WANG: My students, when they first work in my lab, they got it wrong. They say bats has a more efficient immune system to clear the virus. I say. “No, bats have a more efficient immune system not to develop disease.” They are more efficient, really, to control the virus. Otherwise, they will not be good reservoir, right?
NARRATOR: Matae Ahn wrote his thesis under Linfa Wang’s direction. When he joined the team in 2014, the lab did not yet have a living bat colony to work with.
AHN: In the past, we had to fly over to Australia to get all sample for our studies, and now, we have a local bat colony, right here. And this allows us to get the fresh sample easily and study bats really closely.
NARRATOR: The cave nectar bat has a fox-like head and lives principally in Southeast Asia. In the wild, these bats are carriers of many viruses, but don’t get sick. But in the lab, conditions are strictly controlled and the animals remain uncontaminated.
AHN: We are using the fresh bat samples to analyze their contents in details, starting from genes, mRNA, protein, cells, to even tissues. And all of these component can be used and utilized to study bats and their immune system.
NARRATOR: Matae’s experiment concentrates on proteins involved in the immune response, and on one molecule in particular: interferon alpha.
AHN: To be simple, interferon alpha is a key molecule that alerts the body to the intruder. It tells the surrounding cells that an infection is occurring.
NARRATOR: When a cell detects a virus, it unleashes a barrage of interferon molecules which spread through the body, spurring immune cells into action. Which, in turn, wipe out the intruding pathogens and get rid of the cells already infected.
AHN: So we want to examine and compare the level of interferon production between human and bat cells before any infection actually occurs. (whirring) (device beeps) So look, look at this curve. This curve is a human sample, it’s flat. It means that interferon alpha is almost undetectable. In contrast, in our bat sample, we have a lot of interferon alpha detected, even though there is no infection occurring right there.
NARRATOR: In other words, bats have adopted a proactive strategy of defense. (whirring) Thanks to interferon being permanently present, when a virus penetrates the bat’s body, their immune system is already active. But in humans, that reaction is much slower. While our body’s immune system is ramping up to produce interferon, the virus can be spreading. The risk of getting sick is therefore much greater in us than in bats, where the virus remains under tighter control.
WANG: Human, for example, our defense system is switched off most of the time, until we see enemies, and then we switch on.
NARRATOR: Unlike us, the bats’ defenses are always on high alert. Their immune system can prevent damaging infection while letting some virus hang around. That’s good news for the bat, but it might be really bad news for humans.
WANG: One theory is that if the virus live inside a bat body, you know, you already have elevated defense systems. So when they jump to a different host, like human, and that’s, it’s, like, you know, free playground for them and they just go and rampage in us. So very efficient.
https://www.pbs.org/video/bat-superpowers-nfuph6/
Comment: I happened to catch this on our local PBS station today. I found it fascinating and enlightening. I wondered why there was so much bat research going on. Given the virus risk, I thought it was a dangerous scientific curiosity, like juggling sticks of dynamite. There’s a lot more to it than that.
This aptly named special shows how bat studies may lead to better treatments and prophylactics for various viruses and other diseases that can infect humans. The study of bat longevity and telomeres is also eye opening. They successfully manage the processes of inflammation and fever to keep dangerous viruses at bay. Bats do seen to have superpowers. The special is still available for viewing until 6 September 2023 without having to donate to WETA in exchange for a Nina Totin’ Bag.
TTG
No amount of scrutiny will ever mitigate all risks with gain of function research. One mistake and it’s going global. We’ll be locked down with illegal aliens entering unchecked all over again with 85% of people saying 2 more weeks.
Next ‘pandemic’ already being prepped, PBS says so right their on their special on pangolins, er bats. Remember, China’s bio non-warfare lab was really trying to do virus research to save humanity! Funded via Fauci the fraud. But who remembers that guy….
Good for the bats. I am very happy with my human immune system and (sorry Marvel) have no wish to be endowed with superpowers. My human immune system has reportedly evolved separately from the bat’s for the last 80 million years or so. It can’t be that bad as it keeps 8 billion of us alive today.
I was also perfectly happy with the old definition of the word “vaccine” which meant something which stimulates an immune response to prevent infection and transmission of disease. I am extremely unhappy that this definition *was changed* so that Big Pharma’s experimental gene therapy, which does not prevent the infection or spread of a virus, could be marketed as a “vaccine” in order to sell it to a trusting public. I am beyond extremely unhappy with government health agencies trying to force me to have my genetic code modified and I will defend my right to bodily sovereignty to the death.
Science is being weaponized as an instrument of social control. I’d suggest someone start doing some gain-of-freedom research to correct this. Associated research should investigate the already evident *degrading of trust in science itself* that is resulting from this abuse. I’d suggest this will be far more harmful to humanity in the medium/long term than any disease may be.
