Guest post by Dave Archibald
Who does the virus call ‘Daddy’? In the 1950s, oil geologist Michel Halbouty said that “oil is first found in the minds of men“, meaning that someone has to imagine the existence of an oil field before they can go out to find it. The same is true of most of the fruits of mental endeavour.
Similarly, the COVID-19 virus is artificial so someone conceived it in his mind before it was created in the lab.
The construction of the place where the virus was created, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was funded by the French government in 2004 in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the Chinese dictatorship. Upon completion, the Chinese let only one Frenchman into the building.
The events that led to the making of the virus started decades before with the founding of The Wildlife Trust in 1971 by English wildlife lover Gerald Durrell. Its headquarters moved to New York. In 1997 the Wildlife Trust spun out The Consortium for Conservation Medicine. This organisation has been described as a “unique collaborative institution that strives to understand the link between anthropogenic environmental change, the health of all species, and the conservation of biodiversity.”
In other words, it is a spiritual home for health academics worried about global warming.
The Wildlife Trust and the Consortium for Conservation Medicine merged in 2010 to form the EcoHealth Alliance. One benefit from the name change would have been to enable government health bodies to give it money.
Dr Anthony Fauci and his offsider at the National Institutes of Health, David Morens, have been publishing papers like this one since 2004. In that paper they list ‘Intent to harm’ as a contributing factor in the emergence of infectious diseases. This is expanded in a paragraph on ‘Deliberately emerging infections’:
Deliberately emerging microbes are those that have been developed by man, usually for nefarious use. The term ‘deliberately emerging’ refers to both naturally occurring microbial agents such as anthrax 6 , and to bioengineered microorganisms such as those created by the insertion of genetic virulence factors that produce or exacerbate disease. Deliberately emerging microbes include microorganisms or toxins produced in a form that would cause maximal harm because of ease of dissemination, enhanced infectivity or heightened pathogenicity.
The first of Fauci and Morens’ subsequent papers to mention “global warming in the emergence of diseases” was this one from 2008. About the same time, virus researchers in the US started doing interesting things. Two labs altered the H5N1 avian flu strain so that it was more readily transmittable between ferrets. Ferrets use the same cellular receptors as humans for the virus, and strains that infect people spread among ferrets and cause similar symptoms. This is ‘gain of function’ research which is another way of saying they were trying to make deadly viruses yet more deadly. Because of lab mishaps, gain of function research was outlawed in the US in 2012.
It was at this time that somebody, one Nicholas Evans, nailed Fauci’s idee fixe. In a reply to a paper co-authored by Fauci’s sidekick Morens is this sentence:
To claim that nature conducts research is playing fast and loose with the criteria; that nature breaks the rules smacks of an animism that is hard to fathom.
Fauci has got animism, the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena, really bad.
Fauci reacted to the ban on gain of function research by taking it to China. This was channelled through his ideological soulmates at EcoHealth Alliance. As Rudi Giuliani said in an interview:
Back in 2014, the Obama administration prohibited the U.S. from giving money to any laboratory, including in the U.S., that was fooling around with these viruses. Prohibited. Despite that, Dr. Fauci gave $3.7 million to the Wuhan laboratory. And then even after the State Department issued reports about how unsafe that laboratory was, and how suspicious they were in the way they were developing a virus that could be transmitted to humans, we never pulled that money.
This is why the US consulate in Wuhan visited the lab a number of times and wrote reports complaining about the poor biosecurity standards there. A lab mishap duly occurred at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Satellite imagery shows road blocks around the lab on 6th to 11 October, 2019. This is supported by US mapping of mobile phone traffic which showed a reduction in traffic from the affected building. The Russians realised that troop movements could be mapped by the US from mobile phone data so Putin banned Russian troops from carrying mobile phones a week later.
The virus spread. Zinc is known to inhibit viral replication. Doctors in Wuhan remembered a 2014 paper which showed that chloroquine is a zinc ionophore and found that it worked in treating infected patients. On 22nd May, 2020. medical journal The Lancet joyously published a paper stating that chloroquine doesn’t work. Medical authorities around the world reacted by withdrawing chloroquine from treatment of the Wuhan virus. Death rates spiked up dramatically about two weeks later. This is illustrated by the experience in Switzerland, as shown by the following graphic from France Soir:
The grey-shaded area is the period of increased deaths in Switzerland due to the study in The Lancet. The death rate jumped 13 days after the administration of chloroquine was withdrawn, it dropped 13 days after the resumption of dispensing chloroquine. That was just Switzerland. The Lancet retracted the paper on June 4th, more over the damage it was doing to its reputation than embarrassment at the number of deaths it caused. Nobody in the media has displayed any interest in who was behind this hit job on chloroquine.
It has been estimated that the media blitz against chloroquine resulted in 80,000 deaths around the world.
A similar hit job was attempted on the diabetic drug metformin which had also been found to be effective against the Wuhan virus. From down in the comments it is noted that “hydroxychloroquine did show excellent results just for prophylaxis of diabetes” in a paper from April, 2019. So it seems that diabetic drugs are effective against the Wuhan virus, perhaps all of them. This is due to reduced conversion of sugars to fat. Chloroquine combines that effect with being a zinc ionophore.
Somebody funded the hit jobs on chloroquine and metformin but there has been no interest in finding out what motivated these. The lesson from this is that medical researchers are quite happy to cause the deaths of tens of thousands, if you cross their palms with silver. So you can imagine how readily climate scientists can keep up their fraud – nobody dies straight away and they may not be proved wrong for decades.
Now back to Dr Fauci. In September he and his sidekick Morens published the latest iteration of their 2004 paper. Fauci’s weltanschauung is succinctly put in this paragraph from the September, 2020 paper:
The COVID-19 pandemic is yet another reminder, added to the rapidly growing archive of historical reminders, that in a human-dominated world, in which our human activities represent aggressive, damaging, and unbalanced interactions with nature, we will increasingly provoke new disease emergences. We remain at risk for the foreseeable future. COVID-19 is among the most vivid wake-up calls in over a century. It should force us to begin to think in earnest and collectively about living in more thoughtful and creative harmony with nature.
What does that remind us of? It reminds us of the Unabomber’s manifesto which stated in part that modernity has,
“…subjected human beings to indignities, has led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and has inflicted severe damage on the natural world.”
Fauci’s writing style is better than the Unabomber’s but otherwise there is no difference. But now we have motivation. Why would Fauci send all that money to the Wuhan lab knowing that they would use it to manipulate bat viruses to make them infectious in humans?
He is a global warmer and the warmers have a big problem. The world has failed to heat up as predicted, instead remaining stubbornly pleasant. The appearance of the Wuhan virus suggests (at least to those who beleiev such things) that Nature is taking its revenge on humans for not living in harmony with it. Dr Fauci, with the means and the motivation, just gave it a little help along.
President Trump has said that China should be made to pay for the Wuhan virus. Not so fast. It is possible that a bit of investigation may find that the origin was just down the road at 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland, where Dr. Fauci works.
It has been said that global warming has yet to kill anybody. In all likelihood that remains true but belief in global warming has now killed over a million people.
If you think that is a bit far-fetched, consider that Voltaire predicted just such an eventuality when he said ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.’ Global warming is the biggest absurdity of the modern era – it can’t happen in theory and hasn’t happened in practice. A big absurdity begets a proportionate atrocity.
David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare
Sadly, gain of function research wasn’t banned in 2012.
As noted, its risks were recognized in 2014, when funding for such dangerous “research” was temporarily suspended. This meant that “Bat Woman” Shi Zhengli decamped from UNC to the new French-built BSL-4 lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The Obama Administration, under FauXi’s urging, restarted GoF “work” in 2015, which wasn’t finally halted until under Trump in 2018. But by then it was too late.
The WuWHOFlu virus came from the WIV. The only question is whether by accident or on purpose.
https://www.med.unc.edu/orfeome/files/2018/03/a-sars-like-cluster-of-circulating-bat-coronaviruses-shows-potential-for-human-emergence.pdf
Smoking gun paper from 2015 with UNC colleagues.
Further detailed genomic analyses confirmed the a-typical E-protein differences, the presence of a ‘furin linkage’ & 4 separate human HIV segments in the spike-head – none being found in any bat viruses with high human homology, etc, etc…
Lack of faecial bacterial residues found in RaTG13 ( less than 10 %) vs normal faecial bacterial residues always found in ‘natural’ corona viruses ALL but prove that RaTG13 was faked to cover up the source ; ‘made in Wuhan’….
Thanks for picking up David’s mistaken claim that GoF was “outlawed”. Obama declared a *moritorium* on GOVT funding of such research. It was NOT made illegal or even restricted for non-govt research. It was simply a rupture of govt funding for such work, in the US, for an undefined period.
I also think that David’s attempt to link FauXi ( like that one ) being a warmist as a factor is rather tenuous and counter productive. I’m sure there are plenty of greens applauding Covid-19 and hoping it will exterminate 50% of the human “virus” infesting Earth but simple speculation of FauXi’s world view and motivations is pretty flimsy and going nowhere.
This discussion needs to remain focused on exposing the genetically manipulated origin of this virus and getting GoF recognised and banned internationally.
Rather than worrying about winding up the Russians and tearing up successful arms control agreements, Trump and US in general should be looking at the bio-weapons threat coming from China instead of helping them develop it !!
Though the french Pasteur Institute were the main technical advisers on Wuhan P4 lab, this was known and approved by the US. Shi Zhengli was working with Dr Baric in N. Carolina a major player in this field. Some US virologists are deeply implicated in this work which is probably why Trump got told to shut up about the “China virus” angle and demanding financial reparations.
It’s discussion that needs a lot more attention so thanks for David Archibold for posting on it.
“…simple speculation of meFaucistopheles’ world view and motivations
is pretty flimsy and going nowhere.”
How so? There were the vaccinated gay lifestyle adeherents in combination with the
spurious HIV diagnosis and the poison pills AZT.
(Magic Johnson proved his magic by not taking AZT and recovering from HIV)
And now this scenario straight from a spy novel, with our favorite evil garden gnome.
How about granting him a passing interest into eugenics? Can you allow for that much?
The guy is a gun for hire, and he already has 2 notches on his pistol.
What?
Gimme a break.
In his own words:
“And I said, “How am I going to live for a long time?,” because [that’s] the main thing that’s on my mind. He said, “Well, the first thing you have to do is take your meds,” and I said,” OK, I can do that.” And the second thing he said was, “You’ve got to be comfortable with your new status.”
This is your doctor?
Yes, this [is] Dr. [Michael] Mellman. And so I said, “OK.” “And you have to have a positive attitude and work out,” and I said, “OK.” So he said, “Let me get you in touch with a leading doctor in HIV and AIDS, Dr. [David] Ho, and also you can talk to him.” And basically Dr. Ho said, “You’re going to be fine.” There’s a lot of drugs coming down the pipeline, because at that time AZT was the only thing out at that time, but he said there was a lot of drugs coming behind that.”
And so we ran a couple of different series of blood tests, and then he got back to me and prescribed what I had to take and how much of it, and it’s really been great being under the care of Dr. Ho. …
Did you ever have any side effects?
I never had any side effects. I am one of those — and I think what helped me, too, is I kept working out, and when it could have been tough for me in terms of that, I really busted through that tough period because I wasn’t going to let it get me.
I kept working out on the treadmill, and I kept lifting weights, and I kept running and playing basketball, and I think that I was able to deal with the medicine. I think when you first start taking that much medicine, it does change you and your body somewhat, and so I had to just get used to the change, but after four or five months of that, my system got used to it. I got used to it, and I just adjusted to it, and it was fine after that.
Do you get pill fatigue?
Of course, anybody would. But I think that I was following the program because it was working for me, and I think that Dr. Ho answering all the questions and being available at any time, especially that first year, too, because I had so many questions. ”
“Expand on that a little bit, because it is happening everywhere. That’s what we’ve discovered. Stigma, discrimination — small and large acts of discrimination are the big problem.
… I think that hopefully the administration can help and crack down on people who are doing that. Corporations and individuals, store owners or whatever it is and whoever it is, and then, you know, AIDS Healthcare [Foundation] does a wonderful job. If you can’t afford your medicine, then they give it to you for free.
So we need more and more organizations like that, and more funding from the government to keep doors like that open who are taking care of people who can’t afford medicine to pay for their meds. I’ve been really fighting that. That’s been one of the battles, because it’s important that people can just concentrate on their status and not have to deal with all this discrimination that’s going on.
So now you’ve got to deal with this problem and your HIV and AIDS problem, and that’s sometimes too much to bear.”
It is uncurbable.
But there are very effective antiviral multidrug therapies that keep a person from progressing to full blown AIDS.
With no drugs, it takes most people 10+ years after getting infected before they develop AIDS.
He took what was available, which was AZT, until the better stuff came along about five years later.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/20-years-after-hiv-announcement-magic-johnson-emphasizes-i-am-not-cured/
Dr. Li-Meng Yan, the Chinese (Hong Kong) virologist who wrote (with 3 co-authors) this paper – https://zenodo.org/record/4028830#.X1_G1mhKg2z – cites the paper you linked.
When I first read the UNC “gain of function” paper back in May, I noticed 3 of the co-authors were from Wuhan. Godspeed to Dr. Yan and her colleagues in unravelling some hard evidence to pin this on such research … and the Chinese lab. The academy in this area needs a mandatory course in the WHOLE POINT of Mary Shelley’s book – Frankenstein.
You can hear about it from the horses mouth – Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance.
It is quite long as he brags about their work on Bat viruses, but the money quotes are around the last 10-15 minutes wher he talks about collecting all the different bat viruses to work on.
The one possibility that can be ruled out is the ChiCom fable of natural transmission via pangolins. Horseshoe bats in Hubei don’t have the precursor virus, which came from the far SE. The first people affected had no connection to the seafood market, and neither horseshoe bats nor pangolins were on sale there last summer, fall and winter.
That leaves accidental release of a strain of the bat CoV collected far away but studied at the lab, which somehow on its own evolved lung cell-entry, or its cell invasion capability was evolved by lab “researchers” via GoF techniques. The latter case could again be an unintentional escape, or intentional release.
The penultimate name on the authors’ list of that paper, Zhengli-Li Shi, is the director of the Wuhan Level 4 laboratory. The media called her ‘Bat Lady’ but she had all the knowledge and probably the virus culture from UNC Chapel Hill.
The WIV bat lab was hazardous:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1243000/coronavirus-latest-lab-leak-infected-bat-attack-outbreak-patient-zero-bioweapon
Presumed Patient Zero, Huang Yanling, a grad student at the WIV, is still missing:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12476233/patient-zero-scientist-wuhan-lab/
I read an article in early January 2020 which stated someone from the lab was selling the test bats to some vendor at the live meat market in Wuhan. How true it was, I don’t know but I wouldn’t dismiss it either.
It’s not uncommon to sell lab animals to food markets in China. However, there is little to no demand for tiny insectivorous bats. In Asia and Africa, people primarily consume large fruit-eating bats. Possibly microbats are made into soup, but evidence of this doesn’t exist.
The CPC story that viruses from microbats and pangolins combined in the Wuhan market is a blatant lie. Neither mammalian group was on sale there late last year (if ever), and the first WuWHOFlu patients had no connection with the market.
Commies lie. That’s what they do. And k!ll.
“Commies lie. That’s what they do. And k!ll.”
John; Not just ‘Commies’ lie,.. most fervent people in politics (left right & center), religion, banking & commerce lie & kill (directly or indirectly).
My reply appears lost in cyberspace.
Maybe a moderator can rescue it.
Note that these bats on the menu in Indonesia are megabats:
Ummmm, no bat corona viruses with high human homology contain a ‘furin linkage’…go figure….
Been to China, talked to Chinese – less meat on a bat than a chicken wing – not worth the effort of chewing
True of microbats, such as that from which SARS virus comes. Megabats, largely fruit-eaters, are a different matter.
According to Dr. Li-Meng Yan, one of the top virologists in China/Hong Kong, the Chinese government intentionally manufactured and released the COVID-19 virus that led to mass shutdowns and deaths across the world. Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a top virologist from China actually worked on the virus, and turned whistleblower and told Fox News host Tucker Carlson this and has appeared twice now on his TV show. She escaped Hong Kong in April and is in hiding in the USA, presumably under USA Gov’t care. After she started questioning the official CCP version of events from Hong Kong in March/April.
Carlson specifically asked Dr. Li-Meng Yan whether she believed the Chinese Communist Party released the virus “on purpose.” “Yes, of course, it’s intentionally,” she responded on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
She is either making this up, or it has a lot of truth to it. I tend to believe the latter, considering how everything unfolded.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/chinese-virologist-government-intentionally-coronavirus
“She is either making this up, or it has a lot of truth to it.”
My view is that there is the full range of possibilities, everything between, “She is exactly and precisely correct” to, “She is just plain wrong”, and from, “She is 100% honest” to, “She is making it all up” and also everything from “She has no reason to lie or to hate the CCP so much it is clouding her judgement” to “She has many reasons to lie and absolutely hates the CCP”.
At this point we have an assertion.
Assertions are logically not limited to the two possibilities you mention, that either she is making it up, or she is mostly or completely correct.
I watched both of her appearances on Tucker Carlson’s show, several times each.
Besides for the fact that her heavy accent makes her exact words impossible (for me) to hear at several points, she did not present a shred of evidence, or even make a compelling case.
She seems sincere and I do not get the impression she was being disingenuous.
But there is a lot of real estate between being sincere and being spot on regarding each of her assertions.
“she did not present a shred of evidence, or even make a compelling case”: she published a paper that is full of evidence — have you not read it?
Nope.
It sounded to me like she had said she will be publishing, but I could not hear very clearly and not enough to tell if she said when and where.
Got a link or reference?
I do know, because we discussed it here and everywhere else last Winter, that ten minutes after we heard about the virus, a bunch of people shoved out preprints asserting that they knew and could tell for sure that the virus was manufactured, but the evidence they cited was quickly shot down and they were forced to retract, and after that there were other papers from virologists that looked at the genome and saw not sign that the virus was spliced up from parts like “Frankenstein Monster with a monkey hand yada yada yada…”
Probably deserves a read, although to be honest, is beyond my pay grade. I learnt a lot from your commenting last spring and would be interested in your opinion on this paper, that Dr. Li-Meng Yan co-authored with 2 other scientists. No one doubts that research was being done on SARS type viruses at the lab next to the wet market…it whether it was designed and utilized as a weapon, or even accidentally released after that. Perhaps even by other hostile forces within China that are not aligned with the CCP just to cause them no end of grief. Comrade Xi is an absolute dictator in a totalitarian regime and respected out of fear, not out of love by many in China.
https://zenodo.org/record/4028830#.X4uMZi-95n7
My first instinct from her appearance on Tucker Carlson was she was a disgruntled Hong Kong agitator, but being a prominent Chinese virologist that actually was part of the high level team of virologists from China working with WHO in China/Hong Kong, it does give her credibility to speak to the subject. Not to mention they arrested her Mother in China as an attempt to silence her. If there is any truth to this that it was a deliberate CCP military operation, then that would be tacit to declaring war on the world and the USA in particular. Maybe things went sideways; we don’t know the whole story and what they are saying is to examine all the evidence instead of suppressing even talking about it.
Dr. Li isn’t from HK. Her English would be better if she were.
She’s from the major Yellow Sea coastal city of Qingdao.
Yes, you’re right John. She also got her doctorate in Ophthalmology from mainland China where she is from, but a researcher in Immunology. She was assigned to the WHO H5 reference lab at the Centre of Influenza Research at Hong Kong University (HKU) On Dec 31st/19, but had been at HKU on and off from 2012 where she married her husband then, who is also a researcher for WHO. Don’t look at the Wiki page for Dr. Yan…completely hostile and written off as a political quack, tied to Falun Gong. She published this paper through the Rule of Law Society, founded by Steve Bannon, although some of her other papers are published by The Lancet. She is a credible scientist and studies in this field of research.
This interview with her in The Week is printed out as her english is hard to decipher, but is a description of events as they unfolded from Dec/19 to April/19. Luckily for her, she was able to escape HK for USA and is now in hiding in New York writing her second paper. Given everything that happened with China, WHO, CDC et al, it will be interesting to see if this gains traction or gets blocked by the powers that be. If it is true, hard to see how the world can carry on business as usual with Red China. Everything points to some kind of cover up.
https://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2020/10/01/made-in-china.html
Meant Dr. Yan.
She and her colleagues have been accused of being ChiCom plants, meant to scare the world over the regime’s bioweapon power.
Dubious to highly unlikely.
Personally, I liked her…I do like her.
She is very pretty and obviously very intelligent.
Her story of getting out of where she was and into the US is very compelling and I have every sympathy and respect for what she has gone through.
What has been reported to have happened to her mom/family is terrible and outrageous, but sadly not surprising and it is entirely credible.
But none of that means I am willing to just believe it all hook line and sinker.
I am not saying I think she is lying or does not know what she is talking about.
I just do not think any such story should be automatically taken as factual without carefully looking at all the evidence and hearing from other people who do the same sort of work she does about what they think.
Not saying they should be automatically believed either.
I think of it sort of like being on a jury and hearing the details of a shocking crime, and the prosecutor has just given his opening arguments.
That is not the time to make up one’s mind.
Read her paper. The first interview with Carlson has many points of evidence. She supplied a reference document which was linked to the web interview, presenting her evidence.
A sample of warnings against GoF:
From 2014:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/academy-meeting-risky-virus-studies-struggles-find-common-ground
And 2015:
https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-%201.18787
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK285579/
And 2016:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4996883/
And 2018:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2018.00021/full
Wallace Pratt on the ‘oil in the mind’ quote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Pratt
In high school, I wrote:
Gold is where you find it: in rivers, creeks and streams.
Keep on looking for it, awake and in your dreams.
Wow!
That’s one concocted story if I ever saw one. The skeptical side of the coin doesn’t need to make stuff up.
Concocted, poorly written, meandering, contradictory gibberish.
The France Soir chart of deaths in Switzerland doesn’t appear to be anything like the deaths in Switzerland shown by worldometer:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/switzerland/
No corroboration of the satellite images…
Not just October imagery, but hospital data from August, from the notoriously Rightwing BBC:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52975934
Coronavirus: Satellite traffic images may suggest virus hit Wuhan earlier
I should say observations of hospital parking lots, not “data”.
PS: I know that coronaviruses aren’t flu viruses, although similar. I went for the rhyme.
Both are enveloped, single-stranded RNA viruses, but CoVs are positive-sense, while flu viruses are negative, and segmented, ie their genetic material come in several parcels rather than a single long sequence.
Negative-sense RNA is complementary to the viral mRNA, thus a positive-sense RNA must be produced by an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase from it before translation, similarly as with DNA. Thus, it must first be transcribed into a positive-sense RNA to acts as an mRNA. Hence, a flu virion must carry an RNA polymerase inside it.
John
Are you saying that one is biology and the other is technology?
No. There are many naturally occurring CoVs. The Betacoronavirus genus is mostly from bats, with one line from rodents. It includes not only the SARS, MERS and WuWHOFlu viruses, but two of the four CoVs which cause the majority of adult colds.
What I’m saying is that Shi or a colleague found a bat virus in SE China, far from Wuhan, related to the SARS virus, which they then subjected to directed evolution, ie gain of function “research” in ferrets as human lung models. At first this devil’s work was conducted at UNC, paid for by US tax dollars, then at WIV, still supported by American taxpayers, thanks to FauXi.
I was just pointing out the natural differences between two RNA virus (Realm Riboviria) clades, CoVs and Flu A.
I submit then ‘it’ got out on the back of some lab assistant’s shoe.
What’s the end game for the CCP to release it into the wild?
Turmoil?
According to Worldometer, China is still only showing 3 deaths per million.
To tanks the economies of countries which oppose the CCP’s ambitions for global dominance, and ideally to unseat Trump.
Comparative viral phylogenies
Novel Coronavirus:
Realm: Riboviria
Kingdom: Orthornavirae
Phylum: Pisuviricota
Class: Pisoniviricetes
Order: Nidovirales
Family: Coronaviridae
Subfamily: Orthocoronavirinae
Genus: Betacoronavirus
Subgenus: Sarbecovirus
Species: Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus
Strain: SARS-CoV-2
Influenza A:
Realm: Riboviria
Kingdom: Orthornavirae
Phylum: Negarnaviricota
Class: Insthoviricetes
Order: Articulavirales
Family: Orthomyxoviridae
Genus: Alphainfluenzavirus
Species: Influenza A virus
Strains: Many, including those descended from H1N1 (Spanish flu)
Even the 2009 Swine Flu was closely descended from Spanish flu, but obviously much less infective and lethal, as is the norm in pathogen evolution. The 1957 Asian and 1968 Hong Kong flus were more mutated.
The “Nega| phylum includes negative-sense RNA viruses.
In Baltimore’s classification system, all double-stranded RNA viruses are lumped together in Class III, but that’s a paraphyletic group, not a true natural clade taxon. The various ds RNA viruses each evolved from a different ss ancestor:
https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Microbiology/Book%3A_Microbiology_(Boundless)/9%3A_Viruses/9.3%3A_Classifying_Viruses/9.3B%3A_The_Baltimore_Virus_Classification#:~:text=Baltimore%20classification%20(first%20defined%20in,Sense%2C%20and%20method%20of%20replication.
John
Thank you
You’re welcome.
The envelopes of enveloped viruses come from the membranes of the cells they infect.
