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@Pirbright_Inst @NCPV @Micro_MDPI Can you comment on Professor Gallaher's statement concerning the possibility of SARS-COV-2 recombining with

@NCPV @Micro_MDPI Gallaher's "Prophecy" Is it Likely?
MERS + SARS-COV-2 Combo Event
MERS Situation Update - January 2020
https://t.co/K2AB0fTpJT
SA Cases:
https://t.co/ix083ozN0v
UAE Cases:
https://t.co/eCBVg3oSPo


@NCPV @Micro_MDPI 1. "Specificity of S is largely responsible for widespread & rapid communicability of SARS-CoV-2, with relatively low virulence in most infected; in contrast, spread of MERS is more easily contained, but its virulence is much higher, at 35%."

@NCPV @Micro_MDPI 2. A virus with high communicability of SARS-CoV-2 & the virulence of MERS would be apocalyptic in its impact!
There is a breakpoint sequence in MERS S (25215CAGAT) that is similarly very close in relative position to 25047CAGAT in SARS-CoV-2.....

@NCPV @Micro_MDPI 3. There is a 4th breakpoint sequence, between the receptor binding domain of MERS & the S1/S2 junction, that is precisely conserved in sequence & position with the corresponding location of SARS-CoV-2:
23577CAGAC in MERS
23300CAGAC in SARS-CoV-2
Before some so-called Events intervened, @MCHammer and I had agreed to talk about 1. the nature of consciousness and 2. the value of thinking. (I will later put up a thread about planaria, the beautiful animals that started off the conversation!)


argues here that new discoveries about the two-way relationship between microorganisms and brain function should change the way we think about organisms and

(Caveat: I am not a biologist or a philosopher of mind, so I welcome more expert interventions in the thread.) But here is how I see it. It is amazing to think that whole organisms (bacteria) may be a crucial part of human cognition and perception.

The difficulty I see with the piece is that its challenges to the notion of organism (early in the piece, where he argues that we are holobionts) don't seem to work. The mystery of consciousness-- and life-- is not just reactivity and flexibility.

There is a *unity* to my consciousness, just as there is a unity to my life. On the latter: when I lose consciousness, or die, do my gut bacteria change? Not necessarily, I'd guess. Nor am I persuaded that a single organism's life or death is a "spectrum".