The vampire myths of beings who change into bats having some weird immortality have some macabre basis. Not only directly but because behind this research lurk demons like the ultra wealthy billionaires such as Gates who have stated publicly that he’s not averse to seeking immortality and his technique is to drain the life out of billions of other human beings in pursuit of wealth. Corpses don’t concern him. Wealthy reclusive monsters seeking eternal life is an old theme in fiction and movies. Did it kill 20 million in another Frankenstein experiment just yesterday? You must be imagining things. National security. The military, and the ultimate American hero – the cop.
And Batman is a great American hero whose films earn billions too.
Meanwhile their rule is enforced by goons such as these “White” animals in Mississippi. Their photos are nauseating to look at.
“Horrendous”: Black Men Tortured By White Mississippi Police Men:
https://youtu.be/4QVbKzYPAKE
Larry Johnson who thought shooting an unarmed black man in the back 7 times in Indiana a couple of years ago, and that crushing George Floyd’s neck was approved procedure because Israeli monster cops do it to Palestinian Untermenschen must be ecstatic. Let’s see him defend these cops. I bet he’s working on a presentation any day now.
And Barbara Ann –
You needn’t watch nearly the entire 23 minutes. Just up to minute 1:37 should do the trick where a bald headed individual who I can barely prevent myself from calling a maggot says that putting a gun into an unarmed person’s mouth and pulling the trigger is “inflicting serious bodily injury etc.” Yes, that’s what it is. It’s also what Hitler must have been doing in the bunker when he put the barrel of his Walther in his mouth and fired. Because he was a nice man who was a vegetarian and wouldn’t hurt a fly. You can see how much the man speaking really hates not wearing his Klan robes unless you are blind as a bat. And another of Larry Johnson’s specials? The real victims of lynching in America were whites. Larry Johnson. “Former” CIA Agent. Turned patriot.Who probably agrees with his hero Vladimir Putin that Anna Politkovskaya was a person of “little or no consequence.” He-man.
And do you know what the really most perfect part of the video by “Democracy Now” is, Barbara Ann?
https://youtu.be/4QVbKzYPAKE
When you reach the section following 7:37 or so where the nice lady interviews the two black men. Why? Because that’s where you discover, in case you didn’t know it was coming and suspect it all along, that what this presentation is REALLY about is as always …
utterly humiliating the two black men and all the black people of Mississippi and the United States in full view of god and everyone in the world who watches ..
while dressing it up as a revelation and heroic punishment of racist redneck police brutality by progressive caring people who are overjoyed to finally see justice done (just a tiny teeny bit, as long as they can be on TV too).
Sort of like liberal democrat mayor Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago, and brother of Dr Ezekiel Emmanuel (who as Obama’s medical director decided that it was time for every American to die by the age of 75 -[and that was for public consumption .. and mysteriously a pandemic appeared out of gov labs which killed over a million a few scant yrs later, somehow] ) who ran a secret police squad that did unmentionable things all the time but got caught. But not exactly.
Peter Zeihan doesn’t mention PBS specifically but he says that US media is terrible. Without even saying a word about Project Mockingbird – no mean feat but I guess he was a contortionist in a former life. I know things about Fauci’s assistant of many years who took over some of his duties, only because my father was chairman of the physics department for several years which ran the Manhattan Project Medical division since it’s inception and for many decades hence. The assistant worked in the same department of the University medical school (dentistry, as a cover for radiation research on humans, since dentists use radiation and research into it can cover all sorts of stuff) which was exposed in 1993 by Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary as having conducted repulsive experiments on unsuspecting people for many years. A huge scandal which took years and major efforts to clean up. The assistant didn’t work on the radiation experiments, unless they continued for a good period of time. But – same exact department of same medical school of same University of same town used by the government for years for things like injecting children with plutonium and radiating their genitals etc. Nuclear war is known to be unwageable for obvious reasons. So a new era, a new focus – biological warfare – would make perfect sense. And I knew the people at that place only too well. And they were bastards. Clinical sadists. Not all by any means. But those that mattered were. So I have no hard evidence of anything but I trust Fauci and the rest of those monsters not one bit. The entire place was a weapons development front back then and from the little I’ve noticed over the years, still is.
Why Can’t We Trust the Media? (AKA Propaganda)
https://youtu.be/fDkRHku2epE
Forgot to proofread carefully. According to my information the Man Proj Medical Div was run out of the medical school, not the physics department. The guy who was chairman before my dad knew something about it according to him but my dad was notoriously dishonest about that stuff, no doubt for good reason. O’Leary’s stuff was released in 1993, but I discovered by pure chance what was going on from an article in a magazine, so it was known – obviously to the people doing it and administrating. I talked to him about it on the phone, he denied everything and told me to “stop reading commie propaganda.” It even took him years to talk about it after O’Leary’s revelations. Kids injected with … . Nevermind. There were far more disturbing things.
