Al Peffley

Annual flu vaccines build up your immune system to last year's strain of viruses, but not this year's strain. As a senior, your pneumonia shots are more important than an annual flu shot. Immune system strengthening of the lung cells is the goal. Until there is more infection abatement progress information reported in medical journals, I don't know how effective these booster series pneumonia shots are for most seniors.

There are more confirmed cases (over 11,000 cases) of the 2019 coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China now than there were confirmed cases of the 2003 SARS coronavirus in the entire world. Collected 2019-nCoV samples evaluated in India last month have contained in them unique protein "inserts" found in HIV1. No other viruses in the coronavirus family of pathogens have ever been recorded as having those additives in their genetic profile. Without the "inserts", SARS killed one in eight confirmed cases of the 2003 coronavirus outbreak world-wide. Those are pandemic statistics that are well-documented. In 2003 the SARS pandemic interrupted Canada's economy and social activities for over two months. Canada has a lot of Asian citizens with relatives in China and a lot of visitors from China every year. Pneumonia is a name for a large family of respitory pathenogenic virus insults to the lungs. Bacteria infections add to lung failure of high risk individuals.

The WHO and the Chinese Communist Government are at odds over what information should be released for containment and negation measures. The Chinese Government is reported to have responded better for this outbreak incident than the 2003 SARS pandemic. There is some concern that this outbreak may have been caused by an accidental lab experiment release in the Government Wuhan laboratories. If so, the animal market products contamination explanation could be a ruse to draw attention away from the real source of release.

Again, those little paper masks you see in the media photos only protect you from body fluid droplet and vapor airborne emissions, and not from micron-size viral pathogens you collect through hand transfers. Wash your hands completely under nails and rings with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds. Anything produced in China since last October can have the virus on its surface because it does not see sunlight in storage. Wipe down surfaces lightly with a hydrogen peroxide-wetted towel and pat dry. Wash all new clothes before you wear them.

Some foreign traveler carriers will not show 2019-nCoV symptoms of coughing and sneezing. Stay at least six feet away from people in public places who are excessively coughing and sneezing. Untreated viruses from body fluids deposited on contact surfaces can live for minutes (most die when when exposed to sunlight UV radiation) or months (if stored away from sunlight) if not sanitized by antiviral agents like drug store variety of hydrogen peroxide solution or Lysol sprays and wipes. Baby wipes work well for face and lips sanitation measures in foreign countires (something I learned from talking with US Special Forces operatives.) God bless you. (Sorry for the typos. It is too bad this venue does not have a spell-checker.)

Al Peffley

Here is a hyperlink to an article on the latest status of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus pandemic in China as of Wednesday:

https://www.oann.com/china-virus-toll-jumps-past-500-as-more-cases-found-on-cruise-ship-off-japan/

This is a trusted news media source and much of the information has been reported on multiple news sites.

Are you prepared if infected patient numbers increase here? Keep informed.

Tom Chavez

China Sacrifices a Province to Contain a Coronavirus

Scenes of chaos and despair are emerging daily from China’s Hubei province, the landlocked region of 60 million people where the new coronavirus dubbed 2019-nCoV was first identified in December. While cases have spread around the globe, Hubei has seen a staggering 97% of all deaths from the illness, and 67% of all patients. (Diagram as of Feb. 5)

It’s the human cost extracted by the world’s largest-known quarantine, with China effectively locking down Wuhan city from Jan. 23 to contain the virus’ spread. The quarantine soon widened to encompass nearly the entire province.

Hubei is paying the price, with the mortality rate for patients there 3.1%, versus 0.16% for the rest of China. In the early days of the virus’ spread, prevarication and delay by local officials allowed the pathogen to spread widely. 

More than 8,000 medical workers from across the country have gone into Hubei. Two new hospitals, with 2,600 beds in total, were completed in 10 days, while stadiums, offices and hotels are being converted into isolation units.

The situation is improving, but medical authorities think infections have not yet peaked. The recommendation from health officials is to wash your hands, keep unwashed hands away from your face, and maintain a distance from infected persons of at least six feet.

