A new scientific paper by American researchers sheds more light on the origin and initial growth of the Covid 91 pandemic based on careful analysis and back tracking of the genetics of the initial Chinese cases.
They concluded words to the effect that the growth and initial behavior of the pandemic is consistent with an index case being infected from an animal in October 2019 and that person infecting a few others in the Wuhan wet market in November.
Their conclusion is that the virus “Got Lucky” and we didn’t.
“Our results highlight the unpredictable dynamics that characterized the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The successful establishment of SARS-CoV-2 post-zoonosis was far from certain, as more than two-thirds of simulated epidemics quickly went extinct. It is highly probable that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating in Hubei province at low levels in early-November 2019 and possibly as early as October 2019, but not earlier. Nonetheless, the inferred prevalence of this virus was too low to permit its discovery and characterization for weeks or months. By the time COVID-19 was first identified, the virus had firmly established itself in Wuhan. This delay highlights the difficulty in surveillance for novel zoonotic pathogens with high transmissible and moderate mortality rates.”
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/03/17/science.abf8003
Comment: This conclusion is consistent with the content of the private briefing I received on March 6 last year and reported to this committee.
Conspiracy theories involving Bill Gates, global cartels, secret military laboratories, etc. are superfluous. Bureaucracy, stupidity, greed, local and national politics initially in China and later elsewhere are sufficient explanation of our predicament.
Opinion: The utter rubbish I read about the politicization of the Covid 19 pandemic is depressing. Masks, vaccines, lockdowns, quarantine and social distancing are well known and in some cases ancient proven public health tools that work. The fact that the pandemic was an excuse to pervert what passes for the American voting system in the November 2019 elections does not invalidate the use of such tools.
We should get out of the way of the public health doctors and let them do their jobs.
what about the cross connections with usa and chinese labs??? why did they shut down fort detricks chemical weapons lab?? i know what they say, but the timing is suspicious.. too many questions… unfortunately money influences so much of the ‘news’ or propaganda we read today – whatever the case may be…
lets say it first started in wuhan… what role has the usa played in this?? has anyone come up with a definitive answer?? sorry, but i have too many questions that i believe remain unanswered..
james
It has been decades since Ft. Detrick did anything with offensive BW. Where do you get this crap?
james
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention There has been an international convention aginst chemical weapons for a long time. Ft. Detrick does DEFENSIVE research on disease and chemical weapons in the hands of renegades. You sure as hell are gullible, anything anti-American will do for you.
pat – it is just a conspiracy theory if it comes from china, but otherwise a theory if it comes from anywhere else…
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html
https://www.ibtimes.com/china-says-us-lab-fort-detrick-could-be-covid-19-origin-claims-explode-chinese-3148180
i would like to add one other comment… until the world comes to an agreement to ban the use of chemical weapons and to shut down these labs that are used specifically for these purposes, there will continue to be a cloud of suspicion over their existence and all that this implies.. hopefully the people on this planet can get their act together, but it is going to be a hard fought accomplishment if it happens… i don’t want to give the impression i am pointing fingers at any country here… i am just asking questions that i don’t believe have easy answers…
If the public health doctors are exemplified by Fauci and the CDC clown show, we’d best NOT let them do “their job.” as so far, it’s been a bunch of politicized bureaucrats enjoying their power trip while doing a piss poor job of so-called “public health.”
Given that 40% or so of US medical professionals are unwilling to get the jab, I hazard that Walrus is NOT referencing top FDA & CDC doctors. There are too many conflicts of interest ($$$) between CDC & FDA and big pharma whose interest clearly is aligned with $$$ first and foremost – health being an accidental byproduct.
What is the average survival rate for Covid?
What was it for the Spanish flu?
When did we first mask the HEALTHY people and quarantine them? (rhetorical)
In what year did seasonal influenza disappear?
In what year did pnuemonia essentially disappear?
In what year was my brother, owner of a funeral home) told that his MVA deaths were all Covid-19?
This is a BS virus, and governments worldwide have used it to increase power and dominate their people.
Don’t go gently good people…
Oilman,
The 800 dead arising from our last Covid 19 outbreak were not the victims of a “BS Virus”.
Similarly, the hospital I attended a few weeks ago were not performing “street theater” for my benefit when they screened me on entry.
The exhausted nurses and doctors I’ve seen on news reports weren’t actors either.
You are just another person who doesn’t understand that negative evidence can’t be converted to positive evidence of anything.
The nurses and doctors are indeed exhausted, but not because of an extraordinary avalanche of Covid-19 cases ( other years happens exactly the same with flu, hospitals are overcrowded and crews have needed seasonal reinforcement all these past years in winter ) they are exhausted out of the cuts of personel and beds which took place in the aftermath of the past 2008 crisis.
To this add that now, instead of being reinforced, the crews are being cut to half for to destining half the crew to mass vaccination on open spaces and other facilities as this has been deemed the priority.
How do you explain France has cut its health personal by almost half during the pandemic?
Of course a lot of medical and nursing activites have been erased from public systems…one wonders whether they will return once the pandemic washes away..I fear they not…
This pandemic is being instrumental for many things ( hence it has no end…) amongst them decimating through collapsing it what of the welfare state still remains in places like Europe…The same hedge funds behind the mass media, banks, vaccines, are salivating for grabbing the public helath systems..
800 dead? I am NOT impressed by this virus, not at all.
Evidence is evidence – WTF do you even mean by “negative evidence”?
A “screening on entry” is nothing – now, denying entry or limiting entry might be something to consider.
I have three (3) hospitals within half a klic from me – a ‘pandemic’ would have been blatantly obvious, with people lined up trying to get taken care of. This was NOT the case – things were normal. No overflowing parking garages, no bunches of people lining up, no ambulances rushing to and fro with the dying.
If you actually believe the news media, in spite of the fact that worldwide they have been busted using actors and green screens, then there is no point in my trying to bring you back to the reality around you.
I never posited any theory as to why this madness has been thrust upon us, but the visual evidence in the form of modified statistics is blatant. The simple fact that most other influenza strains “disappeared” this year is very telling. Pneumonia, one of the most common killers of the old and infirm, also disappeared this year.
The ‘truth on the ground’ is very different when you drive by and walk in these hospitals than what they are shoveling into your brain in the MSM.
You need to wake up…
Oilman2,
“Negative evidence cannot be turned into positive evidence” is formal logic: – absence of something is not evidence of absence.
You illustrate the point very well; your three hospitals have no Covid cases, therefore Covid is not a serious disease, according to you, because you have not personally seen it.
I have two good female friends, both in their Nineties. Both are mentally sharp as a razor and are much loved great grandmothers. Of course they have pre – existing health conditions, we all do. We have preserved them very carefully this last year and kept them safe from Covid because we want the benefit of their love and counsel for as long as they are able to provide it.
Of course if they get Covid they will die of “pneumonia”, “Organ failure” or suchlike, but the primary cause will be Covid.
T o put that another way, consider the old car joke: (To the mechanic) “My car has had electrical failure”, “Oh?”, “Yes, a piston came through the block while I was revving it to 8000rpm and knocked the alternator to bits”.
Your suggestion that “Flu” has disappeared has a very simple explanation: the same precautions we have taken against Covid 19 are also effective against the flu.
Why should anyone spoon feed you wisdom? Get off your butt and consult any COVID webpage, say at Johns Hopkins or the WHO. That is, if the sound of helicopters doesn’t make you hide in the basement. Parading your ignorance around like you have just married a supermodel doesn’t mean you have anything intelligent to say.
ricardo2000
Ad hominem attacks are not allowed on my site. If you do it again I will ban you.
walrus
Fauci is self-obsessed Cassandra. If we let him control the country we would starve to death. You have not noticed that COVID is dying out just as the Spanish flu just disappeared? AND the rate of decline in cases and mortality is no better in locked down Blue states than in wide open Red States.
Col. Lang,
Fauci may well be a self obsessed Cassandra. As for starving to death, we successfully locked down our cities and got control of this virus (at least for now) by following the advice of public health professionals. The Australian economy is bouncing back. The main business victims have been personal service businesses from gyms to restaurants. Anyone who embraced on line shopping has made a heap of money. Businesses adopted the work from home model.
Regional tourism is going crazy because overseas travel is still impossible. We had traffic jams in our town from all the holiday makers a few weeks ago and this coming Easter should be the same.