Unfortunately these “super powers” do not appear to extend to white-nose syndrome, which is wiping out bat colonies throughout North America.
random cave-dweller,
Yes, the super powered bats do have their kryptonite. Seems there’s a bacterial treatment that helps control the effects of this deadly fungal infection.
I had to use bat-b-gone ultrasonics to get them out of the barn because of their bat droppings over the the car, the boat, the kayak, lawnmower, tools, etc. But then the mosquitos became unchecked; not even the swallows could get rid of them all. So I put up cedar, multi-chambered bat houses on the south facing trees. It worked, the bats came back. Haven’t seen nor heard a skeeter since.
leith,
I noticed a lot more bats here in the past and very few mosquitos. Now I don’t see the bats and the mosquitos are far more plentiful. I’m going to build and install a bat house or two soon to reinforce the birds. I enjoy the possums out back. They do a good job keeping the ticks under control.
TTG –
My son has a bad tick infestation. He’s using guinea hens to try to reduce it. He says it is getting somewhat better. But dang those birds are ugly.
The part about finding two year old bats indistinguishable from 30 year old bats is spooky. Are they immortal?
Always been in awe of the ability to home in on something as small as a mosquito, and with both in flight, no less, with high frequency echolocation. How much energy can something as small as a mosquito reflect? Yet bats have no problem with not only hearing it but getting a precision location from it while flying at high speed. If we had that ability we could effortlessly catch peanuts thrown by Nolan Ryan in a pitch black room with our mouths.
Man with IQ 100 or possibly much lower: Did you see the story about how you should get your COVID vax in the right arm?
Man with IQ above 110: No, the story meant in the “correct arm,” and you’ve confused “correct” with “right,” which is an old political trick by the way, which has been used to great effect in our politics and has resulted in everyone running to the “right” less they be thought to be incorrect.
Someone you probably have encountered: Haha. Now the MSM will be telling us the vax didn’t work or killed us because we got it in the wrong arm.
American University Professor or President or Lawyer, or reporter for a major international newspaper or of the era in which we are living through:
Disregard this fascist pig who is asking these absurd multiple choice questions!
Persons 1, 2 and 3 in chorus: Why?
To receive this week’s award, please write your answer to the question immediately above, which in your opinion best summarizes the reasoning of the the 4th individual and submit it immediately below.
—————————————-
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2023/08/17/arm-for-vaccine-shots-matter/70604228007/
Left or right arm: Choosing where to get vaccinated matters, study suggests. Here’s why
When you roll up your sleeve to get routine vaccinations, do you prefer a jab in your right or left arm? New data suggests the choice you make matters.
Researchers in Germany found people who got all their shots in one arm had a stronger immune response than those who distributed shots between both arms, according to a study published last week in eBioMedicine, a peer-reviewed journal from The Lancet Discovery Science.
In the observational study, authors analyzed immune responses from about 300 people who never had COVID-19 and received two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine between March and September 2021.
F&L
Unrelated, but have theologians issued a pronouncement on whether receiving the Mark of the Beast on the left hand would be OK, or whether “foreheads” in Revelation 13:16 could be a reference to facial recognition software?
It doesn’t need a theologian to see that the very next line “And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark..” describes the system of Vaxx passports/digital ID’s and CBDC’s perfectly. Neither arm will remain my choice, and not because of the Book of Revelation.
Yes, it is rather like trusting the Nazis who said they were relocating you to rest homes and sanitariums in the east. Or being a southern sharecropper who felt a bit ill and reported to the Tuskegee institute. Same species. Same rotten rulers.
Would they try to pull off a UFO hoax too?
“The aliens have given our scientists the remedy to: Old age, Covid, and a long list of other maladies. You know their technology and medicine is far more advanced than ours and that we ourselves are entirely benevolent people who donated pillows to inhabitants of burned out victims of extremely valuable and intensely coveted beach properties located in a region where by secret agreement between … and …. and especially … , no harm will befall the residents in the upcoming …. “
F&L,
“Man with IQ 100 or possibly much lower….”
Sounds like the lead off from Gaius Baltar, betrayer of humanity in Battlestar Galactica, as used as a nom-de-plum on the banned one’s (Larry J) blog.
But vaccines…. “vaccines are targeting the same lymph nodes…” Science! Unlike when the Polio vaccine did not need multiple boosters for years on end. Of course that vax didn’t result in
Died Suddently.
Fred,
The vax gave me myocarditis and swollen legs – I couldn’t barely walk to the corner for supplies & coffee. Then a series of heart attacks which I somehow survived. Then my tests showed I’d developed kidney disease which I had no evidence of in over 70 yrs.