Bastids! That’s like plastids, only worse.
Viral proteins poke through these stolen envelopes. In CoVs, they form the eponymous crown-like spikes. In flu viruses, they’re more like knobs, plates or scales.
Hot off the presses!
Riboviria, containing RNA viruses, is probably a monphyletic clade, ie all members sharing a common ancestor:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00705-019-04306-w
Realm Riboviria (is) a likely monophyletic group encompassing all viruses with positive-strand, negative-strand and double-strand genomic RNA that use cognate RNA-directed RNA polymerases for replication.
Each double-stranded clade however probably evolved from a different single-stranded clade.
DNA viruses developed independently, so “virus” is paraphyletic.
The amount of disinformation about this coronavirus is mind boggling. Much of it is politically motivated.
There is a Spanish study on Vitamin D with a huge effect size. It’s a small study but the effect size is so gigantic that the results are real or it has to be outright fraud. link
Then there is this story which casts doubt on the relationship between Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19. It has this to say about the Spanish study:
Sorry folks, but the effect size trumps your objections.
Did these people have some motivation for poo-pooing Vitamin D? Why yes they did. People of color are more likely to be Vitamin D deficient and also more likely to suffer from Covid-19. That goes against their chosen message.
These people are swine but they aren’t the only ones trying to use the pandemic to push a political message. I wonder which of the rings of Hell, Dante would have assigned them to.
Yes. If Fauci cared about saving lives rather than his waning career and reputation, he’d have urged everyone with dark complexions to take vitamin D supplements, zinc and an ionophore. But, Oh Noes!, the latter would include dreaded HCQ, the ionophore which dare not say its name.
Never mind that Africa’s relatively low rate of COVID death owes in part to HCQ, commonly taken against malaria there. South Africa has more COVID fatality since it’s mainly out of the malarial zone, yet still, as subtropical, gets plenty of high UV sunlight.
Black Lives Don’t Matter if they don’t advance the anti-Trump agenda.
Of course in the NH winter and spring when the pandemic began, pale people also needed vitamin D, being bundled up and often indoors, with less UV when outdoors.
I was driving on I-95 and I saw an anti-Trump billboard trying to link him with COVID-19 deaths. At that moment it hit me: The fear porn about this virus wasn’t about destroying Trump’s economy, but about saying Trump is a poor leader. I see it all the time on the Twitter — “Trump lied, people died”, “200,000 dead!”, “Trump’s America!” (Of course, never you mind that people with terminal conditions like cancer, gunshot wounds, motorcycle accidents, drug overdoes, or massive heart attacks are being labeled as COVID-19 deaths. And never you mind that certain governors put sick people into nursing homes.)
At the time, Biden labeled Trump’s closing of air traffic with China as being xenophobic.
Now Biden says that had he been president, he would have stopped air traffic sooner and much more extensively.
Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore slammed the doors shut even before the new coronavirus had a name. For Taiwan, for which I have some direct knowledge, that meant they avoided lockdowns. Those places have remarkably better results than the rest of the developed world.
I’m coming to the conclusion that the lockdowns are like closing the barn door after the horses have run away.
Taiwan also warned the world when WHO wouldn’t. Some RoC citizens learned what was happening in Wuhan, so could take early action, unlike countries dependent on ChiCom puppet WHO.
Of course WHO officials don’t recognize the legitimate government of the free Republic of China.
Whose fault was it in every other country?
Covid was a no fault non event in 90% of the countries.
Not gonna get much traction with that reply.
Worldmeters has a long lost with many new cases and death around the world every day.
No matter what significance ones gives it, that is the data that everyone is looking at.
Simply saying it does not exist will not win any public arguments.
People are saying the deaths in the US are Trump’s fault.
The obvious come back to such an assertion, short of a detailed explanation of how ridiculous the entire idea is, is to simply point out that all of Europe and lots of other countries around the world have roughly similar rate of deaths when counted as deaths per million of population…once one takes into account that there are no international standards of how to count deaths and we know that some countries are doing it way differently, some places are utterly untrustworthy for other reasons, and some places are third world hellholes that no one should expect reliable number of a confidence level that permits direct comparisons.
In poor countries with no robust health care infrastructure, people mostly die at home.
Even in NYC at the peak of their outbreak, estimates were that a large percentage of people died in their beds at home. And only hospital deaths were counted.
And those numbers are for several reasons suspect.
So there is good reason to believe some deaths were not counted and others were inflated…all at the same time.
Because hospitals are incentivized to maximize covid deaths, and even official US guidelines explicitly called for counting any person who died with covid, not just those that died of it.
And some places like, IIRC, Germany to name one, have issued reports that they count deaths only when the primary and proximate cause of death was covid. IOW, they did not count old people or frail people that were one sniffle away from kicking the bucket anyhow.
The US, India and Brazil together have more Covid-19 deaths than the ENTIRE rest of the word.
The top ten countries for death represent over 70% of the deaths.
What kind of global pandemic is that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak
I am sure that the numbers being reported from each country are not strictly or even remotely comparable, many are very suspect, and some surely are flat out lies.
Here in the US, something like 1/3 or more of the deaths have been in a few states in the Northeast US, and many of them seem to have been caused by what seems like criminally insane policies, like sending people with covid to nursing homes crowded with very old and not very healthy people.
Meanwhile millions of people are suffering from the effects of being confined, many are not getting needed healthcare like cancer screenings, vaccinations, routine doctor visits, chemotherapy, etc.
The whole thing is a bizarre tragedy.
Dante’s Seventh Circle of Hell was reserved for instigators of Violence against people or property, violence against nature or art [maybe Antifa, BLM thugs, statue-topplers and history-erasers]
Eighth Circle reserved for those who practice Fraud – false prophets, liars, seducers, panderers, hypocrites, sowers of discord [or those who claim to be scientists, but violate the scientific method by searching for facts to back a conclusion]
Ninth (final) Circle reserved for those who practice Treachery – Betrayers of special relationships – Judas, Cain, Brutus [or those who swear an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution]
I don’t know about you, but these personality flaws sound like entrance requirements for Democrat Party leadership
I see that in the UK they are looking for volunteers for a Vitamin D trial.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54526652
If the CDC and its minions Fauxci et alI had simply endorsed the time-honored technique off fighting spreading infection by quarantining the sick( a relatively small number) instead if a lockdown on the healthy(a very large number) almost all of the side effects of the current virus would not have occurred.
We’d all be celebrating its gradual disappearance. Instead we nearly wrecked the economy for political purposes of the rogue socialist/marxist segment primarily in the Democratic party.
The widespread “lockdown” was intended to wreck the economy and leave room for the social Democrats to recover control of the government. The President was supposed ti crumble under the strain, but he didn’t. Instead he’s fought it at best he can with the fewer people that realize what is going on.
Good tie-in with the Unabomber.
The Unabomber Manifesto is not that hard to read. It is not hard to find on the web. It is pretty well-reasoned, even if most of us would not agree with some points of view. It draws upon a range of recognized philosophical / ethical idea. I will have to read some of Fauci’s stuff and review the Unabomber stuff to see how clear it is that these to might have this animism philosophy.
Beyond that: this is not a “human-dominated world.” Neglect your yard at the wrong two weeks of year, and you are playing catch-up for months. Most of us can see mother nature taking over buildings, etc. A roadway is being attacked and dismantled as soon as the concrete is dry.
Who is dominating? Maybe ants – the quadrillion of them. Maybe bacteria, with their last laugh over most any other living organism. Beyond counting. Not this mere 7 billion humans.
What lesson can we take from the fact that life is teeming at Chernobyl? link
Human life is teeming in impoverished parts of Africa. What quality of life and lifespans do they have? Same question for Chernobyl.
Wildlife is doing much better in Chernobyl than it is in places where human population is high or even moderately high.
ICISI, a huge area around the reactor site at Chernobyl has been designated a wildlife refuge by the Ukraine government. People can go in there and shoot photos all they want, but the critters and plants are thriving. The river is full of fish and there are several packs of very healthy wolves, never mind prey animals galore. Migratory birds use it as a rest stop now.
And people who used to live and work in Chernobyl (the town ) have been moving back into the general area and gone back tgo housekeeping and gardening.
Cheer up, willya? You might try gardening yourself. Taking care of plants is soothing.
The slums of 3rd world hellholes thrive with people, but I wouldn’t say they are thriving. Likewise, Chernobyl wildlife may be abundant, but little is known about their overall state of health. Have birth rates increased to compensate for reduced lifespans? No one knows. So until that kind of research happens it’s too early to say everything’s hunky-dory with a wave of the hand.
If they are teeming, then the situation can’t be as bad as you wish to believe.
Secondly, first you declare that we don’t know enough about life around Chernobyl to draw and conclusions, then you declare as if it has already been proven that life expectancy for animals has been reduced. Contradict yourself much?
Do you have any evidence that wildlife is being harmed? Or is it just more of your standard assumption that even tiny increases in radiation must be deadly.
Yeah, there actually is research that wildlife is damaged in the Red Forest. Researcher from the Univ. of South Carolina. I’ll let you look it up.
Well, I just did me some research, and it seems there may be a problem.
See here:
You can also go into the nature preserve to hunt.
Not much wildlife has a life expectancy of 70+ years. Low radiation doses are less likey to cause noticeable damage in short lived critters. Also need to see what level of damage is done to genetics.
If this virus is an engineered bio-weapon, it’s pretty weak sauce. 74-year-old, overweight Trump beat it in 3 days; Melania treated herself with rest, vitamins and healthy food; Bannon their son might have had a fever; and I haven’t heard that any of the 34 or so White House staff who tested positive have had problems.
To serve as an economic bioweapon, the virus doesn’t need to be very lethal.
“COVID-19” (of hospitals) to the old group was extremely lethal during the “first wave” of this novel corona virus infection disease .
How could an “economic bioweapon” discriminate in that way???
No prob at all with children and the young!
(as a side note about you sharing information about the genetic code inside a virus;
the only thing that really matters there as far as the cell is concerned, is the ability of the cell to compile it.
If it can not compile it, it will not produce or reproduce it, regardless of other features.)
cheers
Medical malfeasance caused many of those deaths, not covid. Medical establishments foolishly abandoned decades of established medical practice to follow WHO guidelines and Chinese consensus, putting unfortunate patients in harm’s way.
Yes, this so much. Nations opted in with WHO guide lines and rules, and
the WHO saw fit to change those rules. For example what constitutes a pandemic.
Death by NGO, again and again.
“How could an “economic bioweapon” discriminate in that way???”
Excellent point.
From an evil viewpoint, getting rid of old people would strengthen the economy, but eliminate sources of knowledge – not that anyone listens to us old people. :-o)
Evil would want to target 25-55.
OTOH, if lockdown could be forecast, the impact on the economy could be expected to be devastating, as it has been. That reduces ability to export and produce weapons, and shifts focus.
An economic bioweapon works when its user fails to release vital information or allow others to find out on their own.
Lacking firm knowledge that the new virus preferentially attacks the old and sick, unlike some flu viruses, to include the “Spanish” and Asian pandemics, nor how it is transmitted, the CPC could count on lockdowns or at least greatly reduced expenditures on travel, tourism, hospitality, entertainment, etc.
Conveniently while cracking down on HK, East Turkestan, Tibet and Inner Mongolia and pressing illegal claims in the SCS, and expanding its debt slavery Belt and Road programs.
PS: Not bioengineered, but evolved via directed evolution using ferrets. Bioengineering suggests purposeful alteration of genetic sequences, rather than letting selection run its course.
Morbidly obese Chris Christy (sp?) went to the ICU for a week.
I heard 12 days in ICU. Not surprised because morbidly obese people are at greater risk for any respiratory illness.
Maduro is trolling it too… 🙂
Barron, not Bannon. God, I hope Bannon was not his son.
Steve Bannon is too old to be Trump’s son (unless Trump was quite the prodigy at age 6, but you obviously intended to say Barron.
Follow the ‘Zelenko protocol’ – Zinc – zinc ionophore – antibiotic. Close to 100% recover in less than a week. This was an obvious protocol from research done by the NIH. Several care home doctors gave this treatment to their patients and nobody died.
The response of course was for politicians to ban the most widely published ionophore hydroxychloroquine a 50+ year old antimalarial now used for Lupus. The political banning and the twitter/facebook censoring of hydroxychloroquine has been criminal. When the ‘Front Line Doctors’ gave an ad hoc press briefing saying that COVID-19 could be cured using Zinc – zinc ionophore – antibiotic. the video of the briefing was banned by the ‘social media’ twitter/facebook/you tube within minutes. Sentencing thousands to death. Pharmacies were instructed to refuse to provide HCQ to doctors. Clinical trials were set up but instead of giving the treatment to outpatient level patients the trials waited until there was a cytokine storm, they also deliberately failed to include zinc in the treatment.
So this may have been released ‘deliberately’ by the Chinese and spread by them – but the deliberate banning of effective therapeutics has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and is part of the same ‘attack’.
One of the possible reasons is that there is so much push back against the Zinc – zinc ionophore – antibiotic protocol can be found in another NIH paper: Search on: Journal.ppat.1001176. The title is:
From the first lines of the abstract:
So the Zelenko protocol can ‘efficiently impair’ replication of Corona viruses, polio viruses and influenza viruses.
You can see why the vaccine industry would not want people aware of a therapeutic that would treat viruses that currently are seen as only possible to stop with vaccines. Imagine a short treatment costing $30 for influenza if you catch it. Why would you even need vaccines?
A few months ago, six Chinese researchers were ousted from the NIH facility and sent packing. They were working on the Covid-19 bug and how to “kill” it. Fauci was the one in charge. Now I wonder if they were there for other reasons and spoke too freely about something related to CV-19.
OK,great. I see the Dark Ages have arrived on this website. First you say, with NO evidence, that the SARS2 coronavirus is artificial. Then you accuse Fauci, with NO evidence, of inventing it. The next stop for you is clearly deciding that the Jews are poisoning the water. Then we’ll all be right back comfy in the 14th century with no science or rationality to worry about.
Nice way to totally crater any credibility this site had left. Way to go!
It’s not totally “artificial”. It derives from a bat virus related to the naturally occurring SARS virus. Its infectiousness and lethality in humans was enhanced by gain of function research in labs.
No one accused FauXi of inventing it. He did however fund the work which produced it, with other Western culprits.
Please show how these facts in any way are comparable to false charges against Medieval Jews. They are facts, as shown by allocations of funds and public arguments for continued GoF “research” against those wiser heads in the virology and epidemiological communities who argued against this errant insanity.
Forgotten what you wrote already?—it was” the COVID-19 virus is artificial so someone conceived it in his mind before it was created in the lab.” But you give NO evidence that the vinous is not a product of natural evolution. Or don’t you believe in the existence of the process of evolution?
You give NO evidence of how a grant issued to STUDY the natural evolution of coronaviruses is REALLY a grant to artificially develop a new virus.
In your reply you say no one is accusing Fauci, but—you wrote: “Why would Fauci send all that money to the Wuhan lab knowing that they would use it to manipulate bat viruses to make them infectious in humans?” Sounds like an accusation of mass murder. Of course you present NO evidence that any such research was done to create an artificial virus, let alone that Fauci knew about such –fictitious—research.
I’d say that those who accused the Jews of poisoning the water supply probably thought they had better evidence than the non-existent evidence you presented.
Those who write this garbage and those who give it a platform are encouraging other loonies to act on it.
Eric, do your homework or put your head back in the sand.
– Already established viral program and infrastructure in Wuhan in place
– Obama moratorium imposed in USA for gain of function research
– FauXi et al say “..let’s try thing gain of function stuff in a place without ethics” ie Wuhan
– FauXi funds them with a paltry $3.7mil – dubious amount if we believe that’s all they received
– yadda yadda – research progresses and POOF – a virus from bat cave 1000km away seems to be the culprit at a wet market, 6 blocks away from the Wuhan Virology complex, in Wuhan
– US state dept says this Virology complex is as porous as a surgical mask’s effectiveness to stopping a virus
– during initial ‘outbreak’ WHO and US authorities say “…can we come in and help you check things out and let’s source this nasty virus”
– CCP says “…naw never mind, besides we already bleached the sh!t out the market so nothing to see here”
– somehow, someway – people get samples of this ‘naturally evolved virus’ and low and behold there are bits and pieces (aka DNA) from other viruses like HIV – despite other samples from this Bruce Wayne bat cave NOT having these bits and pieces
– CCP says “all you Wuhan district residents shelter in place – no one leaves the district for destinations within the country – however if your flying out of China – here’s your hat and coat, sorry to see you go”
The above are just facts – not conspiracy – we see connections – you see none – all these facts are purely random by your synthesis (and sandy hair)
I’m not sure what you folks are exactly saying here. Are we supposed to believe that Anthony Fauci is part of an international conspiracy to commit mass murder?
Maybe I’m way off base here, but I thought that the rationale behind gain-of-function research was to evaluate how likely it is that existing viruses will become deadly, and then to attempt to find treatments and cures. I don’t think that the imagined benefits outweigh the risks (Captain Obvious). But you really think it was a Dr. Evil plot?
FauXi doesn’t need to be in on an international murther plot. He is however guilty of negligent incompetence in funding such dangerous “research”, which has never produced any useful results, at great and obvious risk of a pandemic. Wise virologists and epidemiologists have been sounding the alarm against this threat for as long as GoF research on potentially highly infectious and lethal viruses has been so idiotically going on.
FauXi has never worked as a medical doctor since his residency in 1968, but always as a government bureaucrat.
SARS was far more lethal, and only slightly less contagious.
SARS killed 9.6 percent of those it infected.
What about it indicates enhanced lethality?
MERS is even more lethal. 35% on average.
This web site publishes all variaties of articles. If you disagree you are free a comment or just leave and not come back. Fauci is an admitted liar on the most important COVID masks issue who then wonders why people are not buying his bullshit. This site is as far from the “Dark Ages” as you can get.
Yes, FauXi has admitted to lying about the efficacy of masks. He was also responsible for faulty test kits at the beginning of the pandemic. Why does he still have his job?
John Tillman writes:
“[Fauci] was also responsible for faulty test kits at the beginning of the pandemic.”
Most people do not know why the original USA test kit failed. Our first COVID-19 test also tested for SARS (SARS-CoV-1), the original COVID from 2002-2004.
The SARS test failed (a reagent problem, as I recall). The COVID-19 test and the other parts of the first test worked fine.
Now that we know about the Gain of Function research on SARS, does it seem suspicious that Fauci would insist on testing for both viruses?
Or, is there a justifiable reason for doing that?
Steve Z.
October 17, 2020 at 5:12 am
Maybe as an attempt on;
“killing” SARS CoV-2, as it completely out of the script, an uninvited guest…
and if real and true as it propagated, it would mess around with fatality rate.
cheers
The first test kits had contaminated water that was supposed to be used to calibrate the test, or something like that.
But it took weeks for them to pinpoint the problem.
It turned out the tests were fine.
But the big screw up was that they violated their own standards and procedures in making this mistake.
Plus they had previously put in place rules that only they could manufacture tests and/or analyze the results, which was ridiculous.
They were inept and slow and dumb.
And on top of everything else, they issued orders that only people who had travelled to China or were in direct contact with someone known to be infected, could be tested.
They insisted against evidence that there was almost surely no asymptomatic transmission, even though they had zero specific info on this virus in that regard.
They ignored indications and people reporting that there was significant asymptomatic transmission, and in fact never changed their official position on that until recently!
They based this view on the observation that most commonly, with URI’s, a person is most infectious when they are sickest.
But there has for many decades been knowledge that asymptomatic transmission can occur in most common illnesses for at least a little while before overt symptoms become manifest in a patient, and that for many diseases, it is common for people to be infected and spread a disease while not themselves being sick.
In other words, they erred on the side of being careless when there was every reason not to make dangerous assumptions.
They erred on the side of underestimating the virus regarding other aspects/factors as well: They assumed without evidence that there was no aerosol transmission, when no one could have known that. In fact for most viruses in circulation that cause flu like illness and or common cold, no one in the world is very sure one way or the other how common fomite spreading is vs droplets or aerosols. Many carefully done clinical trials and studies have come to contradictory conclusions and findings across a wide range of respiratory infections.
I am hard pressed to find any work in that area going back decades, that is not confusing and contradictory with regard to comparing results in one study with those of another.
At various points in time, efforts have been made to spend a lot of money and pay a lot of volunteers to sit through long and multi phase direct challenge studies using every conceivable way if getting at the question of how and when these viruses are transmitted.
And in every case, the results were at odds not only with what was expected, but at odds with with other data within each study and between all of the many studies.
I posted a whole bunch of stuff on this exact issue starting back in early February right here.
And then their guidance on masks was just ridiculous.
And it is still ridiculous.
In the US people are talking about mandates but without any standards, and with no actual medical grade masks or respirators even allowed to be sold to the general public…TO THIS DAY!
They offer no guidance on protecting the eyes, no education about the limitations of mask use and how touching it and then then nose or eyes or mouth makes usage worthless.
Not that it matter much…because no masks of a known efficacy or medical filtration value are available…whosoever!
The ones for sale that look like surgical masks are all labelled dust masks and specifically labelled as not providing biological protection.
And apparently any piece of clothe is a mask…a bandana is a mask.
A turtleneck shirt pulled up is a mask.
No one is being even scolded for touching the damn things and then their face ten times a minute, even when they are so called experts and sanctimonious politicians screaming and whining and bleating about masks saving lives!
It is an absolute joke!
Not a funny one though.
Joe “I believe in THE science guy” Biden was on video giving a speech in front of his crowd of several bored hirelings, and pulls down his mask to cough on his hand and then pulls it back up to his face!
Because that is what is called science, and what all the experts recommend, and after all he is setting and example so…yeah…
And again…nothing about eye protection.
People were them below the nose.
But the literature makes it clear virus introduced into the mouth is orders of magnitude less likely to lead to infection that virus on the eyes or the opening of the nostrils! It is like we are in a Fellini film about a Kafka novel starring Inspector Clouseau!
In fact what we are living through makes that movie scenario look rational and quite serious and logical.
Everything about preventing transmission requires persnickety attention to every detail, like donning and doffing procedures, having the proper grade of equipment, continuously being conscious of hand sanitation during the whole time one is on public and relying on a mask for protection.
The only positive thing that can be said is, something is probably better then nothing, and reducing the amount of ingested virus if and when exposed almost surely will make a large difference.
But not as much as making sure everyone has enough vitamin D!
The director of the CDC last week stood in front of cameras and gave testimony, with a straight face and grave intonation, that the 50 cent dusk mask he was holding up would protect him far more than even a vaccine!
What a frickin lying fool!
Stop the world…I want to get off!
He cannot go ten seconds without touching and adjusting it, or pulling it down…and always touches it directly in the center of the face!
Joe Biden that is.
Because you know…science!
To that point Fauci says OK to date and vote but families must cancel Thanksgiving Dinner.
Those are mutual exclusive ideas.
He also said HQC was a particular unsafe and unproven drug.
…unsafe though probably 50 million doses are being consumed today in the Indian subcontinent for anti-malaria Rx
pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining…
Yeah, I lost all respect for Fauci on 04/03/2020 at roughly 1045 hrs for the most intellectually dishonest and dangerous statement that could have ever been stated during a pandemic. I began to dig into who he was.
You’ve cratered whatever credibility you had here, which of course was negative from the gitgo:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/nih-cancels-funding-for-bat-coronavirus-research-project-67486
Had you a shred of shame, honesty or credibility, you’d beg readers’ forgiveness, but of course you won’t, being a tool of the CPC.
The MSM is hopelessly inbred. Referencing their somewhat dubious work is not fact chacking.
Dosn’t this Chinese 2015 study describe exactly what we now have?
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
A C, the Nature-Medicine article (actually published as a “Letter”) certainly appears to indicate the need for oneself to get into BOHIC position as early as December 2015.
Zhengli-Li Shi, the Chinese “bat lady” virologist who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is clearly listed as one of that article’s authors. She was intimately involved in the dangerous “gain of function” research at WIV, research that had earlier been outlawed in the US and other Western countries.
If one needs a “smoking gun” to establish the origins of the current COVID-19 pandemic, just look at these verbatim quotes taken directly from the reference article text:
“Therefore, we synthesized the SHC014 spike in the context of the replication-competent, mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone (we hereafter refer to the chimeric CoV as SHC014-MA15) to maximize the opportunity for pathogenesis and vaccine studies in mice . . . To test the ability of the SHC014 spike to mediate infection of the human airway, we examined the sensitivity of the human epithelial airway cell line Calu-3 2B4 (ref. 9) to infection and found robust SHC014-MA15 replication, compa- rable to that of SARS-CoV Urbani (Fig. 1c).”
N.B., “pathogenesis” is med-speak for “the development of a disease and the chain of events leading to that disease” . . . now, why would one want to “maximize the opportunity” for that? And mice are the laboratory animals-of-preference for closely representing human susceptibilities to infectious diseases, especially those spread via airborne transmission.
If the purpose of such dangerous GOF research being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was to engineer a vaccine against the possible future NATURAL outbreak of such a “naturally evolved” virus (yeah, right), then it has been an utter failure . . . if instead its purpose was to develop a biological weapon to use against humans, it has been shown to be an outstanding success.
Outstanding success???
Don’t think so.
All it did was kill off old and sick.
Mostly old and sick.
Not exclusively.
Science is about being accurate and concise.
