Never heard of Pizzagate. Funny to learn of it on a science site no less. Reminds me of that old saying "Idle minds are the devil's workshop". Enough of the other conspiracies, and back to work. Here is an article based on the CDC's Friday estimate, that 10X's more people have been infected in the US, than the 2.6 million presented.
https://outkick.com/cdc-now-es…illion-coronavirus-cases/
Select posts will be moved later on.
Why did the USA clandestine finance the Wuhan lab? Who is the true responsible person that promoted this illegal work?
There are conflicting reports out there.
But here is one side:
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fa…onavirus-research-1500741
"...last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million."
IMHO the virus was not released on purpose but escaped somehow from the lab. The HIV type genes just don't fit the natural routes as I understand them but then others disagree about the origin. It does seem to have gotten "gain of function" somehow.
The HIV type genes just don't fit the natural routes as I understand them but then others disagree about the origin. It does seem to have gotten "gain of function" somehow.
I might agree, if there was any real evidence for "HIV type genes". I have not seen that posted here, or read elsewhere.
There absence of a known final animal link this early in investigations is expected: you had identical sevidence from SARS and MERS, they took time to work out:
Finding a virus nearly identical to SARS-CoV-2 in an animal would provide the most persuasive evidence for how it passed to people. It would require extensive sampling of coronaviruses in wildlife and livestock in China, says Rob Grenfell, the director of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s Health and Biosecurity unit in Melbourne, Australia. China has reportedly started such investigations, but little information on their status has been released.
Similar investigations happened after the original SARS outbreak. The first cases emerged in November 2002, but the cause wasn’t identified as a coronavirus until April 2003. By then, authorities already suspected that animals were involved, because more than 30% of the early cases in Guangdong province, China, where the outbreak started, were in workers at a live animal market. A month later, researchers found the virus in civets at live animal markets. Researchers later linked civets to cases of SARS in people — a waitress and customer at a restaurant serving palm civets (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) tested positive for the virus, along with six of the animals4.
But it took nearly 15 years and extensive animal sampling to find a closely related virus in bats. It was Shi Zheng-Li who led the team that sampled thousands of bats in remote caves in China. And even though they found5 all the genetic components of the SARS virus, they did not find one virus with the same genetic make-up.
"...last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million."
Canada has also been funding the WIV, not as much as the NIAID under Fauci but enough to raise the ire of many Canadians. Essentially funding a CCP project. They have ultimate control of WIV.
One can do things in China that you can't get away with in the West. I suspect more money started flowing the the WIH after a (four year?) halting of gain of function in the US starting in 2014, after alarming findings were made known.
Not sure if this article has been linked to yet, but it gives eight lines of circumstantial evidence that are suggestive of lab origin.
https://thebulletin.org/2020/0…laboratory-very-possibly/
Excerpt from point 8:
8. What is the nature of the research being carried out in Zhengli Shi’s laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Details of the most recent National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grant for WIV bat coronavirus surveillance and WIV bat coronavirus gain of function research are publicly available. The key activity for bat coronavirus surveillance is “Aim 1 … 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).” The key activity for bat coronavirus gain of function investigation is “Aim 3…. 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.”28
might agree, if there was any real evidence for "HIV type genes". I have not seen that posted here, or read elsewhere.
Yes, you are likely correct. Many (but not all) early papers have been withdrawn.
example:
Not sure if this article has been linked to yet, but it gives eight lines of circumstantial evidence that are suggestive of lab origin.
Here some key extracts of the report:
(Still only a once in live time of the universe chance for a natural origin of the virus...)
It would be curious if no precursor or branches of SARS-CoV-2 evolution are discovered in humans or animals….Even the possibility that a non-genetically-engineered precursor could have adapted to humans while being studied in a laboratory should be considered, regardless of how likely or unlikely.
[T]here is Chinese evidence that the lab had safety problems. VOA has located state media reports showing that there were security incidents flagged by national inspections as well as reported accidents that occurred when workers were trying to catch bats for study.
About a year before the corona virus outbreak, a security review conducted by a Chinese national team found the lab did not meet national standards in five categories.
What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable … also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
The key activity for bat coronavirus surveillance is “Aim 1 … 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).” The key activity for bat coronavirus gain of function investigation is “Aim 3…. 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.
The WIV began its gain of function research program for bat coronaviruses in 2015. Using a natural virus, institute researchers made “substitutions in its RNA coding to make it more transmissible. They took a piece of the original SARS virus and inserted a snippet from a SARS-like bat coronavirus, resulting in a virus that is capable of infecting human cells.”29 This meant it could be transmitted from experimental animal to experimental animal by aerosol transmission, which means that it could do the same for humans. In other words, gain of function techniques were used to turn bat coronaviruses into human pathogens capable of causing a global pandemic.
