Internet platforms have had a sense of humor failure about the Germany-based playwright, author, and satirist, one of many zapped for criticism of pandemic policies
I am still trying to sift through the legacy of COVID. The real legacy isn't the virus itself but the reaction to it, which has exposed enormous fault lines in just about everything in our societies in the modern west. What stands out as perhaps most troubling is the clear, quasi totalitarian diktat on what could or could not be discussed.
The origin of the virus - for all of 2020 anyone suggesting that it could have escaped from a lab rather than naturally occurring was immediately branded a crackpot, and not just a crackpot, but a dangerous and ignorant racist too. A common-sense interpretation of the events of early 2020 clearly pointed towards a lab escape as a major and realistic origin for COVID-19, which is backed up by the Chinese government's behaviors and actions in Wuhan at the time. Common sense isn't always right, but both the establishment governments worldwide and the "scientific community" immediately shut down any discussions on a lab escape despite enormous conflict of interests, and even outright lied about it, as Nicholas Wade, former science writer for the NYT, so brilliantly exposed in his long article on COVID on Medium: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038. Now we know there's a staggering conflict of interest among many scientists going right up to Fauci himself. Why are they still being excused and why aren't the mainstream media asking them awkward questions about their roles in allowing the virus to emerge in the first place?
Then we have the actual virus itself. Why are we still wearing masks outside? Not a single covid transmission has been traced back to an outdoor transmission between two people. Not one. We've known since pretty early on that COVID transmits through prolonged exposure in closed spaces. In short, you don't get COVID from walking past someone on the sidewalk. That's the scientific fact for you. But we've created a world where solitary schoolchildren (who are the least affected by COVID) wear masks while walking alone through an empty neighborhood. We've created a world where diners can dine in small tables but their waiters have to wear masks. Where's the logic in this?
Then we have the hypocrisies in calling out all references to Covid as the Wuhan or Chinese flu as racist and bigoted, yet the same people have no problems referring to the UK variant or South African variant or Indian variant....
The list goes on. The real problem is that we live in an age of experts, and COVID was created and allowed to escape by the experts, and it was covered up by the experts, and yet we have people still divided between those who shout to everyone we must listen to the experts and do what they tell us and who get incensed when someone simply asks how we know the experts are right (especially as time goes on, it's increasingly clear they are not), versus those who actually dare say, wait, hold on, there's a lot of problems with this policy or that policy, this doesn't make sense, why aren't we allowed to ask what happened in Wuhan and so forth.
Sometimes I wonder if we're starting to witness the beginning of the collapse of the expert class as a moral and political force. This certainly extends to all facets of modern America, in politics, media, culture for a variety of reasons. Contrary to what some people would like, this isn't necessarily a good thing. But the experts also may have brought it upon themselves in their blindness and arrogance of their assumptions.
"Sometimes I wonder if we're starting to witness the beginning of the collapse of the expert class as a moral and political force. This certainly extends to all facets of modern America, in politics, media, culture for a variety of reasons. Contrary to what some people would like, this isn't necessarily a good thing. But the experts also may have brought it upon themselves in their blindness and arrogance of their assumptions."
I completely agree. Also known as the Professional Middle Class. GlobalCap has also very damaged Universities... and learning in general.
There is also the denial of the efficacy of inexpensive remedies that research has shown to have prophylactic as well as anti-inflammatory value in treating COVID; ivermectin comes to mind:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYv30g7TKVM
The cocktail of Hydroxycloroquin, ivermectin, zinc, and Z-pack has saved thousands of people from any negative results from Covid 19. It is an effective, inexpensive, and safe treatment when treated early.
Sure ;-)) - and so is Ben Carson's and My-Pillow idiot's oleander oil extract. Despite that snake oil guaranteed cure, Ben Carson was publicly praising/groveling that Trump gave him a vaccine and saved his life after he gor Covid-19
All in all -- we should ALL be immensely thankful that Trump is GONE
Nicholas Wade is wrong. And pretty goddamned stupid. Here's why.
>1. Why do we know that there is no indication of GOF being part of COVID-19?
-Because of the sequences in nature, and over time the trail of people infected. It probably emerged in humans in China, possibly related to some cases that may have been immune compromised, allowing the virus to mutate for a long period in a few people.
>2. Why did China censor Chinese social media in October 2019 who talked of severe, suspicious pneumonia outbreaks. China punished a Doctor to silence when he raised alarm in November. He died of the virus as many others disappeared who spoke up. Why? -Because that's how bureaucrats roll everywhere, and especially in China. In the USA, hospitals have fired doctors and threaten to blackball any doctor for criticizing treatment or lack of PPE, etc.. This signifies nothing.
-Also, keep in mind that the Trump administration was attacking China verbally, and started a trade war. China has very good reason to be paranoid.
>3. Virologists are conspiring to do GOF experiments that endanger us all!
-Bullcrap. GOF experiments are how we find out how viruses are likely to mutate so we can create responses BEFORE it happens in nature. Yeah, I am one of those who SUPPORT GOF. Why do I do that? Because I KNOW that nature is doing GOF as we speak. ALL THE TIME! Deal with it. It's reality.
>4. US aiding Chinese research, blah, blah, cue rabid sino-xenophobia.
Mr. Wade, how the hell do you think that we can get influence in China? Hmm? By blabbering your xenophobic claptrap? No. That doesn't work. NEWS FLASH! You make friends by ... TA DA! Being friendly! Didn't your mommy ever tell you that? WTAF?
>Conclusion. Case substantial.
No. It's not substantial at all because the science does not support it.
** I will continue now with address to some of the other garbage that gets blabbered about by so-called journalists.
>Why did China enforce lockdown measures internally but allowed international travel, thus spreading the virus worldwide? Why didn’t the WHO speak out, but instead defended China’s marvellous transparency?
-Because every nation did the same thing! The USA has not shut down international travel - ever. And the USA became the worst nation in the world for spreading COVID-19. Ass clowns R US!
-I note that China notified the world before it had a single clear death from this new disease. Compare that with USA's behavior since.
>We lost over 4 months control of the spread because of China.
-The first death was in mid-November, but this wasn't established as probable until February 2020, and fairly well confirmed by June 2020. New diseases don't have a neon sign that says, "HEY! NEW DISEASE!" They look like any other acute respiratory illness in that season. There are reports that the CIA assessed this as a potentially deadly pandemic in November 2019. The CIA notified NATO. But like MMWR report, there are potential diseases all the time. I'm sure CIA had identified others that didn't pan out.
-FYI In any flu season, acute respiratory illness (which leads to pneumonia) causes huge numbes of deaths. 30,000-40,000 annually in the USA. It's not remarkable at all.
A normal season is 20% flu, 20% rhinoviruses and adenoviruses, 5% coronaviruses, 5% other. The "other" 50% is bacterial. (Staph, H. influenzae, etc.)
>According to the Washington post in January 2018, USA embassy members visited the laboratory and alerted Washington of the insufficient security measures for a laboratory studying Bat Corona Viruses.
All the science says there is no suggestion it's an escaped bat virus. It's been circulating in other animals and humans (in less severe form) for as long as 30 years. Deal with it.
Nicholas Wade is a former 30 year science writer for the NYT and a prominent and extremely knowledgeable person on the subject. His article is filled with credible information and facts about COVID-19, viruses as well as the people involved. He is not the only person who thinks it is quite credible the virus escaped from the lab rather than emerging naturally. The former head of the CDC does, too, among others.
You are a random internet poster telling people to "deal with it" while nothing you post disproves with any certainty the theory the virus may have escaped from the lab (and most of what you say reads like copied cherry picked distorted information). As Wade himself said we don't know for certain it came from the lab, but there are many, many strong implications it could have. Indeed, for otherwise it would have to be an enormous coincidence. A shockingly great and enormous coincidence.
The real question is why are you so insistent it could not have escaped from the lab? Why? The tone of your message suggests you are emotionally involved in not wanting the virus to have escaped from the lab. Perhaps too emotionally involved.
It's tempting to think perhaps we have one of the hacks deployed by the CPP globally to post on internet forums, but that is, of course, pure speculation ;)
I am insistent because there is zero evidence that it did "escape" aside from innuendo like Wade's nonsense. I explained why above. You didn't read very well. Go back and read. The answer is there. 10 points if you can post why.
I could care less these days about the credentials of the NYT. It's all but an anti-credential these days, just like citing the credential "I write for Fox!" isn't a recommndation. But that doesn't matter here. In that piece, Wade cobbled together some things and most of them have blindingly obvious answers that should have been apparent to him.
">3. Virologists are conspiring to do GOF experiments that endanger us all!
-Bullcrap. GOF experiments are how we find out how viruses are likely to mutate so we can create responses BEFORE it happens in nature. Yeah, I am one of those who SUPPORT GOF. Why do I do that? Because I KNOW that nature is doing GOF as we speak. ALL THE TIME! Deal with it. It's reality."
Then what do you think about the moratorium that was placed on GoF research from 2014-2017? Was it totally unnecessary? If so, why?
For myself, in addition to Racaniello's points, the idea that we can prevent biological warfare, or prevent crossover of diseases like COVID-19 into humans, by refusing to look at possibilities is quite insane. It's equivalent to telling soldiers that they must wear blindfolds while out on patrol. That this is a dominant view, and was completely dominant during the cold war does not make it any better. The result of that policy was that the USSR's Vector created a set of biological weapons and ICBM delivery systems incorporated into their nuclear war doctrine. That doctrine was to follow up the nuclear strikes days later with aerosol delivered engineered bioweapons.
Today, the threat is non-state actors. Those actors have tried, and will continue to try, to deploy biological weapons as simple as rabies or Ebola, or as complex as god-knows-what. Since WWII, only non-state actors have actually used biological weapons. And it has been the academic science community, and journalists who have bent over backwards to minimize or to excuse events like the salad bar in Oregon. It wasn't until Rajneesh himself found out what the women who guarded him had done and called in the police that anything was believed.
I think these academics are ivory tower naive. This also is the norm. Few things show this better than the NSABB, which has done nothing except wildly exacerbate any possible concern by shouting in the ears of our enemies exactly what they should try to do. That the board has done less damage is due to the extremity of naivete of its members, who have about as much understanding of terrorist psychology, motives, capability, etc. as a pet duck.
Brian P. Hanley (2013) Security in a Goldfish Bowl: the NSABBs Exacerbation of the Bioterrorism Threat.
Yes! My dear! The evil gAtES fOunDAtioN is coming to get US! With 5G eNaBLed nanochips! Mixed into vaccines that take over your brains! Bill Gates is our master. You will know the darkness known only to the vaccinated! Expose this to ALL!!!!! (With lots of explanation points. Some people call them exclamations, but they are explainers. For those who are lacking paint.)
What Racaniello says about it. https://www.virology.ws/2019/04/04/avian-influenza-virus-transmission-experiments-proceed-as-they-should/ ...there is no evidence that the work will produce dangerous viruses. Yet these individuals, and others, use the scare tactic of describing theoretical dangers to mobilize opinion against the work. As I have written before, the work has clear benefits that the detractors fail to acknowledge.
Over 4 years ago, when the Fouchier-Kawaoka experiments were revealed, the objections of a few lead to a moratorium on this work. A careful review of the experiments followed which included panel discussions and a risk-benefit analysis of the work. Procedures were put in place to ensure that such gain-of-function experiments would receive proper review and be done under safe containment. After a long review process, the work was allowed to resume. The process was not kept secret as suggested in the articles...
Also, from the Scientific American article I linked is the following:
"But the decision to lift the moratorium did not sit well with scientists who have long warned of the risks of such research—and questioned its benefits.
“I am not persuaded that the work is of greater potential benefit than potential harm,” said molecular biologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, who has argued that U.S. labs working with dangerous pathogens regularly suffer serious biosafety lapses. Experiments to create enhanced viruses, he and others argue, could lead to the pathogens’ accidental release, most likely by a lab worker becoming infected unknowingly and then walking out the door.
“A human is better at spreading viruses than an aerosol” that might breach a lab’s physical containment, said epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who has calculated that the risk of a lab-acquired infection sparking a pandemic is greater than recognized. “The engineering is not what I’m worried about. Accident after accident has been the result of human mistakes.”
He nevertheless called the new policy “a small step forward” because it sets up a formal process for evaluating whether the controversial experiments should receive federal funding. But because geneticallymodified viruses “risk creating an accidental pandemic” and “have done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemic,” he said, “my view is that a review of the sort proposed should disallow such experiments.”
In fact, he argued that the moratorium on federal funding of the experiments should be extended to cover those conducted with private money."
Are your credentials on the matter equal to or greater than those of the scientists who oppose GoF research? Genuinely curious. If not, what are your bona fides with respect to virology?
But because genetically modified viruses “risk creating an accidental pandemic” and “have done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemic,” he said, “my view is that a review of the sort proposed should disallow such experiments.”
If a Harvard epidemiologist is against GoF and says that in fact such research has done ALMOST NOTHING to improve our preparedness, why are you such a strong proponent and can you present counter-arguments that address the concern stated by all of the people interviewed by Scientific American, namely accidental escape from the lab?
P.S. - The two articles you linked on avian influenza seem to have contradictory dates. In the one about the lifting of the original GoF pause, it says the following:
"In early 2012 influenza virus researchers around the world decided to stop working on highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus. This decision came after work from the Fouchier and Kawaoka laboratories revealed the isolation of influenza H5N1 strains that can be passed among ferrets by aerosol. The moratorium on influenza H5N1 virus research has now been lifted, as described in a letter from influenza virologists to Science and Nature." (article dated 23 January 2013 by Vincent Racaniello)
"there is no evidence that the work will produce dangerous viruses"
Then there is no point in doing the work. The sole objective of GOF research is to produce a virus that is more pathogenic and virulent so that it may be studied, and treatments developed prior to a natural outbreak.
I can only conclude that you are either a run-of-the-mill internet troll or someone working on behalf of a state. Either way, your input into this argument is dismissible.
So in your own words, who was the main driver behind the LATEST GoF moratorium that was lifted in 2017 (not the H5N1 moratorium from 2012*) and who publicly opposed it? It would seem that proponents of GoF, including Anthony Fauci and other prominent virologists, would have more "say" in the matter, wouldn't it? And yet it was paused for 4 years (not that I believe the work was discontinued at Fort Detrick and other governments' bio-weapons labs).
*-Four years? It looks more like 8 years from your article. It clearly states that the Fouchier-Kawaoka experiments happened prior to 2012 and that the H5N1 moratorium was in effect from early 2012 to January of 2013. That's not the moratorium I was talking about and I provided at least one link. From roughly 2014 to 2017. Paywall warning: https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/moratorium-on-gain-of-function-research-36564
After the past few years, it continues to amaze me people are busy chasing rainbows like "determining the origin of a new coronovirus", as you do here. This absurd desire to place the blame so to speak, is wildly over emphasized.
Based on your own evidence, the virus existed in the wild. Whether it escaped from a lab that was studying it, or migrated on its own into the general population, hardly matters does it? From a practical perspective? Maybe the lab accidentally released it, or maybe it released itself. Who really cares? From any practical perspective, it just doesn't matter.
What continues to amaze and frankly elude me, is why no one is asking questions about the absurdly large and grossly ineffective measures taken in response?
There's no doubt at all that so called "N-95" masks are completely useless in blocking the transmission of a virus. The pores in those masks are literally orders or magnitude larger than the virus, which just blow right by the masks without even slowing down.
Next we have the magnificently overstated menace represented by the virus. In early propaganda, it was purported to be lethal in 0.03 to 0.05% of the infected. This proved to be horribly inaccurate; a blatant attempt to terrorize the world population.
Why isn't anyone questioning this? Honestly, at this point I'm pretty sure we can agree the virus exists and it came from somewhere. Where it came from is a mostly accademic pursuit. But the horribly overblown threat? That wasn't pure accident and frankly reeks of intentional manipulation. Who was behind that?
Early in its spread, it became clear people with type O blood weren't susceptible to the extreme symptoms caused by the virus. Was this presented to the general public? No, it wasn't. If you happened to be a reader of the New England Journal of Medicine, you would have seen it, however there just aren't that many folks in the general population that read the NEJM regularly, and even the NEJM didn't make an attempt to promote those findings.
I'm fairly certain this is the natural course for a "news" media that runs on the axiom "if it bleeds, it leads". Their sole interest was in selling "eyeball time" to the great unwashed and they played the story for all it was worth.
That's the sad state of affairs with the so called "Main Stream Media", and it should be patently obvious that the Fourth Estate has openly and unabashedly failed our society.
I'm not certain whether the lab hypothesis or the bat hypothesis is correct, but I hardly see how thinking the virus escaped from a US-China joint research lab is more "sino-xenophobic" than thinking it escaped from a traditional Chinese "wet market".
It was part of the Trump administration's cold warring with China and at the very least an attempt to pin the full blame on Chinese negligence as part of the propaganda war between the two countries.
BRAVO Brian -- fully supported by ALL other facts and sources !! Just ignore feeble-minded -- by now they are beyond hope. Yet -- we have 600K dead (20% of world total with only 4% of world population).
Our country has been a complete failure on Covid-19 control -- many lunatics can't comprehend this because we are soo "special". Although rapid actions and responses required have been known for 100+ years everywhere except in a backward US country where even evolution is "controversial" and "gingerly" being taught in schools, if at all
Not only a failure, but possibly the SOURCE of COVID-19. The tweet has a graphic of a Facebook post by a guy who says he worked at Fort Detrick on coronavirus and SARS research.
With you on the failures of American and European governments, but the nature of the outbreak is far from decided and may never be. But this is a good rundown on the former issue:
You've bought into the propaganda full-bore. If you're going to pin it on China, at least cite the actual history of the virus. It, or a very close variant, of it was discovered in a mine there in 2012.
"One of the very earliest scientific papers from the COVID-19 pandemic era now has over 11,000 citations. Appearing in the scientific journal Nature on February 3rd 2020, Zhou et al., 2020 reported the genome sequence of a novel coronavirus isolated from patients with atypical pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Its senior author was leading coronavirus researcher Zheng-li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (the WIV). Along with what we now call SARS-CoV-2, her paper also reported the genome sequence of a closely related (96.2% identical) bat virus. The authors called this virus RaTG13. To this day RaTG13 is still the closest known viral genome by far to SARS-CoV-2.
RaTG13 came from the freezers of the WIV.
In one sense, there is nothing unusual about that. Researchers often have old samples stored away and the WIV has the largest collection of coronaviruses in the world. On the other hand, Wuhan is considered an unlikely locality for a coronavirus outbreak.
However, the two sentences in Zhou et al., (2020) describing RaTG13 allayed any fears:
“We then found that a short region of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) from a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13)–which was previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan province–showed high sequence identity to 2019-nCoV. We carried out full-length sequencing on this RNA sample (GISAID accession number EPI_ISL_402131).”
This statement clearly implied that, prior to the pandemic, WIV researchers had only ever studied a ‘short’ fragment of RaTG13, that the fragment was unpublished (since no prior description was cited), and that no recent research had been carried out on RaTG13 or its sample. Consequently, a lab leak involving RaTG13 was implausible.
But all these inferences turned out to be untrue. Zhou et al. was one of the pandemic’s key misinformation superspreaders. In August 2020, two researchers, Monali Rahalkar and Rahul Bahulikar, published a preprint in which they reported that they had accessed the underlying sequencing files for RaTG13. As first noticed by Twitter user Francisco A. de Ribeira, some were dated from 2017 and others from 2018. Moreover, these early RaTG13 sequences went far beyond a short fragment, encompassing most of the genome (Rahalkar and Bahulikar, 2020a).
In November 2020 Nature published an addendum to Zhou et al. in which Zheng-li Shi and her co-authors conceded these points. They wrote:
“In 2018…..we performed further sequencing of these bat viruses and obtained almost the full-length genome sequence (without the 5′ and 3′ ends) of RaTG13.”
Thus the RaTG13 genome sequence was mostly deciphered in 2018 and not in January 2020. Ergo, the viral genome most similar to SARS-CoV-2 was being studied at the WIV before the pandemic broke out."
Here's my question, though. We've already seen it reported that COVID-19 (or again, a very close variant) has been found in sewage samples from Barcelona in March of 2019 and both Italy and Brazil experienced abnormally high deaths from viral pneumonia in mid to late 2019.
Here's USA Today attempting to debunk it, and I'm willing to wait for scientific confirmation, but where there's smoke (and in more than one place) there's usually SOME fire:
All of this having been said, I am fully willing to believe that SARS COV2 was potentially circulating in patches as far back as 2012, certainly it was already spreading in mid-2019 well before the Wuhan outbreak was reported.
"Perhaps the most persistent false narrative of Chinese deception and concealment has nothing to do with fake statistics or Chinese manipulation of the WHO, but with China allegedly withholding details from the world and silencing whistleblowers. The Associated Press’s widely circulated report, “China Didn’t Warn Public of Likely Pandemic for Six Key Days” (4/15/20), contained many blatant falsehoods and omissions.
The AP report blamed the “delay” in informing the public between January 14 and January 20, after “top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus,” for infecting millions and killing thousands.
The AP’s claims about the Chinese government not informing the public for six crucial days are demonstrably false, as Chinese state media published multiple reports before this “crucial” period, informing the public of a “new virus” in Wuhan (China Daily, 1/9/20).
Although the AP notes that raising the alarm prematurely would damage the Chinese government’s credibility and “cripple their ability to mobilize the public,” that is not given credence as an explanation for the government “waiting” until leading Chinese epidemiologist Dr. Zhong Nanshan confirmed human-to-human transmission of Covid-19 on January 20. Instead, AP claimed that “China’s rigid controls on information, bureaucratic hurdles and a reluctance to send bad news up the chain of command muffled early warnings,” despite WHO and AP itself (1/15/20) reporting on Chinese officials warning that the possibility of human-to-human transmission could not be ruled out during this supposed period of “silence.”
An earlier AP report (3/19/20) shared a similar perspective, citing the familiar (and repeatedly debunked) myth of the Chinese government silencing Dr. Li Wenliang, a supposed “whistleblower” who warned the public of Covid-19. I previously noted (FAIR.org, 3/6/20) that Dr. Li was not a whistleblower, nor the first doctor to discover the Covid-19 outbreak, and neither was he ahead of the Chinese government. However, Vijay Prashad, Du Xiaojun and Weiyan Zhu’s timeline of the Chinese government’s response offers more clarity (People’s Dispatch, 3/31/20, 4/7/20, 4/14/20).
Dr. Zhang Jixian was the first to discover the Covid-19 outbreak, and was not a whistleblower either, because she followed established protocol by reporting it to her hospital’s disease control department on December 27. This resulted in an announcement by the Wuhan Health Commission on December 30, which is why Reuters (12/31/19) was able to report on this supposedly “secret” information in real-time.
