OT: COVID-19 thread #4

[Dresden]

As for it being "perfectly adapted to humans":

"Some have also argued that SARS-CoV-2 was too well adapted to infecting humans at the start of the pandemic — and that this could indicate human design.

But Penn State’s Boni said that’s a faulty line of thinking.

“There’s no guarantee that something that crosses over has to be perfectly adapted or half adapted or a third adapted. Whatever happens, happens,” he said.

The H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009, for example, he said, was very well adapted to humans and took off very easily and very quickly. “It is not a sign that they were bioengineered,” Boni said.

A paper he co-authored with Robertson in PLOS Biology pieced together SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary history and suggests that the virus’s ability to infect a broad range of mammals evolved hundreds of years ago.

“This would indicate that the SARS-CoV-2 progenitor did not have to adapt to humans much, if at all,” Robertson said, because it had already become a “generalist virus” long ago, although he said an intermediate animal could very well still be involved in the transfer to a human."

Again from factcheck.org article...

[Almost Retired]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/over-500-u-s-scientists-under-investigation-for-being-compromised-by-china/ar-BB1fZbBk

[Almost Retired]

I really think the wet market theory has no legs. Let's look at some chronology for context:

* 2014: The Obama administration bans US Gain of Function research

* 2014: NIH grants Eco-Health Alliance money to study the potential emergence of dangerous coronaviruses that could jump to humans; some of that money is sent to China and Wuhan is particular, for field work.

* 2015: A team of US and Chinese biologists/virologists publish a paper stating that they have created/engineered a 'chimeric' virus from a SARS backbone that is adapted to infect human ACE2 receptors, by mutating it repeatedly in 'human' mice. One of the authors of the paper is the head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the US government is EXPLICITLY thanked (NIH) for providing funding for said research. Again, to repeat: they created a 'chimeric' SARS that has an affinity for human cells. That paper is still available for download.

* 2018 Eco Health Alliance applies for a DARPA grant that specifies that:
-- they are inserting "furin cleavage site" into MULTIPLE SARS-related coronaviruses collected from Chinese bat populations
-- these "furin cleavage site" inserts are spliced explicitly to enhance binding to human cells
-- they want further money for field research, which includes RELEASING said engineered viruses back into the wild bat populations

-- DARPA denies the grant, chastising EHA that their actions will endanger local human populations.

Just because one branch of the US government denies the grant, does not mean that they did not get funding from another branch (NIH), the Chinese themselves, or private parties. From what I've seen, NIH $ was flowing from EHA to China all the way from 2014 to 2019.

* 2019 mid-to-late year:
-- a SARS-related coronavirus, with expressed affinity for human cells, causes a local pandemic in the city where ALL of the above work was taking place over the last 5 years. Within 6 months, the pandemic goes global because the virus is perfectly adapted to infect humans.

So, let me summarize this again:
--Chinese scientists with US help (IP and $) have been creating 'chimeric' SARS-related coronaviruses both through splicing and controlled mutation in 'human' mice for at least 5 years before COVID hit. Work is carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. All of this is easy to verify from the primary sources, not what somebody wrote in an article/fact check online--So, there's a clear paper and $ trail

--In 2018, EHA wants more $ to release MULTIPLE of said creations into the wild. DARPA tells them to F-off because that's too dangerous.

--Sometime in 2019: a coronavirus that targets human cells causes a pandemic... in 'effin Wuhan.

Given that the Chinese have probably burned/erased any record of what happened, you're never going to know the full truth. All you can trace is the IP and $ from the US 'partners', which is already in the open.

When a virus' spike protein shows an affinity for human ACE2 an order of magnitude higher than any other animal receptor currently known in nature, including bats, (research came out in 2020), and we are yet to find the species that this thing jumped from--that column of smoke is stratosphere-high and the odds are there's a massive fire there.

Who the F knows exactly what happened, but I just lost a family member to that bug last week and if that thing came from a lab, I want to know. To me, this transcends partisan politics. I don't give a F who's in office. As I've said before in the previous pages, I don't want ANYBODY playing with technology that can kill us all and good intentions notwithstanding, there is a TON of evidence people were doing just that in Wuhan. People are sloppy; can have bad days; they can get unlucky; etc. The list of historic lab leaks all over the globe is dozens long, so this won't be the first time it has happened. It's just that this time it could have been a new generation of spliced coronavirus that happened to be much more infectious than anything that's escaped before.

Amen brother. Too much time and effort have been spent pitting vaxxed vs unvaxxed and far too little time spent worrying about the prevention of this kind of scenario happening again. I can understand why China and America want the origin and funding issues buried but I would think the rest of the world which lost citizens and had their economies decimated would be banging their shoes on their desks at the UN. And the scarier though is just as you alluded to. Dr. Steven Quayle said that his team found genetic remnants of Nipah Virus at the Wuhan Lab. If you want a scary scenario look at the lethality of the Nipah virus. God help us if that ever gets weaponized.

[Almost Retired]

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/08/chinas-military-pursuing-biotech/159167/

[micromonkey]

Spoiler:

* 2014: The Obama administration bans US Gain of Function research

* 2014: NIH grants Eco-Health Alliance money to study the potential emergence of dangerous coronaviruses that could jump to humans; some of that money is sent to China and Wuhan is particular, for field work.

* 2015: A team of US and Chinese biologists/virologists publish a paper stating that they have created/engineered a 'chimeric' virus from a SARS backbone that is adapted to infect human ACE2 receptors, by mutating it repeatedly in 'human' mice. One of the authors of the paper is the head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the US government is EXPLICITLY thanked (NIH) for providing funding for said research. Again, to repeat: they created a 'chimeric' SARS that has an affinity for human cells. That paper is still available for download.

* 2018 Eco Health Alliance applies for a DARPA grant that specifies that:
-- they are inserting "furin cleavage site" into MULTIPLE SARS-related coronaviruses collected from Chinese bat populations
-- these "furin cleavage site" inserts are spliced explicitly to enhance binding to human cells
-- they want further money for field research, which includes RELEASING said engineered viruses back into the wild bat populations

-- DARPA denies the grant, chastising EHA that their actions will endanger local human populations.

Just because one branch of the US government denies the grant, does not mean that they did not get funding from another branch (NIH), the Chinese themselves, or private parties. From what I've seen, NIH $ was flowing from EHA to China all the way from 2014 to 2019.

* 2019 mid-to-late year:
-- a SARS-related coronavirus, with expressed affinity for human cells, causes a local pandemic in the city where ALL of the above work was taking place over the last 5 years. Within 6 months, the pandemic goes global because the virus is perfectly adapted to infect humans.

So, let me summarize this again:
--Chinese scientists with US help (IP and $) have been creating 'chimeric' SARS-related coronaviruses both through splicing and controlled mutation in 'human' mice for at least 5 years before COVID hit. Work is carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. All of this is easy to verify from the primary sources, not what somebody wrote in an article/fact check online--So, there's a clear paper and $ trail

--In 2018, EHA wants more $ to release MULTIPLE of said creations into the wild. DARPA tells them to F-off because that's too dangerous.

--Sometime in 2019: a coronavirus that targets human cells causes a pandemic... in 'effin Wuhan.

Given that the Chinese have probably burned/erased any record of what happened, you're never going to know the full truth. All you can trace is the IP and $ from the US 'partners', which is already in the open.