Since the SARS-CoV-2 genome was decoded and published, there have been numerous statements from virologists that the genome shows no indication of genetic manipulation, and that this too supports the argument that it arose in the field and did not escape from a laboratory. Although this argument implicitly recognizes that the WIV laboratory was using genetic engineering technology, there is no reason to arbitrarily assume that only a bat coronavirus that was genetically modified might have escaped from the laboratory. Nevertheless, the second portion of the NIAID research grant design made absolutely clear that the WIV would be applying genetic engineering techniques to bat coronaviruses. Using the current standard genetic engineering technology, many alterations of several bases in the RNA genome would be undetectable, including construction of a chimeric coronavirus encoding an unpublished spike protein in an unpublished genome. This would be the equivalent of a natural mutation in several bases that coded for the spike proteins.
The virus’s ability to bind protein on human cells was far greater than its ability to bind the same protein in bats, which argues against bats being a direct source of the human virus.https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2005/2005.06199.pdf
As noted, the average age of new patients has shifted down. The change is not all that dramatic. in Florida, in early June, 25% of patients were age 15 to 34. Now it is 31%.
Here is an AP article with many details. The authors seem to blame feckless young people.
New cases in all age groups have increased since May 31. See the graph in the article showing per capita rates for each age group. The 18 - 49 year old cohort now has the most cases per capita. This may explain why the daily new cases are increasing dramatically, but deaths are not. I expect deaths will start to catch up. It takes a few weeks. There are still thousands of people over 60 being infected every day, and many of them are sure to die.
https://apnews.com/753ed7dc88ec5ce8906967f268d78b99
Virus cases surge among the young, endangering older adults
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Coronavirus cases are climbing rapidly among young adults in a number of states where bars, stores and restaurants have reopened — a disturbing generational shift that not only puts them in greater peril than many realize but poses an even bigger danger to older people who cross their paths.
In Oxford, Mississippi, summer fraternity parties sparked outbreaks. In Oklahoma City, church activities, fitness classes, weddings and funerals seeded infections among people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. In Iowa college towns, surges followed the reopening of bars. . . .
. . . In Florida, young people ages 15 to 34 now make up 31% of all cases, up from 25% in early June. Last week, more than 8,000 new cases were reported in that age group, compared with about 2,000 among people 55 to 64 years old. And experts say the phenomenon cannot be explained away as simply the result of more testing.
Elected officials such as Florida’s governor have argued against reimposing restrictions, saying many of the newly infected are young and otherwise healthy. But younger people, too, face the possibility of severe infection and death. In the past week, two 17-year-olds in Florida died of the virus.
And authorities worry that older, more vulnerable people are next.
“People between the ages 18 and 50 don’t live in some sort of a bubble,” Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt said. “They are the children and grandchildren of vulnerable people. They may be standing next to you at a wedding. They might be serving you a meal in a restaurant.”
The virus has taken a frightful toll on older people in the U.S., which leads the world in total deaths, at over 120,000, and confirmed infections, at more than 2.3 million. Eight out of 10 deaths in the U.S. have been in people 65 and older. In contrast, confirmed coronavirus deaths among 18- to 34-year-olds number in the hundreds, though disease trackers are clamoring for more accurate data. . . .
. . . In one Florida hospital system, nearly half the COVID-19 patients were on ventilators during April compared with less than 3 percent now, said Dr. Sunil Desai, president of the Orlando Health hospital system.
Some of the young people who have fallen ill describe stretches of extreme pain and fatigue. . . .
Coronavirus cases are climbing rapidly among young adults
It is happening all over - college kids getting it.
Dinkytown's Kollege Klub linked to 22 new COVID-19 cases
https://www.mndaily.com/articl…ked-to-new-covid-19-cases
Coronavirus outbreak at Michigan college bar infects at least 85 people
https://www.foxnews.com/us/cor…ege-bar-infects-85-people
Popular KU college bar, The Hawk, confirmed as COVID-19 outbreak site
http://www.kansan.com/news/pop…ea-a0a8-3776d561b050.html
Virus cases spike among young adults in Iowa college towns
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/…wa-college-towns-71414535
It is happening all over - college kids getting it.
There are incredibly large numbers of young people getting infected in the Southern and Western parts of the U.S. The question is what type of interaction will they have with older folks (parents/grandparents) over the next couple of weeks. If the infections spread to an older group of people it could be a serious issue for hospitals.
Also, we don’t know the long term health effects some of these younger people could have from Covid. There could be organ damage and scarring of the lungs etc. It’s just an unknown. But what is going on in the U.S. right now is unreal. There needs to be a stronger effort to contain the spread.