On December 30 (the same day as the Wuhan Health Commission announcement), Dr. Ai Fen saw a test report of unidentified pneumonia, circled the words “SARS coronavirus” in red before taking a picture of it and sending it to a medical school classmate. From there, it spread in medical circles before reaching Dr. Li, who had shared it with seven colleagues in a private WeChat group on December 30 as well. Dr. Li didn’t consider himself a whistleblower, and asked them not to share the message to the public before it was leaked on December 31, the same day WHO picked up a media statement from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission’s website.
Dr. Li and his seven colleagues were reprimanded on January 3 (the same day China notified the US CDC) for not following established protocol, as Dr. Zhang had (who was never punished, but rewarded), and for potentially causing unnecessary panic, given that the SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequence wasn’t identified and shared until January 11. While the Chinese government doesn’t pretend to have handled the outbreak perfectly—as it apologized to Dr. Li’s family and disciplined the police officers who had initially handled the case—it is hard to believe officials had a mandate to suppress knowledge of the novel coronavirus, considering nobody knew the true nature of the disease at the time.
Despite the Chinese government making much of this information readily available in their timelines, corporate media conveniently leave these crucial details out of theirs in order to advance New Cold War propaganda (Business Insider, 5/22/20; New York Times, 5/26/20)."
I suggest reading the whole thing (especially the embedded links) and re-evaluating your opinion on the alleged "coverup" by China.
I think the "problem" with experts isn't their expertise, but what policy makers do with the synthesis of information across disciplines. Virology experts, economic experts, logistical experts, foreign policy experts and more all have a valid view of the situation, but the actual decision comes when combining the input. For example, if you take your car in to a mechanic and say, "Go over it. I'd like it in tip-top shape," the mechanic (expert) will lay out dozens of items to repair, replace, upgrade, etc. They will give the expert opinion from their point of view. You take that information and, when considered with how long you intend to keep the vehicle, how much money you have to spend and how critical the work is (the carpet is fine!), you then make a decision about what work needs to be done. The expert did what the expert does, but you decide what has to happen based on their input. A health expert would want our country to do all kinds of bans, restrictions and preventative measures for any number of health concerns - but the policy maker has to balance with other experts and, often, simple common sense. They must also consider the will of the people. For some reason, we put a heavy load on experts to actually formulate policy, which introduces conflicts of interest.
In re-reading what I wrote, it occurs to me politicians are shirking responsibility by passing policy decisions off to the experts. The expert isn't really accountable to anyone and the politician can simply blame the expert for the decisions. Win-win for the politician.
In a past age, that wouldn't have been tolerable. Can you imagine Harry Truman blaming the expert? Why we put up with it is one of the questions for today's population.
I agree that the lab escape theory is plausible and also I don't rule out malevolent intent considering the not too distant revelations about MK-Ultra and Fort Detrick.https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/cia-project-mk-ultra/
From the very early goings, I was finding what looked like legitimate theories about the possibility of a lab leak where gain of function research was happening. Here are two of the first bits I found way back in February of 2020.
Notably this particular person pins it solely on sloppiness by Chinese researchers in Wuhan, but I'm not convinced. I'm just as willing to consider an attempt by the U.S. government to sabotage China from the public health, economic and public relations angles. After all, what has resulted cannot be described as anything BUT a propaganda war.
I've also seen the stuff about Fauci's involvement in circumventing the GoF moratorium starting in 2014 by moving that research to Wuhan (with much American involvement, by definition), but the 'ban' was lifted in the first year of Trump's presidency and it became fully 'legal' to resume GoF research in the US at non-military labs.
Just for an oldie but goodie, here's a great Glenn Greenwald series about the Bruce Ivins anthrax saga, which of course, centered on....Fort Detrick.
Here's another link about the Chinese allegations that COVID was brought to China (either intentionally or through negligence and initial spread from an American lab).
With the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists being willing to re-open the debate on the origins of COVID-19, one has to keep an open mind and realize that here in the West, we're swimming in just as much if not more propaganda than the Chinese are.
Thank you so much for the Wade article! Having done some reading I had come to the same conclusion about a year ago - that, for a number of reasons, "lab escape" was entirely possible ...
"Why are they still being excused and why aren't the mainstream media asking them awkward questions about their roles in allowing the virus to emerge in the first place?"
You / we are looking for a pursuit of truth within an industry that forfeited that directive long ago. There are few "journalists" left in MM and Taibbi, Greenwald and others have yet to gain enough traction to be a substitute for what once was. CNN/FOX/NYT, etc. reach only a few million at any given time which is a small % of the population, but their outsized influence comes by way of social media and non-thinking persons & algorithms forwarding and parroting the misleading messages - it's a real uphill battle for "real journalists" to contend with.
Step one would be to treat MM for the entertainers that they are and nothing more, never lending them credence as a source of valuable information.
Step two would be to find a new term for "journalist" with a clear distinction from the historical relationship with MM and previous news outlets. Once identified, those using the term as a label can effectively build the cachet necessary to distinguish the new term as meaning a "searcher of truth".
Unfortunately, little time is available to accomplish this before social media excludes all truth seekers from any platform that might reach a sizable audience.
I feel like everything with Covid had to be dumbed down for general consumption.
Last summer I got into an argument when I thought people should be able to go to beaches. Based on everything I read, beaches were not risky. What would be risky would be people from multiple households driving to the beach, or getting together indoors after the beach. However, why demonize being at the beach. I was almost universally chastised with "why take the chance?" or "you are risking the life of [insert at-risk relative]".
There was no allowance for nuanced thinking or analyzing specific activities done a specific way. It was either a blanket "this is ok" or "this is not OK"
There was a lot of this, still is, but I chalk it up to a new virus where scientific and govt authorities were legit worried about it wiping out 5-30% of the planet. That is, rather than a conspiracy (or "system," whatever) to exert control, there was a lot of overselling of potential dangers. Most of the US is coming out of lockdown — and many regions were never even in it — with no new repressions I'm aware of.
The 5 to 30% figure was based on very crappy models, not science. There was a Sars Covid 1 prior to this, but I guess it didn't have the "gain of function" part to it. Shouldn't scientists be all over that? Let's face it there are American scientists that participated in that research, and none of them want to be outed. Nor does the government that gave them the power and dollars to do it. FUBAR!
Yes, I was exaggerating and don't honestly remember any numbers from early on. But with all the (honest) skepticism to overreaction, I was one of many who were worried Trump-controlled agencies would downplay the threat.
Are a few hundred people on a cruise ship really indicative of the 7 billion people on earth? I can't argue the media loves its panic porn but I will definitely argue against a Gubbmint Conspiracy to gain greater control by overhyping it. It's like the kooks who claimed 9/11 was set up as an excuse to invade Iraq — as if the govt has ever needed to kill 3,000 of its own people to invade anywhere. I think social media, smart appliances, online shopping, etc etc has proven that if the govt wants more control they don't need to overhype a pandemic to get it. The potential economic effects alone seem like a hell of a wildcard for a government to play. I think it's the typical naivety of a conspiracy buff to think any particular plan would automatically work out in their favor.
And yes, this reminds me of AIDS as well, in that there were plenty of Monday Morning Quarterbacks by the mid-90s who knew all along exactly how the disease was contracted. Very, very few of them in the mid-80s when the "gay flu" made its public debut.
Yes it was. Over and over around the world, we saw the virus get to roughly 20% prevalence and then start crashing. India is the most recent example but NYC was one of the first.
Hell, it wasn't even just the Diamond Princess, you also had the USS Theodore Roosevelt. That's two petri-dishes with slightly different media (demographics). The TR had ONE fatality in the crew.
I remember the Diamond Princess quite well. There were several highly reputable epidemiologists and statisticians who were using the Diamond Princess experience for their long-term forecasting and they got pilloried (or outright ignored) by the press, who attempted to judge/shame them as a threat to science and endangering people's own lives for promoting fake information. Despite being genuine experts, they were simply the wrong kinds of experts. But they are now having the last laugh.
But it is telling that so much of COVID was already known by end of April 2020 but the goalposts kept shifting and new excuses kept cropping up for shutdowns and wearing masks. I am not attempting to downplay that a new virus did emerge and did pose a genuine risk to specific demographics, but at the same time the establishment classes really ramped through an approach that terrified far more people than really needed to be the case and the reaction was outsized compared to what it logically should have been (highly targeted towards the high profile demographics rather than a one-size fits all approach).
Why did this happen? Why were disagreements and dissenting voices censored and banned? For me, the answer rests in two overarching reasons:
1. The anti-Trump movement. People, either deliberately or unconsciously, used COVID as a means to defeat Donald Trump by turning it into a political weapon. This meant a close collaboration between the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, and the Democratic politicians quickly moved in lockstep in their policies while the media did everything they could to portray any disagreements as racist, bigoted, unscientific, what you have it. They wanted to scare Americans from voting for Trump - and they did, even if they did also destroy a great deal of legitimacy along the way.
2. The rise of the class of technocratic experts, which is also a byproduct of the emergence of modern Democratic/Progressive alliance. In this world, experts are given a great deal of deference, and the growing influence of experts allows them to disregard differing views from people outside their field and pesky things like civil rights, constitutional laws and all these things we normally use to protect ourselves from abuses of power. The mainstream media staunchly believes in superiority of technocratic experts, which also helps define their moral understanding of right and wrong. So when an expert says X, they are never questioned why it's X and not Y. They simply blindly report what the experts say must be the right thing to do. Anthony Fauci is a perfect example of the technocratic expert - he has been wrong many times but he is still treated reverently by the mainstream media who persist in telling all and sundry we must listen to him because he's the "expert."
1. There's been close collaboration between MSM and the Dems for decades — this hardly started 14 months ago. The elites in both entities are basically the same people. It didn't help that most of the people crying loudest about Covid restrictions were in fact racist, bigoted, unscientific, and just plain inhuman. Right wingers from the WSJ op-ed page to the Texas lt. gov actually put eugenics back on the table, which is not a great way to let citizens know you have their best interests in mind. So I don't think it was the Dem-MSM cabal that actively did in Trump so much as Trump doing in Trump, as only he can.
2. This has been true forever as well and Dems hardly have the franchise.
I have been doing a lot of research on Covid-19 for quite a while now, posting updates to either my blog of facebook. I posted a link to a bloomberg article which noted that the Thai government had approved the use of andrographis (a potent antiviral and antiinflammatory herb) for the treatment of covid-19 during its early stages. Thai studies had found that it shortened duration of the infection and decreased the chances of severity. Facebook removed the post within 24 hours and said that any further infractions could lead to the suspension of my account. I found this particularly oppressive as all i had done was linked to an article to a relatively prominent news site and the article merely discussed the outcomes of Thai scientific studies and what the Thai government had decided to do in response. Among other things, it reduced costs, relieved overcrowding at the hospitals, and actually seemed to work well in the real world.
The powers that be seemed not to want to let people know the simple things that could be done. I spoke to my doctor and asked if he had been vaccinated, which he had. I told him I was simply increasing vitamin intake for my immune system and would rely on the therapeutics if I happened to get infected. He thought, given my health and age, that it was a sound plan.
Absolutely! That is the question that beckons the thought, that maybe they didn't want this to go away, at least until after the election. Darker skinned people should have been told to take (very inexpensive Vit D). I have a family member that works in a large hospital in California, he told me 95% of the patients hospitalized for Cov 2 were grossly over weight, and yet we have social justice warriors that are currently celebrating obesity as a beautiful and natural thing.
I don't think body shaming would've helped (ask any fat person who's yoyo dieted out of self hatred if they actually wound up healthier), but we could've had a "get outside and exercise" PSA campaign plus free vitamins for everyone, instead of a "stay home and live in fear" PSA campaign plus closing parks and beaches in the early months.
No it wouldn't have helped. There is something fundamentally wrong with the American diet, and I don't really blame citizens for that. I blame corporations that push food sales like the tobacco industry did. You are so right about what a well thought out PSA campaign could have accomplished, and that is puzzling that such a simple idea was ignored.
Great article. I wish I could encapsulate my thoughts as efficiently as Mr. Hopkins.
I remember a belligerent post on the neighborhood app Nextdoor for Santa Monica, CA that stuck with me. To paraphrase:
‘To the runner who ran past my open car door without a mask - HOW DARE YOU! You endangered our lives! My children in the backseat were frightened. May you get what you deserve, sir!’
^Note that at the time it was posted the LA mayor said it was allowed for people to exercise outdoors without a mask (later changed to must wear at all times).
The LA city officials following ‘science’ closed our beaches. Surfers were given $1000 tickets. Bulldozers filled volleyball courts and skateboard parks full of sand. They thought it better to have the working poor living with multi-generations in small apartments to cram together indoors than use the beaches. Real geniuses...
Not to mention, if you think people are going to get sick when you let them out, THERE'S NO BETTER TIME THAN DURING THE SUMMER! You certainly don't want to drag your curve into flu season -- or what used to be flu season -- when the hospitals are full of the at-risk!!!!
Hard to “be funny” in the midst of fascist totalitarian brutality. At least the “ass clown” stood up to the corrupt MSM and tried to fight the deep state. Anyone they hate that much I will gladly defend.
Weird how they didn't announce the vaccine until the week after the election. As a wise person recently told me "there wouldn't be so many conspiracy theories if there weren't so many conspiracies".
No matter where one falls on this debate regarding how the pandemic was handled, my real concern has been the effect on potential future pandemics that carry actual substantial danger (my personal bias is showing there).
The tale of the boy who cried wolf comes to mind a lot.
Yeah, that goes without saying. I'm referring to the skeptics (of all sorts and of all reasoning) who might not take serious an actual dangerous pandemic.
For those who may take exception to my use of the word "actual", I just mean if another virus came along where it proved lethal to at least 10% of the general population.
I suspect the threat of the state scales exponentially to the threat of the thing itself. 10% of the general population would be horrific, but then I consider the reaction to that.
It's always impressive how Matt gets criticism like "what happened to you" from BlueMaga types. but will also get something like "I was with you until you said you were no fan of Trump.."
This guy in the interview is clearly a leftist based on his criticism of global Capitalism, I'm guess he read the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein form his "shock and awe" comment. I love watching peoples heads explode when they can't fit an essay neatly into their blue or red headspace.
I look at Matt's Twitter feed every now and then. It's become very dark. It went from a lot of "what happened to you, man?" which is kind of funny, to many barking, foaming, screeching accusations that he's a traitor, a Putin plant, or even a white supremacist.
Check it out some time. It's gotten creepy.
I'm hoping this is just some isolated nuts and trolls. But when you realize that some of his big RussiaGate antagonists now have high positions in the Justice Department and the intelligence services, it feels ominous.
Unfortunately it's not nuts and trolls... I find myself out of sync lately with Matt's priorities, but it's the venom from his critics is part of what keeps me here. People who want to demonize honest discussion are my enemies, no matter what side. Seems his overall priority is to have no sacred cows or taboos when it comes to issues counter to freedom and democracy, and that's too much for a lot of people.
There are a lot more left leaning critics of covid authoritarianism than the mainstream media acknowledges. I know, because I went looking for them to preserve my own sanity: CJ Hopkins, Mark Crispin Miller, Alison McDowell, Naomi Wolf, Whitney Webb, James Corbett, Giorgio Agamben, winter oak press, off-guardian, the lockdowncriticalleft subreddit, Bellows magazine...
Architects for Social Housing is quite good (even if a little too materialist/Marxist for my tastes at times), and David Cayley has written some great articles/blog posts from the more philosophical approach (quite like Agamben).
The worst part, to me, is they've now conditioned the masses to accept this as necessary when so deemed by the state. The mechanisms are still in place to spring to action for the next "crisis," and 80% of the population of the entire globe will do exactly as directed. This includes turning in family, friends and neighbors for whatever is sold by governments as dangerous. I imagine the next "crisis" is, at least, on the horizon. I think it will be climate change, personally. Those activists have been itching for re-education camps and forced behavior for years. Half the population believes the world is ending in around 10 years (contrary to any actual science) and would be more than happy to do whatever is necessary to the other half to preserve their "survival." All that is now needed is to plug this crisis in and activate the machine.
Really? How about the authorities that come and shut down your business, arrest pastors of half filled churches while big box stores and super markets are full of people. You have to be a bit smarter than you have up to this point shown.
I'm talking about the "mechanisms" you mentioned. The state has always had and should continue to have the ability to shut down a business that's endangering people. This is not new with Covid.
Those places were big enough to allow social distancing and have good ventilation, and more to the point they required masks, and followed social distancing and cleaning protocols.
They most certainly do not have good ventilation. These buildings meet building code minimums. For an effective HVAC system for air adequate exchange it would cost ten times as much. I do this for a living. All the protocols, like wiping down shopping carts and such have now been proven to have been a waste of time. It was always theater, and that is all.
Here's another example of you missing the point of Hopkins' article.
You'll recall he lives in Germany. Traditionally, Germany doesn't have a great track record giving the state power to "shut down a business that's endangering people." Can you possibly, for a moment, understand how big of a problem this already is and will continue to become?
I'm not downplaying COVID here. I'm saying you totally underestimate the effect the state's reaction had on our society, especially considering history since the Cold War.
They locked the door when you weren't looking. At this stage, I've got to believe you don't WANT to look.
We've had and still have re-education classes for the entire history of our country. It's called boot camp.
I'm betting there will be yet another financial crash before anything else. The world government and currency is going to happen no matter what at this point.
The coup was over a long time ago, we're just along for the ride at this point.
The worst part about all of this is that the "party of science" is still pretending that it's March 2020, and not actually following the real-world data we've been collecting over the last year+. And they demand that the rest of us stay as scared as they are.
I'll leave the judgement on this exchange to the other readers. Which is not a number to be confused with the spurious tally known as "upvoting", as if Internet comments were some slambook.
"the "party of science" is still pretending that it's March 2020"
No, unlike the denier contingent, people with science-based opinions are aware of the difference in the casualty toll between March 2020 and May 2021, both in the US and worldwide.
Democrats wouldn't have felt that it was advantageous to brand themselves as "the party of Science" if their opponents hadn't been counseling quackery.
Now we're at the point where perhaps 1/3 of the population of the country is refusing the vaccine; given the overwhelming evidence for the lack of side effects of the vaccines being provided (aka "science"), the best explanation for the refusal of most of them is that it's an exercise in Political Activism. Virtue Signaling, for people determined to prevent the prospect of herd immunity against Covid-19 because it might be viewed as a victory by the current presidential administration that they oppose.
Covid-19 doesn't care, but to the extent that a virus partakes of a biological imperative, I'm sure it appreciates the help of the Refusers in assisting its continued survival.
I'll get vaccinated as soon it's FDA approved, and the vaccine makers are no longer shielded from liability. If the vaccine is safe, these are reasonable expectations, yes?
Until then, I'm not really feeling the urgency to vaccinate for protection from a virus with 0.01% mortality rate for my age and physical condition, especially when there's no guarantee it will prevent spreading the virus.
"overwhelming evidence for the lack of side effects of the vaccines"
Lack of side effects, my ass. I was laid up in bed for a week after the second shot; same thing happened to my dad with his first shot. I know, "anecdotal"; "your personal experiences contradict pre-established reality and are therefore inconsequential"
It's well-known that the covid vaccine produces side effects of that sort, not infrequently. Transient side effects. I've heard several anecdotal reports myself.
I got a shingles shot once that did something like that. I'm still glad I got the shot.
"It's well-known that the covid vaccine produces side effects of that sort, not infrequently."
That's not what you wrote in the OP, though. You wrote this: "given the overwhelming evidence for the lack of side effects of the vaccines being provided (aka "science")," then proceeded to politicize it.
"well-known that the covid vaccine produces side effects" vs. "overwhelming evidence for the lack of side effects of the vaccines": one of those things is not like the other.
Sometimes the horse you ride in on is pretty high. Sometimes it's two different horses.
I got "side effects" in 2008 when I got a flu shot for what I suppose was Sars ?. I came down with a nasty flu two weeks later and a bad case of shingles to boot. Two years later I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. How do I know that wasn't as "side effect"?
It's different for everyone. My first shot left me with a sore an incapacitated arm for a day. Next day it was fine. The 2nd shot left me a lethargic blob for a day, then it passed. My wife & 2 of my kids had no adverse effects while my other 2 kids were feeling ill for a day or two.
For all we know G, we could have all gotten shots of distilled water & the vaccine could be nothing more than another instance of "security theater" that America seems to love so much. The "side effects" would then be self induced hysteria.
I agree that it's putting on airs to say it. But I comprehend the temptation. I saw all of the live, unmasked rallies the former occupant of the White House held so that he could get his vanity fix.
Yes. Big-time C-Span fan. Although I did spend a couple of decades abstaining from television, and heartily endorse the benefits of doing so.
One benefit is all the extra time that it allowed me to read books. So I had a little bit of layperson's scientific background when SARS-CoV-2 hit, having read both The Great Influenza and the much more prescient and relevant 2006 account by Karl Taro Greenfeld, The China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century's First Great Epidemic.
Greenfeld's book is about SARS-CoV-1. Having read that book, I realized early on that SARS CoV-2 (aka Covid-19) was no joke.
Well in the real world, there's no evidence whatsoever that any NPIs actually worked. And sooner or later some people are going to have to answer some hard questions about why they tanked the economy for no reason.
As long as you guys are ignoring people who have gotten the virus and gotten over it, there is no science anywhere near your views.
There's no "you guys" here. There's only the person writing this post.
In the real world, while it's too early to make a final assessment, evidence does already exist to settle that argument with a reasonable degree of certainty. I don't know where the prevailing weight of the evidence will fall.
But as a rule, the phrase "no evidence whatsoever" is just another one of those grandiloquent flourishes that gets tossed in to set up an applause line on whatever, and that's the way you've employed it in your post.
As for "ignoring people who have gotten the virus and gotten over it", you're playing the same game there; the fact that the tabulation of those cases is thus far incomplete does not indicate that it's being "ignored." Like, duh
The statistic that's really incomplete at this time is the number of people who have gotten the virus and NOT gotten over it. The epidemiologists do have a pretty good idea of who died from Covid, though. Although my guess is that the well of non-falsifiable objections that can be raised against the precision of that statistic is bottomless, and it's hardly begun to be tapped by unscrupulous thought leaders and their gullible cohort of followers.
Good lord, I never thought I'd be so bored. I need to find a different venue.
Matt, thank you for publishing the conversation with CJ Hopkins.
The pharmaceutical industry's $9.6 billion advertising budget gives drug companies much control over corporate news and television outlets. 50, 60, up to 70 percent of corporate media's news divisions' revenues comes from pharma, as I understand it. Whatever the percentage, one need only turn on the nightly news to see where pharma puts its money night after night after night. Yet pharma's capture of these corporate news divisions and how this might shape their covid fear campaigns is rarely mentioned by independent journalists in their critiques of corporate media. Why?