You could feed the developers and promoters of the vax and the entire hoax (not a hoax like UFOs because some very real viruses were in fact on the loose) to half starved lions, tigers, bears and wolves – feed them alive, I want to emphasize – and charge money for admission and I would accuse you of being a soft hearted, cowardly weasel unworthy of things I’m too diplomatic and sensitive to mention.
Just for the record mind you.
F&L,
Could I send in the governors, like that once leading presidential candidate, who sent the grannys back to the nursing homes, in before the Tik-Tok dancing docs and nurses of course, as a warm-up rountine? Maybe use some crocodiles – so we have a show with the right kind of tears?
Fred,
That governor? Probably your idea is necessary. I don’t think, unfortunately, that the devil really exists and tortures sinners eternally — that only happens to people with mercilessly punitive superegos or a powerful conscience which I suspect that individual is not in full possession of.
F&L,
Are you sure you didn’t get Covid-19 in spite of your vaccines. SWMBO and I both had it back in February 2020. At the time we both thought it was the flu and there was no test for it. We both got vaccinated and caught it again this summer from my vaccinated older son. This time I tested. The first day it was negative, but two days later I tested positive so we all figured we got it. My son’s office at Belvoir ended up with a lot of cases.
TTG,
I did get Covid, probably three times. It was really everywhere here. People did and didn’t follow precautions, merchants were quite good about it, but there were sufficient unmentionables who were absolutely incorrigible about masking or keeping distance, not to mention the imbeciles out rioting and city politicians allowing unadvisable gatherings so their popularity wouldn’t suffer, and it spread like wildfire especially the later variants. And yes, I did in fact get Covid after both vaxes. I’m sorry if I sounded that I overly complained about a widespread illness which killed people and luckily didn’t kill me. It was really very bad here among the poor communities who live in overcrowded and poorly ventilated dwellings. I’m also aware that some of my ailing could possibly be so called “long Covid”, I don’t discount that at all, while simultaneously suspecting an deceptive information campaign purposed to aquit the vax … but the heart trouble and swollen legs – (the swelling did indeed go away after 12-14 days) – were due to the vax. And I’ve had several episodes of near death since then, which obviously could be old age etc or laughing too hard, which I guess won’t be the worst way to go.
So you have a 71 yr old – not in the best health – advised to take a vax which gave him myocarditis, swollen legs and heart attacks, the latter horrific but thankfully not severe enough to kill him. After which he gets Covid 3 times. TTG, you are a combat veteran who nearly got blown to pieces in your chosen profession. You can’t take your experience as a baseline for what is tolerable by the wide range of people, anymore than we should all follow a Sumo wrestler’s regimen or commit suicide because the Marine corps rejected us, despite what Hollywood says. I mean you can and you might and you will and you can cry “national security” till Congress invests $29 billion annually to develop trees which produce gourds which contain artillery ammunition and aren’t such bad hand grenades either, but another $12 billion is foreseen as needed to perfect the pin mechanism.
You’re “happy as a pig in ####” despite your injuries and afflictions. I’m happier than that possibly. And I bitch and moan about what I went through along with the whole planet even though, thank god, I wasn’t welded into an apartment, and even though I didn’t croak because – in addition to all the above I think (?), no I’m sure, there was really nasty research on gain of function going on for years, from which this avoidable war-planner’s monstrosity arose.
“..caught it again this summer from my vaccinated older son”
And that boys and girls is why the Vaxx *is not* a vaccine! But I guess if the meaning of the word “vaccine” can be fluid we should not be surprised when the biggest funder of the WHO tells us “vaccines” are going to be used to control population growth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeHLNthYTSI – watch first 2 minutes).
This is nothing new of course. The Nazis considered their eugenicist policies a matter of “hygiene”.
By the way, as Walrus will no doubt attest, a treatment that requires update jabs indefinitely is the Holy Grail of Big Pharma. An income stream forever with the added bonus that the disease is allowed to mutate and is never actually cured. Yup, their ideal scenario is that we outsource our immune system entirely – Immunity as a Service.
Polio is NOT a single dose vaccine, either for the OPV (IMO better) or the IPV.
“Schedule
In countries with endemic polio or where the risk of imported cases is high, the WHO recommends OPV vaccine at birth followed by a primary series of three OPV doses and at least one IPV dose starting at 6 weeks of age, with a minimum of 4 weeks between OPV doses. In countries with >90% immunization coverage and low risk of importation, the WHO recommends one or two IPV doses starting at 2 months of age followed by at least two OPV doses, with the doses separated by 4–8 weeks depending on the risk of exposure. In countries with the highest levels of coverage and the lowest risks of importation and transmission, the WHO recommends a primary series of three IPV injections, with a booster dose after an interval of six months or more if the first dose was administered before 2 months of age.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#
Peter,
Thanks for the link. A booster every year?
No.
99% immunity, unlike what you get with any and all COVID mRNA shots. I haven’t had any Polio shot since leaving elementary school decades ago.