It is impossible to counter lies and exaggerations with other exaggerations in the other direction.
According to CDC data the over 75 demographic represents over 50% of the deaths, 65+ almost 80%, 55+ over 92%. That leaves less than 10% of the deaths for the ENTIRE rest of the population.
There are also statistics for comorbidity, by states and more.
Do the homework.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex
Nick Schroeder posted: “All it did was kill off old and sick.”
Well here’s the actual data—as opposed to armchair ramblings—for the US, as of 14 October 2020, provided by the CDC (ref: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex ) for the category of “Deaths with confirmed or presumed COVID-19, coded to ICD–10 code U07.1”
For all males and females age 54 years and less: 8.4% of all US deaths attributed to COVID-19.
For all males and females age 64 years and less: 21.2% of all US deaths attributed to COVID-19.
I suspect that the age-dependent mortality rates are similar in other countries on a percentage basis.
So, Nick, I can see that your definition of “old” is much different than mine. In your world, is everyone over the age of 40 “old”?
And since you offered no definition of what you mean by “sick”, there is no need for me to respond to you regarding that assertion.
BTW, it is interesting that you are using past tense when by all accounts the US and the many other countries in Earth’s northern hemisphere are presently experiencing a “second wave” of COVID-19 infection spread, likely associated with the onset of winter cold.
Finally, with the worldwide death count attributed to COVID-19 surpassing 1.1 million people, I stand by my statement that as a biological weapon, whether accidentally or intentionally released out of Wuhan, China, it has successfully demonstrated its virulence and staying power.
CDC data shows the 75+ demographic represented 57% of the deaths, 65+ 80%, 55+ 90%.
There is also a complicated table that looks at compounded comorbidity, multiple health issues plus Covid.
Comorbidity is a major factor. Trump remarked that many of these were already on death’s door step. The data bears him out.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex
About 2.8 million people die every year in the US, that’s and average of 7,600/day.
1,000/day of flues and other causes is just part of the cycle.
“…experiencing a “second wave” of COVID-19…”
ECDC data shows more like a second ripple.
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/download-todays-data-geographic-distribution-covid-19-cases-worldwide
Regarding U07.1 code, did you check this site?
https://web.archive.org/web/20200502180121/https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/U00-U85/U00-U49/U07-/U07.1
This code became effective on October 1, 2019. Not 2020. 6 months before WHO’s pandemic declaration.
This code is the guideline to describe the cause of death hospitals can use without autopsy for reimbursement purpose. English parliament approved on March 26, 2020 to go with this guideline and WHO notified the world to use this guideline. In my country, Japan, it was June when previous mortality was changed upward accordingly.
Since the death toll was inflated by this code, I am afraid that the argument based on the inflated mortality is useless. And, although you are talking about the second wave, it is PCR positive wave, isn’t it?
PCR positive is not infection because swab taken for PCR testing is the garbage of live and dead microbes and PCR amplifies unidentified active and inactive RNA.
“the chimeric CoV ”
She actually referred to it as a chimera?
Philip Mulholland asked: “She actually referred to it as a chimera?”
Assuming Philip is referring to Zhengli-Li Shi, she was listed as a co-author of the subject Nature-Medicine article, and I did provide a verbatim quote from that article that includes the phrase “we hereafter refer to the chimeric CoV as SHC014-MA15”.
Although Zhengli-Li Shi may not have written those exact words as part of her contribution to the article’s text, she certainly did not object strongly to it remaining there at the time of publication.
And, yes, as others much more knowledgeable than me have pointed out, the genetic makeup of COVID-19 has all the characteristics of a chimera, something that with near-certainty could not have arisen out of natural mutations/natural selection. That is, it was manufactured by combining multiple genetic content from separate species of infectious viruses . . . that is THE basic method of conducting gain-of-function research.
Nick S.
You said this:
“All it did was kill off old and sick”
You said it, not me, and when I correctly pointed out that this is an exaggeration in the direction of minimizing it, you quoted some numbers that confirmed exactly what I said and refuted what you said, and then told ME to do some research!
What a wind bag you are.
You say crap all the time that is simply untrue and state these falsehoods without qualification.
You find one single instance of me doing that.
I do not do that.
But you did.
It just seems pretty dumb to say the things you just said, when you could have just not said it.
New and relevant data arrive, new pictures and new avenues thought and new possibilities must be considered. The dots start getting connected. Some of these data are a matter of public record. Even, layperson like me can understand there is no way a virus fresh out of the jungle comes with a ready made mate for hACE-2 without incubation and direct manipulation. No host species needed.
Eric Lerner
October 16, 2020 at 6:14 pm
Dark Ages was a very devastating period in Europe.
Contrary to climatariat position, the main cause was the total collapse of the economic, politic and civic function structure of Europe at that time, due to total collapse of Rome… the Roman Republic.
Death and destruction dominated the population then, followed by the destructive and very fatal diseases.
Only in the case of such conditions, associated with drastic collapse of quality of leaving conditions can there bet mass health hazards with very high severity and fatality in the nature.
Devastating and butchering wars may and do have similar results..
The numbers do not lie.
The numbers clearly show that there happens to be two different COVID-19 diseases.
One very severe and lethal and the other non lethal.
The connection of SARS2 cornavirus to the very lethal one is very very small, completely out of the clause of causality.
Without SARS2 in the picture there still would have being the lethal disease, completely out of the norm.
In absence of something similar that caused Dark Ages, or absence of devastating wars, the next and “obvious” thing to explain it wold have being well, you may already guess it your self…
the man made climate change.
Oh well the Dark Ages already blamed on climate.
And it seems like Fauci already a key, being there done that…
the attempt of connecting this wide spread lethal health hazard to man made climate change.
As otherwise this wide big problem, the fatal “COVID-19” not natural… but very much man made outside the CO2 clause.
When we may not actually be able to find out the “mind” behind the SARS2 coronavirus,
we may be actually able to find out the minds behind the fatal “COVID-19” disease condition.
The signature of it is simple, an IDS signature… to wide and spread, beyond the normal.
At the scale observed and experienced it stands as totally artificial, non self propagating.
Technically in principle is very achievable to intentionally cause IDS. (Immuno Deficiency Syndrome)
It only takes for a method application to significantly jeopardize the symbiosis between pathogens and the host(s).
That is far far much easier and possible to achieve than engineering of a virus like SARS2 coronavirus.
But in its own will die out… and the only way to persist is by artificial induction repeat of the method(s).
The connection of the SARS2 coronavirus to the artificial lethal “COVID019” subjects this novel corona virus to the prospect of it being considered artificial, due to connection/reflection.
Oh well, just furthering more in what you dislike and may consider a conspiracy theory.
But still, do remember… in the end of the day numbers do not lie… people do.
Last time I checked, Fauci still not a number, and the guy quite devious and deceptive.
And he is not alone in these works.
The death toll in its main was real and far too spread, far too fast and far too high for a random normal IDS.
The first alarm bells rung in proposition of an IDS signature… before the discovery of the SARS2 cov.
cheers
The Roman Republic ended about 500 years before the Dark Ages. You mean Empire.
Really????
Yes, really. 45AD
Yes. Even the most cursory knowledge of Roman history would acquaint you with the fact that the Republic ended officially in 27 BC, but effectively at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Please fact check your comments before posting.
I’m sorry, but your comment displayed historical ignorance on so epic a scale that, if I were you, I might feel such shame as never to post here again.
But that’s your call.
Rich Davis
October 18, 2020 at 11:30 am
Ok, Rich
But happens to be that you and me in completely two different position about what constitutes as a Republic.
The Rome collapsed the moment the West Imperial House completely took over and completely dominated the Republic… creating a Void of power… where and when power sharing and power competition died.
Due to a very high corruption in the main power of the Republic.. the Roman Senate.
The Imperial House was simply a replacement for the Dictator Office in Rome, but the structure still in Rome functioned as a Republic in the nation and the state of Rome.
Only difference was that the emperor was not electable, therefore the Roman senate and the Roman military maintained their power in place… in full… even over territories outside the state of Rome.
The power struggle between the Imperial House and the Republic starts with the
Julius Caesar’s son crowned as an Emperor and keeps persisting till
the time of Attila the Hun.
The Roman Senate that murdered Julius Caesar, made his son an Emperor… go figure.
The murder of Julius Caesar, the regular whacking of emperors, the burning of Rome by Nero, the splitting of the
Imperial House power in two, east and west, the war of Attila against Imperial Rome, were
not some random fun adventures in history… but more a result of power struggle between Imperial power and the Republic of Rome.
Oh well, the brutal murder of Julius Caesar by the Rome senators was the first stepping stone for the Imperial Rome though.
It is not that difficult to say, in this context, that when Attila realized that the Republic of Rome had betrayed him, he retreated… and the Republic collapsed.
The power of the Roman Senate and the military of the state of Rome crushed, collapsed… powerless against the Imperial power.
The end of Rome.
Oh well, that is how I see it, maybe wrong, but that how it is for me thus far.
Just simply explaining my position in the point made in my first comment on this thread…
which very well may be wrong anyhow…
but it was meant as put.
cheers
John Tillman
October 18, 2020 at 8:06 pm
“Yes. Even the most cursory knowledge of Roman history would acquaint you with the fact that the Republic ended officially in 27 BC, but effectively at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.”
You know I guess, that Mark Antony was appointed as Rome’s Governor by Julius Caesar.
The first move to expansion of the Dictators office power over territories outside the State of Rome.
Technically Mark Antony was the right hand of Julius Caesar, Julius the Dictator for life of Rome, brutally murdered by Rome senators.
Same can be claimed about the last battle of Attila the Hun versus Rome… centuries later.
The republic effectively ended at that battle of Attila… with the Attila retreat.
Anyhow, just saying.
cheers
Cheers
The Western Roman Empire ended in AD 476. By then, the position of Western Roman Emperor wielded little military, political or financial power, and lacked effective control over the scattered Western domains that could still be described as Roman.
Yet, conventionally, the Western Roman Empire is said to have ended on 4 September 476, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus and proclaimed himself ruler of Italy.
The Republic, as noted, ended at the Battle of Actium, 2 September 31 BC, when Augustus Caesar’s forces defeated those Anthony and Cleopatra, if not earlier. The Senate of course continued to exist, but lacked the power to oppose emperors, who were supposedly just first among equals, but in practice wielded absolute power, until murthered or otherwise overthrown.
In the “Andromeda Strain”, the final fail-safe was to just nuke the joint.
Hmm….
How did Dr. Fauci provide $3.7 million to the Wuhan facility? That’s a rather important link in this chain. Proof?
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/niaid-research-china
NIH awarded $3.7 million in grants between 2014 and 2019 to EcoHealth Alliance, a “global environmental health nonprofit organization”, to fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Approximately $700,000 of the $3.7 million total was approved under Donald Trump, but only because the contracts carried over. The Trump Administration zeroed out this insane, idiotic expenditure in 2018, the first year in which it could.
Chloroquine is different from hydroxychloroquine. This piece seems to use them interchangeably.
It should be noted that cases and deaths in Switzerland are now higher than during the spike shown in the graphic from France Soir. It would have been good to discuss other possible causes for spikes.
HCQ is the pro-drug form of CQ, which is an amine acidotropic non-enzymatically bioactivated form of quinine.
The problem with quinine is that it is quickly absorbed by the body, so large doses lead to side effects. CQ has a more complex molecule which takes longer to break down, so a larger dose can be given, with fewer side effects. HCQ has a still-more complex molecule. This allows large doses and longer dosing schedules with fewer side effects.
In the body, the active compound in all cases is still quinine.
I got CoV19, but I’d been pre-dosing with 83 mg / day of quinine in the form of quinine-fortified Indian tonic water, so the symptoms were a slight loss of sense of taste (and presumably smell, since the two are linked, but I didn’t notice this. I didn’t realize the loss of sense of taste was a symptom until much later, but I remember my food was as bland as styrofoam… I’d thought my wife just had an off-day in the kitchen), a slight tickle in the back of my throat, and a feeling of deep tiredness.
I went home from work, took as hot a shower as I could stand, dosed up on water, quinine, vitamin D, zinc, vitamin C and vitamin A, then piled under the covers to ‘sweat it out’. The next day I felt better and had no further symptoms.
My thinking in using quinine-fortified Indian tonic water was that it would reduce sialic acid biosynthesis, and since CoV19 attaches to sialic acid moieties, that would make it more difficult for the virus to infect cells, allowing my immune system to destroy the virus without simultaneously dealing with a fast-spreading infection.
I’ve got a short paper with references that I wrote up to explain my logic in using quinine and my logic in ‘sweating it out’, if you want it to give to friends or family.
“it would reduce sialic acid biosynthesis”
That is some story you have there.
Sounds like an electric blanket full on would help too.
Thanks for sharing.
I don’t really trust electric blankets. My MIL used to use one for her chair, she’d sit on it and use it to warm her rather than turning on the heat for the room. She gave it up after her arse caught on fire. LOL
No, what I do is I have 4 blankets. Three thick blankets on top, and a thin blanket on the bottom of the stack of blankets. I climb into bed, lay on my back, lift my legs to gather the blankets under my legs (so my back doesn’t get sore from laying flat), then pull the blankets up to chest height, and pull the thin blanket over my head and tuck it under my head and shoulders. This forms a ‘cocoon’ that’s hot, allows enough air through the thin blanket to breathe, and is really comfortable. I can sleep in that position throughout the night.
The thick blankets are so thick that my upper legs are bent at about a 45 degree angle, and my lower legs are supported by the blankets. My knees are held in place so my legs don’t splay apart by the tension of the blankets tucked under my legs.
If I get too hot or I don’t have enough air to breathe, I can roll the top three blankets down a bit, and vice versa.
It helps to have a water bottle and long straw so you can drink without getting out of bed. I crimp the water bottle in a drawer so it doesn’t fall over. I use 1/4″ silicone surgical tubing as the straw. It’s about $1 / foot on Amazon.
Sweating out a mild fever from a virus infection is long time proven, good tactic if you can stay hydrated while avoiding NSAIDs. If the fever goes beyonfd 2 days, medical attention be sought. Tylenol (acetominophe, paracetamol) is far better choice than an NSAID (ibuprofen) if you have to take something to knock the fever down to get your appetite back to eat and not lose too much weight.
“HCQ is the pro-drug form of CQ”
You have been spewing this bullshit for months KKK.
It was not true then, is not true now, and never will be true.
Either you do not know what a prodrug is, or you have never looked at the metabolic pathways of these two drugs, or have never considered that the toxicity profile of the two of them alone disproves this contention, or else you just made it up.
I am gonna go with all of the above.
It’s sad that you’re too stupid to do your own research to figure out for yourself that everything I’ve stated is truth… but then, if you were smart enough to do your own research, you wouldn’t be a kicktoy kook. LOL
I note you’ve not provided any refutation, just ad hominem vitriolic spittle-flecking and impotent foot-stomping. LOL
First, we’ll start with the definition of ‘prodrug’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrug
“A prodrug is a medication or compound that, after administration, is metabolized (i.e., converted within the body) into a pharmacologically active drug.”
Whoopsie… it’s not looking good for you already, Nicky my boy. LOL
HCQ is a pro-drug form of CQ:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8601050/
“Hydroxychloroquine is metabolised to 3 metabolites”
HCQ hepatic metabolism to CQ:
http://www.emdocs.net/hydroxychloroquine-and-chloroquine-past-presentfuture-covid-19/
“Metabolism: Hepatic to active metabolites bidesethylchloroquine, desethylhydroxychloroquine, & desethylchloroquine.”
desethyl and bidesethyl are terms referring to an organic compound from which an ethyl group has been removed. That’s how HCQ is hepatically metabolized into CQ.
Either you do not know what a prodrug is, or you have never looked at the metabolic pathways of these two drugs (you seem to think they’re not related in any way whatsoever to each other. LOL), or you have never considered the history of quinine, CQ and HCQ. Or you’re just a stupid kook.
I am gonna go with the latter. LOL
It seems NMcG is missing everything about HCQ, CQ and is deficient in as well IQ.
Does CQ not or at least Q appear naturally in some of the foods we eat?
Quinine is a naturally-derived substance from the bark of the Cinchona tree.
By the 1930s Dutch plantations in Java were producing 22 million pounds of cinchona bark, or 97% of the world’s quinine production. CQ had already been synthesized (by Bayer in 1934) prior to Japan invading Java in 1941, but the cost of production was too high to compete with naturally-derived quinine. When Japan invaded Java, natural quinine supplies dwindled, necessitating mass production of synthetic derivatives.
You just posted proof that you are wrong and declared yourself right.
I do not play chess with pigeons.
That goes for you too JEHILL.
(BTW…your cap lock is on)
L’il Nicky McG dribbled:
“You just posted proof that you are wrong and declared yourself right.”
You just declared me ‘wrong’ without one shred of proof, whereas I provided proof that you’re wrong. It’s sad that you’re forced to deny reality to assuage the cognitive dissonance clanging about in your empty skull like a bell on an old-timey fire engine, but that’s the life of a dimbulb like you, Nick. Keep that up, and you’ll soon find that you’ve denied so much of reality that you can legitimately be classified as clinically insane. LOL
Nick-Nick The Dimwit sharted:
“(BTW…your cap lock is on)”
Do you consider it your destiny to be wrong about everything, Nicko? LOL
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/13/attention-citizens-the-covid19-emergency-is-over/#comment-2994261
DEATH RATES BY AGE
https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-age
Deaths from Covid-19 increase sharply with age.
Maybe Covid-19 really IS a Wuhan lab designer virus – designed to wipe out China’s huge elderly population, now supported by “the few” due to their one-child policy.
Attaboys all around Beijing!
Hey wait a second – all the guys in charge of the CCP are old f@rts too!
“Hello, Wuhan Lab? It’s Beijing, Communist Party Headquarters. You plicks!” 🙂
The Politburo have been assiduously shielded from the virus.
UPI had an article about blood types being a factor in COVID-19 .
Does anyone have any information on this topic?
And,
Hematology
Press Release, Oct. 14, 2020
Article
https://www.hematology.org/newsroom/press-releases/2020/possible-link-between-blood-type-and-covid-19
There are more articles on the Internet on this topic including the (NCBI NIM NIH).
And,
UN System
COVID-19
Articles
https://www.unsystem.org/search/node/covid-19
And,
UN Library, (DAG), 2020
COVID-19
Various topics, links, and files.
Articles
https://ask.un.org/faq/281723
The percentage of people with each blood type does not match up precisely with the incidence of
covid sorted by blood type.
O has slightly less chance of being infected, AB is intermediate.
There were reports along these lines back last Winter.
It is not a huge disparity, and it no one can change their blood type.
First obvious question is (since people looked for a correlation) what other viruses or infectious disease have a disparity by blood type?
There has been some anecdotal evidence by hospitalizations seeming to indicate that Blood Types A and AB are more prevalent in Patients requiring Hospitalization. There doesn’t seem to be any indication that hospitalized patients with these blood types are more likely to die, but only that they seem to be a higher percentage of patients requiring admission. However, these blood types do seem to be more common in non-white populations, which could explain the higher incidence of COVID19 infections with complications in dark skinned populations as mentioned in other comments above.
Who did pay for the demonizing of HCQ and other drugs that were being tested against the Wuhan virus? The Chinese? Big Pharma?
Remdisivir has now been declared ineffective against the Wuhan virus in one study.
Is this a pattern?
Next thing you know, they will say the Regeneron cocktail has no effect on the Wuhan virus, and Trump just got well naturally.
The Wuhan virus situation has become a three-ring-circus of misinformation and disinformation. People’s heads are spinning.
“The Wuhan virus situation has become a three-ring-circus of misinformation and disinformation. People’s heads are spinning.”
That’s the way the Ministry of Truth likes it.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-19-coronavirus-remdesivir-who-hydroxychloroquine-interferon-lopinavir-solidarity
Remdesivir doesn’t reduce COVID-19 deaths, a large WHO trial finds
“Remdesivir, an antiviral drug that was the first found to combat COVID-19, doesn’t reduce deaths from the disease, a large international study found.
The World Health Organization’s Solidarity trial, which combined data from 405 hospitals in 30 countries, randomly assigned more than 11,000 people hospitalized with COVID-19 to receive one of four drugs or standard care, which could include other drugs such as steroids. The tested drugs include remdesivir, the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine, an anti-HIV drug called lopinavir and interferon-beta1a. Interferon is an immune system chemical that triggers the body’s antiviral defenses.
None of the drugs showed any benefit in reducing deaths, the need for ventilation or the length of hospital stays, researchers report October 15 in a preliminary study posted at medRxiv.org. The work has not been vetted by other scientists yet, and some analyses may change during the peer-review process, experts say.”
end excerpt
There are now multiple studies showing Remdesivir does have significant value in fighting the infection, but like most antivirals used by themselves, it is not a magic bullet.
But is has been shown in several studies to have a more than worthwhile positive effect.
Sofosbuvir is the backbone of the first successful hepatitis C cocktails, but alone it does not cure very many people. But when combined with other antivirals that have a different mode of action, it becomes nearly 100% effective in curing even resistant hep C in the sickest people.
The same sort of thing has been found with the HIV antivirals. No one drug works very well to keep people from progressing to more severe illness. But combinations of them have made it so people with the virus can live relatively normal lives. There are numerous people, some quite well known, who have HIV and have survived for several decades by using the drug cocktails.
The focus on ongoing research with remdesivir is combining it with other drugs to find a cocktail which is very effective.
A look at worldmeters data on cases and deaths in the US shows that although cases are very high compared to the early stages of the pandemic, deaths are very low compared to that time period.
If one looks at overall death rates, the data includes all stages of the pandemic.
But if one looks at the death rate of hospitalized patients in March vs death in hospitalized patients in recent months, it is clear that far fewer people are dying of the disease now than then.
In the US, the number daily new cases is two to three times higher in recent months that it was from mid March through April, but the number of daily deaths is less than half of what it was in those early days.
Remdesivir became part of the Standard of Care (SoC) in the US in the first week of May, meaning every hospitalized patients gets it. At some point during the Spring it became clear that steroid treatment reduced death rates in people who developed pneumonia, and it became part of the SoC as well.
High flow oxygen and ECMO instead of ventilators was shown to reduced deaths, and those came into widespread use.
Prone positioning became a standard treatment therapy.
Blood plasma became ever more readily available.
New therapeutics like the monoclonal antibody drugs have been developed and existing ones came into more common usage.
And soo we will have vaccines.
In the US, the average age of patients who have died of COVID is about 78.
The average overall life expectancy in the US?
Also 78 years of age.
Back in the discussions here in the early weeks of the outbreak, I speculated that the overall net long term effect may wind up being little more than slowing or even maybe a halting of the gradual increase in the average life expectancy in the US.
We have a huge number of very old people here, which is far higher than the number of such people in previous decades.
Historically, infectious disease were one of the principle constraints on human life expectancy, and over time these types of diseases have become less important as a cause of death.
Everyone is gonna die of something, and we have developed ways to stave of death from strokes, heart disease, infectious diseases, cancers, and many other ways people can die.
So a new disease cutting into the trend towards ever longer life for some amount of time is hardly surprising.
With all these new treatments and therapies, and the huge likelihood of not one but many vaccines in the near future, at some point COVID will be defeated and the deaths will be a blip in overall mortality statistics.
We may even find out that the fear porn and lockdowns and all of the consequences of these factors, may in the end have caused more problems and more deaths than the disease itself.
I expect at some point in the future we will known more about the origins of the virus and how and who it did what it did.
It may even become clear exactly where it came from and how.
That is what typically happens in such events. The truth gradually or even suddenly emerges, and quite often many early speculations are shown to be baseless, some may prove to have been prescient.
Some ideas that prove correct will no doubt be lucky guesses.
Guessing the right Powerball number is incredibly unlikely, but someone always winds up getting the right number eventually.
If a million people toss out ten million ideas, in the end some will be correct, and a few might even be correct for the correct reason.
And it is also probably going to be true that none of the guesswork will matter, or be part of the eventual proof about the answers to the important questions.
At some point there may even be some set of explanations and details that are so compelling that few dispute them.
No sign of anything like that yet though.
“There are now multiple studies showing Remdesivir does have significant value in fighting the infection, but like most antivirals used by themselves, it is not a magic bullet.”
Agreed. Even that WHO study I referenced above says Remdesivir shortens the infection by four days. I would think shortening the time the Wuhan virus is in the body would be a positive development which would prevent four more days of damage done by the virus.
I wonder if those people who were infected and studied were treated as soon as they tested positive? The article doesn’t say, but it appears that the sooner drugs are given after testing positive, the better the outcomes, so when in the course of the disease, were the drugs administered, would be a question I have.
I meant to post a link to the Gilead Sciences company website. A week or so ago they released the results of another study.
There are several reasons to be pretty sure getting out of the hospital sooner is a huge benefit.
For one thing, being in the hospital is very expensive, and so getting out earlier saves money. The drug was intentionally priced to be cheaper than the hospital time it saved…IOW using it saves money for the average person.
Then our course there is the obvious supposition that getting out of the hospital earlier means the patient is feeling much better sooner.
I have never been sick enough to need to be in the hospital (only ever been for injuries), but it seems to me that is pretty darn sick.
Then there is the reduced risk of a hospital acquired infection by getting out sooner.
There were indications in some of the previous studies that the drug saved at least some lives.
This new data expands on that, and also breaks out the status of patient groups and how they fared while on the drug.
