“Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion,”

Submitted by CB on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 4:46pm

Timeline on how Donald Trump completely failed America.

This expose by the New York Times is the best reporting I have seen on Trump's complete inability and subsequent failure to lead during this time of acute crisis.

He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus

An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.

April 11, 2020
Updated 4:33 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — “Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,” a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote on the night of Jan. 28, in an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities. “The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”

A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Mecher was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action.
...
The Containment Illusion

By the last week of February, it was clear to the administration’s public health team that schools and businesses in hot spots would have to close. But in the turbulence of the Trump White House, it took three more weeks to persuade the president that failure to act quickly to control the spread of the virus would have dire consequences.
...
The China Factor

The earliest warnings about coronavirus got caught in the crosscurrents of the administration’s internal disputes over China. It was the China hawks who pushed earliest for a travel ban. But their animosity toward China also undercut hopes for a more cooperative approach by the world’s two leading powers to a global crisis.
...
The Consequences of Chaos

The chaotic culture of the Trump White House contributed to the crisis. A lack of planning and a failure to execute, combined with the president’s focus on the news cycle and his preference for following his gut rather than the data cost time, and perhaps lives.
...

Tags:

Trump Coronavirus

Vote

Comments

Submitted by wendy davis on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 5:35pm

abc news had the story

as well, and as i'm not permitted to read the NYT, here it is.

on the side bar is also: ‘White House braces for congressional probes of coronavirus response’, Multiple oversight entities in Congress are vying to examine the response.

Submitted by Pricknick on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 6:02pm

It's called

@wendy davis
The probe should be aptly called
"Look over there."

—

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Submitted by CB on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 6:50pm

Did you read the NYT piece?

@Pricknick
It eviscerates Trump, week by week.

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 12:20pm

lol; rather than craig

@Pricknick

murray's 'Look where they tell you not to look'.

Submitted by CB on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 6:28pm

The NYT is free for coronavirus news

@wendy davis
https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/coronavirus

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 9:05am

that's very white of them,

@CB

as they say around these parts, but not for me. this is what i'm allowed to see:

WASHINGTON — “Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,” a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote on the night of Jan. 28, in an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities. “The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”

...as it greys and whites out.

sign in for four more free hits. when i try, they say my email address is already in use, as is mr. wd's i've tried as well. and it gets more absurd from then on w/ the suggestion of 'log in'. but i've been locked out of my own flckr account for months, and the software's workarounds never work. for now, in mega-frustration, i've given up trying to get in.

but i just opened my msn email account, and on the rolling thunder i did manage to score this new one from the CIA Times via msn: ‘The ‘Red Dawn’ Emails: 8 Key Exchanges on the Faltering Response to the Coronavirus’

i assume this will be more ammunition for congressional dems.

Submitted by CB on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 9:14am

Have you tried clearing browser history and cookies?

@wendy davis
I set Firefox to clear EVERYTHING on exit. Because I have all my passwords in a vault, I only have to remember one passphrase.

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 11:16am

i haven't,

@CB

and i dunno if the two ancient versions of firefox i need to perform Easy Copy cross-posting has a mechanism for that. neither version allows adblock any longer, which is an utter pain in the ass; i can scarcely read at telesur english any longer, it bounces around so wildly.

as microsoft is no longer supporting windows 7, i downloaded the free version of TotalAV, but it seems that real tie protection costs and extra tenner of so a month. i just installed a new version of malware bytes, but unlike mr. wd's version, there's been no way to neutralize and murder what it does find. i hate tech! okay, only when it goes tits-up...

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 7:22pm

ABC reported a leak out of the Intelligence Community

@wendy davis

...this week that IC is furiously trying to deny:

Intelligence report warned of coronavirus crisis as early as November 2019

According to an exclusive ABC News investigation the National Center for Medical Intelligence warned the military and White House about the spread of the virus in China as far back as late November.

The Pentagon forced ABC to edit their report and add misinformation to obscure the facts, but some of it still remains. The implications are very twisted:

As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.

Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.

From that warning in November, the sources described repeated briefings through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council at the White House. All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January, the sources said. For something to have appeared in the PDB, it would have had to go through weeks of vetting and analysis, according to people who have worked on presidential briefings in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

"The timeline of the intel side of this may be further back than we’re discussing," the source said of preliminary reports from Wuhan. "But this was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on."

Funny how intel knew exactly where a biological catastrophe was about to take place.

Submitted by CB on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 7:31pm

MoA has a report about this

@Pluto's Republic @Pluto's Republic
I tend to trust b's reporting. His reporting has been exceptionally reliable.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/04/asorted-virus-news.html
Assorted Virus News

ABCNews has a sensational report about an alleged epidemic warning report which circulated in November 2019. Some people claim that this proves that there were early cases of the covid-19 disease. There was likely a report but the insinuation that it was connected to covid-19 comes only from ABCnews.
...
The NCMI denies that such a report was made. But we can be sure that it would notice when news about a potential epidemic in China circulates. That was indeed the case in mid November. The news was not about the novel corona virus but about a small outbreak of bubonic plague from Inner Mongolia:
...
The covid-19 disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-19 virus, not by bacteria. The three cases in November were caused by a detectable bacteria. The first SARS-Cov-19 case currently known emerged in Wuhan in mid-late December.
...

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 8:05pm

I agree with b, with a different conclusion.

@CB

Intel was front-running an epidemic before it appeared because they knew it was planted there. In fact, China accused the US military that was on the ground at that time in Wuhan, of planting it.

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 11:08am

you're chanelling

@Pluto's Republic

pepe escobar's earlier report, and he'd also reported that there were variants already (in italy and iran?..iirc when i'd posted it earlier i'd asked for help decoding it).