Somebody said to me recently that this is the best thread about the pandemic that they have seen anywhere on the web.
I have found it very helpful and educational.
Some very smart people on here with some good advice (which I have passed around to friends and family).
The tricky bit is discriminating between the very smart people with good advice and the very smart people with bad advice.
However what I find most elevating is the general level of tolerance and largely civilized debate.
I was talking to some friends in the US who have a house in Florida but have decamped to Ohio (probably a wise move).
Basically they are alarmed about the increasing divisiveness in the USA.
But I was telling them that what I have learned here is that what unites us is greater than what divides us.
We all are facing the same threat, we just see different perspectives.
Yes there are polarised viewpoints but basically we all want the same thing, a return to normality ASAP.
So respect all round.
It is happening all over - college kids getting it.
Dinkytown's Kollege Klub linked to 22 new COVID-19 cases
I don't like to blame young people, or say the disease is spreading mainly because they go to bars. But maybe it is true. Is there data to support that? No doubt some cases are caused by that.
In Japan, they have a spike in cases. The mass media says many of them originate in the entertainment district, such as bars and live music joints.
disease is spreading
having taken and taugh grad courses in micro- it is common to speak of virus as though they "think" or "have a plan" (actually it is just the roll of the dice but there are millions of the little things trying different paths).
I view the spread now is because the virus has "adapted" so that it finds new and different hosts to grow in. (it may be the virus has changed or our actions have changed) If a virus is too lethal or causes too severe of health issues it is a dead end or the host stays in a sick bed and does not give as many chances for it to spread. So, the virus's "best shot" (most likely to multiply more and survive) is usually to become less lethal and more easily spread.
Younger people give the virus more chances to go to a larger population (only so many in nursing homes and many quickly die more people in colleges than in nursing homes).
The long term problem I worry about is the lasting effects. I have heard of people who regularly run 10K's but even after "recovery" from the virus get out of breath climbing a single flight of stairs.
example: https://www.insider.com/corona…or-washington-post-2020-4
A 44-year-old marathon runner says he now has to sit on a plastic stool in the shower, unable to stand for long after being on a ventilator for a severe case of COVID-19
In some cases it damages the lungs, pantries, heart, brain
https://www.sfchronicle.com/he…-heart-lungs-15230192.php
well, the number of world recorded cases has passed 10M and the number of world wide deaths is now pass 0.5 M
So in round numbers, does that mean the tested, diagnosed, and tested case fatality rate is about 5% overall?
There still does not seem to be a good number for the actually total cases (not just recorded).
Anyone want to venture a guess at what percentage (world wide not just US or Europe....) go untested and undiagnosed? And what percentage of deaths from the virus go unrecorded. There are rumors that some countries hide cases and deaths.
View from Canada/Taiwan of the Dragon's virus..
So in round numbers, does that mean the tested, diagnosed, and tested case fatality rate is about 5% overall?
I believe so. That is what it is in Japan. Nearly all cases there after April were tested and diagnosed, but it was still stuck at 5%. 18,366 cases 972 deaths.
S. Korea has the best testing and tracking in the world, and one of the best medical systems. They have had 12,757 cases, 282 deaths, 2.2%. That makes me think the actual rate including hidden cases is on the order of 2%, and the Japanese caught about half at the peak of the epidemic there. They were not in a position to catch and document them all back then. There have been so few after the peak that even if they catch them all, the percent will not change much.
No doubt there are some unrecorded cases in Korea, such as patients who did not realize they were sick, or who did not bother to go to the doctor. But there are not many unrecorded cases in Korea or Japan at this moment, because if there were, more untraceable cases would be popping up.
In the U.S. it is 2,637,077 cases, 128,437 deaths, 4.9%. Some experts are saying there are 10 times that many cases, so many have not been recorded. I do not want to argue with experts, and I do not have the serology reports they refer to, but my feeling based on Korea, where very few cases are overlooked, is that the recorded cases are 2 to 3 times less than the actual totals. Not 10 times less. Also, I doubt the mortality rate is really 0.49%. That seems too low, based on Korea, Japan, Italy and other countries. Of course there may be deaths not recorded as caused by coronavirus, which would skew the numbers the other way. That seems likely months ago at the beginning of the pandemic.
18 Coronavirus Autopsies (This is what they found in the Brain) | COVID-19
If you’ve seen my previous videos on autopsies that were done on COVID-19 patients, it's pretty clear by now that when patients do die of this coronavirus, it's because of the lungs. Either because of all the inflammation in the lungs, with pneumonia and cytokine storm and ARDS, sometimes with multiorgan failure….or because of the major blood clot that develops in the lungs. Sometimes though, blood clots show up in other parts of the body as well. For example, in some cases, clots can travel to the brain, and lodge in the blood vessels there, causing decreased blood flow to certain regions of the brain, and this is known as a stroke.
