Obamagate: Who will be the first to fall?

A mostly pictorial essay, sparing you readers thousands of words.

The Storm is here, gentles. It's not just raining, it's pouring. The barely visible deluge is upon us--well, not us, exactly. It's on the corruptocrats, whether wearing blue or red or business black. Some wear matching facemasks and dresses (not naming names here, got it?)

Some of them are being slowly boiled and they turn green.

So who will be the first to fall?

"No one", I hear from many.

Yeah, well, maybe. But Darnold T. believes in a vengeful God, the kind that would tempt a fellow to immolate his first-born son. A God who allows Satan to play Hell with the world. A God who says "Vengeance is mine". That kind of deity.

Get your seat ready as the tumbrels transport the soon to be severed head-from-shoulders, next to Madame De Farge and her knitting.

The Apostle of God the Avenger is named Q. Q is the Nemesis of Shiva the Destroyer.

The Oracle of Delphi opined, predictions made. Will future prove past?

.

Now, on death row, awaiting possible execution are many.

How's that for starters?

Any bets on this next lot? Good rates on your wagers, y'all.

Now the folks pictured above will have to meet certain criteria for the first one to do a perp / Perv walk.

Hereinunder are contained the statute from the Book of Q, chapter 3717 concerning the person whom should be indicted first.

Got that? First one in the bag is gonna tell us if we're aiming high (like JOB, HRC, or a little lower: JOB, LL, Rosy,

Strzok is on the goner list. Absofguckinglutely. He may smooch his butt goodbye. Lisa, lovely Lisa may be on the kick in the ass club with possible disbarment channel with denial of future government service.

Big money riding here, folks. Get your bets in:

The favorite at odds of 8 to 3 is John O. Brennan, the smiling faced friend of the intelligent.

Running at 4 to 1 is the likely winner of Q's first place award will be Cardinal J. (I'm not a weasel") Comey.

But watch out for the rapidly gaining contender for earth shaker. Are you ready? The Analytical Alligator has determined there yet remains one very enticing choice, lying in cooler, like a strip steak ready to be put on the grill. Guess.

Please, guess.

Aw, c'mon, guess.

At odds of 30 to 1, needing no further introduction. The real peeper sleeper candidate for the first to be skewered is........

A picture, you know.

Adam Schiff, do you plea guilty or guilty of being a Ukrainian stooge, subordinate to J. Biden, Viceroy of Ukraine?

Now, at the end of this picture book for political kids, I wistfully append by wished for Winner of the First Trump Indictment will be--you know who.

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Alligator Ed's picture

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CB's picture

this entire imbroglio together.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@CB A truly lovely portrait with which we gaze into the soul of HRC, a task perhaps requiring detection by electron microscopy. Perhaps, in 4 conjoined base-pairs we shall find something evidencing prior empathy, y'all, hot sauce lady.

No, CB, please suggest as theme to me concerning anything to do with the Giant Rat of Chappaquah. Then, with great pseudo-artistic effort, I shall endeavor to produce another worth essay.*

*Unfortunately, none of the material will be mine but I hope this essay tells a message somewhat like I intended.

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CB's picture

@Alligator Ed
There is a high probability of contracting a fatal contagium from messing with Rattus clintoniae.

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Of Star Trek, when Q was merely that dickish god with low self-esteem who had a man-crush on Picard, rather than the collection of squirrel eating Holocaust deniers who infest the Internets with their 5G Cloudstrike chem-trails for Jesus rants.

Hell, I'd even take the days where Fox Nooz pundits crapped their pants on the air because Obama wore a tan suit.

But now, the crazy train has just begun to chug its way down the tracks. Covid Claudius has a mere 85,000 bodies to bury on his golf course. The sky is the limit. (Russia and Brazil both seem committed to give us a race for our money. We have a head start but they are still on an Exponential Curve for Jesus.)

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Alligator Ed's picture

@SancheLlewellyn

Covid Claudius has a mere 85,000 bodies to bury on his golf course.

You probably hold the CCP blameless, I suppose. Did Commander Cheeto cause the pandemic? Is that why you're trying to lay the blame of all SARS2 victims at his feet? Maybe you oughta listen to some more Madcow tell us about Putin turning off the juice to Fargo, ND.

Anybody that could seriously make that statement blaming Trump for those deaths is afflicted with a case of TDS to be sure. Let's forget how China lied about transmissibility to humanoids and how Doctor Tadpole, the Ethiopian Hippocrates told us and the rest of the world that this SARS2 thing was no big deal--until it became a pandemic.