The same can be said for pharma's capture of the NIH, CDC, etc.
The covid operation has been ongoing for over a year so it should be stating the obvious that the CDC is sitting on the other end of the counter from an independent, tax funded government agency whose sole purpose is to protect public health.
Much of the CDC's funding comes from a private 501c3 organization called the CDC Foundation which is largely funded by big pharma and Bill Gates who also fund the World Health Organization. Vaccine investor Gates, via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi combined, is the largest WHO funder.
These agencies are captive agencies.
Discovering this information doesn't take hot shot investigative reporters. It's right there on the agency web sites for everyone to see.
In a further conflict of interest, the CDC and NIH own patents on injectables.
Please see the list of the CDC's corporate funders on their web site.
Such glaring conflicts of interest are surely directly related to the content controls over our national conversation. It is to the point where merely raising conflicts of interest becomes a pro-Trump insurrection against Science and Democracy.
Matt, thank you for introducing CJ Hopkins to new readers.
Since you're casting about for censorship stories, Jeremy Hammond, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Dr. Reinter Fuellmich and Robert Kennedy, Jr. have tales of corporate and social media censorship that paint a picture of how bad and extreme things have become.
Jeremy Hammond is an independent journalist, political analyst, editor and publisher.
In today's article/interview, Jeremy Hammond takes a deep dive into what you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccines that the government and media aren’t telling you.
Sucharit Bhakdi, MD is a microbiologist who, with his wife Karina Reiss, PhD, wrote the book Corona False Alarm: Facts and Figures.
Dr. Bhakdi "was a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg from 1972 to 1976, and at The Protein Laboratory in Copenhagen from 1976 to 1977. He joined the Institute of Medical Microbiology at Giessen University in 1977 and was appointed associate professor in 1982. He was named chair of Medical Microbiology at the University of Mainz in 1990, where he remained until his retirement in 2012. Dr. Bhakdi has published over three hundred articles in the fields of immunology, bacteriology, virology, and parasitology, for which he has received numerous awards and the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate. He’s one of the most cited scientists in German history."
Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is an international trial lawyer who successfully sued large fraudulent corporations such as Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank. Dr. Fuellmich's worldwide network of lawyers has listened to experts on covid from every field of science and are filing lawsuits against draconian lockdown measures.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is known for legal challenges to industries that harm or pollute water bodies but due to extreme corporate and social media censorship, his work on children's health, vaccine safety and the pharmaceutical industry's covid narrative is less well known.
I posted a link to the following article about a covid treatment that is saving lives in more than 20 countries - now India too - and was censored by FB. It was blocked and I was warned with a 'strike one.' It didn't meet their standards. I didn't appeal. It's all about fear, isn't it? https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/05/india-just-became-latest-country-to-approve-use-of-ivermectin-to-treat-covid-19.html. Nakedcapitalism has been my daily read for years - ever since Bill Moyers interviewed the NC blogger on his show on PBS (before they dumped him - he was straying too far outside their overton manufacturing consent window I think). The commentariat on NC is also very informed.
I have chosen, so far, NOT to be a 'subject' in this huge experiment where all these vaccines have only been approved for EUA. Frankly I don't trust "GlobalCap" in BIGPHARMA and the profit driven sick care insurance in this country that is supposed to pass for health care and that doesn't even cover all Americans and even many who have this 'insurance' can't afford to use it. The conflicting information on this is truly frightening. I feel I am surrounded by brainwashed, very intolerant people no longer able to discuss different points of view on anything relating to covid.
So thanks again for this interview. I had never read him.
Thanks for sharing. You can also follow Dr. Pierre Kory every week on the website FLCCC.net. He presents the weeks news on ivermectin and also answers questions. I've also been following Dr. John Campbell (on youtube - every day) since Feb. 2020. He's usually way ahead of the curve on COVID, very clear, very detailed.
it has been peer reviewed and finally published in the Journal of Therapeutics (something like that). check out the website FLCCC.Net for much more information.
The German journalist Paul Schreyer has done work on how the Covid Response was prepared - down to a tee - in regular post 911 "bioterrorism" drills. These events were attended by a good number of the usual suspects(powerful Western politicians and state officials, big media wigs, scientists) and one important focus was how to streamline the public perception of what was going on, what the nature of the threat is (politics of fear) and how to get the public to accept the loss of fundamental democratic rights. I believe they started in 2006. Drills included bioterror attacks but also coronavirus epidemics. In Europe the rapidity with which political parties accepted various states of emergency (meaning that Parliaments no longer had a say in Cobid Policies- even left wing parties who had criticized the exact same mentality war on terror policies) was stunning to me. Critics were basically shouted down. Schreyer's work on these drills provides a first entry into this state of affairs, I think. (From the War on Drugs to the War on Terror to now this?)
Oh, get a grip. I AM ONE OF THOSE WHO LOBBIED CONGRESS 17 YEARS AGO FOR THAT!
Yes, I did! I did it on my own dime, and it cost a lot of money. I did it along with people like Ken Alibek, and a few others. Why? Because a deliberately introduced disease made just right could kill 50% to 90%. There is only one defense - vaccination and SPEED of response.
This was not a manufactured virus. It was totally natural. We did TERRIBLY! That moronic ass clown got rid of the pandemic response group at CDC, and left it with the least competent people for the job. It is obvious we are a globe filled with ass clowns like Trump and Hopkins who haven't got the SLIGHTEST ability to understand.
Sorry, folks. Hopkins is worse than Trump. At least Trump tried to get vaccines rolled out quickly. But he was a spineless ass clown and incompetent. Hopkins? He's just an incompetent ass clown who doesn't even TRY to gesture toward helping matters.
We WILL have a biological attack that will not be a drill. The way it looks from here, civilization will fall.
Based on the lack of the usual prior mutations found in nature, it is appearing more and more likely that this virus was manufactured. Read Wade's article, if you haven't already. BTW if I were to post this on FB I would be censored.
Horseshit. You haven't got the foggiest clue WTF you are talking about. You are just blabbering some crap you picked up somewhere from some equally (or even more) clueless bozo.
It surprised me that World Savior like you so much worried about "incompetent ass clowns" Trump (who is gone) and Hopkins (who is not well-known author), but didn't say a word about current ass clown who wears mask everywhere including Zoom meetings. Why are you not equally mad about discouraging people from vaccination by idiotic Biden, Fauci, etc.?
Seems pretty likely that it wasn't "totally natural", but yes, in case of a true bioattack, we would have to do some extraordinary things, but the response to COVID hasn't helped in that. Ever read the story of "the boy who cried wolf".
I am a microbiologist who made a vaccine for COVID-19 in February 2020. I have examined the theories, and the sequences for COVID-19 in detail. I also have papers on economics and publications on terrorism.
- A MUCH better question is, why weren't Western governments rolling out vaccines immediately?! The risk is virtually zero, and if there's the slightest issue with one, it can be stopped. EVERY vaccine that got approved is IDENTICAL to the vaccine designed and manufactured in January of 2020. NOTHING was learned by the delay - just bureaucratic red tape. We know far too much about vaccines now. And even the biggest mistakes in vaccination, would have prevented millions of deaths and avoided any need for lockdown.
The lockdown is insane. We should have 10 vaccines rolling out by end of March to medical personnel, and to anyone else who wanted it. Period.
But, the lockdown was a weapon against Trump. Lockdown targeted Trump voters, who were largely working class. And forcing the vaccines to jump through all the hoops was ALSO a weapon against Trump. He was such an ass clown (I totally agree with that) and so spineless, that he didn't use his executive authority to bypass it. Democrats panicked just before the election when Trump tried to unlock the release of vaccines before the election.
- Anyone who thinks "anti-vaxxer" isn't a real thing is an idiot. Sorry, @taibbi. If you swallow that whole, so are you. Vaccines have been demonized since the turn of the 20th century. It was the Back to Eden book by Jethro Kloss, who was a rabid Seventh Day Adventist that was the source of it. He didn't change his mind after losing a child to vaccine preventable disease. Jethro's book became a cult classic of the 60's flower children going back to the land.
The ideology of anti-vaxxers is this: Your child is perfect, and if they are sick this is due to lack of clean, healthy foods, and clean healthy environment. This ideology appeals to the maternal instincts of mothers, because it confirms to them that their child is perfect. It also matches with maternal instincts to nurture. So, if anything goes wrong with their child's health, it is not because that child was exposed to a disease, it is because of a failure of perfecting nutrition and environment.
Combine that ideology with the fact that needles are scary, they make babies cry, and seeing her darling get a needle stick and cry is disturbing. Amalgamate that with ignorance and the batshit crazy lies that are spewed out about vaccines, we have a guy like Hopkins actually thinking that there is something to terribly serious to worry about that requires the rigorous testing in a global emergency like this.
Yes, VACCINES ARE FREEDOM!
Matt? WTAF is WRONG with you here?!
See my journal editorial from last year.
Brian P. Hanley , Steve Keen , and George Church
A Call for a Three-Tiered Pandemic Public Health Strategy in Context of SARS-CoV-2.
I respect your purported credentials, but it is the level of emotion conveyed in your writing that leads me to form (IMO) healthy skepticism, of you and your fellow experts (I'm not an anti-vaxxer eithe.
What I mean by that is, science is a process, which is only as good as the human performing it. This is not a knock on any particular scientist/doctor/theorist, or even humanity itself. This is simply the observation that humans come with emotions, which always means abject objectivity is never possible. All sorts of underlying, subconscious biases and fears play a hand in the way we interpret, or even record, the hardest of data.
I like my leaders with humble reluctance, and my scientist calm and dispassionate.
Tough shit. I have been laboring for decades on this and other things, while you have been sitting in your armchair blabbering whatever. I work rigorously. I put myself to school and to peer review. I have sacrificed large parts of my life to save people from their own dumbass stupidity.
I stopped being nice after I got death threats and other threats from the wack jobs that populate the world. Screw that. This is life and death and I WILL speak out against dumbfuckery.
I know you can't see it, but my eyes just rolled out the back of my head.
If you weren't such an arrogant ____ (or at least act and communicate like one), you might actually serve your purpose instead of just getting people to tune you out, thus creating a never ending cycle of you thinking you need t turn up the alarmism.
But I mean, you couldn't have proven my point any better. FFS! My comment was essentially commenting on your communication and it's lack of effectiveness.
I take it back, though. It's not just your arrogance that is self defeating, it's your insecurity.
No, it's more about someone who's actually paid their dues to obtain expertise in the scientific field being discussed than it is about people on the sidelines taking cheap shots.
It would indeed be interesting to hear out a debate on these questions between microbiology PhD Brian Hanley (the poster to whom you responded) and someone of equivalent professional expertise who holds different opinions on these questions. Presuming that such people exist.
Instead, once again I find myself stuck with reading self-satisfied mockery from clowns who feel entitled to disregard someone's knowledgeable observations out of hand, while impugning their motives.
Go read the OP and tell us again about how he was taking shots. He opened up the discussion by generalization, straw manning, and stereotyping. And stop you boot licking while you're at it please.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Isaac Asimov
That's only a small part of Asimov's 1980 essay, which he presented as an editorial column. He goes on to say
"What shall we we do about it? We might begin by asking ourselves whether ignorance is so wonderful after all, and whether it makes sense to denounce "elitism." I believe that every human being with a physically normal brain can learn a great deal and be surprisingly intellectual. I believe that what we badly need is social approval of learning and social rewards for learning. We can ALL be members of the intellectual elite and then, and only then, will "America's right to know" and, indeed, any true concept of democracy, have any meaning."
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
If objectivity isn't possible (because it isn't) then I'd prefer a scientist who's willing to passionately defend science. 100s of 1000s of lives were sacrificed because our leaders were too humble and reluctant to push back against vaccine skepticism.
My point was more on alarmism and the way things, even important topics with supposed levels of urgency (like climate change for instance), are communicated.
"our leaders were too humble and reluctant..."
I'm sorry as I don't mean to be dismissive if you're being sincere, but it's hard for me to not take that as satire.
He's a scientist, not a professional communicator so I can cut him slack. Frustrated people can sound frustrated, particularly when they watch people die needlessly because of (actual) hysterics like the subject of this TK piece.
And I was being sarcastic indeed. Great leaders are neither humble nor reluctant.
The problem with your idea of "anti-vaxxers" is that there a lot of people who weren't anti-vaccine in general but became deeply suspicious of the covid19 ones, probably because of the many attempts to institute "vaccine passports" that would force people to take them in order to participate in society.
As for lockdowns being a bout Trump, that's ridiculous: they were far more severe in Europe and Australia than US. I think lockdowns happened because, early on and with very little evidence, the WHO recommended the rest of the world copy China's lockdown policy. Given that the WHO's biggest donor is a man (Bill Gates) with heavy investments in vaccines and digital id, it seems the plan was to inflict massive pain on the world then offer digital id tied to proof of vaccination as the only way out. Classic "Shock Doctrine" capitalism.
So is the Stop sign a "suggestion"? Do you oppose writing tickets and fining those who fail to stop? After all, it is only an "option", right?
Of course, folks have the "freedom" to break the law - goes without saying - folks should be "free" to break the law, as long as the consequences only accrue to them, and not others ...
Glad you are amused - we need more amusement these days ...
The only reason I stay stopped on an empty road with no other car in site and excellent visibility is because I fear a police car might show up just as soon as I decide to run it.
I read your article right up to the point where you claimed masks and lockdowns worked. Knowing that most of the spread occurred in confined / locked down places kind of ruins your claim. I live in a place where they were tracking by zip code, and it was clear that most of the cases were to be found in areas where homes were occupied by multi generations..ie mom, dad, children, grandparents. The spread happened because of the lockdown. BTW, nobody actually used or is using proper mask etiquette, with respect to wearing a clean mask.
Rewearing of masks just spreads more virus around, presuming you were sick. But it was something people could do and it gave the proles the impression that this was somehow under their control, and they could go out and do things "safely". That's why the militant mask mandates, not because it was realistically supposed to stop anything. Also why the militant encouragement to take vaccines. No one realistically expects vaccine mandates and passports to survive contact with the legal system. At least no one sane. But it's an attempt to get people out of their houses and back to pre-March 2020 functioning, regardless if it is legal or not. It's the functional equivalent of throwing shit at the wall and hoping it will stick.
A lot of people are liking this stay at home thing. It's going to be hard to break them out of these habits now.
They aren't doing it. They are rewearing masks that are intended for one-time use over and over, and not washing the cloth masks in a timely manner. Human behavior is like that, they do things in a halfassed fashion when they don't see the importance of it. Also, maintaining vigilance over the long term is always spotty. So the masks are really doing nothing useful other than mass psychology.
At one level people could see that a lot of work could get done remotely with the added benefit of having that commute time and money unspent. Managers who cruise around the office, coffee cup in tow, to oversee the cube dwellers probably hate it. But productivity is going good.
Conversely, I think the teachers unions may have ended up hurting their cause by staying remote longer. You've just proven that you can do learning via computer, so that teacher could be anywhere (India, Singapore, EU). And that remote teacher will likely come at a lower price than the union ones, with more luxe health benefits and retirement than the avg proles'. Yes, I know remote is a disaster for younger kids. But I won't underestimate the political schemers class for coming up with new ways to cut costs if it's advantageous. Imagine using those property tax dollars for something else, not to mention taking the land lots the schools are on and sending them off to developer friends to build other projects (palms greased all the way). Not saying it'd happen in the next year, but maybe the next 10 yrs.
Interesting to see if the arguments for Universal Basic Income get forwarded based on the shuttering of businesses. I'd think for a lot of people, going out to eat or bars won't be much of a thing, either due to lack of funds or finding out just how much that cost you. Certain industries may end up in a permanently lower or non-existent operating basis. Small businesses in general have suffered the most, and if they are indeed the "engine of the economy" things are going to get more grim over the next few years.
When I hear about UBI it translates into "inflation" in my mind. Whatever the UBI would buy now, it won't be able to after people start chasing it with their UBI money. We're already seeing that in most sectors due to all the funny money being pumped into the economy now with unemployment bonuses and stimulus checks.
The teachers' unions are going to do just fine out of this. I seem to remember Kristi Noem saying that in SD, they'd lost contact with something like 25% of the elementary school students during this remote session thing. It makes the job of being a truant officer almost impossible, not that much effort is expended in that direction by most school systems anyway. They need to get the children going to school again to avoid that, which is going to keep the teachers' unions in the catbird seat in terms of demanding salary and benefits. If you let a quarter of the students fade out of the system, I can just imagine the attack ads.
Whether that quarter of students that don't want to attend school would be better off without the education on offer that they clearly don't want, that's another issue entirely. Could type up 10 pages on that one.
One could draw another conclusion from all of the remote work; that many people are redundant. Government would like to push that reckoning out for a long time, though it is coming. Thinking on a world where production and services require a quarter of the current population. That world is coming. What do you do with the rest?
What to do with the rest...if I were thinking like someone who wanted to advance humanity, honestly I'd set my sites on colonization and mining of other planets, moons and asteroids. My pop culture reference for that would be the first season of The Expanse.
Pessimist part of me says a lot more of the country will end up looking like depression Appalachia, and that life expectancy will drop 10-20 yrs.
I'm sure that the Global Hegemony would prefer a world that looked more feudal or at least Dickensian, so the avg person could look to have similar outcomes in terms of wealth and health (not good).
I'm not saying that this is what I want or that it can't change, but it's a likely trajectory.
My thoughts run toward a lack of control associated with a lack of gainful employment. Bored people start causing trouble. An unhappy mob is bad for any country. Governments will react the way governments always react - with force. It's not a pretty thought.
The Elon Musk admirer in me wishes your initial thought were going to be the trajectory, but I see it something more along the lines of Gattaca, if we are to go that route at all.
You are emblematic of the Dunning-Kruger effect (see video below).
Your personalized, emotional and anti-scientific totalitarian support of vaccines is self-serving but you do not have the objectivity or lack of arrogance to perceive it.
He totally ignores how science has been ruined by its dependence upon funding by corporate and government(sometimes joint) funding.
Not all science is bogus of course, but it takes a decade or two to find out how ethical any experiment or study actually is.
There are some disadvantages to privatizing the funding of research. This probably had more to do with slowing down the vaccine process here in the states more than anything else.
Funding can also censor people questioning some of the bullshit narratives spewed by the corporate press who had no problem covering for Cuomo's cover up of his nursing home debacle.
I agree - science has been corrupted by big money whether public or private (hardly a difference much of the time). Covid-19 censorship has been frighteningly pervasive throughout all mainstream channels. Alternate treatments supported by "gold star" research, scientific information on masks, lockdowns and social distancing and of course any information not extolling total effectiveness and safety of "the vaccine" (any vaccine, for anyone, any time). I am not talking about someone in sweatpants blogging from their parents' basement but rather people like Dr. David Eberhard (above) being censored and often denigrated for raising valid risk/benefit analyses. I.AM.NOT.ANTI-VACCINE. I am anti-totalitarian and anti-stupidity.
If the people running the show were confident in their logic and reasoning they would be open to debate without having to utilize character assassination and ad hominen attacks upon any and all that question them in the slightest.
I'm not looking to play pile on. You seem to have enough people on your back as it is.
Alright, first, I'm not an anti-vaxxer. Got the Pfizer in Jan./Feb. Other than a sore arm after the 1st & lethargy after the second I've noticed exactly zero ill effects since.
My skepticism...or, better yet, caution about vaccines was brought about by an incident that occurred with my daughter when she was young. As parents we dutifully got our kids vaccinated. It was an actual requirement of our school district. Didn't have a problem with it.
But one day, soon after my oldest daughter's latest, at that time, vaccination, we received a phone call from our pediatrician in which they informed us that "there may have been ground glass in our daughters vaccine shot but that there was nothing to worry about." Just what I wanted to hear.
The basic fact is, while you seem well meaning & dedicated to public health, it often seems like the actual corporations who profit off of your work and disseminate assorted drugs & vaccines are dedicated to other, less noble things.
As someone who lost his niece to opioids it's not hard to see how that whole crisis was aided and abetted by rapacious pharmaceutical corporations. Distrust of these corporations seems entirely reasonable to me.
I have no quibbles with your assessment of Trump. He was man pudding. I didn't vote for him. I didn't like him. But he was the legally elected president of the United States. And he was almost immediately attacked by a completely hysterical, irrational & unhinged left wing. I think Matt has a video on here showing the long list of baseless attacks that were leveled at the guy for 4 fucking years. While Democrats seemed to be willfully & blissfully unaware their media of choice was feeding them a constant diet of shit sandwiches, the Trump folk were not. So for 4 years they had to endure the lies of Democrats & media pundits until, suddenly, a real crisis arises & they're asked to unquestioningly believe the same people who have been tossing shit sandwiches at their heads. The fact that there was huge skepticism & push back should not be surprising in the least. It should have been expected. It's human nature. Y'know, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. ( I was tempted to use the Bush quote here since it would have been shorter & funnier although completely unintelligible). So, while I've never been a Republican I completely understand why they're doing what they're doing.
In my opinion, the real unspoken & never discussed lesson of the pandemic was that corporations & elected leaders callously created this entire atmosphere of distrust that segments of America feel towards their decrees from on high with years of lies & obfuscations & complete and utter bullshit. Yet their part in this is never ever discussed. Instead they demonize these people who question them as unhinged crazies. It may be convenient but it is incredibly disingenuous. And unless their is some kind of mass epiphany among our ruling class I've no doubt that the exact same thing will happen when the next crisis hits.
"The lockdown is insane. We should have 10 vaccines rolling out by end of March to medical personnel, and to anyone else who wanted it. Period.
But, the lockdown was a weapon against Trump. Lockdown targeted Trump voters, who were largely working class. And forcing the vaccines to jump through all the hoops was ALSO a weapon against Trump."
"Forcing the vaccines to jump through all the hoops" is the correct answer. The anti-Trump conspiracy scenarios require a level of advance planning and coordination that only a paranoid (or a manipulator) could construct. (As a speculation. With no evidence. A construction cobbled together in post hoc, propter hoc fashion from selected data points extracted from their context.)
Making newly invented substances that go into people's bodies subject to requirements to "jump through all the hoops" is normal protocol in order to ward off the possibility of unanticipated disaster, from the cure being worse than the disease. Much of this is about civil liability, insurance risk, and various other conventions of the American legal system. And if things go bad, political leaders in a democracy have even more to risk than the heads of businesses, in some respects. If the vaccine had been rolled out in January 2020 and it killed or crippled, say, 1 person in every 1000, we wouldn't just have been dealing with a regime of onerous procedures and economic restrictions; we'd be dealing with a cataclysm.
We don't have a dictatorship, monarchy, or an autocratic system, where the King clear the rollout, says to everyone "you WILL take this vaccine", and accepts all responsibility if it turns disastrous (while retaining the official power and authority to remain head of State, because autocracy.)