To be fair, you don’t need a polio booster anymore in any case, unless you go somewhere it’s still prevalent, which at this point is Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Malawi (or you’re doing lab work on polio).
I’m old enough that I got vaccinated for smallpox when I was a kid (probably in 1965); when I started working with vaccinia in the lab in 1997, they made me get revaccinated.
Oh, and one major reason for multiple boosters is that Covid is that the virus is evolving fast enough that the new variants are no longer seen by the older vaccines, so updated ones are needed (and there will be a new one this fall that I would highly recommend getting).
Peter,
You mean it is seen that this is just like the flu. I stopped getting those ‘shots’ a long time ago.
Fred,
Covid-19 is very much like the flu in its changeability. Natural immunity, a euphemism for have survived an infection, doesn’t seem to lessen your susceptibility to a reinfection, much like the vaccine. Nor does in guarantee a lesser virulent reinfection, which the vaccine does seem to do. I don’t know if that’s true with the seasonal flu.
Regarding COVID vaccinations:
I am in my 70s, but decided not to get vaccinated, and indeed have not.
Call me an ornery old coot, if you like.
My general philosophy is to try and live a healthy lifestyle, and avoid doctors and (super UGH!) drugs and pills like the plague.
They might make things better, but they might make things worse.
I believe Col. Lang regretted getting the COVID shots.
Also it saves money.
TTG,
Missing from all the latest commentary are all those experts who were telling us all about lock downs, masks, and a lack of symptoms being a symptom – right here on this blog – for months on end. Where are all those UK based ‘experts’, or the daily death counts on the evening news? Oh, right, the Trump – Biden election is over. POOF just like that they went away, just like that other WHO declared ‘pandemic’: Monkeypox. I’m sure like ‘died suddenly’ that is just a coincidence.
The seasonal chinese warfare, whoops, I meam seasonal flu, isn’t guaranteed to not be pre-antibiotic 1917 strain level killing? Surprise, surprise. “guarantee a lesser virulent reinfection, which the vaccine does seem to do.”
If that shot is guaranteeing a reinfection it is counter productive and should not be thought of as a vaccine, unless the definition of the term vaccine was changed. Oh, wait, it was!
Shot shot shot
vax vax vax
boost boost boost
obey
That should be the daily haiku for the rest of our lives.
Fred,
Covid-19 still killed a million Americans, far more than polio killed and maimed (less than 25,000 in 1952, the worst year). Polio panic was far more out of proportion to the actual threat than the Covid panic. And thank God the current cult of outrage and victimhood wasn’t in full swing in the 1950s and 60s. The polio vaccine campaigns, which had major failures including vaccine induced polio and sudden deaths, would have never succeeded thus leading to the virtual eradication of polio cases in most of the world.
You give me the impression that you feel the worst part of the Covid pandemic was that Trump lost the 2020 election. Cue the cries of outrage and victimhood.
TTG,
It grieves me greatly that you think I’m outraged by the election results rather than the immoral and often criminal conduct of our public officials. The propaganda, like what you consciously spread now, was far different in the 1950s. Would you like to rehash the things proclaimed to spread fear and concentrate power? Like “a million dead” with
with
Covid. As opposed to actually BY covid. Comorbidly? What’s that. Don’t bother.
AGE
why on Earth would that be relevant? Like what age were all those old people dying at while young people weren’t dying. Remember? Don’t let those facts upset you.
“Mostly Peaceful” assembly ok, family get togethers not. Remember?
Ivermetcin – the “horse medicine”, a line you spread repeatedly. Remember?
I won’t mention “China” as the source or US funding via Fauci and his shell game nor concealing or manipulating information like he and Dr. Birx (It’s in her book). Cue self righteousness……
Fred,
The situation is much like deaths attributed to influenza. The direct cause of those of those deaths is pneumonia, but that pneumonia infection is brought about by the flu. Comorbidity or not, if the victims didn’t catch the flu, they wouldn’t have gotten pneumonia. And those deaths are also skewed towards the old. BTW, influenza deaths are equivalent to the worst year of polio caused deaths and paralysis.
I did recently read that ivermectin may work as a prophylaxis against the strain of malaria now popping up in Florida. Makes sense since it is an effective treatment for various parasitic diseases in humans and animals.
