Fun fact 2: Sialic acids are important for protecting your gut / balancing the microbiome.
Fun fact 3: Bats apparently have a much simpler microbiome (less weight, better flying), and can tolerate low levels of coronavirus infection.
I would bet the closest non-flying relative of a bat would get respiratory infections too.
What do you mean by "recognises" here? Is sialic acid something that helps the coronavirus or something that hinders it?
Edit: a letter.
But Sialic acids are really interesting!
One thing we may have to consider is a policy of bat eradication. At least in populated areas. It would have some ecological consequences, but the risk of mass pandemic probably outweighs that cost.
[1]https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JnBpAgAAQBAJ&oi=...
"Insectivorous bats in particular are especially helpful to farmers, as they control populations of agricultural pests... It has been estimated that bats save the agricultural industry of the United States anywhere from $3.7 billion to $53 billion per year in pesticides and damage to crops."[1]
Holy crap! This is a bad idea. Just leave the bats alone. They serve as an apex predator to provide balance to the natural environment.
https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus...
I've been thinking about it and I can't fathom how we would know of every case.
What percentage of adults who get the seasonal flu go see a doctor and get diagnosed, 10%? Coronavirus symptoms mimic the flu and can even by asymptomatic in people, meaning people can easily attribute symptoms to a bad cold/flu or not even notice them. On average someone with coronavirus spreads it to 3-4 other people. It's estimated that the virus started infecting people in early January, but China didn't start quarantining people until 3 weeks later or so.
I just don't see the math adding up, all it takes is a handful of people not seeking treatment in order for it to start spreading without our knowledge. There has to be thousands of additional cases around the world of that just aren't diagnosed, which is how we're suddenly seeing unexpected diagnoses in places without any previous outbreak like Iran.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/25/cdc-coronav...
And yeah, there are going to be a bunch of people here who won't seek help unless it gets really bad, and who will go to their jobs even if they feel crummy because they need the money, thus spreading it farther and more rapidly.
BTW, we were warned: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-t...
To a lot of people it's pretty obvious that there are a lot of undiagnosed cases in the wild. They are not testing anyone unless you are coming from a known risk area, which means by definition they can't detect local community outbreaks.
December 2019. That's why it is called COVID-19 to begin with, because it was first detected in 2019.
https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accid...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis
Has the figure at 61%.
Jumping species tends to be a rare event with regard to diseases. But it is an important event, hence the article.
My observations (all facts)
1. Proximity of outbreak to sole advanced virology lab in all of China, suspicious
2. Publications ( https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899 )from lab suggest they were dealing with CoVid-19 like viruses for a while.
3. State of China would strongly deny/cover-up the lab to be the cause of outbreak, even if that did happen. I'm not suggesting they engineered the virus, just suggesting that they were researching animals with the virus, and a freak case of violating safety protocol let to the virus leaking to the nearby seafood market. Again - attributing this to clumsiness, not malice
Given the above, I think an investigative journalist would find the circumstances fertile enough for a deep investigation. Given how hard it is to identify patient zero of the outbreak, I think journalists need to go down this path of investigation
http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/3...
During the past two decades, three zoonotic coronaviruses have been identified as the cause of large-scale disease outbreaks–Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome (SADS). SARS and MERS emerged in 2003 and 2012, respectively, and caused a worldwide pandemic that claimed thousands of human lives, while SADS struck the swine industry in 2017. They have common characteristics, such as they are all highly pathogenic to humans or livestock, their agents originated from bats, and two of them originated in China. Thus, it is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China. Therefore, the investigation of bat coronaviruses becomes an urgent issue for the detection of early warning signs, which in turn minimizes the impact of such future outbreaks in China. The purpose of the review is to summarize the current knowledge on viral diversity, reservoir hosts, and the geographical distributions of bat coronaviruses in China, and eventually we aim to predict virus hotspots and their cross-species transmission potential.
Is this prescient or purely coincidental or something else?
