Lockdown might have been needless - Coronovirus already spreading in late 2019

[Thick Face Black Heart]

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/07/world/coronavirus-spread-swiftly-late-2019#.XrURrWgzaUk

A genetic study of samples from more than 7,500 people infected with COVID-19 suggests the new coronavirus spread quickly around the world after it emerged in China sometime between October and December last year, scientists said on Wednesday.

Scientists at University College London’s Genetics Institute found almost 200 recurrent genetic mutations of the new coronavirus — SARS-CoV-2 — which the UCL researchers said showed how it is adapting to its human hosts as it spreads.





“Phylogenetic estimates support that the COVID-2 pandemic started sometime around Oct. 6, 2019 to Dec. 11, 2019, which corresponds to the time of the host jump into humans,” the research team, co-led by Francois Balloux, wrote in a study published in the journal Infection, Genetics and Evolution.

Balloux said the analysis also found that the virus was and is mutating, as normally happens with viruses, and that a large proportion of the global genetic diversity of the virus causing COVID-19 was found in all of the hardest-hit countries.

That suggests SARS-CoV-2 was being transmitted extensively around the world from early on in the epidemic, he said.

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“All viruses naturally mutate. Mutations in themselves are not a bad thing and there is nothing to suggest SARS-CoV-2 is mutating faster or slower than expected,” he said. “So far, we cannot say whether SARS-CoV-2 is becoming more or less lethal and contagious.”

In a second study also published on Wednesday, scientists at the University of Glasgow who also analyzed SARS-CoV-2 virus samples said their findings showed that previous work suggesting there were two different strains was inaccurate.

A preliminary study by Chinese scientists in March had suggested there may have been two strains of the new coronavirus causing infections there, with one of them more “aggressive” than the other.

But, publishing their analysis in the journal Virus Evolution, the Glasgow team said only one type of the virus was circulating.

Cases have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since they were first identified in China in December 2019.

The genetic studies offer “fascinating” insights into the evolution of the virus, and emphasize that it is “a moving target with an unknown evolutionary destination,” said Jonathan Stoye, head of the division of virology at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute.

“All the evidence is entirely consistent with an origin towards the end of last year, and there’s no reason to question that in any way,” Stoye said.

A study by French scientists published earlier this week found a man in France was infected with COVID-19 as early as Dec. 27, nearly a month before authorities there confirmed the first cases.

The World Health Organization said the French case was “not surprising” and urged countries to investigate any other early suspicious cases.

Balloux’s team screened the genomes of more than 7,500 viruses from infected patients around the world. Their results add to a growing body of evidence that SARS-CoV-2 viruses share a common ancestor from late 2019, suggesting this was when the virus jumped from a previous animal host into people.

The UCL researchers also found almost 200 small genetic changes, or mutations, in the coronavirus genomes they analyzed — findings Balloux said offered helpful clues for researchers seeking to develop drugs and vaccines.

 

[tanwahtiu]

Like this can world super class action sue Trump Administration for slander China name calling the virus as China virus.

This has had caused anti Chinese sentiment and hurt many Asian look like Chinese faces badly....

Hoot ahhh....

Fuck Trump Administration...

 

[Hypocrite-The]

The lockdown etc will continue as the media will keep playing up the virus, eventhough its just the flu. Now that the infection rates are dropping,,the media will print BS leftwing liberal bleeding heart liberal fuckwit articles to justify the lockdowns etc and make the fatalities sound like the end of the world

Why We Can't Dismiss Any COVID-19 Deaths




Rachel Fairbank

28/04/2020



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“They would’ve died anyway.” These past few weeks, an argument has gained prevalence in social media spheres that the death of a person with underlying conditions who has been infected with COVID-19 shouldn’t “count” as a COVID-19 death. Yes, fatal cases of COVID-19 are more common among people with conditions like heart disease, lung disease and diabetes. But this only raises the question of how officials determine that a person has actually died of COVID-19—especially as the disease’s death rate is being used as a factor to determine when businesses can reopen and people can go back to work.

“In the cases that we do autopsies, the lung changes are so severe that it is truly separable from the effects of the coronary artery disease, the emphysema, the heart disease, the diabetes, all these things,” says Dwayne Wolf, the deputy chief medical examiner for Harris County Institute for Forensic Sciences and a clinical assistant professor of pathology for Baylor College of Medicine. “It truly is a separate disease.”
The primary cause of death is why a patient died on that particular day
When it comes to determining cause of death, there will be the primary cause, as well as contributing causes. For someone who died of COVID-19, the primary cause is often diffuse alveolar damage in the lungs, which leads to patients dying because they can’t breathe.

If COVID-19 caused a person to die on that particular day, that is considered the primary cause of death—and a COVID-19 death is still an early death, whether that death came a month or twenty years earlier than it would have otherwise.

In addition to the primary cause of death, the death certificate will list contributing factors such as heart disease or diabetes or any number of other conditions that could have worsened the patient’s condition. These are factors that, although they didn’t cause the patient to die on that particular day, also didn’t help them either.

Simplistically speaking, COVID-19 would not be considered the cause of death if a person with a mild case got into a car accident and died, as the disease wouldn’t be the reason for their death on that day.

“There are going to be those cases where people die with COVID-19 but not of COVID-19,” Wolf says.
How cause of death is determined has not changed
It’s important to remember that the way a cause of death is determined in COVID-19 patients is no different from how medical professionals determine cause of death in different times. As Wolf points out, even in normal times, there are situations where cause of death is determined based on a patient’s history, as well as statistics.

“It’s the same process that we used before the pandemic, it’s the same process we’ll use after the pandemic,” Wolf says.

Wolf’s office in the US's Texas has handled a number of autopsies during which they’ve needed to determine whether the death was COVID-19-related or not. Their strategy for determining the cause of death is the same as it always has been.

The process and logic behind determining a cause of death is the same as is used in normal times. At the end of the day, determining cause of death is always a tricky business.
The world is probably undercounting the number of deaths
Given the lack of widespread testing, there are certainly COVID-19 deaths that are unaccounted for. A recent New York Times analysis looked at the number of deaths this year versus the same time period a year ago. They considered the difference in the death rate, factored in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and used the results to generate an estimate of how many COVID-19 deaths may still be unaccounted for.

Based on this analysis, they estimate there are 40,000 unaccounted deaths in 12 countries, which include countries such as Belgium France, Spain and Switzerland. For New York City, they estimate that there are an additional 4,200 unaccounted COVID-19 deaths within the time frame of March 11 to April 25.

Practically speaking, then, it’s likely we are looking at an undercount of COVID-19 deaths, even as the process for ruling a cause of death is the same now as it has been in the past. And that information could be critical in determining where we go from here.