WEF event 201 made us wonder, as well, didn't it? 'shit down the internet', etc. john steppling said on twitter that a homie of his posited that biden won't even make until the election, and his friends were posting...'Bill Gates for President!'. he's so at the core of all this, including testing gates funded vaccines on Africans...again. and stuff like this, and suggesting lockdowns until everyone in the multiverse has been vaccinated.

where i did agree with b is that no one really knows how deadly the virus is, and i have a page of links noting the same thing. i admit a few of his earlier suggestions i found...severe over-reactions. but to begin with, he'd sorta poo-pooed all of it, but he's got religion now. ; )

Submitted by CB on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 9:56am

With the contagion rate of COVID19

@Pluto's Republic
It is very doubtful that the virus could have started in early or mid November. The R0 of 2 to 2.5 would have created thousands of cases with hundreds of deaths by late December. All of the early December cases were discovered retroactively once the genetic code was sequenced on Jan 7. Another factor is 5 million people passed through or left Wuhan to go to other places in China in December and the first three weeks in January. The lock-down would not have worked as well as it did. China managed to effectively contain 90% of the epidemic within Hubei province. The timing works out perfectly if the disease was introduced at a point source on late November/early December.

There was a valid reason to keep things under wraps until the Chinese authorities understood what they were actually dealing with. A false report of SARS would panic the people because they still had memories of the 2003/2004 SARS outbreak that had a much higher death toll. China learned from that experience and immediately notified the WHO on Dec 31, 2019, even before they had sequenced the virus they had a pneumonia of unknown origin. The lock-down had to come as a surprise to prevent a mass of people trying to leave a city of 11 million people. The first thing they did was cut of all routes in/out of the city. (Look what happened in the US. The wealthier people left some major centers like NYC and spread the virus to smaller communities in adjoining counties.)

The Chinese government immediately went on a war footing once it knew there was a dangerous epidemic loose. It took them less than 48 hrs to completely seal off the epicenter from the rest of the country. Then they built hospitals designed specifically for severe coronavirus patients as well as different ones for mild and moderate. The patients were moved as their health improved and discharged to their homes for a further 14 day quarantine.

China’s Building a Hospital in 10 Days — This Is What the Design Must Get Right
AD speaks to Gensler, a world leader in hospital and health care design, on what Chinese officials must do to ensure that their rushed hospital design can keep the the deadly coronavirus in check
January 27, 2020

Over the past few decades, China has built some of the most revolutionary architecture in the world. But what they plan to do now—complete a 1,000-bed hospital in a mere 10 days—might be among their most ambitious feats to date. And the most important. As we publish this story, several parts of China have been under quarantine due to dire concerns over the spreading of the coronavirus. As of Thursday morning, there have been over 170 confirmed deaths from the outbreak, with over 7,700 confirmed cases of affected individuals, making the situation so severe that Chinese president Xi Jinping has labeled it a "grave situation" (even Shanghai Disneyland has shut down, while Starbucks has closed 2,000 branches throughout China). Russia has signaled they may close their 2,600 mile border with China.
...
According to Crispino, patient isolation, following strict protocols, and rigorously maintained air flow will be key to the hospital's success. "Airborne infectious diseases are best controlled by caring for patients in isolation rooms, ideally each with an anteroom for gowning and hand-washing. What's more, airflow is also key in this type of facility. The patient isolation rooms must have air pressure that is negative to the adjacent spaces and corridors. That is to say, air flows into the rooms containing airborne agents, rather than out of the rooms and distributing those agents."
...

BUT, I am open to discussions that this virus was originally brought from another location on purpose.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQQf2yoymu0]

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 11:07am

fascinating;

@CB

that's the one i'd chosen the site you'd recommended. the a,b,c trees. wish i could have grasped more of it.

#1.3.1.1 It is very doubtful that the virus could have started in early or mid November. The R0 of 2 to 2.5 would have created thousands of cases with hundreds of deaths by late December. All of the early December cases were discovered retroactively once the genetic code was sequenced on Jan 7. Another factor is 5 million people passed through or left Wuhan to go to other places in China in December and the first three weeks in January. The lock-down would not have worked as well as it did. China managed to effectively contain 90% of the epidemic within Hubei province. The timing works out perfectly if the disease was introduced at a point source on late November/early December. There was a valid reason to keep things under wraps until the Chinese authorities understood what they were actually dealing with. A false report of SARS would panic the people because they still had memories of the 2003/2004 SARS outbreak that had a much higher death toll. China learned from that experience and immediately notified the WHO on Dec 31, 2019, even before they had sequenced the virus they had a pneumonia of unknown origin. The lock-down had to come as a surprise to prevent a mass of people trying to leave a city of 11 million people. The first thing they did was cut of all routes in/out of the city. (Look what happened in the US. The wealthier people left some major centers like NYC and spread the virus to smaller communities in adjoining counties.) The Chinese government immediately went on a war footing once it knew there was a dangerous epidemic loose. It took them less than 48 hrs to completely seal off the epicenter from the rest of the country. Then they built hospitals designed specifically for severe coronavirus patients as well as different ones for mild and moderate. The patients were moved as their health improved and discharged to their homes for a further 14 day quarantine. China’s Building a Hospital in 10 Days — This Is What the Design Must Get Right AD speaks to Gensler, a world leader in hospital and health care design, on what Chinese officials must do to ensure that their rushed hospital design can keep the the deadly coronavirus in check January 27, 2020 Over the past few decades, China has built some of the most revolutionary architecture in the world. But what they plan to do now—complete a 1,000-bed hospital in a mere 10 days—might be among their most ambitious feats to date. And the most important. As we publish this story, several parts of China have been under quarantine due to dire concerns over the spreading of the coronavirus. As of Thursday morning, there have been over 170 confirmed deaths from the outbreak, with over 7,700 confirmed cases of affected individuals, making the situation so severe that Chinese president Xi Jinping has labeled it a "grave situation" (even Shanghai Disneyland has shut down, while Starbucks has closed 2,000 branches throughout China). Russia has signaled they may close their 2,600 mile border with China. ... According to Crispino, patient isolation, following strict protocols, and rigorously maintained air flow will be key to the hospital's success. "Airborne infectious diseases are best controlled by caring for patients in isolation rooms, ideally each with an anteroom for gowning and hand-washing. What's more, airflow is also key in this type of facility. The patient isolation rooms must have air pressure that is negative to the adjacent spaces and corridors. That is to say, air flows into the rooms containing airborne agents, rather than out of the rooms and distributing those agents." ... BUT, I am open to discussions that this virus was originally brought from another location on purpose. [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQQf2yoymu0]