But we're living in an affluent democracy, and one that's a sky-is-falling world for some people; some of them wear their masks even when outdoors and driving in their cars alone, and others (many more, like 33% of Americans), having disregarded most quarantine restrictions as "tyranny", now refuse to get the approved vaccines. Even after the vaccines have jumped through all the hoops you speak of. Because we have free speech in this country, there's no shortage of quackery being peddled; despite all of the overwrought scenarios of looming totalitarian rule conjured in reaction to the impotent attempts of a few social network sites to cull the material, those views are readily accessible, no matter how misinformed or misleading. A lot of people are buying into them, on account of their Feels. And paradoxically enough (although also logically enough), the attempts at censorship only increase the appeal of the narratives, and their spread to an ever-widening audience.
Who (or more properly what) wins? The Covid-19 virus. And that's just how it is. That's American Democracy, c.2021. One-third of the country feels justified in refusing the vaccine, many of them as some sort of political statement. And despite all of the "Democrat Tyranny" scaremongering, no one is going to force the refusers to get it. All of us will just have to deal with the consequences, whatever they might happen to be.
Thanks for sharing your views: 2 questions for you.
1/ Do you feel you have a conflict of interest when expressing your views on vaccination?
Let’s say, an extreme case (which I’m not necessarily advocating), that vaccination research was to be frozen. Could you make an equivalent living in a different scientific field or elsewhere?
2/ Do you feel your views should count more than people who don’t have your scientific background?
I’m just curious
Just to be clear, your views on vaccination are constitutionally protected in the US. I agree with some and disagree with other but, personally, I would defend your right to speak if the gov was to move to suppress it.
1. No, I do not. It is my ethical obligation to counter ignorant idiocy that slaughters millions. Yes, I can make a living elsewhere.
2. Yes, I do. Why would you think otherwise? But you can feel free to go elsewhere than medicine for your ailments. Just not force your children into that or the children of others to their deaths.
You made a vaccine in February (or January) 2020? How many doses? You must be incredibly rich now. At the very least, you must have at least felt safe having been vaccinated before the pandemic even began.
Not many. Still have quite a few potential doses in the freezer. Only self-experimentation is allowed. No, I didn't get rich. Over 200 vaccines were created. Moderna had theirs manufactured, early test data, and FDA application in by the end of January IIRC. They already had VC money, and got funded. By the time we had anything, it was too late. Investors look at the crowd and say, "Too late." Yes, I was safe as the pandemic started.
People think vaccines are a great business. It's a terrible business. It makes money, but nothing like what the small molecule drugs make. There are single drugs that have yearly revenue nearly as high as Facebook's 2015 revenue. Vaccines are in the $00 million range.
If you really want to help out the world, you should release your patents on your vaccine so that countries like India and Brazil can produce it and save themselves from their current infection rates.
To be clear, no it's not patented. I would give it to any competent party. All they would have to do is attribute it. I also have improvements. Like most things, there is no absolute, final design. One can always tweak things.
What do you mean by "the path to oblivion to not patent pharma". I used to work in biopharma so I have my opinions about the FDA, regulations, information sharing, the pharmaceutical industry, and the media's coverage of the industry. I also have my opinions on modeling and how much we actually understand about complex systems like the human immune system. They are somewhat different than yours, but I share your rage at the absolute ignorance about the way the government and the media have covered this pandemic. Thank you for your responses.
I tried to release it open-source. But it got to complicated, and the people who were picking it up were mostly not competent to handle it.
I would be happy to do so for either nation. I attempted to contact people in India in early 2020 through a physician colleague there. She said nobody was interested.
"- A MUCH better question is, why weren't Western governments rolling out vaccines immediately?!"
My guess is they were too busy trying to protect their "patent rights" on K-street and figuring out how to weaponize the vaccine in order to bring about their policy goals for the rest of the world.
People are more worried about what ELSE is in a vaccine far more than the vaccine. Now that science has become a commodity and been caught several times lying for corporate funding or lying for government funding people seem to be much more reluctant to believe it is legitimate.
The fact you don't even recognize this in your post point to your own bat shit crazy delusion that you're somehow superior to everyone else.
In closing, go fuck yourself you self consumed, self important megalomaniac cunt.
One under-discussed symptom of this whole COVID era is how online everyone has become. When everything in your neighborhood is closed and there's really not a whole lot to do outside of your home, I think a lot of people have replaced a staggering portion of their social lives with social media, browsing, falling into weird internet rabbit holes, getting deeply entrenched in their ideologies etc. Close friends of mine have increasingly weirder opinions I'm positive they've absorbed from some YouTube asshole or some irony-poisoned twitter nihilist. It blows!
Hoping that local restaurants seating people inside, bars opening up, vacations becoming feasible again, etc. will knock us out of some of this. This has been a boring, stupid, and depressing year plus.
This was a big reason why I rejected and refused to comply with any of the lockdown measures since the start. I think it's pretty clear that phone/social media addiction is a blight on modern health, and lord knows I was at some of my lowest points when I was spending a lot of time cruising Twitter or Facebook. I broke out of that by avoiding using my phone as much as possible and just having more conversations with strangers as I'd go to coffee shops or to see live music. When everything shut down and now everybody was saying we "have" to do everything online because we "can't" do those things that made life worth living (to me), I absolutely refused to accept that. Partially because I think people were over-reacting, and also because I'd rather risk getting sick (and dying) than go back to living behind screens.
A lot of "unpluggers" have probably had similar experiences and this whole ordeal caused a vast acceleration of digitizing our society, which was already really bad (especially as somebody who remembers making fun of people constantly using cell phones in the 90s as self-centered assholes, before that became all of us hahaha), and has already wreaked havoc on our psyches.
I also hope that things re-opening and people getting together will knock us out of this -- I'm not known for my optimism, but every time I go to the park on my weekends I see a lot of people/strangers getting together and enjoying new friendships and each others' crafts/overall variety and it certainly cheers me up that there is a life to be had outside of the hustle & bustle of online existence.
Oh man. I used to blast my buddy all the time for being on his then-futuristic T-Mobile Sidekick. Little did I know I'd end up there too. And most other people. I've also made a pretty concerted effort to avoid the phone outside of doing crosswords on it to wake my brain up in the morning and texting my closest friends and family. Took a while to get there but I genuinely feel happier. Gotta be on a computer for work but whatever. That's my job. I chose that. I can do something else if it bums me out.
I personally would've have gone out to see a concert or have coffee indoors during this thing because my rubric is a little more about the risk I might pose to others vs. the risk I knowingly take on myself. I do dumb shit all the time that would only hurt me if it backfired. That said: people's responses to COVID aren't their entire personality. Neither are their politics or the basketball team they root for. The online-ness I was talking about seems to reduce each other to those things and it feels incredibly dangerous and atomizing.
Hah! I do crosswords on my phone before going to sleep as part of my kooky routine. Probably a terrible idea with how screen lighting affects sleep patterns but I feel incomplete going to bed without using a crossword to wind down.
I see your point(s). The way online-ness has taken complete hold over people’s worldviews and how we treat each other has really been troubling for me.
People aren't allowed to question or disobey a quarantine's usefulness/correct application? "Pandemic" itself isn't an arbitrary term with a changing definition that also means it's up for debate?
There's no shortage of people in the world who will tell you how to behave or what to do in order to make themselves feel better/safer. This occurs every day as people push against each other and learn to get along, so somebody can ask you not to use the word "retard" because to them it's a slur, or they can ask you not to track mud in their store on a rainy day because they're gonna have to clean it up. We all make judgments as to what is worth acceding to and what is a request we consider unreasonable and therefore don't honor. More to the point, this is why we designate people as "germophobes" or diagnose them with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder if their preoccupation with sanitation/disease is deemed to affect their lives & relationships, as they make (what society deems to be) unreasonable demands of themselves & others, whom they invariably see as soulless vectors for disease.
Did the physical world *actually* change in March, 2020 AD to make those behaviors necessary or correct (which, by extension, means the "old" way of living was no longer correct)? Many people were convinced that it did, so they adopted lockdown behaviors previously considered unthinkable, and I wasn't convinced, so I didn't. If I think people are making unreasonable demands due to fear clouding their judgment, why would I agree to comply with them, especially to the scale they've been pushed onto the world?
As another (less philosophical) question, what kind of idiotic quarantine is implemented on EVERY member of its population, both healthy & unhealthy, and for an indefinite amount of time (welcome to month 15 of it)? Why don't I get a decision on whether or not to comply with such a moronic policy of quarantine?
Are you *at all* seeing the problem(s) with the argument of, "It's not your choice because you're affecting others, so just do what I tell you to do" yet? These are moral questions that, contrary to popular belief, science can't actually answer.
This isn't the first time that an epidemic has occurred and official measures were taken against it, Mr. Rhetorician.
Nor is it the first time that medical science was put into the position of needing to make their best educated guess on what policies would be most effective in curbing the spread of the viruses, finding that some of their suggestions were mistaken, and then changing their recommendations. (It beats the alternative, of simply insisting on maintaining one unbending stance in defiance of the facts.)
It also isn't the first time that parts of the population have resisted such restrictions. Although I don't recall any precedent of incidents of mass occupations of state capitals, by armed resistors.
Blacksmith strikes health inspector striving to enforce order
Two men and a woman were shot yesterday at Powell and Market streets when Henry D. Miller, an inspector in the city Health Department, discharged his revolver in a battle with James Wiser, a blacksmith, who refused to don a gauze influenza mask at the order of the health officer.
Wisser was one of the wounded, being shot in the arm and leg. Henry Appleton, 63 years old, 124 Belvedere Street, was shot in the leg by one of the four bullets fired by Miller, as was a woman whose name could not be learned by police, she having gone at once to her home after learning her wound was slight.
The police report that Miller found Wisser standing at the corner waving his arms and urging a crowd to dispense with the masks. "They are the bunk," he is reported to have said."
"Miller led him toward the drug store, insisting he purchase a mask. At the door of the store the blacksmith struck Miller with a sack containing a large number of silver dollars, and them knocked him to the ground."...
The NoMask website telegraphs their political agenda by introducing the article above with the typical partisan rhetorical hype-mongering:
"The only difference between this story 102 years ago and today is that Miller was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Today, he'd probably be given a medal and a promotion..."
Yeah. Globalist Totalitarian Tyranny- it's all coming down, man! Any minute!
So don't even try to tell me that "people aren't allowed to question" the quarantine restrictions or medical response policies. The record shows that no matter what decision was made on any of those questions, someone found a way to make it wrong. Sometimes the criticisms were grounded in fact. Other times, objections have been simply pulled out of thin air, or even concocted on the basis of lies.
I do find it disturbing that the objections based on wild exaggerations and falsehoods have gotten at least as much traction than the ones based in fact, if not more. But it's been educational. I've learned that quite a number of people view the character quality of Willfulness per se as self-evident proof of Independent Thinking and an expression of Superior Virtue. All I notice in those people is house-proud ignorance, obduracy, and pomposity. But then, I'm one of those Sheeple who never had a problem with masking up to go on a shopping trip.
1) The violence hasn’t “all been in one direction” — that’s just plain dumb to even claim, c’mon dude.
2) The (largely futile) measures in 1918 are poor analogues when:
A) they weren’t worldwide
B) they lasted nowhere near as long
C) 1918 Flu was far more deadly than COVID ever was believably projected to be (especially to under-70s)
3) You’re obviously right in that this isn’t the first epidemic, which is why countries all had measures in place for pandemic events, and they didnt involve closing schools, forcibly canceling gatherings/events, restricting movement of healthy people (or closing borders), or mandating masks (let alone across the entire healthy population). Why was all of this thrown out the window for COVID-19?
That’s an example from the UK’s influenza pandemic preparedness of 2011.
4) since this isn’t the first pandemic, there are precedents for increases in death (and even over-burdened hospitals in non-pandemic times), but what IS “unprecedented” is the denial of basic fundamental rights to citizens all over, including the dignity of burying your dead and holding a funeral where people can pay their respects. Things are being suspended and banned that haven’t been encroached upon since the days of the Black Death. If you wanna compare those times to modern times as if they’re remotely comparable in terms of threat, be my guest.
5) as you made excuses for them making their “best educated guess” for policies that would be imposed upon everybody, you left out option 3: do nothing. I know it’s not sexy in the age of “we have to do SOMETHING!” But when it comes to massive worldwide shut downs and de facto martial law, it’s entirely possible and should be taken into account without being cast as evil or defeatist that doing that “something” can cause greater harm than doing “nothing”. “Do no harm” is the oath, right? The problem with this war footing you’ve so readily adopted against germs is that, just like in the War on Terror and the War on Crime (we have an EXCELLENT record in our wars against abstract concepts), as soon as people said, “is this a war we should be fighting?” We got treated like terrorist sympathizers or people who want to keep rapists on the streets, and labeled “dangerous”.
6) I gave you my personal objections stated very plainly and earnestly to the measures being taken in the name of combatting a virus, and you instantly talked down to me as if I’m some antisocial nutjob with your links and drawn battle lines for whose side I’m on, based on whatever narrow-minded media outlet shaped your view on reactions to the virus. Certainly doesn’t seem like I’m allowed to question any of it when doing so already gets me lumped in the “degenerate” category in your responses.
I love it when people smugly post a Wikipedia article, you read it, and then find it actually undermines their point.
Healthy carriers was a new thing, the germ theory of disease wasn't widely accepted (Mary hardly ever washed her hands), she was terrified of poverty (cooking paid quite well at the time), and it seems even some doctors thought her treatment was overly harsh!
Hmm!
Wonder how COVID compares to typhoid. I'll go read up on that, next!
I'm not much of a fan of posts that provide inaccurate summaries of the material they purport to present.
Mary Mallon was a serial recividist offender.
"From 1900 to 1907, Mallon worked as a cook in the New York City area for eight families, seven of whom contracted typhoid.[11][12] In 1900, she worked in Mamaroneck, New York, where within two weeks of her employment, residents developed typhoid fever. In 1901, she moved to Manhattan, where members of the family for whom she worked developed fevers and diarrhea, and the laundress died. Mallon then went to work for a lawyer and left after seven of the eight people in that household became ill.[13][14]
In June 1904, she was hired by a prosperous lawyer, Henry Gilsey. Within a week, the laundress was infected with typhoid, and soon four of the seven servants were ill. No members of Gilsey's family were infected, because they resided separately, and the servants lived in their own house. The investigator Dr. R. L. Wilson concluded that the laundress had caused the outbreak, but he failed to prove it. Immediately after the outbreak began, Mallon left and moved to Tuxedo Park,[15] where she was hired by George Kessler. Two weeks later, the laundress in his household was infected and taken to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, where her case of typhoid was the first in a long time.[10]
In August 1906, Mallon took a position in Oyster Bay on Long Island with the family of a wealthy New York banker, Charles Henry Warren. Mallon went along with the Warrens when they rented a house in Oyster Bay for the summer of 1906. From August 27 to September 3, six of the 11 people in the family came down with typhoid fever. The disease at that time was "unusual" in Oyster Bay, according to three medical doctors who practiced there. The landlord, understanding that it would be impossible to rent a house with the reputation of typhoid, hired several independent experts to find the source of infection. They took water samples from pipes, faucets, toilets, and the cesspool, all of which were negative for typhoid...[16][17][18
More details are available, if people take the time to read it for themselves rather than accepting your preposterous twisting of the facts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
One more case: "In 1915, Mallon started working at Sloane Hospital for Women in New York City. Soon 25 people were infected, and two died. The head obstetrician, Dr. Edward B. Cragin, called Soper and asked him to help in the investigation. Soper identified Mallon from the servants' verbal descriptions and also by her handwriting.[36][39]"
Mallon eventually being sentenced- after multiple offenses- to the equivalent of life without parole in NYC's quarantine camp was arguably excessive. But that wasn't your initial point, was it?
Your point was about someone who "did what he thought was right for himself, in spite of others.
Really really good interview Matt! As a conservative Republican who voted for Trump twice, I truly respect interviews with guys from the left who can articulate their points like CJ Hopkins. He made some great points. We are in the "new" normal, not sure how this all ends.
I am still trying to sift through the legacy of COVID. The real legacy isn't the virus itself but the reaction to it, which has exposed enormous fault lines in just about everything in our societies in the modern west. What stands out as perhaps most troubling is the clear, quasi totalitarian diktat on what could or could not be discussed.
The origin of the virus - for all of 2020 anyone suggesting that it could have escaped from a lab rather than naturally occurring was immediately branded a crackpot, and not just a crackpot, but a dangerous and ignorant racist too. A common-sense interpretation of the events of early 2020 clearly pointed towards a lab escape as a major and realistic origin for COVID-19, which is backed up by the Chinese government's behaviors and actions in Wuhan at the time. Common sense isn't always right, but both the establishment governments worldwide and the "scientific community" immediately shut down any discussions on a lab escape despite enormous conflict of interests, and even outright lied about it, as Nicholas Wade, former science writer for the NYT, so brilliantly exposed in his long article on COVID on Medium: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038. Now we know there's a staggering conflict of interest among many scientists going right up to Fauci himself. Why are they still being excused and why aren't the mainstream media asking them awkward questions about their roles in allowing the virus to emerge in the first place?
Then we have the actual virus itself. Why are we still wearing masks outside? Not a single covid transmission has been traced back to an outdoor transmission between two people. Not one. We've known since pretty early on that COVID transmits through prolonged exposure in closed spaces. In short, you don't get COVID from walking past someone on the sidewalk. That's the scientific fact for you. But we've created a world where solitary schoolchildren (who are the least affected by COVID) wear masks while walking alone through an empty neighborhood. We've created a world where diners can dine in small tables but their waiters have to wear masks. Where's the logic in this?
Then we have the hypocrisies in calling out all references to Covid as the Wuhan or Chinese flu as racist and bigoted, yet the same people have no problems referring to the UK variant or South African variant or Indian variant....
The list goes on. The real problem is that we live in an age of experts, and COVID was created and allowed to escape by the experts, and it was covered up by the experts, and yet we have people still divided between those who shout to everyone we must listen to the experts and do what they tell us and who get incensed when someone simply asks how we know the experts are right (especially as time goes on, it's increasingly clear they are not), versus those who actually dare say, wait, hold on, there's a lot of problems with this policy or that policy, this doesn't make sense, why aren't we allowed to ask what happened in Wuhan and so forth.
Sometimes I wonder if we're starting to witness the beginning of the collapse of the expert class as a moral and political force. This certainly extends to all facets of modern America, in politics, media, culture for a variety of reasons. Contrary to what some people would like, this isn't necessarily a good thing. But the experts also may have brought it upon themselves in their blindness and arrogance of their assumptions.
"Sometimes I wonder if we're starting to witness the beginning of the collapse of the expert class as a moral and political force. This certainly extends to all facets of modern America, in politics, media, culture for a variety of reasons. Contrary to what some people would like, this isn't necessarily a good thing. But the experts also may have brought it upon themselves in their blindness and arrogance of their assumptions."
I completely agree. Also known as the Professional Middle Class. GlobalCap has also very damaged Universities... and learning in general.
There is also the denial of the efficacy of inexpensive remedies that research has shown to have prophylactic as well as anti-inflammatory value in treating COVID; ivermectin comes to mind:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYv30g7TKVM
The cocktail of Hydroxycloroquin, ivermectin, zinc, and Z-pack has saved thousands of people from any negative results from Covid 19. It is an effective, inexpensive, and safe treatment when treated early.
Sure ;-)) - and so is Ben Carson's and My-Pillow idiot's oleander oil extract. Despite that snake oil guaranteed cure, Ben Carson was publicly praising/groveling that Trump gave him a vaccine and saved his life after he gor Covid-19
All in all -- we should ALL be immensely thankful that Trump is GONE
People should have their own opinions.
Correct -- but not "facts"
Total agreement
Nicholas Wade is wrong. And pretty goddamned stupid. Here's why.
>1. Why do we know that there is no indication of GOF being part of COVID-19?
-Because of the sequences in nature, and over time the trail of people infected. It probably emerged in humans in China, possibly related to some cases that may have been immune compromised, allowing the virus to mutate for a long period in a few people.
>2. Why did China censor Chinese social media in October 2019 who talked of severe, suspicious pneumonia outbreaks. China punished a Doctor to silence when he raised alarm in November. He died of the virus as many others disappeared who spoke up. Why? -Because that's how bureaucrats roll everywhere, and especially in China. In the USA, hospitals have fired doctors and threaten to blackball any doctor for criticizing treatment or lack of PPE, etc.. This signifies nothing.
-Also, keep in mind that the Trump administration was attacking China verbally, and started a trade war. China has very good reason to be paranoid.
>3. Virologists are conspiring to do GOF experiments that endanger us all!
-Bullcrap. GOF experiments are how we find out how viruses are likely to mutate so we can create responses BEFORE it happens in nature. Yeah, I am one of those who SUPPORT GOF. Why do I do that? Because I KNOW that nature is doing GOF as we speak. ALL THE TIME! Deal with it. It's reality.
>4. US aiding Chinese research, blah, blah, cue rabid sino-xenophobia.
Mr. Wade, how the hell do you think that we can get influence in China? Hmm? By blabbering your xenophobic claptrap? No. That doesn't work. NEWS FLASH! You make friends by ... TA DA! Being friendly! Didn't your mommy ever tell you that? WTAF?
>Conclusion. Case substantial.
No. It's not substantial at all because the science does not support it.
** I will continue now with address to some of the other garbage that gets blabbered about by so-called journalists.
>Why did China enforce lockdown measures internally but allowed international travel, thus spreading the virus worldwide? Why didn’t the WHO speak out, but instead defended China’s marvellous transparency?
-Because every nation did the same thing! The USA has not shut down international travel - ever. And the USA became the worst nation in the world for spreading COVID-19. Ass clowns R US!
-I note that China notified the world before it had a single clear death from this new disease. Compare that with USA's behavior since.
>We lost over 4 months control of the spread because of China.
-The first death was in mid-November, but this wasn't established as probable until February 2020, and fairly well confirmed by June 2020. New diseases don't have a neon sign that says, "HEY! NEW DISEASE!" They look like any other acute respiratory illness in that season. There are reports that the CIA assessed this as a potentially deadly pandemic in November 2019. The CIA notified NATO. But like MMWR report, there are potential diseases all the time. I'm sure CIA had identified others that didn't pan out.
-FYI In any flu season, acute respiratory illness (which leads to pneumonia) causes huge numbes of deaths. 30,000-40,000 annually in the USA. It's not remarkable at all.
A normal season is 20% flu, 20% rhinoviruses and adenoviruses, 5% coronaviruses, 5% other. The "other" 50% is bacterial. (Staph, H. influenzae, etc.)
