Corona is SARS. Can’t tell the difference. It’s why it’s a hoax. Flu, all it is!
JC, we can tell the difference. Coronaviruses are similar to influenza viruses in that they are both enveloped RNA viruses, but they are very different in every important detail.
Coronaviruses are positive sense viruses, the viral genome is mRNA. Influenza viruses are negative sense viruses, they do not act directly and must code for the mRNA before replication. Similar in some structural ways, but originating from opposite DNA strands.
They infect cells with completely different mechanisms- influenza viruses have a simple mechanism where they just hitch a ride on the sugars that coat the cells- the fuel source. SARS-COV2 has a complex mechanism where it attaches to cellular receptors and undergoes a protein cleaving process and membrane fusion in order to get the viral genome into the host cell.
The 2003 SARS-COV was a naturally occurring coronavirus that originated in the Yunnan Province in China. SARS-COV2 is a laboratory created offshoot using a recombinant SARS-COV virus from the Yunnan bat population and a spike protein designed by Ralph Baric at UNC Chapel Hill. The Baric spike was inserted into the SARSr-COV backbone by the bat lady in Wuhan, and that became SARS-COV2.
It got away from them, and the rest as they say, is history.
But it isn't just the flu- the flu doesn't tear through nursing homes and wipe out large fractions of the residents in one fell swoop. We saw that right away- the Life Care Center in Kirkland had it's first confirmed case on February 28 and by mid-march there were 101 residents, 50 staff, and 16 visitors that had it. At least 46 deaths from that outbreak. That was repeated in lots of other places, and influenza just doesn't do that.
It's not the flu, it's the product of an ill-advised experiment gone awry. That mistake was compounded by another ill-advised experiment- a global clinical trial of an unproven vaccine technology (against a target pathogen that we have never successfully vaccinated against).
The virus so outpaces the vaccines that they can never hope to catch up, and it makes no sense to me to imprint my immune system with an extinct pathogen, so I will remain in the control group...