Talk:SARS-CoV-2

Topic code	Area of conflict	Decision linked to
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=aa}}	politics, ethnic relations, and conflicts involving Armenia, Azerbaijan, or both	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Armenia and Azerbaijan
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=crypto}}	blockchain and cryptocurrencies	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Blockchain and cryptocurrencies
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=kurd}}	Kurds and Kurdistan	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Kurds and Kurdistan
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=mj}}	Michael Jackson	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Michael Jackson
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=pw}}	professional wrestling	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Professional wrestling
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=rusukr}}	the Russo-Ukrainian War	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Russo-Ukrainian War
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=sasg}}	South Asian social groups	Wikipedia:General sanctions/South Asian social groups
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=syria}}	the Syrian Civil War and ISIL	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Syrian Civil War and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=uku}}	measurement units in the United Kingdom	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Units in the United Kingdom
{{SARS-CoV-2|topic=uyghur}}	Uyghurs, Uyghur genocide, or topics that are related to Uyghurs or Uyghur genocide	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Uyghurs

Highlighted open discussions

NOTE: It is recommended to link to this list in your edit summary when reverting, as:
[[Talk:SARS-CoV-2#Current consensus|current consensus]] item [n]
To ensure you are viewing the current list, you may wish to .

01. There is consensus that the terms "Wuhan virus" or "China virus" should not be used in the Lead of the article. The terms and their history can be discussed in the body of the article. (April 2020)

LDR

@CatPath: hello! The article uses a different reference formatting convention; see Help:LDR. I noticed you undid my edit to stick with LDR; do you plan to seek consensus to change the convention in this article? Cheers, Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 16:00, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@Rotideypoc41352:, I mistakenly thought that the script you used inserted a hidden list of the full citations in the middle of the article. I reverted back to your edit, except I restored the citation for the review article from Frontiers in Microbiology, which is not a predatory journal. CatPath ^{meow at me} 17:08, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, CatPath! Out of curiosity, have you found consensus on the reliability of journals Frontiers Media publishes? I have yet to find recent consensus; perhaps you've had better luck? Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 20:51, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I assume that you find Frontiers unreliable because they're in Jeffrey Beall's list of blacklisted journals. The list was generated by a single person rather than an official organization, and he took down his list in 2017. The inclusion of Frontiers in his blacklist has also been questioned: [1]. Certainly there has been past controversy with a few of their journals (none involving Frontiers in Microbiology to the best of my knowledge), but they've long had a seal of approval from the COPE and the DOAJ. CatPath ^{meow at me} 22:39, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

image is wrong

https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11729122 explains this and gives sources for better images.Someone can check the copyright on them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.112.30.115 (talk) 11:44, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Early Italian virus detection

The sentence on Epidemiology that I added is based on a report in an Italian daily newspaper and the British Journal of Dermatology which is ahead of print. Are edits supposed to be coming ONLY from systematic reviews? If not, the requirement of an authoritative biomedical source is met.

See my edit: "A University of Milan study has found the virus in the skin tissue of a dermatosis patient, who was asymptomatic, in November 2019.<ref>Gianotti R, Barberis M, Fellegara G, Galván-Casas C, Gianotti E. COVID-19 related dermatosis in November 2019. Could this case be Italy's patient zero? Br J Dermatol. 2021 Jan 7. doi: 10.1111/bjd.19804. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33410129.</ref. " Church of the Rain (talk) 17:36, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Such claims need WP:MEDRS. A newspaper's not that. And PMID 33410129 is a "research letter", not a review article (or better) that would be a good enough source. Alexbrn (talk) 17:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

A research letter in a highly respected journal is good enough because it presents an alternative to the accepted epidemiological understanding in an ongoing public health crisis. Due weight should be given to such an alternative view. This Wikipedia article on the virus has 23 non-biomedical references and I assume the balance are review articles? Probably not. Scientific reporting publishes research letters because they have scientific and social purpose. For the merits of various forms of research see BMC Medical Research Methodology. I argue this article would not suffer from this research letter reference. Church of the Rain (talk) 03:15, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

No it's not, it has been questioned by other scientists, and as the review you have linked to even concludes "Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of research is composed by publications without original data. Peer-reviewed original articles with data showed a high risk of bias and included a limited number of patients. Together, these findings underscore the urgent need to strike a balance between the velocity and quality of research, and to cautiously consider medical information and clinical applicability in a pressing, pandemic context." Unless the claims have been taken seriously by the wider virological community, it shouldn't be included. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:34, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

• Biomedical information needs to supported by WP:MEDRS, and there are general sanctions for this topic area to reinforce that requirement (OP is now aware). There is really nothing more to be said. Alexbrn (talk) 06:46, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
  • I am suggesting a sentence indicating a minority view that the virus was present earlier than originally thought. The following article has been cited almost one hundred times in the biomedical literature. See here. Also another one here.. The WP:GS/COVID19 sanction does prohibit "preprints and other non-peer-reviewed sources" which I understand, but note that systematic reviews only account for .6 % of scientific reporting on this topic. The Wikipedia readers don't expect a textbook though they do look for a current understanding of medical topics. Church of the Rain (talk) 05:32, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
    • Then they are going to be disappointed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a news-site. Our medical articles summarise published, accepted knowledge, not fringe conspiracy theories and misinformation. Requiring the best quality secondary sources is our principal means to guarantee that. --RexxS (talk) 00:24, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
      • I could see an argument that this may not be an entirely fringe view, though I agree we should really wait for the WHO's review or other peer review of this study (which, as has been pointed out, depended on an in-house serological test which could have produced false positives and caused this result) to decide it has merit rather than merely being faulty. That said, I think this research paper is perhaps more credible and makes a less lofty claim. Specifically, that the virus may have been detected in Italy in early December. But again, should wait for at least peer review and preferably secondary sourcing. More broadly, can we properly source a claim that the virus may have spread outside China before 2020? Should it even go in this article? Bakkster Man (talk) 14:18, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
        • There seems to be increasing evidence that the virus might have been circulating before Jan 2020. However I would also suggest patience on this topic. At the moment the evidence available is not very solid and independent analysis by the WHO of some of the results is ongoing. Confirmation of this would radically change the history of the virus so we should be careful before publishing misleading information. We should apply the most stringent sourcing standards. I think we could add to the article that there have been reports of earlier cases which are being investigated. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 15:02, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
          • I think that's a reasonable solution, a non-biomedical claim that investigation into possible earlier transmission outside of China is ongoing. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:04, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 13 January 2021

change image2 = 2019-nCoV-CDC-23312 without background.png to image2 = SARS-CoV-2 (CDC-23312).png

Comment: The illustration is outdated; see CDC's webpage phil.cdc.gov/details.aspx?pid=23312. SARS-CoV-2 does not have hemagglutinin esterase proteins shown in the figure; see jaanajurvansuu.medium.com/spot-the-difference-in-sars-cov-2-98bfa0f4da9c. Jaana2021 (talk) 12:25, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done per CDC image as of the edit. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 16:43, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Ongoing discussion on the lab leak theory

There is an ongoing discussion on the lab leak theory of SARS-CoV-2 and some editors there have commented that it pertains more here in the virus entry, instead of the current location (the entry on the Wuhan Institute of Virology). Please take a look here, comments are welcome. Forich (talk) 16:54, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

misplaced link

what's the link between the clinical definition of a virus and the "See also: Trump administration communication during the COVID-19 pandemic § Terminology" ?? it s a shame to include politics on a general definition. Trump administration "communication" if at least it was "course of action", it could have an interest, but here it is just a partisan move.