Covid-19 News

Quote from Navid

You know how they used to message in the airports "Terrorism - if you see something say something." They are spinning society but now it is about racists, elite-crime conspiracy theorists, and anti-vaxxers.

After the self orchestrated 9/11 perl harbor event the patriot act allowed the US services a limit less surveillance of all US (and of course world wide) citizens. Because some companies like apple did refuse to cooperate with NSA they had to legally force them to be compliant.

US deaths forced by terror attacks are just a tiny fraction of e.g. traffic deaths or deaths from slippery soap!!

Obviously freedom for US citizens is the right to eat as many burgers they can swallow and to shoot around like mad inside a gravel pit.

The same now with CoV-19. The pressure is upheld to allow a few people to generate a gigantic amount of money. The criminal folks at Gilead sponsoring world wide a small army of the FR mafia to sell a kidney damaging drug that has no effect in helping your survival.

Also masks are still sold at 4x the prize before the CoV-19 event.

Terrorizing the population is the easiest way to generate money. After two years from now you will notice how many criminal deals did change your city that went on unnoticed during the time you did sit in your "CoV-19 prison".

The Hidden Long-Term Cognitive Effects of COVID-19

https://www.newsmax.com/health…ive/2020/10/09/id/991282/

new evidence reveals that the virus also attacks the nervous system. In one study, doctors found that 40% of patients with COVID-19 exhibited neurological symptoms and 30% had impaired cognition, according to experts at Harvard Medical School.

Chinese researchers discovered that even patients who had mild cases of COVID-19 and were thought to have fully recovered suffered mild brain damage such as attention deficit disorders. They suspected that some of these patients may have suffered “silent strokes” that damage the brain.

OMG! Imagine if the president gets attention deficit disorder!

Quote from Navid

If this was about saving lives, ~$100 billion per year could end global poverty and thereby bring the basic necessities of life to all those dark skinned people we're supposed to love.

That comment is borderline racist, in its conflation of "treat the same way as you treat white people" with "love". Or would you say that you are supposed to love all people? admirable, but alas I fail there.

But to reply to the serious and non-racist point here, not all causes of death are morally equal. For example, 9/11, killing 3000 people or so, created a reaction much more extreme than that given to the US obesity epidemic, killing 300,000 per year.

There are good philosophical reasons for these differences - i'm not saying we should compare deaths from terrorism with deaths from over-eating.

Or, compare deaths from terrorism with deaths from guns; 40,000 per year, or completely innocent deaths from mass shooting: 200 per year. The (non-terrorist) mass killing deaths are comparable over time with the 9/11 deaths and yet in the US the money and political effort spent on reducing foreign terrorism deaths vastly exceeds that spent on reducing mass shooting deaths.

People rate all these different types of deaths in different ways. And deaths of people in different countries are rated very differently. As, in the US and most other places, are deaths of poor people, black people. That is less easy to excuse.

THH

Quote from THHuxleynew

Or, compare deaths from terrorism with deaths from guns; 40,000 per year, or completely innocent deaths from mass shooting: 200 per year. The (non-terrorist) mass killing deaths are comparable over time with the 9/11 deaths and yet in the US the money and political effort spent on reducing foreign terrorism deaths vastly exceeds that spent on reducing mass shooting deaths.

Live is risky and every live counts. But some deaths had a very high value like the 9/11 ones that had to pay for the unusable towers full of asbestos... Also terror death cost 100000x more than all other deaths. So there is no reason for most security controls we have except for making money and control/steer business!

Experienced a Covid test on Tuesday. Not for myself but for my father in law who needed a test for admission to a Seniors living home. In Ontario starting last week we have to make appointments to get a test. This was implemented because there are increasingly long line ups, with people waiting in line at some test sites for over five hours! Problem was, when I tried to make an appointments, the various testing centres were already booked full, some for two weeks in advance. Thankfully I saw a testing site listed, a drive through place in a remote large parking lot with tents. One couldn't phone in an appointment or do it over the internet ; one had to drive to this parking lot first and make an appointment in person. I thought that this would mean fewer people would be making appointments for this test site, so I gave it a try. Bingo! Made an appointment in the morning and drove my father in law to his test later in the afternoon, on Tuesday. Took about half an hour in total, driving through the parking lot to various checkpoints before the final one, where the passenger window was rolled down and my father-in-law got a long swab stuck far up his nose. Done! Checked a website every day for results, and Friday evening the result came back: Negative. The rule of the Seniors home was that moving in must occur within 24 hours of a negative test. So yesterday we moved him in. Nice place, nice staff. "Grandpa" seemed in good spirits about the thing. Myself and one of my boys had to dress up in full PPE, as we moved Grandapa's bed and other things up to his room in his new home. He'll be in quarantine in his room with another new resident and a rotating nursing staff for 2 weeks. Brutal. I miss him already, and how he has keep me constantly on my toes for over the last year and a half! Good thing is he is only a 15 minute drive away, and a 10 minute walk away from one of his other kids. Here he is in our living room a few days ago, shortly after our dog jumped up on the couch to join him. Physically is a fine specimen (he still has great hair and looks at 93!) but strokes have take a toll on his brain.