Our main hiccups in the response have arisen from the actions of corrupt and/or grandstanding politicians. I haven’t done the work to compare U.S. state responses, but our lockdowns have worked. The last few cases have been caused by “escape” from hotel quarantine of returning overseas travelers.
I hope that Covid 19 will die out naturally, but European experience at the moment does not suggest it yet.
walrus
It IS dying out here and our economy is booming except in locked down Blueland.
Kary Mullis, who won a 1993 Nobel Prize for inventing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing process says the same thing about Fauci.
https://twitter.com/LegendaryEnergy/status/1369720747313098753
Any idea on what topic he would have loved to debate Fauc, Fred? That would be interesting.
Kary B. Mullis … died on Aug. 7 [2019] at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 74.
The cause was heart and respiratory failure brought on by pneumonia, his wife, Nancy Cosgrove Mullis, said.
LeaNder,
Fauci’s been in the same job for decades, the interview took place before Covid arrived on our shores; and Fauci learned nothing in the intervening years.
Hey, thanks Fred,
longtime no exchanges, as you may imagine, or maybe you didn’t, considering my home ground, I didn’t give a damn about Fauci or for that matter the Cherry Blossom King’s Corona press conference expertise. …
But I do feel honored you spell my aka correctly. Highly appreciated.
Be well …
Fred,
Kary’s statements are technically correct but he’s off-beam. Fauci is an epidemiologist, not a lab guy who is charged with finding cures. We don’t want the lab guys spending their time trying to craft and coordinate public responses to epidemics, not any more than we want the people charged with crafting responses in the labs doing research.
Same goes for the economics. Epidemiologists are not experts in that area, but somehow it has been deemed that Fauci is evil because he doesn’t modify his judgements within his own field of expertise with any of that. Fauci crafting his public statements based on his judgements of macro economics would be an act of unforgivable hubris on his part.
It was never necessary to discredit him or his expertise. It was only necessary to explain it wasn’t worth the cost or it was in some other way impossible for the US to combat this disease in the ways the Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Japanese, Australians, New Zealanders, et al did.
Mark K. Logan
“an act of unforgivable hubris on his part.” Yes, that is how I would describe his behavior.
There was no medical ‘consensus’ and there still isn’t.
The blind leading the blind is what we’ve witnessed ever since COVID first arrived on the stage. The only ones operating with clear heads was and still is the Russians in particular their VEKTOR researchers. The West and the Chinese government have been operating in a ‘duh’ stupor.
Something definitely worth considering:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin-chaos-under-heaven-wuhan-lab-book-excerpt-474322
From the article by Josh Rogin:
“The original Chinese government story, that the pandemic spread from a seafood market in Wuhan, was the first and therefore most widely accepted theory. But cracks in that theory slowly emerged throughout the late winter and spring of 2020. The first known case of Covid-19 in Wuhan, it was revealed in February, had no connection to the market. The Chinese government closed the market in January and sanitized it before proper samples could be taken. It wouldn’t be until May that the Chinese Centers for Disease Control disavowed the market theory, admitting it had no idea how the outbreak began, but by then it had become the story of record, in China and internationally.
…
When they sat down with the scientists at the WIV, the American diplomats were shocked by what they heard. The Chinese researchers told them they didn’t have enough properly trained technicians to safely operate their BSL-4 lab. The Wuhan scientists were asking for more support to get the lab up to top standards.
…
Taken together, those two points—a particularly dangerous groups of viruses being studied in a lab with real safety problems—were intended as a warning about a potential public-health crisis, one of the cable writers told me.
…
What I [Josh Regin] found was that, just months into the pandemic, a large swath of the [U S.] government already believed the virus had escaped from the WIV lab, rather than having leaped from an animal to a human at the Wuhan seafood market or some other random natural setting, as the Chinese government had claimed.
Any theory of the pandemic’s origins had to account for the fact that the outbreak of the novel coronavirus—or, by its official name, SARS-CoV-2—
first appeared in Wuhan, on the doorstep of the lab that possessed one of the world’s largest collections of bat coronaviruses
and that possessed the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, a virus known as RaTG13 that Shi identified in her lab.
…
Beijing threatened Australia and the EU for even suggesting an independent investigation into the origins of the virus.”
Slightly changing topic, let me ask:
Walrus: I have read reports in the MSM,
e.g. https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/if-you-make-china-the-enemy-china-will-be-the-enemy-beijing-s-fresh-threat-to-australia-20201118-p56fqs.html
of the PRC making gross efforts to influence Australian domestic policies, threatening Australia with economic retribution if Australia didn’t kowtow to the demands of the Middle Kingdom.
It sounds to me like Australia is, to use an American idiom “between a rock and a hard place” on this.
The appearance is that Australia needs China as a customer for the raw materials that it produces,
in order to pay for the finished goods that China produces in abundance and that Australian consumers desire.
This is, to quote another idiom, “a sticky wicket indeed.”
I sympathize with Australia’s plight.
Keith,
Yes. The Chinese are making lots of noise because we are your ally and act like it. They have made some high profile trade attacks on agricultural products which don’t and can’t produce long term negative effects because we just diversify our customer base in response.
They are still buying iron ore as fast as we can ship it.
Really?
When in the whole history of virology and epidemiology the whole population of the world, including young and children, were vaccinated against anything?
By vaccinating the whole population of the world simulataneously as the waves of the pandemic develop, we will erase, according to Geert Vanden Bossche, the whole natural immunity of the population of the world, allowing SARSCov2 to become a hyperresistant monster which will hypotecize our lives for the rest of our existences, to majot glory of some Big Pharma corporations and their shareholders…amongst them Bill and Melinda Gates..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eqoCLHH1e8
The CEO of BioNtech says “in the future all citizens will be vaccinated against Covid19 once a year”…of course, once erased natural immunity…
https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/biontech-gruender-erwartet-lockdown-ende-im-herbst-li.147517?utm_medium
Also, how about the low number of cases in palces where lockdown were not impossed, like Belarus, Tanzania, Burundi…countreis which also rejected substantious IMF loans if they had lockdown their countries…The numbers show that countries which did not impossed lockdowns had the same number of deaths than those who ruined their economies and thus became, again, slaves of the IMF and thus of financial transnational capital…and thus the fiat dollar system..
BTW, the presidents of two of those countries have recently die …of heart failure….The sin of Mugulufi was that he sent for PCR testing some juice of papaya, motor oil and a sample from a goat, giving positive results for Covid-19, the papaya sample and that of the goat, exposing the obvious scam of a pandemic declared and based of results by PCR tests whose revolutions wer just recently lowered by WHO from around 60 to 22, and whose very inventor declared was not a test to diagnose any infection…
https://trikooba.com/2021/03/18/la-muerte-de-john-magufuli-el-lider-africano-que-ridiculizo-a-la-oms-otro-asesinato-encubierto/
Of course, governments must be seen doing something about this pandemic, but the results of the actions encouraged by so called “experts” and people with spurious interests only looking for the enslavization of whole humanity from their “vaccines” will prove the remedy will be worst than the illness proper…When we realize, it will be too late…
If there would not be currently a war of vaccines amongst the Big Pharma at play in a business worth hubndreds of billions of dollars every year for the whole future of humanity to come, we would had never known about the serious side effects we are knowing and there would not bevoices in Europe claiming that they will use the Russian vaccine, by far the most harmless, on ground of national interests….
There are scientific voices who express doubts and concern about the vaccines´security, about the security of using masks full time for a year or more ( there are voices claiming they produce hypoxia in the brain and thus we will see galloping increasing in dementia in the years to come to major glory of those who seek not to pay our pensions, the same shareholders of the media and the vaccines…) and they are being silenced, demonized and their careers ruined…Why is there not a discussion on the serious consequences of all this, why is not anyone allowed to rise its voice, why is being the people who protest the authoritarian measures systematically beat, thrown the dogs, detained? Why is there only one voice out there?
I will tell you, because main shareholdres at major media are the same shareholdres behind the vaccines…They need this pandemic to be eternal to save their asses from the mother of all crisis and on the same travel submit the whole population to their tirany so that once they become aware they can not rebel…That is what the “vaccination passports” are for…control and geolocate people…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1owHx4F4iA
This time, yes, they got it, “the world is their clinic”…
Tess,
You are just another conspiracy nut.
And you are just hardheaded. Nobody made yoi get personal with Tess.
Yes, you are right. I apologise to Tess.