A popular and now deserted pedestrian shopping street in Wuhan.

To save the family one may sacrifice a member. To save the town, one may sacrifice a family. To save the province, one may sacrifice a town. To save the country, one may sacrifice a province. And to save the self, one may sacrifice the world.—Vedic proverb

pamelaAKASilvermoon Johnson (Johnson)

I was thinking of this situation whee people are locked indoors or on a ship with little of all that exists to sustain  to sustain their  body and  soul , let alone w/o green red orangeveggies , fish , array of  fruits herbs, roots, beries tinctures , with ice and heat, and movement .

 I had a flu that climbed all through me ,a while ago  .heading to weak places, rib assult from llittle l grand kid , weak tooth nfd it combed thru my brain with great pressure but i had water ,warm and cold , ice that greatly helped  and ability to chose how to proceed and to  wlk in the cool  air and touch the Earth. gathering the herb usnea  to be made into medicine I believe to be ant fungal 

    I know  the Chinesse hve a rich history of healing  and attending to their  health but to be confined with minimal  availability of all that    makes up life , possibly ,pooor quality of food .of All what can assist in maintaining Life would make prognosis toward health most  dificult .

Pamela Johnon     Silvermoon

Al Peffley

Big cruise ships are self-sustaining with enough life services for crew and passengers to exist in luxury for weeks at a time. I am sure they are being re-supplied at sea. The problem seems to be acurately identifying the pathogen infection when tested people don't show active symptoms (temperature, coughing, weakness, etc.) Not all exposed human carriers come down with the 2019-nCoV symptom indicators.

It is reported that HIV drugs can be administered by attending medical staffs to arrest the virus (information from the India research report.) Ultra violet radiation and hydrogen peroxide solution will kill the virus on contact when found on most material surfaces. I'd rather be quarantined on a crusise ship with separate rooms than in one of those mass, open-area "hospital" centers the Chinese have set up for quaratining infected people. China is reported now to have over 40,000 conirmed cases of 2019-nCoV infected people.

Micron-size, Coronavirus CAD-generated Image

On another subject, has anyone been in contact with Chris Mitchell recently? The email account information I received does not work, and an old telephone number I had no longer works. Both email address and phone number contacts are disabled.

Gregg Wilson

There is evidence that the coronavirus is not a natural mutation. It has a new genome inserted that could not have come from that general group of viruses. Specifically, this new part  amplifies the viruse's ability to penetrate the cell wall. They say it is a 90% probability that this viruse was created in a Chinese laboratory and broke out. Be careful what you create.

Tom Chavez

Gregg, I've heard that rumor in political circles, but no word from scientific sources that actually sequence genomes. "They say"? Where is factual evidence?

Al Peffley

A report from India in January contained this table of lab test findings about "Inserts" in 2019-nCoV:

The mass media and CDC is supressing this East Indian scientific lab report for some reason (probably political.) I am not a genome scientist, but I understood the majority of the report summary findings on 2019-nCoV samples collected from confirmed infection cases. I do have a professional background in biological weapon effects development and dispersion response. According to the epidemiologist report findings reported below, not one of these inserts identified by genome scientists have been found in previous test samples of the coronavirus family (including 2003-04 SARS test data.)

According to the genome lab testing report article I found on January 31, 2020:

"In 'uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag', Indian researchers are baffled by segments of the virus’s RNA that have no relation to other coronaviruses like SARS, and instead appear to be closer to HIV. The virus even responds to treatment by HIV medications. [See table 1 above]

Why do the authors think the virus may be man-made? Because when looking at the above insertions which are not present in any of the closest coronavirus families, 'it is quite unlikely for a virus to have acquired such unique insertions naturally in a short duration of time.' Instead, they can be found in cell identification and membrane binding proteins located in the HIV genome."

Tom Chavez

Al, you say you found an "East Indian scientific lab report" which "the mass media and CDC is supressing [sic]".

What "East Indian lab"? What is the source of the report? Why don't you give the source? What evidence do you have that CDC and mass media are suppressing the report?