When a virus' spike protein shows an affinity for human ACE2 an order of magnitude higher than any other animal receptor currently known in nature, including bats, (research came out in 2020), and we are yet to find the species that this thing jumped from--that column of smoke is stratosphere-high and the odds are there's a massive fire there.

Who the F knows exactly what happened, but I just lost a family member to that bug last week and if that thing came from a lab, I want to know. To me, this transcends partisan politics. I don't give a F who's in office. As I've said before in the previous pages, I don't want ANYBODY playing with technology that can kill us all and good intentions notwithstanding, there is a TON of evidence people were doing just that in Wuhan. People are sloppy; can have bad days; they can get unlucky; etc. The list of historic lab leaks all over the globe is dozens long, so this won't be the first time it has happened. It's just that this time it could have been a new generation of spliced coronavirus that happened to be much more infectious than anything that's escaped before.

I also think the wet market origin doesn't hold water--it was just where it took off.

In none of these papers or research we are aware of do we see anything resembling the existing COVID or pre-Wuhan strain. Worth repeating since no one wants to acknowledge this.

The known research shows these known created strains are far afield from what we have and the receptor binding domain's are far apart. We can only speculate about possible strains experimented on we don't know about.

Thus far the closest strain we found (BANAL, in Laos this year) has the closet RBD to the Wuhan strain.

The original SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain has 17 amino acid contact points between the virus and the ACE2 receptor.

Several of these are modified in the RaTG13 coronavirus. However, two of the viruses analyzed by Temmam et al.—BANAL-20-52 and BANAL-20-103—differs by only one of the 17 amino acids. Another analyzed virus—BANAL-20-236—differs by only two amino acids. By contrast, in RaTG13, there are six amino acid modifications.

So at this point re: ACE2 receptor this would be the closest relative. Again this was a virus found in Laos, in 2021 by a French research team. This also has the highest similarity to the Wuhan strain.

Other points to note-- The binding affinity of the Alpha variant for the ACE2 receptor was more than doubled relative to that of the Wuhan strain (then more again for Delta and Delta plus). Humans by far have been the biggest gain of function engines. There is nothing to suggest the virus was "perfectly adapted"--as precursor strains obviously evolved for certain right before our eyes and its likely Wuhan might not even be the original.

When a virus' spike protein shows an affinity for human ACE2 an order of magnitude higher than any other animal receptor currently known in nature, including bats, (research came out in 2020)

Link please, again we now have a few candidates with only 1 amino acid contact point difference.

Chinese scientists with US help (IP and $) have been creating 'chimeric' SARS-related coronaviruses both through splicing and controlled mutation in 'human' mice for at least 5 years before COVID hit.

What part of the intercept documents are being referred too here? it seems to be a conflation of asked for and denied research but I could be wrong. The base being used SHC014-CoV is 95.4% to SARS-CoV-1.

All you can trace is the IP and $ from the US 'partners', which is already in the open

Again -where is the IP that matches, SHC014-CoV cannot be the source. The SL-SHC014-MA15 version of the virus, primarily engineered to infect mice, has been shown to differ by over 5,000 nucleotides from SARS-CoV-2.

Furin cleavage sites do occur in nature in other coronaviruses. While suspicious its not a smoking gun. We have .01% of the "IP" but are missing 99.9% of of it. That is a lot to infer--especially when we are seeing 96%+ of in the wild. There seems to be a fixation on Furin Cleavage sites and making it a one in a trillion occurrence that can't be chance.

In fact, the Furin cleavage site is often lost merely by growing SARS-CoV-2 in human tissue culture. It is likely that the Furin site arises in some SARS-CoV-2 variants and bat viruses by natural recombination, as it may have been the case for SARS-CoV-2.

There are for sure precursors and we know for certain there are at least 2 lineages of the Wuhan strain (A and B). So in that case 1 of 2 scenarios. 1 they share a precursor (working theory) -- and that pushes the date back further. 2 they evolved independently--not as likely but possible. If they evolved independently then the lab leak goes in the toilet completely. If one is a precursor--we need to push back dates whether its lab leak or natural--and look for possible precursors.

We should keep looking for more data--and hopefully more real verified documents will exist (like the intercept information). There are other groups (DRASTIC) releasing documents but the authenticity is at this point is unverified.

It's too early to come to any conclusions yet. We will continue to get more data and then we can adjust what we think. I'm with Coldfish in that I think we need to push back the origin date. We might be looking even earlier than mid 2019--we already know it was around then for sure. China was in the middle of covering up an African swine flu outbreak in 2019-not manmade but they cover up everything.

We might not get positive data out of china (proof it was a leak) but the negative information (in NOT finding the zoonotic origin source) will speak loudly at some point. But it's early yet based on past outbreaks to make any real determination.

I think its almost universal agreement that we need oversight on research like this--there needs to be congressional oversight committee or fold this into another one. I would also say Doug is right--we deserve to know--but there will likely be no impactful consequences if China is guilty.

[chefo]

Not to be picky on the 'sciency folks', but their answers lack context and cannot be taken at face value. Not when they have an immense conflict of interest--both ethically and financially. The messenger in this case matters because the message can easily be warped by their own bias and experience. Off the top of my head:

* The gentleman talking about humanized mice has actually worked on coronaviruses being modified. What do you want him to say?

"My friend Pete, who happens to share grant money with me on messing around with deadly, super-infectious pathogens, sure as heck conjured up that chimera in his lab. From the entire community of geneticists that get $200K+ / year, courtesy of government grants for tinkering with said deadly pathogens, I'd like to apologize on his behalf. Please don't cut our funding and definitely don't fire us all... and of course, don't look into the likely criminality of using a middle-man to sidestep a direct order by the US executive branch which prohibited tinkering with deadly pathogens."

"Extraordinary improbable", I'd like to introduce you to the "law of large numbers". Something of small probability, if repeated enough times becomes an inevitability. I work closely with a tech firm that will, over the next couple of years (crossing fingers), introduce an absolutely revolutionary low voltage tech the like of which currently doesn't exist even in theory. The optimal math for the invention could not even be theoretically computed, but once they had the baseline prototype working, it was simply a matter of time, $, and enough repetition to get a (near) perfect outcome.

If you read how they pass these coronaviruses through cell cultures--they repeat and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. There are a bunch of people talking about the procedure openly because it seems to be standard practice. Introduce, select the best bunch of 'mutants', sequence, replicate procedure with said subset-->smaller subset, repeat. As many times as necessary. They had 5 years. Besides, the gents commenting had probably ZERO visibility into what the Chinese were doing and how many reps they did, and of what. This was a Chinese lab, run by the Chinese government, where the French partners that built it left the project because French intelligence told them there was bioweapon research going on that wasn't part of the initial agreement. Furthermore, I remember one geneticists commented that ANY opinion on whether something is natural or not is completely worthless nowadays because they all KNOW how to make it naturally looking. After the first splice, you mutate it a couple of hundred times, while keeping the functionality you're solving for and none would be the wiser.

On the cleavage site--from the horse's mouth--they first bragged about it (their premise that SARS can be 'humanized' was proven correct) and then again, in a written document submitted to the US government, explained in plain English that they're doing it again to a larger subset of SARS relatives, including bat coronaviruses. I don't care if somebody who's conflicted as-is says it looks sloppy or not. You've got to understand that there are likely hundreds or perhaps thousands of variants they've catalogued. Maybe the dud one escaped. Maybe they were sloppy and that variant was done by a medical student--they had a bunch on staff.

