explain the lopsided response.
>>
>> BTW: the Flu numbers were a wakeup call! I hope we all have one!
>>
>>    -- Owen
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200217/656e827b/attachment.html>