It is apparent that it keeps people from getting sicker in a large number of the cases.
The new data found that patients recovered (left the hospital) an average of five days sooner, and the sickest of the patients recovered 7 days faster.
Here is a quote:
“The first is that hospitalized patients receiving remdesivir recovered five days faster on average, and in patients with severe disease, seven days faster. These severely ill patients made up 85% of the total study population. The second key takeaway is that remdesivir reduced the likelihood of patients progressing to more severe stages of the disease where they would require new or additional oxygen support. And thirdly, in the largest group of patients in the study, those on low-flow oxygen, there was a significant reduction in mortality in a post-hoc analysis. In the overall population, the results showed a trend in mortality reduction. Each of these study outcomes is of critical importance to managing the pandemic and informing decisions made by healthcare workers on behalf of their patients.
For patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19, the importance of speeding up recovery by five to seven days cannot be underestimated. Aside from the physical challenges, every day with the disease brings an emotional toll on patients and their families dealing with the separation and the worry. Some physicians have also raised the point that the longer a patient is in hospital, the greater the risk of getting a secondary infection. In the group of patients that required supplemental oxygen, those receiving remdesivir plus standard of care recovered one week faster than those treated with placebo plus standard of care. This represents a significant benefit in a disease where every day counts.
The latest data also include new results on reducing disease progression. In the group of patients receiving remdesivir, fewer progressed to the need for supplementary oxygen or higher levels of respiratory support, such as mechanical ventilation. Remdesivir works by reducing the ability of the virus to replicate in the body and ideally, we want to stop the replication as early as possible in the course of the disease. We know that for patients on a ventilator, the chances of survival are lower. By reducing disease progression, remdesivir may keep patients from entering this critical stage of illness.”
“In a post-hoc analysis of mortality rates for patients receiving low-flow oxygen, there were 70% fewer deaths among patients receiving remdesivir compared with the placebo group. Patients on low-flow oxygen made up approximately 40% of the overall patient population. This information is critically important for understanding remdesivir’s potential impact on mortality and maximizing the benefit to patients.”
So getting it early saves lives.
And for those who are very ill when they start getting it, it helps keep them from getting worse.
From what I had read previously, they must now be testing the inhaled version of the drug, which may be able to be given to people who are not hospitalized.
And by introducing it into the airway, it may possibly target the affect cells, the respiratory epithelium, directly. It is not hard to imagine this could result in a higher concentration of the drug where it counts, and less of it elsewhere, where it might cause side effects and harm. Antivirals tend to be at least somewhat toxic…viruses are hard to kill once they are inside a person.
And they have been doing trials that were designed from the get go to adapt to any new treatments by adding them in with the remdesivir.
This study looked at only 1060 hospitalized patients. From what I have been reading for several months, the widespread knowledge of the existence of the drug since early on, coupled with what is called expanded access, means that there were fewer patients willing or available to be in placebo controlled trial.
Smaller number of study participants means that some results will not rise to statistical significance even if they are real and fairly strong of an effect.
I have not looked at the WHO study details, so it is impossible to say much about it, except that in general, there are a lot of ways to set up studies and a lot of ways for them to not be as telling as one might hope.
The correct way to evaluate such clinical data is to consider all of the evidence and give studies with equal standards and verification equal weight, and those with a better standard (Prospective, randomized, double blind, placebo controlled) more weight than those which may be, for example, open label, or whatever.
It is not unusual for several studies to not have entirely consistent results even when they are done with the same sorts of protocols.
Typically FDA approval for a new drug only comes after several or even many clinical trials in a large number of people.
In any case, there is other good news in the Press Release/Open Letter from Gilead.
They say that there is enough of the drug on hand and in hospitals to give it to every hospitalized US patient, and there will within a couple of months be enough around the world to do so.
They early on enlisted manufacturers around the world to begin making it.
I know if I get covid (If I have not had it yet) I will run not walk and insist on the same regimen that Trump got, and sign up for a clinical trials if that is the only way to get one of the new antibody drugs from Regeneron or one of the other companies that have one in testing.
I will also continue to do all the rest of the things I have been doing to try to get a mild case if I am exposed)Have plenty of vitamins D and C and also zinc and every other vitamin and essential nutrient. No one is perfectly healthy with any vitamin deficiency.
A bunch of one or two of them will not do anything to help avoid problems caused by not enough of any different one.
And do whatever I can to try to make sure than if I get any of the virus in my body, it is a small amount…a low infective dose.
Getting a mild case of covid is a best case scenario, far better than not getting it at all.
A mild case means for free that a person is immune, and can no longer acquire the disease, or have it replicated enough inside to be infectious to others, and any subsequent exposure will strengthen the immunity by adding more antibodies and more memory T and B cells to their immune system.
And collectively, everyone who gets it and becomes immune, is one less possible vector for the disease spreading to someone new.
I am pretty sure the protective effect of immune individuals begins at one patients and gets more better as the number of them increases.
It does not suddenly kick in at 60% or whatever, as some people seem to think. At some value, it will quash an outbreak totally, but at lesser levels it will slow it.
Open letter from CEO of Gilead:
https://stories.gilead.com/articles/an-open-letter-from-our-chairman-and-ceo-oct-8
Study results of Veklury (trade name for Remdesivir) press release:
“As announced on October 1, 2020, Gilead is now meeting real-time demand for Veklury in the United States and anticipates meeting global demand for Veklury in October, even in the event of potential future surges of COVID-19.”
https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-releases/2020/10/final-results-of-national-institute-of-allergy-and-infectious-diseases-actt-1-trial-published-in-new-england-journal-of-medicine-expand-clinical-bene
There are a bunch of other press releases on the company website, some of which relate to production agreements it appears:
https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-releases
And finally here is the actual study results in the NEJM:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007764?query=recirc_mostViewed_railB_article
Excellent comments, Nicholas. As usual. 🙂
I think the only problem we have with our treatment pollicy is we don’t treat early enough. Waiting to treat the Wuhan virus until one is hospitalized is too late. We should be treating the disease as soon as it shows up, at least in the most vulnerable. That way we keep the virus from overwhelming the body’s immune system and give the body a chance to mount a defense.
At the present time, each person will have to form their own policy and go out and demand the drugs they need. President Trump signed into law the “Right to Try” law that allows people to use drugs and experimental drugs, approved by the FDA or not, if their doctor thinks a particular drug will help his patient.
This law has to apply to medications surrounding the Wuhan virus. This law says you can’t be denied drugs if your doctor says you need them. The doctors promoting hydroxychloriquine should file a class-action lawsuit against the restrictions on hydroxychloriquine and all other drugs aimed at treating the Wuhan virus. We have a Right to Try. The Congress and the president say so. What say the Courts? Make it official.
I think we have several drugs that are effective if given early enough in the progression of the disease. I don’t think it is a good idea to allow the disease to run its normal course in the body as it may be doing considerable damage even though a person may only have mild or even no symtoms. There are still so many unknowns to this disease, so the sooner we can get it out of the body, the better.
We are learning a lot about the Wuhan virus, and a lot about how the body’s immune system functions. It’s fascinating stuff! And it will serve us well in the future. I keep hearing about other infectious diseases on the horizon, so we will need all these “lessons learned” in the future.
Well, it is not for me to tell anyone else what to take or not take.
I only want to share information, and say so if someone makes assertions that available evidence contradicts, so that anyone reading and lurking has both sides of the story.
As for HCQ specifically, if there was no data indicating a problem, I would say so.
For most people it is not seeming to be dangerous.
But there is one more part of the HCQ story that bears on remdesivir.
I am not at all sure how strong an effect it is, and even Gilead does not say specifically that they have quantified info on it, but there is lab data and some clinical data that strongly suggest that HCQ interferes with remdesivir efficacy.
I am sure some people will point out that this may seem like a self serving finding on their part, but I would say the opposite is true.
Gilead knows that effective drugs are synergistic, and are actively trying to find which other drugs enhance the efficacy of their drug.
They have not said dexamethasone interferes with remdesivir.
They have not said that about anything else that I know of.
If there was something they could toss in with their drug they would have every reason to say so and to use it.
Speculating a little further, we know that in the early days, patients who were doing poorly were being given everything that was thought might help.
Many people are known to have gotten HCQ and remdesivir.
We do not really have any way of being sure if any of the data about remdesivir included people who took HCQ and if so, if that could explain some of the results that seemed to show little is any benefit from it.
There are other reasons why remdesivir may have not done well in some trials of course.
It was in short supply in some places, and for quite a while was known to be saved for the sickest patients.
This may have been the exact wrong way to use a limited supply, if it mostly helps people that are not as bad off.
It is these sorts of uncertainties that make well controlled prospective RCTs the gold standard, especially when the inclusion and exclusion criteria are well written and followed by each of the places doing the treatment in the trial.
HCQ lingers in the body.
It may interfere.
The drug was in short supply, and it may have been given in some places and at some time periods to mostly worse off patients, and these and other factors may possibly have combined i ways that no one can figure out without having detailed and exact data on every patients and sifting through it…especially if some people were self medicating with it and then not saying so when informed they could only get remdesivir in a trial if they had not taken anything else.
Who knows?
In my mind the best way to proceed is to accept data gathered by experienced and dedicated clinical researchers who are also front line health care providers, is most likely to be the most reliable information we have. Those are the people who in my experience are the best doctors with the most attention to evidenced based patient care, are the smartest and the best and most reliable doctors in the business.
Others are free to have other opinions…but I promise you I have no reason to make anything up or tilt one way or another, except according to what I think is the most likely to be the best information.
I believe we all have to be our own best advocate.
Those with the most knowledge have the best chance of getting the best care, but at some point everyone has to trust someone.
Clinical trials stick to a strict and rigorously applied set of guidelines including the most important one of all: Informed consent. They are not allowed to hold back any info, positive or negative. they give people in trials the pros and cons and make sure every patient or the person responsible for making decisions for that patient have all of the available info and furthermore that they understand it…and then someone has to sign a whole bunch of forms confirming every part of that information separately.
And that is what keeps the process open and honest.
And that is what is missing from all of the people who are on TV and in newspapers talking up themselves and not shutting up and caring for patients.
Self advocacy is counter to every rule of medical ethics I have ever learned or heard about.
Passage from July 10th press release:
“Following the availability of in vitro data demonstrating chloroquine inhibits the antiviral activity of remdesivir in a dose-dependent manner, Gilead conducted an analysis of clinical outcomes with patients who were treated with both remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine concomitantly, versus patients who were treated with remdesivir and who did not receive concomitant hydroxychloroquine. Through a median follow-up of 14 days, the rates and likelihood of recovery were lower in patients who received concomitant hydroxychloroquine compared with patients treated with remdesivir who did not receive hydroxychloroquine (57 percent vs. 69 percent, covariate-adjusted HR [95% CI] 0.61 [0.45, 0.83], p=0.002). Concomitant hydroxychloroquine use was not associated with increased mortality in the 14-day analysis window. The analysis also showed that patients in the concomitant hydroxychloroquine group experienced overall higher rates of adverse events. After adjusting for baseline variables, this difference was significant for Grade 3-4 adverse events.”
https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-releases/2020/7/gilead-presents-additional-data-on-investigational-antiviral-remdesivir-for-the-treatment-of-covid-19
Just in case you were unaware.
Nicholas McGinley wrote:
“There are now multiple studies showing Remdesivir does have significant value in fighting the infection, but like most antivirals used by themselves, it is not a magic bullet.”
“significant value”?
Seems to be tracking just slightly positive of (and with) a placebo. That means it’s likely a placebo. LOL
The WHO Solidarity study showed a negative effect:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.15.20209817v1
“WHO SOLIDARITY open-label RCT with 2,750 very late stage (76% on oxygen/ventilation) Remdesivir patients, mortality relative risk RR 0.95 [0.81-1.11], p=0.50.
Non-ventilated patients show a greater benefit, RR 0.86 [0.72-1.04], p = 0.13.
No study drug definitely reduced mortality (in unventilated patients or any other subgroup of entry characteristics)”
Now the shoe’s on the other foot… defend your “significant value” stance. LOL
Let me guess… “That’s a retrospective study. Nothing can be learned from it, because I believe that you can learn nothing by looking at historical data.”… amiright? LOL
Horrible study released by WHO! Frontline Doctors and all early studies of HCQ recommended EARLY use, at first symptoms, or even as preventive. WHO used a study of 11,000 already hospitalized patients (some already in ICUs and/or on ventilators) to trash the effectiveness of HCQ primarily for political reasons and to maintain their “pandemic” crisis influence.
Way past time to stop being hard headed about it.
There are now numerous prospective, randomized, double blind, placebo controlled clinical trials of HCQ, and none of them shows any benefit.
There is a new one from U of P hospital in Philly of high risk health care workers who took it pre-exposure from April 9, 2020, to July 14, 2020,with a 28 day follow up period.
The results are in agreement with every other study in which all of the variables were controlled for using the best known methodology.
When an effect disappears when the testing is done to the gold standard of new drug testing, one has got to wonder why that is uncompelling to the people who found great significance in a fraction of the studies that were not done to this standard?
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2771265
This result is in agreement with another one in health care workers that was done with a larger number of workers:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7523161/
Another look at people who took it lupus and RA, and other so-called rheumatic diseases, prior to the outbreak, and so where taking it when the pandemic exposed them, also finds no effect from the malaria drug, but did show a benefit from steroid use and from some of the biologics (the general term used for drugs that inhibit cytokines like IL-6 and TNF-a):
https://ard.bmj.com/content/annrheumdis/early/2020/08/05/annrheumdis-2020-218500.full.pdf
The full Recovery trial final results have now been published too:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926?query=recirc_mostViewed_railB_article
Never has any drug been tested in so many people and had so much data demonstrating no benefit and was still widely considered by many to work.
If it works, why do none of the most careful methods of testing find any benefit?
In the beginning, it was supposed to be CQ.
No dosage was known to be optimal.
The the storyline morphed into HCQ.
Then HCQ with zinc and an antibiotic.
These were proclaimed cures by a small collection of individuals that are mostly notable for being outside of the credible research community, and several of which were found to be outright fraudsters and hucksters and publicity hounds.
These proclamations were each found to be highly problematic and in fact some were shown to be verging on deliberate fraud (In fact I believe they were, but we can just stick to what we know, rather than suspect) , and none of which had allowed anything close to an appropriate amount of time to pass to have any actual conclusive result.
And yet with no possible way to logically be able to have such a conclusion, somehow this small group of people (knew) the drugs worked for this virus…even though this same combination has been tried over many years for many viruses and found to cure none of them, or even to show any benefit in actual sick people (apart from their well known value as antimalarials and anti-inflammatories), and the only real reason to even suspect any value was in vivo testing in kidney cells from an immortal cell line derived from Green Monkey in the early 1960s.
These cells are not used because they are a good model for human cells or respiratory epithelial cells, but because it is easy to infect them with viruses due to them not have many of the specific factors that exist in other types of cells, like an interferon modulated viral defense. In fact it has long been known that many drugs kill virus in these cells that have no value in live animals or people.
So over several months millions of people became convinced these drugs are the cure or a preventative for this disease…not because these millions of people had any prior expertise in any relevant area of study or experience, but because, well…who the hell knows why.
It sure was never because there was any solid evidence of the type known to have value in new drug research.
And when bad news came back from the front lines, clinical trials, and lab research, from all around the world, it was one excuse after another why the few studies with inferior methodology were the ones that we had to look at , and ignore the ones with identical methodology that shows no effect, and ignore the studies with superior methodology showing no effect, and ignore that all of the original rationale has long since gone out the window.
They used too much, they used it too late, they did not give it with the zinc… you need that zinc!…it is a scam and a whitewash by the evil big money people who want money and case nothing about lives…even though drug makers have no presence in the actual hospitals where drugs are dispensed to people who are sick and dying.
None of these proponents of these drugs ever explained how they had intuited the optimum dosage levels, or why a high dose of an antiviral would not work but a lower dose would, or how they suddenly knew about the need for a cocktail of stuff when the initial story had nothing like that requirement, and then why it had to be given early, when that was not part of the original assertions or rationale.
No one who is an actual researcher in the relevant disciplines thinks that these drugs work by acting as ionophores, so how did people with no such research training or experience know this?
Except for that they readed it on ta interwebs?
And none of the people talking up that money angle ever actually did any math before concluding there was no money in a drug which anyone can manufacture for pennies and pay no royalties and have no development costs, then sell for about $40 for a months worth and which everyone needed to take as a preventative presumably forever…all 320,000,000 of us in the US and all 7 billion of us on the planet! Yeah, no sign of any profit potential there!
No clue why some doctor lady in a strip mall clinic would urge everyone in the US to come to her office for a prescription and a declaration that “You will live!”
Not like she charges anyone any money for seeing them and writing a prescription.
Oh,wait…
There are many study results using the gold standard methodology, and other methodologies, that show these drugs do not work.
The original research in cells in culture has been redone using actual human respiratory epithelial tissues.
The have done direct viral (this is when they inoculate the test subject with the virus as part of the testing) challenge studies on a large variety of animals using live virus.
Compared to treating people who are sick and at various stages of illness, or who are well and have a low overall chance of becoming infected, direct challenge studies can give the drugs before or after inoculation with a known amount of the live virus at a specific point in time.
All of these studies, which have been BTW published in peer reviewed journal, found any benefit or evidence of an antiviral effect.
NONE OF THEM!
Time to move on.
Testing in human epithelial cells (and other types) and animal models:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-hydroxychloroquine-inhibit-sars-cov-infection-preclinical.html
2006 study that followed up on the in vivo result for malaria drugs vs SARS virus, and found no antiviral effect in actual live animals:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17176632/
One of the many results from this past summer:
https://medcitynews.com/2020/07/hydroxychloroquine-flunks-phase-iii-trial-in-mild-to-moderate-covid-19/?rf=1
Every hospital system in the US and most around the world have stopped using it due to lack of efficacy. No one can say they did not try:
https://nbc-2.com/news/health/2020/08/27/lee-health-is-no-longer-using-hydroxychloroquine-to-treat-covid-19-patients/
The FDA has long banned pilots from taking these malaria drugs.
And soldiers forced to take them have been complaining for decades that they cause mental problems. Not al, but some:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/935435
Time to move on.
We are in a serious situation.
A global health and economic crisis.
No one is doing anyone any favors by spreading bad information.
You have no possible way to know anything that thousands of doctors do not know.
No possible knowledge that compares to decades of experience from researchers, or with dozens of scientific studies that have looked at the stuff from every possible angle.
But not to worry, lots of people have hard heads, and there are hundreds of not thousands of trials with no results posted yet.
Many are still ongoing.
Some are listed as still enrolling.
But most have given up…because it does not work.
And other stuff does.
Huh, yet the NIH stated that chloroquine is “a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection” [1][2] and since SARS binds to the same sialic acid moieties as Covid-19, and since chloroquine is an amine acidotropic form of quinine, it would appear that either something has happened to the drug’s efficacy… or the newer studies used either way too little or way too much of the drug, didn’t use the drug in combination with known-effective synergists, or only tested on the sickest of the sick, rather than focusing on prophylaxis.
Perhaps the pharmaceutical industry ‘paid for the results’ of these studies to denigrate Q / CQ / HCQ because in order for pharmaceutical companies to get emergency approval of their treatments / vaccines, no effective treatment can currently exist. Perhaps the pharmaceutical companies want emergency approval of their treatments / vaccines because along with that approval comes complete legal immunity from doing people harm with those treatments / vaccines.
Quinine / chloroquine / hydroxychloroquine targets angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), interfering with sialic acid biosynthesis [3].
SARS, MERS and Covid-19 use sialic acid moieties as receptors, so quinine (and its synthetic counterparts) work to prevent viral attachment to cell receptors.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16115318/
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300881
“moieties”
A new word for me. You know your stuff.
Active Moiety
You linked to the 2005 research using VERO cells, an immortal cell line that consists of kidney cells from the Green monkey.
I linked two papers that addressed that research.
One is a follow up in 2006 that tried to recreated the antiviral effect seen in vitro, by doing the next phase in any such research: Seeing if the effect was seen in live animals.
They tested the malaria drugs and many others.
None showed an antiviral effect.
It is from 2006, after the 2005 in vitro work.
Here it is again:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17176632/
Here is a quote from this work:
“Anti-inflammatory agents, chloroquine, amodiaquin and pentoxifylline, were also inactive in vivo, suggesting that although they may be useful in ameliorating the hyperinflammatory response induced by the virus infection, they will not significantly reduce the replication of the virus, the inducer of inflammatory response. ”
I could also post any number of clinical trial results from the years around that time and subsequent years that tried the drugs in human beings with all sorts of viral diseases and cancers.
None found any benefit.
Let me know if anyone has not seen these results and needs to see them to believe they were done and they exist and they found what I say.
Or just believe that I am not lying.
I posted them many times last Winter and Spring and can do so again.
Here is a paper I have reviewed but do not think I have ever shared here, as it is not strictly bearing on the questions of this specific virus, but it does illustrate an important point made over and over again: Many things work on cells in vitro and do not have the same effect and are of no value in live animals with a viral illness.
It is from 2008, and again it refers to the 2005 work in vitro and is a follow up to it:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4941887/
Here is a quote from this research:
“Methods The effectiveness of chloroquine at preventing or ameliorating influenza following viral challenge was assessed in established mouse and ferret disease models.
Results Although active against influenza viruses in vitro, chloroquine did not prevent the weight loss associated with influenza virus infection in mice after challenge with viruses expressing an H1 or H3 hemagglutinin protein. Similarly, clinical signs and viral replication in the nose of ferrets were not altered by treatment.
Conclusions Although in vitro results were promising, chloroquine was not effective as preventive therapy in vivo in standard mouse and ferret models of influenza virus infection. This dampens enthusiasm for the potential utility of the drug for humans with influenza.”
There are many more such results from those years.
And here is a paper that is an unbiased overview of every aspect of the many years of research using malaria drugs to try and cure viral illnesses, including the early work using HCQ to fight Covid.
It is a follow on to that work that summarizes what is known and asks the relevant questions, and what ought to be done to resolve the questions of safety and efficacy.
It covers nearly every aspect.
It is extensively footnoted and sourced, with links to every one of the cited studies discussed.
It is logical, forthright, and comprehensive for the time it was published.
It was published in May of 2020.
Here it is:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7267640/
I also linked to a paper that described why VERO cells are not a good model for the cells that are infected in animals or humans with a corona virus, and specifically with SARS, or SARS Co-V-2.
That paper then tried to duplicate the findings in the 2005 paper using a raft of cell lines that are a good match for the cells that get infected in people and animals with COVID.
The antiviral effect was not seen in these cells. This research confirms the results seen in the 2006 paper I just linked above.
The these same researcher and indeed researchers around the world used the malaria drugs in primates that are able to be infected with SARS Co-V-2.
They did many trials using the virus and the malaria drugs in direct challenge studies and found no benefit.
This was published in August of 2020, months after the initial results of trials in HCQ were published, and refers to that work and is a follow up to it, that answers specific questions about the previous work and the value of it.
Here is a quote from the August 2020 study on human cells and primate animals using HCQ to prevent and/or treat COVID:
“An international collaboration of researchers across more than 80 countries has come to the conclusion that chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxchloroquine (HCQ) are unlikely to provide clinical benefit against COVID-19. In a new commentary paper co-authored by Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., a group of scientists describe multiple recent studies in human Organ Chips and other multi-tissue in vitro models, mice, hamsters, and non-human primates, all of which strongly indicate the drugs do not have the efficacy suggested by earlier results obtained from in vitro studies with cultured cell lines.”
Here it is again:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-hydroxychloroquine-inhibit-sars-cov-infection-preclinical.html
Last Winter I pointed out that little is known about the full range of strategies that viruses use to gain entry into cells, but that it is recognized to not be as simple as a single mode of entry using a single type of receptor, notably in this case the ACE-2 receptor.
I posted many times that virologists had identified at least one other receptor that the virus can use to gain entry, and the possibility that these are not the only two. Viruses have been around for a long time and the animals and cells they infect have been in a biochemical war with them for this entire very long interval of time…likely millions of years. They have a diversity of strategies to overcome any simple defense like an alteration or a blocking of a single receptor or a single means of using that receptor to gain entry.
It does not even address that other receptors have been identified by which the virus can gain entry.
This next paper is one of the ones that studied this question of how a virus has multiple strategies, and offers a very clear reason for why blocking a single mode of entry to cells does not work, and specifically it offers at least one reason, but not the only one, why HCQ does not work to treat or prevent Covid.
It is from July 22nd 2020, and refers to earlier work and is a follow up to it.
Here is a quote from this important research:
“Hydroxychloroquine, used to treat malaria and some autoimmune disorders, potently inhibits viral infection of SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) and SARS-CoV-2 in cell-culture studies. However, human clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine failed to establish its usefulness as treatment for COVID-19. This compound is known to interfere with endosomal acidification necessary to the proteolytic activity of cathepsins. Following receptor binding and endocytosis, cathepsin L can cleave the SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) proteins, thereby activating membrane fusion for cell entry. The plasma membrane-associated protease TMPRSS2 can similarly cleave these S proteins and activate viral entry at the cell surface. Here we show that the SARS-CoV-2 entry process is more dependent than that of SARS-CoV-1 on TMPRSS2 expression. This difference can be reversed when the furin-cleavage site of the SARS-CoV-2 S protein is ablated. We also show that hydroxychloroquine efficiently blocks viral entry mediated by cathepsin L, but not by TMPRSS2, and that a combination of hydroxychloroquine and a clinically-tested TMPRSS2 inhibitor prevents SARS-CoV-2 infection more potently than either drug alone. These studies identify functional differences between SARS-CoV-1 and -2 entry processes, and provide a mechanistic explanation for the limited in vivo utility of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.”