For the same token you are a member of the Covidian Cult unable to consider another opinion, angle, alternative, even when scientific, to that offered to you by governments who ignore everything about virology, immunology, epidemiology and general biology and are almost all sold to the biggest bidder….
You probably have investment in online selling corporations or even in vaccines Big Pharma, since I see you really do not care about little to medium business…
Difficult to have an objective opinion that way, do not you think?
Also you seem way too keen on lockdowns…bet you have some acres of propietry where to move yourself at pleasure and breath fresh air without noticing the lockdown…
Tess,
I apologise, with respect, I’m a member of the “reality based community”. I don’t find fault with the science just because I don’t like it’s conclusions.
I have no shares in pharma, in fact I am a strong critic of their operations. Same with on line businesses.
I ran a university commercialisation company that dealt with big pharma, venture capital, etc. That included spending two million dollars in a potential AIDS vaccine in partnership with Institute Pasteur.
I learned roughly how vaccination and pandemics work – it’s about statistics. I also learned that vaccines are cheap to produce and are mostly bought by the U.N. for use in the third world – which is why Pharma generally aren’t interested – no profit.
That is why Pfizer, J & J , etc. make me almost laugh. They are much more interested in hair loss, sexual dysfunction, weight loss and ageing. Those, and other conditions of rich first world countries are much more profitable. Vaccines are the poor cousin….except maybe once per century.
On the subject of scientists, don’t be fooled by titles: “professor” can be bought Harvard used to charge a million, same with “doctor”, etc. It is important to check if the speaker is qualified and up to date in the relevant field, most clowns like van den Bosch – a vet who writes papers on hooping cough in donkeys. who doesn’t work in the field of vaccines but would like to if he could get the money. There are too many carpetbaggers of that sort.
I accept your apology, but, for coming from the vaccines business, teven in the most indirectly as it could be, you are ill informed about the business which ocupes us right now.
Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were generously subsidized by US and European governments in the hundreds of milllions od dollars and euros thorugh the Warp Speed operation, and the European agreement on pushing production of vaccines with which to combat Covid-19 pandemic.
Through this operation, Moderna, a newby pharma company with no known product in the market managed to go out for shares and is counting with a prospect of multibillion business benefit. The same could be said of Pfizer, a pharma company with a really bad reputation, through a bunch of trial cases on serious side effects from drugs it priduced in the past, to the extent that its CEO, in the absolute personal lack of trust in his own product, sold all his shares in Pfizer just before the vaccine entered the market…just in case it could fail?
The fact is that they, out of their agreements with the governments of the US and EU, are offering their product, in this round, since subsidized with public funds and offered the companies total exemption from legal liabilities on side effects ( which in case of demand will be paid by the governments, i. e. the people…), at 19.5 euros/does, that is for this year, but next doses, as they assured already to some banks like Barklays, while selling their round business, will be sold at their real price, they say, just the current price multiplied by 10, that is 195 euro /dose.
With already a warning by CEOs of those companies involved on that the vaccinated will highly likely need a new dose perhaps in a 6 months ( and that in case immunity lates such period of time, currently unknown..), but for sure one new dose, or may be even two, yearly, imagine the overbudget the public health systems will endure. Already hard to finance public systems will have to cop with this multibillion new expense plus the part due to personel dedicated each year to one round or two of mass vaccinatations.
For sure this will be just what could give the final punch to all these public systems so that to be bankrupted, for the same shareholders to come grabb them. On not public systems go preparing the new overcost your insurance will surely charge for such expensive doses. the younger you are the more you will pay…And that, if we are lucky more coronavirus, or different strains, do not come later…
The possibility exsits that this expensive vaccines could not be financed in the future, even in public systems or at leasts not completely, causing a new source of expenditure for people who mostly was previously healthy, which, imo, transalte into enslavization of healthy people unnecesarily by Big Pharma in the new grabbing of funds and wages in the panorama of the Great Reset and Green Agenda…
I do not know you, sir, nor you do know me, but, sorry to say, but the authomatic agresiveness with which you responded to me and how you tried to silence me through your fast intent on descalification gave me the impression you had an interested part on this business…And, in the end, man, you really have it!
If you have worked in venture capital and vaccines I find difficult to believe that due your job connections you have not been offered a share in this new profitable business.
Enjoy your profits!
With respect what knowledge veterinaries could hold on this issue, it happens they are probably the most informed part in the whole medical science related to cornavirus infection, sicne an infection to this date affecting just the animal world, it is they who have tested so far coronavirus vaccines for dogs and pigs for years past, coming to the conclusion that there is no effective coronavirus vaccine to this date, since all the animals died in the trials.
Another thing you will probably know, as an insider in the business, is that due the emergency of the pandemic the period of animal testing was jumped over by these companies….
To warn that these vaccines have been granted only “Authorization for Emergency Use”, thus they are in experimental period, and thus the whole period of testing, greatly facilitated and for freem without any liability, in what could be defined as “live exercise” ( Pompeo dixit…) over the whole world population, will not end sooner than 2023…to be finally approved…in case they finally do it.
To say that you have the right granted by the Nuremberg Code to refuse being treated with experimantal medical products, and that in case you have accepted the vacciantion you have the right to register by yourself at Vaers data in case of side effects which you could find hard to be accepted as so by your vaccine providers/ administers…
There are already may people being denied their side effects have been caused by these vaccines, even when they are young people previously healthy.
Of course all those leders who died immedaitely after vaccinations, they say died obviously of aging or their preconditions, no deaths have been recorded, nor authopsies done, to certify whether they were caused by the vaccines. …
Tess,
I think you’re right about these vaccines. With the exception of the the Russian sputnik vaccine I think the rest are pure poison experimental gene therapy of some sort.
I dread the thought of what the true numbers of deaths and permanent disabilities will be in six to eight months from now from these poisons. IMO Covid is the cover for this so-called thing The Great Reset. In other words the new world order or one world government that I’ve heard and read about for maybe thirty years now.
I truly hope I’m wrong and in the end I would be glad to be wrong about all this especially because I think depopulation is a very big part of this whole horrific virus scam. Over the past twenty years we’ve had Sars, bird flu, swine flu, zika and God knows what else. All basically much ado about nothing but testing the waters to guage and take notes of our reaction?
So anyone please feel free to label me a conspiracy nut job out of my mind and wrong about everything. If you do I honestly hope that you’re right.
My sincerest best for all…
walrus
As you know ad hominem attacks are not tolerated here.
USA is preparing to spend $billion more-or-less on a PR campaign to “persuade” the “vaccine hesitant.”
A Modest Proposal. Won’t cost one thin dime:
1. Pharma corporations accept liability for the vaccines
2. Media outlets of every mode and stripe agree that for 10 days (better, a fortnight) NOT ONE WORD about Covid, Coronavirus, vaccines appears in print or spoken, anywhere. NOT ANYWHERE. Total masking and lockdown of ALL mention of anything having to do with Covid. That means no discussion of who is mandating masks, or (ludicrously named) social distancing.
After a fortnight, let’s see what the American public, indeed, the world public — thinks and experiences about the pandemic.
—-
n.b. I do not trust the public “experts” because too many have hidden agendas, conflicting interests, and track records that render them non-credible. I trust my own awareness of my own health, and I trust those experts who have actual knowledge of my health situation.
What about the role of the Wuhan International Military Games held in late autumn 2019 – used as a potential global vector – participants from around the world carrying it home after a potential late autumn exposure in Wuhan?
Debunked, or is this in active tracing investigation. Hilary Clinton has long insisted this pandemic started in the US much earlier than first reported case in Jan 2020. She claimed Trump ignored those earlier warnings, making everything worse. What was the factual base for Clinton’s assertions, echoed later by other Democrats.
“Covid” was exploited politically- 100% election year advantage exclusively to the Democrats.
If getting out of the way of public health officials hands a blank check to frauds like Fauci, incompetents like Birx and other top level US “health” bureaucrats, I am not on your team. Pick a non-election year for the next “pandemic” and lets see how the data shakes out.
“We should get out of the way of the public health doctors and let them do their jobs.”
They aren’t elected and they are often incompetent. The granny killing Covid (median age of death in the US being 80), aided by incompetent, corrupt polls like Cuomo & Whitmer, has certainly killed thousands, though ‘flu’ has due, to CDC bureaucrat mandated reporting requirements, ceased to exist. Kneeling in submission to ‘public health doctors’ is something foreigners should do at home. In the US we should be firing these people as fast as we can.
https://www.heritage.org/data-visualizations/public-health/covid-19-deaths-by-age/
“Their conclusion is that the virus “Got Lucky” and we didn’t.”