Let's recap what our "sciency folks" did, based on their own published writings:
Phase 1 (2014-2015):
* The spliced a new spike protein optimized for humans onto SARS
* They tested how said spike protein reacted to:
-- live "human" mice
-- "human" cell cultures
* It worked--they gained the IP necessary to move on from there

Phase 2 (2015-2018):
* They spliced said working spike protein onto several other SARS-related viruses. The gent replying to Congress (while throwing EHA under the bus for breaking their grant restrictions on GoF, BTW) explained that a 97% genetic match of a virus they have spliced is proof that COVID is "natural".

Here's what I'd like them to do, if I were Congress--splice a harmless RNA virus that we have a vaccine for to better bind with human tissue and mutate it over several hundred or thousand iterations. Report back what the RNA match is. The other thing is--the RNA map of these viruses is tiny. To compare us and chimps (96% genetic match), which are incredibly complicated organisms that took 15 years to map with a tiny RNA sequence that was mapped over lunch break is preposterous. That was the other argument which smells like BS. BTW, show of hands if you believe that they can't splice a chimp with human DNA to create a viable hybrid, if ethics and laws did not prohibit them to. They can. BTW, they could do that in simulations over a decade ago. You know how they did it? Billions, upon billions of iterations run on a super-computer.

Anyhow--just as a reference point from where I'm personally coming from--part of my job is to deal with insanely smart people who are trying to get $. I've seen every trick on Wall Street and by R&D teams to BS an audience into believing. Mismatched scales that imply magnitude that isn't there, correlation graphs, abstract data sets, curve-fitting to perfection, pre-cognition, missing statistical data, "adjusted" statistical data, etc.

"Sciency folks" are human, just like everybody else, no matter how smart they are. I bet you some truly believe that thing is natural. I'm pretty sure some are self-delusional because the implications are otherwise horrific for their entire caste of very highly paid professionals.

Anyhow, I've come across several mathematical improbabilities, that when put together, suggest that this emerging naturally is a near zero possibility. They find the original carrier with receptors that are more sensitive to the spike than ours, I'll reserve the right to change my mind. Until that point, the wet market theory to me is full of propaganda BS meant to deflect blame.

[coldfish]

Spoiler:

Not to be picky on the 'sciency folks', but their answers lack context and cannot be taken at face value. Not when they have an immense conflict of interest--both ethically and financially. The messenger in this case matters because the message can easily be warped by their own bias and experience. Off the top of my head:

* The gentleman talking about humanized mice has actually worked on coronaviruses being modified. What do you want him to say?

"My friend Pete, who happens to share grant money with me on messing around with deadly, super-infectious pathogens, sure as heck conjured up that chimera in his lab. From the entire community of geneticists that get $200K+ / year, courtesy of government grants for tinkering with said deadly pathogens, I'd like to apologize on his behalf. Please don't cut our funding and definitely don't fire us all... and of course, don't look into the likely criminality of using a middle-man to sidestep a direct order by the US executive branch which prohibited tinkering with deadly pathogens."

"Extraordinary improbable", I'd like to introduce you to the "law of large numbers". Something of small probability, if repeated enough times becomes an inevitability. I work closely with a tech firm that will, over the next couple of years (crossing fingers), introduce an absolutely revolutionary low voltage tech the like of which currently doesn't exist even in theory. The optimal math for the invention could not even be theoretically computed, but once they had the baseline prototype working, it was simply a matter of time, $, and enough repetition to get a (near) perfect outcome.

If you read how they pass these coronaviruses through cell cultures--they repeat and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. There are a bunch of people talking about the procedure openly because it seems to be standard practice. Introduce, select the best bunch of 'mutants', sequence, replicate procedure with said subset-->smaller subset, repeat. As many times as necessary. They had 5 years. Besides, the gents commenting had probably ZERO visibility into what the Chinese were doing and how many reps they did, and of what. This was a Chinese lab, run by the Chinese government, where the French partners that built it left the project because French intelligence told them there was bioweapon research going on that wasn't part of the initial agreement. Furthermore, I remember one geneticists commented that ANY opinion on whether something is natural or not is completely worthless nowadays because they all KNOW how to make it naturally looking. After the first splice, you mutate it a couple of hundred times, while keeping the functionality you're solving for and none would be the wiser.

On the cleavage site--from the horse's mouth--they first bragged about it (their premise that SARS can be 'humanized' was proven correct) and then again, in a written document submitted to the US government, explained in plain English that they're doing it again to a larger subset of SARS relatives, including bat coronaviruses. I don't care if somebody who's conflicted as-is says it looks sloppy or not. You've got to understand that there are likely hundreds or perhaps thousands of variants they've catalogued. Maybe the dud one escaped. Maybe they were sloppy and that variant was done by a medical student--they had a bunch on staff.

Let's recap what our "sciency folks" did, based on their own published writings:
Phase 1 (2014-2015):
* The spliced a new spike protein optimized for humans onto SARS
* They tested how said spike protein reacted to:
-- live "human" mice
-- "human" cell cultures
* It worked--they gained the IP necessary to move on from there

Phase 2 (2015-2018):
* They spliced said working spike protein onto several other SARS-related viruses. The gent replying to Congress (while throwing EHA under the bus for breaking their grant restrictions on GoF, BTW) explained that a 97% genetic match of a virus they have spliced is proof that COVID is "natural".

Here's what I'd like them to do, if I were Congress--splice a harmless RNA virus that we have a vaccine for to better bind with human tissue and mutate it over several hundred or thousand iterations. Report back what the RNA match is. The other thing is--the RNA map of these viruses is tiny. To compare us and chimps (96% genetic match), which are incredibly complicated organisms that took 15 years to map with a tiny RNA sequence that was mapped over lunch break is preposterous. That was the other argument which smells like BS. BTW, show of hands if you believe that they can't splice a chimp with human DNA to create a viable hybrid, if ethics and laws did not prohibit them to. They can. BTW, they could do that in simulations over a decade ago. You know how they did it? Billions, upon billions of iterations run on a super-computer.

Anyhow--just as a reference point from where I'm personally coming from--part of my job is to deal with insanely smart people who are trying to get $. I've seen every trick on Wall Street and by R&D teams to BS an audience into believing. Mismatched scales that imply magnitude that isn't there, correlation graphs, abstract data sets, curve-fitting to perfection, pre-cognition, missing statistical data, "adjusted" statistical data, etc.

"Sciency folks" are human, just like everybody else, no matter how smart they are. I bet you some truly believe that thing is natural. I'm pretty sure some are self-delusional because the implications are otherwise horrific for their entire caste of very highly paid professionals.

Anyhow, I've come across several mathematical improbabilities, that when put together, suggest that this emerging naturally is a near zero possibility. They find the original carrier with receptors that are more sensitive to the spike than ours, I'll reserve the right to change my mind. Until that point, the wet market theory to me is full of propaganda BS meant to deflect blame.

Just to note, the story out of China is a mathematical impossibility. That covid showed up in Wuhan in December and killed 4600 over the next 6 weeks. The virus, particularly the original strain, just doesn't work like that. We have seen spikes play out all over the world and you just don't see that happening.

If it was natural, the virus jumped a long, long time before December. If it was there evolving, improving and spreading for quite some time that makes the data more plausible. That would fit more with the genetic data and dual original variants.

Of course, that brings up a completely different series of issues. If the world had known that the virus was around far longer they would have been looking for it and possibly prevented a lot of deaths.

And no, I do not rule out a lab leak. I just don't see anything beyond circumstantial evidence . . . which is probably all we will ever have.