Here is the paper showing that
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.216150v1
No one paper proves anything conclusively.
Anyone who wants to be informed and unbiased and scientific and to know what the actual truth is about anything, must be willing to set aside preconceived or hastily conceived notions or conclusions.
It is the height of bias to look at one or several points of research that tend to reinforce a notion, and then to refuse to consider and contrary information.
Yes, the whole world of medicine, and tens of thousands of doctors, and hundreds of hospitals, and thousands of virologists and medical researchers, and hundreds of immunologists, can all be wrong or lying, and letting hundreds of thousands of people die when they know a cheap and readily available drug can save them.
But why would they do that?
Why would they first use it for months on tens and tens of thousands of patients and then one by one turn away from it and concentrate on other things?
The profit motive does not explain it.
One of the drugs found to have a great deal of value is the cheap steroid dexamethasone.
There is less money in it that in huge number of malaria pills.
The doctors themselves volunteered to be in clinical trials to see is a healthy and uninfected person could be kept from getting the virus by taking HCQ.
After several months they can no longer find many doctors willing to take it anymore, and the ones who were taking it have dropped out of the studies and stopped taking it.
Are they all insane?
Are they all stupid?
Are they all lying?
Or are they all following the evidence?
Anyone who thinks all the many clinical trials are fake research by insane homicidal maniacs, is not going to be convinced by the chains of evidence that proves HCQ does not have any appreciable affect on the virus in people or animals infected with it.
But anyone willing to allow themselves to acquire new information when it is presented will be.
I do not really care what is wrong with anyone who thinks they have uncovered the most insidious and widespread and utterly illogical and nonsensical and insane murder plot in human history, rather than believe a huge amount old, and new, and very complete, and straightforward, body of research and clinical data from literally all around the world.
Probably you do not even read anything that you know will undermine the ideas that are locked up tight in your stubbornly closed minds.
LOL:
You said:
“Huh, yet the NIH stated that chloroquine is “a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection” ”
But left out that this was in 2005, and the result was found IN VITRO only.
Subsequent in vivo research did not confirm the finding.
In vitro effect is a reason for the next stage of testing.
The next stage is in vivo research, meaning in live animals.
It did not have the same effect in live animals.
Or in humans with viral infections.
Then you said:
“the newer studies used either way too little or way too much of the drug, didn’t use the drug in combination with known-effective synergists, or only tested on the sickest of the sick, rather than focusing on prophylaxis.”
All of which are false statements.
All of which have been addressed and you just ignore time and again, just like you keep repeating that 2005 study in VERO cells as if it is the last word, but never mention the important part: That it only applies to the work that was done, which was a first step, not a conclusion that the stuff would work in animals or people with an infection.
Antivirals work best in high concentration.
There is no mechanistic basis for asserting that too much of something that kills a virus would not work.
The usual and logical thing to do it what is done in phase 1 and phase two human clinical trials: Try many dosages and find the one that works without causing more adverse events that the disease being treated.
There are no drugs that kill infectious organisms in a person that kill them in a low dose but not a higher dose.
The basic challenge with any medicine is getting a sufficient concentration at the site of the infection without causing toxic side effects that are worse than the disease.
There was one covid HCQ study where the amount given was found to be causing toxicity, the one in Brazil.
This was noted almost immediately, and that arm of that trial was halted.
The trial continued with the lower dose.
The results were published this summer and found the drug had no benefit.
Next, you say that the studies that did not use “way to much”, instead used way too little.
Leaving aside the question, which I have already wondered about in the previous comment, of how it is that only you and some other internet trained experts somehow intuitively know the exact right amount but no one else does, leaving that aside (although it would be nice if you could say how it is you know what is the exact right amount and TELL US what this amount is so we can dispense with the idea you are just making stuff up), it has to be pointed out that there have been many clinical trials, and they have used a range of dosing amounts and schedules.
There have been no studies that have used way too much except the one noted in Brazil.
And others have used a lesser amount, but no amount that can be discerned as “way too little”.
The therapeutic window of these drugs is well known from other uses…for malaria prophylaxes, a larger amount for malaria treatment (same or similar amounts but every day for treatment and once a week for prevention).
And again…why would too much not kill a virus?
The amount that is needed to be given to get a concentration in the patients target cells can be easily calculated by pharmacologists. It is known that for CQ, it is too toxic to get the levels that worked in vitro into a human without killing them. That is why everyone quickly switched to HCQ.
Reference for this fact:
https://covid-19.sciensano.be/sites/default/files/Covid19/COVID-19_InterimGuidelines_Treatment_ENG.pdf
“• Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine inhibits replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. Chloroquine (CQ)
inhibits the virus at concentrations (EC50 = 1.13 to 5.47 µM) that cannot be achieved in human plasma
[21], but possibly in the intracellular compartment. This drug (not available in Belgium since 2015) has
been used for decades (at a total of 25 mg/kg within 3 days) for malaria treatment without any monitoring
and side effects, including in pregnant women. However, the therapeutic window is quite narrow
(cardiotoxicity/arrhythmia), requiring caution for use at higher cumulative dosages in patients with comorbidities and co-medication”
This same source, INTERIM CLINICAL GUIDANCE FOR ADULTS WITH SUSPECTED OR
CONFIRMED COVID-19 IN BELGIUM, summarizes a number of the RCTs for HCQ:
“Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ, drug marketed in Belgium as Plaquenil®) has appeared to be more potent than
chloroquine in vitro (EC50=0.72 µM), so that lower dosages (than initially recommended) could be used
[22]. It has also a better safety profile than chloroquine (larger therapeutic window).
7
Several small retrospective studies could not demonstrate any independent benefit of
hydroxychloroquine use compared to non-exposed hospitalized patients [23–27]. Some larger
retrospective studies did find an independent association between HCQ use (low dosage, similar to the
“Belgian” recommendations) and a reduction in COVID-19 associated in-hospital mortality [5,28–30]. No
particular safety signals were observed with the use of HCQ (alone) in these large cohorts. However, the
major limitation of all these studies was the retrospective observational design that precluded any
definitive conclusion about treatment efficacy. The prospective randomized controlled trial (RCT)
RECOVERY in UK has stopped enrolling patients on the 5th of June after finding no beneficial effect of high
dose hydroxychloroquine (9600 mg in total over 10 days) in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.. For the
same reason (absence of efficacy in hospitalized patients), the SOLIDARITY trial has communicated the
suspension of recruitment in the HCQ arm (9600 mg over 10 days) on 18th of June (link). Similarly, the
DisCoVeRy trial stopped enrolling participants in the HCQ arm (5600 mg in total over 10 days) at the same
period. The results of the large RECOVERY trial on HCQ efficacy in hospitalized COVID-19 patients have
demonstrated that mortality at Day 28 was similar in HCQ recipients compared to standard of care
(421/1561, 27% versus 790/3155, 25%; p=0.15). No benefit was observed for all secondary outcomes and
subgroups of patients [31]. Another smaller RCT in Brazil conducted in mild-to-moderate hospitalized
patients did not find any improvement of the clinical status (seven-level ordinal scale) in participants
having received HCQ (total dosage: 5600 mg), alone or with azithromycin (500 mg/day for 7 days) [32].
Regarding other potential indications, an RCT using HCQ (low-dose) as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP),
showed no prevention of “illness compatible with COVID 19” [40]. This trial had however several
limitations such as undocumented treatment adherence and no laboratory confirmation of SARS-CoV-2
infection in 85% of the participants. No serious adverse events were notified. Another RCT by the same
group studied early administration of HCQ in mild/ambulatory patients with laboratory-confirmed or
symptomatic contacts (n=423), and no substantial symptom reduction was observed in the HCQ arm
compared to masked placebo [33]. Here again, many participants (about 40%) were not tested. In a welldesigned Spanish RCT evaluating early treatment with HCQ in adults with mild disease (n=293), no clinical
(shortening of symptoms) nor viral (reduction of shedding) benefits were observed [34]. The results of
several other ongoing trials using HCQ are still awaited, including as chemoprophylaxis (PrEP).
Meanwhile, several preclinical studies have not demonstrated any antiviral effect of HCQ in animal models
(hamsters, macaques, including one study from the KUL [35–38]. Overall, based on these preclinical
observations and the reported trial results it has been decided since beginning of June (version 10) not to
recommend its off-label use for COVID-19 in Belgium anymore, except within ongoing clinical registered
trials, and after timely interim analysis of the study-related risk/benefit.”
It specifically mentions that some trials used low doses, some trials were done in early stage patients, etc. So it specifically contradicts many of your assertions, which frankly sound as if you have not actually kept up with anything and are merely repeating the things you had already decided 6 months or more ago.
There is a huge mountain of data that is continuing the be released even in the past month, week, and two days.
You ignore all of it when you say what you said and I quoted above.
In fact I described some of the recent studies and posted links to them, ones that used it as pre-exposure prophylaxis, ones that were studies of people who were already on Plaquenil when they got COVID, ones that used it with the antibiotics and with zinc.
You claim to have knowledge but have no knowledge of the studies that have released data that contradicts every single thing you said!
The things you assert are simply false, and you should read up on it and see where you are mistaken.
You are propagating outdated and false information is a health emergency (although many here seem to dispute there is any emergency), and also one that is causing a great deal of anxiety.
There are drugs that have been found to work and be safe enough for general usage in even the sickest patients.
On that subject, you assert that HCQ will only work at some happy medium dosage but have never said what the amount is or how you know it, so it can be either confirmed or refuted.
Please do tell us the dosage that is the right amount.
You claim to know that if one is very sick already, the stuff will not work, and that is has to be taken with (synergists), but even the early proponents like Zelenko did not say the antibiotic was given as a synergist, but was given to treat preemptively any secondary bacterial infections. Obviously no one can take a rather hazardous antibiotic on a prophylactic basis for weeks and months on end, or even a very safe one. No one thinks that. It is a guaranteed way to make antibiotics useless and to give everyone diarrhea and to breed resistant super bugs.
So the only drug that can be used as a prophylactic is the HCQ. The zinc is being taken and given by every doctor who has ever read anything.
So what you are saying, without saying it, is there is only a small subset of patients who can possibly be helped by HCQ id it works, people who do not have the virus yet, and those who just got it.
You are saying it without saying it by declaring all the ways it will not work.
So you ought to at least just say that in plain language.
The only people who can take the antibiotic with it are people who have just become infected.
But it is clear that the QT prolongation is much worse of a risk in anyone taking z pak and HCQ. the z pak label warns not to use it for pneumonia.
The Belgium guidelines describe in detail why z ak should not be used except in carefully screened and monitored patients.
So what we are left with is a drug which even you say can only be used in people who are not very sick yet. And everyone knows only a small number of people infected ever die from it, mostly the very old and sick, and these are the people who should not take zpak and HCQ, because of QT risk.
So who should take it, and when and why and how much, in your opinion?
And why should anyone listen to someone who by their own words is not aware of the current state of research findings?
And what should the people that you yourself say are too sick and for too long for HCQ…what should they take?
Do you agree that all the people you say were bound not to be helped, the ones that are “(only tested on) the sickest of the sick”, need to do something else beside curl up and die?
And to reiterate…many of the RCT’s have been done on people who are not anything like the sickest of the sick.
At least three that have been linked to numerous times studied it in post exposure and pre exposure prophylaxis. I just posted two of them in the comment you responded to!
Here:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2771265
Health care worker, pre exposure, 600 mg, daily, April 9th to July 14. (No one had adverse events from this dosage every day for over 3 months)
And here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7523161/
Two dosages, pre exposure, 400mg once a week or twice a week, 1483 health care workers.
And here:
https://ard.bmj.com/content/annrheumdis/early/2020/08/05/annrheumdis-2020-218500.full.pdf
Lupus and RA patients already on a safe dose of Plaquenil.
And here is a fourth, which used zinc and the zpak antibiotic vs a placebo:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638
The used multiple doses and the synergists and did so in pre and post exposure prophylaxis…so the obvious conclusion is you do not even read anything.
You also made this comment (I will not say how insanely paranoid it sounds to imply every person in the whole world is in on a murderous plot to sell some drugs no one has so far made and money on. But they have made money on HCQ…billions. Once a vaccine comes along all the drugs will be orphaned, BTW), but it ignores that the first drug everyone agrees has a huge benefit is a steroid that is cheap and out of patent decades hence, and also that they did use HCQ, extensively. You cannot pay doctors any amount of money to kill their patients, but you are asserting they ALL got and are getting paid to do just that.
Strangely, only a few money grubbers are complaining HCQ has been given short shrift.
Stop saying things that are not true.
Please.
And read the things you have very obviously not apprised yourself of.
You really are a f*cking dummy, you know that?
Funny how you know my name but no one knows yours.
You are clueless.
The Belgium guidelines explain what anyone who has ever been involved in drug research knows: Retrospective studies are not able to prove anything.
And far from never mentioning those things, they have been extensively discussed here over the entire interval of this pandemic.
Why would I mention, “people who’ve been treated with HCQ or CQ or Q, and never experienced severe symptoms or even hospitalization.”?
They have nothing to do with any proof of anything, one way of the other.
I am starting to think you are about 15 years old.
FUD?
Me?
I think you must also be a closet Democrat, because they are the ones that accuse others of what they are doing.
I am pointing out that there are drugs that work and death rates are down.
You spin elaborate conspiracies in which no doctor can be trusted, and are being paid off to murder people rather than give them HCQ.
Plus you have no idea what you are talking about.
FUD?
How about this:
“Perhaps the pharmaceutical industry ‘paid for the results’ of these studies to denigrate Q / CQ / HCQ because in order for pharmaceutical companies to get emergency approval of their treatments / vaccines, no effective treatment can currently exist. Perhaps the pharmaceutical companies want emergency approval of their treatments / vaccines because along with that approval comes complete legal immunity from doing people harm with those treatments / vaccines.”
Not only is this insane conspiracy mongering, devoid of any connection with reality, but you have no idea about what approval means.
No company has any legal immunity from anything they sell.
Approval or EUA means they can sell it.
Before that, all they can do is seek permission to do clinical trials.
I think you must be very stupid and the most uninformed idiot on the planet if you think any drug company is shielded from liability, or any doctors are.
Every doctor and every drug company gets sued on a regular and frequent basis.
The Lancet study was retracted.
Everyone knows that.
It is irrelevant.
Only a paranoid thinks it proves anything.
There is nothing to mention
The India study is a retrospective.
It proves nothin.
The Henry Ford study was also a retrospective.
It has been extensively debunked.
But since you mention it, that study found that HCQ use was associated with decreased mortality, and the Zpak use was too. But both together was about the same as taking nothing!
Also, the study claims to look at all patients over an interval from March to Late April or early May, and during this time it is known that many patients got remdesivir, but that drug is not mentioned anywhere in the data or list of other drugs taken.
In fact what that retrospective is tracking is how the treatment of patients evolved over time and all doctors were getting better as time went on of keeping people alive.
And earlier published trial from that same health system detailed how the introduction of dexamethasone had altered the fatality rate, as had the advent of prone positioning, remdesivir, etc.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7314133/
The same journal that published the Henry Ford study published a scathing denouncement of the retrospective, only days later:
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30530-0/fulltext
The effect of the steroids explains all of the variation in the later retrospective that claimed to find a positive result.
And funny how the later study you are focused on did not mention this earlier study from the same hospital group that found it was steroids that was making the difference.
You are elevating inferior data and discounting the kind of data which gives conclusive results. Much of it.
But you go ahead with your India study.
I bet you did not read a word about the details of any of the studies posted.
The VA study was also a retrospective.
Funny how the studies with the same inferior methodology differ so much in your opinion of them.
Retrospective studies are flawed, period.
Why would I mention them.
We have later, larger, prospective clinical trials.
Stop being a fool and learn something.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v2.full.pdf
There is nothing in the VA study remotely resembling what you are on about.
It was the set of all patients that met the inclusion criteria, which was everyone for whom certain data was available.
There is nothing about people being miraculously cured.
I doubt you read a word of it.
Do you know what you have failed to do?
You have failed to learn that this stuff has been proven not to work.
I will bet you any amount in increments of $10,000 that there will be no studies showing the malaria drugs help with this virus, in any combination, amount, or co-administration, in any Prospective RCT that is to come.
How much money you gonna put where your stupid fat yap is, boy?
Nicholas McGinley wrote:
“And here is a fourth, which used zinc and the zpak antibiotic vs a placebo:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638”
That ‘study’ had a treatment course of only 5 days.
“The dosing regimen for hydroxychloroquine was 800 mg (4 tablets) once, then 600 mg (3 tablets) 6 to 8 hours later, then 600 mg (3 tablets) daily for 4 more days for a total course of 5 days (19 tablets total).”
Question, Nicky… what’s the length of time for the drug to reach levels in the body such that it’s effective?
I know with quinine, it’s 4 to 5 days. So they ended the treatment regimen (and declared negative results) just at the time that the drug was building up in the body to the point that it’d have an effect by suppressing sialic acid biosynthesis. LOL
Nicholas McGinley wrote:
“https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2771265
Health care worker, pre exposure, 600 mg, daily, April 9th to July 14. (No one had adverse events from this dosage every day for over 3 months)”
Do you bother to read these, or do you just use them for your FUD propaganda? LOL
“Among hospital-based health care workers, daily hydroxychloroquine did not prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection, although the trial was terminated early and may have been
underpowered to detect a clinically important difference.”
Nicholas McGinley wrote:
“https://ard.bmj.com/content/annrheumdis/early/2020/08/05/annrheumdis-2020-218500.full.pdf
Lupus and RA patients already on a safe dose of Plaquenil.”
“A strength of this study is all patients were on an immunosuppressant, with similar high-risk status for COVID-19 regardless of HCQ use.”
Q / CQ / HCQ is used to limit sialic acid biosynthesis which makes it more difficult for the virus to attach to sialic acid moeities so that the immune system can clear the virus. That “all patients were on an immunosuppressant” isn’t “a strength” of that study, it completely destroys its premise. LOL
Nicholas McGinley wrote:
“The amount that is needed to be given to get a concentration in the patients target cells can be easily calculated by pharmacologists. It is known that for CQ, it is too toxic to get the levels that worked in vitro into a human without killing them. That is why everyone quickly switched to HCQ.”
They’re not trying to “kill the virus” with HCQ or CQ or Q, Nicko. Those drugs aren’t antivirals (as you continue to attempt to claim). No, they’re looking to inhibit sialic acid biosynthesis in the body by affecting the ACE2 enzyme, making it more difficult for the virus to attach to and infect cells.
Long-term, there is a paradoxical effect (but only long-term), whereby the body up-regulates sialic acid biosynthesis in spite of the HCQ or CQ or Q. This was found in some taking the drug for RA. So long-term, the body is going to stabilize and produce the sialic acid it needs (for blood pressure regulation) regardless of the drug, but short-term (ie: you’re not on it for years), it works to inhibit sialic acid biosynthesis.
Pretreatment with 0.1, 1, and 10 μM chloroquine reduced infectivity by 28%, 53%, and 100%, respectively. [1]
The EC90 value of chloroquine against the 2019-nCoV in Vero E6 cells was 6.90 μM, which can be clinically achievable as demonstrated in the plasma of rheumatoid arthritis patients who received 500 mg administration. [2]
But Nicko, didn’t you claim “It is known that for CQ, it is too toxic to get the levels that worked in vitro into a human without killing them.”? Pulling “facts” from your sun-don’t-shine doesn’t bode well for your credibility, Nick. Claiming common dosages used is “killing them” (your words) shows the lengths you’ll go to in order to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). LOL
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0
You really are a f*cking dummy, you know that?
Smart enough to drop-kick you with facts, to get you to pull “facts” from your sun-don’t-shine, and to catch you in blatant lies, and to so perturb you that I now pwn every square inch of your empty brainpan. LOL
Funny how you know my name but no one knows yours.
So the messenger matters, not the message? That’s typical libtard-speak, Nicko.
Retrospective studies are not able to prove anything.
Translation:
“DUURRRHH! We can’t prove anything by looking at historical data!” LOL
You spin elaborate conspiracies in which no doct{ TARDSMACK }
Not “no doctor can be trusted” (your words), “the pharmaceutical industry cannot be trusted”. Stop putting words in my mouth, Dirtbag.
Not only is this insane conspiracy mongering, devoid of any connection with reali{ TARDSMACK }
You need to do a little reading, Nicko my boy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Food_and_Drug_Administration
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/major-generic-pharmaceutical-company-admits-antitrust-crimes
https://search.justice.gov/search?query=pharmaceutical&op=Search&affiliate=justice
4387 results – have fun reading about all that “devoid of any connection with reality” (your words) reality. LOL
No company has any legal immunity from anything they sell.
Oh, you’re not up with the times, Nicko. Read up on “Supreme Court of the United States. Russell Bruesewitz et al v. Wyeth et al. No. 09-152. Argued October 12, 2010 – Decided February 22, 2011.”
You’ll note the first paragraph contains: “As a quid pro quo, manufacturers enjoy significant tort-liability protections. Most importantly, the Act eliminates manufacturer liability for a vaccine’s unavoidable, adverse side effects.”
Talk about “devoid of any connection with reality” (your words, your current state). LOL
The Lancet study was retracted. Only a paranoid thinks it proves anything.
Bwahahaha! “Don’t look at those studies showing blatant falsification for an ulterior agenda! That’d expose the anti-HCQ agenda!” LOL
The India study is a retrospective. It proves nothin.
Translation:
“DUURRRHH! We can’t prove ‘nothin’ by looking at historical data!” LOL
The Henry Ford study was also a retrospective. It has been extensively debunked.
Translation:
“DUURRRHH! We can’t prove anything by looking at historical data! And I’ll claim it’s debunked when really the complaint was that it wasn’t double-blind (which takes much more effort to set up). Don’t look at the actual data of that study! That’d expose me as a fraud!” LOL
The same journal that published the Henry Ford study published a scathing denouncement of the retrospective, only days later:
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30530-0/fulltext
Oh, absolutely “scathing”… do you even bother to read these before you use them for your FUD propaganda? LOL
“Overall, the authors should be commended for rapidly compiling and analyzing data from a large cohort of COVID-19 patients.
The authors’ analysis suggested that hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, was associated with a reduced hazard ratio for death when compared with receipt of neither medication. Using a propensity score matched analysis, with the same variables, they reached a similar conclusion.
It remains fundamentally limited by its observational nature and is subject to residual confounding.”
That’s it? That’s the “scathing denouncement”? Or are you caught in yet another lie, Nicko? LOL
The effect of the steroids explains all of the variation in the later retrospective that claimed to find a positive result.
Care to show where, in that “scathing denouncement” they specifically state what you claim?
The VA study was also a retrospective.
“DUURRRHH! We can’t prove ‘nothin’ by looking at historical data!” LOL
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v2.full.pdf
Ah, the hypocrisy… you attempt to refute a retrospective study with that very retrospective study. LOL
The retrospective study didn’t separate the people into “you receive HCQ for CoV19, you don’t”, the VA itself did, you nong. And that decision was based upon how bad-off the people were.
On MSNBC, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Wilkie said, “That’s an observational study. It’s not a clinical study. It was done on a small number of veterans; sadly, those of whom were in the last stages of life, and the drug was given to them.”, adding that the drug “has been working on middle-age and younger veterans.”
I will bet you any amount in increments of $10,000 that there will be no studies showing the malaria drugs help with this virus, in any combination, amount, or co-administration, in any Prospective RCT that is to come. How much money you gonna put where your stupid fat yap is, boy?
I’ll bet you a billion dollars, Nicko, payable to the charity or political organization of my choice, to be announced at a later date (after I’ve made you squirm more. LOL).
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) frequently-updated list of studies:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w6p_HqRXCrW0_wYNK7m_zpQLbBVYcvVU/view
“Updated probability of success in preventing death from CoVID-19 using HCQ or HCQ + AZ = 91.6%”
How about a controlled study directly from Wuhan, where the virus originated?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v3
Efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in patients with COVID-19: results of a randomized clinical trial
“A larger proportion of patients with improved pneumonia in the HCQ treatment group (80.6%, 25 of 31) compared with the control group (54.8%, 17 of 31).”
Pay up, sucker. LOL
Nicholas McGinley wrote:
“There are now numerous prospective, randomized, double blind, placebo controlled clinical trials of HCQ, and none of them shows any benefit.”
None of them?
https://www.bakirkoytip.org/jvi.aspx?pdir=bakirkoytip&plng=eng&un=BMJ-50469&look4=
Small prophylaxis study of 208 healthcare workers in Turkey, 138 with high risk exposure received HCQ, while 70 with low and medium risk exposure did not. COVID-19 cases were lower in the treatment group, relative risk RR 0.43, p = 0.026. Since the control group had lower risk, the actual benefit may be larger.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11739-020-02505-x
2075 hospital patients in Spain showing HCQ reduces mortality 52% (~466,000 potential lives saved with global HCQ), odds ratio OR 0.39, p 37 °C, and saturation of oxygen < 90%
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.09.20184143v1
Observational prospective 5,541 patients, adjusted HCQ mortality odds ratio OR 0.36, p = 0.012. Adjusted hospitalization OR 0.57, p < 0.001. Zinc supplementation was used in all cases. Early treatment in ambulatory fever clinics in Saudi Arabia.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352906720303365
Observational prospective 254 hospitalized patients, HCQ+AZ mortality odds ratio OR 0.36, p = 0.04.
