i have been friends with ES for some time and we chat on this quite a bit.
we worked together on the theory that early pac rim resistance was the result of prior exposure to sars-like viruses etc.
we've spoken on this emergence/lab escape issue but i'm not yet convinced. it's hard to use too many historical evo patterns in a situation with a massive exogenous driver like a leaky vaccine.
there's also the compounding issue that it looks like the sarscov-2 progenitor was lab generated and the specific set of bases in it (a quad) were naturally improbable and thus prone to seek to rapidly stabilize toward a different config etc.
and who knows what the role of the degenerate bases in the mRNA vaxxes did in terms of weird evo side chains?
i'm just not well enough versed to pull all this apart and account for all the weird variance here that seem to make historical comparisons to natural event levels fraught.
kevin mckernan, another good pal, is convinced by valentin's argument:
Higher indels (insertions and deletions) is another signature.
The ratio of variants that change amino acids to those that don’t (silent changes in the wobble bases of the codons)….
This ratio is used to define selective pressure.
If it were totally random mutations from the polymerase, you’d expect a ratio of ~1.
When the number of amino acid changing variants is much higher than the silent variants, selection is occurring.
Some selection has been noted in spike prior to the Omicron but it was a 5:1 ratio.
This is over 25:1 with omicron. Someone applied a shitload of selection in a short time frame and erased all the ancestors?
Serial passage under convo-plasma was happening in Durban SA."
i trust and respect both folks, but these analyses seem to hinge on comps to normal evo gradients yet are being applied to a situation dominated by abnormal drivers.
this makes benchmarking difficult and i just do not have the deep grounding here to really sort it out at this point.
serious guys seem to be taking it seriously, so i am also hesitant to dismiss it and it is certainly possible that there was accelerated lab evo that resulted in the end stage vaxx evading virus that would have evolved anyway, but i am just not comfortable making any sort of strong call at this point.
this is too far out of my wheelhouse and well into the realm of seriously specialized gene sceince.
is this an alpha variant that jumped to some other host, perhaps one like a bat or similar that has notably rapid evo due to sloppy immune systems and big colony structure, and then jumped back.
this might explain why we have not seen it for a while and the seeming lack of discernable ancestors. perhaps we're looking for them in the wrong place?
this is just a potential hypothesis, but does seem to have plausible alignment with the data.
I admit a fair amount of the technical aspects of epidemiology is beyond me, but I try to read as much info from various sources to at least have a basic understanding of what's going on. It just seems to me the biggest issue with SARS-CoV-2 has been man's intervention. From the lab creation, to mitigation attempts, to trying to vaccinate in the middle of the pandemic, it seems like man's intervention has just clouded everything instead and made things impossible to predict.
It's the exact thing I'm concerned about with climate change. We have people who don't fully understand how all the drivers of climate change interact and to what degree, and they want to try to "fix" what's a naturally occurring force of nature. I fear a real climate catastrophe if we listen to these "not remotely as smart as they think they are" people.
You should be following Tony Heller. It's worse than your outline. Tony's shown (mostly gov't affiliated) scientists have and are manipulating the data on climate trends to produce signals which don't actually exist. These signals are used as part of the effort to justify control measures. He provides invaluable historical context to media claims of various "unprecedented"-ness and "worst/highest/hottest/driest/most-burned" claims of popular media stories on natural events. In short, it's all almost entirely lies (and the stuff that isn't, is of little residual significance). CO2 is still the target lever promoted for climate change mitigation, but Heller has and continues to show how this supposed correlation doesn't actually exist. Whether it's heat, hurricanes and severe storm events, sea-level rise, droughts, floods, or wildfire prevalence, Heller's show how the "hair on fire" stories don't line up with historical experience. It's a game about economic control.
He's still on YouTube, but cannot post everything he'd like there, due to Susan's edicts on content policy. He's on Rumble, newtube, and the web at realclimatescience.com
Also excellent on this subject is John Robson's Climate Discussion Nexus (CDN).
Oh, and I should also mention, if the CO2 correlation doesn't exist, even success in halting and reversing CO2 rise cannot be expected to produce the reduction in whatever "climate change" is supposed to mean to these people. (it's carefully made nebulous so that victories can be claimed when controls are successfully passed; so calls for more strident controls can be made so long as resistance persists)
So all that's left is to ask yourself what serious reductions in your personal CO2 footprint (to include the CO2 cost of the stuff you buy) would actually mean for your quality of life and cost of living. Life becomes more expensive, and with reduced flourishing, while enhancing gov't control and resources. An outcome Klaus Schwab of course would love!