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 8:18am

you're absolutely correct;

@Pluto's Republic

it's a different report than the NYT story altogether. my apologies. full of 'sources say'...of course.

on edit: i must have snagged the link from b, as it was sitting at the bottom of my current word document.

Submitted by Bollox Ref on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 6:36pm

Trump

could kill 200,000 on Fifth Avenue with a large calibre machine gun, and people would still vote for him.

—

Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Submitted by ggersh on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 6:46pm

Pretty good read

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/10/covid-19-coronavirus-and-civilizat...

What is the use of locking up a population – and I think especially of the United States – that is disunited, disorganized, profoundly confused by generations of ideological indoctrination telling them that their country is “the best” in every way, and thus unable to formulate coherent demands on a system that exploits them ruthlessly? Do you need to lock up your faithful Labrador so he won’t bite you?

—

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Submitted by CB on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 7:05pm

Very good read

@ggersh

Submitted by travelerxxx on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 8:20pm

Meanwhile, stupidity continues...

TEXAS TO EASE CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN UNDER EXECUTIVE ORDER TO 'RESTORE LIVELIHOODS,' GOVERNOR SAYS

Honestly, I don't even know what to say. Here in Texas, the number of virus case is about to rise.

Money over people. Typical.

Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 8:27pm

I am appalled.

@travelerxxx Stupid ass governor has yet to make a good call on anything, so I didn't expect him to do anything smart or helpful in this pandemic.
Well, I do not intend to open my doors to the public until late May, and if I can't get continuances, I will withdraw from my cases rather than be forced into that courtroom.
I wonder which way the county judges will go.
Ours just ordered gloves and masks when in public.

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by travelerxxx on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 8:42pm

You first, Grandma...

@on the cusp

Evidently, the Texas Republicans – to whom money is dearer than (somebody else's) life itself – really do intend to sacrifice Grandma. I suppose they intended it all along and our Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick simply spilled the beans earlier than he was supposed to.

Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 8:56pm

I figure I will get a Physician's Directive

@travelerxxx to DO NOT RESCUSITATE document in a special envelope bearing the governor's seal.
I prepare them for clients all the time, but I would hesitate to recommend them at this juncture.
Patrick is stupid and cruel at the same time. Just blessed with the worst attributes a human can have.

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by Blue Republic on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 9:10am

It's not like

@travelerxxx

The lockdowns themselves don't have real
costs. If effective treatments become available
and most people have had it and recovered
then you'd be better off quarantining the vulnerable
and letting others resume normal activities - as normal
as a global economic depression allows, anyway.

Fauci talked about continuing lockdowns until there
were *no* new cases being reported.

I can confidently predict that will happen about a day
after we win the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 11:32am

lmao,

@Blue Republic

plus this: Papers, please! Covid-19 ‘immunity cards’ may be required of Americans, Fauci says, 10 Apr, 2020, RT.com

then factor in: Unbeatable virus or false positive? Doctors alarmed after some Covid-19 patients test positive after recovering, 9 Apr, 2020

While reinfection would be problematic, reactivation is a more troubling prospect. In addition to raising questions about post-recovery immunity to the virus, it would pose a major challenge to mitigation strategies adopted around the world. If there is a high risk of Covid-19 reactivating among the people considered cured, that would mean longer quarantines and delays in reopening businesses and public spaces.

Other possibilities include false positives, if the tests pick up residue from the initial infection, or prolonged “shedding” of the virus load missed by the tests at discharge because the levels were just under the limit.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 8:40pm

Yes Trump truly fumbled the ball on the response

but he isn't the only one solely responsible for how many people have gotten sick and have died.

Trump failed to respond. But in January and February, it was clear coronavirus would hit NY. Cuomo and de Blasio could have instituted full lockdowns by early March when first cases appeared. Meanwhile, Washington State and California moved more quickly and saved many lives.

— Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) April 11, 2020

pic.twitter.com/X7pVPmrBTL

— ragonepr (@ragonepr) April 11, 2020

Countless other state governors didn't close things down as quickly as Newsom in California and other governors. Florida let spring break go one and once finished no state put kids in quarantine. The blame for this response falls on many shoulders. And the lack of response is hiding the biggest transfer of wealth in history. Not here of course. As usual the blue blog has been on top of most issues and way ahead of others.

I'm very concerned about how this country will look once it's open again. I think it's going to be unrecognizable because of how many businesses will have permanently closed down and how many people will stay unemployed. Lots of businesses are going to be bought out at Fire sale prices by those who got all the money. Like usual. Workers desperate for a job might have to take less than minimum wage cuz of the demand for jobs. But whoboy congress better be thinking about that or they will be in for a big surprise. OWS will look like just a warmup for what might be coming.

Hospitals have been closed down for decades or been asset stripped after they were bought out by hedge funds. Obama and Biden didn't replenish the supplies for epidemics after they dealt with the H1N1 flu. Blame goes to both parties and especially their embrace of neoliberalism.

He's thinking of reopening the country. Hardily and bigly.

"I don’t know that I’ve had a bigger decision. But I’m going to surround myself with the greatest minds. Not only the greatest minds, but the greatest minds in numerous different businesses, including the business of politics and reason," Trump told reporters.