Ventilation OR 0.20, p = 0.008.
death, ↓53.6%, p=0.04
ventilation, ↓65.6%, p=0.008
(odds ratio converted to relative risk)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2052297520301013
Analysis of US states and countries. Country analysis shows a significant correlation between the dates of decisions to adopt/decline HCQ, and corresponding trend changes in CFR. US state analysis shows a significant correlation between CFR and the level of acceptance of HCQ.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10067-020-05334-7
Analysis of 1641 systemic autoimmune disease patients showing csDMARD (HCQ etc.) RR 0.37, p=0.015.
csDMARDs include HCQ, CQ, and several other drugs, so the effect of HCQ/CQ alone could be higher.
This study also confirms that the risk of COVID-19 for systemic autoimmune disease patients is much higher overall, OR 4.42, p<0.001 (this is the observed real-world risk which takes into account factors such as these patients potentially being more careful to avoid exposure).
(results are for "definite + highly suspected" cases and the main result is presented in the paper as the OR for not taking csDMARDs, we have converted this to RR for taking csDMARDs).
COVID-19 case, ↓63.0%, p=0.01, risk of COVID-19 case
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30600-7/fulltext
HCQ+AZ adjusted death HR 0.44, p=0.009. Propensity scores include baseline COVID-19 disease severity, age, gender, number of comorbidities, cardio-vascular disease, duration of symptoms, date of admission, baseline plasma CRP. IPW censoring. Retrospective study of 539 COVID-19 hospitalized patients in Milan, with treatment a median of 1 day after admission. HCQ 197 patients, HCQ+AZ 94, control 92. Control group received various other treatments. Authors excluded people receiving other drugs which could have biased the effect of HCQ when used in combination. Residual confounding is possible (e.g., people with CVD were more frequent in control), however people in the control group were more likely to require mechanical ventilation.
death, ↓34.0%, p=0.12
death, ↓56.0%, p=0.009, HCQ+AZ
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.20159301v1
Study of hospital health care workers showing HCQ prophylaxis reduces COVID-19 significantly, OR 0.30, p=0.02. 94 positive health care workers with a matched sample of 87 testing negative. Full course prophylaxis was important in this study which used a low dose of 400mg/week HCQ (800mg for week 1), so it may take longer to reach therapeutic levels. Actual benefit of HCQ may be larger because severity of symptoms are not considered here but HCQ may also reduce severity.
COVID-19 case, ↓51.0%, p=0.02
(odds ratio converted to relative risk)
So, so, sooooo many more… wait, I thought you said "none of them shows any benefit” (your words), Nicko… why, oh, why do you catch yourself in these easily debunked lies? LOL
Nicholas McGinley wrote:
“I will bet you any amount in increments of $10,000 that there will be no studies showing the malaria drugs help with this virus, in any combination, amount, or co-administration, in any Prospective RCT that is to come. How much money you gonna put where your stupid fat yap is, boy?”
I replied:
“I’ll bet you a billion dollars, Nicko, payable to the charity or political organization of my choice, to be announced at a later date (after I’ve made you squirm more. LOL).”
It only takes one, right? You specified “no studies showing the malaria drugs help with this virus” (your words), right? LOL
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.09.20184143v1
Observational prospective 5,541 patients, adjusted HCQ mortality odds ratio OR 0.36, p = 0.012. Adjusted hospitalization OR 0.57, p < 0.001. Zinc supplementation was used in all cases. Early treatment in ambulatory fever clinics in Saudi Arabia.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352906720303365
Observational prospective 254 hospitalized patients, HCQ+AZ mortality odds ratio OR 0.36, p = 0.04.
Ventilation OR 0.20, p = 0.008.
death, ↓53.6%, p=0.04
ventilation, ↓65.6%, p=0.008
(odds ratio converted to relative risk)
So if I provide more than one, will you owe multiple billions of dollars to the charity or political organization of my choice, Nicko? I’ve got more. LOL
I choose the America First SuperPAC to support Trump’s reelection. Pay up, sucker. You’re not getting off the hook for this one, Nicholas McGinley. Your bet is in black and white for all to see. LOL
I expect you to get a receipt and present it for everyone at WUWT to see, for your $1,000,000,000 contribution to the America First SuperPAC post-haste. You’ll make the contribution in my name, since I won the bet. That’s ‘LOL@Klimate Katastrophe Kooks’. Do be sure to spell it correctly. LOL
Well, that’s CoV19 done and dusted. Tested using human HEK293T-ACE2 cells (presumably from aborted fetuses), not the Green Monkey cells that Nicholas McGinley seems to have such a problem with. LOL
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.216150v1.full.pdf
“The combination of both drugs (HCQ, camostat mesylate) inhibited SARS1- and SARS2-PV more effectively than either drug alone.”
“In contrast, the same fixed amount of camostat had a more than 20-fold impact on hydroxychloroquine inhibition of SARS2-PV (changing the IC50 from 69.4 µM to 3.2 µM), but much less impact on SARS1-PV (27.1 µM to 10.6 µM). These data again demonstrate that SARS2-PV are more responsive to TMPRSS2 inhibition than are SARS1-PV, and that TMPRSS2 must be inhibited for hydroxychloroquine to be effective.”
“We also show that hydroxychloroquine efficiently blocks viral entry mediated by cathepsin L, but not by TMPRSS2, and that a combination of hydroxychloroquine and a clinically-tested TMPRSS2 inhibitor prevents SARS-CoV-2 infection more potently than either drug alone.”
“Here we show that hydroxychloroquine interferes with only one of two somewhat redundant pathways by which the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein is activated to mediate infection. The first pathway is dependent on the endosomal protease cathepsin L and sensitive to hydroxychloroquine, whereas the second pathway is dependent on TMPRSS2, which is unaffected by this compound.”
“The SARS-CoV-1 and -2 S proteins bind angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), their common receptor [17-19]. Two obligate proteolysis sites for fusion activation have been identified within the S proteins, namely at the junction of the S1 and S2 domain, and at the S2′ site in an exposed loop of the S2 domain [20]. The SARS-CoV-2 S1/S2 junction is cleaved in virus producing cells by proprotein convertases that cleave a distinctive furin-recognition site at this boundary [21]. In contrast, the SARS-CoV-1 S1/S2 boundary is cleaved in the virus target cell after receptor engagement by either cell-surface TMPRSS2 or endosomal cathepsin L [15, 22, 23]. The S2’ sites of both viruses are cleaved in the target cell, again by either TMPRSS2 or cathepsin L (Fig. 1). These proteolysis events and ACE2- binding prime the S protein for conformational changes that mediate fusion of the viral and cellular membranes [22-25]. While hydroxychloroquine is known to suppress cathepsin proteolysis activity, its impact on TMPRSS2-mediated viral entry is unknown.”
The ACE2 enzyme is the main pathway for the virus to infect cells, TMPRSS2 is a redundant and less-used pathway. So inhibiting ACE2 sialic acid biosynthesis does have an effect in inhibiting viral attachment to cell receptors which slows down infection spread rate.
But Q / CQ / HCQ was only half of the picture, since there are two pathways which the CoV19 virus can use (unlike SARS and MERS, which rely much less upon TMPRSS2).
To fully knock down the virus’s ability to infect cells, both Q / CQ / HCQ and a TMPRSS2 inhibitor (camostat mesylate in the case of the study above) need to be used.
Poor Nicholas McGinley loses again… when are you gonna get that lost-bet billion dollars to the America First SuperPAC, Nicko? Don’t forget that receipt, to be shown to everyone on WUWT. LOL
Don’t welch on the bet, Nick. You’ve already damaged your credibility by getting caught in lies and exaggerations, putting words in my mouth and spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)… reneging on the bet that you made would completely destroy what few shreds of credibility you have left. LOL
Still waiting for you to show a single result in the kind of study I specified.
Are you really this insane and stupid?
Are you determined to be the last human on Earth to believe something that is not true?
Come on…just fond one.
No one has time to read through 100,000 words of your inane babbling.
I am switching from popcorn to pine nuts.
The reaction to the virus has turned out to be politically useful to far too many leftist bad actors. They’re not about to give that up, so they must crush anything that shows promise for mitigating the virus’s effects.
As for the useful idiots, who simply don’t know any better, they’ve abandoned rational thought and formed a new cult based upon irrational fear and mask worship. To them, the masks are also symbols of leftist moral superiority.
As with the “climate change” issue, this situation is rapidly shifting away from a factual basis and is instead becoming dominated by emotions and political posturing. Just wait until they figure out how to merge the two issues. Well never be rid of masks or windmills after that.
Mike wrote:
“Just wait until they figure out how to merge the two issues.” (Climate Change and Covid-19).
ALREADY HAPPENED, WAY BACK IN JUNE 2020!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/15/farmers-fear-the-european-green-deal/#comment-3022602
Notice how the global warming cabal have linked the climate crisis AND the Covid-19 flu? How child prodigies like Greta and academics in non-technical fields have spouted drivel like “to tackle Covid-19 we also have to tackle climate change”? Remember this point!
We’ve demonstrated many times that alleged dangerous human-made global warming/climate change is not only false, it is fraudulent!
THE CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (CAGW) AND THE HUMANMADE CLIMATE CHANGE CRISES ARE PROVED FALSE
By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc.(Eng.), M.Eng., January 10, 2020
thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/the-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming-cagw-and-the-humanmade-climate-change-crises-are-proved-false.pdf
There is a similar high probability that the Covid-19 full-Gulag Lockdown is also a scam. We have experienced many flu epidemics that were more dangerous than Covid-19, with NO lockdowns. Why this flu? Why now? Read my post below for details on Covid-19.
Also, why are Antifa and BLM suddenly exploding onto the scene, trashing downtowns and terrorizing people, allegedly based on the police killing of career criminal George Floyd, who violently abused women? Much better people than Floyd die every day, and nobody cares.
HINT:
All these scams are related, concocted by the Marxist Dems, and have nothing to do with the climate, the mild Covid-19 flu or USA police violence. These are Democrat planned political events by paid demonstrators, intended to derail the investigations into the attempted coup-d’état of Trump via the Russia scam and the false FBI charges against Lt.-Gen. Flynn, and to steal the election so the treasonous acts of the Obama regime remain hidden.
It’s all a smokescreen to hide the criminal activity of the Dems – Try to focus on the big picture good people – It’s not all that complicated.
PLANDEMIC OR SCAMDEMIC?
IMPORTANT: Everyone should watch this video AND re-post it.
youtu.be/X6pzXrEBqR0
The full-Gulag lockdown was completely unnecessary and that was obvious by early-mid-March. I wrote then:
wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/21/to-save-our-economy-roll-out-antibody-testing-alongside-the-active-virus-testing/#comment-2943724
[excerpt- posted 21Mar2020]
LET’S CONSIDER AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH, SUBJECT TO VERIFICATION OF THE ABOVE CONCLUSIONS:
Isolate people over sixty-five and those with poor immune systems and return to business-as-usual for people under sixty-five.
This will allow “herd immunity” to develop much sooner and older people will thus be more protected AND THE ECONOMY WON’T CRASH.
rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/21/end-the-american-lockdown/comment-page-1/#comment-12253
[excerpt- posted 22Mar2020]
This full-lockdown scenario is especially hurting service sector businesses and their minimum-wage employees – young people are telling me they are “financially under the bus”. The young are being destroyed to protect us over-65’s. A far better solution is to get them back to work and let us oldies keep our distance, and get “herd immunity” established ASAP – in months not years. Then we will all be safe again.
__________________________________
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/10/15/james-murdoch-opens-up-on-the-family-rift-over-climate-change-politics/#comment-3105019
I’ve been busy – fighting the New Scam “full-Gulag Covid-19 lockdown” and the Old Scam “man-made global warming aka climate change”.
Notice how the scammers-that-be have linked the two, as in: “To fight Covid-19 we have to fight climate change” and such illogical drivel? WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, clown price Justin Trudeau, Greta and others have made that ridiculous linkage, and leftist academics and the “bought” press have parroted it. It is clear that Covid-19 and global warming are NOT even remotely related, and no honest, rational person could be so stupid.
I called it correctly on 21March2020 – NO LOCKDOWN! Covid-19 was a relatively mild flu except for the very elderly and infirm. Covid-19 is less dangerous to the general public than the 2017-2018 flu that nobody remembers – the lockdown was a huge over-reaction or a WHO scam.
Sweden correctly did not impose the full-Gulag lockdown and had low death rates and has now achieved herd immunity – forget vaccines, all flu’s die because herd immunity is reached.
Watch this video by Ivor Cummins – his Covid-19 conclusions of 8Sep2020 agree with my conclusions of ~21Mar2020, almost 6 months earlier. youtu.be/8UvFhIFzaac
The bloom is off the rose with green energy, end even the one time advocates are gradually realizing what an epic waste of money and resources it is.
Unfortunately, like many bad ideas, some people will continue to believe in it even after others have realized the truth.
I think what is most likely is that as they turbines wear out and fail or are taken off line one by one in coming years, they will not be replaced.
Even stupid people eventually give up on expensive bad ideas.
Mostly.
As long as there are mandates, money and willing hosts, renewable energy projects are likely to continue.
That is why hydrogen has come alive again. Someone is funding a big campaign to promote hydrogen. It is likely the EU through proxies.
Well, interesting. Good plot lines for a spy/thriller/apocalyptic novel.
I recall early on seeing that the Covid genre was recognized in the early sixties.
And if Covid-19 was intended to be weaponized it flopped.
All it has accomplished so far is cull the herd of the too many, too old, too sick, too crammed together in badly run (BLUE) nursing homes in NYC and a dozen or so states.
So far I see zero evidence in the data of a widespread contagion and death in the under 55 demographic.
And masks are just a clown show.
How ‘bout some mo’ data, yum-yum, data.
Global, WHO.
The US, India and Brazil together have more cases than the ENTIRE rest of the world combined.
The top ten countries have over 70% of the cases.
The US, Brazil, India and Mexico together have more Covid-19 deaths than the ENTIRE rest of the world combined.
The top ten countries have 72% of the deaths.
Seems to me more of a problem with crappy health care systems in a few countries and not a global pandemic.
US, CDC.
NYC and six states have accumulated more Covid-19 deaths than the ENTIRE rest of the country.
The top 15 states have accumulated over 75% of the US deaths.
The 75+ demographic has more deaths than the ENTIRE rest of the country combined.
The 65+ demographic represents almost 80% of the deaths.
The 55+ demographic represents over 90% of the Covid-19 deaths.
Japan has the highest percentage of 65+ in the world, 27%, yet a little over 1,500 deaths.
What do they know/do that the lying, fact free, fake news MSM does not consider newsworthy?
Denver, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties represent more Covid-19 deaths than the ENTIRE rest of Colorado.
The top ten Colorado counties represent 90% of the state’s Covid-19 deaths.
Why should the entire state/country/world suffer for these (BLUE) health care **** holes?
The data absolutely BELLOWS SCAM!!!!!!!-demic!!!!!
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nicholas-schroeder-55934820_covid-lyingmedia-data-activity-6719676294088552448-aPP-
I have found a even more compelling correlation that the ones mentioned by Nick S: A map of the US showing the results of the 2016 Presidential election by county, and the map showing covid deaths by county.
They are highly correlated.
And in the first month or two of the outbreak, they were nearly identical.
I posted the maps in a few places, my FB page, a few Twitter thread, and over at tony Heller’s site.
Let me grab a link and then if anyone else finds the correlation compelling, I would like to hear about it.
Here we go:
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1299574662716968960?s=20
Where Democrats are in charge, people got the COVID.
Of course, once it was widespread in those places, it spread out from them, and so over the time the correlation has been “smeared out”.
Luckily leftist insanity is not as contagious as infectious diseases.
Throw out NY, NJ, Connecticut, Massachusetts and USA drops to like 40th world wide position.
Turns out when you put ‘recovering infected old residents’ back into the retirement homes from where they came – the vulnerable, frail, uninfected residents get covid-19 and succumb – who would make such a policy for convalescing – oh ya – the Governor – Cuomo et al – despite tremendous objections from the retirement home administrators.
It has hammered the economies of the Communist Party’s opponents, and might achieve the further goal of removing Trump from office, to be replaced by the CCP’s bought poodle Biden.
“A lab mishap duly occurred at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Satellite imagery shows road blocks around the lab on 6th to 11 October, 2019. This is supported by US mapping of mobile phone traffic which showed a reduction in traffic from the affected building. The Russians realised that troop movements could be mapped by the US from mobile phone data so Putin banned Russian troops from carrying mobile phones a week later.”
Putin Bans Armed Forces Members From Carrying Electronic Devices, Gadgets
https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-bans-armed-forces-members-from-carrying-electronic-devices-gadgets/30598888.html
According to the decree, signed on May 6, military personnel may not possess gadgets that can track locations and transmit audio and photo materials.
What other facts did David fabricate to write this conspiracy article? I have neither the desire nor the patience for this kid of stuff.
Aside from the probability that there was an obvious concerted and funded effort by Democratic Party operatives to discredit hydroxychloroquine last Spring to smear President Trump, much of the rest of this essay by David should be viewed in about the same way as the Steele Dossier on Trump – mostly unsubstantiated accusations and claims.
This kind of COVID conspiracy stuff does NOT serve the Climate Skeptic community well.
May 6, 2020. October 2019 was months previously.
6 months is not “a week later.”
Wow. You don’t construct an argument very well at all.
Actually it serves the community just fine.
Darwin will have the last word with these skeptics.
Darwin has the last word with skeptics and alarmists.
Darwin, aka nature and viruses, doesn’t care about Mankind’s quibbles, dishonest data manipulations, or pet theories.
If I wanted to lower my risk of getting and dying from COVID, and I lived in a place where the local and state governments were controlled by Democrats, I would move:
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1299574662716968960?s=20
Mosh,
you just elevated the skeptics to an “immortal” or never dying species… 🙂
The “species” that Darwin will have the last word with… 🙂
cheers
darwin award’s buddy.
get in line
Ha… 🙂
The “get in line” is the easy peasy part.
The hard part, the tough part, the really tough part, the really really tough part is
“keep in line”.
🙂
cheers
I am pretty sure he died.
See below on Steele’s dodgy dossier.
While what has transpired has certainly been politically damaged and mismanaged, and the amount of information presented here is large, nevertheless in skimming through the referenced papers, only noticed one referenced statement about global warming, and at least some environmental concerns seem legitimate. The papers appeared to be useful summaries of historical pandemics with quite a bit of emphasis on the role of faster travel. The current culture of reversing innocence standards is troublesome, of course not that some may be guilty.
Some of you will remember Enginer01 posts here and elsewhere pointing the research that says that the initial stages of viral attack deplete the body’s relatively small store of tissue zinc, and why rapid replenishment is important. Unfortunately over 85% of the hydroxychloroquine mentions I have seen omit the importance of or any mention at all of zinc.
I was blown away several days ago when Tucker Carlson mentioned the importance of ventilation in diluting indoor viral loads. ASHRAE has made mild thrusts in pointing out the need for increasing make-up air in HVAC systems, but unfortunately hardware limits usually make this option unattractive. Unless you want to live.
The police don’t believe in coincidence and neither should the public. A deadly disease breaks out in Wuhan, right next to the lab doing bio research on the similar diseases. And everyone acts like we need proof positive from a government that covers up everything. Instead they say we are “interfering in their internal affairs.
China is the new Russia or the new Nazi Germany. Where is the evidence that the virus is an accident? It should be listed as one of the biggest crime against humanity of all time.
This is a rambling diatribe, making extensive use of ‘asserted correlation, therefore proven causation’ smears.
It lowers the reputation of WUWT ., and should have no place here…
DG
Maybe you are right, however the comments posted here are an absolute goldmine.
“The police don’t believe in coincidence…”
The Denver police do not seem to have any problem with coincidences.
They said this:
https://twitter.com/DenverPolice/status/1315100293940441088?s=20
But the truth is more like this:
https://twitter.com/LibertyHangout/status/1315251282115014656?s=20
Agreed
Full throated that the bat virus was manipulated into the SARS2 (no silly ‘Darwinian evolution’ producing it)
I believe it was an accident that it got out on the bottom of some lab assistant’s shoe
Diseases pass from animals to humans all the time.
Literally every day.
If one just looks at new emerging ones, it turns out that a whole monthly medical journal could be devoted to that narrow topic alone.
Some are very and indeed and have emerged in out lifetime.
Ebola.
AIDS.
Others are widespread in animals and they can pass it to humans but humans never pass it to other humans.
Things like
Rabies.
Tetanus
Many more that are common but many never heard of or only have in passing.
How many were real familiar with SARS or MERS before all of this occurred?
They are both…corona viruses that passed from animals to people real sudden like and started killing large percentage of the people that got it, and it turned out to be easy for one person to spread it to another.
Yeah but it is silly to think diseases can spread form animals to people.
Never happens…except the many times it has and does happen.
Some have caused will known events, like all of the flu pandemics.
They al are caused by some of that Darwinian Evolution nonsense and spread from pigs or birds to people.
But how often does that happen?
Only every once in a while…it is for all intents and purposes impossible, eh?
Except for every time it happens.
Yup…If one just looks at new emerging ones, it turns out that a whole monthly medical journal could be devoted to that narrow topic alone.
In fact, as it turns out, someone has long ago done just that!
And nary a month goes by without many article about Emerging Infectious Diseases:
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/
But any that really cause big problems for regular people:
On the scale of the Black Death that killed a substantial fraction of all the people in Asia and Europe and who knows where else, when bubonic plague jumped from animals into people?
Plague!
Animals.
Evolution.
Hanta virus, anyone?
Toxoplasma gondii?
In fact, it is very likely that every infectious disease humans ever suffered from, came from some other animal at some point in the past.
This list of zoonotic diseases is far from exhaustive. For instance, it doesn’t include measles, smallpox or HIV.
https://www.healthline.com/health/zoonosis#list-of-diseases
Not all infectious diseases come from animals, but most.
Smallpox is very closely related to cowpox and horsepox.
In fact they are so close that inoculating a person with one prevents any chance of catching the other, and does so to the extent that one of the most widespread diseases to effect humans is now wiped out completely in every human on the planet.
I am curious to know how it can be assumed that at some long ago time smallpox evolved from cowpox?
And HIV is known to have jumped into people at some point in the 20th century or perhaps just before.
I am surprised someone knowledgeable in viral evolution is not aware of the work that has made that conclusion a virtual certainty?
It is thought that all humans are propagated from a very small population at some point in the not so distant (by evolutionary reckoning) past. The most recent common ancestor of all living humans has been determined by analysis of mitochondrial DNA.
Unless that over-a-decade-old finding has been cast into doubt without me reading about it, which is not impossible but the research was at the time presented as rather conclusive.
Given this recent shared lineage, it has been argued that all diseases in modern humans that do not appear in all isolated populations, and shared by them and us, are likely recently acquired, and there is only one place they could have come from if they have not always been with us.
Still, I only said I considered it very likely, and I did not come up with that idea on my own. It could be false.
HIV origin:
“Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are believed to have originated in non-human primates in West-central Africa, and are believed to have transferred to humans (a process known as zoonosis) in the early 20th century.[153][154]
HIV-1 appears to have originated in southern Cameroon through the evolution of SIVcpz, a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that infects wild chimpanzees (HIV-1 descends from the SIVcpz endemic in the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes).[155][156] The closest relative of HIV-2 is SIVsmm, a virus of the sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys atys), an Old World monkey living in littoral West Africa (from southern Senegal to western Côte d’Ivoire).[21] New World monkeys such as the owl monkey are resistant to HIV-1 infection, possibly because of a genomic fusion of two viral resistance genes.[157]
HIV-1 is thought to have jumped the species barrier on at least three separate occasions, giving rise to the three groups of the virus, M, N, and O.[158]
Left to right: the African green monkey source of SIV, the sooty mangabey source of HIV-2, and the chimpanzee source of HIV-1
There is evidence that humans who participate in bushmeat activities, either as hunters or as bushmeat vendors, commonly acquire SIV.[159] However, SIV is a weak virus, and it is typically suppressed by the human immune system within weeks of infection. It is thought that several transmissions of the virus from individual to individual in quick succession are necessary to allow it enough time to mutate into HIV.[160] Furthermore, due to its relatively low person-to-person transmission rate, it can only spread throughout the population in the presence of one or more high-risk transmission channels, which are thought to have been absent in Africa prior to the 20th century.
Specific proposed high-risk transmission channels, allowing the virus to adapt to humans and spread throughout the society, depend on the proposed timing of the animal-to-human crossing. Genetic studies of the virus suggest that the most recent common ancestor of the HIV-1 M group dates back to circa 1910.”
“An alternative view—unsupported by evidence—holds that unsafe medical practices in Africa during years following World War II, such as unsterile reuse of single-use syringes during mass vaccination, antibiotic, and anti-malaria treatment campaigns, were the initial vector that allowed the virus to adapt to humans and spread.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV
Source of this assertion in wikipedia references list:
http://perspectivesinmedicine.cshlp.org/content/1/1/a006841
Origin of smallpox:
“Smallpox has been one of humankind’s greatest
scourges since time immemorial. Even illnesses
as terrible as the plague, cholera, and yellow fever
have not had such a universal and persistent impact.
