China Has Withheld Samples of a Dangerous Flu Virus | Hacker News Reader

China Has Withheld Samples of a Dangerous Flu Virus

nytimes.com

99 pointstony10129 comments

An argument can be made that China is violating the International Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. By withholding the samples they are at least constructively stockpiling a lethal pathogen; with full knowledge this action can (and likely will) result in the loss of many lives. The appropriate response is to announce travel restrictions on all travelers originating from China, effective in 30 days. I expect that announcement will dislodge the samples quickly, assuming the present media coverage doesn't already do so.

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...

> One would therefore expect the US will obtain samples by other means

From the article:

”At least four research institutions have relied upon a small group of H7N9 samples from cases in Taiwan and Hong Kong. (All four asked not to be identified for fear of further straining ties.)”

That said, a travel ban on travelers originating from or having recently been to China is too harsh. Mandatory quarantines (with the costs of such quarantine being the responsibility of the traveler) would be more prudent.

I think the travel ban is meant to be punitive as much as it is a quarantine. I think the way the OP was suggesting it was travel restrictions to or from a country refusing to cooperate with treaties. Implemented in 30 days, not anyone who has traveled to China within 30 days.

@SolarNet ... correct.

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...)

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.

> No response so far from the official channel of Chinese government.

So? Do they ever respond to anything? At the core of a communist regime is secrecy. They seldom respond to any request for information or allegations, and when they do respond to anything, it is usually by way of exerting (physical) force or a war.

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

The only conspiracy here is, that you can be sure to find someone downplaying the issue every time something regarding China comes up here.

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.

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

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.

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.

> At least four research institutions have relied upon a small group of H7N9 samples from cases in Taiwan and Hong Kong

So why can't Taiwan send a sample?

>The Office of the United States Trade Representative in April released a proposed list of products to be targeted for tariffs — including pharmaceutical products such as vaccines, medicines and medical devices.

Well then, what did you expect? That China do nothing?

> … plastic drip mechanisms … there are no stockpiles

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...

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