Have you followed Q at all? Chemtrails for Jesus, interesting. And the basis if any for assigning this to Trump's acolytes is what?

You don't seem to give due credit to two morons directly responsible for 25% of the US's deaths: Bill De BlahBlah and Mad Andrew Cuomo. Yeah, Andy wanted all those fine, newly made (upon Trump's orders) ventilators which he could then sell at markup to other states and countries.

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CB's picture

@Alligator Ed

Anybody that could seriously make that statement blaming Trump for those deaths is afflicted with a case of TDS to be sure. Let's forget how China lied about transmissibility to humanoids and how Doctor Tadpole, the Ethiopian Hippocrates told us and the rest of the world that this SARS2 thing was no big deal--until it became a pandemic.

Should China have reported something before they had done a study to confirm? Keep in mind that the Chinese doctors were in touch with the WHO on a daily basis since December 31, 2019. The US CDC was notified that there was an outbreak of pneumonia from an unknown cause on January 3, 2020.

The following are published papers from The Lancet:

A familial cluster of pneumonia associated with the 2019 novel coronavirus indicating person-to-person transmission: a study of a family cluster
Published:January 24, 2020

Summary

Background
An ongoing outbreak of pneumonia associated with a novel coronavirus was reported in Wuhan city, Hubei province, China. Affected patients were geographically linked with a local wet market as a potential source. No data on person-to-person or nosocomial transmission have been published to date.

Findings
From Jan 10, 2020, we enrolled a family of six patients who travelled to Wuhan from Shenzhen between Dec 29, 2019 and Jan 4, 2020. Of six family members who travelled to Wuhan, five were identified as infected with the novel coronavirus. Additionally, one family member, who did not travel to Wuhan, became infected with the virus after several days of contact with four of the family members. None of the family members had contacts with Wuhan markets or animals, although two had visited a Wuhan hospital. Five family members (aged 36–66 years) presented with fever, upper or lower respiratory tract symptoms, or diarrhoea, or a combination of these 3–6 days after exposure. They presented to our hospital (The University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen) 6–10 days after symptom onset....

Interpretation
Our findings are consistent with person-to-person transmission of this novel coronavirus in hospital and family settings, and the reports of infected travellers in other geographical regions.
...

Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China
Published:January 24, 2020

Summary

Background
A recent cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China, was caused by a novel betacoronavirus, the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). We report the epidemiological, clinical, laboratory, and radiological characteristics and treatment and clinical outcomes of these patients.

Methods
All patients with suspected 2019-nCoV were admitted to a designated hospital in Wuhan. We prospectively collected and analysed data on patients with laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection by real-time RT-PCR and next-generation sequencing.
...

Interpretation
The 2019-nCoV infection caused clusters of severe respiratory illness similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and was associated with ICU admission and high mortality. Major gaps in our knowledge of the origin, epidemiology, duration of human transmission, and clinical spectrum of disease need fulfilment by future studies.
...

Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a descriptive study
Published: January 30, 2020

Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding
Published:January 30, 2020

Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread of the 2019-nCoV outbreak originating in Wuhan, China: a modelling study
Published:January 31, 2020

Summary


Background

Since Dec 31, 2019, the Chinese city of Wuhan has reported an outbreak of atypical pneumonia caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Cases have been exported to other Chinese cities, as well as internationally, threatening to trigger a global outbreak. Here, we provide an estimate of the size of the epidemic in Wuhan on the basis of the number of cases exported from Wuhan to cities outside mainland China and forecast the extent of the domestic and global public health risks of epidemics, accounting for social and non-pharmaceutical prevention interventions.
...
Interpretation

Given that 2019-nCoV is no longer contained within Wuhan, other major Chinese cities are probably sustaining localised outbreaks. Large cities overseas with close transport links to China could also become outbreak epicentres, unless substantial public health interventions at both the population and personal levels are implemented immediately. Independent self-sustaining outbreaks in major cities globally could become inevitable because of substantial exportation of presymptomatic cases and in the absence of large-scale public health interventions. Preparedness plans and mitigation interventions should be readied for quick deployment globally.

To see if China was hiding anything check the timeline of responses in South Korea, Vietnam and Singapore.

If you are curious about Dr. Tadpole's (WHO) initial response:

(You may want to read this in it's entirety. It will show how other East Asian countries managed to jump on this so fast that they managed to effectively minimize the spread and subsequent deaths.)