>According to the Washington post in January 2018, USA embassy members visited the laboratory and alerted Washington of the insufficient security measures for a laboratory studying Bat Corona Viruses.
All the science says there is no suggestion it's an escaped bat virus. It's been circulating in other animals and humans (in less severe form) for as long as 30 years. Deal with it.
Nicholas Wade is a former 30 year science writer for the NYT and a prominent and extremely knowledgeable person on the subject. His article is filled with credible information and facts about COVID-19, viruses as well as the people involved. He is not the only person who thinks it is quite credible the virus escaped from the lab rather than emerging naturally. The former head of the CDC does, too, among others.
You are a random internet poster telling people to "deal with it" while nothing you post disproves with any certainty the theory the virus may have escaped from the lab (and most of what you say reads like copied cherry picked distorted information). As Wade himself said we don't know for certain it came from the lab, but there are many, many strong implications it could have. Indeed, for otherwise it would have to be an enormous coincidence. A shockingly great and enormous coincidence.
The real question is why are you so insistent it could not have escaped from the lab? Why? The tone of your message suggests you are emotionally involved in not wanting the virus to have escaped from the lab. Perhaps too emotionally involved.
It's tempting to think perhaps we have one of the hacks deployed by the CPP globally to post on internet forums, but that is, of course, pure speculation ;)
I am insistent because there is zero evidence that it did "escape" aside from innuendo like Wade's nonsense. I explained why above. You didn't read very well. Go back and read. The answer is there. 10 points if you can post why.
I could care less these days about the credentials of the NYT. It's all but an anti-credential these days, just like citing the credential "I write for Fox!" isn't a recommndation. But that doesn't matter here. In that piece, Wade cobbled together some things and most of them have blindingly obvious answers that should have been apparent to him.
You might want to check out this article https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on the debate over whether the virus had a natural origin or escaped from WIV.
Oops, no points for me -
">3. Virologists are conspiring to do GOF experiments that endanger us all!
-Bullcrap. GOF experiments are how we find out how viruses are likely to mutate so we can create responses BEFORE it happens in nature. Yeah, I am one of those who SUPPORT GOF. Why do I do that? Because I KNOW that nature is doing GOF as we speak. ALL THE TIME! Deal with it. It's reality."
Then what do you think about the moratorium that was placed on GoF research from 2014-2017? Was it totally unnecessary? If so, why?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-lifts-moratorium-on-funding-controversial-high-risk-virus-research/
For myself, in addition to Racaniello's points, the idea that we can prevent biological warfare, or prevent crossover of diseases like COVID-19 into humans, by refusing to look at possibilities is quite insane. It's equivalent to telling soldiers that they must wear blindfolds while out on patrol. That this is a dominant view, and was completely dominant during the cold war does not make it any better. The result of that policy was that the USSR's Vector created a set of biological weapons and ICBM delivery systems incorporated into their nuclear war doctrine. That doctrine was to follow up the nuclear strikes days later with aerosol delivered engineered bioweapons.
Today, the threat is non-state actors. Those actors have tried, and will continue to try, to deploy biological weapons as simple as rabies or Ebola, or as complex as god-knows-what. Since WWII, only non-state actors have actually used biological weapons. And it has been the academic science community, and journalists who have bent over backwards to minimize or to excuse events like the salad bar in Oregon. It wasn't until Rajneesh himself found out what the women who guarded him had done and called in the police that anything was believed.
I think these academics are ivory tower naive. This also is the norm. Few things show this better than the NSABB, which has done nothing except wildly exacerbate any possible concern by shouting in the ears of our enemies exactly what they should try to do. That the board has done less damage is due to the extremity of naivete of its members, who have about as much understanding of terrorist psychology, motives, capability, etc. as a pet duck.
Brian P. Hanley (2013) Security in a Goldfish Bowl: the NSABBs Exacerbation of the Bioterrorism Threat.
https://www.omicsonline.org/security-in-a-goldfish-bowl-the-nsabbs-exacerbation-of-the-bioterrorism-threat-2157-2526.S3-013.php?aid=11953
"Today, the threat is non-state actors. "
You mean the Gates foundation ?
Yes! My dear! The evil gAtES fOunDAtioN is coming to get US! With 5G eNaBLed nanochips! Mixed into vaccines that take over your brains! Bill Gates is our master. You will know the darkness known only to the vaccinated! Expose this to ALL!!!!! (With lots of explanation points. Some people call them exclamations, but they are explainers. For those who are lacking paint.)
Brian, you need to take your meds dude. Chill out!!
Wow, you really are an asshole. Too bad all that education resulted in a Trump like ego. I'll bet your single, right ??
What Racaniello says about it. https://www.virology.ws/2019/04/04/avian-influenza-virus-transmission-experiments-proceed-as-they-should/ ...there is no evidence that the work will produce dangerous viruses. Yet these individuals, and others, use the scare tactic of describing theoretical dangers to mobilize opinion against the work. As I have written before, the work has clear benefits that the detractors fail to acknowledge.
Over 4 years ago, when the Fouchier-Kawaoka experiments were revealed, the objections of a few lead to a moratorium on this work. A careful review of the experiments followed which included panel discussions and a risk-benefit analysis of the work. Procedures were put in place to ensure that such gain-of-function experiments would receive proper review and be done under safe containment. After a long review process, the work was allowed to resume. The process was not kept secret as suggested in the articles...
Also, from the Scientific American article I linked is the following:
"But the decision to lift the moratorium did not sit well with scientists who have long warned of the risks of such research—and questioned its benefits.
“I am not persuaded that the work is of greater potential benefit than potential harm,” said molecular biologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, who has argued that U.S. labs working with dangerous pathogens regularly suffer serious biosafety lapses. Experiments to create enhanced viruses, he and others argue, could lead to the pathogens’ accidental release, most likely by a lab worker becoming infected unknowingly and then walking out the door.
“A human is better at spreading viruses than an aerosol” that might breach a lab’s physical containment, said epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who has calculated that the risk of a lab-acquired infection sparking a pandemic is greater than recognized. “The engineering is not what I’m worried about. Accident after accident has been the result of human mistakes.”
He nevertheless called the new policy “a small step forward” because it sets up a formal process for evaluating whether the controversial experiments should receive federal funding. But because geneticallymodified viruses “risk creating an accidental pandemic” and “have done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemic,” he said, “my view is that a review of the sort proposed should disallow such experiments.”
In fact, he argued that the moratorium on federal funding of the experiments should be extended to cover those conducted with private money."
Are your credentials on the matter equal to or greater than those of the scientists who oppose GoF research? Genuinely curious. If not, what are your bona fides with respect to virology?
Or epidemiology? And to repeat:
But because genetically modified viruses “risk creating an accidental pandemic” and “have done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemic,” he said, “my view is that a review of the sort proposed should disallow such experiments.”
If a Harvard epidemiologist is against GoF and says that in fact such research has done ALMOST NOTHING to improve our preparedness, why are you such a strong proponent and can you present counter-arguments that address the concern stated by all of the people interviewed by Scientific American, namely accidental escape from the lab?
P.S. - The two articles you linked on avian influenza seem to have contradictory dates. In the one about the lifting of the original GoF pause, it says the following:
"In early 2012 influenza virus researchers around the world decided to stop working on highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus. This decision came after work from the Fouchier and Kawaoka laboratories revealed the isolation of influenza H5N1 strains that can be passed among ferrets by aerosol. The moratorium on influenza H5N1 virus research has now been lifted, as described in a letter from influenza virologists to Science and Nature." (article dated 23 January 2013 by Vincent Racaniello)
You might want to check out this article https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on the debate over whether the virus was of natural origin or escaped from WIV.
"there is no evidence that the work will produce dangerous viruses"
Then there is no point in doing the work. The sole objective of GOF research is to produce a virus that is more pathogenic and virulent so that it may be studied, and treatments developed prior to a natural outbreak.
I can only conclude that you are either a run-of-the-mill internet troll or someone working on behalf of a state. Either way, your input into this argument is dismissible.
So in your own words, who was the main driver behind the LATEST GoF moratorium that was lifted in 2017 (not the H5N1 moratorium from 2012*) and who publicly opposed it? It would seem that proponents of GoF, including Anthony Fauci and other prominent virologists, would have more "say" in the matter, wouldn't it? And yet it was paused for 4 years (not that I believe the work was discontinued at Fort Detrick and other governments' bio-weapons labs).
*-Four years? It looks more like 8 years from your article. It clearly states that the Fouchier-Kawaoka experiments happened prior to 2012 and that the H5N1 moratorium was in effect from early 2012 to January of 2013. That's not the moratorium I was talking about and I provided at least one link. From roughly 2014 to 2017. Paywall warning: https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/moratorium-on-gain-of-function-research-36564
So we are talking about two different pauses.
After the past few years, it continues to amaze me people are busy chasing rainbows like "determining the origin of a new coronovirus", as you do here. This absurd desire to place the blame so to speak, is wildly over emphasized.
Based on your own evidence, the virus existed in the wild. Whether it escaped from a lab that was studying it, or migrated on its own into the general population, hardly matters does it? From a practical perspective? Maybe the lab accidentally released it, or maybe it released itself. Who really cares? From any practical perspective, it just doesn't matter.
What continues to amaze and frankly elude me, is why no one is asking questions about the absurdly large and grossly ineffective measures taken in response?
There's no doubt at all that so called "N-95" masks are completely useless in blocking the transmission of a virus. The pores in those masks are literally orders or magnitude larger than the virus, which just blow right by the masks without even slowing down.
Next we have the magnificently overstated menace represented by the virus. In early propaganda, it was purported to be lethal in 0.03 to 0.05% of the infected. This proved to be horribly inaccurate; a blatant attempt to terrorize the world population.
Why isn't anyone questioning this? Honestly, at this point I'm pretty sure we can agree the virus exists and it came from somewhere. Where it came from is a mostly accademic pursuit. But the horribly overblown threat? That wasn't pure accident and frankly reeks of intentional manipulation. Who was behind that?
Early in its spread, it became clear people with type O blood weren't susceptible to the extreme symptoms caused by the virus. Was this presented to the general public? No, it wasn't. If you happened to be a reader of the New England Journal of Medicine, you would have seen it, however there just aren't that many folks in the general population that read the NEJM regularly, and even the NEJM didn't make an attempt to promote those findings.
I'm fairly certain this is the natural course for a "news" media that runs on the axiom "if it bleeds, it leads". Their sole interest was in selling "eyeball time" to the great unwashed and they played the story for all it was worth.
That's the sad state of affairs with the so called "Main Stream Media", and it should be patently obvious that the Fourth Estate has openly and unabashedly failed our society.
I'm not certain whether the lab hypothesis or the bat hypothesis is correct, but I hardly see how thinking the virus escaped from a US-China joint research lab is more "sino-xenophobic" than thinking it escaped from a traditional Chinese "wet market".
Here's how that theory is more "sino-xenophobic":
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/05/as-death-toll-increases-blame-china-campaign-intensifies.html
It was part of the Trump administration's cold warring with China and at the very least an attempt to pin the full blame on Chinese negligence as part of the propaganda war between the two countries.
BRAVO Brian -- fully supported by ALL other facts and sources !! Just ignore feeble-minded -- by now they are beyond hope. Yet -- we have 600K dead (20% of world total with only 4% of world population).
Our country has been a complete failure on Covid-19 control -- many lunatics can't comprehend this because we are soo "special". Although rapid actions and responses required have been known for 100+ years everywhere except in a backward US country where even evolution is "controversial" and "gingerly" being taught in schools, if at all
Not only a failure, but possibly the SOURCE of COVID-19. The tweet has a graphic of a Facebook post by a guy who says he worked at Fort Detrick on coronavirus and SARS research.
https://twitter.com/fgl8/status/1352257841302818818?s=20
With you on the failures of American and European governments, but the nature of the outbreak is far from decided and may never be. But this is a good rundown on the former issue:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/coronavirus-on-western-government-failures-and-possible-therapies.html
You've bought into the propaganda full-bore. If you're going to pin it on China, at least cite the actual history of the virus. It, or a very close variant, of it was discovered in a mine there in 2012.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.581569/full
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/a-chinese-phd-thesis-sheds-important-new-light-on-the-origin-of-the-covid-19-coronavirus/
"One of the very earliest scientific papers from the COVID-19 pandemic era now has over 11,000 citations. Appearing in the scientific journal Nature on February 3rd 2020, Zhou et al., 2020 reported the genome sequence of a novel coronavirus isolated from patients with atypical pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Its senior author was leading coronavirus researcher Zheng-li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (the WIV). Along with what we now call SARS-CoV-2, her paper also reported the genome sequence of a closely related (96.2% identical) bat virus. The authors called this virus RaTG13. To this day RaTG13 is still the closest known viral genome by far to SARS-CoV-2.
RaTG13 came from the freezers of the WIV.
In one sense, there is nothing unusual about that. Researchers often have old samples stored away and the WIV has the largest collection of coronaviruses in the world. On the other hand, Wuhan is considered an unlikely locality for a coronavirus outbreak.
However, the two sentences in Zhou et al., (2020) describing RaTG13 allayed any fears:
“We then found that a short region of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) from a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13)–which was previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan province–showed high sequence identity to 2019-nCoV. We carried out full-length sequencing on this RNA sample (GISAID accession number EPI_ISL_402131).”
This statement clearly implied that, prior to the pandemic, WIV researchers had only ever studied a ‘short’ fragment of RaTG13, that the fragment was unpublished (since no prior description was cited), and that no recent research had been carried out on RaTG13 or its sample. Consequently, a lab leak involving RaTG13 was implausible.
But all these inferences turned out to be untrue. Zhou et al. was one of the pandemic’s key misinformation superspreaders. In August 2020, two researchers, Monali Rahalkar and Rahul Bahulikar, published a preprint in which they reported that they had accessed the underlying sequencing files for RaTG13. As first noticed by Twitter user Francisco A. de Ribeira, some were dated from 2017 and others from 2018. Moreover, these early RaTG13 sequences went far beyond a short fragment, encompassing most of the genome (Rahalkar and Bahulikar, 2020a).
In November 2020 Nature published an addendum to Zhou et al. in which Zheng-li Shi and her co-authors conceded these points. They wrote:
“In 2018…..we performed further sequencing of these bat viruses and obtained almost the full-length genome sequence (without the 5′ and 3′ ends) of RaTG13.”
Thus the RaTG13 genome sequence was mostly deciphered in 2018 and not in January 2020. Ergo, the viral genome most similar to SARS-CoV-2 was being studied at the WIV before the pandemic broke out."
Here's my question, though. We've already seen it reported that COVID-19 (or again, a very close variant) has been found in sewage samples from Barcelona in March of 2019 and both Italy and Brazil experienced abnormally high deaths from viral pneumonia in mid to late 2019.
https://www.medindia.net/news/strange-pneumonia-cases-were-noticed-in-italy-before-chinas-covid-19-outbreak-193888-1.htm
Here's USA Today attempting to debunk it, and I'm willing to wait for scientific confirmation, but where there's smoke (and in more than one place) there's usually SOME fire:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/07/fact-check-coronavirus-found-march-2019-wastewater-sample/5350878002/
All of this having been said, I am fully willing to believe that SARS COV2 was potentially circulating in patches as far back as 2012, certainly it was already spreading in mid-2019 well before the Wuhan outbreak was reported.
If you could provide citations for the conclusions, it would strengthen the argument.
Regarding #2:
https://fair.org/home/debunking-trump-and-corporate-medias-who-china-coverup-conspiracy-theories/
"Perhaps the most persistent false narrative of Chinese deception and concealment has nothing to do with fake statistics or Chinese manipulation of the WHO, but with China allegedly withholding details from the world and silencing whistleblowers. The Associated Press’s widely circulated report, “China Didn’t Warn Public of Likely Pandemic for Six Key Days” (4/15/20), contained many blatant falsehoods and omissions.
The AP report blamed the “delay” in informing the public between January 14 and January 20, after “top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus,” for infecting millions and killing thousands.
The AP’s claims about the Chinese government not informing the public for six crucial days are demonstrably false, as Chinese state media published multiple reports before this “crucial” period, informing the public of a “new virus” in Wuhan (China Daily, 1/9/20).
Although the AP notes that raising the alarm prematurely would damage the Chinese government’s credibility and “cripple their ability to mobilize the public,” that is not given credence as an explanation for the government “waiting” until leading Chinese epidemiologist Dr. Zhong Nanshan confirmed human-to-human transmission of Covid-19 on January 20. Instead, AP claimed that “China’s rigid controls on information, bureaucratic hurdles and a reluctance to send bad news up the chain of command muffled early warnings,” despite WHO and AP itself (1/15/20) reporting on Chinese officials warning that the possibility of human-to-human transmission could not be ruled out during this supposed period of “silence.”
An earlier AP report (3/19/20) shared a similar perspective, citing the familiar (and repeatedly debunked) myth of the Chinese government silencing Dr. Li Wenliang, a supposed “whistleblower” who warned the public of Covid-19. I previously noted (FAIR.org, 3/6/20) that Dr. Li was not a whistleblower, nor the first doctor to discover the Covid-19 outbreak, and neither was he ahead of the Chinese government. However, Vijay Prashad, Du Xiaojun and Weiyan Zhu’s timeline of the Chinese government’s response offers more clarity (People’s Dispatch, 3/31/20, 4/7/20, 4/14/20).
Dr. Zhang Jixian was the first to discover the Covid-19 outbreak, and was not a whistleblower either, because she followed established protocol by reporting it to her hospital’s disease control department on December 27. This resulted in an announcement by the Wuhan Health Commission on December 30, which is why Reuters (12/31/19) was able to report on this supposedly “secret” information in real-time.
On December 30 (the same day as the Wuhan Health Commission announcement), Dr. Ai Fen saw a test report of unidentified pneumonia, circled the words “SARS coronavirus” in red before taking a picture of it and sending it to a medical school classmate. From there, it spread in medical circles before reaching Dr. Li, who had shared it with seven colleagues in a private WeChat group on December 30 as well. Dr. Li didn’t consider himself a whistleblower, and asked them not to share the message to the public before it was leaked on December 31, the same day WHO picked up a media statement from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission’s website.
Dr. Li and his seven colleagues were reprimanded on January 3 (the same day China notified the US CDC) for not following established protocol, as Dr. Zhang had (who was never punished, but rewarded), and for potentially causing unnecessary panic, given that the SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequence wasn’t identified and shared until January 11. While the Chinese government doesn’t pretend to have handled the outbreak perfectly—as it apologized to Dr. Li’s family and disciplined the police officers who had initially handled the case—it is hard to believe officials had a mandate to suppress knowledge of the novel coronavirus, considering nobody knew the true nature of the disease at the time.
Despite the Chinese government making much of this information readily available in their timelines, corporate media conveniently leave these crucial details out of theirs in order to advance New Cold War propaganda (Business Insider, 5/22/20; New York Times, 5/26/20)."
I suggest reading the whole thing (especially the embedded links) and re-evaluating your opinion on the alleged "coverup" by China.
These are also recommended write-ups:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/05/as-death-toll-increases-blame-china-campaign-intensifies.html
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/coronavirus-on-western-government-failures-and-possible-therapies.html
Succinct, cogent , and informative!
Thank you!
As Usual,
EA
This sure didn’t age well. Yet you said it all with such arrogance at the time.
Any analysis that refutes an argument with charges of racism or xenophobia is self-identifying as prima facie bogus. Next!
"Mr. Wade, how the hell do you think that we can get influence in China?"
We won't. Ever. You're an idiot if you believe you can sway the CCP into becoming something it isn't. And the CCP is absolute master of China.
Good grief!
I think the "problem" with experts isn't their expertise, but what policy makers do with the synthesis of information across disciplines. Virology experts, economic experts, logistical experts, foreign policy experts and more all have a valid view of the situation, but the actual decision comes when combining the input. For example, if you take your car in to a mechanic and say, "Go over it. I'd like it in tip-top shape," the mechanic (expert) will lay out dozens of items to repair, replace, upgrade, etc. They will give the expert opinion from their point of view. You take that information and, when considered with how long you intend to keep the vehicle, how much money you have to spend and how critical the work is (the carpet is fine!), you then make a decision about what work needs to be done. The expert did what the expert does, but you decide what has to happen based on their input. A health expert would want our country to do all kinds of bans, restrictions and preventative measures for any number of health concerns - but the policy maker has to balance with other experts and, often, simple common sense. They must also consider the will of the people. For some reason, we put a heavy load on experts to actually formulate policy, which introduces conflicts of interest.
In re-reading what I wrote, it occurs to me politicians are shirking responsibility by passing policy decisions off to the experts. The expert isn't really accountable to anyone and the politician can simply blame the expert for the decisions. Win-win for the politician.
In a past age, that wouldn't have been tolerable. Can you imagine Harry Truman blaming the expert? Why we put up with it is one of the questions for today's population.
I agree that the lab escape theory is plausible and also I don't rule out malevolent intent considering the not too distant revelations about MK-Ultra and Fort Detrick.https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/cia-project-mk-ultra/
From the very early goings, I was finding what looked like legitimate theories about the possibility of a lab leak where gain of function research was happening. Here are two of the first bits I found way back in February of 2020.
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
and
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/03/19/china-owns-nature-magazines-ass-debunking-the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2-claiming-covid-19-wasnt-from-a-lab/
Notably this particular person pins it solely on sloppiness by Chinese researchers in Wuhan, but I'm not convinced. I'm just as willing to consider an attempt by the U.S. government to sabotage China from the public health, economic and public relations angles. After all, what has resulted cannot be described as anything BUT a propaganda war.
https://www.ibtimes.sg/was-coronavirus-developed-fort-detrick-military-lab-us-conspiracy-theory-surfaces-after-chinas-55063
I mean, it shouldn't even be controversial to say that GoF research was almost certainly happening at Detrick, even during the so-called moratorium.
https://veritybase.info/en/gain-of-function-research-on-sars-virus-performed-at-us-lab-with-bio-cells-from-fort-detrick/
I've also seen the stuff about Fauci's involvement in circumventing the GoF moratorium starting in 2014 by moving that research to Wuhan (with much American involvement, by definition), but the 'ban' was lifted in the first year of Trump's presidency and it became fully 'legal' to resume GoF research in the US at non-military labs.
Just for an oldie but goodie, here's a great Glenn Greenwald series about the Bruce Ivins anthrax saga, which of course, centered on....Fort Detrick.
https://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/anthrax_25/
Here's another link about the Chinese allegations that COVID was brought to China (either intentionally or through negligence and initial spread from an American lab).
https://stateofthenation.co/?p=9469
With the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists being willing to re-open the debate on the origins of COVID-19, one has to keep an open mind and realize that here in the West, we're swimming in just as much if not more propaganda than the Chinese are.