[dice]

Spoiler:

Not to be picky on the 'sciency folks', but their answers lack context and cannot be taken at face value. Not when they have an immense conflict of interest--both ethically and financially. The messenger in this case matters because the message can easily be warped by their own bias and experience. Off the top of my head:

* The gentleman talking about humanized mice has actually worked on coronaviruses being modified. What do you want him to say?

"My friend Pete, who happens to share grant money with me on messing around with deadly, super-infectious pathogens, sure as heck conjured up that chimera in his lab. From the entire community of geneticists that get $200K+ / year, courtesy of government grants for tinkering with said deadly pathogens, I'd like to apologize on his behalf. Please don't cut our funding and definitely don't fire us all... and of course, don't look into the likely criminality of using a middle-man to sidestep a direct order by the US executive branch which prohibited tinkering with deadly pathogens."

"Extraordinary improbable", I'd like to introduce you to the "law of large numbers". Something of small probability, if repeated enough times becomes an inevitability. I work closely with a tech firm that will, over the next couple of years (crossing fingers), introduce an absolutely revolutionary low voltage tech the like of which currently doesn't exist even in theory. The optimal math for the invention could not even be theoretically computed, but once they had the baseline prototype working, it was simply a matter of time, $, and enough repetition to get a (near) perfect outcome.

If you read how they pass these coronaviruses through cell cultures--they repeat and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. There are a bunch of people talking about the procedure openly because it seems to be standard practice. Introduce, select the best bunch of 'mutants', sequence, replicate procedure with said subset-->smaller subset, repeat. As many times as necessary. They had 5 years. Besides, the gents commenting had probably ZERO visibility into what the Chinese were doing and how many reps they did, and of what. This was a Chinese lab, run by the Chinese government, where the French partners that built it left the project because French intelligence told them there was bioweapon research going on that wasn't part of the initial agreement. Furthermore, I remember one geneticists commented that ANY opinion on whether something is natural or not is completely worthless nowadays because they all KNOW how to make it naturally looking. After the first splice, you mutate it a couple of hundred times, while keeping the functionality you're solving for and none would be the wiser.

On the cleavage site--from the horse's mouth--they first bragged about it (their premise that SARS can be 'humanized' was proven correct) and then again, in a written document submitted to the US government, explained in plain English that they're doing it again to a larger subset of SARS relatives, including bat coronaviruses. I don't care if somebody who's conflicted as-is says it looks sloppy or not. You've got to understand that there are likely hundreds or perhaps thousands of variants they've catalogued. Maybe the dud one escaped. Maybe they were sloppy and that variant was done by a medical student--they had a bunch on staff.

Let's recap what our "sciency folks" did, based on their own published writings:
Phase 1 (2014-2015):
* The spliced a new spike protein optimized for humans onto SARS
* They tested how said spike protein reacted to:
-- live "human" mice
-- "human" cell cultures
* It worked--they gained the IP necessary to move on from there

Phase 2 (2015-2018):
* They spliced said working spike protein onto several other SARS-related viruses. The gent replying to Congress (while throwing EHA under the bus for breaking their grant restrictions on GoF, BTW) explained that a 97% genetic match of a virus they have spliced is proof that COVID is "natural".

Here's what I'd like them to do, if I were Congress--splice a harmless RNA virus that we have a vaccine for to better bind with human tissue and mutate it over several hundred or thousand iterations. Report back what the RNA match is. The other thing is--the RNA map of these viruses is tiny. To compare us and chimps (96% genetic match), which are incredibly complicated organisms that took 15 years to map with a tiny RNA sequence that was mapped over lunch break is preposterous. That was the other argument which smells like BS. BTW, show of hands if you believe that they can't splice a chimp with human DNA to create a viable hybrid, if ethics and laws did not prohibit them to. They can. BTW, they could do that in simulations over a decade ago. You know how they did it? Billions, upon billions of iterations run on a super-computer.

Anyhow--just as a reference point from where I'm personally coming from--part of my job is to deal with insanely smart people who are trying to get $. I've seen every trick on Wall Street and by R&D teams to BS an audience into believing. Mismatched scales that imply magnitude that isn't there, correlation graphs, abstract data sets, curve-fitting to perfection, pre-cognition, missing statistical data, "adjusted" statistical data, etc.

"Sciency folks" are human, just like everybody else, no matter how smart they are. I bet you some truly believe that thing is natural. I'm pretty sure some are self-delusional because the implications are otherwise horrific for their entire caste of very highly paid professionals.

Anyhow, I've come across several mathematical improbabilities, that when put together, suggest that this emerging naturally is a near zero possibility. They find the original carrier with receptors that are more sensitive to the spike than ours, I'll reserve the right to change my mind. Until that point, the wet market theory to me is full of propaganda BS meant to deflect blame.

Just to note, the story out of China is a mathematical impossibility. That covid showed up in Wuhan in December and killed 4600 over the next 6 weeks. The virus, particularly the original strain, just doesn't work like that. We have seen spikes play out all over the world and you just don't see that happening.

If it was natural, the virus jumped a long, long time before December. If it was there evolving, improving and spreading for quite some time that makes the data more plausible. That would fit more with the genetic data and dual original variants.

Of course, that brings up a completely different series of issues. If the world had known that the virus was around far longer they would have been looking for it and possibly prevented a lot of deaths.

And no, I do not rule out a lab leak. I just don't see anything beyond circumstantial evidence . . . which is probably all we will ever have.

and to reiterate, it doesn't matter as much as people seem to think it does whether a lab leak is to blame. either way, wet markets should not exist and labs should be employing strenuous safety precautions

i mean, if there was a lab leak due to unique, unforeseeable circumstances, that would inform future processes, but that's highly unlikely. any leak was very likely the product of carelessness or even malice

[coldfish]

Spoiler:

Not to be picky on the 'sciency folks', but their answers lack context and cannot be taken at face value. Not when they have an immense conflict of interest--both ethically and financially. The messenger in this case matters because the message can easily be warped by their own bias and experience. Off the top of my head:

* The gentleman talking about humanized mice has actually worked on coronaviruses being modified. What do you want him to say?

"My friend Pete, who happens to share grant money with me on messing around with deadly, super-infectious pathogens, sure as heck conjured up that chimera in his lab. From the entire community of geneticists that get $200K+ / year, courtesy of government grants for tinkering with said deadly pathogens, I'd like to apologize on his behalf. Please don't cut our funding and definitely don't fire us all... and of course, don't look into the likely criminality of using a middle-man to sidestep a direct order by the US executive branch which prohibited tinkering with deadly pathogens."

"Extraordinary improbable", I'd like to introduce you to the "law of large numbers". Something of small probability, if repeated enough times becomes an inevitability. I work closely with a tech firm that will, over the next couple of years (crossing fingers), introduce an absolutely revolutionary low voltage tech the like of which currently doesn't exist even in theory. The optimal math for the invention could not even be theoretically computed, but once they had the baseline prototype working, it was simply a matter of time, $, and enough repetition to get a (near) perfect outcome.

If you read how they pass these coronaviruses through cell cultures--they repeat and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. There are a bunch of people talking about the procedure openly because it seems to be standard practice. Introduce, select the best bunch of 'mutants', sequence, replicate procedure with said subset-->smaller subset, repeat. As many times as necessary. They had 5 years. Besides, the gents commenting had probably ZERO visibility into what the Chinese were doing and how many reps they did, and of what. This was a Chinese lab, run by the Chinese government, where the French partners that built it left the project because French intelligence told them there was bioweapon research going on that wasn't part of the initial agreement. Furthermore, I remember one geneticists commented that ANY opinion on whether something is natural or not is completely worthless nowadays because they all KNOW how to make it naturally looking. After the first splice, you mutate it a couple of hundred times, while keeping the functionality you're solving for and none would be the wiser.