They were not given access to the Wuhan virus lab (“The circumstances surrounding the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in Hubei province remain shrouded.” – from the study you linked too.) and neither has anyone else. They, or you, are repeating last year’s pro-China stories.
The Chinese have utilized the viral contagion in their country to manipulate the West into destroying 20% or so of GDP; destroying the financial self-sufficiency of millions of families while aiding the in the biggest wealth transfer in the history of the human race. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Fred,
Yes, the Chinese may well have done all of those things with the greatest of gusto, but that is not the point. The point is that China did not engineer the pandemic in “Doctor No” style although the didn’t let the opportunity provided by the pandemic go to waste.
At least one group of AMERICAN researchers, using as far as I can tell, peer reviewed science, have concluded that the virus “got lucky” in that its survival and explosive growth into a pandemic was a low probability event.
If it was a pre planned deliberate bio warfare strike by the PLA it wouldn’t have happened this way because our researchers found that the probability of success was very low.
Walrus,
“that is not the point.”
That’s entirely the point. Pandolin, fish, baboon, bat, NOT lab. That’s YOUR point and of little value now. This virus kills, or aids other diseases, in killing the old, fat and infirm. We don’t need to kneel down to commie propaganda and incompetent autocrats in government like Fauci in order to provide additional risk avoidance to the age groups at risk.
Fred,
With respect, we have all heard the mantra before “the old, fat and infirm” argument. It’s hardly original and you must know exactly where it came from. It must be rejected.
There is also he little matter of new variants. What would you say if Covid 19 only killed teenagers or young adults?
I agree with you that propaganda should have no place in our response – that’s why the idea of red state vs. blue state is annoying. Surely it is possible to scientifically arrive at the truth of pandemic best practice?
Complaints, even if justified, about grandstanding scientists, Chinese subversion and corrupt politicians miss my point: infantry tactics 101 – selection and maintenance of the objective above all else.
Follow the science wherever it leads.
Walrus,
“Follow the science wherever it leads.”
Except in that chart I linked too.
” you must know exactly where it came from. ”
Why, scientificly, is that essential?
“What would you say if …”
I say that by asking that question you are not being scientific, but diverting attention away from the evidence I supplied, the same with your red/blue stage segway. Maybe next year the Black Death or the Antonine plague will reapear; but it’s been a more than a thousand years for one and hundreds for the other and ‘science’ and sanitation have changed; political opportunism not so much.
Tess wrote:
By vaccinating the whole population of the world simulataneously as the waves of the pandemic develop, we will erase, according to Geert Vanden Bossche, the whole natural immunity of the population of the world, allowing …
To me, that sounds like a scholarly argument, or at least the first step toward one. It is not a conclusive argument; I would have to look up VanDenBossche’s work before I could judge how to respond.
Walrus wrote:
Tess,
You are just another conspiracy nut.
To me, that sounds unproven. Maybe Tess is a Ph.D. in a relevant field. Maybe Tess is an emeritus professor who has experience in editing journals. Even if Tess is not a scholar, there are many distinguished scholars who question the mainstream narrative regarding COVID.
https://profiles.stanford.edu/john-ioannidis
Dr. Ioannidis was famous to philosophers of science long before the China-Virus Panic because he rightly pointed out that many scientific claims cannot be replicated. He has made skeptical arguments against the mainstream narrative.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915-most-scientific-papers-are-probably-wrong/
I am convinced that Ioannidis is closer to the truth than Fauci. If this be conspiracy nuttery, so be it.
Walrus – politicisation? You should experience the fuss in Europe!
But when that settles down, as it must if we’re not to see bricks being thrown both ways across the channel, I believe we’re all going to see the light on getting ready for the next one. Canada and a lot of other countries have found the only thing to do is to establish their own vaccine production facilities . I hear recently that Australia is already using, or very near to using such a facility in Melbourne. And it looks as if some vaccine ingredients have been outsourced excessively so that’s going to have to be looked to as well.
The new variants have changed the picture entirely. Just looking at the graphs for Ireland, Portugal and the UK, all countries where one of the first new variants, B117, started racing away, we see the line shooting up as soon as the new variant takes over and going down as dramatically when the control measures are introduced. That settles the matter for me, at least in Europe.
Apparently yet another new variant has turned up in France. They have supply problems with vaccines so control measures are just about all they have there at present. The people are also more anti-vax than most apparently. Patients being taken for treatment outside Paris because the hospitals are overloaded. In the Czech Republic patients are being airlifted to Poland for the same reason. I’m disappointed that we haven’t sent vaccines over to the hotspots yet and hope we’ll do so soon. HMG was more on the ball getting vaccines developed and procured so there’s something of a dog in the manger feeling around as far as the UK is concerned.
Two factors have put the States ahead in the race of mass vaccination against the new variants. The first was that they have massive pharmaceutical capacity. The second was Trump’s Operation Warp Speed. I’m seeing that being compared to the industrial effort unleashed in America in WWI. But even in the States there’s some to-ing and fro-ing across the Atlantic during the process of vaccine production and I suspect there also the lesson will be learned for next time that you’re only really safe if it’s all done in house. We have learned another limit to globalisation.
Apologies – WWII
The article with its obtuse scientific language merely offers guesses. The article also states “The circumstances surrounding the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in Hubei province remain shrouded.” It also states “Importantly, it is yet unknown whether the virus emerged directly from its animal reservoir, presumably horseshoe bats (42, 43), or first circulated in and possibly adapted to an intermediate host.” We don’t know how the virus emerged or from which animal, but we are certain that it originated naturally. Ha.
Occam’s Razor. The virus is a man made virus produced by a Chinese BioWeapons lab through gain of function research. A coronavirus seemingly designed to uniquely attack human cells at multiple points. It was released either accidentally or intentionally. Given the behavior of the Chinese and the timing of the release, I have no doubt it was a malicious release.
If this virus emerged naturally, why are the Chinese reluctant, to put it mildly, to provide the international health community access to the records and sites? It has been over a year and still the Chinese are obstructing. I understand you have a blind spot for the Chinese, but at some point you must find their behavior concerning.
I recently tested positive for the virus. My symptoms was a persistent fever. It lasted about 3-5 days. No other symptoms. I am pretty healthy for my age as I cycle, run and swim two to three times a week. Fully recovered though long term impact is unknown which brings the most devastating aspect of this virus: psychological worry. Worry that I do not transmit this virus to my loved ones. Worry about the long term impact considering all the fear mongering that is incredibly difficult to brush aside.
Considering the impact of this virus, why has the international community not pressured and ostracized China? Why does it seem this virus/epidemic is being used as casus belli for general societal reform? A societal reform a new normal that would not be imaginable without the virus induced fear.
Yet, we who question the inconsistent establishment narratives are the conspiracy nuts.
Stueeeeeee,
You have no evidence, only supposition.
And you think you have provided evidence by linking a scientific article that cannot provide the name of the animal host nor provide the origins of the outbreak.
This coronavirus is unique in that it behaves like no other coronavirus. It binds more tightly to humans cells than any other animal…more tightly than the cell of bats: the supposed original carriers. There are other anomalies that makes this virus unnaturally adapted to attack human cells.
The difference between my suppositions and yours is that I don’t believe the Chinese. Nothing more. Everyone is guessing until the Chinese are forced to disclose the source info and research that they were performing…which I don’t think will ever happen.
Stueeee,
“Everyone is guessing until the Chinese are forced to disclose the source info and research that they were performing…which I don’t think will ever happen.”
Perhaps it won’t happen because there is nothing more to disclose?
EO,
Deaths rates are projected to increase sharply for the next 25 to 30 years in the western world. Actually, the steep increase began a couple years ago.
Each of the next 30 years or so, there are going to be a lot of elderly/infirm people barely hanging on and they are going to succumb to whatever virus is making the rounds that year. That’s what we’re seeing with covid. Once covid is gone, it will be some other pathogen. Some years will be significantly worse than others. Flues that would have gone unnamed 20 years ago, will be making headlines on a regular basis.
If we, in the west, had a younger, healthier population, covid would have been barely noticed, if at all. There are some truly tough ethical questions that are going to have to be addressed and answered pertaining to how we prepare and react to those inevitable bad years. The reaction cannot be what has been done regarding covid.