Thank you so much for the Wade article! Having done some reading I had come to the same conclusion about a year ago - that, for a number of reasons, "lab escape" was entirely possible ...
"Why are they still being excused and why aren't the mainstream media asking them awkward questions about their roles in allowing the virus to emerge in the first place?"
You / we are looking for a pursuit of truth within an industry that forfeited that directive long ago. There are few "journalists" left in MM and Taibbi, Greenwald and others have yet to gain enough traction to be a substitute for what once was. CNN/FOX/NYT, etc. reach only a few million at any given time which is a small % of the population, but their outsized influence comes by way of social media and non-thinking persons & algorithms forwarding and parroting the misleading messages - it's a real uphill battle for "real journalists" to contend with.
Step one would be to treat MM for the entertainers that they are and nothing more, never lending them credence as a source of valuable information.
Step two would be to find a new term for "journalist" with a clear distinction from the historical relationship with MM and previous news outlets. Once identified, those using the term as a label can effectively build the cachet necessary to distinguish the new term as meaning a "searcher of truth".
Unfortunately, little time is available to accomplish this before social media excludes all truth seekers from any platform that might reach a sizable audience.
Thank you, Thomas. You took the words out of my head and did the typing for me - couldn't agree more.
I feel like everything with Covid had to be dumbed down for general consumption.
Last summer I got into an argument when I thought people should be able to go to beaches. Based on everything I read, beaches were not risky. What would be risky would be people from multiple households driving to the beach, or getting together indoors after the beach. However, why demonize being at the beach. I was almost universally chastised with "why take the chance?" or "you are risking the life of [insert at-risk relative]".
There was no allowance for nuanced thinking or analyzing specific activities done a specific way. It was either a blanket "this is ok" or "this is not OK"
There was a lot of this, still is, but I chalk it up to a new virus where scientific and govt authorities were legit worried about it wiping out 5-30% of the planet. That is, rather than a conspiracy (or "system," whatever) to exert control, there was a lot of overselling of potential dangers. Most of the US is coming out of lockdown — and many regions were never even in it — with no new repressions I'm aware of.
The 5 to 30% figure was based on very crappy models, not science. There was a Sars Covid 1 prior to this, but I guess it didn't have the "gain of function" part to it. Shouldn't scientists be all over that? Let's face it there are American scientists that participated in that research, and none of them want to be outed. Nor does the government that gave them the power and dollars to do it. FUBAR!
WHY the “overselling of potential dangers?” ... what product was being oversold?
What product? Politicians' "authority" and state power. Isn't that obvious.
Duh !
0.5% of the population is quite significant. So called crude death rate is around 0.08% per year.
Yes, I was exaggerating and don't honestly remember any numbers from early on. But with all the (honest) skepticism to overreaction, I was one of many who were worried Trump-controlled agencies would downplay the threat.
Are a few hundred people on a cruise ship really indicative of the 7 billion people on earth? I can't argue the media loves its panic porn but I will definitely argue against a Gubbmint Conspiracy to gain greater control by overhyping it. It's like the kooks who claimed 9/11 was set up as an excuse to invade Iraq — as if the govt has ever needed to kill 3,000 of its own people to invade anywhere. I think social media, smart appliances, online shopping, etc etc has proven that if the govt wants more control they don't need to overhype a pandemic to get it. The potential economic effects alone seem like a hell of a wildcard for a government to play. I think it's the typical naivety of a conspiracy buff to think any particular plan would automatically work out in their favor.
And yes, this reminds me of AIDS as well, in that there were plenty of Monday Morning Quarterbacks by the mid-90s who knew all along exactly how the disease was contracted. Very, very few of them in the mid-80s when the "gay flu" made its public debut.
Yes it was. Over and over around the world, we saw the virus get to roughly 20% prevalence and then start crashing. India is the most recent example but NYC was one of the first.
Hell, it wasn't even just the Diamond Princess, you also had the USS Theodore Roosevelt. That's two petri-dishes with slightly different media (demographics). The TR had ONE fatality in the crew.
I remember the Diamond Princess quite well. There were several highly reputable epidemiologists and statisticians who were using the Diamond Princess experience for their long-term forecasting and they got pilloried (or outright ignored) by the press, who attempted to judge/shame them as a threat to science and endangering people's own lives for promoting fake information. Despite being genuine experts, they were simply the wrong kinds of experts. But they are now having the last laugh.
But it is telling that so much of COVID was already known by end of April 2020 but the goalposts kept shifting and new excuses kept cropping up for shutdowns and wearing masks. I am not attempting to downplay that a new virus did emerge and did pose a genuine risk to specific demographics, but at the same time the establishment classes really ramped through an approach that terrified far more people than really needed to be the case and the reaction was outsized compared to what it logically should have been (highly targeted towards the high profile demographics rather than a one-size fits all approach).
Why did this happen? Why were disagreements and dissenting voices censored and banned? For me, the answer rests in two overarching reasons:
1. The anti-Trump movement. People, either deliberately or unconsciously, used COVID as a means to defeat Donald Trump by turning it into a political weapon. This meant a close collaboration between the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, and the Democratic politicians quickly moved in lockstep in their policies while the media did everything they could to portray any disagreements as racist, bigoted, unscientific, what you have it. They wanted to scare Americans from voting for Trump - and they did, even if they did also destroy a great deal of legitimacy along the way.
2. The rise of the class of technocratic experts, which is also a byproduct of the emergence of modern Democratic/Progressive alliance. In this world, experts are given a great deal of deference, and the growing influence of experts allows them to disregard differing views from people outside their field and pesky things like civil rights, constitutional laws and all these things we normally use to protect ourselves from abuses of power. The mainstream media staunchly believes in superiority of technocratic experts, which also helps define their moral understanding of right and wrong. So when an expert says X, they are never questioned why it's X and not Y. They simply blindly report what the experts say must be the right thing to do. Anthony Fauci is a perfect example of the technocratic expert - he has been wrong many times but he is still treated reverently by the mainstream media who persist in telling all and sundry we must listen to him because he's the "expert."
1. There's been close collaboration between MSM and the Dems for decades — this hardly started 14 months ago. The elites in both entities are basically the same people. It didn't help that most of the people crying loudest about Covid restrictions were in fact racist, bigoted, unscientific, and just plain inhuman. Right wingers from the WSJ op-ed page to the Texas lt. gov actually put eugenics back on the table, which is not a great way to let citizens know you have their best interests in mind. So I don't think it was the Dem-MSM cabal that actively did in Trump so much as Trump doing in Trump, as only he can.
2. This has been true forever as well and Dems hardly have the franchise.
Yes! I would also add corporate capture of supposedly neutral science organizations, ie the Gates Foundation capture of the WHO.
I have been doing a lot of research on Covid-19 for quite a while now, posting updates to either my blog of facebook. I posted a link to a bloomberg article which noted that the Thai government had approved the use of andrographis (a potent antiviral and antiinflammatory herb) for the treatment of covid-19 during its early stages. Thai studies had found that it shortened duration of the infection and decreased the chances of severity. Facebook removed the post within 24 hours and said that any further infractions could lead to the suspension of my account. I found this particularly oppressive as all i had done was linked to an article to a relatively prominent news site and the article merely discussed the outcomes of Thai scientific studies and what the Thai government had decided to do in response. Among other things, it reduced costs, relieved overcrowding at the hospitals, and actually seemed to work well in the real world.
The powers that be seemed not to want to let people know the simple things that could be done. I spoke to my doctor and asked if he had been vaccinated, which he had. I told him I was simply increasing vitamin intake for my immune system and would rely on the therapeutics if I happened to get infected. He thought, given my health and age, that it was a sound plan.
After age (which we can't do anything about), vitamin D deficiency and obesity were the two biggest factors in bad outcomes.
How much better would we be if government had "mandated" an hour-long walk in the sunshine when possible?
Absolutely! That is the question that beckons the thought, that maybe they didn't want this to go away, at least until after the election. Darker skinned people should have been told to take (very inexpensive Vit D). I have a family member that works in a large hospital in California, he told me 95% of the patients hospitalized for Cov 2 were grossly over weight, and yet we have social justice warriors that are currently celebrating obesity as a beautiful and natural thing.
I don't think body shaming would've helped (ask any fat person who's yoyo dieted out of self hatred if they actually wound up healthier), but we could've had a "get outside and exercise" PSA campaign plus free vitamins for everyone, instead of a "stay home and live in fear" PSA campaign plus closing parks and beaches in the early months.
No it wouldn't have helped. There is something fundamentally wrong with the American diet, and I don't really blame citizens for that. I blame corporations that push food sales like the tobacco industry did. You are so right about what a well thought out PSA campaign could have accomplished, and that is puzzling that such a simple idea was ignored.
Great article. I wish I could encapsulate my thoughts as efficiently as Mr. Hopkins.
I remember a belligerent post on the neighborhood app Nextdoor for Santa Monica, CA that stuck with me. To paraphrase:
‘To the runner who ran past my open car door without a mask - HOW DARE YOU! You endangered our lives! My children in the backseat were frightened. May you get what you deserve, sir!’
^Note that at the time it was posted the LA mayor said it was allowed for people to exercise outdoors without a mask (later changed to must wear at all times).
The LA city officials following ‘science’ closed our beaches. Surfers were given $1000 tickets. Bulldozers filled volleyball courts and skateboard parks full of sand. They thought it better to have the working poor living with multi-generations in small apartments to cram together indoors than use the beaches. Real geniuses...
Not to mention, if you think people are going to get sick when you let them out, THERE'S NO BETTER TIME THAN DURING THE SUMMER! You certainly don't want to drag your curve into flu season -- or what used to be flu season -- when the hospitals are full of the at-risk!!!!
Hard to “be funny” in the midst of fascist totalitarian brutality. At least the “ass clown” stood up to the corrupt MSM and tried to fight the deep state. Anyone they hate that much I will gladly defend.
Weird how they didn't announce the vaccine until the week after the election. As a wise person recently told me "there wouldn't be so many conspiracy theories if there weren't so many conspiracies".
No, Trump and Biden are both deep state tools, for all that they ACT different. See:
http://www.renegadetribune.com/harpa-trump-seeking-new-agency-to-use-a-i-to-screen-mental-health-for-gun-ownership/
https://geopolitics.co/2021/05/08/trifecta-darpa-iarpa-and-now-harpa-to-complete-digital-dictatorship
No matter where one falls on this debate regarding how the pandemic was handled, my real concern has been the effect on potential future pandemics that carry actual substantial danger (my personal bias is showing there).
The tale of the boy who cried wolf comes to mind a lot.
It'll be the same as this one: the consolidation of power. They'll just have experience the next time.
Yeah, that goes without saying. I'm referring to the skeptics (of all sorts and of all reasoning) who might not take serious an actual dangerous pandemic.
For those who may take exception to my use of the word "actual", I just mean if another virus came along where it proved lethal to at least 10% of the general population.
Understood.
I suspect the threat of the state scales exponentially to the threat of the thing itself. 10% of the general population would be horrific, but then I consider the reaction to that.
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fauci will be a memory and CDC will have zero credibility.
Exactly
It's always impressive how Matt gets criticism like "what happened to you" from BlueMaga types. but will also get something like "I was with you until you said you were no fan of Trump.."
This guy in the interview is clearly a leftist based on his criticism of global Capitalism, I'm guess he read the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein form his "shock and awe" comment. I love watching peoples heads explode when they can't fit an essay neatly into their blue or red headspace.
Keep breaking the Matrix Matt.
I look at Matt's Twitter feed every now and then. It's become very dark. It went from a lot of "what happened to you, man?" which is kind of funny, to many barking, foaming, screeching accusations that he's a traitor, a Putin plant, or even a white supremacist.
Check it out some time. It's gotten creepy.
I'm hoping this is just some isolated nuts and trolls. But when you realize that some of his big RussiaGate antagonists now have high positions in the Justice Department and the intelligence services, it feels ominous.
Unfortunately it's not nuts and trolls... I find myself out of sync lately with Matt's priorities, but it's the venom from his critics is part of what keeps me here. People who want to demonize honest discussion are my enemies, no matter what side. Seems his overall priority is to have no sacred cows or taboos when it comes to issues counter to freedom and democracy, and that's too much for a lot of people.
This is hilarious to read after you claimed my views were "contrarian posturing."
Is it because I'm not a famous journalist like Matt? Go on. You can tell us the truth.
Truth is you have a screw loose.
Not the same as being wrong!
Well you're two for two.
It's also pretty strange how none of these people question themselves. If the people who you admired are no longer on your bandwagon.......
People who question themselves are mostly done with Twitter.
Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
The TDS is real and has claimed a tons of victims.
Matt clearly left a cult. lol
They left him.
There are a lot more left leaning critics of covid authoritarianism than the mainstream media acknowledges. I know, because I went looking for them to preserve my own sanity: CJ Hopkins, Mark Crispin Miller, Alison McDowell, Naomi Wolf, Whitney Webb, James Corbett, Giorgio Agamben, winter oak press, off-guardian, the lockdowncriticalleft subreddit, Bellows magazine...
Architects for Social Housing is quite good (even if a little too materialist/Marxist for my tastes at times), and David Cayley has written some great articles/blog posts from the more philosophical approach (quite like Agamben).
I find MCM is too conspiratorial and falls for dramatic too easily. Hopkins seems to be a lot more grounded.
The worst part, to me, is they've now conditioned the masses to accept this as necessary when so deemed by the state. The mechanisms are still in place to spring to action for the next "crisis," and 80% of the population of the entire globe will do exactly as directed. This includes turning in family, friends and neighbors for whatever is sold by governments as dangerous. I imagine the next "crisis" is, at least, on the horizon. I think it will be climate change, personally. Those activists have been itching for re-education camps and forced behavior for years. Half the population believes the world is ending in around 10 years (contrary to any actual science) and would be more than happy to do whatever is necessary to the other half to preserve their "survival." All that is now needed is to plug this crisis in and activate the machine.
Turn in family, friends, and neighbors to whom...?
Really? How about the authorities that come and shut down your business, arrest pastors of half filled churches while big box stores and super markets are full of people. You have to be a bit smarter than you have up to this point shown.
We're talking about future effects, the "mechanisms" the OP speaks of, not what was happening 6-9 months ago. Read, then react.
Google "call police for covid violations" to get an idea of areas where it was encouraged and those chomping at the but to do so.
Make that *bit. ;)
But works too.
I'm talking about the "mechanisms" you mentioned. The state has always had and should continue to have the ability to shut down a business that's endangering people. This is not new with Covid.
Wonder why they didn't target Best Buy or Costco or Target then?
Those places were big enough to allow social distancing and have good ventilation, and more to the point they required masks, and followed social distancing and cleaning protocols.
They most certainly do not have good ventilation. These buildings meet building code minimums. For an effective HVAC system for air adequate exchange it would cost ten times as much. I do this for a living. All the protocols, like wiping down shopping carts and such have now been proven to have been a waste of time. It was always theater, and that is all.
More importantly they have representation where it actually counts, on K-street.
Because that's never gone poorly ever.
It’s gone poorly and saved a lot of lives, depending. If public health is not in the govt’s portfolio I’m not sure why we have one.
Here's another example of you missing the point of Hopkins' article.
You'll recall he lives in Germany. Traditionally, Germany doesn't have a great track record giving the state power to "shut down a business that's endangering people." Can you possibly, for a moment, understand how big of a problem this already is and will continue to become?
I'm not downplaying COVID here. I'm saying you totally underestimate the effect the state's reaction had on our society, especially considering history since the Cold War.
They locked the door when you weren't looking. At this stage, I've got to believe you don't WANT to look.
In other words 80% of the population is mentally ill.
100% is much closer.
We've had and still have re-education classes for the entire history of our country. It's called boot camp.
I'm betting there will be yet another financial crash before anything else. The world government and currency is going to happen no matter what at this point.
The coup was over a long time ago, we're just along for the ride at this point.
The worst part about all of this is that the "party of science" is still pretending that it's March 2020, and not actually following the real-world data we've been collecting over the last year+. And they demand that the rest of us stay as scared as they are.
"Party of science."
There's me pissed off for the rest of the day! :P
more of the "Snark is its own Factual Support" contingent from Newsmax and Breitbart...
He said, snarkily, utterly devoid of self awareness.
I'll leave the judgement on this exchange to the other readers. Which is not a number to be confused with the spurious tally known as "upvoting", as if Internet comments were some slambook.
Cool, I don't give a shit what they think either.
"the "party of science" is still pretending that it's March 2020"
No, unlike the denier contingent, people with science-based opinions are aware of the difference in the casualty toll between March 2020 and May 2021, both in the US and worldwide.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map
Would you please let Jay Inslee know?
Whitmer and Wolf refuse to be ignored as well.
Democrats wouldn't have felt that it was advantageous to brand themselves as "the party of Science" if their opponents hadn't been counseling quackery.
Now we're at the point where perhaps 1/3 of the population of the country is refusing the vaccine; given the overwhelming evidence for the lack of side effects of the vaccines being provided (aka "science"), the best explanation for the refusal of most of them is that it's an exercise in Political Activism. Virtue Signaling, for people determined to prevent the prospect of herd immunity against Covid-19 because it might be viewed as a victory by the current presidential administration that they oppose.
Covid-19 doesn't care, but to the extent that a virus partakes of a biological imperative, I'm sure it appreciates the help of the Refusers in assisting its continued survival.
I'll get vaccinated as soon it's FDA approved, and the vaccine makers are no longer shielded from liability. If the vaccine is safe, these are reasonable expectations, yes?
Until then, I'm not really feeling the urgency to vaccinate for protection from a virus with 0.01% mortality rate for my age and physical condition, especially when there's no guarantee it will prevent spreading the virus.
"overwhelming evidence for the lack of side effects of the vaccines"
Lack of side effects, my ass. I was laid up in bed for a week after the second shot; same thing happened to my dad with his first shot. I know, "anecdotal"; "your personal experiences contradict pre-established reality and are therefore inconsequential"
It's well-known that the covid vaccine produces side effects of that sort, not infrequently. Transient side effects. I've heard several anecdotal reports myself.
I got a shingles shot once that did something like that. I'm still glad I got the shot.
"It's well-known that the covid vaccine produces side effects of that sort, not infrequently."
That's not what you wrote in the OP, though. You wrote this: "given the overwhelming evidence for the lack of side effects of the vaccines being provided (aka "science")," then proceeded to politicize it.
"well-known that the covid vaccine produces side effects" vs. "overwhelming evidence for the lack of side effects of the vaccines": one of those things is not like the other.
Sometimes the horse you ride in on is pretty high. Sometimes it's two different horses.
I got "side effects" in 2008 when I got a flu shot for what I suppose was Sars ?. I came down with a nasty flu two weeks later and a bad case of shingles to boot. Two years later I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. How do I know that wasn't as "side effect"?
Yeah. Busted. I left out the qualification "serious or lasting." You got me.
Bore me to death, why don't you.
This may be the funniest exchange I've ever witnessed on substack.
Quick writing tip for you: when invoking Science in the service of a political goal, remember to capitalize the 'S'.
I think the point is you can bore yourself to death - but keepa U Hands off there rest of us Buckeroo...and...that hasn't been happening.
The fondness for tyranny and such that the 'party of science' is trying to party like it's 1979...gas lines HOSTAGE TAKE DOWNS...
all because they can...
Well embrace the Suck Mascot...the resistance is here...and en mass...
It's different for everyone. My first shot left me with a sore an incapacitated arm for a day. Next day it was fine. The 2nd shot left me a lethargic blob for a day, then it passed. My wife & 2 of my kids had no adverse effects while my other 2 kids were feeling ill for a day or two.
For all we know G, we could have all gotten shots of distilled water & the vaccine could be nothing more than another instance of "security theater" that America seems to love so much. The "side effects" would then be self induced hysteria.
Neither party can claim the mantle of science. They can both eat shit.
I agree that it's putting on airs to say it. But I comprehend the temptation. I saw all of the live, unmasked rallies the former occupant of the White House held so that he could get his vanity fix.
Haha. You watch TV?
Yes. Big-time C-Span fan. Although I did spend a couple of decades abstaining from television, and heartily endorse the benefits of doing so.
One benefit is all the extra time that it allowed me to read books. So I had a little bit of layperson's scientific background when SARS-CoV-2 hit, having read both The Great Influenza and the much more prescient and relevant 2006 account by Karl Taro Greenfeld, The China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century's First Great Epidemic.
Greenfeld's book is about SARS-CoV-1. Having read that book, I realized early on that SARS CoV-2 (aka Covid-19) was no joke.
Cool story bro.
just calling it like it is.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/23/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-white-republicans/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-41-percent-of-republicans-dont-plan-to-get-the-covid-vaccine
admittedly, the reluctance is decreasing, which is encouraging
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/republicans-more-eager-for-vaccine-kaiser-family-foundation.html
Well in the real world, there's no evidence whatsoever that any NPIs actually worked. And sooner or later some people are going to have to answer some hard questions about why they tanked the economy for no reason.
As long as you guys are ignoring people who have gotten the virus and gotten over it, there is no science anywhere near your views.
There's no "you guys" here. There's only the person writing this post.
In the real world, while it's too early to make a final assessment, evidence does already exist to settle that argument with a reasonable degree of certainty. I don't know where the prevailing weight of the evidence will fall.
But as a rule, the phrase "no evidence whatsoever" is just another one of those grandiloquent flourishes that gets tossed in to set up an applause line on whatever, and that's the way you've employed it in your post.
As for "ignoring people who have gotten the virus and gotten over it", you're playing the same game there; the fact that the tabulation of those cases is thus far incomplete does not indicate that it's being "ignored." Like, duh
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map
The statistic that's really incomplete at this time is the number of people who have gotten the virus and NOT gotten over it. The epidemiologists do have a pretty good idea of who died from Covid, though. Although my guess is that the well of non-falsifiable objections that can be raised against the precision of that statistic is bottomless, and it's hardly begun to be tapped by unscrupulous thought leaders and their gullible cohort of followers.
Good lord, I never thought I'd be so bored. I need to find a different venue.
When the CDC says nothing about what people who got over the virus can do, that's ignoring it.
If you like you can just pretend it's not about you at all and instead direct your ire to the idiot "leaders" like the ones at the CDC.
If you're scared, stay home forever.
Empty branding is exactly what Trump is an expert at, funny that Dems should follow that.
Matt, thank you for publishing the conversation with CJ Hopkins.
The pharmaceutical industry's $9.6 billion advertising budget gives drug companies much control over corporate news and television outlets. 50, 60, up to 70 percent of corporate media's news divisions' revenues comes from pharma, as I understand it. Whatever the percentage, one need only turn on the nightly news to see where pharma puts its money night after night after night. Yet pharma's capture of these corporate news divisions and how this might shape their covid fear campaigns is rarely mentioned by independent journalists in their critiques of corporate media. Why?
