On 2020-10-27 14:28, jim bell wrote: > On Monday, October 26, 2020, 03:25:41 AM PDT, grarpamp <grarp...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html > > Full disclosure: While I consider myself conversant with many sciences and > technologies, 'biology' is probably my area of least knowledge. > I rapidly skimmed this article, but was doubtful when I saw this: >> "RaTG13 looks like a “close cousin” of the Wuhan coronavirus – the two are >> 96% identical throughout the whole sequence of the viral genome. If RaTG13 >> is a nature-borne virus, one can comfortably conclude that the Wuhan >> coronavirus must very likely also come from nature and must share a recent >> common ancestor with RaTG13."
Nuts. We are far more closely related to a chimp, than the Wu Flu is related to RTG13 four percent difference is a huge difference. Wu Flu is mostly bat virus with a little bit of Aids virus, which is what led some people to suspect it is lab created. However, Wu Flu is an RNA positive strand virus, and Aids is is an RNA positive strand virus, and RNA positive strand viruses are always undergoing genetic interchange (having virus sex) with each other. New flus are usually descended from strange hybrids of various diverse kinds, and were such long before we had the capability to engineer them. The usual pattern of a new flu is that it starts off more deadly than most, then evolves rapidly to normal levels of virulence. Wu Flu fits the usual pattern, initially worse than most, but it looks like total excess deaths for the 2020 flu season will only be modestly worse than total excess deaths for the 2018 flu season (which was a very bad flu season) > [end of quote] > My impression is that if two viruses are ONLY "96% identical" "throughout > the whole sequence of the viral genome", they shouldn't be described as a > "close cousin". Should it be called a "not-so-close cousin"? I don't > know. > > > >