Trump's labor leader doesn't want people to get used to being on government assistance and is trying to restrict who can get unemployment benefits and for how long. Now it takes brass balls for little Anthony Scalia to say that to desperate people after the corrupt and especially the banks have gotten trillions! This guy should be embarrassed to show his face in public ever again. But he isn't.

—

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

Submitted by Roy Blakeley on Sat, 04/11/2020 - 10:57pm

The CDC blew the test kits as well

@snoopydawg They decided to go with their own unnecessarily complex kit instead of going with the Qiagen kit or some variant (RT-PCR is a pretty routine procedure in labs). They initially stuck with the influenza model of having the samples sent to Atlanta for analysis. This is fine if you are just monitoring the flu, but useless for trying to stop a pandemic. Tens of thousands of people in the US have died and will die unnecessarily.

but he isn't the only one solely responsible for how many people have gotten sick and have died. Trump failed to respond. But in January and February, it was clear coronavirus would hit NY. Cuomo and de Blasio could have instituted full lockdowns by early March when first cases appeared. Meanwhile, Washington State and California moved more quickly and saved many lives. — Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) April 11, 2020 pic.twitter.com/X7pVPmrBTL — ragonepr (@ragonepr) April 11, 2020 Countless other state governors didn't close things down as quickly as Newsom in California and other governors. Florida let spring break go one and once finished no state put kids in quarantine. The blame for this response falls on many shoulders. And the lack of response is hiding the biggest transfer of wealth in history. Not here of course. As usual the blue blog has been on top of most issues and way ahead of others. I'm very concerned about how this country will look once it's open again. I think it's going to be unrecognizable because of how many businesses will have permanently closed down and how many people will stay unemployed. Lots of businesses are going to be bought out at Fire sale prices by those who got all the money. Like usual. Workers desperate for a job might have to take less than minimum wage cuz of the demand for jobs. But whoboy congress better be thinking about that or they will be in for a big surprise. OWS will look like just a warmup for what might be coming. Hospitals have been closed down for decades or been asset stripped after they were bought out by hedge funds. Obama and Biden didn't replenish the supplies for epidemics after they dealt with the H1N1 flu. Blame goes to both parties and especially their embrace of neoliberalism. He's thinking of reopening the country. Hardily and bigly. "I don’t know that I’ve had a bigger decision. But I’m going to surround myself with the greatest minds. Not only the greatest minds, but the greatest minds in numerous different businesses, including the business of politics and reason," Trump told reporters. Trump's labor leader doesn't want people to get used to being on government assistance and is trying to restrict who can get unemployment benefits and for how long. Now it takes brass balls for little Anthony Scalia to say that to desperate people after the corrupt and especially the banks have gotten trillions! This guy should be embarrassed to show his face in public ever again. But he isn't.

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 12:27pm

wooot!

via Gates Expert jacob levitch's twit account: April 09, 2020, Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination, RFK, Jr, Chairman, Children’s Health Defense

[hope you won't mind if i paste it all in, CB.]

‘Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.
Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology.

Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took control of India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously.

In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. [?] The most frightening epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain.

In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.

In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children.
During Gates’ 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates’ operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.” Nelson Mandela’s former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philanthropic practices as “ruthless and immoral.”

In 2010, Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO saying, “We must make this the decade of vaccines.” A month later, Gates said in a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”. In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a “tetanus” vaccine campaign. Independent labs found a sterility formula in every vaccine tested. After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade. Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines.

A 2017 study (Morgenson et. al. 2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP vaccine is killing more African children than the diseases it prevents. DTP-vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of children who had not yet received the vaccine. WHO has refused to recall the lethal vaccine which it forces upon tens of millions of African children annually.

Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of steering WHO’s agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases: clean water, hygiene, nutrition, and economic development. The Gates Foundation only spends about $650 million of its $5 billion dollar budget on these areas. They say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal philosophy that good health only comes in a syringe.

In addition to using his philanthropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, and PATH, Gates funds a private pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines, and additionally is donating $50 million to 12 pharmaceutical companies to speed up development of a coronavirus vaccine. In his recent media appearances, Gates appears confident that the Covid-19 crisis will now give him the opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs on American children.’

Submitted by Blue Republic on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 5:57am

Missed your comment

@wendy davis
and just posted this in an essay...

Quite a body count among those the Gates Foundation has "helped"...

via Gates Expert jacob levitch's twit account: April 09, 2020, Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination, RFK, Jr, Chairman, Children’s Health Defense

[hope you won't mind if i paste it all in, CB.]

‘Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.
Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology.

Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took control of India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously.

In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. [?] The most frightening epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain.

In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.

In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children.
During Gates’ 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates’ operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.” Nelson Mandela’s former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philanthropic practices as “ruthless and immoral.”

In 2010, Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO saying, “We must make this the decade of vaccines.” A month later, Gates said in a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”. In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a “tetanus” vaccine campaign. Independent labs found a sterility formula in every vaccine tested. After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade. Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines.

A 2017 study (Morgenson et. al. 2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP vaccine is killing more African children than the diseases it prevents. DTP-vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of children who had not yet received the vaccine. WHO has refused to recall the lethal vaccine which it forces upon tens of millions of African children annually.

Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of steering WHO’s agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases: clean water, hygiene, nutrition, and economic development. The Gates Foundation only spends about $650 million of its $5 billion dollar budget on these areas. They say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal philosophy that good health only comes in a syringe.

In addition to using his philanthropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, and PATH, Gates funds a private pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines, and additionally is donating $50 million to 12 pharmaceutical companies to speed up development of a coronavirus vaccine. In his recent media appearances, Gates appears confident that the Covid-19 crisis will now give him the opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs on American children.’