The same can be said for pharma's capture of the NIH, CDC, etc.
The covid operation has been ongoing for over a year so it should be stating the obvious that the CDC is sitting on the other end of the counter from an independent, tax funded government agency whose sole purpose is to protect public health.
Much of the CDC's funding comes from a private 501c3 organization called the CDC Foundation which is largely funded by big pharma and Bill Gates who also fund the World Health Organization. Vaccine investor Gates, via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi combined, is the largest WHO funder.
These agencies are captive agencies.
Discovering this information doesn't take hot shot investigative reporters. It's right there on the agency web sites for everyone to see.
In a further conflict of interest, the CDC and NIH own patents on injectables.
Please see the list of the CDC's corporate funders on their web site.
CDC: Our Partners: Corporations/CDC Foundation
https://www.cdcfoundation.org/partner-list/corporations
CDC Members Own More Than 50 Patents Connected to Vaccinations
https://www.lawfirms.com/resources/environment/environment-health/cdc-members-own-more-50-patents-connected-vaccinations
Such glaring conflicts of interest are surely directly related to the content controls over our national conversation. It is to the point where merely raising conflicts of interest becomes a pro-Trump insurrection against Science and Democracy.
Bingo!
Matt, thank you for introducing CJ Hopkins to new readers.
Since you're casting about for censorship stories, Jeremy Hammond, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Dr. Reinter Fuellmich and Robert Kennedy, Jr. have tales of corporate and social media censorship that paint a picture of how bad and extreme things have become.
Jeremy Hammond is an independent journalist, political analyst, editor and publisher.
In today's article/interview, Jeremy Hammond takes a deep dive into what you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccines that the government and media aren’t telling you.
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2021/05/13/interview-how-bout-them-rona-jabs
Sucharit Bhakdi, MD is a microbiologist who, with his wife Karina Reiss, PhD, wrote the book Corona False Alarm: Facts and Figures.
Dr. Bhakdi "was a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg from 1972 to 1976, and at The Protein Laboratory in Copenhagen from 1976 to 1977. He joined the Institute of Medical Microbiology at Giessen University in 1977 and was appointed associate professor in 1982. He was named chair of Medical Microbiology at the University of Mainz in 1990, where he remained until his retirement in 2012. Dr. Bhakdi has published over three hundred articles in the fields of immunology, bacteriology, virology, and parasitology, for which he has received numerous awards and the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate. He’s one of the most cited scientists in German history."
https://www.chelseagreen.com/writer/sucharit-bhakdi-md/
Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is an international trial lawyer who successfully sued large fraudulent corporations such as Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank. Dr. Fuellmich's worldwide network of lawyers has listened to experts on covid from every field of science and are filing lawsuits against draconian lockdown measures.
https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/fuellmich
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is known for legal challenges to industries that harm or pollute water bodies but due to extreme corporate and social media censorship, his work on children's health, vaccine safety and the pharmaceutical industry's covid narrative is less well known.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/
What's the takeaway? That the vaccines are a scam?
Thanks for this. I don't feel so alone anymore.
I posted a link to the following article about a covid treatment that is saving lives in more than 20 countries - now India too - and was censored by FB. It was blocked and I was warned with a 'strike one.' It didn't meet their standards. I didn't appeal. It's all about fear, isn't it? https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/05/india-just-became-latest-country-to-approve-use-of-ivermectin-to-treat-covid-19.html. Nakedcapitalism has been my daily read for years - ever since Bill Moyers interviewed the NC blogger on his show on PBS (before they dumped him - he was straying too far outside their overton manufacturing consent window I think). The commentariat on NC is also very informed.
I have chosen, so far, NOT to be a 'subject' in this huge experiment where all these vaccines have only been approved for EUA. Frankly I don't trust "GlobalCap" in BIGPHARMA and the profit driven sick care insurance in this country that is supposed to pass for health care and that doesn't even cover all Americans and even many who have this 'insurance' can't afford to use it. The conflicting information on this is truly frightening. I feel I am surrounded by brainwashed, very intolerant people no longer able to discuss different points of view on anything relating to covid.
So thanks again for this interview. I had never read him.
Here is a rather impartial interview on the virtues of ivermectin:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19DPijOoVKE
Thanks for sharing. You can also follow Dr. Pierre Kory every week on the website FLCCC.net. He presents the weeks news on ivermectin and also answers questions. I've also been following Dr. John Campbell (on youtube - every day) since Feb. 2020. He's usually way ahead of the curve on COVID, very clear, very detailed.
Thanks, I had Dr.Kory's website, but I didn't know Dr. Campbell had a daily update.
It appears their manuscript pending at a 'major scientific publication' has been rejected....
it has been peer reviewed and finally published in the Journal of Therapeutics (something like that). check out the website FLCCC.Net for much more information.
Correction, I had Dr. Campbell's website but I was unaware of FLCCC.net. This is very useful information. Thanks again!
The German journalist Paul Schreyer has done work on how the Covid Response was prepared - down to a tee - in regular post 911 "bioterrorism" drills. These events were attended by a good number of the usual suspects(powerful Western politicians and state officials, big media wigs, scientists) and one important focus was how to streamline the public perception of what was going on, what the nature of the threat is (politics of fear) and how to get the public to accept the loss of fundamental democratic rights. I believe they started in 2006. Drills included bioterror attacks but also coronavirus epidemics. In Europe the rapidity with which political parties accepted various states of emergency (meaning that Parliaments no longer had a say in Cobid Policies- even left wing parties who had criticized the exact same mentality war on terror policies) was stunning to me. Critics were basically shouted down. Schreyer's work on these drills provides a first entry into this state of affairs, I think. (From the War on Drugs to the War on Terror to now this?)
Another important angle is the politization of science - a good article is: https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-science-has-been-corrupted/ . I am glad you are picking this up, Matt.
Oh, get a grip. I AM ONE OF THOSE WHO LOBBIED CONGRESS 17 YEARS AGO FOR THAT!
Yes, I did! I did it on my own dime, and it cost a lot of money. I did it along with people like Ken Alibek, and a few others. Why? Because a deliberately introduced disease made just right could kill 50% to 90%. There is only one defense - vaccination and SPEED of response.
This was not a manufactured virus. It was totally natural. We did TERRIBLY! That moronic ass clown got rid of the pandemic response group at CDC, and left it with the least competent people for the job. It is obvious we are a globe filled with ass clowns like Trump and Hopkins who haven't got the SLIGHTEST ability to understand.
Sorry, folks. Hopkins is worse than Trump. At least Trump tried to get vaccines rolled out quickly. But he was a spineless ass clown and incompetent. Hopkins? He's just an incompetent ass clown who doesn't even TRY to gesture toward helping matters.
We WILL have a biological attack that will not be a drill. The way it looks from here, civilization will fall.
Based on the lack of the usual prior mutations found in nature, it is appearing more and more likely that this virus was manufactured. Read Wade's article, if you haven't already. BTW if I were to post this on FB I would be censored.
Horseshit. You haven't got the foggiest clue WTF you are talking about. You are just blabbering some crap you picked up somewhere from some equally (or even more) clueless bozo.
You do realize that by calling people "bozo" you reduce your own credibility, I assume?
You mad Bro? And I do mean MAD in the head.
There are things worth getting mad about, like willful ignorance based solely on teenager-like contrarianism and grievance.
I get mad at masterminds that are self absorbed and arrogant assholes.
BRAVO Brian -- fully supported by ALL other facts and sources !! Ignore feeble-minded...
And yes, I've read Wades blabber.
Why blabber?
How would you explain finding the virus in sewage samples in Spain from early 2019?
It surprised me that World Savior like you so much worried about "incompetent ass clowns" Trump (who is gone) and Hopkins (who is not well-known author), but didn't say a word about current ass clown who wears mask everywhere including Zoom meetings. Why are you not equally mad about discouraging people from vaccination by idiotic Biden, Fauci, etc.?
BRAVO Brian -- fully supported by ALL other facts and sources !!
Seems pretty likely that it wasn't "totally natural", but yes, in case of a true bioattack, we would have to do some extraordinary things, but the response to COVID hasn't helped in that. Ever read the story of "the boy who cried wolf".
I was hoping you and Greenwald would start flirting w/ the Covid 3rd rail. Kudos to both you warriors.
I am a microbiologist who made a vaccine for COVID-19 in February 2020. I have examined the theories, and the sequences for COVID-19 in detail. I also have papers on economics and publications on terrorism.
- A MUCH better question is, why weren't Western governments rolling out vaccines immediately?! The risk is virtually zero, and if there's the slightest issue with one, it can be stopped. EVERY vaccine that got approved is IDENTICAL to the vaccine designed and manufactured in January of 2020. NOTHING was learned by the delay - just bureaucratic red tape. We know far too much about vaccines now. And even the biggest mistakes in vaccination, would have prevented millions of deaths and avoided any need for lockdown.
The lockdown is insane. We should have 10 vaccines rolling out by end of March to medical personnel, and to anyone else who wanted it. Period.
But, the lockdown was a weapon against Trump. Lockdown targeted Trump voters, who were largely working class. And forcing the vaccines to jump through all the hoops was ALSO a weapon against Trump. He was such an ass clown (I totally agree with that) and so spineless, that he didn't use his executive authority to bypass it. Democrats panicked just before the election when Trump tried to unlock the release of vaccines before the election.
- Anyone who thinks "anti-vaxxer" isn't a real thing is an idiot. Sorry, @taibbi. If you swallow that whole, so are you. Vaccines have been demonized since the turn of the 20th century. It was the Back to Eden book by Jethro Kloss, who was a rabid Seventh Day Adventist that was the source of it. He didn't change his mind after losing a child to vaccine preventable disease. Jethro's book became a cult classic of the 60's flower children going back to the land.
The ideology of anti-vaxxers is this: Your child is perfect, and if they are sick this is due to lack of clean, healthy foods, and clean healthy environment. This ideology appeals to the maternal instincts of mothers, because it confirms to them that their child is perfect. It also matches with maternal instincts to nurture. So, if anything goes wrong with their child's health, it is not because that child was exposed to a disease, it is because of a failure of perfecting nutrition and environment.
Combine that ideology with the fact that needles are scary, they make babies cry, and seeing her darling get a needle stick and cry is disturbing. Amalgamate that with ignorance and the batshit crazy lies that are spewed out about vaccines, we have a guy like Hopkins actually thinking that there is something to terribly serious to worry about that requires the rigorous testing in a global emergency like this.
Yes, VACCINES ARE FREEDOM!
Matt? WTAF is WRONG with you here?!
See my journal editorial from last year.
Brian P. Hanley , Steve Keen , and George Church
A Call for a Three-Tiered Pandemic Public Health Strategy in Context of SARS-CoV-2.
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/rej.2020.2363
I respect your purported credentials, but it is the level of emotion conveyed in your writing that leads me to form (IMO) healthy skepticism, of you and your fellow experts (I'm not an anti-vaxxer eithe.
What I mean by that is, science is a process, which is only as good as the human performing it. This is not a knock on any particular scientist/doctor/theorist, or even humanity itself. This is simply the observation that humans come with emotions, which always means abject objectivity is never possible. All sorts of underlying, subconscious biases and fears play a hand in the way we interpret, or even record, the hardest of data.
I like my leaders with humble reluctance, and my scientist calm and dispassionate.
Tough shit. I have been laboring for decades on this and other things, while you have been sitting in your armchair blabbering whatever. I work rigorously. I put myself to school and to peer review. I have sacrificed large parts of my life to save people from their own dumbass stupidity.
I stopped being nice after I got death threats and other threats from the wack jobs that populate the world. Screw that. This is life and death and I WILL speak out against dumbfuckery.
I know you can't see it, but my eyes just rolled out the back of my head.
If you weren't such an arrogant ____ (or at least act and communicate like one), you might actually serve your purpose instead of just getting people to tune you out, thus creating a never ending cycle of you thinking you need t turn up the alarmism.
But you do you, dude. Have screaming at the sky.
Have fun*
But I mean, you couldn't have proven my point any better. FFS! My comment was essentially commenting on your communication and it's lack of effectiveness.
I take it back, though. It's not just your arrogance that is self defeating, it's your insecurity.
I think that what you're reading as "insecurity" is actually frustration.
You speak as if anything I said would dent the phalanx of your brain.
You speak as if you're a megalomaniac.
👍
Remember Joshua...."our amps go up to 11"....I think Brian needs more emotion in his writing, not less, so we can take him even more seriously!!
5,4,3,2,1....cue https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem from Brian....wait for it....OK...now!! 🤣
I am not the arrogant one here. You are. You and all the rest of the oh-so-sincere know-nothings who blabber nonsense.
BRAVO Brian -- fully supported by ALL other facts and sources !!
I agree
Go reread your OP ego boy.
Hi E.Pierce.....I did....I'm slipping up in my old age.
Not to worry...maybe I could donate a copy of https://www.amazon.com/Nonsense-Herrings-Sacred-Everyday-Language/dp/1604191252 to help things along in the discussion thread for all concerned ;-)
On a side note, I would be frustrated too if my h-index was a bit less than Bhattacharya's after all these years of effort: https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/J.-Bhattacharya/144071689
You're a martyr angry he doesn't have more supplicants.
I think it is clear this is all about YOU.
No, it's more about someone who's actually paid their dues to obtain expertise in the scientific field being discussed than it is about people on the sidelines taking cheap shots.
Lots of varied opinion from the "experts", so much so that you have to pick which ones to "believe", and thus we have uncertainty.
It would indeed be interesting to hear out a debate on these questions between microbiology PhD Brian Hanley (the poster to whom you responded) and someone of equivalent professional expertise who holds different opinions on these questions. Presuming that such people exist.
Instead, once again I find myself stuck with reading self-satisfied mockery from clowns who feel entitled to disregard someone's knowledgeable observations out of hand, while impugning their motives.
Go read the OP and tell us again about how he was taking shots. He opened up the discussion by generalization, straw manning, and stereotyping. And stop you boot licking while you're at it please.
In a field that relies upon financial support through grants that instantly go away when you rock the boat you mean ?
Oh please. The unwashed masses choose not to be ruled by you superior geniuses who devote your lives,unselfishly, to our wellbeing.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Isaac Asimov
That's only a small part of Asimov's 1980 essay, which he presented as an editorial column. He goes on to say
"What shall we we do about it? We might begin by asking ourselves whether ignorance is so wonderful after all, and whether it makes sense to denounce "elitism." I believe that every human being with a physically normal brain can learn a great deal and be surprisingly intellectual. I believe that what we badly need is social approval of learning and social rewards for learning. We can ALL be members of the intellectual elite and then, and only then, will "America's right to know" and, indeed, any true concept of democracy, have any meaning."
A hopeful note.
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
― Frederic Bastiat, The Law
You're (yawn) projecting an awful lot of inferences that aren't present in my comment.
Hahahahaha
BRAVO Brian -- fully supported by ALL other facts and sources !!
Who paid for those facts are yet to be disclosed.
If objectivity isn't possible (because it isn't) then I'd prefer a scientist who's willing to passionately defend science. 100s of 1000s of lives were sacrificed because our leaders were too humble and reluctant to push back against vaccine skepticism.
My point was more on alarmism and the way things, even important topics with supposed levels of urgency (like climate change for instance), are communicated.
"our leaders were too humble and reluctant..."
I'm sorry as I don't mean to be dismissive if you're being sincere, but it's hard for me to not take that as satire.
He's a scientist, not a professional communicator so I can cut him slack. Frustrated people can sound frustrated, particularly when they watch people die needlessly because of (actual) hysterics like the subject of this TK piece.
And I was being sarcastic indeed. Great leaders are neither humble nor reluctant.
Cut him some slack? What a cop out. A scientist steps into the realm of communication he doesn't get a free pass because he's an asshole.
Guy needs to chill out, read some Carl Sagan, and git gud.
You're calling him an "asshole" because he used a few exclamation points too many and *he* should chill out. Okay.
Humble leaders? Good grief!
The problem with your idea of "anti-vaxxers" is that there a lot of people who weren't anti-vaccine in general but became deeply suspicious of the covid19 ones, probably because of the many attempts to institute "vaccine passports" that would force people to take them in order to participate in society.
As for lockdowns being a bout Trump, that's ridiculous: they were far more severe in Europe and Australia than US. I think lockdowns happened because, early on and with very little evidence, the WHO recommended the rest of the world copy China's lockdown policy. Given that the WHO's biggest donor is a man (Bill Gates) with heavy investments in vaccines and digital id, it seems the plan was to inflict massive pain on the world then offer digital id tied to proof of vaccination as the only way out. Classic "Shock Doctrine" capitalism.
If you can't say, "No" it isn't freedom.
Does that extend to saying no to traffic lights? We are not free! How about stop signs? Or just say no to speed limits? Where does your "No" end?
It doesn't end anywhere.
But of course, if you run a stop sign, you risk consequences. The option is there, however!
Uh,huh, and if a guy runs stop sign, he isn't the only one to face consequences ...
It amuses me you think freedom causes people to be stupid.
Are you projecting?
So is the Stop sign a "suggestion"? Do you oppose writing tickets and fining those who fail to stop? After all, it is only an "option", right?
Of course, folks have the "freedom" to break the law - goes without saying - folks should be "free" to break the law, as long as the consequences only accrue to them, and not others ...
Glad you are amused - we need more amusement these days ...
So the ONLY REASON you stop at a stop sign is because the law requires it and you fear punishment by the govt if you fail to do so?
The only reason I stay stopped on an empty road with no other car in site and excellent visibility is because I fear a police car might show up just as soon as I decide to run it.
No, I stop at stop signs to look for traffic in order to avoid getting in an accident as well as obeying the law.
I read your article right up to the point where you claimed masks and lockdowns worked. Knowing that most of the spread occurred in confined / locked down places kind of ruins your claim. I live in a place where they were tracking by zip code, and it was clear that most of the cases were to be found in areas where homes were occupied by multi generations..ie mom, dad, children, grandparents. The spread happened because of the lockdown. BTW, nobody actually used or is using proper mask etiquette, with respect to wearing a clean mask.
Rewearing of masks just spreads more virus around, presuming you were sick. But it was something people could do and it gave the proles the impression that this was somehow under their control, and they could go out and do things "safely". That's why the militant mask mandates, not because it was realistically supposed to stop anything. Also why the militant encouragement to take vaccines. No one realistically expects vaccine mandates and passports to survive contact with the legal system. At least no one sane. But it's an attempt to get people out of their houses and back to pre-March 2020 functioning, regardless if it is legal or not. It's the functional equivalent of throwing shit at the wall and hoping it will stick.
A lot of people are liking this stay at home thing. It's going to be hard to break them out of these habits now.
Uh, it's called washing them - do you wash your underwear?
Way to miss the point. Do you really think people are doing this? I don't.
Doing what? Washing them?
You missed the point - if folks are afraid that re-wearing masks "spreads the virus around" - the answer is obvious, wash them, for Pete's sake!
They aren't doing it. They are rewearing masks that are intended for one-time use over and over, and not washing the cloth masks in a timely manner. Human behavior is like that, they do things in a halfassed fashion when they don't see the importance of it. Also, maintaining vigilance over the long term is always spotty. So the masks are really doing nothing useful other than mass psychology.
Agreed.
At one level people could see that a lot of work could get done remotely with the added benefit of having that commute time and money unspent. Managers who cruise around the office, coffee cup in tow, to oversee the cube dwellers probably hate it. But productivity is going good.
Conversely, I think the teachers unions may have ended up hurting their cause by staying remote longer. You've just proven that you can do learning via computer, so that teacher could be anywhere (India, Singapore, EU). And that remote teacher will likely come at a lower price than the union ones, with more luxe health benefits and retirement than the avg proles'. Yes, I know remote is a disaster for younger kids. But I won't underestimate the political schemers class for coming up with new ways to cut costs if it's advantageous. Imagine using those property tax dollars for something else, not to mention taking the land lots the schools are on and sending them off to developer friends to build other projects (palms greased all the way). Not saying it'd happen in the next year, but maybe the next 10 yrs.
Interesting to see if the arguments for Universal Basic Income get forwarded based on the shuttering of businesses. I'd think for a lot of people, going out to eat or bars won't be much of a thing, either due to lack of funds or finding out just how much that cost you. Certain industries may end up in a permanently lower or non-existent operating basis. Small businesses in general have suffered the most, and if they are indeed the "engine of the economy" things are going to get more grim over the next few years.
When I hear about UBI it translates into "inflation" in my mind. Whatever the UBI would buy now, it won't be able to after people start chasing it with their UBI money. We're already seeing that in most sectors due to all the funny money being pumped into the economy now with unemployment bonuses and stimulus checks.
The teachers' unions are going to do just fine out of this. I seem to remember Kristi Noem saying that in SD, they'd lost contact with something like 25% of the elementary school students during this remote session thing. It makes the job of being a truant officer almost impossible, not that much effort is expended in that direction by most school systems anyway. They need to get the children going to school again to avoid that, which is going to keep the teachers' unions in the catbird seat in terms of demanding salary and benefits. If you let a quarter of the students fade out of the system, I can just imagine the attack ads.
Whether that quarter of students that don't want to attend school would be better off without the education on offer that they clearly don't want, that's another issue entirely. Could type up 10 pages on that one.
One could draw another conclusion from all of the remote work; that many people are redundant. Government would like to push that reckoning out for a long time, though it is coming. Thinking on a world where production and services require a quarter of the current population. That world is coming. What do you do with the rest?
What to do with the rest...if I were thinking like someone who wanted to advance humanity, honestly I'd set my sites on colonization and mining of other planets, moons and asteroids. My pop culture reference for that would be the first season of The Expanse.
Pessimist part of me says a lot more of the country will end up looking like depression Appalachia, and that life expectancy will drop 10-20 yrs.
I'm sure that the Global Hegemony would prefer a world that looked more feudal or at least Dickensian, so the avg person could look to have similar outcomes in terms of wealth and health (not good).
I'm not saying that this is what I want or that it can't change, but it's a likely trajectory.
My thoughts run toward a lack of control associated with a lack of gainful employment. Bored people start causing trouble. An unhappy mob is bad for any country. Governments will react the way governments always react - with force. It's not a pretty thought.
The Elon Musk admirer in me wishes your initial thought were going to be the trajectory, but I see it something more along the lines of Gattaca, if we are to go that route at all.
Low wage yes, essential workers I have no way of knowing.
You are emblematic of the Dunning-Kruger effect (see video below).
Your personalized, emotional and anti-scientific totalitarian support of vaccines is self-serving but you do not have the objectivity or lack of arrogance to perceive it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKHEXzOFnR8
He totally ignores how science has been ruined by its dependence upon funding by corporate and government(sometimes joint) funding.
Not all science is bogus of course, but it takes a decade or two to find out how ethical any experiment or study actually is.