Data as reported by: 20 January 2020

SUMMARY
Event highlights from 31 December 2019 to 20 January 2020:

  • On 31 December 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. From 31 December 2019 through 3 January 2020, a total of 44 case-patients with pneumonia of unknown etiology were reported to WHO by the national authorities in China. During this reported period, the causal agent was not identified.

...

Here are ALL the WHO's responses:
Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) situation reports

Now compare to the US response under Trump and tell me how much of the shit the US is now in is the responsibility of China "hiding" information?

Timeline: Trump administration's response to coronavirus
An examination of how the Trump administration responded to the coronavirus outbreak.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@CB Lancet has been an almost always reliable medical source. One of the best. I read the article.

of the 7 patients, 1 through 6 had visited Wuhan between 12/27/19 and 1/4/20. They became symptomatic within approximately the next ten days. Genotyping was performed and the authors present two genotypes with identifying information concerning which beta-Caronaviruses were similar.

I have no doubt that these travelers returning from Wuhan to Szeschen were indeed infected by SARS2. The information on the individual patients, in toto, was not completed until about two weeks after the Szeshen return. This would be about 1/18/20.

Mind you, these physicians were NOT the physicians in Wuhan raising the alarm in late December, 2019 onward. WHO was parroting the non-human transmissibility scam at least as late as mid-Jan. 2020 (likely Jan 17 or later).

I have no qualms about the article or its conclusions. But nowhere in this paper is any reflection of what the Chinese Government and their WHO confederates were broadcasting at and after that time.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Alligator Ed

on how the C virus was running through the population before it hit Wuhan. It might have started in Lombardi, Italy in November or it might have been even earlier than that. Young adults were getting a new type of pneumonia which they thought was due to vaping, but health officials are now looking to see if might have been from COVID. The key point here is that it was affecting people months before it hit China

You should read moon of Alabama’s coverage on this. In other words China is not responsible for the way Trump responded to the epidemic here. He knew it was coming back in January and did nothing. But he’s not the only one who didn’t.

And could you please stop with the cutesy names for people. You must have missed the essay here where we agreed not to use them.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Alligator Ed's picture

@snoopydawg Could you please provide the link which you cite? I will read it. You may or may not believe this, but I still have an open mind. My suspicions are that the disease might have been man-made and joint;y concocted, in series, from Fort Derrick, MD to Wuhan Institute of Virology and then released at the world military "games" in Wuhan. Italian athletes participated in those games and may have unwittingly imported the bug with them upon their return to Italy.

As far as cutesy names, that is a matter of style. If you or anyone does not know the referent, I shall gladly supply the "correct" name(s).

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CB's picture

@Alligator Ed
more that would have improved the US response to the pandemic? All you are doing is spreading the same fucking FUD as "We lie, We steel, We cheat," Pompeo.

China rebuts accusation of cover-up, says it first notified U.S. of coronavirus on Jan. 3

China's Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying Thursday rebutted Washington's accusations of a cover-up by saying that China first notified the U.S. government about the novel coronavirus on January 3.

"China has been updating the U.S. on the coronavirus and its response since January 3. On January 15 the U.S. State Department notified Americans in China U.S. CDC's warning about the coronavirus. And now blames China for delay? Seriously?" Hua Chunying posted on Twitter.

The remarks came after U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien accused China of covering up information about the outbreak, thereby delaying global response.

On March 11, O'Brien said China didn't initially handle the outbreak well, likely costing the world two months when it could have prepared and dramatically limited the outbreak.

"Unfortunately, rather than using best practices, this outbreak in Wuhan was covered up," he said at a think-tank event, citing online reports that Wuhan doctors were "silenced."
...
"It probably cost the world community two months to respond," during which "we could have dramatically curtailed what happened both in China and what's now happening across the world," he said.
...
Three days after health authorities confirmed human-to-human transmission of the virus, Wuhan, where the virus was first reported, went into lockdown.

China has imposed travel restrictions and quarantine measures on Chinese people over the past two months.

"Our arduous efforts have paid off: On March 18, Hubei Province (including Wuhan) reported 0 new confirmed cases, 0 new suspected cases and 0 suspected cases pending results," said Hua.
...

I suppose you'll be jumping on this bandwagon next?

How The Trump Administration Inserts 'Blame China' Propaganda Into Main Stream Media
...
Manipulated interpretations of diplomatic cables and evidence-free claims about allegedly existing evidence were also used in warmongering campaigns about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and chemical attacks in Syria. The neo-conservatives are now using the same old tricks against China.