As you should know, the scientific community collaborates to share sequences and monitor genetic evolution of influenza viruses on the GISAID platform (Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data). Here are some authoritative reports with their sources.

Chinese medical authorities shared sequences of samples taken from the first patients on January 11th. You can see a sequence here:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947

The Lancet reported on January 30th: The ten genome sequences of 2019-nCoV obtained from the nine patients were extremely similar. 2019-nCoV was closely related to two bat-derived severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronaviruses, bat-SL-CoVZC45 and bat-SL-CoVZXC21, collected in 2018 in Zhoushan, eastern China.—Source:  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext

An analysis by a team from the Wuhan Institute of Virology on bioRxiv, determined that the genome of this coronavirus (the seventh known to infect humans) is 96% identical to that of a bat coronavirus, suggesting that species is the original source. Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v2

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine on Jan 24th, another team of scientists in China reported that the new coronavirus is 86.9% identical to the bat SARS-like coronavirus. Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v2

Genomeweb: Further, bats acted as the natural reservoir in both SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. It seems therefore likely that 2019-nCoV might have also been initially hosted by bats, and might have been transmitted to humans via currently unknown animals sold at the Huanan seafood market. Source: https://www.genomeweb.com/genetic-research/coronavirus-genome-sequencing-finds-distinct-genetic-differences-2003-sars-virus#.XkQhEC2ZOCM

On Feb 7 Xinhua reported: The genome sequences of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) have been synchronized and shared with an American database, provided by the Institute of Pathogen Biology under the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Since the release of the 2019-nCoV database on Jan. 22, the genome sequences of 82 virus strains worldwide have been collected and integrated. Source: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/07/c_138763999.htm

Al Peffley

The experiments at Wuhan at the communist government viral pathogens research lab were conducted using a special species of bats native to China. Those experiments have been documented. Canada was a research partner in the experiments at the Wuhan Chinese research lab. Is that a coincidence? Maybe.

Does it look like I made that report table up with Excel and PowerPoint? I don't even know what a "gag" is, let alone all of the other genome science notations. No, I don't believe everything I read on the Internet. I do seek enough knowledge of pandemic pathogens to avoid exposure and protect my family, friends, and myself from being a pandemic victim during an outbreak that can easily spread world-wide.

The Communist Chinese Government, maybe like our Federal Government initially hid the real reason for the Benghazi satellite embassy attack, is probably not going to reveal the real source of this deadly 2019-nCoV virus of the coronavirus family, If they do reveal a lab experiment breech as the cause for the outbreak (as Hillary is oft quoted as saying) -- "What difference would it make?" [to us after the fact]. I am sure this is an accidental release, and uninvolved people (especially exposed Chinese citizens) are suffering greatly and dying because of it.

This is a terrible pandemic situation for many people all around the world since we are so connected through international air and ocean cruise travel. Thank God we aren't trying to contain it with 1917 medical response and treatment technology. Let's hope and pray it does not successfully spread a new hybrid of HIV in addition to the well-documented lung damage pneumonia insults to human beings.

Al

Tom Chavez

My dear classmates, let’s temporarily escape the current quarrels, culture wars, cold wars, hot wars, fake news, deep states, deep fakes and hypocrisy of the local situation and take a mental journey through time and space, to an afternoon in the late 1800s, to Westminster London and the offices of Prime Minister William Ewert Gladstone. 

That afternoon a prominent business baron, whose name is lost to history, came to visit Prime Minister Gladstone with an appointment to discuss urgent matters. The Prime Minister’s secretary greeted him as he entered at the appointed time, and requested him to be seated in the antechamber, informing him that the Prime Minister was present, but something had come up, and the Prime Minister would surely meet with him soon. The businessman sat impatiently for a while, wondering what was delaying his meeting. When the secretary excused herself and stepped out, the businessman, curious to know the cause of delay, stealthily peeked in at door of the Prime Minister’s office. There, in the stately office, on a plush Persian carpet in the middle of the chamber, he saw Prime Minister Gladstone on his hands and knees playing horsey, with his grandson riding on his back. 