Meanwhile, my wife's brother mentioned last week that he thought he might have the flu. His workplace made him get a covid test. He tested positive yesterday, after a five day wait! (He's feeling fine now.) Good thing he hadn't been around to visit in the last few weeks.

Quote from Mark U

Checked a website every day for results, and Friday evening the result came back: Negative. The rule of the Seniors home was that moving in must occur within 24 hours of a negative test.

Not sure about the US tests but most tests have quite a high false negative rate - 1 in 3. So although they have this rule, they can still be importing COVID. They just do the best they can without asking for two tests...

But in this case, if you have a 72 hour wait for results, there is that length of time for COVID to infect even when negative during test.

The point is that testing reduces chances of spread but only by a relatively small factor, in this case maybe 50%. Trump's "we test everyone so social distancing is not needed" is just not true.

Glad your wife's brother is OK, hope it stays that way...

THH

Goa state goes it alone in India and launched
Ivermectin based home isolation kits last Friday

""The newly launched Home Isolation Kit is a game-changer. We are using Ivermectin and Doxycycline for prophylaxis which has no proven side effects. It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the use of Ivermectin for treatment of patients is also followed by the Australian Government," Rane said. "

Statement about Australian govt is in error..

http://www.businessworld.in/ar…n-kit-/10-10-2020-329906/

OK, i promised not to dampen people's enthusiasm here, and know it won't be much liked, but here is why most people (including the POTUS medical team) do not rate Ivermectin. (Don't worry, I will stay silent on this topic for another week or so after this).

Pros:

• Low cost
• Very well tolerated at (low) doses typically used and well above that
• Shows anti-viral activity against COVID.

Cons:

• Anti-viral activity is at concentration 100X higher than that achieved by typical (well tolerated) dose, not clear it is well tolerated at such a high dose, and none of the trials use such a high dose.
• There is no reason to expect it to be better than any of the other (many) antivirals out there. From in vitro studies you can put together a "best guess" list based on comparing effective anti-viral concentration (EQ50 or whatever) with concentration in body that is well tolerated. Ivermectin does not go anywhere near the top of this list (the 100X factor).
• There is no support from trials. Observational trials do not provide support unless very carefully compared with other observational trials. I've seen no such well done comparisons favouring Ivermectin. Every doctor wants to provide hope, and Ivermectin, as a cheap and well tolerated at normal doses drug, provides hope. It is understandable doctors jump on it when they have nothing else.

We do now have drugs that help, and will over time have more. The trials in the UK and elsewhere to see whether BCG vaccine can help reduce COVID severity are interesting - and perhaps we will in the end have common cold (coronavirus version) "catch it as a preventative" as well. Remdesivir, Regeneron, both unproven but likely to help. Regeneron could be the magic bullet that trump things it is - though i doubt it. Dexamethasone helps. So things are getting better, in a boring way (BCG quite exciting, if a long shot).

Meanwhile, the evidence for COVID being a coordinated global conspiracy to reduce the population is mounting. In the UK 3/4 of all women with COVID are Asian or Negro. When HCQ was shown to be effective in vitro, it was suddenly withdrawn from all UK pharmacies. The Harvard professor and two Chinese PhD students who travelled to China with links to the Wuhan virology center were arrested by the FBI but any further developments/news of this have been suppressed, It emerged today that at least half of doctors in the UK told care workers in homes for the elderly not to resuscitate patients (DNR) by order from central government (NHS) expressly against the wishes of their families. Certain gene sequences of the SARS-2 virus are homologous to those of the HIV virus. 'Long' COVID-19 symptoms are remarkably similar to HIV infected patients. The list goes on and on.......is this a Utopia/Dystopia conspiracy which is now simply out of control?

Quote from Dr Richard

Meanwhile, the evidence for COVID being a coordinated global conspiracy to reduce the population is mounting.