TTG
“Natural immunity, a euphemism for have survived an infection, doesn’t seem to lessen your susceptibility to a reinfection, much like the vaccine”
Nope. A 2021 Israeli study found that “Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine” – my emphasis
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital
Barbara Ann,
Natural immunity does provide effective temporary immunity, but having to be hospitalized to acquire that effective natural immunity is far from ideal.
https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/lancet-most-comprehensive-study-date-provides-evidence-natural
Other studies indicated natural immunity’s effectiveness has been overrated. Plus, the side effects of acquiring natural immunity resulted in a million dead Americans.
https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/covid-19-studies-natural-immunity-versus-vaccination
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/vaccination-has-a-lower-risk-of-autoantibody-development-than-natural-immunity/
TTG
My bodily sovereignty cannot end at your aversion to disease. If a person is not permitted to acquire natural immunity our immune systems become the property of the State and we are like so many cattle. The State can then do what it will to us in the name of maintaining a ‘healthy’ population. All that needs to go wrong then is for TPTB to consider a healthy population does not include you or I. When the leading donor to the WHO is an avowed eugenicist you’ll forgive me for pointing out the downside risk of a State ‘healthcare’ policy dictated by such folk.
TTG,
pnuemonia is caused by bacteria not virus. Sending old people back to nursing homes (Whitmer, Cuomo, others) were death sentences. Covid deaths were and are not prevelent in children and nor even serious cases of Covid. As Barabara Ann points out our bodily sovereinty doesn’t end because others are ‘scared’ or some ‘professional’ wants to increase their power.
“the side effects of acquiring natural immunity resulted in a million dead Americans.”
That is untrue.
Fred,
Pneumonia can be viral or bacterial. The most common cause for both are viral cold and influenza infections. Covid-19 can also lead to viral or bacterial pneumonia.
How do you think natural immunity is acquired? It’s not like the immaculate conception. It’s an infection induced immunity with all the risks accompanying that infection.
TTG,
I would praise you for your loyalty to the narrative, but I haven’t decided whether that conclusion is correct of if you simple suffer from a closed mind. Covid is very survivable, especially for those who are not sick or elderly. The vaxx side effects, which are still being covered up, injured the founder of this blog and probably caused his early death as well. He’s not alone.
Diet and exercise would have been far more beneficial for a lot more people than the fear campaign or this mRNA shot program. The coordinated government, media, and corporate coercion campaign has resulted in a massive shift of wealth to a plutocratic elite and a further concentration of power in the hands of the unelected. You appear to be cheering on the loss of freedom.
Fred,
I agree that Covid is very survivable. And a better diet and more exercise would benefit all. But to push for that would also be flexing the might of big government and an intrusion upon our bodily autonomy. I bring up the polio example of another very survivable disease. The Spanish flu is another, although it was actually an American flu. The government response in all three of these was draconian. The polio vaccine was mandated to an even greater extent than the Covid mRNA vaccine. During the Spanish flu, police hunted down unvaccinated Americans, physically held them down and then health officials forcibly vaccinated the recalcitrant individuals. The heightened vigilance and accompanying hysteria subsided in all these cases. Are further Covid boosters mandated any more that annual flu shots?
Peter Hug –
Wasn’t FDR an adult when he caught polio? When I was a boy in the 1940’s and early 50’s there was no Salk vaccine. Everyone knew somebody who had been lamed or worse. It used to be a crippler. The town I lived in closed the swimming pool because of it. Mom and my aunts were first in line to sign the petition to get the pool closed. That drew a bit of annoyed indignation from my cousins and I.
leith –
I just went and looked a bit. It’s quite clear that he caught SOMETHING when he was 39 that put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. And adults do get polio. I did run into a really interesting paper that concludes there’s a 51% chance that he actually had Guillain–Barré syndrome instead. (I guess from FDR’s standpoint that’s a distinction without a difference.) One problem with figuring out what he had is that essentially none of the modern diagnostic tests were available in 1921, and Guillain–Barré syndrome was only described in 1916.
One of the cool things about the paper is that they use a Bayesian statistics approach to arrive at that number – I’ve been interested in using that for years, although in more industrial applications.
https://www.ehdp.com/out/jmb_2003_v11_p232-240.pdf
TTG –
The 25K figure didn’t fit with my recollection. So with due diligence I see you are correct. I was ten years old in ’52 so was maybe overly influenced by a 2nd cousin coming down with it and her having to wear those metal leg braces.
BUT, there is also a Wiki mention that in 1977 there were a quarter of a million people living in the US who had been paralyzed by polio; and that in 2001 there were 134K people in western Europe, Canada, Australia & Japan still living with paralysis from polio. I wonder what the world figures were before the WHO established the Global Polio Eradication Initiative?
leith,
I was born in 1953, but I also remember at least two kids in school with those leg braces and that’s in a small New England town. I got the full series of polio shots just when the oral treatment came out. I got the full sugar cube series as well.
Peter Hug –
51 percent? Statistics are great for manufacturing and other industrial applications. Not so much though for determining a medical diagnosis 80 years afterwards.
BTW, Arthur C Clarke also contracted polio as an adult, and Bob McNamara and several others. That’s just a few among the more famous ones.