Smallpox is believed to have appeared at the time
of the first agricultural settlements in northeastern
Africa, around 10 000 BC (2). It probably spread
from Africa to India by means of Egyptian merchants in the last millennium BC (3). The earliest
evidence of skin lesions resembling those of smallpox is found on the faces of mummies from the time
of the 18th and 20th Egyptian Dynasties ”
Source:
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=C471CE46E9EB27B1087A841E4838942F?doi=10.1.1.695.883&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Other source are in general agreement with this hypothesis.
Measles:
“Measles is of zoonotic origins, having evolved from rinderpest, which infects cattle.”
“A pre-cursor of the measles began causing infections in humans as early as the 4th century BC or as late as after AD 500”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles
Source for the first assertion:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2838858/
Just sayin’.
If you find any that are known not to have, I would like to read about it.
We all have things we can learn.
Of note, I have a special interest in Hepatitis C, and the zoonotic origin is not well researched, but the common ancestor of the various genotypes of the virus has been calculated, although estimates vary from 400 to 1300 years ago or more. I have wondered how a disease that only spreads by blood to blood contact had managed to propagate prior to people using needles and such, but it may be it was via tattooing or some such thing.
“A number of cultural or ritual practices have been proposed as a potential historical mode of spread for HCV, including circumcision, genital mutilation, ritual scarification, traditional tattooing and acupuncture.[47] It has also been argued that given the extremely prolonged periods of persistence of HCV in humans, even very low and undetectable rates of mechanical transmission via biting insects may be sufficient to maintain endemic infection in the tropics, where people receive large number of insect bites.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_C_virus
“I am curious to know how it can be assumed that at some long ago time smallpox evolved from cowpox?”
Left out a word.
Sorry.
Meant to ask how it could be assumed to have not done so?
But it was rhetorical, as the origin seems rather certain.
But scientists can be wrong.
It was produced by evolution, ie artificial selection, which is what gain of function is. It didn’t evolve naturally.
Maybe it did not.
But without convincing evidence, it is just an assertion.
One that many people had already decided was definitely true from the get go.
Which only makes the bar higher.
Not just an assertion. Papers published by its creators show how it was made.
It would take very little gain of function lab work to evolve this bat coronavirus described in 2015 into the pandemic pathogen:
https://jvi.asm.org/content/90/6/3253
Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus
Xing-Lou Yang, Ben Hu, Bo Wang, Mei-Niang Wang, Qian Zhang, Wei Zhang, Li-Jun Wu, Xing-Yi Ge, Yun-Zhi Zhang, Peter Daszak, Lin-Fa Wang, Zheng-Li Shi
Authors from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Not just an assertion. Papers published by its creators show how it was made.”
I understand that you are convinced.
I am not, and in fact have not seen anything close to proof, or even a coherent and convincing set of convincing facts.
I am keeping an open mind, but have not seen any reason to be sure it is not just the latest coronavirus that are endemic in a large number of wild animals, to have jumped into humans.
It has always happened, and we have created conditions that make it not just more likely than ever, but certain to keep happening.
We are lucky it is not a 90+ % fatal-to-humans bird flu, which exist in millions of birds that we know of, but so far can only be spread from birds to people and not from one person to another.
We are one unlucky mutation away from that awful eventuality, and it would not even take a mutation…just some single person or animal getting two viruses and once and exchanging the appropriate genetic material to make human to human airborne transmission possible.
John, I apologise if you have mentioned it elsewhere in the comments, but if you got the Wuhan virus, what would you want to be treated with? And anything prophylactically?
I would risk HCQ as a preventative. IMO the malarial regions of Africa support this view, as does the Indian medical estabishment’s endorsement of HCQ as prophylaxis.
My own preventative measures are vitamins D and C, with zinc and Zith as an ionophore, rather than HCQ.
Plus of course normal distancing and mask wearing. The thing is, I’ve survived so many pandemics that I’m actually probably too cavalier in my attitude toward the ChiCom CoV. My young sister-in-law, an asthmatic physical therapist student, is quite horrified at my lack of respect for this pandemic. But at 22, she hasn’t been through the many viral plagues which I’ve managed to survive, by the grace of God and an activated immune system.
What is Zith please? I look it up and all I am told is that it is not a valide Scrabble word.
Azithromycin.
Sorry.
Should have used the full name, but it has been mentioned here before.
Israeli company Redhill biopharma, has had excellent results and is in stage2-3 for it’s drug Opaginib, if their studies are as good as they say, we’ll have a big winner. They have collaborated with two specialist pharmaceutical manufacturers in Europe and Canada to meet anticipated demand. Opaganib is taken orally and has demonstrated potent anti-viral activity against Cov-19. I recommend going onto their site for more details of studies and the drug make up.
A great example of a false assumption creating two pages of equally false conclusions. Climate change is down to CO2 anyone?
Leo Smith
October 17, 2020 at 12:05 am
Leo, you your conclusion is wrong.
For what is known, if the virus is not even real as some have already claimed then it is an artificial condition conceived by a mind.
In the other hand, if it is real as described, definitely it is “artificial”.
“Artificial” as in the case of the “Killer Bee”.
A fully properly successive natural bee insect, but first conceived in a mind and then made by utilization and influence of artificial methods, as otherwise solely relying by means of nature it could not have being made. A product through the high human technology.
The main point… as it stands it is a product first thought by a mind.
The virus has 4 signatures in its body “envelope”, 2 human and 2 of other species.
Nature in its own alone does not do that and can not do that… it is far above plain nature.
It requires highly evolved human technology,
and a mind to conceive it first of all and then be able to apply the technology at/to a very very high fine precision and accuracy at the most top high resolution…
Nature in its own does not do and can not do such a virus… outside the intelligence mind clause.
So much so that Fauxi and company at the first consider it to be just a Chinese trick as an attempt to mess around with the real problem… and not a real discovery of a new highly infectious potential virus.
So either it is a hoax, a mind product, artificial… or it is real as described but still a product of intelligent mind.
The only thing in the statement you addressed that could be argued over and over ad nauseam is the meaning point of ‘artificial”.
But that then will be in the argumentative territory of absolute perfection.
cheers
Many plusses.
Glad to see I am not the only one that read that sentence and the link (which seems as though it was supposed to be verification, but was nothing like verification at all) and had my bullshitometer get instantly pegged to the pinstop.
BTW my comment is a response to Leo.
“Actually it serves the community just fine.”
Lapping it up in fact and puts paid to any hint of skepticism. More like credulism.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/millard-j-melnyk/credulism-every-skeptics-dirty-little-secret-introduction/996349383818699/
It works both ways Loydo.
This article is shameful. Most of it is invented without any evidence. David Archibald is descending even more in his lack of credibility.
A place like WUWT should not publish this rubbish. It does a disfavor to its credibility forever.
I have to say, after all of the insanity already inflicted upon us all in 2020, I have developed a distinctly lowered tolerance for abject nonsense, outright lies, utter hogwash, and BS in general, in all of it’s many forms.
At the very least, given that we are in what is at the very least a dire situation based at least partly on irrational fearmongering, people engaging in flights of fancy, speculations of a problematic and dubious nature, and/or imaginative guesswork, could at the very least say so up front.
Presenting such material without anything in the way of qualifications, does not seem right.
At some point, it stands to reason that widespread sanity is bound to re-emerge, and it seems to be a forthright step in that direction would be for people to stop passing off fiction and speculations and stuff made up out of thin air, as facts, and stick to…you know…what we can say with some certainly is known to be true.
Oy…the typos.
I wonder if the good folks running WUWT that are ever going to be able to provide an edit function for at least a short time after a comment is posted.
Posting pictures and graphs and charts again would be nice too.
Not complaining, just sayin’.
And wonderin’.
Mike “Armageddon” Pompeo cavorted in London with the Henry Jackson Society, a founding member being Sir Richard Dealove, ex-MI6 chief, who STARTED the WUHAN conspiracy theory.
Pompeo is doing at least 3 speeches like the Lead PER DAY!
This the very same Dearlove of the dodgy Iraq Dossier, causing an invasion with American brawn (yet again). The very same Dearlove of the entire Russiagate hoax based on the well known dodgy dossier. That is real interference in US politics, and President Trump fully knows it.
It sure looks like the lead was dictated from London, maybe at the In and Out Club, via some Canadian back channel.
Great to see some here smelling a swamp rat.
Cracks are beginning to appear. The English North South divide
Could Burnham win the battle of the North? Boris backed down from forcing Manchester into Tier 3 ‘because he feared police would not enforce rules’ – and figures show the city’s infections are still going DOWN
…
Greater Manchester Police currently answers to the city’s Labour Mayor, while police and crime commissioners – a role filled in Manchester by Mr Burnham – have the power to set strategic priorities for their local constabularies.
This means that police enforcement of restrictions is contingent on the support of Mr Burnham, who is refusing to move the region into Tier Three without a full reinstatement of the furlough scheme.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8850005/Boris-Johnson-backed-imposing-Tier-3-Covid-rules-Manchester-amid-policing-fears.html
I think we should sue the US and Dr Fauci….
Sue Neil Ferguson, perpetrator of the bogus Imperial College London model used to justify shutting down Western economies, and relied upon by Democrat governors to send infectious patients into nursing homes.
They did the opposite of what was required, ie they sent old, sick people into enclosed spaces with the most vulnerable, while quarantining the young and healthy. Instead, isolation wards for the infected were what a real doctor would have ordered.
I wonder how I could trust this author.
He wrote in his column of January 2020 about 300 Kg of weapon grade plutonium Japan returned to the US this way;
“That is why Japan developed its own nuclear reprocessing industry which could be used for a weapons-based program. As a result of that reprocessing, which runs at a loss, Japan has accumulated 47 tons of reactor-grade plutonium. This is useless for making weapons because its Pu240 content is too high at about 20%. Weapons-grade plutonium has a Pu240 content of 7% or less. Japan did have 300 kg of weapons-grade plutonium the United States had lent them in the 1960s. That would have been enough for 50 fifty-kiloton weapons (assuming that they were tritium-boosted). China was agitated by this and so the Obama regime insisted on its return in 2014. One cheap way of helping keep the peace in Asia would be to send those 300 kg back to Japan.”
「Occasional Cortex: Therefore Japan Goes Nuclear」(January 31, 2019 By David Archibald)
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/occasional_cortex_therefore_japan_goes_nuclear.html
He is right about Obama’s request date of early 2014 but it was March 2016 when 300 Kg arrived at the final destination, Savannah River Site, two full years after the pledge of Abe, then prime minister of Japan.
The US lent Japan 300 Kg for research purpose more than 50 years ago and it was used for making MOX fuel mixing with uranium for fast-breeder reactor experiment.
As Japan did not return in the form of MOX fuel and you cannot recover 239Pu fully from MOX fuel, how could Japan return 300 Kg intact? This is the question of commonsense.
I have a theory on 300 Kg and Fukushima cover up and I want to discuss this issue with the author before taking his Wuhan theory as it is.
Fukushima was a bad reactor design and bad placement. We don’t have a great deal of time to get ready for China’s war. When the Chicoms start losing they are likely to start nuking Japanese cities, one at a time, until the Japanese tap the mat. It is time for the US to lease at least 30 warheads of 400 kt to Japan. So that China’s aggression stays conventional.
Whatever the old design of the reactor, the problem was that fuel tanks for backup power for coolant flow were not located high enough to be out of the earthquake’s waves. They were deliberately placed high but the forecast of maximum wave height was not enough. Much has been learned about earthquakes in the over half century since the plant was designed.
Of course extreme events can occur, but on the other hand design to ‘very bad things shall not happen’ is an approach increasingly being used for airliners, replacing traditional <1E-12 type calculations. A problem with calculations is estimates of variables within them, and having to foresee all possible failures is a difficult task. To the extent that the USSR was rigorous, would anyone have included "operators violate procedures in order to test a theory"?
(The mining industry is also shifting away from 'tailings ponds' to slash the downside risk. In one disaster in BC the mine operator was not keeping up with widening the width of the bottom of the dam as it was raised, geoscientists who were supposed to be keeping tabs on things were slow or worse, so a unmapped strata under a wing of the dam liquified under pressure. (For some reason designers had not drilled deep enough to detect it even though they found such strata under the front of the dam. As usual multiple factors combined to make disaster.)
Chinese are not that stupid and there is no reason for them to nuke us.
If you are American, you had better make more efforts to reduce the tension in Asia Pacific because there is westerlies toward American continent.
EPA detected massive 239Pu plume in California 9 days after the explosion of SFP of Fukushima Unit 4 on March 15, 2011and a large amount of unusual 234U was also monitored in Alaska. Fresh depleted uranium from enriching reprocessed uranium has 236U, naturally non-existent isotope, in it and more 234U.
Thanks to the wind direction, IAEA laboratory located 100 Km down south from Fukushima monitored 236U. Researchers there could not understand why because there were no fuels which contain 236U in Fukushima officially.
The formula to make MOX fuel to use weapon grade plutonium mixing with fresh depleted uranium was agreed in 2010 between US and Russia for the reduction of excessive amount of weapon grade plutonium.
Unit 4 was not in operation when the accident happened and GE-Hitachi, not Tepco, was working some repair work exclusively and what they were doing has never been disclosed.
I have quite a few copies of FOIA documents that show how badly Obama administration wanted to hide the fuel damage of SFP of Unit 4.
Let me talk briefly how Unit 4 was covered up.
It was April 2, 2013 when the final report on Fukushima was published by UNSCEAR which said that reactor core of Unit 1 to 3 were severely damaged but it is considered that there was no radioactive release from the SFPs at Units 1-4.
However, in the IAEA Technical Volume 1/5 published August 2015 there are daily records and March 15 states;
“At 09:38, a fire reported on the north-west part of the Unit 4RB. It was observed later this fire had self-extinguished at 11:00.
The ERC recovery team tried to enter the RB at 10:30 in order to confirm the state of the SFP regarding to a reported fire, but abandoned the attempt because the dosimeter displayed a maximum rate of 1000 mSv/h upon opening the RB door.
The maximum radiation dose rate of Fukushima accident is manipulated to be 12mSv/h, which was recorded at the main gate at 09:00 on the same day. Nobody knows the exact dose rate because 1000 mSv was the measuring limit of the equipment. There is a conspiracy, not conspiracy theory, in this world.
Why this author does not mention strange pneumonia cases occurred in the US in 2019 which is said to have causality with vaping? This phenomenon seems equally important to find the origin of corona virus.
When China starts its war, either they win or Xi is killed in the subsequent coup. To preclude dying himself, Xi will kill any amount of other people by whatever means available. Japan alone could defeat China in a conventional war. So at some stage Xi (China) will start lashing out in desperation.
I think they found out the lung disease caused by vaping was from vape juice with some sort of vitamin E derivative in it. Vitamin E acetate. They also think it was mostly or maybe all people who were vaping stuff with THC in it, Some may not have wanted to admit what they were using.
It was mostly in August and by September was tapering off.
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/severe-lung-disease.html#what-we-know
I know what CDC said. I don’t take it as it is. Despite the average age of patients is 51 years old, Trump raised age limit from 18 to 21. Strange, isn’t it?
Does not seem strange to me.
Sentiment in the US is that smoking is a bad thing to do, and the companies have been long known to market their products to younger people.
A few decades ago, many states raised the legal age to buy alcohol from 18 to 21.
As for the CDC, it is not just them saying it.
There are no new reports of people winding up in hospitals with mysterious and rare lung damage.
But we are all free to think anyone and everyone is lying about everything.
Then what?
Just make up our own facts?
You have not said why you think there is any link to COVID.
The cause of the injury was found.
What reason to doubt the findings?
Despite all the wrangling and misinformation in this thread, I learned something here — I was introduced to Michel Halbouty! Knew nothing of the man before.
From Wikipedia:
So, the quote was not his, but still what a remarkable man. Obviously it took death to put an end to his projects. Bankrupt twice and came back both times. Found 30 oil fields.
Uyghurs,Tibet,Hong Kong, Repubic of China,Territorial claims ,wholesale corruption in Western Countries ,correction treatment any dissent and failing to inform the world of the impending disaster,that was COVID-19. Apologists comments expected.
nerdhaspower.weebly.com has something to say both scientific and forensic about COVID19 and RaTG13.
I thought this blog was about science. On the origins of the virus, this piece is just speculation, no evidence just a bit of circumstantial evidence that we have to take on trust anyway as there is no link to any source material.
Disappointed!
yes look it is impertative for Covid skeptics to fill the air with dust and confusion.
any story will do no matter how far fetched.
They can’t believe their lives have changed forever, and they had no control over it
Well displace my stuff with better stuff from your own hand. Explain why Fauci sent that money to Wuhan.
sending money to wuhan is not proof of the biological origin of a virus.
it’s not even evidence.
You dont even know how much money was sent to wuhan or what they did.
( travel and collect samples)
as for the funding. the 3.7 Million was Not directly to Wuhan, it went to ecohealth
In 2014, the NIH approved a grant to EcoHealth Alliance designated for research into “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” This involved collaborating with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses in bats and the risk of potential transfer to humans. Other agencies and researchers NOT IN WUHAN also recieved
portions of this 3.7M
The project wanted to understand what factors allow coronaviruses, including close relatives to SARS, to evolve and transfer into the human population
Over the entire history the Wuhan Institute received about $600,000 from the NIH. the money was a fee for gathering and analysing of bat samples.
the research was not for gain of function
In 2014 ~$133,000 was sent to the institute in the first four years ~ $66,000 coming in the last year. For In 2019 ~$76,000 was budgeted for the Wuhan Institute no money was actually sent.
Here is the top level link, if you contact ecohealth, they can verify the small sums sent to wuhan
and details I provide for you above
https://taggs.hhs.gov/Detail/AwardDetail?arg_AwardNum=R01AI110964&arg_ProgOfficeCode=104
I don’t think that FauXi intended to kill people. IMO, he, obviously like others at NIH and CDC, contrary to non-governmental epidemiologists and virologists, actually thought there was some value in patently dangerous GoF research.
Alert!
Opinions vary, one research paper concludes the virus was not created in a lab, given detail characteristics.
Researchers in Communist China have worked with bats, which are a reservoir of some diseases, apparently they are not much affected by corona virus.
Thus it is conceivable that sloppy lab workers or deficient facilities.
One _theory_ is that some miners caught the virus and were in a hospital for months with a then unknown illness.
Speculators seem to miss that COVID-10 resembles INFLUENZA thus may well have been misdiagnosed initially. Analysis of sewage samples in Italy suggests the SARS-CoV-2 virus was about several weeks or more before it was recognized there.
(Apparently there is much travel between Communist China and northern Italy for manufacturing to get Made In Italy label. Similarly, it popped up in Iran which has Communist Chinese supplying missiles for proxies to shoot at Israelis, and providing training. There is significant travel between Iran and Canada due immigration and students, many ex-pats ad students went to Iran over the Christmas break, that was a path into North America. (There were direct paths too, notably into Vancouver BC which has many emigres from CC and HK.)
Do you refer to the paper which concluded on dubious grounds, that the WuWHOFlu virus was not genetically engineered? In a strict sense, that’s probably correct, where “genetic engineering” means inserting new sequences into existing genomes.
However, SARS-2 was created by a different technique, ie gain of function via directed evolution. Hence, it appears as is it evolved naturally, rather than in a lab, using ferrets as models for human lungs.
Despite my use of “flu|, coronaviruses are quite distinct from influenza viruses. While symptoms in infeccted patients overlap, the two viral families are separated by untold generations of divergent evolution.
CoVs are closer to the ancestral Ur-RNA virus, which was an enveloped, positive-sense, single-stranded replicant. They constitute Family Coronaviridae in Order Nidovirales, Class Pisoniviricetes, Phylum Pisuviricota, Kingdom Orthornavirae, Realm Riboviria.
Influenza A viruses are multi-strain species and genus of enveloped, negative-sense, segmented, single-stranded members of Family Orthomyxoviridae, Order Articulavirales, Class Insthoviricetes, Phylum Negarnaviricota, Kingdom Orthornavirae, Realm Riboviria. So same realm and kingdom, different phyla. As distinct as chordates from arthropods in Kingdom Animalia. As its name implies, Negarnaviricota contains negative-sense viruses.
I think he means to say that the disease, not the virus, shares many symptoms and initial disease progression with other respiratory infections.
They mostly all do at some stages, because the symptoms are caused by our immune response, not anything specific to the viral genome.
For example, a very long list of infectious organisms cause pneumonia.
Viruses, fungi, bacteria…many types and strains of each all cause the same sort of symptoms at various stages.
Even doctors that see patients every day have to do a swab and culture to know if someone has an actual case of influenza.
Over 200 different viruses all cause the common cold.
Rhinoviruses, coronas, adenoviruses, and some others.
WuWHOFlu also has symptoms not shared by flu strains. This isn’t an exhaustive list:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/expert-answers/coronavirus-unusual-symptoms/faq-20487367
BTW, my wife, a Chilean nurse fighting COVID-19 in Santiago, has been separated from her family, son and me in Valparaiso for seven months, under preventative quarantine since even before Chile entered its state of emergency in April. Valpo came out of total quarantine on Tuesday, entering the still strict Phase 2.
Of course.
In many ways it is nothing like any other virus we have seen.
Which become apparent over time, and may even be obvious once everyone is looking very closely for the difference and there is a pandemic.
It was obvious after some time, but how obvious when no one is looking and it is the first few days or a week?
I have read reports from ER doctors about the very early days, when no testing was available, and even when it was, they were supposed to get permission to test someone, and in some cases were denied permission to test patients they thought might have COVID, b/c the person how no risk factor, which were only two of…out of the country in China, or close contact with someone known to be infected.
Those criterion are guaranteed to miss cases when it is spreading at first.
Bessides problems like those was the fact of asymptomatic cases, the extent of which wasn’t known, which led to estimates of fatality rates ten times too high.
The fact is however that even most very old people recover, and more so now that medical professionals know better how to treat patients, so that treatment-caused fatalities have declined.
Some epidemiologists think that the 1889 Russian flu was caused by coronavirus OC43, which is now a common cold agent, one of seven known human CoVs and, like SARS-1, MERS and SARS-2, a betacoronavirus, as is another of the cold CoVs. The other two are alphaCoVs. The majority of adult colds are caused by those four CoVs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic
Others think it was flu, which conferred immunity against Spanish flu among people old enough to have been exposed to it.
This great 2018 paper on RNA virus phylogeny shows that the NIH isn’t totally useless:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282212/
Origins and Evolution of the Global RNA Virome
Wuhan is a huge industrial city with many direct international flights in and out every day.
And the virus was almost surely spreading for weeks before anyone knew anything about it, and when the initial implications grew more clear, the flights continued for some time after that.
One thing we do know, it was spreading widely over there and in Italy and here in the for long enough that is was all over the place by the time the number of known cases and then deaths suddenly jumped up through the roof.
The CDC was still saying no one had anything to worry about and there was no evidence of community transmission while it was known to have spread widely in Washington State, and no one had any idea how first that teen aged kid and then that nursing home had acquired the infection…which was far away from the guy who was know to have arrived from China with it and was in the hospital.
And while they issued glib assurances that there was no evidence of community transmission, they had no testing capacity and no surveillance and were not actually looking for it or even coming up with a plan for what to do if the situation changed…which it had already done while they were snoozing.
CDC actions and inactions have been terrible, to include faulty test kits after Obama made them the only source for viral tests.
However, had the CPC lived up to its WHO obligations, informed the world as soon as the outbreak was recognized and let in foreign specialists, US and other authorities would have known more. Instead the ChiCom regime covered up, delayed, arrested honest, brave whistleblowers and let international flights continue unabated.
Mass murder, economic warfare and election interference by the criminal CPC vs. bureaucratic incompetence by the CDC. FauXi and other Western co-conspirators are however accomplices both before and after the fact.
Nicholas McGinley
October 17, 2020 at 5:39 pm
A convincing fiction story, not even a science fiction one.
But wholly non realistic.
cheers
Everything I said in that comment is a documented fact.
What exactly do you think is fiction?
Not that I really care.
But I am curious if you can actually explain what you say.
Saying “No, wrong” is not even a worthy drive by effort at trolling.
On second thought, do not bother to respond.
You have never said one single sentence that has any value whatsoever, in all the years you have been bothering everyone here.
I doubt you would break that streak here and now.
Whiten,
I took you to mean my comment is a fiction.
But perhaps you meant the headline post is one.
If so I owe you an apology.
Nicholas McGinley
October 19, 2020 at 4:57 am
Sorry, but;
Yes I meant your comment is fiction.
You do not know even the very basics of virology.
No new virus, especially “airborne” one, can go global Pandemic in maters of weeks or few months.
Needs replication through production and reproduction.
Needs the “grounds” to do that.
Needs to dominate over other viruses that utilizing the same grounds.
That takes more than three full cycles, technically ~2 years at the very least to get the critical “mass” for a full seasonal global blow, if it could at all, in consideration of a global Pandemic.
So whatever your facts are, in consideration of how global Pandemics could be, these facts give you a fictional vision.
You are welcome to stick by it and believe it.
But it wont hurt if you give it a second thought… just in case.
cheers
I suppose you have not been keeping up with current events.
It did happen.