If so, it is highly ineffective. It is likely to reduce the population by ~5 million at most, which is how much the population increases every 2 weeks. Not only that, but it mainly kills elderly people, who will not have children, and who will die in 10 or 20 years anyway. To reduce population in the long term, you need to kill off young people. It is also an extremely expensive way to reduce population. It destroys economies. A global conspiracy conducted by elites would not want to destroy their own wealth.

In other words, this conspiracy theory of yours is not only nonsensical, it is even crazier than usual.

Quote from JedRothwell

If so, it is highly ineffective. It is likely to reduce the population by ~5 million at most, which is how much the population increases every 2 weeks.

Note that the population of young people is not increasing. World population as a whole is only increasing because cohorts over age 30 are living longer. People used to die more often of infectious diseases between age 30 and the natural limits of human life, around age 80. Nowadays, most people everywhere in the world live to age 80. When the present groups over age 30 reach that limit, population growth will stop. The population will plateau, as you see here:

World Population: Past, Present, and Future

https://www.worldometers.info/…iving)%20of%20the%20world.

In other words, if the elites want to "reduce the population" by killing off old people with COVID-19, as Dr Richard claims, they are idiots who do not understand demographics. The only thing they will accomplish is to bring about the plateau 2 weeks earlier than it would have come anyway. It is costing the elites trillions of dollars to accomplish this. There are much cheaper ways to "reduce the population." You can actually reduce it and make a profit, mainly by selling contraceptives and educating girls. People will pay for contraceptives and education, and an educated population will pay more in taxes, and produce a higher GDP. The keys to reducing population are improved healthcare, reduced infant mortality so that parents do not have more than two or three children, education and wealth.

Reducing infant mortality used to increase the population, in the 19th and 20th centuries. That was before reliable contraception and widespread education become the norm worldwide.

Quote from Dr Richard

Meanwhile, the evidence for COVID being a coordinated global conspiracy to reduce the population is mounting. In the UK 3/4 of all women with COVID are Asian or Negro. When HCQ was shown to be effective in vitro, it was suddenly withdrawn from all UK pharmacies. The Harvard professor and two Chinese PhD students who travelled to China with links to the Wuhan virology center were arrested by the FBI but any further developments/news of this have been suppressed, It emerged today that at least half of doctors in the UK told care workers in homes for the elderly not to resuscitate patients (DNR) by order from central government (NHS) expressly against the wishes of their families. Certain gene sequences of the SARS-2 virus are homologous to those of the HIV virus. 'Long' COVID-19 symptoms are remarkably similar to HIV infected patients. The list goes on and on.......is this a Utopia/Dystopia conspiracy which is now simply out of control?

None of those things have the slightest connection to a global conspiracy - and the idea there could be such a conspiracy is so batty if you are not careful I will start calling you Navid.

HCQ: it could have been effective, in which case keeping supplies for where it is needed is sensible. And while people are hording it (don't know if idiots are still doing that, given evidence against now) keeping it for genuine uses is just plain sense. no conspiracy. If HCQ were effective you don't think Trump would have got his doctors to give it to him and said that?

Profs + PhDs arrested by FBI. "Arrestogate":

https://uk.reuters.com/article…us-to-china-idUSKBN21P292

(He was selling secrets to China - or so FBI think).

It emerged today that at least half of doctors in the UK told care workers in homes for the elderly not to resuscitate patients (DNR) by order from central government (NHS) expressly against the wishes of their families. Shocking. But at a time when we were thinking thousand would be dying due to lack of ICU beds not surprising. And, do you really think a global conspiracy cuases the Uk govt to do this? Why? Where? How?

Certain gene sequences of the SARS-2 virus are homologous to those of the HIV virus. Wow! Debunked (comprehensively) in April:

https://www.europeanscientist.…contain-hiv-genetic-code/

Through two radically different kinds of reasoning, the authors of Nature’s article and the BLAST software lead us to the same inescapable conclusion that the SARS-CoV-2 is likely a product of nature, born out of Darwinian selection.

The list goes on and on...

Quite!

Quote from Navid

What is obvious now, is they are turning the messaging around and turning it on the scary viruses as the new bogeyman and simultaneously pushing the masses to apologize for their racist crimes. I see more and more webexes beginning with "apologies to our native people." I'm all for apologies and reconciliation. But how about we acknowledge these are manufactured now in this moment to make us feel like there are traders against in the midst. To steer the conversation to defunding police forces, rooting out "racists" from our midst, and having us all participate in this collective consciousness. They want to create a culture - meanwhile our governments are not working on ending the prison complex - the institutionalized system of racism (because sadly, some people are worth more economically in jail than out of jail). Rather than actual positive change, a whole new set of agendas centered around societal control is rolling in. You know how they used to message in the airports "Terrorism - if you see something say something." They are spinning society but now it is about racists, elite-crime conspiracy theorists, and anti-vaxxers.