On the cleavage site--from the horse's mouth--they first bragged about it (their premise that SARS can be 'humanized' was proven correct) and then again, in a written document submitted to the US government, explained in plain English that they're doing it again to a larger subset of SARS relatives, including bat coronaviruses. I don't care if somebody who's conflicted as-is says it looks sloppy or not. You've got to understand that there are likely hundreds or perhaps thousands of variants they've catalogued. Maybe the dud one escaped. Maybe they were sloppy and that variant was done by a medical student--they had a bunch on staff.

Let's recap what our "sciency folks" did, based on their own published writings:
Phase 1 (2014-2015):
* The spliced a new spike protein optimized for humans onto SARS
* They tested how said spike protein reacted to:
-- live "human" mice
-- "human" cell cultures
* It worked--they gained the IP necessary to move on from there

Phase 2 (2015-2018):
* They spliced said working spike protein onto several other SARS-related viruses. The gent replying to Congress (while throwing EHA under the bus for breaking their grant restrictions on GoF, BTW) explained that a 97% genetic match of a virus they have spliced is proof that COVID is "natural".

Here's what I'd like them to do, if I were Congress--splice a harmless RNA virus that we have a vaccine for to better bind with human tissue and mutate it over several hundred or thousand iterations. Report back what the RNA match is. The other thing is--the RNA map of these viruses is tiny. To compare us and chimps (96% genetic match), which are incredibly complicated organisms that took 15 years to map with a tiny RNA sequence that was mapped over lunch break is preposterous. That was the other argument which smells like BS. BTW, show of hands if you believe that they can't splice a chimp with human DNA to create a viable hybrid, if ethics and laws did not prohibit them to. They can. BTW, they could do that in simulations over a decade ago. You know how they did it? Billions, upon billions of iterations run on a super-computer.

Anyhow--just as a reference point from where I'm personally coming from--part of my job is to deal with insanely smart people who are trying to get $. I've seen every trick on Wall Street and by R&D teams to BS an audience into believing. Mismatched scales that imply magnitude that isn't there, correlation graphs, abstract data sets, curve-fitting to perfection, pre-cognition, missing statistical data, "adjusted" statistical data, etc.

"Sciency folks" are human, just like everybody else, no matter how smart they are. I bet you some truly believe that thing is natural. I'm pretty sure some are self-delusional because the implications are otherwise horrific for their entire caste of very highly paid professionals.

Anyhow, I've come across several mathematical improbabilities, that when put together, suggest that this emerging naturally is a near zero possibility. They find the original carrier with receptors that are more sensitive to the spike than ours, I'll reserve the right to change my mind. Until that point, the wet market theory to me is full of propaganda BS meant to deflect blame.

Just to note, the story out of China is a mathematical impossibility. That covid showed up in Wuhan in December and killed 4600 over the next 6 weeks. The virus, particularly the original strain, just doesn't work like that. We have seen spikes play out all over the world and you just don't see that happening.

If it was natural, the virus jumped a long, long time before December. If it was there evolving, improving and spreading for quite some time that makes the data more plausible. That would fit more with the genetic data and dual original variants.

Of course, that brings up a completely different series of issues. If the world had known that the virus was around far longer they would have been looking for it and possibly prevented a lot of deaths.

And no, I do not rule out a lab leak. I just don't see anything beyond circumstantial evidence . . . which is probably all we will ever have.

and to reiterate, it doesn't matter as much as people seem to think it does whether a lab leak is to blame. either way, wet markets should not exist and labs should be employing strenuous safety precautions

i mean, if there was a lab leak due to unique, unforeseeable circumstances, that would inform future processes, but that's highly unlikely. any leak was very likely the product of carelessness or even malice

+ eleventy billion

Even if we didn't cause this through viral genetic tampering. WHY THE **** ARE WE INTENTIONALLY CREATING NEW VIRUSES THAT CAN INFECT HUMANS?!?!?

[Dresden]

Spoiler:

Not to be picky on the 'sciency folks', but their answers lack context and cannot be taken at face value. Not when they have an immense conflict of interest--both ethically and financially. The messenger in this case matters because the message can easily be warped by their own bias and experience. Off the top of my head:

* The gentleman talking about humanized mice has actually worked on coronaviruses being modified. What do you want him to say?

"My friend Pete, who happens to share grant money with me on messing around with deadly, super-infectious pathogens, sure as heck conjured up that chimera in his lab. From the entire community of geneticists that get $200K+ / year, courtesy of government grants for tinkering with said deadly pathogens, I'd like to apologize on his behalf. Please don't cut our funding and definitely don't fire us all... and of course, don't look into the likely criminality of using a middle-man to sidestep a direct order by the US executive branch which prohibited tinkering with deadly pathogens."

"Extraordinary improbable", I'd like to introduce you to the "law of large numbers". Something of small probability, if repeated enough times becomes an inevitability. I work closely with a tech firm that will, over the next couple of years (crossing fingers), introduce an absolutely revolutionary low voltage tech the like of which currently doesn't exist even in theory. The optimal math for the invention could not even be theoretically computed, but once they had the baseline prototype working, it was simply a matter of time, $, and enough repetition to get a (near) perfect outcome.

If you read how they pass these coronaviruses through cell cultures--they repeat and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. There are a bunch of people talking about the procedure openly because it seems to be standard practice. Introduce, select the best bunch of 'mutants', sequence, replicate procedure with said subset-->smaller subset, repeat. As many times as necessary. They had 5 years. Besides, the gents commenting had probably ZERO visibility into what the Chinese were doing and how many reps they did, and of what. This was a Chinese lab, run by the Chinese government, where the French partners that built it left the project because French intelligence told them there was bioweapon research going on that wasn't part of the initial agreement. Furthermore, I remember one geneticists commented that ANY opinion on whether something is natural or not is completely worthless nowadays because they all KNOW how to make it naturally looking. After the first splice, you mutate it a couple of hundred times, while keeping the functionality you're solving for and none would be the wiser.

On the cleavage site--from the horse's mouth--they first bragged about it (their premise that SARS can be 'humanized' was proven correct) and then again, in a written document submitted to the US government, explained in plain English that they're doing it again to a larger subset of SARS relatives, including bat coronaviruses. I don't care if somebody who's conflicted as-is says it looks sloppy or not. You've got to understand that there are likely hundreds or perhaps thousands of variants they've catalogued. Maybe the dud one escaped. Maybe they were sloppy and that variant was done by a medical student--they had a bunch on staff.

Let's recap what our "sciency folks" did, based on their own published writings:
Phase 1 (2014-2015):
* The spliced a new spike protein optimized for humans onto SARS
* They tested how said spike protein reacted to:
-- live "human" mice
-- "human" cell cultures
* It worked--they gained the IP necessary to move on from there

Phase 2 (2015-2018):
* They spliced said working spike protein onto several other SARS-related viruses. The gent replying to Congress (while throwing EHA under the bus for breaking their grant restrictions on GoF, BTW) explained that a 97% genetic match of a virus they have spliced is proof that COVID is "natural".

