China Has Withheld Samples of a Dangerous Flu Virus(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
China Has Withheld Samples of a Dangerous Flu Virus
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/health/china-flu-virus-samples.html
33 comments
They may be withholding physical samples, but some sequence data appears to have been released[1(eight segments of the virus from one patient),2(sequences from the last ten years)]. Sequence data like this is helpful for genomic epidemiology—modeling how the virus evolves over time and across geographic regions, as well as for investigating the potential functional impact of mutations.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=Influenza+A+virus...)
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=(%22H7N9%20subtyp...)
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=Influenza+A+virus...)
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=(%22H7N9%20subtyp...)
It should be noted that the influenza virus has 8 segments, so those 8 released segments from a patient represent the entire flu genome.
Health should be separate from commerce. It's messed up to refuse to exchange scientific information that could save a lot of lives to get more bargaining power, but it's also messed up if some entity takes that information and internationally patents a vaccine so they could sell it for ungodly high prices.
Does the timing even make sense for attributing the delay to trade tensions? If theyve delayed for more than a year, those tensions were not at their present level a year ago.
The article says that scientists fear that trade tensions will worsen the problem, not that the problem sprang up out of the ether a couple of months ago.
The problem that sprang up out of the ether is the trade war and the subsequent very blatant propaganda war. Note that I'm not saying there is no problem here, but the fact that the story lay dormant and pops up now is not a coincidence. At the very least some NY Times editors thought it was relevant and opportune to shout into the echo chamber right this moment (and the same here, for posting it).
There's a link to an older story about the same topic right at the bottom of the page.
While I'm not sure why Chinese government is not sharing the virus, I really don't like the way the article is written.
The entire article is about guessing the reasons and developing a conspiracy (even the relation to trade war). No response so far from the official channel of Chinese government.
Also for this section:
>> The Chinese government has refused to share clinical data from infected patients, according to scientists[1], and claims to have all but eradicated H7N9 through a single poultry vaccination campaign.
[1]: Citation needed.
The entire article is about guessing the reasons and developing a conspiracy (even the relation to trade war). No response so far from the official channel of Chinese government.
Also for this section:
>> The Chinese government has refused to share clinical data from infected patients, according to scientists[1], and claims to have all but eradicated H7N9 through a single poultry vaccination campaign.
[1]: Citation needed.
I don't see what's conspiratorial when it identifies several recent examples of governments doing exactly what the scientists they've interviewed speculate is happening here. If we followed your standard, the Chinese government would be able to get away with anything without scrutiny indefinitely simply by refusing to respond to inquiries.
The only conspiracy here is, that you can be sure to find someone downplaying the issue every time something regarding China comes up here.
This steps into nationalistic flamewar, which is not allowed here. Both sides routinely accuse each other of dominating HN. Such comments add no information and provoke worse from others. Indeed, they're just another move in the flamewar.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I am posting anonymously here because of all the toxicity of this comment. Take away "Chinese" from his argument and he still has an argument. Your comment on the other hand, is just throwing your emotions around. I suspect other commenters downvote him for the same reason. I find this every time an article about China comes up. Its infuriating because there is not legitimate discussion going on. It simply a downvoting war.
hd4(1)
The Chinese government has proven time and again that it's supremely untrustworthy. That alone gives the article some credence.
No government is "trustworthy". Singling out the one you don't like seems dodgy.
some_account(2)
[flagged]
Please don't take HN further into flamewar with grand nationalistic rhetoric. We're interested in specifics here, not loud generics.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[deleted](1)
> … plastic drip mechanisms … there are no stockpiles
why not?
why not?
stockpiles are not required if you have the RNA sequences of the virus...
to make matters worse influenza is understood to the extent that any sophomore bio undergrad has the knowledge to create a nasty version, whether they know it or not...the big hurdle is the equipment which is not intrinsically expensive to build, and the biochemical reagents required e.g. restriction enzymes...
UPDATE: The virus can (may not necessarily) have a 40% mortality rate says the article below. One would therefore expect the US will obtain samples by other means. At a minimum birds don't recognize borders.
https://www.livescience.com/63448-china-h7n9-flu-samples-pan...