We want to play, to enjoy and to love, but sometimes we find ourselves entangled in unpleasantness, suffering, quarrel and grief. Our involvement in this world can be analyzed as combinations of three primary modes, just as colors can be analyzed as combinations of three primary colors. These modes are goodness, passion and ignorance. Goodness leads to happiness and knowledge, passion leads to grief and suffering, and ignorance leads to foolishness, madness and illusion. The mixtures of these modes in the interaction between matter and consciousness create the varieties of experience in this world. An intelligent person will act to increase goodness and minimize passion and ignorance.

William Gladstone was Prime Minister of England for four terms

before he was let out to pasture. Some of his famous sayings:

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.

Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.

Gregg Wilson

To continue the humor,

When Great Britian was involved in a war with Ethiopa, Benjamin Disraeli announced that the prime minister should go to Ethiopia to determine the best course of action.

Gladstone retorted that "Only a fool and a Jew would go to Ethiopia!"

Disreali replied "I quite agree sir. We must both leave at once!"

Robert Bramel

From the Washington Post:

Al Peffley

The United Nations WHO is censoring online free speech articles about 2019nCoV comments, concerns, and data sharing in the United States? They are asking lap dog social media companies to ban online pandemic commentaries and redirect online international media sources to the WHO's website? How endearing, communist-inspired controlling, and totalitarian of them to do so. Just what I wanted to hear. Yet another reason for me to not join Facebook or Twitter. Free speech speculation and theories are being deamed unsafe and not allowed any more on the Internet by the United Nations. I thought it was the CDC doing the censorship. My sincere apologies to the CDC for being falsely accused by me before I had your facts presented to me from a reliable PR source. I must admit that I have been strongly influenced by the US Congress and FBI for speading slanderous hearsay about anyone questioning Deep State authority or government affairs manipulation and corruption. So be it. Are there more world affair topics we should control or ban in the public media? The list is becoming endless.

Gentlemen - the tone of your comments and questions and the information source selections concerning the current pandemic discussion says a lot about your intolerance of differing or inquisitive views from other adults and subject matter professionals who are also trying to follow the 2019nCoV outbreak news being shared across the globe. I live right next to the third largest shipping seaport (volume-wise, and mostly trade with Asia & China) in Washington State. Our community pandemic risk in Kelso-Longview is very high right now. We can easily be exposed to pathogen-infected ship crews and contaminated cargo coming into our port on large ocean-going freighter ships. Did I directly challenge your submitted viewpoints about the new coronavirus and debunk them for irrelevancy to current 2019nCoV health threat or subject matter information sources? I think not. Emergency preparation, informed rapid response actions, and additional washing safety cleanliness and enhanced personal hygene practices save lives (and keep the global economy moving along, allbeit at a slower and more cautious pace for a while.)

I recently witnessed my brother die a miserable and drawn-out death from an accute pneumonia infection this last November. He lived at the sea port of Groton, CT. The hospital staff put him down with drugs like a sick pet at the vet ("to sleep", eternally.) Don't preach to me what the WHO wants to control or dictate to us. This subject matter is very personal to me right now. Go intellectually bully someone else about Communist China, UN, and WHO political PR tactics and pandemic information release collateral damage control!

Tom - I would go back to playing "horsey" I guess, but my old back won't hold up under the weight of my growing grand childrens' increasing body mass (thank God they are all healthy young individuals, and always a great delight to me and my wife.) The love shared and hugs with them are priceless. They seem to have almost endless energy, unique individual talents, and youthful dreams of doing good things in life.

On my prior request to our classmates - I found Chris Mitchell this week. Thank you Duane for helping me make contact with him again after over 50 years of going our separate ways and no contact. It is always delightful making the effort to reach out and find someone from the past that is still alive and enjoying his/her family. I always enjoyed Chris' company and infectious smile when we were attending Highline and on weekend "field trips" with our brotherhood friends (like Bob Mayfield, Jim Fradet, and others in the day.)

Tom Chavez

Some of us trust scientific evidence and trained authorities for guidance; and others are convinced that so-called authorities are not trustworthy. The institutions of government, education, science, medicine, military, etc., which our forefathers established, are gradually losing respect and credibility. This is symptomatic of societal breakdown in this age.