Here's what I'd like them to do, if I were Congress--splice a harmless RNA virus that we have a vaccine for to better bind with human tissue and mutate it over several hundred or thousand iterations. Report back what the RNA match is. The other thing is--the RNA map of these viruses is tiny. To compare us and chimps (96% genetic match), which are incredibly complicated organisms that took 15 years to map with a tiny RNA sequence that was mapped over lunch break is preposterous. That was the other argument which smells like BS. BTW, show of hands if you believe that they can't splice a chimp with human DNA to create a viable hybrid, if ethics and laws did not prohibit them to. They can. BTW, they could do that in simulations over a decade ago. You know how they did it? Billions, upon billions of iterations run on a super-computer.

Anyhow--just as a reference point from where I'm personally coming from--part of my job is to deal with insanely smart people who are trying to get $. I've seen every trick on Wall Street and by R&D teams to BS an audience into believing. Mismatched scales that imply magnitude that isn't there, correlation graphs, abstract data sets, curve-fitting to perfection, pre-cognition, missing statistical data, "adjusted" statistical data, etc.

"Sciency folks" are human, just like everybody else, no matter how smart they are. I bet you some truly believe that thing is natural. I'm pretty sure some are self-delusional because the implications are otherwise horrific for their entire caste of very highly paid professionals.

Anyhow, I've come across several mathematical improbabilities, that when put together, suggest that this emerging naturally is a near zero possibility. They find the original carrier with receptors that are more sensitive to the spike than ours, I'll reserve the right to change my mind. Until that point, the wet market theory to me is full of propaganda BS meant to deflect blame.

Just to note, the story out of China is a mathematical impossibility. That covid showed up in Wuhan in December and killed 4600 over the next 6 weeks. The virus, particularly the original strain, just doesn't work like that. We have seen spikes play out all over the world and you just don't see that happening.

If it was natural, the virus jumped a long, long time before December. If it was there evolving, improving and spreading for quite some time that makes the data more plausible. That would fit more with the genetic data and dual original variants.

Of course, that brings up a completely different series of issues. If the world had known that the virus was around far longer they would have been looking for it and possibly prevented a lot of deaths.

And no, I do not rule out a lab leak. I just don't see anything beyond circumstantial evidence . . . which is probably all we will ever have.

and to reiterate, it doesn't matter as much as people seem to think it does whether a lab leak is to blame. either way, wet markets should not exist and labs should be employing strenuous safety precautions

i mean, if there was a lab leak due to unique, unforeseeable circumstances, that would inform future processes, but that's highly unlikely. any leak was very likely the product of carelessness or even malice

I'm sorry, but I think it's going to be a bombshell of an international event if it turns out to be a lab leak. The animosity towards China that it will generate will have important consequences, IMO, politically, economically and scientifically. Especially if it turns out that China knew about this and was covering it up.

Also, I don't know if wet markets are a problem in themselves. It might be more all the exotic animals that are being sold (and have a chance to mix together and spread microbes). They may need to more heavily regulated, and safety measures put in place of some sort- like better sanitation for one, and more barriers put in place to keep animals apart from each other.

I catch of whiff of cultural bias in the outcry against wet markets, while very little is said about the industrial agricultural practices being spread around the world by US corporations that are just as likely to encourage new stains of diseases to develop. In particular, the practice of having large numbers of pigs and chickens in close proximity to each other, which gives viruses a good opportunity to jump from one species to another, and exchange genetic material with other viruses.

[Dresden]

Just to note, the story out of China is a mathematical impossibility. That covid showed up in Wuhan in December and killed 4600 over the next 6 weeks. The virus, particularly the original strain, just doesn't work like that. We have seen spikes play out all over the world and you just don't see that happening.

If it was natural, the virus jumped a long, long time before December. If it was there evolving, improving and spreading for quite some time that makes the data more plausible. That would fit more with the genetic data and dual original variants.

Of course, that brings up a completely different series of issues. If the world had known that the virus was around far longer they would have been looking for it and possibly prevented a lot of deaths.

And no, I do not rule out a lab leak. I just don't see anything beyond circumstantial evidence . . . which is probably all we will ever have.

and to reiterate, it doesn't matter as much as people seem to think it does whether a lab leak is to blame. either way, wet markets should not exist and labs should be employing strenuous safety precautions

i mean, if there was a lab leak due to unique, unforeseeable circumstances, that would inform future processes, but that's highly unlikely. any leak was very likely the product of carelessness or even malice

+ eleventy billion

Even if we didn't cause this through viral genetic tampering. WHY THE **** ARE WE INTENTIONALLY CREATING NEW VIRUSES THAT CAN INFECT HUMANS?!?!?

I don't think it's such a mystery- in order to learn more about the viruses and how they work, so as to be able to control them if they should jump to humans. Coronaviruses have previously caused several serious outbreaks, that's why they were being studied. Samples were collected from the wild as candidates that might have caused previous outbreaks, and that might cause new ones. The more we learn about them, obviously the better we will know how to fight them. And in fact that was the case with Covid- the Wuhan lab and Dr. Shi were the first to code the genome and which sped the development of a vaccine.

I'm not saying the risks outweigh the benefits. I'm sure this is going to be looked at in a much different light going forward. But at the same time, we don't want to be so afraid of coronaviruses that we stop doing any research at all on them.

Again, I'm not saying I'm in favor of the research that was being undertaken- just that it's not that difficult to understand why it was being done.

[Dresden]

Just to note, the story out of China is a mathematical impossibility. That covid showed up in Wuhan in December and killed 4600 over the next 6 weeks. The virus, particularly the original strain, just doesn't work like that. We have seen spikes play out all over the world and you just don't see that happening.
.

The "story out of China" is, from what I understand, consistent with known data. December is when it first came on the radar in China as a novel coronavirus. I don't think anyone is saying it didn't exist before then- just that that is when it became noticed and identified in the lab.

One study here: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009620

finds that:

While the first case of COVID-19 was officially identified in early December, 2019 [1], it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 had spilled over into humans much earlier. Nsoesie et al. [3] identified significant changes in hospital and search engine traffic in Wuhan during August to October, 2019, suggesting a possible earlier existence of COVID-19. The recent joint WHO-China study on the global origin of SARS-CoV-2 found that, based on a review of molecular evidence, most point estimates place the most recent ancestor at between mid-November and early December, with a range from late September to early December [5]. Our results support the existing evidence and suggest that the first case of COVID-19 would have been sometime between early October and mid-November. Further, our results suggest the most likely timing of the first case to be November 17, 2019.

I believe the method used here is mathematical, and extrapolates backwards from the cases that were being reported- they go on to estimate a timeline for when Covid arrived in countries around the world.

[Dresden]

I also think the wet market origin doesn't hold water--it was just where it took off.

.

I never thought there was a "wet market" origin theory that claimed the virus mutated and jumped to humans in the market itself, rather that it had done so in a rural or wild setting, had then also jumped to an intermediate animal, which was then brought to the Wuhan market to be sold, from where it infected people- possibly a worker or a seller at the market, who then passed it along to others, and started the ball rolling.

[dice]

Just to note, the story out of China is a mathematical impossibility. That covid showed up in Wuhan in December and killed 4600 over the next 6 weeks. The virus, particularly the original strain, just doesn't work like that. We have seen spikes play out all over the world and you just don't see that happening.

If it was natural, the virus jumped a long, long time before December. If it was there evolving, improving and spreading for quite some time that makes the data more plausible. That would fit more with the genetic data and dual original variants.

Of course, that brings up a completely different series of issues. If the world had known that the virus was around far longer they would have been looking for it and possibly prevented a lot of deaths.