There are some disadvantages to privatizing the funding of research. This probably had more to do with slowing down the vaccine process here in the states more than anything else.
Funding can also censor people questioning some of the bullshit narratives spewed by the corporate press who had no problem covering for Cuomo's cover up of his nursing home debacle.
I agree - science has been corrupted by big money whether public or private (hardly a difference much of the time). Covid-19 censorship has been frighteningly pervasive throughout all mainstream channels. Alternate treatments supported by "gold star" research, scientific information on masks, lockdowns and social distancing and of course any information not extolling total effectiveness and safety of "the vaccine" (any vaccine, for anyone, any time). I am not talking about someone in sweatpants blogging from their parents' basement but rather people like Dr. David Eberhard (above) being censored and often denigrated for raising valid risk/benefit analyses. I.AM.NOT.ANTI-VACCINE. I am anti-totalitarian and anti-stupidity.
If the people running the show were confident in their logic and reasoning they would be open to debate without having to utilize character assassination and ad hominen attacks upon any and all that question them in the slightest.
I'm not looking to play pile on. You seem to have enough people on your back as it is.
Alright, first, I'm not an anti-vaxxer. Got the Pfizer in Jan./Feb. Other than a sore arm after the 1st & lethargy after the second I've noticed exactly zero ill effects since.
My skepticism...or, better yet, caution about vaccines was brought about by an incident that occurred with my daughter when she was young. As parents we dutifully got our kids vaccinated. It was an actual requirement of our school district. Didn't have a problem with it.
But one day, soon after my oldest daughter's latest, at that time, vaccination, we received a phone call from our pediatrician in which they informed us that "there may have been ground glass in our daughters vaccine shot but that there was nothing to worry about." Just what I wanted to hear.
The basic fact is, while you seem well meaning & dedicated to public health, it often seems like the actual corporations who profit off of your work and disseminate assorted drugs & vaccines are dedicated to other, less noble things.
As someone who lost his niece to opioids it's not hard to see how that whole crisis was aided and abetted by rapacious pharmaceutical corporations. Distrust of these corporations seems entirely reasonable to me.
I have no quibbles with your assessment of Trump. He was man pudding. I didn't vote for him. I didn't like him. But he was the legally elected president of the United States. And he was almost immediately attacked by a completely hysterical, irrational & unhinged left wing. I think Matt has a video on here showing the long list of baseless attacks that were leveled at the guy for 4 fucking years. While Democrats seemed to be willfully & blissfully unaware their media of choice was feeding them a constant diet of shit sandwiches, the Trump folk were not. So for 4 years they had to endure the lies of Democrats & media pundits until, suddenly, a real crisis arises & they're asked to unquestioningly believe the same people who have been tossing shit sandwiches at their heads. The fact that there was huge skepticism & push back should not be surprising in the least. It should have been expected. It's human nature. Y'know, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. ( I was tempted to use the Bush quote here since it would have been shorter & funnier although completely unintelligible). So, while I've never been a Republican I completely understand why they're doing what they're doing.
In my opinion, the real unspoken & never discussed lesson of the pandemic was that corporations & elected leaders callously created this entire atmosphere of distrust that segments of America feel towards their decrees from on high with years of lies & obfuscations & complete and utter bullshit. Yet their part in this is never ever discussed. Instead they demonize these people who question them as unhinged crazies. It may be convenient but it is incredibly disingenuous. And unless their is some kind of mass epiphany among our ruling class I've no doubt that the exact same thing will happen when the next crisis hits.
"The lockdown is insane. We should have 10 vaccines rolling out by end of March to medical personnel, and to anyone else who wanted it. Period.
But, the lockdown was a weapon against Trump. Lockdown targeted Trump voters, who were largely working class. And forcing the vaccines to jump through all the hoops was ALSO a weapon against Trump."
"Forcing the vaccines to jump through all the hoops" is the correct answer. The anti-Trump conspiracy scenarios require a level of advance planning and coordination that only a paranoid (or a manipulator) could construct. (As a speculation. With no evidence. A construction cobbled together in post hoc, propter hoc fashion from selected data points extracted from their context.)
Making newly invented substances that go into people's bodies subject to requirements to "jump through all the hoops" is normal protocol in order to ward off the possibility of unanticipated disaster, from the cure being worse than the disease. Much of this is about civil liability, insurance risk, and various other conventions of the American legal system. And if things go bad, political leaders in a democracy have even more to risk than the heads of businesses, in some respects. If the vaccine had been rolled out in January 2020 and it killed or crippled, say, 1 person in every 1000, we wouldn't just have been dealing with a regime of onerous procedures and economic restrictions; we'd be dealing with a cataclysm.
We don't have a dictatorship, monarchy, or an autocratic system, where the King clear the rollout, says to everyone "you WILL take this vaccine", and accepts all responsibility if it turns disastrous (while retaining the official power and authority to remain head of State, because autocracy.)
But we're living in an affluent democracy, and one that's a sky-is-falling world for some people; some of them wear their masks even when outdoors and driving in their cars alone, and others (many more, like 33% of Americans), having disregarded most quarantine restrictions as "tyranny", now refuse to get the approved vaccines. Even after the vaccines have jumped through all the hoops you speak of. Because we have free speech in this country, there's no shortage of quackery being peddled; despite all of the overwrought scenarios of looming totalitarian rule conjured in reaction to the impotent attempts of a few social network sites to cull the material, those views are readily accessible, no matter how misinformed or misleading. A lot of people are buying into them, on account of their Feels. And paradoxically enough (although also logically enough), the attempts at censorship only increase the appeal of the narratives, and their spread to an ever-widening audience.
Who (or more properly what) wins? The Covid-19 virus. And that's just how it is. That's American Democracy, c.2021. One-third of the country feels justified in refusing the vaccine, many of them as some sort of political statement. And despite all of the "Democrat Tyranny" scaremongering, no one is going to force the refusers to get it. All of us will just have to deal with the consequences, whatever they might happen to be.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for sharing your views: 2 questions for you.
1/ Do you feel you have a conflict of interest when expressing your views on vaccination?
Let’s say, an extreme case (which I’m not necessarily advocating), that vaccination research was to be frozen. Could you make an equivalent living in a different scientific field or elsewhere?
2/ Do you feel your views should count more than people who don’t have your scientific background?
I’m just curious
Just to be clear, your views on vaccination are constitutionally protected in the US. I agree with some and disagree with other but, personally, I would defend your right to speak if the gov was to move to suppress it.
Thanks
1. No, I do not. It is my ethical obligation to counter ignorant idiocy that slaughters millions. Yes, I can make a living elsewhere.
2. Yes, I do. Why would you think otherwise? But you can feel free to go elsewhere than medicine for your ailments. Just not force your children into that or the children of others to their deaths.
How do you know your vaccine works?
You made a vaccine in February (or January) 2020? How many doses? You must be incredibly rich now. At the very least, you must have at least felt safe having been vaccinated before the pandemic even began.
Not many. Still have quite a few potential doses in the freezer. Only self-experimentation is allowed. No, I didn't get rich. Over 200 vaccines were created. Moderna had theirs manufactured, early test data, and FDA application in by the end of January IIRC. They already had VC money, and got funded. By the time we had anything, it was too late. Investors look at the crowd and say, "Too late." Yes, I was safe as the pandemic started.
People think vaccines are a great business. It's a terrible business. It makes money, but nothing like what the small molecule drugs make. There are single drugs that have yearly revenue nearly as high as Facebook's 2015 revenue. Vaccines are in the $00 million range.
If you really want to help out the world, you should release your patents on your vaccine so that countries like India and Brazil can produce it and save themselves from their current infection rates.
To be clear, no it's not patented. I would give it to any competent party. All they would have to do is attribute it. I also have improvements. Like most things, there is no absolute, final design. One can always tweak things.
This one has all 4 of the primary proteins.
BTW - It's generally the path to oblivion to not patent pharma. This is just the reality of things.
What do you mean by "the path to oblivion to not patent pharma". I used to work in biopharma so I have my opinions about the FDA, regulations, information sharing, the pharmaceutical industry, and the media's coverage of the industry. I also have my opinions on modeling and how much we actually understand about complex systems like the human immune system. They are somewhat different than yours, but I share your rage at the absolute ignorance about the way the government and the media have covered this pandemic. Thank you for your responses.
No patent(s) no money.
I tried to release it open-source. But it got to complicated, and the people who were picking it up were mostly not competent to handle it.
I would be happy to do so for either nation. I attempted to contact people in India in early 2020 through a physician colleague there. She said nobody was interested.
So why not just put it on-line - ultimate open source ....
because if people use the published guidelines to do it wrong, that could wreak an incalculable amount of havoc.
"- A MUCH better question is, why weren't Western governments rolling out vaccines immediately?!"
My guess is they were too busy trying to protect their "patent rights" on K-street and figuring out how to weaponize the vaccine in order to bring about their policy goals for the rest of the world.
People are more worried about what ELSE is in a vaccine far more than the vaccine. Now that science has become a commodity and been caught several times lying for corporate funding or lying for government funding people seem to be much more reluctant to believe it is legitimate.
The fact you don't even recognize this in your post point to your own bat shit crazy delusion that you're somehow superior to everyone else.
In closing, go fuck yourself you self consumed, self important megalomaniac cunt.
Congratulations on being a lousy proponent of vaccines.
So which vaccine did you make? Clinical trials for efficacy and safety? Results?
One under-discussed symptom of this whole COVID era is how online everyone has become. When everything in your neighborhood is closed and there's really not a whole lot to do outside of your home, I think a lot of people have replaced a staggering portion of their social lives with social media, browsing, falling into weird internet rabbit holes, getting deeply entrenched in their ideologies etc. Close friends of mine have increasingly weirder opinions I'm positive they've absorbed from some YouTube asshole or some irony-poisoned twitter nihilist. It blows!
Hoping that local restaurants seating people inside, bars opening up, vacations becoming feasible again, etc. will knock us out of some of this. This has been a boring, stupid, and depressing year plus.
This was a big reason why I rejected and refused to comply with any of the lockdown measures since the start. I think it's pretty clear that phone/social media addiction is a blight on modern health, and lord knows I was at some of my lowest points when I was spending a lot of time cruising Twitter or Facebook. I broke out of that by avoiding using my phone as much as possible and just having more conversations with strangers as I'd go to coffee shops or to see live music. When everything shut down and now everybody was saying we "have" to do everything online because we "can't" do those things that made life worth living (to me), I absolutely refused to accept that. Partially because I think people were over-reacting, and also because I'd rather risk getting sick (and dying) than go back to living behind screens.
A lot of "unpluggers" have probably had similar experiences and this whole ordeal caused a vast acceleration of digitizing our society, which was already really bad (especially as somebody who remembers making fun of people constantly using cell phones in the 90s as self-centered assholes, before that became all of us hahaha), and has already wreaked havoc on our psyches.
I also hope that things re-opening and people getting together will knock us out of this -- I'm not known for my optimism, but every time I go to the park on my weekends I see a lot of people/strangers getting together and enjoying new friendships and each others' crafts/overall variety and it certainly cheers me up that there is a life to be had outside of the hustle & bustle of online existence.
Amen.
I’m at a laundromat eating a sandwich from a place I just discovered. Got rained on walking back to the laundromat.
It was beautiful.
Oh man. I used to blast my buddy all the time for being on his then-futuristic T-Mobile Sidekick. Little did I know I'd end up there too. And most other people. I've also made a pretty concerted effort to avoid the phone outside of doing crosswords on it to wake my brain up in the morning and texting my closest friends and family. Took a while to get there but I genuinely feel happier. Gotta be on a computer for work but whatever. That's my job. I chose that. I can do something else if it bums me out.
I personally would've have gone out to see a concert or have coffee indoors during this thing because my rubric is a little more about the risk I might pose to others vs. the risk I knowingly take on myself. I do dumb shit all the time that would only hurt me if it backfired. That said: people's responses to COVID aren't their entire personality. Neither are their politics or the basketball team they root for. The online-ness I was talking about seems to reduce each other to those things and it feels incredibly dangerous and atomizing.
Ramble over.
Hah! I do crosswords on my phone before going to sleep as part of my kooky routine. Probably a terrible idea with how screen lighting affects sleep patterns but I feel incomplete going to bed without using a crossword to wind down.
I see your point(s). The way online-ness has taken complete hold over people’s worldviews and how we treat each other has really been troubling for me.
"I think people were over-reacting, and also because I'd rather risk getting sick (and dying) than go back to living behind screens."
The decision on whether or not to comply with a quarantine isn't all about you.
Come on. This is basic.
People aren't allowed to question or disobey a quarantine's usefulness/correct application? "Pandemic" itself isn't an arbitrary term with a changing definition that also means it's up for debate?
There's no shortage of people in the world who will tell you how to behave or what to do in order to make themselves feel better/safer. This occurs every day as people push against each other and learn to get along, so somebody can ask you not to use the word "retard" because to them it's a slur, or they can ask you not to track mud in their store on a rainy day because they're gonna have to clean it up. We all make judgments as to what is worth acceding to and what is a request we consider unreasonable and therefore don't honor. More to the point, this is why we designate people as "germophobes" or diagnose them with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder if their preoccupation with sanitation/disease is deemed to affect their lives & relationships, as they make (what society deems to be) unreasonable demands of themselves & others, whom they invariably see as soulless vectors for disease.
Did the physical world *actually* change in March, 2020 AD to make those behaviors necessary or correct (which, by extension, means the "old" way of living was no longer correct)? Many people were convinced that it did, so they adopted lockdown behaviors previously considered unthinkable, and I wasn't convinced, so I didn't. If I think people are making unreasonable demands due to fear clouding their judgment, why would I agree to comply with them, especially to the scale they've been pushed onto the world?
As another (less philosophical) question, what kind of idiotic quarantine is implemented on EVERY member of its population, both healthy & unhealthy, and for an indefinite amount of time (welcome to month 15 of it)? Why don't I get a decision on whether or not to comply with such a moronic policy of quarantine?
Are you *at all* seeing the problem(s) with the argument of, "It's not your choice because you're affecting others, so just do what I tell you to do" yet? These are moral questions that, contrary to popular belief, science can't actually answer.
This isn't the first time that an epidemic has occurred and official measures were taken against it, Mr. Rhetorician.
Nor is it the first time that medical science was put into the position of needing to make their best educated guess on what policies would be most effective in curbing the spread of the viruses, finding that some of their suggestions were mistaken, and then changing their recommendations. (It beats the alternative, of simply insisting on maintaining one unbending stance in defiance of the facts.)
It also isn't the first time that parts of the population have resisted such restrictions. Although I don't recall any precedent of incidents of mass occupations of state capitals, by armed resistors.
https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-campaigns
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/people-balked-at-masks-in-1918-too-then-the-arrests-started/ar-BB17ZNKi
From an anti-Covid restrictions website:
https://nofacemask.blogspot.com/2020/08/health-inspector-enforcing-mask-order.html
https://thedentalhygienechronicles.com/face-masks-the-history/
"Excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle, 1918:
THREE SHOT IN STRUGGLE WITH MASK SLACKER
Blacksmith strikes health inspector striving to enforce order
Two men and a woman were shot yesterday at Powell and Market streets when Henry D. Miller, an inspector in the city Health Department, discharged his revolver in a battle with James Wiser, a blacksmith, who refused to don a gauze influenza mask at the order of the health officer.
Wisser was one of the wounded, being shot in the arm and leg. Henry Appleton, 63 years old, 124 Belvedere Street, was shot in the leg by one of the four bullets fired by Miller, as was a woman whose name could not be learned by police, she having gone at once to her home after learning her wound was slight.
The police report that Miller found Wisser standing at the corner waving his arms and urging a crowd to dispense with the masks. "They are the bunk," he is reported to have said."
"Miller led him toward the drug store, insisting he purchase a mask. At the door of the store the blacksmith struck Miller with a sack containing a large number of silver dollars, and them knocked him to the ground."...
The NoMask website telegraphs their political agenda by introducing the article above with the typical partisan rhetorical hype-mongering:
"The only difference between this story 102 years ago and today is that Miller was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Today, he'd probably be given a medal and a promotion..."
Yeah. Globalist Totalitarian Tyranny- it's all coming down, man! Any minute!
In real-world history, the response of American law enforcement authorities to violations of the 2020-21 quarantines has, without exception, been much more low-key. When it's occurred at all. Any incidents of serious violence have come from the other direction https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/michigan-man-asked-to-wear-mask-stabs-store-employee-is-fatally-shot/ar-BB16J07l
https://thegrio.com/2020/08/03/pennsylvania-man-ak-47-mask/
So don't even try to tell me that "people aren't allowed to question" the quarantine restrictions or medical response policies. The record shows that no matter what decision was made on any of those questions, someone found a way to make it wrong. Sometimes the criticisms were grounded in fact. Other times, objections have been simply pulled out of thin air, or even concocted on the basis of lies.
I do find it disturbing that the objections based on wild exaggerations and falsehoods have gotten at least as much traction than the ones based in fact, if not more. But it's been educational. I've learned that quite a number of people view the character quality of Willfulness per se as self-evident proof of Independent Thinking and an expression of Superior Virtue. All I notice in those people is house-proud ignorance, obduracy, and pomposity. But then, I'm one of those Sheeple who never had a problem with masking up to go on a shopping trip.
1) The violence hasn’t “all been in one direction” — that’s just plain dumb to even claim, c’mon dude.
2) The (largely futile) measures in 1918 are poor analogues when:
A) they weren’t worldwide
B) they lasted nowhere near as long
C) 1918 Flu was far more deadly than COVID ever was believably projected to be (especially to under-70s)
3) You’re obviously right in that this isn’t the first epidemic, which is why countries all had measures in place for pandemic events, and they didnt involve closing schools, forcibly canceling gatherings/events, restricting movement of healthy people (or closing borders), or mandating masks (let alone across the entire healthy population). Why was all of this thrown out the window for COVID-19?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213717/dh_131040.pdf
That’s an example from the UK’s influenza pandemic preparedness of 2011.
4) since this isn’t the first pandemic, there are precedents for increases in death (and even over-burdened hospitals in non-pandemic times), but what IS “unprecedented” is the denial of basic fundamental rights to citizens all over, including the dignity of burying your dead and holding a funeral where people can pay their respects. Things are being suspended and banned that haven’t been encroached upon since the days of the Black Death. If you wanna compare those times to modern times as if they’re remotely comparable in terms of threat, be my guest.
5) as you made excuses for them making their “best educated guess” for policies that would be imposed upon everybody, you left out option 3: do nothing. I know it’s not sexy in the age of “we have to do SOMETHING!” But when it comes to massive worldwide shut downs and de facto martial law, it’s entirely possible and should be taken into account without being cast as evil or defeatist that doing that “something” can cause greater harm than doing “nothing”. “Do no harm” is the oath, right? The problem with this war footing you’ve so readily adopted against germs is that, just like in the War on Terror and the War on Crime (we have an EXCELLENT record in our wars against abstract concepts), as soon as people said, “is this a war we should be fighting?” We got treated like terrorist sympathizers or people who want to keep rapists on the streets, and labeled “dangerous”.
6) I gave you my personal objections stated very plainly and earnestly to the measures being taken in the name of combatting a virus, and you instantly talked down to me as if I’m some antisocial nutjob with your links and drawn battle lines for whose side I’m on, based on whatever narrow-minded media outlet shaped your view on reactions to the virus. Certainly doesn’t seem like I’m allowed to question any of it when doing so already gets me lumped in the “degenerate” category in your responses.
Sounds like he did what he thought was right for himself, in spite of others.
You know that's OK, right?
Typhoid Mary had the exact same attitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
This is fun!
It seems the answer to typhoid wasn't throwing people in jail but improving public sanitation and hygiene! Imagine that!
Folks, I'm beginning to think Mascot might be an idiot.
You know...
I love it when people smugly post a Wikipedia article, you read it, and then find it actually undermines their point.
Healthy carriers was a new thing, the germ theory of disease wasn't widely accepted (Mary hardly ever washed her hands), she was terrified of poverty (cooking paid quite well at the time), and it seems even some doctors thought her treatment was overly harsh!
Hmm!
Wonder how COVID compares to typhoid. I'll go read up on that, next!
I'm not much of a fan of posts that provide inaccurate summaries of the material they purport to present.
Mary Mallon was a serial recividist offender.
"From 1900 to 1907, Mallon worked as a cook in the New York City area for eight families, seven of whom contracted typhoid.[11][12] In 1900, she worked in Mamaroneck, New York, where within two weeks of her employment, residents developed typhoid fever. In 1901, she moved to Manhattan, where members of the family for whom she worked developed fevers and diarrhea, and the laundress died. Mallon then went to work for a lawyer and left after seven of the eight people in that household became ill.[13][14]
In June 1904, she was hired by a prosperous lawyer, Henry Gilsey. Within a week, the laundress was infected with typhoid, and soon four of the seven servants were ill. No members of Gilsey's family were infected, because they resided separately, and the servants lived in their own house. The investigator Dr. R. L. Wilson concluded that the laundress had caused the outbreak, but he failed to prove it. Immediately after the outbreak began, Mallon left and moved to Tuxedo Park,[15] where she was hired by George Kessler. Two weeks later, the laundress in his household was infected and taken to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, where her case of typhoid was the first in a long time.[10]
In August 1906, Mallon took a position in Oyster Bay on Long Island with the family of a wealthy New York banker, Charles Henry Warren. Mallon went along with the Warrens when they rented a house in Oyster Bay for the summer of 1906. From August 27 to September 3, six of the 11 people in the family came down with typhoid fever. The disease at that time was "unusual" in Oyster Bay, according to three medical doctors who practiced there. The landlord, understanding that it would be impossible to rent a house with the reputation of typhoid, hired several independent experts to find the source of infection. They took water samples from pipes, faucets, toilets, and the cesspool, all of which were negative for typhoid...[16][17][18
More details are available, if people take the time to read it for themselves rather than accepting your preposterous twisting of the facts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
One more case: "In 1915, Mallon started working at Sloane Hospital for Women in New York City. Soon 25 people were infected, and two died. The head obstetrician, Dr. Edward B. Cragin, called Soper and asked him to help in the investigation. Soper identified Mallon from the servants' verbal descriptions and also by her handwriting.[36][39]"
Mallon eventually being sentenced- after multiple offenses- to the equivalent of life without parole in NYC's quarantine camp was arguably excessive. But that wasn't your initial point, was it?
Your point was about someone who "did what he thought was right for himself, in spite of others.
You know that's OK, right?"
Sounds like she wasn't thinking at all, unlike our friend Matthew here.
Yes. It gave rise to the Substack. Thank gawd.
Really really good interview Matt! As a conservative Republican who voted for Trump twice, I truly respect interviews with guys from the left who can articulate their points like CJ Hopkins. He made some great points. We are in the "new" normal, not sure how this all ends.