Greek historians mention a cycle of four ages: Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron, a concept which is described in detail in the Vedic texts of India. Most major calendrical systems in India refer to this cycle of ages, which says that we are now in the Iron age, which dates back to slightly before 3,000 BC.

At its best, human society is graced by four key virtues: truthfulness, compassion, cleanliness and austerity, which are fully manifest during the Golden age. As the ages progress, these virtues are gradually lost with the ebb and flow of time. 

Austerity, tolerance of discomfort and pain, is necessary to develop higher functions and achieve peak experiences. This virtue is undermined by sensual indulgence, intoxication and distracting “entertainment.”  

Cleanliness is undermined by dirty habits, particularly promiscuous and gratuitous sex life.

Compassion is destroyed by animal slaughter. Meat eaters become numb to the suffering of other living entities, and this numbness extends to their fellow humans.

In this Iron age, only truthfulness is still prominent, but it too will gradually be lost. We expect people to be honest, but our expectations are increasingly disappointed.

The degradation of human society has ups and downs, but the long term trend is down.

What to do? 

When winter approaches we cannot counter the decline in temperature, but we can prepare ourselves by laying up provisions, insulating our residence, laying up fuel, obtaining warm clothing, etc.

Similarly, we cannot stop the general degradation of society. It will happen. But we can try to personally develop virtuous qualities by our own efforts and by associating with like-minded people. We can create a shelter of sorts, a mini-society, in which good virtues are cultivated.

Various religious traditions teach that the real shelter is to recite or chant the names of God. Vedic authorities recommend this as the best means of self-realization and purification in the Iron age.

God is absolute, the Lord and his name are the same. Speaking the name of the Lord invokes the presence of the Lord, which makes his mercy and protection immediately available. There is no other real shelter.

Gregg Wilson

Institutions such as the United Nations and WHO have a guaranteed existence, a guaranteed income. They have no competition. They can behave and say anything they want, including demands for censorship. After all, anyone who disagrees with them is a source of horrible, horrible, horrible chaos!

The same goes for university professors. They have tenure, no competition. They can make any idiotic claim they want without jeopardizing  their position and income. Can you argue with them in class? Of course not!

Anyone who questions them on the open market is obviously WRONG! After all, they are the only source of TRUTH.

So, why do we lose faith in them? It is obvious.

Al Peffley

I think Mr. Bergstrom's comment is rational and does adequately discuss the social impacts of violent protestors who injure and kill our law enforcement officers in the name of some extremely radical social change cause. Censorship by the WHO is un-American. It denies concerned citizens their First Amendment rights to debate world affairs in a public forum. I won't address my opinion of WaPo (I like the New York Post.) I am glad that WaPo is exposing the source of the Internet censorship actions against public discourse on the pandemic.

I worked with professionals who coordinate Emergency Management training of federal, state, and local incident response agencies through The Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWR), DHS, and the Washington State Department of Emegency Management. Censorship was never discussed at the Pandemic Response Exercise. The Pandemic Exercise included a briefing from a former Canadian DHS Minister on the 2003-04 SARS outbreak in Canada. There is no section of the US Critical Incident Management Plan that addresses or condones censorship of public discussions by the Incident Command Public Relations Officer or the PR Staff. Communists don't recognize individual freedoms and free speech, our US Constitution addresses it immediately in our Bill of Rights.

Our nation has an extensive government planning and response system called the National Incident Mangement System (NIMS). NIMS has proven to be effective in serving the American public during long term critical incidents similar to a global pandemic health threat outbreak. The National Response Plan (NRP) for NIMS implementation and response actions describes establishing a National Joint Field Office (JFO). The JFO is usually created for national-level responses to extended operation timeline incidents like a pandemic. Normally our lead federal agency for a pandemic is DHHS, but after 9-11 also includes the Department of Homeland Security. The WHO is an important interface to our national response, but not the lead at the pandemic JFO. The whole system was established and managed according to US Federal Law after the 9-11 attacks. There is a Public Relations Officer Office function in the NIMS managment structure. Does the WaPo article address the National Incident Management System or a JFO for 2019nCoV response and protection measures?