And no, I do not rule out a lab leak. I just don't see anything beyond circumstantial evidence . . . which is probably all we will ever have.

and to reiterate, it doesn't matter as much as people seem to think it does whether a lab leak is to blame. either way, wet markets should not exist and labs should be employing strenuous safety precautions

i mean, if there was a lab leak due to unique, unforeseeable circumstances, that would inform future processes, but that's highly unlikely. any leak was very likely the product of carelessness or even malice

I'm sorry, but I think it's going to be a bombshell of an international event if it turns out to be a lab leak.

of course. i'm saying it shouldn't matter

The animosity towards China that it will generate will have important consequences, IMO, politically, economically and scientifically. Especially if it turns out that China knew about this and was covering it up.

china owns us. there's already animosity and very little is done

Also, I don't know if wet markets are a problem in themselves. It might be more all the exotic animals that are being sold (and have a chance to mix together and spread microbes). They may need to more heavily regulated, and safety measures put in place of some sort- like better sanitation for one, and more barriers put in place to keep animals apart from each other.

I catch of whiff of cultural bias in the outcry against wet markets, while very little is said about the industrial agricultural practices being spread around the world by US corporations that are just as likely to encourage new stains of diseases to develop. In particular, the practice of having large numbers of pigs and chickens in close proximity to each other, which gives viruses a good opportunity to jump from one species to another, and exchange genetic material with other viruses.

wet markets, factory farming...it's all destructive and loathsome

[Dresden]

wet markets, factory farming...it's all destructive and loathsome

Agreed!!

[GetBuLLish]

I stated somewhere earlier in this tread that on the topic of covid vaccine mandates, comparisons to other vaccine mandates are completely misleading. Doug had asked me how. Here's my response:

First and foremost, the Covid vaccines are significantly less effective than the other vaccines, almost to the extent that they should be placed in separate categories. To be clear, the vaccines are incredibly effective at decreasing hospitality and fatality rates (though this effectiveness appears to wane pretty rapidly; more on that below). However, the vaccines just are not effective at stopping infection and transmission, completely contrary to what Fauci and others promised when these vaccines were first coming out. In fact, at the population level, the evidence shows that vaccine rates have no effect on Covid rates. For example, see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7:

At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people. Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days.

This is incomparable to the other mandated vaccines, which actually do effectively stop transmission and infection.

Second, the other vaccines that are mandated throughout the country are administered to young children. This effectively makes the issue of natural immunity versus vaccine immunity irrelevant. That’s the not case here where we are vaccinating adults, many of whom have prior natural immunity. And the evidence is overwhelming that natural immunity provides much greater protection than the Covid vaccines. See, e.g.:

Read on Twitter

Frankly, I find the idea of mandating a person with natural immunity to get a Covid vaccine or otherwise destroy their livelihood to be pure evil. No exaggeration, I find that to be evil, and it makes me realize how easily humans have been manipulated into supporting evil atrocities throughout history.

Third, as I alluded to above, contrary to what was promised from the outset, the evidence is mounting that the Covid vaccines lose their effectiveness in as little as 8 months. I know at least Israel is requiring booster shots and only defining “fully vaccinated” to include people who have gotten booster shots. That approach appears to be coming to the US. And this is completely different to the other mandated vaccines, which at minimum provide 10 years worth of protection (with evidence suggesting much longer protection, including possibly lifetime protection).

Fourth, I haven’t done or seen a side-by-side analysis of the side effects of the Covid vaccines versus the other vaccines, but it definitely appears that the Covid shots have a much worse side effect profile. This seems especially true with younger people, with some European countries even suspending the Moderna vaccine for people under 30. See https://www.graydc.com/2021/10/07/some-european-countries-suspend-moderna-shots-those-30-under/.

This ties into the fact that these vaccines were approved and distributed in record time, and as far as I’m aware, these Covid vaccine mandates have been instituted much closer in time to initial distribution of the vaccine than all other prior vaccine mandates.

Fifth, and possibly the most critical difference, there was a much greater level of confidence in the public health establishment when prior vaccine mandates were instituted than right now, and rightfully so. People who are angry at the vaccine hesitant should direct their frustration at public health officials, politicians, and media members who have completely lit their credibility on fire. Want to be angry? How about directing that anger at the public health experts who, after months of telling everyone to stay home or else risk killing their grandparents, publicly praised thousands of people gathering together during the BLM protests/riots. Or go be angry at the public health officials who constantly advocated six feet of distance, despite that figure being completed pulled from their asses with little to no scientific basis. Or go be angry at the people who shut down schools despite the overwhelming evidence showing that children are at minimal risk of significant Covid illness and much less likely than adults to transmit the disease (facts which nearly all of Europe recognized over a year ago). Or go be angry at the maniacal focus on masks, despite the mounting evidence that masks (especially cloth masks) provide little to no protection from Covid. Or go be angry at Fauci and others immediately attempting to discredit the lab leak theory (leading to social media companies banning people from discussing it), despite that theory being, by far, the most likely explanation for the source of Sars-Cov-2. Or go be angry at many of the absolutely preposterous Covid regulations that have no earthly basis in science (such as mask mandates outdoors or requiring people to wear a mask when standing up at a restaurant but not when they are sitting down).

Or be angry at the use of draconian lockdowns, which the evidence shows have had minimal effect on Covid transmission but a massive detriment to society. See, e.g.:

Read on Twitter

Or go be angry at the near refusal of public health officials to advocate exercise and activity, despite obesity being one of the largest predictors of severe Covid illness.

Trust has to be earned. And mandating someone put something in their body requires a lot of trust, which our health establishment has simply not earned.

So yeah, I think the comparisons to other vaccine mandates are disingenuous.

[coldfish]

I had been seeing people claim Israel showed vaccinations don't work?

I came across this, someone compiled data from Israel, and he goes through how he built his charts with images included. Seems to show vaccines do work and boosters are really beneficial for 60+.

1) I downloaded and analyzed data containing daily COVID-19 deaths and critical infection numbers from the Israeli ministry of health dashboard from August 10 and September 8, overall and split out by <60yr and >60yr, to assess effectiveness of boosters and vaccination without boosters relative to unvaccinated.

2) Because of age confounding, it is crucial to stratify by age groups, and further to remove children from the <60yr group; otherwise Simpson's paradox makes vaccines look like they are not effective in protecting against COVID-19 deaths at all.

3) After doing this adjustment, we see the vaccines and boosters are strongly protecting against both COVID-19 deaths and critical infections.

4) For the >60 population, we see ~70% effectiveness for vaccinated, which increases to >93% for boosted, agreeing with other public reports showing boosters reducing serious cases in the older population.

5) For the 12yr-60yr population, we see ~90% effectiveness for vaccinated, whether boosted or not.

6) However, there may still be a remaining "Simpson's effect" attenuating the estimated effectiveness of boosters in the 12yr-60yr group, since most boosted are in the 40-60yr group that has higher risk of death and critical disease, so the effectiveness of boosters might in fact be >>90%.

https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/what-do-new-israeli-data-say-about-effect-of-vaccines-boosters-vs-death-critical-severe-disease

Sorry to quote you on a different board Nutty Nats Fan but your comments were appropriate here and I wanted to give you credit for the work.

.....

Regardless, the data out of Israel clearly shows that the vaccines work to prevent severe cases, even 8 months after vaccination. As has been discussed, antibodies may fall to zero and you may get infected but the vaccine is preventing serious illness very well.