The spin I see now comes from anti-vaxers (see above).

Quote from THHuxleynew

The spin I see now comes from anti-vaxers (see above).

No: Spin as yours too comes from spin-doctors!

Or in Germany from Drosten the self pleased doctor that cannot analyze the simplest numbers and still talks of a mortality of 1% instead of the measured 0.1%.

But spin seems to be fun anyway.

Quote from THHuxleynew

https://www.europeanscientist.…contain-hiv-genetic-code/

Through two radically different kinds of reasoning, the authors of Nature’s article and the BLAST software lead us to the same inescapable conclusion that the SARS-CoV-2 is likely a product of nature, born out of Darwinian selection.

The list goes on and on...

Quite!

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This virus has lab origin. Why don't you read this paper and tell us what you disagree with on a specific basis - not sourcing your opinions from Fact Checkers or Dr. Google. We don't need your Fact-Checking of Dr. Yan's credentials and we don't need your stating "no scientific consensus has formed." We don't need you taking generic broad statements and spinning them into an argument that dumps the entire subject into the dustbin and then starts to name-call anyone who looks at said subject.

On such a topic, with trillions of dollars of impact, of course truths become dangerous. She challenges a mega-narrative. Stick to the scientific argument, make it your own, let's see what you can do.

https://zenodo.org/record/4073…n%20Report.pdf?download=1

We are waiting. This is a way to figure out if you actually have anything to say at all, or if you are just here to stir the pot and foment discord.

Quote from Navid

This virus has lab origin. Why don't you read this paper and tell us what you disagree with on a specific basis - not sourcing your opinions from Fact Checkers or Dr. Google. We don't need your Fact-Checking of Dr. Yan's credentials and we don't need your stating "no scientific consensus has formed." We don't need you taking generic broad statements and spinning them into an argument that dumps the entire subject into the dustbin and then starts to name-call anyone who looks at said subject.

On such a topic, with trillions of dollars of impact, of course truths become dangerous. She challenges a mega-narrative. Stick to the scientific argument, make it your own, let's see what you can do.

https://zenodo.org/record/4073…n%20Report.pdf?download=1

We are waiting. This is a way to figure out if you actually have anything to say at all, or if you are just here to stir the pot and foment discord.

Display More

I guess most people here think my answering this repetitive misinformation is feeding the trolls - but as you all know i'm a sucker for it. I did this in detail a few months ago. I do not have time now to repeat that, but instead I will summarise, quoting other sources. I want to point out you can go back to the original discussion if you want more.

First: I've not seen any worthwhile scientific argument for your extraordinary supposition. Sometimes even as a non-specialist (which I take you to be since I've never detected from you on this topic any critical appraisal) you can work out the nmerit of arguments by looking at both sides. In this case there was an early argument made by Yan and rebutted here. There was then a later argument so bad it was retracted.

The point here is that we don't need scientific reasons for it to be the same as all other similar viruses. That is expected. Those who argue for lab origin need scientific reasons for this hypothesis and do not have them.

How can I prove it is not a lab virus? In principle, a Navid-friendly lab run by a Navid-style deep conspiracy - probably several centuries old and possessing in secret advanced biotec all that time, could produce artificially a virus so similar in all respects to a natural zoonosis cross-over that it would fool everyone. Such a possibility can never be disproved. But it is unlikely.

Here are facts, please let me know which you question, and why you question them, and I will post support.

I'm quoting from a National geographic summary of the immediate scientific reactions to the Yan September rehash paper.

https://www.nationalgeographic…an-report-fact-check-cvd/

Chief among their complaints was that the report ignored the vast body of published literature regarding what is known about how coronaviruses circulate in wild animal populations and the tendency to spill over into humans, including recent publications about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

I know you have a selected attention span when it come to reading science critical of your theories - but in this case the whole "hey - look - we've found all the bits we need in bats already" stuff has been well circulated here. As someone claiming to be knowledgable about cutting edge scientific research you will I'm sure be familiar with how to critically appraise a paper. This is absolutely necessary. You find papers arguing everything under the sun, and would end up believing all sorts of batty things....

OK that argument won't work with you: because you have done that and bought the T shirt - so to speak.