A little memento of polio:
https://www.goldenhistory.org/gleaton/
I think diseases like this that most affect our youngest are much more to be attacked than those that mostly affect the elderly.
leith –
I guess the number came out the way it came out. For me the bottom line is that there is a nontrivial chance that it wasn’t polio. And either way, he was paralyzed from the waist down.
I’m young enough (barely) that I didn’t go to school with anyone with polio, but my Dad had a coworker who got polio as a kid. She was from Tuscaloosa, AL, and walked with crutches her whole life – until post-polio syndrome put her into a wheelchair. Nevertheless, she was able (growing up as a girl on crutches in 1930s AL) to get through college, and then medical school, and then came to Cincinnati Children’s where she was a resident and joined and then ran the Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Division there, and turned it into probably the best Pediatric Hem-Onc organization in the world.
And then, when she retired, she started the Glad House in Cincinnati, a place to support kids who have been who have been impacted emotionally and behaviorally by a family member with an addiction. (Of course, given her background, the first thing she did was a randomized trial to demonstrate efficacy for the things she did…)
https://www.gladhouse.org/
Peter –
An amazing woman! Probably super smart to start with. But I have to wonder if her childhood experience with polio somehow contributed to her admittance to med school and her later great success at CCH? Adversity can sometimes be a great motivator. And what is that old quote about what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?
Off topic but contains info on ally UK demographics. Translated from Malek Dudakov on Telegram. Links are in original.
https://t.me/malekdudakov/5941
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12416255/Births-plummet-20-YEAR-low.html
Britain has a demographic crisis. Very disappointing statistics for 2022 arrived in time – the number of newborns fell to 600 thousand. The birth rate has fallen to a twenty-year low. Moreover, the same number of births was observed in Britain in the middle of the 19th century before the advent of modern medicine and with a population 4 times smaller than now.
The reasons for the collapse in the birth rate are a pandemic and a rise in inflation. The British economy is plunging into recession – and cannot even reach the level of the last peaceful 2019. And the real incomes of the population de facto have not been growing for the past 15 years. There is also a crisis of values - with the de-Christianization of Britain. As well as the active promotion of the LGBT and the “transgender” agenda.
Against this background, there is a rapid demographic replacement of white British. One third of all newborns in England and Wales are of migrant mothers. Most often they are either Indian or Pakistani. Although now the Afghans are coming to the fore. After all, every month thousands of illegal immigrants sail on boats in Britain – and many of them come from Afghanistan.
Similar processes are observed on the other side of the Atlantic – in the United States. Here, too, amid the pandemic, the birth rate collapsed. And the share of white Americans has already fallen from 64% to 57% in 10 years, while the percentage of Hispanics and Asians is growing rapidly.
Rishi Sunak’s cabinet hopes to stop the wave of migration by deporting illegal immigrants to Rwanda or the Falklands. But this will not help curb the demographic crisis. Since 2017, migrants have been responsible for 90% of Britain’s population growth due to the growing birth rate and the incessant flow of people into the country. Therefore, Britain, like the United States, is threatened by the same processes of Balkanization of the country – with a split into disunited ethno-cultural minorities
And exactly why is that bad? It will create an interesting and varied region of different people rather than a blob of homogenous servants of a central repressive government. Aren’t we to celebrate differences?
Mr billy roche,
Sorry, it was written by a Russian journalist and internet blogger. It’s logical to think that he takes pleasure in reporting these features of UK demographics due to understandable resentment he feels due to frequent harping in the western media & think tankery on Russia’s demographic situation which is considered by many experts to be severe. Severe to where they have a large immigrant population themselves, mostly from central Asia. They have there own Rush Limbaughs too who don’t like it at all and stir up trouble over the issue.
Are we to celebrate differences? I myself, a human male heterosexual individual have observed that certain other human individuals are female and possibly at least occasionally practitioners of heterosexuality. Do I celebrate this difference? No, Mr roche, but at times, late at night alone in my bed, listening to the pouring rain, waiting for the sun to rise, I gropingly come to appreciate at least the social needs for companionship and interpersonal warmth.
More from Dudakov on Seymour Hersh’s latest this morning on substack. Obviously a pro Ru takeaway.
Follows with Peter Zeihan’s brief (suspiciously?) look at recent fighting.
https://t.me/malekdudakov/5940
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/summer-of-the-hawks
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Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer laureate, continues to participate in the war of compromising evidence within the Biden team. This time, he reported on the ongoing internal confrontation between the CIA and the State Department over Ukraine. The fight of bulldogs under the carpet in Washington has now become aggravated because of the turmoil in Ukraine – and the search for the perpetrators has begun.
CIA director Bill Burns is one of the top realists in the White House. And he is trying to preemptively absolve himself of responsibility for the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive – claiming that the CIA warned the hawkish Secretary of State Blinken in advance of Ukraine’s defeat.