Anyone who thinks that once covid has been “defeated” that we will have been spared from mass death due to pathogens and obtained immortality is a delusional fool.
Eric,
You mean the boomers need to face their mortality? As we are seeing, they would rather destroy civilization than pass on the torch to a new generation.
Boomers en masse left “the church” because they could not reconcile science and religion. They claimed enlightened superiority by this choice.
A Jungian would claim the spiritual side of human existence is as fundamental as emotions, intellect and sensations. Deny the spiritual side and it distorts the entire personality. This deferred moment of “covid” mortality recognition may well the Boomers payoff after rejecting “the church”.
NB:”The church” by definition is intended to be generic and fungible – but clearly a discipline and exploration into exactly what science cannot measure or explain: the divine spark that glues our disparate parts together. Also a non-drug induced experience of transcendence.
“Churches”don’t really demand you believe anything; they are just vehicles by which one can explore their own inherent spiritual dimension. I am sorry an entire generation rejected the fundamental concept of religion. I think they are making the rest of us pay the price, as yet again the huge boomer bulge works its way through the present human experience on their own terms.
Well said.
“Poor Great Aunt Agatha just passed. She was only 97. She had her whole life ahead of her…”
Er, no.
Since the west will certainly not get a younger population and will probably never get a healthier population, can we expect to see a drop in life expectancy similar to this year’s over the next 30 years. At that rate, we’ll be back to the dark ages except for the one percenters… maybe.
“the west will certainly not get a younger population and will probably never get a healthier population”
I disagree with both your assumptions. The virus has reduced life expectancy in the USA – which by definition means the average age of the population is younger. And it is also killing off the sickly – which also raises the average health of the overall population.
Evolution is always happening. It can be held off for several generations of the unfit because we have that luxury. But nature always bats last. Populations which do not reproduce will vanish. Unhealthy populations will also vanish in the long run. Covid-19, whether artificially enhanced (imho likely), or 100% naturally evolved, also subject to the iron rules of evolution.
Definitely agree that evolution is always happening and like your observation that nature always bats last. But killing off the old and lowering the life expectancy does not necessarily mean a younger population. That only works when the birth rate remains high, at least as high as the replacement level. That’s not the case in the US and Europe. We can have an aging population and a decrease in life expectancy at the same time. That seems to be what Eric Newhill’s comment about increasing death rates is driving at.
I appreciate your comments. I think I’ll put together a post on nature batting last in the next day or two.
Ah yes well we do – absent some procreation among the youngsters – have a population structure with too few in the younger cohorts. I have to say that I’m concerned that there is far too little attention paid in our society to family matters. WHen the young “cannot afford” to start a family, and are effectively juveniles at the age of 30, Huston, we have a problem.
Thanks! This conversation is quite good and I’m trying to be economical with words.
“we’ll be back to the dark ages except for the one percenters”
The “dark ages” were chaotic, with invasions from the north in all the imperial areas. (If you’ve ever watched “Gladiator”, the scene of the Battle of Teutoborg Wald is indicative – where the Romans formed up in battle array surrounded by hooting barbarians. I commented to my wife that our ancestors were among the barbarians (anglo-celtic and slavic-german), not among the Romans!) But the “dark ages” were only dark for the imperialist Romans – for the barbarian invaders, they were rather good!
Finally, the one percenters in their bubbles are also subject to natural laws, which includes that they have heads which can be separated from their bodies in one stroke of a barbarian blade.
I was referring to the population and population density of the dark ages rather than the chaos of the times. There will be less of us. And you’re right about the one percenters. Nature will catch up with them.
We could have a sustainable population in North America at current levels – with organic agriculture, many more people working the land, and a lower general level of energy use ( = money prosperity). Hopefully the transitions are orderly….but we should be prepared for disorder.
divadab
I am curious as to what you think life would be like in the world you describe. Inter-city transportation for example?
@Pat Lang:
“I am curious as to what you think life would be like in the world you describe. Inter-city transportation for example?”
Electric trains; perhaps electric buses as used to exist in most cities (I remember seeing them as a young lad just before they were replaced with diesel buses). Of course there will be some areas where fossil fuel use will not be replaceable – Logging, e.g. – power to weight ratio for a chainsaw requires 2-stroke gas.
As to plastics – a remarkable invention but out of control, to the extent they are affecting human reproduction negatively. Plastic an acceptable use of oil, IMHO, if managed correctly.
Pre-fossil fuel use humanity achieved very high levels of material, cultural, and social prosperity – the Roman Empire, the enlightenment, the British empire, not to mention all the great religions, and so on. We don’t need fossil fuels to maintain a high level of civilization. But – Burning up 20 million years worth of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere has destabilized our planetary climate systems. This will create massive migratory pressures as parts of the world become uninhabitable (the middle east, Arizona, e.g.) and climate zones move north (what we are seeing now is just the drips before the flood). Not to mention sea level rise which will require all hands on deck in massive continental dike and water control measures a la Netherlands. And none of this stuff is even on the radar of our political class, devoted as they are to the status quo and their own wealth. Leaders they are not – leadership and innovation always comes from the fringes, not the center.
I am optimistic in the long term; however in the short to medium term (2 or 3 generations), I see unavoidable chaos. The oil will flow for a long time despite the posturing (and useless) Gov. Whitmers of this world.
There is a related phenomenon of “harvesting” which run on a 3 years cycle.
Fragile elderly accumulate and then a bad flu season wipe them out in a batch and the next 2 years show less mortality since they are gone.
2020 was a ‘harvest” year, in France at least.
JLD,
Yes. Severity of winter seems to be a factor in the harvesting. The first two months of 2020 showed the US was on track to be a harvesting year. Mortality was significantly higher in Jan and Feb 2020 over the previous two years. That was prior to covid. Cause of death was the usual, just more of it.
thanks eric… sounds like a good overview and appraisal of where we are at this point… thanks…
Eric – I don’t venture on the death stats. Those available to me aren’t any good. The general public doesn’t get the fine detail you get.
Take the group around me. Most in the vulnerable category – older or with some condition – self isolated like mad so were less likely catch the disease. The rest pretty fit. Also careful about hand washing, if that counts.
Also live fairly spaced apart. Also have access to good medical care. I doubt lockdown makes a huge difference there. Few deaths likely either way.
Compare that to some American inner city deprived area. Difficult to self-isolate or don’t bother. Three generations to a house. Many obese or otherwise unfit, not great on the rest of it and sometimes no good access to medical care. Not suprising the death rate there is said to be up to four times as much. More maybe – I suppose the most cited example at least as far as crowding goes is the New York Ultra-Orthodox community where there was scarcely a family that didn’t lose a member.
So with the Swedish Somalis and with other inner city groups in England. Lockdown could save a lot of lives there, particularly since it means at least some won’t have to go to work and thus get further exposed.
So when I look at the recent graphs showing the mainly B117 cases shooting up and then shooting down after lockdown I don’t know what I’m looking at with respect to the various components. All I know is that that is the gross effect and it’s demonstrably there.
But I believe you’re right. We can’t go through all this again when the next one comes. Can’t have entire nations cowering away in corners. But we could be a lot better prepared, as we were not this time. And maybe, if the next one’s fairly mild – as Covid has in fact been so far when you compare it with other plagues – we’ll get away with it more easily next time.
“Hand-washing counts” if one insists on self-inoculation with their own dirty fingers. Typically, sticking dirty fingers in one’s own nose transmitting upper-respiratory pathogens; or eating food with their own dirty fingers that may transmit gastro-intestinal pathogens.
Inadvertent recontamination between “hand-washing” and later self-inoculation is the weak link. Similar benefit can be obtained by not sticking one’s fingers into their eyes, nose or mouth – clean or not.
Masks also prevent persons from sticking their own dirty fingers into their own noses. Newtonian physics here – nothing magical about masks. Similar to the plastic cones put on dogs to keep them from licking their surgical wounds.
Imagining one is wearing a similar device, while not actually wearing one, will offer good benefit if the visual image keeps one from sticking their fingers in eyes, nose or mouth.
EO,
“Compare that to some American inner city deprived area. Difficult to self-isolate or don’t bother. Three generations to a house. Many obese or otherwise unfit, not great on the rest of it and sometimes no good access to medical care. ”
You are exactly correct on the source of deaths in the US, outside of the low grade nursing homes. However, it’s not that these people don’t have access to good healthcare – they do, for free, via Medicaid, etc – they just don’t utilize it properly because they are generally ignorant. Also, these people are the pool from which low skill nursing home staff are drawn in the low grade grade homes; the janitors, the bed changers, etc. That is a big part of the story in covid deaths and serious hospitalizations in the US and why they are clustered in big democrat run cities.
