Counterpoint: 21 Million Fewer Cellphone Users in China May Suggest a High CCP Virus Death Toll
Falun Gong vs Jack Ma! FIGHT!
Here's the article. In short, they assume it is most likely from pangolins, with the gain of human ACE2 binding to have happened in humans. They do not think someone designed the ACE2 site with a program, because it is not a predicted high-efficiency ACE2 site using software. The authors note that this gain of function could feasibly have been the result of driven mutation in the lab. However, this coronavirus isn't a with a commonly used backbone. That is, researchers haven't been messing with it and publishing the results. Thus, the ACE2 site isn't one your computer would tell you to use, and the virus itself isn't a coronavirus known to be used by scientists. Therefore, the authors conclude that the virus probably went from pangolins to humans, and then gained the ACE2 site.All SARS-CoV-2 genomes sequenced so far have the genomic features described above and are thus derived from a common ancestor that had them too. The presence in pangolins of an RBD very similar to that of SARS-CoV-2 means that we can infer this was also probably in the virus that jumped to humans. This leaves the insertion of polybasic cleavage site to occur during human-to-human transmission.
The acquisition of polybasic cleavage sites by HA has also been observed after repeated passage in cell culture or through animals.
Actually, I am now skeptical. The reasoning seems circular. The pangolin theory seems based upon the fact that although the bat virus RaTG13 is 96.12% identical to SARS-Cov2, the pangolin-CoV has the ACE2 site, and is 91.02% and 90.55% identical to SARS-CoV-2 and BatCoV RaTG13. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32197085 And the above authors are saying that since the S1 in pangolin is closer to SARS-Cov2 it must have had a gain of ACE2 binding in humans. But what about the 96.12% identical RaTG13? Is it possible that someone was messing with RaTG13 and drove a mutation that resulted in ACE2-binding? And here is that backbone (MG772934 and MG772933) being collected and grown in rats and human cells in 2018: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6135831/ Also, rat ACE2, not crazy different from human ACE2. This from 2005. Ok, I am descending into #mkbatshittery. I need to stop.In this study, a suckling rat model was initially used to study the possibility of the proliferation of bat-derived CoVs in other animals. Previously, only one report had shown promising results associated with the isolation of live SL-CoVs from the fecal samples of bats with Vero E6 cells13. The live SL-CoV cultured in Vero E6 cells presented a typical CoV morphology and has the ability to use ACE2 from humans, civets, and Chinese horseshoe bats for cell entry33. An attempt to isolate the virus with Vero E6 cells was unsuccessful, which was likely due to a low viral load or a lack of compatibility with Vero E6 cells. This study found that the SL-CoVs derived from bats could replicate successfully in suckling rats, and pathological examination showed the occurrence of inflammatory reactions in the examined organs of the suckling rats. This result indicated that the virus can proliferate in rats and has the potential of cross-species transmission. When CoV particles procured from the infected brain tissues of the rats were studied by electron microscopy, the morphology of the particles was found to be identical to the typical coronavirus particles, as described in previous studies34. However, the typical spikes could not be visualized by electron microscopy. This observation can be partially explained by the hypothesis that the S1 and S2 domains of the S protein (which are not well-connected) were easily detached from the virion using excessive freeze-thawing or ultracentrifugation6.
By altering histidine 353 in rat ACE2 and modifying a glyosylation site that may alter the shape of a-helix 1, we converted rat ACE2 to an efficient receptor for SARS-CoV.
Epoch Times is a Falun Gong website. The Falun Gong will do whatever they can to hasten the downfall of China which... China was executing Falun Gong and harvesting their organs years before they decided to butcher Uyghurs. So I mean they have a point.
Yeah people made mad fun of 'em for incorporating organ harvesting into their Shen Yun stuff And then the UN came out and said "well, there's more organs than listed donors so..." One of the most ironic things about all this coronavirus stuff is everyone is taking Chinese facts and statistics as gospel fucking truth when just three months ago we all knew 95% of it was purest bullshit.
look - I agree - the Chinese stats are NO WAY accurate. China will try to save face at every opportunity. on one end of the spectrum you have "The Chinese government is being transparent" and on the other end is "The Epoch Times is reporiting 23 million people missing and crematoriums burning 40,000 people per day". Somewhere in between them is the truth - and my bet is - we'll never really know.