Also, this is why the US is hesitating on giving boosters to people under 65. Not a lot of evidence that it does much other than give you a short term boost to your antibodies.

[micromonkey]

Set aside the mandate--what is being asked is to get a shot with a safety profile similar to other vaccines in the past. People are trying to cut deaths so we don't have people being sent away because there are no beds.

As already discussed yes some countries are not using Moderna because they have better options for younger groups (lower sides)--its the ethical choice, I'll be interested in seeing the risk rate reduction. I am all for risk benefit analysis of vaccines and sex/age cohorts and administering the lowest risk. Israel is also giving AZ to people who had a reaction to Pfizer on first shot. We are just bumbling around.

As mentioned numerous times the smallpox vaccine had a higher cardiomyopathy rate.

As to infection rates re: vaccines--its likely it only slows the rate slightly as people can still show a positive PCR.
But comparing UK/Israel to non OECD countries is ridiculous--the UK and Israel will not only have much more testing and reporting but will tell you sub variant information. Rates in most non-OECD countries are closer to guesses--they don't have the PCR tests. They can't seriously and honestly be comparing reporting in Vietnam and South Africa and comparing it to the data coming out of Israel.

If you want disingenuous -there is for sure collinearity in vaccination rate and PCR test rate--and the author has to know this.
And also--last 7 days? Are you kidding me--how about last 6 mo-What should be compared is surplus deaths and vaccination rate--that will paint a very different picture. As many non-OECD do not report COVID as a cause either out of not knowing or not wanting to admit.

Again lets say the silent part out loud--you are advocating don't do anything and accept 5x the death rate for zero lockdown (Sweden vs Scandanavia)

And death rate 11x higher vaccinated vs unvaccinated.

So you are saying these higher death rates are superior and less evil than getting a shot and wearing a mask--I respectfully disagree.

I find the base of the "freedom" arguments to be idiotic. This is not about freedom--this is a bunch of whiny toddlers crying and wanting to do whatever they want, when they want and regardless of the impact on other people.

Its a toddler crying he doesn't want to eat his broccoli. Eat it--you'll live. During the war we had rationing and rules and society went on and we resumed normal rules afterwards--I can imagine the backlash today. And while it isn't a traditional war--we have lost more people than ALL combat deaths in all US wars combined.

[Dresden]

Or go be angry at the near refusal of public health officials to advocate exercise and activity, despite obesity being one of the largest predictors of severe Covid illness.

I would like to see the media and health officials make a bigger deal out of this, but be real- getting someone to lose 75 pounds, or begin and stick with an exercise program are vastly more difficult than getting someone to come in and get a couple of injections. And even if it was possible to do the former, it takes time to see the effects and isn't going to help someone avoid Covid in the near term. The vaccines, OTH, go into full effect in 14 days. Even with just one shot, you have about 60-70% immunity after 14 days.

[MrSparkle]

I stated somewhere earlier in this tread that on the topic of covid vaccine mandates, comparisons to other vaccine mandates are completely misleading. Doug had asked me how. Here's my response:

First and foremost, the Covid vaccines are significantly less effective than the other vaccines, almost to the extent that they should be placed in separate categories. To be clear, the vaccines are incredibly effective at decreasing hospitality and fatality rates (though this effectiveness appears to wane pretty rapidly; more on that below). However, the vaccines just are not effective at stopping infection and transmission, completely contrary to what Fauci and others promised when these vaccines were first coming out. In fact, at the population level, the evidence shows that vaccine rates have no effect on Covid rates. For example, see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7:

At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people. Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days.

This is incomparable to the other mandated vaccines, which actually do effectively stop transmission and infection.

Second, the other vaccines that are mandated throughout the country are administered to young children. This effectively makes the issue of natural immunity versus vaccine immunity irrelevant. That’s the not case here where we are vaccinating adults, many of whom have prior natural immunity. And the evidence is overwhelming that natural immunity provides much greater protection than the Covid vaccines. See, e.g.:

Read on Twitter

Frankly, I find the idea of mandating a person with natural immunity to get a Covid vaccine or otherwise destroy their livelihood to be pure evil. No exaggeration, I find that to be evil, and it makes me realize how easily humans have been manipulated into supporting evil atrocities throughout history.

Third, as I alluded to above, contrary to what was promised from the outset, the evidence is mounting that the Covid vaccines lose their effectiveness in as little as 8 months. I know at least Israel is requiring booster shots and only defining “fully vaccinated” to include people who have gotten booster shots. That approach appears to be coming to the US. And this is completely different to the other mandated vaccines, which at minimum provide 10 years worth of protection (with evidence suggesting much longer protection, including possibly lifetime protection).

Fourth, I haven’t done or seen a side-by-side analysis of the side effects of the Covid vaccines versus the other vaccines, but it definitely appears that the Covid shots have a much worse side effect profile. This seems especially true with younger people, with some European countries even suspending the Moderna vaccine for people under 30. See https://www.graydc.com/2021/10/07/some-european-countries-suspend-moderna-shots-those-30-under/.

This ties into the fact that these vaccines were approved and distributed in record time, and as far as I’m aware, these Covid vaccine mandates have been instituted much closer in time to initial distribution of the vaccine than all other prior vaccine mandates.

Fifth, and possibly the most critical difference, there was a much greater level of confidence in the public health establishment when prior vaccine mandates were instituted than right now, and rightfully so. People who are angry at the vaccine hesitant should direct their frustration at public health officials, politicians, and media members who have completely lit their credibility on fire. Want to be angry? How about directing that anger at the public health experts who, after months of telling everyone to stay home or else risk killing their grandparents, publicly praised thousands of people gathering together during the BLM protests/riots. Or go be angry at the public health officials who constantly advocated six feet of distance, despite that figure being completed pulled from their asses with little to no scientific basis. Or go be angry at the people who shut down schools despite the overwhelming evidence showing that children are at minimal risk of significant Covid illness and much less likely than adults to transmit the disease (facts which nearly all of Europe recognized over a year ago). Or go be angry at the maniacal focus on masks, despite the mounting evidence that masks (especially cloth masks) provide little to no protection from Covid. Or go be angry at Fauci and others immediately attempting to discredit the lab leak theory (leading to social media companies banning people from discussing it), despite that theory being, by far, the most likely explanation for the source of Sars-Cov-2. Or go be angry at many of the absolutely preposterous Covid regulations that have no earthly basis in science (such as mask mandates outdoors or requiring people to wear a mask when standing up at a restaurant but not when they are sitting down).

Or be angry at the use of draconian lockdowns, which the evidence shows have had minimal effect on Covid transmission but a massive detriment to society. See, e.g.:

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Or go be angry at the near refusal of public health officials to advocate exercise and activity, despite obesity being one of the largest predictors of severe Covid illness.

Trust has to be earned. And mandating someone put something in their body requires a lot of trust, which our health establishment has simply not earned.

So yeah, I think the comparisons to other vaccine mandates are disingenuous.

*scanning…. Sighing*

“Vaccines are evil.”

Yeah. Microbiologists, physicists and doctors must be evil too. We would’ve preferred life in 1329 AD I think.

The 57% fully vaccinated CDC report is a nightmare. Only reason we’re still dealing with this stupid virus is because almost half of this country has injected too many chem trails (joke intended).

One of the least healthy 1st world populations on the planet has decided to be “health conscious” with bogus data claims. Check out the rates of myocarditis in Moderna vaccinated patients versus Covid-infected patients.