It is also why I think Fauci’s/Walrus’ position on lockdowns in bunk. They are overlooking the root cause in the US and elsewhere and suggesting the everyone is equally at risk, when everyone is not.
Eric – the area of Kent in England where the B117 variant is supposed to have originated fits your description also.
I suspect that if we were not so centralised in England we could have coped with the pandemic better. Local Authorities, knowing their areas better and the people in it, could have targeted the at risk groups better.
This would have been more in line with the approach Trump set out in a press conference towards the end of the first US lockdown – test and trace intensively and local and small scale lockdowns only where needed. But once the thing gets out of control then the crude and immensely disruptive lockdowns we saw in England were the only shots left in locker.
These were never seriously thought to be able to halt the spread of the disease, was my impression. Certainly not to eradicate it. Merely to feed the sick into the hospitals and the dead into the mortuaries at a rate that didn’t overload them.
I hope you get on top of the new variants. I don’t know if you also believe that they have changed the picture entirely.
Colonel – apologies. “in the locker”. This pilgrim’s typing is execrable.
“Finding the animal reservoir, or hypothetical intermediate host, will help to further narrow down the date, location, and circumstances of the original SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans.” From the study.
Until they find the virus in an animal it is all conjecture. Why is an accidental lab release considered a conspiracy? Humans are Perfect. I think not. Gain of function research is insane research practice by virologists world wide. The Pandora box can’t be closed.
Even Dr. Baric of UNC who worked with the Wuhan lab on joint projects said it is impossible to know whether the virus came from the wild or a lab. Due to a natural bat coronavirus being manipulated in GOF research by a combination of genetic engineering and serial infection of ferrets to develop a virus that more easily infects humans. The result or virus would be impossible to determine if it was a wild virus or a GOF enhanced virus due to serial infection of ferrets.
Do you know more than Dr. Baric?
So maybe a Bioweapon or maybe not. Maybe during this research the virus became airborne and infected a lab worker. A younger worker who maybe the symptoms were asymptomatic or less lethal and they passed it on to somebody outside the lab. And the rest is history.
Science and Nature are the premiere scientific magazines in the world. But this issue has become so highly politicized that they will never take the position it was a lab accident.
Dr. Peter Daszak is President of EcoHealth Alliance and is allied with Wuhan Lab. Why was he sent on a WHO mission to find the origin of the virus? Is this a joke?
The virus is real. And deadly for older people relative to the flu. Hopefully, the vaccines will save the day. I see the variants getting ahead of the virus as I type. Too many with many more mutations than expected on a wild virus in my opinion. GOF research may have supercharged the virus for evolutionary survival at a rate unobserved by man so far.
Here is the hard truth. The vaccines were not tested for efficiency on older people. It will be a miracle if they solve the crisis. Due to older people having a much more difficult time developing an appropriate immune response due to factors such as their thymus degenerating.
Maybe. Just maybe. The new mRNA and DNA vaccines will overcome this for the older cohort. But my mom is 77 years old. She received the Moderna Vaccine. Thankfully. But I live nearby and still buy all her groceries and cigarettes. She takes limited risk.
Too early to tell. P1 variant in Brazil shows substantial ability to evade the antibodies so far from an original infection.
If this is a wild virus then I agree with Colonel Lang that the virus(like the Spanish Flu which was much more lethal) should become less lethal due to evolutionary pressures and herd immunity.
But if it was GOF accidental lab release then evolutionary biology theory could argue it will become more lethal by selective pressures of vaccines making it escape and forcing it into a more transmissible virus and maybe becoming more lethal.
Time will tell. But my view is the whole world would have to become vaccinated in a short period of time. Minus this then the variants will continue to be pressured into dominant mode making this an endemic virus like flu is every year. Except, if Brazil is indicative of possible forward paths this virus will be endemic all year not just flu respiratory season though the heat should offer some release.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/05/experts-call-alternatives-gain-function-flu-studies
My Mom is 98. She is quite healthy. She has been vaccinated (Pfizer). She has had no side effects. She lives in a retirement community in SC. They’ve done a good job of protecting the residents. 🙂
DH had both the two dose covid and two dose shingles vaccines earlier this year and now reports continuous joint pain – well beyond any prior “elderly” arthritis. Transitory or permanent? To be determined, in this vast unregulated human experiment.
Walrus and all comers,
I am going to throw up some links with fairly minimal commentary. Some of them may make you think that I am a conspiracy theorist, but maybe, just maybe, they make you think, and leave assigning me to the dolorous company of conspiracy theorists to the time after you let these alternative points of view work on you. Deal?
You dismissed the information from the Belgian, Geert vanden Bossche, out of hand, but the host of the website where I found his POV prefaced his link to the material with these words:
“My guess is that Geert Vanden Bossche is among the most fierce vaccine advocates anywhere. He serves Bill Gates!
And yet, behold…”
Perhaps he had some scientific insights to convey after all? To be on the safe side, I post it again:
https://dryburgh.com/geert-vanden-bossche-open-letter-to-who-halt-all-covid-19-mass-vaccination/
(Preliminary backgrounding with links to relevant materials, followed by vanden Bossche’s own words)
Next, a public presentation from an eminent Canadian researcher, also a vaccine advocate in general, not an anti-vaxer, as he himself states, with related concerns:
(The site host at which I found this link is an American ex-pat living in New Zealand, and he prefaces his link with some of his own concerns…
“A country like New Zealand, which has isolated itself and may not have substantial, naturally acquired immunity, which is gonna be very broad and is relying on these vaccines, may be able to vaccinate their population.
But if the rest of the world has these variants circulating, all those vaccinated individuals are gonna be susceptible to these variants that don’t care about that spike protein specific immunity anymore.
And you may, as a population, have wanted much more broad immunity that’s conferred by natural natural acquisition of immunity, meaning you acquire the infection and clear it. So I’m very concerned about this.”)
On to the link:
https://dryburgh.com/byram-bridle-coronavirus-vaccine-concerns/
There is a video at the start followed by a transcript. The transcript may have a few glitches, but it has the advantage of being able to be re-read for comprehension.
N.B.: Both of these posts are from dryburgh.com. Visit the site for the bona fides of its host; not an expert, but not a fool.
Next, a couple of links to articles that contain thought-provoking, if not alarming, information.
First a link to The Defender site, sometimes characterized as an anti-vaxxer site, but I think of them as people exhibiting caution rather than blind negativity. Mr. Kennedy marshalls some not inconsequential information about concerted efforts to manage public perceptions, and access for critics to informational channels on the internet (hmm, sounds like a conspiracy to me, and not just a theory, either). The link:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gates-planned-social-media-censorship-vaccine-safety/
Last, is this link to a brief summation of some information from a book by journalist, Josh Rogin, on the role of the beloved, Dr. Fauci’s advancement of research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This work apparently included research on Gain of Function, a very dangerous field of study in virology. The Obama administration, in fact, had asked that no more research in this area be done after 2012 in the US. But Dr. F, not to be thwarted, encouraged such work to be done at thw WIofV, subsequent to this functional US ban, and may have secured funding for same. Oh, dear. READ THIS LINK. If it doesn’t make you crap your pants, you are unreachable. Link to longer excerpt at the end of this short post.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/faucis-nih-funded-wuhan-bat-covid-experiments-2018-cables-warned-dangerously-lax-safety
Sorry to appear to be handing out assignments, but well, it’s important to be exposed to these concerns before committing to categorical statements about this topic. After all, trillions are at stake, not to mention frightening amounts of societal power, and human nature being what it is…
Dryburgh.com is toilet paper. Neither I or anyone else needs to track their crazy statements down their rabbit holes.
Yes, I know, “prove me wrong!”.
I say again: Negative evidence is not positive evidence.
Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist who was part of the recent WHO delegation to China claims that they found evidence that wildlife farms is south China are the likely link between the bats in southern China and the human Covid-19 cases in Wuhan. Those wildlife farms were supplying animals to the Wuhan markets.
The Chinese government set up those wildlife farms as a way to aid the south China economy and touted the program as a great success. In February 2020, China moved to shut down those wildlife farms. Since this would mean that government actions were key to the spread of the pandemic, it is not surprising that the Beijing government is trying to keep this quiet.