Tom Chavez

Some people recommend drinking a little beach to counteract the virus, or other crazy ideas which would do more harm than good. WHO is cooperating with Facebook and other media companies to direct medical questions to authoritative sources. 

We could go to Facebook and other companies and ask them to direct questions to us, but we are not accepted as authorities. I don’t see that to be censoring my speech. Don’t the media companies have the right (and responsibility) to direct questions to what they consider to be the best answers?

Al, you say that this denies citizens their rights to debate in a public forum. I don’t see how it stops us from expressing ourselves in public. Or do you think that Facebook should be a “public forum” rather than a capitalistic company? Isn’t that socialism? 

Gregg, according to Al, NIMS and the JFO also cooperate with WHO as part of our national response to health threats. That doesn’t mean NIMS and the JFO are censoring our opinions. They just don’t recognize our authority. That’s their loss, right? Ha-ha!

You express resentment toward tenured professors, which is the arrangement in most American universities. There are pros and cons in any arrangement, but the US is recognized all over the world as having a superior educational system. Tenure helps insure academic freedom.

In organized societies there are always recognized authorities. If we don’t agree we can complain, criticize or campaign to remove them. I find it easier to just respect the authorities we have and save energy for more practical things, like posting here. Ha-ha!

Gregg, you seem bitter toward professors and most college students; as I recall you called them ‘idiots’. Is that because your ideas of alternative physics have not caught on?

I’ve certainly felt frustrated with teachers in my younger years. It used to bother me, but holding negative feelings didn’t help the situation or my health. I have no tenure or authority and most people don’t take my ideas seriously, either. No problemo.

I find the advice of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu to be perfectly practical: be as tolerant as a tree, give up all sense of false prestige, offer all respect to others, don’t expect any respect for yourself, chant the names of the Lord, and be happy. Hare Krishna!

Gregg Wilson

Tom,

Not bitterness, disgust.

In the first English class at the UW, the lady professor spent the entire quarter exclaiming how unfair and wrong it was that peacocks had beautiful feathers but peahens had only drab feathers. This was undoubtedly the start of male chauvinism! The little nitwit could not figure out that that difference kept peahens safe.

In the second quarter English class, the professor would enter the room and hide under his desk.

Period.

Apparently, qualifications for being an English professor at the UW were a bit lax.

An Economics professor explained in excruciating non-detail that prices go up because costs go up. Huh? Costs and prices were going up relative to what? The dollar. Why was the dollar losing value through time? No answer.

In a US HIstory course, the professor stated that civilization was collapsing because of the existence of private property. Perhaps he should have studied the Roman Civilization where private property was paramount and Rome lasted for centuries.

The ultimate winner has Gee Whilikers Higbee, a professor who spent an entire year preaching to engineers that they were the scum of the Earth, blood suckers, crawling over the backs of decent people. Quite entertaining. I could go on....

I had no problem with engineering professors, chemistry professors, physics professors, mathematics professors. But of course those were lower campus subjects and sub human.

College students these days are propagandized, not educated. They are told that a free market society is the ultimate hell and socialism is the answer. So yes, they tend to be idiots. And how can you get a productive job if you don't know anything useful?

My problem with authoritative sources is that they protest against any human that speaks otherwise. They are the Truth; everyone else should be quiet.

Tom Chavez

I had a good laugh after reading your reminiscences of UW classes, Gregg! The worst I had was the freshman English class in which we had to read and comment on a novel which included a key horrible episode which is indescribable on a family friendly forum like this. Yeah. Below the animal level. You seem to have gotten the crème de la crème of absurdity. I can't imagine. Catch 22 and Kafka. Life in the material world. You should write about it.

Al Peffley

The WHO is a agency of the United Nations. It funded by international donations (not taxes) and the United States and the Bill & Malinda Gates Foundation are its largest funding donors. China is near the bottom of the list as a national contributor to WHO funding. The WHO has been criticized for its poor performance in responding to the last major ebola outbreak in Africa.