The media echo shows that they have some success with this.

Even I knew what was going on in Wuhan by the first week in January just by following several Chinese English language sites on YouTube.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LtA0-qoHOg]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkFDjroyS_w]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNJBoBPMy8Y]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5MtO02imy4]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p601LORm3Ho]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9ozFabl17g]

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@CB

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Office of the Secretary

DATES: The Declaration is effective as of February 4, 2020.

The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services (the Secretary) to issue a Declaration to provide liability immunity to certain individuals and entities (Covered Persons) against any claim of loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the manufacture, distribution, administration, or use of medical countermeasures (Covered Countermeasures), except for claims involving “willful misconduct” as defined in the PREP Act.

They were efficient enough to provide legal protection to manufacturers, but not so fast to provide PPE to health care providers. Who would have thunk?

To date, United States traveler-associated cases have been identified in a number of States and community-based transmission is suspected. On January 31, 2020, Secretary Azar declared a public health emergency pursuant to section 319 of the PHS Act, 42 U.S.C. 247d, for the entire United States to aid in the nation’s health care community response to the COVID-19 outbreak.1 The outbreak remains a significant public health challenge that requires a sustained, coordinated proactive response by the Government in order to contain and mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

(My boldface.)

Thus, it is the Secretary's interpretation that, when a Declaration is in effect, the Act precludes, for example, liability claims alleging negligence by a manufacturer in creating a vaccine, or negligence by a health care provider in prescribing the wrong dose, absent willful misconduct. Likewise, the Act precludes a liability claim relating to the management and operation of a countermeasure distribution program or site, such as a slip-and-fall injury or vehicle collision by a recipient receiving a countermeasure at a retail store serving as an administration or dispensing location that alleges, for example, lax security or chaotic crowd control.

I have determined that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 or a virus mutating therefrom and the resulting disease COVID -19 constitutes a public health emergency.

Liability immunity . . .

Covered Countermeasures are any antiviral, any other drug, any biologic, any diagnostic, any other device, or any vaccine, used to treat, diagnose, cure, prevent, or mitigate COVID-19, or the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 or a virus mutating therefrom, or any device used in the administration of any such product, and all components and constituent materials of any such product.

Covered Countermeasures must be “qualified pandemic or epidemic products,” or “security countermeasures,” or drugs, biological products, or devices authorized for investigational or emergency use, as those terms are defined in the PREP Act, the FD&C Act, and the Public Health Service Act.

for governmental program planners only, liability immunity is afforded only to the extent such program planners obtain Covered Countermeasures through voluntary means, such as (1) donation; (2) commercial sale; (3) deployment of Covered Countermeasures from federal stockpiles; or (4) deployment of donated, purchased, or otherwise voluntarily obtained Covered Countermeasures from state, local, or private stockpiles.

https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/legal/prepact/Pages/COVID19.aspx

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snoopydawg's picture

@CB

before we remove China's president. And of course it will take a full scale military invasion to do it. We have been under constant bombardment from propaganda for decades and yet instead of questioning why we are being told that China is the bad guy many people are buying into it and believing the same people that have been lying to us to manufacture consent for war. This is one reason why both parties agree that Russia interfered with the election. The difference is that dems want to say Trump colluded with Russia while the GOP say he didn't. But we still haven't seen ANY evidence of what Russia supposedly did outside the Facebook ads placed by an agency that was created to manipulate bad news. The guy who owns it once sold hotdawgs that made people sick so he hired people to say that they were the best dawg gone hotdawgs ever and it took off from there.

And then the news came out that 60% of the ads were placed AFTER the election had been decided. And how can a picture of the Jesus dude telling guys not to whack off change their minds on voting for Hillary and vote instead for Trump? Puppies have what to do with how bad our choices were?

I read MOA not only for what B posts, but for the many links people post in their comments. Lots of very smart lay people are seeing through this.

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CB's picture

@snoopydawg
He wants to distract the voters from his deplorable performance in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course the National Security goons infesting Washington are giving him a lot of attaboys which feeds his ego. He is not getting any from the other departments. He is basically a weak man that needs to overcompensate in order to build up his self-worth. The hawks recognize his weakness through his bluster.

The Point: Why is Trump's anti-China theory dangerous?
May 12, 2020

U.S. coronavirus deaths continue to climb, but President Trump is still busy blaming China. One U.S. professor says Trump's tactics will implode. Why?