Not picking on you, TG, but Peter Daszak is not a reliable source of information in this matter because he has major conflicts of interest – he is a virology researcher specifically in gain of function of virus’s – and was involved in running US-funded research on bat viruses at the Wuhan level 4 biolab.
Why would the WHO put this guy in charge of the investigation of the source of SARS-cov-2 virus? Whitewash a strong possibility, no?
Daszak is a disease ecologist, especially in the field of zoonosis. Yes, he is connected with the Wuhan virus lab and the lead researchers there. He also has demonstrated expertise in bat viruses. None of that has been hidden and it should be taken into account, but his expertise should be welcomed in the WHO and Lancet investigations. He is not in charge of the WHO investigation, just one of many researchers involved. I’m willing to wait for the WHO report which should be out shortly.
https://twitter.com/claytravis/status/1371498258871152642?s=21
The first question is: why should we trust public “health” officials and politicians who pushed lockdown as the first and primary response to the Wuhan virus?
Second question is: what is the total cost of the policy enacted by the public health officials and politicians? We must include loss of jobs, economic costs, school shutdowns, mental health costs, increased violence by stressed out people, suicides, deaths and exacerbated health conditions due to not treating non-covid ailments, etc.
Third question is: what should the framework and metrics be to objectively judge the effectiveness of the policy and regulations enacted by public health officials and politicians in response to the Wuhan virus?
Funny. Our lockdowns worked. Conversely when the virus escaped in one breakout we lost 800 dead, mostly from badly run nursing homes.
Now do your badly-run nursing home residents just die from their “underlying conditions” and no longer “covid”?
Everyone dies, Deap. The trip to the undiscovered country is one that nobody can avoid, you can only delay.
Walrus is perfectly correct: lockdowns have worked here, and now the only time I have to don a mask is when I jump on a bus.
And, yes, my mother in law has recently passed away in a nursing home. Of natural causes. Nobody in her nursing home died from Covid-related causes. Not. A. One.
The downside was that my wife has spent a distraught year being either unable to visit her mother or having to jump through hoops to make a brief visit.
In the last few months those restrictions were eased because – have I mentioned this before? I think I did – the lockdowns worked.
It is the difference between those countries that has played politics with public health, and those where the politicians treat the advice from their medical experts as if that advice was coming from experts.
Can’t imagine why that would make a difference but, demonstrably, it does.
Walrus: with all due respect, that publication does not shed any light on the origins of Covid 19, and investigation of those origins is not the stated intent of the research effort, as the title of the publication (“Timing the SARS-Cov-2 index case in Hubei province”) clearly indicates.
A zoonotic origin is assumed as a necessary element of context for this paper, because that is the explicit motivation for the work, i.e., to “highlight the shortcomings of zoonosis surveillance approaches for detecting highly contagious pathogens with moderate mortality rates”. Assessments of the efficacy of surveillance methods for zoonotic emergence of pathogens necessarily assume zoonotic origins, and that is exactly what the authors have done here.
But that is all they have done: the authors are careful to note that their research is based on determination of the index case (without otherwise specifying its origin), and in that respect, the publication is a useful addition to the literature on “when” Covid 19 emerged even given the considerable uncertainties that the authors note.
But “when” and “how” are two distinct questions, and the first cited reference (42) on the question of “how” explicitly states that “One year since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the origins of this new pandemic human coronavirus remain an apparent mystery”.
So this publication makes for interesting reading, and the authors’ conclusions regarding the practical utility of current methods of detection of zoonotic emergence are certainly thought-provoking as humanity begins to learn the lessons of this pandemic. But this work offers no evidence that those who question the various iterations of the evolving SARS-COV-2 origin story could reasonably be characterized as conspiracy theorists.
Ceiran,
Yes. But would we in 1945 have dropped 40+ prototypes of the atomic bomb on Japan in the hope that one or more would work?
The paper says that the emergence of the virus was happenstance. By definition then it is not the construct of some steely eyed fiendish Fu Manchu bent on a deliberate plan of world domination.
Walrus: I would suggest you re-read the publication more carefully. The authors do refer with certainty to a zoonotic origin of a virus, but that virus is HIV, not SARS-COV-2.
As far as atomic bombs, I have no idea what your comments are intended to add to the discussion here. Please feel free to explain.
Cieran,
If Covid19 was an engineered bio weapon, we would all be dead by now. There would have been one coordinated release on all continents while China held back its own vaccine.
The point of the paper is its conclusion that the probability of Covid19 starting a pandemic was small – the virus got lucky.
My allusion to A bombs was to demonstrate the lunacy of suggesting the Covid19 pandemic was deliberate. Would we have dropped 40+ prototype A bombs on Japan in the hope that one might work? Of course not. The Chinese wouldn’t use Covid19 as a bioweapon given its unreliability.
Of course once it was out there everyone tries for advantage – including ourselves.
Covid fatalities now getting linked to lifestyle co-morbidities, such as obesity and periodontal disease.
Is that how covid got “lucky”. A precursor epidemic of sloth and gluttony?
Never have we seen so much obesity, and dental neglect among aging populations remains rampant since 50% of adults over age 50 no longer have dentures.. UK found the periodontal disease connection because their national health service tracks both medical and dental conditions.
Walrus: I don’t know who or what you are responding to here, but it certainly isn’t anything I’ve written, given your “Fu Manchu” (?) and “engineered bio weapons” (??) responses.
But let me suggest this in case it’ll help: there is an entire world of gray-area possibilities that lie between “an engineered bio weapon unleashed upon the world by evil forces” and “scientific uncertainty as to the likelihood of a zoonotic origin of the Covid-19 pandemic”. And there’s even a vast literature exploring that world, thanks to myriad scientists sharing preprints and journal publications in the open literature.
Much of that literature is accessible to the lay reader: I suggest starting with the abstract, jumping next to the authors’ conflict of interest statements (always important in technical fields influenced by financial interests, as this one is), and then reading the publication while using our host’s long-standing advice to evaluate source and intelligence separately when performing analysis assessments.
And with regard to your “40+ prototypes” (???), I’d also recommend a quick review of the history of Little Boy. It is a fascinating topic.
One health expert says the vaccine will prevent infection and stop the spread of the disease. Another says we must wear masks after vaccination because the vaccine does not prevent infection, it only prevents “severe disease, hospitalization and death,” and is only 94% effective at doing that, which means it does NOT stop spread of the disease.
Health experts also say those who have had the disease and recovered must still get vaccinated because “we don’t know how long immunity lasts.” How long does smallpox immunity last? Polio immunity? Mumps immunity? Any other viral immunity? How many people have had Covid, recovered, and had a second bout of the disease?
No one claims immunity does not last, only that recovered persons must get vaccinated because “we don’t know how long immunity lasts.”
Bill H,
Yes. Nobody knows. Congratulations on joining us in the great experiment. Smallpox, Polio, Cholera, Typhoid, measles, etc. were also the subject of great experiments. I’m sure that those who were vaccinated in those campaigns didn’t give two hoots for side effects.
I’m getting vaccinated in a few weeks.
I suspect all the naysayers and anti-vaxers will soon either change sides as they witness the efficacy of the the vaccine or, regrettably, die off.
The attribution of many deaths to Covid is bogus even according to WHO actual report.
This paper will show numerous serious flaws in the Corman-Drosten paper, the significance of which has led to worldwide misdiagnosis of infections attributed to SARS-CoV-2 and associated with the disease COVID-19. We are confronted with stringent lockdowns which have destroyed many people’s lives and livelihoods, limited access to education and these imposed restrictions by governments around the world are a direct attack on people’s basic rights and their personal freedoms, resulting in collateral damage for entire economies on a global scale.
A conspiracy, Eh, Which side?
JLD,
This is about one paper and even if it is totally wrong it doesn’t prove the reverse as you seem to imply.
Sure… 😀
https://twitter.com/aginnt/status/1374020109463810053
Walrus – do you wear a single mask?
Or do you double down?
The curious want to know….
Oilman2,
We only ever wore single masks and that of course was to reduce the amount of airborne particles that we might spray on other people. Masks are good for that. They aren’t much good at direct infection control. You need N95 or better to prevent infection.
During lockdown, it was masks in all public places. We are now down to wearing them in supermarkets and public transport only.