I am not a CNN or MSN fan, but they posted a good article on the Internet within the last two days about the WHO related to their coronavirus response with China. I think it is a decent piece of objective journalism on the WHO and the 2019nCoV pandemic. The JFO and the WHO are reported to be not in agreement over the pandemic response actions by individual nations (such as travel restrictions, insitu quarantine policies, etc.) The current director of the WHO promised to reform it after the ebola outbreak failure controversy. He seems to be more focused on economics and politics than pandemic scientific data collection and analysis, but we shall see how it all turns out. The WHO should not be a source of public discourse redirection with public communication sources. The WHO is not a legal authority within sovereign national bounderies, and it has no enforcement capabilities to make China, United States, or any other UN member nation comply with its health programs, policies, decisions, or incident response directives. Here is the Internet address of the article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/world-health-organization-under-scrutiny-as-it-walks-china-tightrope-over-coronavirus/ar-BB10185m

I too had some weird experiences at Highline Community College, City University, and the UW. All of the political acivists I had were professors in my liberal arts subject matter courses. Graduate student Teaching Aids seemed to avoid social engineering and politics discussions in class. Gregg, your exerience seems to be exceptionally bad. One micro-economics professor that taught out at the UW was really abstract and seemed absorbed in the theory and application of "personal utility curves". I was working in Boeing Aerospace Finance at the time I took the course. One day I stayed after class and asked him why he seemed so unhappy about teaching the subject matter (as he only followed the specified text in teaching the class.) He told me that he had tried working in industry financial management, non-profit consumer product assessments, government civil service, and financial institution jobs. He had failed to succeed in all of those occupational discipline applications and working environments. He said teaching economics at the UW (where he obtained his PhD) was the only place he could consistently work and pay his bills. He had been laid off or fired from all of those previous employment assignments. At least he was honest about his cultured lack of people skills working on teamwork projects; all theory knowledge, but no perceived economic and practical application successes. He was considered an authority and subject matter expert on personal utility curves but could not give one example of their non-academic application in the real financial analysis world.

Tom Chavez

Scientists push back against coronavirus conspiracy theory.

Sen. Tom Cotton has repeatedly aired a theory that the deadly coronavirus is a Chinese biological weapon that was leaked from the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory. 

One commentator on this forum has posted what appears to have been “fake news” to support this theory, for which we requested but have not received a source.

The senator later back-tracked on Twitter he did not mean the new coronavirus is an “engineered bioweapon”, but that hypotheses about its origins need to be further explored.

"There's absolutely nothing in the genome sequence of this virus that indicates the virus was engineered," Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University. "The possibility this was a deliberately released bioweapon can be firmly excluded."

Vipin Narang, associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it was "a skip in logic to say it's a bioweapon" or claim China "developed and intentionally deployed, or even unintentionally deployed" the virus.

The Wuhan lab at the center of the theory is actually "relatively open compared with other Chinese institutes" and "has strong ties" to a number of similar US institutes.

In a paper posted on the online forum Virological on Feb 17, top epidemiologists W. Ian Lipkin from Columbia University; Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney; and Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research said there were crucial genetic clues indicating that the coronavirus was not created in a laboratory.

University of Queensland professor Roy Hall, who researches viral protein structures and was not involved in the study, agreed. “If this was a genetically engineered virus, they would take a virus that we know infects humans and use the same genetic structure. But we haven’t seen these features before, so they couldn’t be genetically engineered,” Hall said. “Claims that the virus had been genetically engineered in a laboratory are very unfounded.”

Trevor Bedford, a researcher at Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre who focuses on modelling the rapid spread and evolution of viruses, came to similar conclusions. “Looking at mutation distributions, it appears that the genetic differences in CoV2019 are consistent with differences expected to arise during natural evolution,” he wrote on Twitter.

Gregg Wilson

Tom and Al,

Apparently the MERS virus, SARS virus and coronavirus are suspected of coming from bats.

Tom Chavez

Does Life Come from Chemicals, or Does Life Comes from Life?