Guest: Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9hEQCHCEzM]

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@Alligator Ed Usually the "you drank the Kool-Aid" insult comes from neoliberals trying to mansplain to the "Idealists" why they can't have single payer health care, because "This is America" (Joe Biden quote). It has become a mini-Godwin. Especially that Nazi analogies flow like water from conspiracy theorists, who equate having to wear a mask in public to getting forced onto railroad cars enroute to Auschwitz.

Incidentally, the same type of men protested mightily at mask wearing rules during the 1918 pandemic. "It's just not manly!" Now the Koch-inspired militia types flock to state capitals with their giant metal dildos demanding the governors "Open up!" As for the Q flat-earther types, reality will eventually impose itself--reality always does--but they will still deny it to their dying day. They used to burn witches; now they burn 5G towers.

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CB's picture

Alligator Ed's picture

@CB Please send me the YouTube link so that I can download this.

Yes, the time to stop playing the blame game has come and gone. What we do now is independent of what Trump's government or any government chooses to do. The video convinces me that Trump, for whatever reasons, failed to act, then downplayed the disease.

Whether China and/or US agencies participated in the creation and dissemination of the virus is a topic for later action. This should not affect our current approaches to SARS2.

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CB's picture

@Alligator Ed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpX_isSrXhE&feature=emb_logo

Here's a point by point denial of Trump's claims against China:


China's Foreign Ministry: 24 lies coming out of U.S. over COVID-19

Updated 18:02, 10-May-2020

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs published an article on COVID-19 in Chinese on Saturday, rebutting false claims from the U.S. on ties between COVID-19 and China.

In the article, China rebutted 24 untrue claims from the U.S., including calling the novel coronavirus "the Chinese virus" or "Wuhan virus" and claims that the Wuhan Institute of Virology created the virus.

The ministry said it will continue to rebut the false claims, as well as any new ones that come up.

Below are the 24 false claims and truths listed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
...

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Alligator Ed's picture

@CB but did not examine each separate refutation. Some are verifiavble claims about misstatements. Some comments about their being no involvement by the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been challenged.

COVID-19 virus lab made?

The appearance of the furin coding sequence in the viral genome requires 4 base pairs and is not a single point mutation. Furin is one of the two naturally occurring S protein cleavage enzymes. The other is plasmin. The burin cleavage site is not present in SARS1.

If the S protein is not cleaved, then the virus cannot occupy and then travel through cell membranes to insert its RNA into the cytoplasm.

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@Alligator Ed
or a doctor. He just plays one on YouTube for click-bait. He found a goldmine with the coronavirus. His views went from 10-20 thousand up to 2-3 million Jan 20, 2020. In his past he was completely wrong about peak oil.

The clip from Jurassic Park tells me he is attempting to dupe us by playing on fear. He constantly uses circumstantial evidence to tie each of his "facts" together to construct a conspiracy. (Amazing Polly also does this - she is a master at using innuendo to spin her stories.)

Bernhard deconstructs Chris Martenson's codswallop using credible and factual information.

Gain of function:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/05/how-the-trump-administration-inser...

Source of virus:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/05/blaming-china-will-not-restore-ame...

Gene inserts:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/02/coronaupdate.html

I'll trust Bernhard's analysis over Mr. Codswallop's any day.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@CB Gain of function essay:

The Wuhan laboratory only provided specific gene sequences from its pool of bat viruses, the laboratory's and Zhengi-Li Shi's specialty, that the researchers in North Caroline wanted to use in their experiment.

To construe that furnisher function as involvement in 'gain of function' experiments is a unjustified exaggeration. I have found no evidence that the Wuhan lab itself ever engaged in such research.

No documentation exists by the author to refute gain of function GOF research. Yes, it is impossible to prove a negative, but Dr. of Pathology (neurotoxicity) makes a plausible argument regarding the appearance of a burin-coding site in a four base-pair insert. Furin is one of two proteases which splice the S protein of SARS2 at the point which results in S1 and S2 portions. SARS1 genome does not contain a furin-coding segment.

Definition of furin:

Spike protein cleavage by plasmin.

Your second citation deals with purely political matters with which I do not concern myself--yet.

The third citation includes:

What those researchers found is interesting. It suggests that something modified the SARS virus RNA by adding four small elements from HIV-1 to create nCoV19. If this is proven correct it might help to find a vaccine against nCoV19.