Submitted by wendy davis on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 9:05am

good;

@Blue Republic

he can't be outed for his murderous 'philanthropic capitalistism' often enough. and at least zero hedge has the original link. as a side note, i'm always amazed at how folks here love zero hedge.

Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 10:51am

You know the sayings about broken clocks and blind squirrels.

@wendy davis

—

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Submitted by wendy davis on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 12:31pm

may i assume not:

@TheOtherMaven

'they ought too be outed for their pseudo-philanthropic murderous money-grubbing' every day, lol?'

Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 3:53pm

That had to do with zerohedge

@wendy davis

Broken clocks = right every 12 hours
Blind squirrel can still find acorn (by smell, or by accident)

—

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Submitted by wendy davis on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 4:39pm

ta for the explanation;

@TheOtherMaven

they do import other people's work, but in the past i'd found the commentariat abysmal in general. although i will say i like the generic paper bag avatars. ; )

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 4:34pm

kinda hate to haugg the comments, but you may be

interested in this.

'Documentary Explores the Origins of the CCP Virus' by Alex Christoforo, April 11, 2020, theduran.com

He opens his quasi-narration with:

As the documentary shows, the CCP’s delay in sharing information about the virus with other countries was not mere oversight.

While The Epoch Times began publishing reports of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus on Jan. 2, most outlets had yet to pick up on the story because of the CCP’s lockdown on information. Three months later, over 200 countries and territories have been infected and the CCP virus has caused over 85,000 deaths infecting at least 1.4 million, but information is murkier than ever.

“We’ve pretty much heard every rumor under the sun. We’ve heard every theory, every crazy rumor, we’ve heard all these different narratives,” said Joshua Philipp, award-winning investigative reporter and host of the show “Crossroads.”

The rumors aren’t by accident: The CCP has been actively engaging in a disinformation campaign, and media outlets around the world have parroted the propaganda. As a result, entire nations have been operating under false information as they try to battle the pandemic within their borders.

Philipp and his colleages at The Epoch Times and NTD Television thought it their responsibility to sift through all the information available, verify it, and put it into one place. The result is the just-premiered documentary “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus,” which is available to watch online. Less than two days after its premiere, the documentary has around 1.6 million views across different platforms.’

he then adds a boatload of additional narration ahead of the 56 min ‘documentary’.

i dunno if you’ve ever seen the Epoch Times ads on youtube, but their ‘blockbusters’ are akin to bellingcat’s online-sourced ‘journalism’. i lasted about 7 minutes; you decide.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=405&v=Gdd7dtDaYmM&feature=em...

from the comments:

BobValdez
If these morons haven’t been to China, and haven’t had access directly to information in China, how do they think they can make a bullshit “documentary” on where this virus originated from?

Clarity
Epoch Times, created and financed by the Falun Gong, is to China what Garry Kasparov and Anne Applebaum are to Russia.

Brokenspine66
Just another BS Propaganda/Information-War Piece aimed towards China – Utterly Rubbish

the duran had earlier featured another 'exposé' i couldn't find, perhaps borrowed fro strategic culture? i'd linked to it earlier noting that the author had posited that the intense coverage of coronavirus was due to its being: Made in China'. but then he went full-tilt anti-china agitprop, and many, if not most, of the comments asked WTF?

Submitted by CB on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 9:48pm

More info on Epoch Times for you

@wendy davis

Anti-China Cult Gets U.S. Government Money - Runs Large Pro-Trump Ad Campaign
Falun Gong is a cult which claims to have millions of followers. It was founded in China by Li Hongzhi who thinks of himself as a higher being. Falun Gong mixes some Taoism and Buddhism with nutty ideas, conservative politics and strong anti-communism:
...
In 1999 the cult attempted to gain political power in China. The government shut it down for pushing its followers to not use medical therapies. Li Hongzhi and some of his followers moved to the United States. As the cult is strongly anti-communist the U.S. government used it to put pressure on China. Some institutions and companies related to Falun Gong are openly funded with U.S. government money.

The main media outlet of the Falun Gong organization is the Epoch Times. NBC reports of its astonishing growth as a pro-Trump social media force:

By the numbers, there is no bigger advocate of President Donald Trump on Facebook than The Epoch Times.
...
The NBC report says it is not clear where the "web and media" money that gets invested in pro-Trump advertisement actually comes from.

Here is a hunch. What NBC does not mention is that Falun Gong is a U.S. anti-China asset. The Bush/Cheney administration used the Falun Gong to intentionally embarrass China's then President Hu Jintao when he visited Washington:
...
A footnote confirms that the Falun Gong companies received part of that money through the BBG:

Of the FY2009 Internet Freedom funding, the BBG received $1.5 Million. The BBG promptly used to contract with DIT to expand its Freegate software operations for some $600,000 and with UltraReach for $840,000.

DIT or Dynamic Internet Technology is run by one Bill Xia. In a 2006 Businessweek portrait he confirms that he is a Falun Gong member. The DIT website lists only four customers: the Falun Gong's Epoch Times, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the New York and Hong Kong based propaganda group Human Rights in China (HRIC). VOA and RFA are financed by the USAGM/BBG. HRIC is financed by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, the Soros Open Society Institute and similar organizations.
...
It might well be that the money Falun Gong generates through such propaganda endeavors is channeled through its media empire into pro-Trump advertisement.

But the significant support U.S. government agencies give to Falun Gong, combined with the virulent anti-China policies of the Trump administration, lets one assume that there are also official dark money sources, think CIA, that support the Falun Gong's anti-China efforts.

Money is fungible. A U.S. government financed organization should not invest it in partisan U.S. politics. Some enterprising Democratic candidates could up their game by taking a deeper look into this issue.

interested in this.

'Documentary Explores the Origins of the CCP Virus' by Alex Christoforo, April 11, 2020, theduran.com

He opens his quasi-narration with:

As the documentary shows, the CCP’s delay in sharing information about the virus with other countries was not mere oversight.