Behind the scenes Bob Bramel and I have been debating evolution. In his last message he questioned my reliance on mathematical evidence (like the Infinite Monkey Theorem) and gave numerous examples supporting chemical evolution in already existing biological systems. 

It’s hard to convince materialists, who are becoming a majority today, that there is more to life than chemicals. I’m taking this discussion public, in the hope that others can help. Dan Norman knows this topic well, but he is too busy finishing a PhD to chime in. (Wrap it up, Dan! We’re waiting to hear from you!)

My background is math, but I will try to explain, in terms of biochemistry, why neo-Darwinian theory is overdue for extinction. I agree with Bob, that evolutionary modifications obviously occur in living systems. The real question is, how did such living systems originate?

In Darwin’s time, and up until the 1950s, no one knew the cellular details of living organisms. It was easy to imagine a bit of mud becoming protoplasm, or a monkey’s brain gradually changing into a human brain, like a cloud changing shape. During this period Darwin’s theory became official scientific dogma to explain life’s origin.

Since then we have learned that even the simplest living cell is like a huge factory full of intricate tiny molecular machines churning out thousands of complicated components, the full complexity of which is far greater than the most complex man-made computer.

For example, some simple bacteria have a flagellum which they use to swim. It utilizes a tiny rotary motor composed of dozens of protein components. The bacteria spins the flagellum which acts like a propeller. It is attached to a drive shaft via a sort of universal joint. The drive shaft is attached to the motor which uses a flow of sodium ions for power.

Darwin wrote in Origin, that if any complex organ exists which could not be “formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

The bacteria flagellum is irreducibly complex; without all the parts it won’t work. No one has proposed how such a complex motor could have evolved naturally by simple successive steps. But it is more complicated than that. The bacteria has an intricate control system which tells the flagellum when to rotate, when to stop and when to reverse rotation. And somehow the flagellum-motor complex automatically self-assembles.

In life we find numerous irreducibly complex systems, such as blood clotting, immune system, metabolism, photosynthesis, etc. Darwinian evolution is supposed to produce extreme complexity from simple chemical precursors in a step-by-step Darwinian process. But no one has ever explained in detailed, scientific fashion how mutation and natural selection could do this.

There is no publication in the scientific literature—not in the Journal of Molecular Evolution, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science or any journal or book—that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred.

“Publish or perish” is a proverb that academicians take seriously. If you do not publish your work for the rest of the community to evaluate, then you have no business in academia. This applies to theories as well. If a theory does not give even an attempted explanation for its claim, it should be banished. The theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, so it should perish.

<For more details please see Professor of Biochemistry Michael J. Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box.>

Al Peffley

Tom,

You have more time to research the 2019nCoV pandemic speculation comments from the US and international scientific community than I do. You are spreading the emotional "bioweapons" label like you criticize blogsite and politician "pundit posters" of doing in other open forums like this one on the Internet. Why? Just because you found a list of people who are arm-chair observants with academic opinions does not mean they have all of the complete knowledge to be obtained from the ground zero, pandemic Hot Zones in Communist China.

I have yet to see any of these subject matter experts produce published lab work information that equals the initial India study report. You can read a .pdf copy of the report online. The authors appear to be legitimate scientists and technicians in the correct field of biologocal sciences [but I am sure they are not as influencial and internationally respected as your highly-credentialed sources.]

Why don't you give the subject matter a rest, Tom?

God help us if the pandemic becomes a bigger health threat here in America. Yes, Gregg, bats have been identified as one of the primary animal carriers of the coronavirus family of pathogen viruses. The Wuhan Chinese government labs were reported as to be studying why the bats are immune to the coronaviruses so that they could develop a vaccine to reduce or abate the leathal health threat to humans. The head scientist of the Chinese study project group is reported to be deceased from a 2019nCoV infection, so the international science community can't interview him. The visiting US biological scientist from California [Cal State Berkeley?] who was a lab projects observer or participant is also reported to be deceased due to the virus. I seriously doubt that they intentionally both consumed bat meat!

Here is the reference information on the East Indian report (I wish the page format allowed the report information copy and paste text to be transferred over in its original format, but it does not - knock your socks off studying and evaluating the Indian study source report.):