And I can promise you that not only have I forgotten more virology than you will ever learn, I alone among the two of us am grounded in reality.
Your inane babbling is not even interesting from a mental health oddities perspective.
“From down in the comments it is noted that “hydroxychloroquine did show excellent results just for prophylaxis of diabetes” in a paper from April, 2019. So it seems that diabetic drugs are effective against the Wuhan virus, perhaps all of them.“
Is illogical, backwards. You can’t properly say that since a medicine effective in some cases of COVID-19 _when used with other substances_ is effectice with diabetes the reverse path is true.
Medicines to combat diabetes very widely in the way they function, note the study customers were taking a two-medicine combination. So I take ‘perhaps all of them’ as ignorant speculation. (That’s just like climate alarmism.)
Metformin is of course well known, used in Europe for decades before the US got off its duff and accepted it, Canada in between in time. It is a very good medicine for diabetes because it has low risk of hypglycemia which is immediately life threatening whereas hyperglycemis is not. Earlier medicines had risk.
Insulin has risk of hypoglycemia, it is fundamentally different from other medicines for diabetes.
In the study, the anti-malaria medicine reduced swelling, which is considered good against COVID-19. It is also less costly, Metformin by itself is not costly but customers in the study were taking a combination.
And where did ‘hit job on Metformin’ come from? I didn’t see anything covering that in this article. There is a tone of conspiracy theory, to which Occam’s Razor should be applied.
(BTW, results of using anti-malaria drugs to treat COVID-19 have varied, perhaps sloppy research, perhaps timing of application, perhaps that they may only be effective in combination with other medicines. Much sloppiness and flapping about in this panicdemic.)
Anthony! Are you sleeping?
Maybe Ayn Rand’s Atlas shrugged?
I kept looking for the /sarc or /darksatire but it was not to be found.
British establishment has become unhinged – my bold :
Ken McCallum, the newly appointed Director General of the U.K.’s MI5 (née Military Intelligence, Section 5), declared China to be the U.K.’s primary adversary this past Wednesday, Oct. 14, in his first public appearance. He said that MI5 is “looking to do more against Chinese activity, carefully prioritized…. You might think in terms of the Russian intelligence services providing bursts of bad weather, while China is changing the climate,” he said.
This sure beats David Archibald for feverish frothing, but is at least funny.
So there we have it, the difference between Russia and China is weather and Climate, get it?
Where is the published peer reviewed paper that says Covid 19 was man made and not natural. Time and time again I have looked and so far nothing. You would think that with all of the hatred in the world it would not be hard for some scientist somewhere to publish a peer reviewed paper in a reputable journal or even in an open journal proving that Covid 19 was man made. Have yet to see it. Have read many that say that have concluded it is natural.
I want to see the paper that proves your thesis.
Peer review is pal review is political review.
Please just look at the papers linked here showing gain of function research on SARS-related coronaviruses. It’s an open and shut case.
Nonsense. Just showing that there is gain of function research on coronaviruses does not mean that gain of function was the cause. Correlation is not causation is a quote often used on this site and it applies here as well.
Here is a finding from a recent paper:
“The researchers found that the lineage of viruses to which SARS-CoV-2 belongs diverged from other bat viruses about 40-70 years ago. Importantly, although SARS-CoV-2 is genetically similar (about 96%) to the RaTG13 coronavirus, which was sampled from a Rhinolophus affinis horseshoe bat in 2013 in Yunnan province, China, the team found that it diverged from RaTG13 a relatively long time ago, in 1969.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200728113512.htm
Where is the gain of function on this particular lineage that was not even known till last July?
There’s a theory that some miners caught a then unknown virus and were in hospital for a few years.
There’s also a claim that since bats are relatively unaffected by SARS type virus it tends to evolve more quickly in them.
Yes, many theories….
The fact is that Shi and colleagues were actively evolving a SARS-like CoV to be able to break into human lung cells more easily. They did this at UNC until funding for this dangerous, potentially lethal “research” was temporarily halted in the US. Then Shi went hom to China to continue the same line of “work” in the new BSL-4 lab at the WIV. FauXi provided new financing when the moratorium was lifted.
There was GoF “work” at UNC and WIV on not just any CoV, but a SARS-like strain from the same caves as SARS. Bat Woman and her colleagues were specifically evolving SARS-related CoVs to improve their ability to infect lung cells through the very receptor used by the COVID-19 pathogen. It’s nonsensical to buy into any of the lame stories floated by the CCP.
The novel CoV did not evolve in bats and pangolins, as the Communists lied.
It’s the same lineage as SARS. When that lineage diverged from related CoVs isn’t relevant.
The novel CoV didn’t come from the wild. It comes from a population of bats in Yunnan, so no farmer in Hubei harvesting guano in bat caves could have picked it up either. It was evolved at the WIV, from which it either escaped accidentally or was intentionally released.
Nothing but opinion and that is all you have. You obviously don’t like or understand virology research and seem to have the opinion that scientists who have the opportunity to do evil will do it.
There are now at least six known non-recombinant strains of Covid (last I checked). Your thesis would require any scientist who would do this to be able to predict how many strains would evolve and whether any would evolve by recombination and become even far more deadly than anyone could possibly know, and how they would effect individuals differently.
The idea that scientists would do this is a bit like saying the military would launch a nuclear warhead with no control over it.
I do like and understand real virus research. But I’m hardly alone in opposing GoF using ferrets to mimic human lung tissue in order to find new ways of infecting cells.
I have linked to some of the many highly respected virologists who objected to GoF “research” as dangerous. The Obama Administration briefly heeded their warnings about the threat, but then resumed funding this risky “work”. It’s not only risky, but has not produced any useful results.
Saying that GoF development of novel viral strains is dangerous is simply a fact. Clearly, labs have frequently lost control of lethal pathogens.
My how the GOF story has morphed. First the virus originated right outside the Wuhan lab. Then it originated just a few blocks away, then it was 8 miles away and a thirty minute bus ride and now the virus originated in Yunnan 2000 miles away. So now the story has to be a bat was taken from the lab to Yunnan 2000 miles away where it was released and then the virus got back to Wuhan and infected someone there. Somehow the virus got to Wuhan, 2000 miles away without infecting anyone in between.
The GOF story gets more preposterous every day.
The facts haven’t morphed. It was always known that the SARS-like CoVs came from Yunnan. Bat Woman Shi’s virus hunting in the caves there was populatized.
Many papers published while she was at UNC and WIV all made plain that the GoF procedures were conducted on SARS-related viruses found in the Yunnan caves, whence came SARS.
You are only missing about a dozen steps between the study of these viruses and gain of function (could be loss as well) being the cause of Covid.
as for Davids lie about the funding
The 3.7 Million was Not directly to Wuhan, it went to ecohealth
In 2014, the NIH approved a grant to ecohealth alliance designated for research into “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” This involved collaborating with researchers at the Wuhan Institute to study coronaviruses in bats and the risk of potential transfer to humans. Other agencies and researchers NOT IN WUHAN also recieved
portions of this 3.7M
The project wanted to understand what factors allow coronaviruses, including close relatives to SARS, to evolve and transfer into the human population
Over the entire history the Wuhan Institute received about $600,000 from the NIH. the money was a fee for gathering and analysing of bat samples.
the research was not for gain of function
https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=9819304&icde=49588715
” Aim 1. Characterize the diversity and distribution of high spillover-risk SARSr-CoVs in bats in southern China. We will use phylogeographic and viral discovery curve analyses to target additional bat sample collection and molecular CoV screening to fill in gaps in our previous sampling and fully characterize natural SARSr-CoV diversity in southern China. We will sequence receptor binding domains (spike proteins) to identify viruses with the highest potential for spillover which we will include in our experimental investigations (Aim 3). Aim 2. Community, and clinic-based syndromic, surveillance to capture SARSr-CoV spillover, routes of exposure and potential public health consequences. We will conduct biological-behavioral surveillance in high-risk populations, with known bat contact, in community and clinical settings to 1) identify risk factors for serological and PCR evidence of bat SARSr-CoVs; & 2) assess possible health effects of SARSr-CoVs infection in people. We will analyze bat-CoV serology against human-wildlife contact and exposure data to quantify risk factors and health impacts of SARSr-CoV spillover. Aim 3. In vitro and in vivo characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk, coupled with spatial and phylogenetic analyses to identify the regions and viruses of public health concern. We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential. We will combine these data with bat host distribution, viral diversity and phylogeny, human survey of risk behaviors and illness, and serology to identify SARSr-CoV spillover risk hotspots across southern China. Together these data and analyses will be critical for the future development of public health interventions and enhanced surveillance to prevent the re-emergence of SARS or the emergence of a novel SARSr-CoV.”
~$133,000 was sent to wuhan in the first four years ~ $66,000 coming in the last year. For In 2019 ~$76,000 was budgeted but no money was actually sent.
Here is the top level link,
https://taggs.hhs.gov/Detail/AwardDetail?arg_AwardNum=R01AI110964&arg_ProgOfficeCode=104
if you contact ecohealth, they can verify the small sums that went to wuhan and verify the ~600K figure
But, but the US consulate in Wuhan had visiting rights to the Institute of Virology and so wrote reports saying how slack biosecurity standards were there. If it is no big deal, how come that happened? Any funding of Wuhan was guaranteed to produce a pandemic. Fauci knew that. Fauci was getting bang for the buck for his misanthropic delusions. Global warming is the religion of choice for militant atheists, without which their meaningless lives would be shallow, hollow, depressing and purposeless.
David,
All you write can be true, but the big step is still that SARS-2-COV is a novel new infection path – one which the leading virologists/geneticists in the world in that area were unaware of.
In order to create SARS-2-COV – this path would have to be discovered (possible but less likely), it would have to be tested (no evidence of testing), and then it would have to be leaked or released (no evidence of this at all).
It is really hard finding/making new things – even with CRISPR.
I would suggest looking at the work being done by this startup trying to create pig organs that can be transplanted into people: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/12/239014/crispr-pig-organs-are-being-implanted-in-monkeys-to-see-if-theyre-safe-for-humans/
Here – they know what they are aiming for, they can test this openly and they have the CRISPR tech and all its associated support companies/knowledge/infrastructure.
I’m not saying it is impossible that SARS-2-COV is man-made, but I am saying that the presence of a Wuhan lab isn’t meaningful itself (a lot of cities have virus research labs including LA, NY, SF etc).
The GoF “researchers” at the WIV were indeed evolving a SARS-like CoV from Yunnan bat caves better to infect human lung cells, using ferrets as models. Before such insanely risky procedures were temporarily shut down in the US, Shi “Bat Woman” Zheng-Li and colleagues were doing the same thing at UNC.
It’s not just that the lab is in Wuhan, but what Shi and her colleagues were doing there. Do you really believe their “work” at the BSL-4 lab to be merely coincidental?
This guy seems to think that the market was not actually where the outbreak originated, but so far I have not located anything more from him on this.
Kind of an annoying place to end an article:
“And while many believe the virus originated at a fish market in Wuhan, China, Garry said that is also a misconception.
“Our analyses, and others too, point to an earlier origin than that,” Garry said. “There were definitely cases there, but that wasn’t the origin of the virus.”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/conspiracy-theorists-study-concludes-covid-19-laboratory-construct/story?id=69827832
It makes sense that the virus was around for some time before it was picked up on by doctors and health authorities.
It sure did a lot of spreading in other countries before anyone was aware of how extensively it was spreading, and indeed that it was spreading at all. And that was after everyone knew there was a new virus and were presumably at least somewhat alert for it.
“The high school boy in Snohomish County became ill with flu-like symptoms last Monday, the student’s family said in a statement.
He was tested for the flu but the tests came back negative, so he returned to Jackson High School on Friday, the county health district said in a blog post.
He stayed on campus about five minutes and went home because the family was notified by health officials that his original sample had been tested for coronavirus and came back presumptive positive, the health district said.
“The family didn’t know their son was being tested for COVID-19…. Like most people, they assumed it was the flu. They did all the right things,” the health district said.
The high school was closed over the weekend and will be closed Monday to allow for a thorough cleaning and disinfecting before the students return.
District health officials say they are investigating this case since it suggests that local transmission of COVID-19 is occurring.”
No one had any idea how a high school kid in a different county had got infected.
And no one knew how it got to that nursing home either.
I think this virus can spread for weeks if not months among young people, almost none of whom get sick enough to wind up in a hospital, and that it becomes known to health authorities only when it spreads into a population of elderly individuals and then starts to make people sick enough to wind up in a hospital.
It is the low level of virulence in a large number of people who get it, coupled with long latency, rapid spread, and long period before the second phase of the illness manifests, that allow it to spread widely and quickly and silently.
Knowing all of this and looking back at when the first cases became known, it seems unlikely that it was noticed soon after it passed into people and began to spread.
Impossible even.
(Of course all of this is leaving aside for the purpose of discussion the possibility it was deliberately or accidental released from that lab.)
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally
1) Correlation is not causation
2) I outlined multiple areas where specific evidence could provide more proof – I have seen none of that.
3) Most of the recent animal to human virus crossings in the past 2 decades were in China. These include: H1N1, SARS1, swine flu etc
Why exactly would not China be researching animal viruses?
4) As I noted before – most large cities in the US host virus research as well. New York, San Francisco, LA and Chicago among them.
If all you can brandish is coincidence, it is a very weak argument.
We pass around research papers in which drugs are tested for antiviral activity against SARS and MERS and COVID.
Where does anyone think these studies are being done?
We have viral genome family trees for entire complex webs of virus families, that includes info on what strains of which viruses can be found in certain animals in certain places.
How does anyone suppose all of this info is gleaned…and more to the point, where?
There are guidelines about what sort of bio containment you need to work with various infectious disease organisms.
For the worst deadly stuff, it is BSL-4.
For SARS and COVID, it is BSL-3
It behooved us to make sure that people in other places have safe facilities to work with this stuff.
Because we can all now get an idea of what can happen.
“But, but the US consulate in Wuhan had visiting rights to the Institute of Virology and so wrote reports saying how slack biosecurity standards were there. If it is no big deal, how come that happened? Any funding of Wuhan was guaranteed to produce a pandemic. Fauci knew that. Fauci was getting bang for the buck for his misanthropic delusions. Global warming is the religion of choice for militant atheists, without which their meaningless lives would be shallow, hollow, depressing and purposeless.”
there is NO evidence that Wuhan institute received 3.7M for gain of function
The evidence is that they received on the order of 600K for collecting samples.
there is no evidence that any gain of function was carried on under the contract
IF you have evidence that there was then you can collect a reward by filing a fraud claim
as the SOW for the contract did not authorize gain of function activities.
IF you have evidence file a claim, the reward is 3X the value of the contract.
1. You have no evidence
2. the evidence that exists indicates MUCH LESS than 3.7M directed to wuhan
3. the evidence that exists indicates this was for collection of samples.
The real question is this. IF you have evidence then what is your motivation in
refusing to file a fraud claim?
david are you being paid by the enemies of china to raise false issues?
until you can prove that you are not a paid state agent I think we have evidence that you are.
Perhaps the Russians are paying you again, like they probably did for your grippen work
what else could explain your refusal to take the evidence you have and file a fraud charge.
Is that lab in Wuhan also the site of the local hospital?
Because if so, it may have been first noticed there because that is where there were people who would recognize a new virus when it appeared in patients.
The market was a site of commerce on a large scale, and presumably had people coming and going from other regions making deliveries of food and animals.
If an infected person passed it to a bunch of people in that market, and then left, it would seem that the virus popped up around and in that market.
Other studies from past years have documented that in the parts of Guangdong that has bats with closely related viruses, nearby villagers have about a 6% chance of having antibodies to those corona viruses. So people in such a village could be immune or mostly immune by dint of having had it circulating around for some period of time.
One of the false arguments made in the legacy media outlets is that humans cannot create such lethal viruses by genetic manipulation
In your abbreviated history of the origin of Sars CoV-2 virus, the virus that causes Covid 19 you left out what is perhaps one of the most pivotal studies involving viral genetic manipulation which actually though inadvertently produced a highly infectious and virulent virus.
The study is “Jackson RJ, Ramsay AJ, Christensen CD, Beaton S, Hall DF, Ramshaw IA (2001) Expression of mouse interleukin-4 by a recombinant ectromelia virus suppresses cytolytic lymphocyte responses and overcomes genetic resistance to mousepox. J Virol 75: 1205–1210”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC114026/
read a review of the studies implications here:
“The mousepox experience”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2816623/
It involved researchers who inserted a gene for Interlukin 4 into a mouse pox virus. the resultant virus was lethal to both immunized and native mice, including all the mice which were not in the actual study but were present in the lab.
I am not sure anyone here has said it could not be done, or that it is impossible to create a lethal virus.
Just that the scenario offered here seems more like speculation that evidence.
Every time a house burns down it COULD have been arson, until someone finds out one way or the other how it actually did start.
And even for something like a house fire, investigators have been found to be notably and heinously wrong.
No speculation required. By GoF in ferrets, the WIV was evolving SARS-like CoVs from Yunnan bats in order for them better to attack the very receptor used by the COVID-19 agent.
That’s more like an open and shut case. Accused have been convicted on far less circumstantial evidence than that. Why do you suppose that the regime wouldn’t let foreign specialists investigate in Wuhan?
I can think of other reasons than to cover up where the virus came from or how it came to exist.
Like for example they were wanting to keep the extent of the outbreak from being reported.
My recollection is they did many things in the initial stages that made it must worse for them, like not cancelling some key events that led to many people travelling around.
I am not clear on if the supposition you are going on is that the release was an accident or deliberate…aside from the origin.
It is a little hard to understand why they would release a deliberately created bioweapon virus on themselves.
” Accused have been convicted on far less circumstantial evidence than that.”
Less evidence than “They were doing research on similar viruses, therefore they created it deliberately?”
There is a large volume of material published from many researchers all over the world in which they conclude that all the evidence points away from it being manufactured.
Having suspicions and a scenario is not a refutation of any of that.
Evidence has to be specific to this viral genome.
The only part of the virus that has not been found in wild virus samples seems to be the spike.
But viruses evolve the ability to jump into people all the time, including all of the known human corona viruses, two in the past 20 years prior to this.
In any case, I think it is more productive to look this from a scientific point of view, not from a prosecutorial one.
Personally, I want to know facts and hear evidence about how this happened, and jumping to conclusions preempts fact finding.
The media is a different story.
No accounting for what those idiots say.
They want to blame every death on the one world leader who took a decisive early step to block the spread, and who no one thinks has any particular medical or public health knowledge.
The example in question was able to test vs. mice.
Where was the human testing in Wuhan?
Real world biological research has shown it is very difficult to achieve anything in biology, even using CRISPR and similar “targeted” tools.
It took 4 years, for example, to create a treatment for a single codon fix for sickle cell.
Alleging SARS-2-COV is man-made requires also showing how it was discovered (the infection pathway was unknown to science until COVID-19 appeared) and how it was tested (mice breed and die quickly, cheaply and anonymously. Humans, not so much).
There’s also the question of how it spread. If the Wuhan lab was truly creating bio-weapons – that’s a completely different level of risk than doing preventative research.
I could much more believe an accidental release from a non-bioweapon research effort – but even evidence for that is non-existent.
I have been wondering if and when they would get around to this:
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-vaccine-challenge/update-1-uk-backs-covid-19-vaccine-trials-that-infect-volunteers-idUSL8N2HB1ZC
Rahman et al. (2020) [1] demonstrated by in silico studies that iridoids, diterpenes and lignans are promising anti-SARS-CoV-2 treatments through TMPRSS2 interaction.
Certain species of trees emit diterpenes… it’d be interesting to cross-correlate areas where people got CoV19, were treated with HCQ with good results, and the preponderance of diterpene-emitting flora in the area (or the average diterpene atmospheric concentration in the area).
That may at least partly explain why HCQ seems to work for some, and not for others. The HCQ inhibits ACE2 enzyme expression, reducing sialic acid biosynthesis, thus blocking CoV19 from attaching to cells via that route, but it can use an alternate route, that of the TMPRSS2 enzyme.
In order to completely block CoV19 from attaching to and infecting cells, one must use an ACE2 inhibitor (quinine, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, etc.), and a TMPRSS2 inhibitor (camostat mesylate, diterpene, etc.)
So if the hypothesis holds, people in areas with large stands of evergreen trees (for example) would find treatment with HCQ alone to be effective, whereas people in cities or areas with no evergreen trees would require treatment with HCQ and a TMPRSS2 inhibitor in order to be effective.
Does anyone here have the data and ability to do such a cross-correlation?
[1] N. Rahman , Z. Basharat , M. Yousuf , G. Castaldo , L. Rastrelli and H. Khan , Molecules, 2020, 25 , 2271
Diterpene
Hmm
Abietane is a diterpene
Hmm
Abietic acid is found in pine wood.
Hmm
Are pine nuts any good?
Well I’ll be darned:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271657173_Roasting_process_affects_the_profile_of_diterpenes_in_coffee
Ok, I did some quick checking… but I’m no statistician, so I don’t really know what to make of the data below. I used counties in the Blue Ridge Mountain range… those mountains are ‘blue’ because of the terpines the trees emit. I’m sure there are a lot of factors to control for, but as I said, I’m not a statistician. Perhaps someone can do something with this.
I only did GA, but there are also counties in PA, MA, WV, VA, NC, SC, TN which are in the Blue Ridge Mountain range.
The list is sorted (descending) by percentage of deaths vs. total county population.
Habersham County, GA
Total population: 45328
CoV19 deaths: 75
%: 0.16546064242852100247087892693258
Stephens County, GA
Total population: 25925
CoV19 deaths: 41
%: 0.15814850530376084860173577627772
Chatooga County, GA
Total population: 24789
CoV19 deaths: 27
%: 0.10891927871233208277865182137238
Fannin County, GA
Total population: 26188
CoV19 deaths: 28
%: 0.10691919963341988697113181609898
Union County, GA
Total population: 24511
CoV19 deaths: 25
%: 0.1019950226428950267226959324385
Towns County, GA
Total population: 12037
CoV19 deaths: 12
%: 0.09969261443881365788817811747113
Bartow County, GA
Total population: 107738
CoV19 deaths: 93
%: 0.08632051829438081271232062967569
Hall County, GA
Total population: 204441
CoV19 deaths: 168
%: 0.08217529751859949814371872569592
White County, GA
Total population: 30798
CoV19 deaths: 23
%: 0.07468017403727514773686603026171
Franklin County, GA
Total population: 23349
CoV19 deaths: 17
%: 0.07280825731294702128570816737334
—————————————-
Above: 525104 population | 509 deaths | 0.09693317895121728267162314512935% avg.
—————————————-
US
Total population: 330480852
CoV19 deaths: 227347
%: 0.06879279045189583328718845108763
—————————————-
Below: 1648313 population | 714 deaths | 0.04331701563962669711395833194302% avg.
—————————————-
Rabun County, GA
Total population: 17137
CoV19 deaths: 11
%: 0.06418859777090505922856976133512
Carroll County, GA
Total population: 119992
CoV19 deaths: 75
%: 0.06250416694446296419761317421161
Walker County, GA
Total population: 69761
CoV19 deaths: 43
%: 0.06163902466994452487779704992761
Hart County, GA
Total population: 26205
CoV19 deaths: 16
%: 0.06105705018126311772562488074795
Gilmer County, GA
Total population: 31369
CoV19 deaths: 19
%: 0.06056935190793458509993943064809
Whitfield County, GA
Total population: 104628
CoV19 deaths: 63
%: 0.06021332721642390182360362426884
Barrow County, GA
Total population: 83240
CoV19 deaths: 50
%: 0.06006727534839019702066314271985
Polk County, GA
Total population: 42613
CoV19 deaths: 25
%: 0.05866754276863867833759650810785
Floyd County, GA
Total population: 94498
CoV19 deaths: 55
%: 0.05820228999555546149124849203158
Jackson County, GA
Total population: 72977
CoV19 deaths: 40
%: 0.05481179001603244857968949120956
Elbert County, GA
Total population: 19194
CoV19 deaths: 9
%: 0.04688965301656767739918724601438
Banks County, GA
Total population: 19234
CoV19 deaths: 8
%: 0.04679213892066132889674534678174
Lumpkin County, GA
Total population: 33610
CoV19 deaths: 14
%: 0.04165426956263016959238321927998
Cherokee County, GA
Total population: 258773
CoV19 deaths: 100
%: 0.03864390798112631534201790758696
Dawson County, GA
Total population: 26108
CoV19 deaths: 10
%: 0.03830243603493182166385782135744
Madison County, GA
Total population: 29880
CoV19 deaths: 11
%: 0.03681392235609103078982597054886
Paulding County, GA
Total population: 168667
CoV19 deaths: 60
%: 0.03557305222716951152270450058399
Haralson County, GA
Total population: 29792
CoV19 deaths: 10
%: 0.03356605800214822771213748657358
Dade County, GA
Total population: 16116
CoV19 deaths: 5
%: 0.03102506825515016133035492678084
Pickens County, GA
Total population: 32591
CoV19 deaths: 10
%: 0.0306833174802859685189162652266
Catoosa County, GA
Total population: 67580
CoV19 deaths: 20
%: 0.02959455460195324060372891387985
Forsyth County, GA
Total population: 244252
CoV19 deaths: 52
%: 0.02128948790593321651409200334081
Murray County, GA
Total population: 40096
CoV19 deaths: 8
%: 0.01995211492418196328810853950519