While The Epoch Times began publishing reports of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus on Jan. 2, most outlets had yet to pick up on the story because of the CCP’s lockdown on information. Three months later, over 200 countries and territories have been infected and the CCP virus has caused over 85,000 deaths infecting at least 1.4 million, but information is murkier than ever.

“We’ve pretty much heard every rumor under the sun. We’ve heard every theory, every crazy rumor, we’ve heard all these different narratives,” said Joshua Philipp, award-winning investigative reporter and host of the show “Crossroads.”

The rumors aren’t by accident: The CCP has been actively engaging in a disinformation campaign, and media outlets around the world have parroted the propaganda. As a result, entire nations have been operating under false information as they try to battle the pandemic within their borders.

Philipp and his colleages at The Epoch Times and NTD Television thought it their responsibility to sift through all the information available, verify it, and put it into one place. The result is the just-premiered documentary “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus,” which is available to watch online. Less than two days after its premiere, the documentary has around 1.6 million views across different platforms.’

he then adds a boatload of additional narration ahead of the 56 min ‘documentary’.

i dunno if you’ve ever seen the Epoch Times ads on youtube, but their ‘blockbusters’ are akin to bellingcat’s online-sourced ‘journalism’. i lasted about 7 minutes; you decide.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=405&v=Gdd7dtDaYmM&feature=em...

from the comments:

BobValdez
If these morons haven’t been to China, and haven’t had access directly to information in China, how do they think they can make a bullshit “documentary” on where this virus originated from?

Clarity
Epoch Times, created and financed by the Falun Gong, is to China what Garry Kasparov and Anne Applebaum are to Russia.

Brokenspine66
Just another BS Propaganda/Information-War Piece aimed towards China – Utterly Rubbish

the duran had earlier featured another 'exposé' i couldn't find, perhaps borrowed fro strategic culture? i'd linked to it earlier noting that the author had posited that the intense coverage of coronavirus was due to its being: Made in China'. but then he went full-tilt anti-china agitprop, and many, if not most, of the comments asked WTF?

Submitted by wendy davis on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 9:17am

excellent, and i thank you.

@CB

this is my favortes section:

DIT or Dynamic Internet Technology is run by one Bill Xia. In a 2006 Businessweek portrait he confirms that he is a Falun Gong member. The DIT website lists only four customers: the Falun Gong's Epoch Times, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the New York and Hong Kong based propaganda group Human Rights in China (HRIC). VOA and RFA are financed by the USAGM/BBG. HRIC is financed by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, the Soros Open Society Institute and similar organizations.

anti-china agitprop is only too ubiquitous, and recently began anew with obomba's 'pivot to asia', as a challenge to counteract the growing power of china and russia. can't have that!

think: macKinder's eurasian heartland geopolitics.

always ships in the sea of hormuz, the south china seas, war games everywhere..

#7 Anti-China Cult Gets U.S. Government Money - Runs Large Pro-Trump Ad Campaign Falun Gong is a cult which claims to have millions of followers. It was founded in China by Li Hongzhi who thinks of himself as a higher being. Falun Gong mixes some Taoism and Buddhism with nutty ideas, conservative politics and strong anti-communism: ... In 1999 the cult attempted to gain political power in China. The government shut it down for pushing its followers to not use medical therapies. Li Hongzhi and some of his followers moved to the United States. As the cult is strongly anti-communist the U.S. government used it to put pressure on China. Some institutions and companies related to Falun Gong are openly funded with U.S. government money. The main media outlet of the Falun Gong organization is the Epoch Times. NBC reports of its astonishing growth as a pro-Trump social media force: By the numbers, there is no bigger advocate of President Donald Trump on Facebook than The Epoch Times. ... The NBC report says it is not clear where the "web and media" money that gets invested in pro-Trump advertisement actually comes from. Here is a hunch. What NBC does not mention is that Falun Gong is a U.S. anti-China asset. The Bush/Cheney administration used the Falun Gong to intentionally embarrass China's then President Hu Jintao when he visited Washington: ... A footnote confirms that the Falun Gong companies received part of that money through the BBG: Of the FY2009 Internet Freedom funding, the BBG received $1.5 Million. The BBG promptly used to contract with DIT to expand its Freegate software operations for some $600,000 and with UltraReach for $840,000. DIT or Dynamic Internet Technology is run by one Bill Xia. In a 2006 Businessweek portrait he confirms that he is a Falun Gong member. The DIT website lists only four customers: the Falun Gong's Epoch Times, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the New York and Hong Kong based propaganda group Human Rights in China (HRIC). VOA and RFA are financed by the USAGM/BBG. HRIC is financed by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, the Soros Open Society Institute and similar organizations. ... It might well be that the money Falun Gong generates through such propaganda endeavors is channeled through its media empire into pro-Trump advertisement. But the significant support U.S. government agencies give to Falun Gong, combined with the virulent anti-China policies of the Trump administration, lets one assume that there are also official dark money sources, think CIA, that support the Falun Gong's anti-China efforts. Money is fungible. A U.S. government financed organization should not invest it in partisan U.S. politics. Some enterprising Democratic candidates could up their game by taking a deeper look into this issue.

Submitted by wendy davis on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 9:43am

p.s.

@CB

i should have added that during this pandemic it's even more important to bash china, russia, and cuba as they send neccessary supplies and doctors abroad to help other nations.

even their products are mocked and derided. 'oh, those crap ventilators', etc.

