Coronavirus in the UK

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/ame...rlier-signs-coronavirus-sewage-samples-brazil



Same probably applies to the Spanish report.

There are two main theories as to the evolution of the virus, one suggests it originated in bats who don't get sick because they have an incredible immune system in part because of their extremely fast metabolism which is optimised for their ability to fly, it is thought that because the closest match in bats is only a 96% match for the SARS-CoV-2 genome that the virus must have evolved further in some intermediary possibly the Pangolin.

The second idea is that the virus passed into people a bit earlier but evolved in us until it became as fatal as it is.

There is an additional possibility in that the the initial match for the virus in Pangolin's was a 99% genome match but this later turned out to be wrong and the full genome match in Pangolin's is only 90%, however the pangolin virus is 99% the same as the S protein in the region of the S protein which is involved with ACE2 receptor binding, the bit that lets the virus into our cells.

In contrast the RaTG13 bat virus is only 77% similar in this area so there is some thought that it might be a recombination event between two different viruses in a single host be that a human host or an animal host be that Bat Pangolin or some other animal, this option could also either be a jump late last year or a bit earlier with further evolution in humans late last year.

Additionally the following quote implies strong evolutionary pressure on the mechanisms that let this thing infect us.

https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/25132/20200327/origin-sars-cov-2-determined-scientists.htm

This quote above is really addressing Bigmac's lab origin or rather the more unlikely lab engineered origin, it says it wasn't engineered but we will never know if the jump to people happened in a lab or not.

If the idea that it evolved in humans to the level of lethality it now shows is correct it is still likely that event took place in China late last year, the zoonotic jump will still have happened at some point earlier than that but it is possible that a variant of SARS-CoV-2 was circulating in humans earlier and that might support the sewage reports.

However the reports from Brazil and Spain are testing a limited set of genome segments they are not fully sequencing the virus and the fact that relatives of the virus exist in animal populations it is quite possible that there is misidentification going on.

Sorry Malcolm but you don't know what evolution is, evolution is not slow it is very rapid not only in micro-organisms but in animals plants and insects everywhere and it is happening all the time.

The flu evolves constantly every year there are one or more new strains, that's one tiny example.

The light peppered moth survived for countless years it was adapted to blend into teh background of trees covered in lichen, then the industrial revolution came along and dumped smoke and dirt into the environment and the light moths stood out on the surfaces they spent time on but the dark moths didn't, the light coloured moths stood out to predators and were pretty much wiped out which provided room for expansion for the dark coloured moths which are now dominant, that happened in a couple of decades and as the environment gets cleaned up the successful genes in the moth populations will change again.

Also a lot of evolution occurs in fits and jumps but for bacteria it takes next to no time, ever heard of MRSA a bacteria that is the scourge of hospitals a bug that is resistant to just about every antibiotic known it evolved because of our use of antibiotics for just about everything just like antibiotic resistant TB this is evolution in action over short time spans due to environment pressures of one kind or another, MRSA is the reason that doctors won't prescribe antibiotics anymore unless they are sure they are needed and MRSA is nto the only bug that is evolving it's way round antibiotics.

People think that evolution takes millions of years it doesn't it happens overnight when a gene sequence changes and new properties emerge in an organism that are a benefit to its survival.

Mutation is evolution when those letters in that code I mentioned above get flipped because the copying process is not perfect, that's evolution, the resulting organism survives or doesn't, if the mutation helps it survive then it will reproduce more effectively and compete better in the environment, most of the time flipping some bits in the code will result in a weaker organism that dies out but there are trillions upon trillions upon trillions of virus particles that are using hosts to replicate right now and every replication has the chance for a mistake to be made in the copy, a mutation, that's how evolution proceeds, the cumulative effect of lots and lots of small mutations that are happening all of the time.

The virus has no will, it did nothing other than spread into the environment likely through the air the animals that encountered the virus particles would breath it in, some of them would get infected because the mechanisms of infection used by the virus allowed it to enter the cells of the host animal, many mutations would be harmless to the host but the host would still be used by the virus to replicate and go on to infect other animals, if it succeeded in infecting a Pangolin then that Pangolin might well be able to infect other Pangolins and the virus would go on to evolve in those hosts over time becoming different to the version that was originally in Bats.

I said in one of these threads that it was calculated that the relatives of the SARS-CoV-2 virus had been in bats for about 70 years at least, estimates were that the virus had been in Pangolins for about 20 odd years after the jump from Bats, that could have been one jump or many depending on the contact and interactions between these animals. The jump to us is very recent which is what the chart I posted is all about all versions of SARS-CoV-2 in humans are very very similar probably 99.9999% similar, I'm making that number up but the variation between the samples is really tiny, no two people in the world will have an exact identically copy of the virus indeed in one person there are probably multiple version of the virus as a result of mutation during the few days they are infected the variation will be tiny but it will be there.

The thing that is so dangerous about SARS-CoV-2 is that it infects new hosts before the original host even gets sick, this virus does not give a **** about the host because as long as it has a population of people to infect it will reproduce so it is secure evolutionarily it continues to exist, most diseases don't want to be too fatal because if they kill their hosts too effectively then they die out, it is not a successful evolutionary strategy to wipe out the host you need to survive.

Saturday figures for new cases one week after the pubs opened (forget the deaths they are trailing by up to five weeks I should not have highlighted)

Saturday figures have almost always been lower than the weekly figures except this weekend past.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/




Covid-19 symptom study (I'm a member screen grab from phone)



North West R0 was 0.8 for most of last week today it's 1.1 (edit: sorry last time I looked it was 0.8 now it is 1.1)

I am part of the covid-19 symptom study, there are over 3 million people reporting via a phone app daily, this study is tracking and trying to calculate real cases and real rates of transmission.

They calculate a real rate of new cases as 1471 a day at the moment which is down a lot from about 2 weeks ago when it was over 8000 a day, you can get what they publish here https://covid.joinzoe.com/ that 1471 number is higher than the Worldometer official tested cases as you can see.

The last set of graphs are for members only which show the rates in various regions, I am interested in the North West, they have a calculated an R0 of 1.1 last Wednesday if correct that means the epidemic is growing again in the North West.

All three of these graphs happen to show the same R0, London is being reported as an R0 of 1.3, Midlands is 0.9 Scotland is 0.9 as you know anything above 1 means the epidemic is expanding and the degree to which it is above 1 determines the rate of exponentiation.

Right now is exactly the time when we should be taking the greatest precautions, that time is when things are starting to look ok, we've reopened pubs when the R0 was still way to high and when the real circulating infection rate is actually higher I think than when we locked down in March.

I just checked ONS spreadsheets for deaths reported for week containing 20th of March: deaths involving covid-19 reported 103 (all ages).

Quite hard to get case numbers from back then the links say it contains case numbers but the actual spreadsheet (very detailed) only contains deaths.

John was your deleted post referring to the 'About' page of the symptom study?

I hadn't noticed that the English Government was not listed as endorsing the study

It might well be the case I really hadn't realised, but they seem to be doing proper research so who knows.

I should also say I've not read a lot of that site the general opinions I have expressed here are not echoes from that site but generally from other online sources and reading.

I just report on the app and answer the questionnaires when they ask some more detailed questions, for once I am not too bothered about my privacy as data is important for everyone.