That you can articulate the point in your own words suggests you're at least probably competent to read and report about the work in this area. In my mind, that qualifies you as a good subject-matter communicator. Great job, I dunno how you keep up and do it, but we're all grateful!! This is the substance of the stuff that's been so sorely lacking from more sanctioned/official channels of discourse.
i have been friends with ES for some time and we chat on this quite a bit.
we worked together on the theory that early pac rim resistance was the result of prior exposure to sars-like viruses etc.
we've spoken on this emergence/lab escape issue but i'm not yet convinced. it's hard to use too many historical evo patterns in a situation with a massive exogenous driver like a leaky vaccine.
there's also the compounding issue that it looks like the sarscov-2 progenitor was lab generated and the specific set of bases in it (a quad) were naturally improbable and thus prone to seek to rapidly stabilize toward a different config etc.
and who knows what the role of the degenerate bases in the mRNA vaxxes did in terms of weird evo side chains?
i'm just not well enough versed to pull all this apart and account for all the weird variance here that seem to make historical comparisons to natural event levels fraught.
kevin mckernan, another good pal, is convinced by valentin's argument:
https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1466919567565934596?s=20
from kev:
"The selection is too high (Ka/Ks).
This is the ratio of Nonsynon/Synon mutations.
Higher indels (insertions and deletions) is another signature.
The ratio of variants that change amino acids to those that don’t (silent changes in the wobble bases of the codons)….
This ratio is used to define selective pressure.
If it were totally random mutations from the polymerase, you’d expect a ratio of ~1.
When the number of amino acid changing variants is much higher than the silent variants, selection is occurring.
Some selection has been noted in spike prior to the Omicron but it was a 5:1 ratio.
This is over 25:1 with omicron. Someone applied a shitload of selection in a short time frame and erased all the ancestors?
Serial passage under convo-plasma was happening in Durban SA."
i trust and respect both folks, but these analyses seem to hinge on comps to normal evo gradients yet are being applied to a situation dominated by abnormal drivers.
this makes benchmarking difficult and i just do not have the deep grounding here to really sort it out at this point.
serious guys seem to be taking it seriously, so i am also hesitant to dismiss it and it is certainly possible that there was accelerated lab evo that resulted in the end stage vaxx evading virus that would have evolved anyway, but i am just not comfortable making any sort of strong call at this point.
this is too far out of my wheelhouse and well into the realm of seriously specialized gene sceince.
second possible consideration:
could this have been animal host mediated?
is this an alpha variant that jumped to some other host, perhaps one like a bat or similar that has notably rapid evo due to sloppy immune systems and big colony structure, and then jumped back.
this might explain why we have not seen it for a while and the seeming lack of discernable ancestors. perhaps we're looking for them in the wrong place?
this is just a potential hypothesis, but does seem to have plausible alignment with the data.
I admit a fair amount of the technical aspects of epidemiology is beyond me, but I try to read as much info from various sources to at least have a basic understanding of what's going on. It just seems to me the biggest issue with SARS-CoV-2 has been man's intervention. From the lab creation, to mitigation attempts, to trying to vaccinate in the middle of the pandemic, it seems like man's intervention has just clouded everything instead and made things impossible to predict.
It's the exact thing I'm concerned about with climate change. We have people who don't fully understand how all the drivers of climate change interact and to what degree, and they want to try to "fix" what's a naturally occurring force of nature. I fear a real climate catastrophe if we listen to these "not remotely as smart as they think they are" people.
You should be following Tony Heller. It's worse than your outline. Tony's shown (mostly gov't affiliated) scientists have and are manipulating the data on climate trends to produce signals which don't actually exist. These signals are used as part of the effort to justify control measures. He provides invaluable historical context to media claims of various "unprecedented"-ness and "worst/highest/hottest/driest/most-burned" claims of popular media stories on natural events. In short, it's all almost entirely lies (and the stuff that isn't, is of little residual significance). CO2 is still the target lever promoted for climate change mitigation, but Heller has and continues to show how this supposed correlation doesn't actually exist. Whether it's heat, hurricanes and severe storm events, sea-level rise, droughts, floods, or wildfire prevalence, Heller's show how the "hair on fire" stories don't line up with historical experience. It's a game about economic control.
He's still on YouTube, but cannot post everything he'd like there, due to Susan's edicts on content policy. He's on Rumble, newtube, and the web at realclimatescience.com
Also excellent on this subject is John Robson's Climate Discussion Nexus (CDN).
https://www.youtube.com/c/CDN_ClimateDN
Case in point, Tony's latest on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmgVOoz-nJw
Oh, and I should also mention, if the CO2 correlation doesn't exist, even success in halting and reversing CO2 rise cannot be expected to produce the reduction in whatever "climate change" is supposed to mean to these people. (it's carefully made nebulous so that victories can be claimed when controls are successfully passed; so calls for more strident controls can be made so long as resistance persists)
So all that's left is to ask yourself what serious reductions in your personal CO2 footprint (to include the CO2 cost of the stuff you buy) would actually mean for your quality of life and cost of living. Life becomes more expensive, and with reduced flourishing, while enhancing gov't control and resources. An outcome Klaus Schwab of course would love!
That you can articulate the point in your own words suggests you're at least probably competent to read and report about the work in this area. In my mind, that qualifies you as a good subject-matter communicator. Great job, I dunno how you keep up and do it, but we're all grateful!! This is the substance of the stuff that's been so sorely lacking from more sanctioned/official channels of discourse.
You’re such a smartycat, el gato 😺