#7 Anti-China Cult Gets U.S. Government Money - Runs Large Pro-Trump Ad Campaign Falun Gong is a cult which claims to have millions of followers. It was founded in China by Li Hongzhi who thinks of himself as a higher being. Falun Gong mixes some Taoism and Buddhism with nutty ideas, conservative politics and strong anti-communism: ... In 1999 the cult attempted to gain political power in China. The government shut it down for pushing its followers to not use medical therapies. Li Hongzhi and some of his followers moved to the United States. As the cult is strongly anti-communist the U.S. government used it to put pressure on China. Some institutions and companies related to Falun Gong are openly funded with U.S. government money. The main media outlet of the Falun Gong organization is the Epoch Times. NBC reports of its astonishing growth as a pro-Trump social media force: By the numbers, there is no bigger advocate of President Donald Trump on Facebook than The Epoch Times. ... The NBC report says it is not clear where the "web and media" money that gets invested in pro-Trump advertisement actually comes from. Here is a hunch. What NBC does not mention is that Falun Gong is a U.S. anti-China asset. The Bush/Cheney administration used the Falun Gong to intentionally embarrass China's then President Hu Jintao when he visited Washington: ... A footnote confirms that the Falun Gong companies received part of that money through the BBG: Of the FY2009 Internet Freedom funding, the BBG received $1.5 Million. The BBG promptly used to contract with DIT to expand its Freegate software operations for some $600,000 and with UltraReach for $840,000. DIT or Dynamic Internet Technology is run by one Bill Xia. In a 2006 Businessweek portrait he confirms that he is a Falun Gong member. The DIT website lists only four customers: the Falun Gong's Epoch Times, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the New York and Hong Kong based propaganda group Human Rights in China (HRIC). VOA and RFA are financed by the USAGM/BBG. HRIC is financed by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, the Soros Open Society Institute and similar organizations. ... It might well be that the money Falun Gong generates through such propaganda endeavors is channeled through its media empire into pro-Trump advertisement. But the significant support U.S. government agencies give to Falun Gong, combined with the virulent anti-China policies of the Trump administration, lets one assume that there are also official dark money sources, think CIA, that support the Falun Gong's anti-China efforts. Money is fungible. A U.S. government financed organization should not invest it in partisan U.S. politics. Some enterprising Democratic candidates could up their game by taking a deeper look into this issue.

Submitted by Blue Republic on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 6:11am

Watched it.

@wendy davis

Well-documented and people with serious academic cred showing
that the CCP narrative of zoonetic appearance of a naturally-evolved
virus originating in the Wuhan wet market is simply BS.

Yeah, Epoch Times is affiliated with Falun Gong, yes, they hate the CCP,
doesn't make them wrong and I don't see anyone here disputing the content of
the documentary.

What, exactly, should I love about the PRC? The devastating pollution? The corruption? The repression of religious minorities? The concentration camps? The all-pervasive surveillance? The Social Credit Score?

Hey, I used to have a Little Red Book too - then I grew up and learned some history.

interested in this.

'Documentary Explores the Origins of the CCP Virus' by Alex Christoforo, April 11, 2020, theduran.com

He opens his quasi-narration with:

As the documentary shows, the CCP’s delay in sharing information about the virus with other countries was not mere oversight.

While The Epoch Times began publishing reports of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus on Jan. 2, most outlets had yet to pick up on the story because of the CCP’s lockdown on information. Three months later, over 200 countries and territories have been infected and the CCP virus has caused over 85,000 deaths infecting at least 1.4 million, but information is murkier than ever.

“We’ve pretty much heard every rumor under the sun. We’ve heard every theory, every crazy rumor, we’ve heard all these different narratives,” said Joshua Philipp, award-winning investigative reporter and host of the show “Crossroads.”

The rumors aren’t by accident: The CCP has been actively engaging in a disinformation campaign, and media outlets around the world have parroted the propaganda. As a result, entire nations have been operating under false information as they try to battle the pandemic within their borders.

Philipp and his colleages at The Epoch Times and NTD Television thought it their responsibility to sift through all the information available, verify it, and put it into one place. The result is the just-premiered documentary “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus,” which is available to watch online. Less than two days after its premiere, the documentary has around 1.6 million views across different platforms.’

he then adds a boatload of additional narration ahead of the 56 min ‘documentary’.

i dunno if you’ve ever seen the Epoch Times ads on youtube, but their ‘blockbusters’ are akin to bellingcat’s online-sourced ‘journalism’. i lasted about 7 minutes; you decide.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=405&v=Gdd7dtDaYmM&feature=em...

from the comments:

BobValdez
If these morons haven’t been to China, and haven’t had access directly to information in China, how do they think they can make a bullshit “documentary” on where this virus originated from?

Clarity
Epoch Times, created and financed by the Falun Gong, is to China what Garry Kasparov and Anne Applebaum are to Russia.

Brokenspine66
Just another BS Propaganda/Information-War Piece aimed towards China – Utterly Rubbish

the duran had earlier featured another 'exposé' i couldn't find, perhaps borrowed fro strategic culture? i'd linked to it earlier noting that the author had posited that the intense coverage of coronavirus was due to its being: Made in China'. but then he went full-tilt anti-china agitprop, and many, if not most, of the comments asked WTF?

Submitted by wendy davis on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 12:32pm

thanks for watching it,

@Blue Republic

and for weighing in, blue republic.

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 6:09pm

And how do you decide that any given individual

@Blue Republic @Blue Republic
has "serious academic cred"? Judy Mikovits is a disgraced and discredited former researcher on retroviruses, who has spent the decade since her downfall insisting without intelligible evidence that she's a victim, while jumping on any and every science-conspiracy bandwagon that will earn her an appearance fee or a book-signing table.

I can't say much with respect to the first part, other than that it's really boring and contains incredibly stupid remarks like, "This was followed by a thorough cleanup of the market, which as an investigative reporter seemed rushed." This kind of nonsensical rhetoric ought to be a cue to the critical reader. I will say, however, that I really hate when anyone, but especially anyone with an axe to grind, starts making strong assertions about negative evidence. When an epidemiologist doesn't find a link between a patient and a place -- or another patient, for that matter -- all that proves is that the epidemiologist didn't find a link, and all further consideration of that missing link should be colored with this simple fact of epistemology.