Any CIA reports always contain several scenarios for the development of events – and among them there was certainly a defeatist scenario. He could well be considered the most probable. But the hawks – including Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin – are authorizing a counter-offensive anyway. And now it is their heads that can fly.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was also under attack. He actively developed the track with the summit in Saudi Arabia – hoping to make it a beautiful finale of victory in the counteroffensive. But there was no victory – that’s why the summit failed. Sullivan himself, who often changes his views, becoming either a hawk or a realist, is also now in an awkward situation.
It is Burns who feels best of all. He is tipped for the position of Secretary of State. So far, Blinken has not been removed – although there are plenty of reasons, from the Afghan fiasco to the defeat in Ukraine. It’s just that he is involved in all the corruption cases of the Biden family – from Ukrainian Burisma to China. But if the situation in foreign policy becomes completely stalemate for Biden, then Blinken will be sacrificed. And they will hastily send Burns to negotiate with Russia on Ukraine and with China on Taiwan.
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His notes pasted below.
Ukraine war updates: Peter Zeihan.
https://youtu.be/575oLHUGAAM
Things over in Ukraine are in a bit of a holding period, which makes getting these updates out consistently that much harder…and let’s not forget that most of the data we’re seeing is shaky at best. But here’s what I got for you.
There are a few things of note. Ukraine is sending small waves of special forces across the Dnieper River to wreak havoc on that region. These small attacks have been pretty successful, thanks to the Russians shifting their focus to the east. This change in Russian strategy is an attempt to draw Ukrainian forces and attention away from hot spots like Zaporizhzhia.
The big thing here is that Ukraine doesn’t necessarily have to punch through all of Russia’s defenses. If they can push them back far enough to cut supply lines in the north and south, then Crimea could very well be a lost cause for the Russians. The Ukrainians have proven they are fully capable of consistently hitting a target – a.k.a the Kerch Bridge – so this is a genuine possibility.
Remember that shaky data coming out of Russia, well it doesn’t really make a difference for us. At the end of the day, Russia is completely hollowed out and no longer operates as a normal economy. They’ll never quite recover from this, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of Russia… it’s just the new status quo.
Did the strategic and diplomatic overachievers at the recent Russian Army conference blunder into promptimg Antony Blinken into being able to rationalize this move announced today, or is Blinken Drinkin’? (They are built to use nuclear weapons, is why I mention it).
US Encourges Nato allies to send F-16s to Ukraine:
https://www.rt.com/news/581433-us-f16-ukraine-denmark-netherlands/
Denmark and the Netherlands can send Ukraine F-16 fighters as soon as the pilot training is complete, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a letter seen by Reuters on Thursday.
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https://t.me/logikamarkova/7843
At the Army Forum 2023, at the main expert round table, the main speaker is Sergey Karaganov, the author of the concept of the need to change the strategy for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Previously, he said that Russia should abandon the principle of no first use of nuclear weapons. And be ready to deliver a nuclear strike on Rzeszow on the territory of Poland, on that huge NATO military base, which is used as the main channel for NATO complicity in the war on the side of Ukraine.
And it was he who was the main speaker after the opening speech of Deputy Defense
Minister Tsalikov.
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Has anyone here ever observed the faces of the Russian Government VIPs who gather in that big Kremlin hall to listen to Putin’s speeches? Did intelligence seem to be pouring excessively out of their foreheads?
‘Antony’ Blinkenzini isn’t no prize himself by the way.
As Mickey Mantle used to reminisce, thinking back over his visits with the New York Yankees star players when they’d visit the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan, referring to Second baseman and future multiple World Series winning manager Billy Martin who was famous for punching his pitchers in the face if they disagreed with his decision to call the bullpen for a reliever … whenever a fight would break out over a foolish remark .. “you know, when it came to Billy, you didn’t exactly have to ask him twice if he wanted to get into a fist fight .. .”
If we get infected but don’t develop symptoms, would we care?
I would make that deal but it creates a ferocious, public, policy debate. If only half the people took the therapy then they would become supercarriers for the half that chose not to. It would be the first time I can recall where a therapy for one person could make things worse for the other. I envy the bats who never had to argue about that.
BTW had my first bout w/Covid. Wow. my only symptom was a non-stop, splitting headache. It lasted for 4 straight days but my breathing was fine. Worst headache I have ever had in my life, wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I’m okay now.
Christian J Chuba,
There’s a huge variation in symptoms/reactions to Covid infection. The vast majority are no worse than a bad flu. We never had headaches at all. I felt run down for two days, but still managed to strip and restain my deck during my first bout. The second time, I was just tired for a day and stayed in bed a lot. SWMBO’s reaction included swollen lymph nodes and lasted a lot longer. She got Covid toes the first time. That’s the only reason we knew we had Covid since there wasn’t a home test at the time. My son’s reaction was just a day or two like a mild flu. None of us had breathing problems.