Continuing to explore the CCP “gain of function” covid conspiracy: What did they know and when did they know it: https://noqreport.com/2021/03/21/evidence-points-to-covid-19-leaking-from-experiments-on-an-antidote-for-their-bioweapon/
Why did the Great Toilet Paper Hoarding Hoax start in Australia and quickly spread via social media around the world?
Why was “panic” inserted into the very first stages of the covid narrative well before it was declared to be a global pandemic. Was “covid” in fact a stage managed street theater event?
Deap,
We secretly own all the shares in toilet paper making companies around the world. We started the hoax for profit.
I actually want some real answers. Why did Australia push the Great Toilet Paper Hoarding Hoax on the rest of the world.
Allegedly, you got your TP supplies from China and you heard there was going to be some problems with the supply chain in China due to this new flu. So in your case downunder, it may have made urban legend sense to stock up on China essentials you are now tethered to.
But why did this uniquely Aussie TP caper strike such hysteria in the US. Which in turn primed too many dupes to be led around by the nose in the US on every rumor and SNL comedy sketch that came thereafter. No need for extra TP for upper respiratory infections.
So since this theater stunt started in Australia, you are the named epicenter for the resultant covid porn that has the rest of the world still tied up in fits.
Deap,
IMO, the Aussies, like Walrus, have some kind of supply problem that causes them to use sandpaper for TP. It’s not even fine grade sandpaper. That theory explains a lot.
Eric,
perhaps its our convict background combined with sandy surf beaches.
As a Walrus, I have been seduced by warm sandy beaches. They are so much more comfortable than an ice floe.
Deap,
TP is a bulky product that I imagine is usually bought in small quantities frequently for storage space reasons. Toilet training memories did he rest. We buy giant packs at Costco because we live far from town.
When lockdowns and supply chains were threatened, people let their imaginations roam free; TP, flour and vegetable seeds disappeared.
They might have stocked up in batteries, tyres, filters and transmission belts.
Me? I stocked up on diesel fuel. Living in a country location, we had sufficient of everything else.
Adding some related and extensive thoughts by “Old Microbiologist”, a former and apparently quite credible Sic Semper Tyrannis commenter: https://www.unz.com/article/was-coronavirus-a-biowarfare-attack-against-china/?highlight=%22Was+Coronavirus+a+Biowarfare+Attack+Against+China%3F%22+OldMicrobiologist…
About conspiracy theories, I consider one the official acceptance on that the annual flu have dissapear this year, with communicated case in the single digist for whole big countries with donzens of millions of people.
The usual alibi is that through the use of masks, social distance and lockdowns we have managed to stop the flu…Then why is that we can not get rid of an allegedly air spreaded virus like SARSCov-2 with the same measures?
It can not be both that we do it well for the flu and do it neglectly for Covid-19…
This is why many people are increasingly thinking that mask, social distance and lockdowns obey to other goals that have nothing to do with containing the infection, highly likely contro of the population as this induce terror and obeyance and keeps the streets free from protesters…
If governments would be so worried by this pandemic they would not seat so closely ministers at parliaments, or would not be accepting an army of European tourists already for this Easter in some southern European countries, nor borders would be opened for foreigners from countries with high number of cases and fully immersed in another wave while keeping their own citizens under curfews and harsh restrictions of movements and basic rights…
Simply, from the epidemiological point of view has no sense…
In a “Covid Freedom Index” collected by RT, countries part of the “Western democracies” score below others which by Western standardas could be considered authoritarian by design, that is the case of, for example, Spain, where curtailing of civil liberties has been, and still is, in the degree of equating former fascist dictatorship…In the Netherlands they are already throwing the dogs on the people lamost daily…
https://www.rt.com/covid_freedom_index/
Some historic curiosities to debunk the new Covidian Faith…
If during the Asian flu pandemic of 1968 the French government had imposed confinement, it would have been released from the historic May 68. Now it has been enjoying a sabbatical for a year. It is the dream of any government…Remember that just when the pandemic arrvied the Yellow Vests had been occupying the streets of Parsi and other French cities for a year without pause…
The historic Woodstock concert drew half a million people in 1969 in the midst of a flu pandemic that cost a million deaths. No idiot came up with proposing a “social distancing”, or flattening any curve….
Thus there must be something more behind all this than what the average eye can catch…
“A FORMER lead investigator at the State Department says he believes the coronavirus was accidentally release as a result of research done by the Chinese military into bioweapons.
David Asher, a former Department of State employee who oversaw the task force into the coronavirus’ origins, said he believes the virus not only came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that it also may have been a bioweapon potentially used by the People’s Liberation Army.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/03/breaking-evidence-suggests-china-coronavirus-covid-outbreak-may-come-military-bioweapons-research-accident/
Again, any link to using the world wide participants in the November 2019 Wuhan Global Military Games convocation as the PLA “enhanced function” contamination vector?
J,
David Asher is an economist, not a scientist. He works for a right wing think tank. His opinion on this subject is no more valid than yours or mine.
Deap
Doctor Brydon at Jalalabad.
Walrus – fascinating interview with Professor Tim Spector. A load of material about all sorts of things from epigenetics to fungi that hang around somewhere inside. Inside us, that is. Odd thought. But also on a subject that’s getting more and more attention and that modern data processing is starting to be able to handle – tuning medicines or nutrition to the individual.
I’ve submitted it because at the end he sticks his neck out and predicts the future course of the pandemic. I’ve set it (I hope) to that time. Earlier he talks about the tracker app he set up that is in use in the UK and the US. Don’t know whether they have it in Australia – it occurs to me there wouldn’t be a lot of point to it there at least as far as Covid is concerned except as an early warning system in the future.
https://youtu.be/8AesHLNadxk?t=4352
All,
It surprises me that this learned group does not mention this:
https://www.booksinc.net/search/site/Rushworth%20Sebastian
Mr. Rushwort and his mentor do have many points which bring much of the present discussion to a coherent close. I urge everyone to read this book if for nothing else but for powerful albeit brief introduction to essential scientific methodology (yes general)!
The trouble with that is that as far as I can see from a quick search the possibility of new variants is ignored.
At present here in the UK and in the States there’s a race between mass vaccination and the new variants. The graph’s going up in the States but with any luck it seems mass vaccination is going to win. It’ll be close though.
Those vaccines were developed incredibly quickly. Few expected that at the beginning. Had the vaccines been slower, or one of the new variants more transmissible, then the picture here and in the States would be quite different.
We’ve also been very lucky because the disease largely left the young alone. Can any virologist say that some new variant won’t?
For these reasons I believe we should have followed the Australian or New Zealand model from the start.
Should have written – the disease largely left the young unharmed. It scarcely left them alone.
Greetings
There was a study published back in November and updated about a month ago regarding when SARS-Cov2 firstly arrived in the US. The study analyzed blood from donations in various US states and found out that there have been cases of SARS-Cov2 prior to the “official” first occurrence day of January 19th 2020 .
Extract from the study:
“These findings indicate that SARS-CoV-2–reactive antibodies were detected in 106 specimens, a small percentage of blood donations from California, Oregon, and Washington, as early as 13–16 December 2019. The presence of these serum antibodies indicate that isolated SARS-CoV-2 infections may have occurred in the western portion of the United States earlier than previously recognized or that a small portion of the population may have pre-existing antibodies that bind the SARS-CoV-2 S protein [3]. Similarly, antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 were identified among donations occurring in early January in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin prior to known introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into those states.”
I would suppose that since blood donations are not really anonymous, one can possibly track the donors and establish a disease vector, though with a lot of effort.
Study details:
Serologic Testing of US Blood Donations to Identify Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)–Reactive Antibodies: December 2019–January 2020
Clinical Infectious Diseases, ciaa1785, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa1785
Received: 19 October 2020
Editorial decision: 23 November 2020
Published: 30 November 2020
Corrected and typeset: 25 February 2021
Covid was also found in early date sewage samples in Europe.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-sewage-idUSKBN23Q1J9
The most concerning aspect of the COVID-2 virus is that the world science community cannot come to a common understanding of its origin (natural vs lab), its transmittance (September-October in China, November in Italy, December in USA), preventative medicines, disease treatment, counting of individuals who had it or died from it (USA very high, China very low), preventative measures ( one mask, two masks, no masks, lockdown, open er up) and the economic ruin (necessary or not).
What has occurred is this scientific community has allowed itself to be politicized making all attempts to be helpful criticized as not credible.
Common sense tells us that the odds of a highly virulent virus emanating within miles of the laboratory that experiments with these type of virus’s is not natural…..