Regardless of all that, I can say something about the bizarre Part II, concerning "the genome" where Mikovits and some guy without any particular credentials start making very, very strong assertions about the genetic sequence of the virus. To be blunt, every "conclusion" that they draw is bunk. Whether stupidly citing the absence of bats at Huanan as evidence of anything, or noting the amazing coincidence of the 100% similarity of one of the proteins, or the very high similarity of the S protein, they both demonstrate comical ignorance of the nature of beta coronaviruses in general and of the conclusions of 15 years' worth of research into the various strains that have been collected from miscellaneous locales in China.

Rather than spend the next 351 hours attempting to describe every last detail of their scientific malfeasance, I will just leave you with this little note: RNA viruses such as the beta coronaviruses are capable of genetic recombination when they are reproducing inside a host cell. In other words: If an animal has multiple infections from different strains of coronavirus, those viruses can exchange genetic sequence, mixing and matching somewhat randomly. Which means that any and all assertions that the virus "must" have been engineered are -- you guessed it -- stupid. To the contrary, it's hard to imagine a better host environment for "breeding" such a virus than in an animal already known to be a host for a virus like SARS-Cov-1, as well as other strains that cannot infect humans. But taking several different species of such animals (civets, pangolins, whatever) and keeping them together in cages where they're all spraying bodily effluent willy nilly? Yeah, that's viral evolution on steroids. Something like SARS-Cov-2 isn't an impossibly improbably outcome, it's an almost inevitable one.

—

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Submitted by Blue Republic on Tue, 04/14/2020 - 5:53am

I get that

@UntimelyRippd

viruses are constantly mutating - but what, in your view, accounts for the apparent
lack of viruses closely related to COVID-19? As I understand it it appears to have branched
from ancestral viruses long ago - so how could have that occurred in the wild without there
being closely-related, intermediate strains?

This extensive article suggests a possible (and frightening) explanation:

– Tinkering with viral genomes is not anything new, but is not something that has ever been fully embraced by the scientific community at large. About a decade ago, two separate research teams successful tweaked the genome of the H5N1 Bird Flu in just two spots and then passed it through ferrets until it became both airborne and pathogenic to mammals, creating a virus that “could make the deadly 1918 pandemic look like a pesky cold.” This involved selecting for a mutation that allowed the virus to access a receptor that’s found in ferret lungs, and was alarming enough that the research was urged to be published without revealing the specific methods involved and data collected – however it appears that only the most technical details were left out, and most of the research is freely available. And studies examining COVID-19’s infectivity in ferrets found that it spreads readily among them, and also appears airborne in that animal model, lending support to the idea that ferrets were used for serial passage. Further support for possibility that serial passage through lab animals played a role in the creation of COVID-19 comes from an April 2020 pre-print, which found that it binds with ferrets cells more tightly than any other species except the tree shrew, which only scored about 2% higher. Tree shrews have also been used for serial viral passage, and were promoted in a 2018 paper out of China as a preferable host for laboratory serial passage since they’re cheaper, smaller, easier to handle, and closer to humans evolutionarily and physiologically than ferrets. Pangolins however, formed a much weaker bond than either, and were clustered way down on the list along with a handful of other much more unlikely intermediate animal hosts.

Inline links don't work in the block quote but will from the original article.

A better explication than I could ever give of the full article is below/

(this guy is *way* beyond walking and chewing gum at the same time)

Also professor of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School.

#7.2 #7.2 has "serious academic cred"? Judy Mikovits is a disgraced and discredited former researcher on retroviruses, who has spent the decade since her downfall insisting without intelligible evidence that she's a victim, while jumping on any and every science-conspiracy bandwagon that will earn her an appearance fee or a book-signing table. I can't say much with respect to the first part, other than that it's really boring and contains incredibly stupid remarks like, "This was followed by a thorough cleanup of the market, which as an investigative reporter seemed rushed." This kind of nonsensical rhetoric ought to be a cue to the critical reader. I will say, however, that I really hate when anyone, but especially anyone with an axe to grind, starts making strong assertions about negative evidence. When an epidemiologist doesn't find a link between a patient and a place -- or another patient, for that matter -- all that proves is that the epidemiologist didn't find a link, and all further consideration of that missing link should be colored with this simple fact of epistemology. Regardless of all that, I can say something about the bizarre Part II, concerning "the genome" where Mikovits and some guy without any particular credentials start making very, very strong assertions about the genetic sequence of the virus. To be blunt, every "conclusion" that they draw is bunk. Whether stupidly citing the absence of bats at Huanan as evidence of anything, or noting the amazing coincidence of the 100% similarity of one of the proteins, or the very high similarity of the S protein, they both demonstrate comical ignorance of the nature of beta coronaviruses in general and of the conclusions of 15 years' worth of research into the various strains that have been collected from miscellaneous locales in China. Rather than spend the next 351 hours attempting to describe every last detail of their scientific malfeasance, I will just leave you with this little note: RNA viruses such as the beta coronaviruses are capable of genetic recombination when they are reproducing inside a host cell. In other words: If an animal has multiple infections from different strains of coronavirus, those viruses can exchange genetic sequence, mixing and matching somewhat randomly. Which means that any and all assertions that the virus "must" have been engineered are -- you guessed it -- stupid. To the contrary, it's hard to imagine a better host environment for "breeding" such a virus than in an animal already known to be a host for a virus like SARS-Cov-1, as well as other strains that cannot infect humans. But taking several different species of such animals (civets, pangolins, whatever) and keeping them together in cages where they're all spraying bodily effluent willy nilly? Yeah, that's viral evolution on steroids. Something like SARS-Cov-2 isn't an impossibly improbably outcome, it's an almost inevitable one.