Here is why critical appraisal matters, especially when you are not familiar with the topic. That is the position most scientists are in when looking at novel work - by definition, it is novel, so they are not familiar with it.

You first look to see whether the paper has considered and either accepted or rejected prior work relevant. In this case the vast literature on wild CVs in bat populations, efforts to find proximal origin, and the quite substantial recent literature on COVID-2 origins. Its not difficult to find this stuff. For example, you take the original https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 paper, and look up its citations (there are 512 from nature web site). I actually did this a while back and it is posted on here, in details, with the fascinating evidence. You seem to have forgotten.

The experts also pointed out that the report whipped up wild conspiracy theories and wrongly accused academic journals of plotting with conspirators by censoring important evidence.

Again - I realise that while most people see this as a red flag you probably find it attractive. So i will let everyone judge for themselves.

In July, David Robertson, a viral genomics researcher at University of Glasgow, authored a peer-reviewed paper in Nature Medicine that showed the lineage behind SARS-CoV-2 and its closest known ancestor, a virus called RaTG13, have been circulating in bat populations for decades. Virologists think this relative, which is 96-percent identical to the novel coronavirus, probably propagated and evolved in bats or human hosts and then went undetected for about 20 years before adapting its current form and causing the ongoing pandemic.

The Yan report claims this hypothesis is controversial, and that RaTG13 was also engineered in a lab. But that flies in the face of the overwhelming body of genetic evidence published about SARS-CoV-2 and its progenitors.

You perhaps remember the details of this (I quoted from the paper) when we last addressed this. at the time you went silent on the subject, but now seem to have come back for another dose of reality?

What’s more, the report was funded by the Rule of Law Society, a nonprofit organization founded by former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, who has since been arrested for fraud.

See, I'm also giving the obvious to all non-scientific context - to counteract all the "conspiracy-smears" which are 100% non-scientific and comprise 90% of your posting on this topic. fair i think. You stick to science and I will too.

“It’s encroaching on pseudoscience, really,” says Robertson. “This paper just cherry-picked a couple of examples, excluded evidence, and came up with a ridiculous scenario.”

National Geographic reached out to other prominent virologists and misinformation researchers to better understand where the Yan report came from and what it got wrong. Along the way, they offered tips for overcoming misinformation surrounding the coronavirus.

Scientists have yet to find the direct parent of SARS-CoV-2 in feral beasts, though its closest relatives exist in bats. The virus may have passed through an intermediate animal—pangolins have been implicated—and then evolved to become better at infecting humans. Or it may have made the jump directly from bats to humans, given past examples of such occurrences. After the original SARS outbreak in China 20 years ago, researchers began surveying wild bats in local caves and the people who live near them. A 2018 study found the genetic relatives of the original SARS virus in the winged mammals—as well as specific antibodies, a residual sign of infection, in their human neighbors.

I pointed this out before. The argument that SARS-nCoV2 must be artificial because we can't find its immediate animal progenitor is fully blown apart by a little zoonotic history. SARS itself too 20 years for us to discover the link. Those bat viruses are not easy to find and isolate. Lots of bats. Lots of viruses.

Uncovering the natural source of the coronavirus will likely require large-scale sampling of animals—including bat and human populations—in China to trace the evolution of the novel coronavirus. The World Health Organization is readying a team to conduct such an investigation in China, though a timetable has not been released.

Navid, is there any specific scientific argument in Yan's paper that you'd like me to expand the rebuttal of? You seem now to be giving me a pretty easy job. Which I guess is why many here are getting bored of the repetition.

Mods - you had better not move this post and Navid's both to clearance - though they deserve this as repetitive - because if you do Navid will darkly claim you are pawns of deep state interests trying to suppress the truth, siding with "spin-doctors" such as me. LOL.

Well, I'm all for highlighting the whole truth, tedious though it is. It is only by such efforts that we can rebut the anti-science irrational internet cult-like conspiracy theories that in this coronavirus era seem to have such public traction. Should this site become a hotbed of such things I would be most sorry. Luckily I've not seen much sign of that, most here seem quite level-headed.

THH

Quote from Navid

We are waiting

Navid, I know you have a very high opinion of yourself, but I think use of the ‘royal we’ is a little much, even for you.

Or is it the case, as Jed has suggested previously, that you can in fact read people’s minds?

(At least your paranoia likely has a rational basis if so...)

And normally, “scientific” papers, such as Dr. Yan’s, are peer reviewed and published in a journal. Not on the website of a political organisation, that has not previously published scientific or medical research, run by a Chinese exile with an axe to grind, and a White House goon being prosecuted on four counts of fraud.