But the conclusions are in my view too strong and not substantiated enough to make them fully acceptable. While the similarities may not be 'fortuitous' they may make evolutionary sense and may have evolved through some natural process which is not 'unconventional'. If a host (a bat or human) carries the HIV-1 virus and the SARS virus might the replications of those viruses mix?

Work needs to be done, or perhaps has been done of which we non-virologists are unaware, showing that removal of the 4 "fortuitous" inserts leads to differing pathogenicity. Perhaps such deletion of the 4 inserts would render the virion harmless. What do you think?

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CB's picture

@Alligator Ed

Researchers trace COVID-19’s family tree to battle outbreak and ‘infodemic’
February 14, 2020

SEATTLE – Tracing the family tree of COVID-19 through its evolving DNA sequence makes it possible to disprove many false claims circulating on social media about the novel coronavirus, and, in particular, that it was generated in a covert biological weapons program.

“From everything I’ve looked at, there is zero evidence for genetic engineering; it looks like normal evolution,” said Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who has been using genomes sequences taken from patient samples to track the spread of the virus since Jan. 11.

“Thousands of mutations are distributed across the genome. If you’re engineering something, you wouldn’t do that. There are no signals for biological engineering. It looks like natural evolution,” Bedford told attendees of the AAAS meeting on Feb. 14.

Bedford also decried a paper published on the Biorxiv preprint server by scientists at the Indian Institutes of Technology, pointing to an “uncanny similarity” between COVID-19 and HIV. They claimed to have identified four insertions in the spike glycoprotein of COVID-19, through which the virus binds to the host cell, that are not present in other coronaviruses, but which looked the same as key structural proteins of HIV-1, a finding that they said “is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.”

The research “was very shoddily done,” Bedford said. “The sequence differences are not unique to COVID-19. Closely related [bat] coronaviruses have these chunks as well. They are small motifs used by nature over and over again.”

The paper was swiftly withdrawn from Biorxiv, but the allegations continue to have a life of their own on social media, with stories headlined “Scientists confirm” COVID-19 is “man-made.”

Biorxiv has proved an important conduit for rapid publication of legitimate research about the virus, but the controversy around the Indian paper led the website to add a yellow band across all its postings about COVID-19 to stress that these are “preliminary reports that have not been peer-reviewed … and should not be reported in news media as established information.”

The volume of misinformation about COVID-19 led World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to label it an “infodemic.” WHO has set up a team to monitor and respond to “myths and rumors” around the clock.

Along with debunking bioweapon conspiracy theories, the genomes of 100 samples of COVID-19 taken from patients that have been sequenced to date also are providing insights into the epidemiology of the virus. In combination with live case records and mathematical modeling, that gives lie to claims there has been a cover-up, and that far more people have contracted the virus than officially reported.
...

There are other viruses that also have evolved cleavage sites:

A furin cleavage site was discovered in the S protein of the 2019 novel coronavirus
January 2020

Abstract
In 2019, the 2019 novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has caused the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan (a city of China). In our previous study, the analytical results showed that both 2019-nCoV and SARS coronavirus belongs to Betacoronavirus subgroup B (BB coronavirus), but have large differences. The most important finding was that the alternative translation of Nankai CDS could produce more than 17 putative proteins, which may be responsible for the host adaption. The genotyping of 13 viruses using the 17 putative proteins revealed the high mutation rate and diversity of betacoronavirus. The present study for the first time reported a very important mutation in the Spike (S) proteins of BB coronavirus. By this mutation, 2019-nCoV acquired a cleavage site for furin enzyme, which is not present in the S proteins of all other BB coronavirus (e.g. SARS coronavirus) except the Mouse Hepatitis coronavirus (MHV). This mutation may increase the efficiency of virus infection into cells, making 2019-nCoV has significantly stronger transmissibility than SARS coronavirus. Because of this mutation, the packing mechanism of the 2019-nCoV may be changed to being more similar to those of MHV, HIV, Ebola virus (EBoV) and some avian influenza viruses, other than those of all other BB coronavirus (e.g. SARS coronavirus) except the Mouse Hepatitis coronavirus (MHV). In addition, we unexpectedly found that some avian influenza viruses acquired a cleavage site for furin enzyme by mutation as 2019-nCoV. Further studies of this mutation will help to reveal the stronger transmissibility of 2019-nCoV and lay foundations for vaccine development and drug design of, but not limited to 2019-nCoV.

Running diagnostic tests for neurotoxins is a far cry from a Masters degree in virology which actually requires a sound knowledge of genetics.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@CB

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