But this virus, in a different manner, can cause neurologic symptoms in some people, such as headache, confusion, and anosmia, meaning loss of taste and smell. But we don’t really know why this coronavirus sometimes causes these symptoms. Is it because the coronavirus travels in the bloodstream to the brain? Maybe. After all, there are ACE2 receptors that are located in the brain. Is it because the virus gets in our nose, and used the olfactory nerves that are there to gain entry into our brain? Or are these symptoms more related to the effects of the cytokine storm, which is actually pretty common with infections in general, whether that be from pneumonia or something else? In a recent study in NEJM, they looked at brain findings from autopsies done on 18 patients who died from COVID-19, in a single teaching hospital. All 18 of these patients had nasopharyngeal swab samples that were positive for SARS-CoV-2 on RT-PCR.
Eleven COVID 19 patients required mechanical ventilation, meaning a breathing tube. Interestingly, it was noted that all of the ventilated patients had a confusional state or decreased arousal from sedation for ventilation. The way that I interpret this is that when they paused the sedation, meaning they temporarily stopped the sedation to assess their mental status, the patient was able to follow commands during that time. This, in general, is not uncommon, but this does seem to occur more often with COVID 19 patients, and this is something that I’ve been finding with my COVID 19 patients in the ICU.
On average, these COVID-19 patients died about 10 days after being admitted to the hospital.
When they did the autopsies, they looked at the brain as a whole, and they also sampled 10 different areas of the brain, and then looked at those samples underneath the microscope. Microscopic examination showed acute hypoxic injury in some regions of the brain. Acute hypoxic injury means tissue was damaged as a result of not getting enough oxygen. There was an acute hypoxic injury in the cerebrum, which is the part of the brain that allows us to think, and be conscious. There was also an acute hypoxic injury in the cerebellum in all the patients. There were no blood clots in the brain, or vasculitis, meaning inflammation of blood vessels. So another thing we want to know, is, is the virus actually invading the cells of the brain? In this study, they actually tested the brain tissue for the virus with RT-PCR.
Gee "Dr. " Richard, I'd love to. But with people writing like you do, coronavirus may catch up with me first.
I hope CV did not catch up with 7 of 20. He hasn’t been here for about a month.
I hope CV did not catch up with 7 of 20. He hasn’t been here for about a month.
I've thought the same. Being a doc, he's more exposed.
Speaking of exposure, I mentioned some months ago that I was in contact with someone who may have had CoVid-19 at the time - my car mechanic Chuck.
He had just returned from vacation and let's just say he was looking the opposite of refreshed. Two weeks later I came back to the car service department to find out that Chuck was off on sick leave. Fast forward to last week, and I asked Chuck outright if he had CoVid-19 at that time. He said yes! If I was indeed infected from him, the worst I got was a little phlegm in my throat in the morning a few days later.
Canada has only recently announced it will be buying kits for SARS-2 antibody testing. If an individual wants to get tested of his own initiative, it will cost between $200 and $400. Problem is, perhaps most people who have been infected probably never even got to the antibody response phase, because their T-cell response was adequate. So their blood serum antibody test will show up as negative, as if they never had it.
Ivermectin + Doxycycline passes another test --
Ivermectin Study Reveals Fantastic Results:
100% of 60 Patients Better in an Average of Just Under 6 Days
https://www.trialsitenews.com/…age-of-just-under-6-days/
However, Trial Site News also remarks --
But the complete lack of intellectual interest in the Ivermectin movement, including reputable hospital protocol approved, off-label, controlled observational studies, raises suspicions of a set point of view.
That TrialSIte News has spoken with several physicians around the world in combination with outcomes from these carefully run observational studies starts to make the team wonder if there isn’t some institutional bias against this particular alternative approach. There appears to be a strange lack of any intellectual curiosity on the part of the “establishment” we refer to as a pharma-government-academia industrial complex or “complex.”
While intriguing movements such as Ivermectin with growing data points of success are completely ignored, Remdesivir is blindly embraced: although the drug hasn’t really demonstrated success anywhere else (e.g. not for Ebola) and shown only some positive results, they certainly aren’t any better than the apparent Avigan (Favipiravir) results, which have led to approvals targeting COVID-19 in Russia, China and India. Bizarre given the U.S. government injected $138+ million into Favipiravir just eight years ago for the exact scenario that is now unfolding: a global pandemic.
Rather, the “complex” pushes on with remdesivir to the point that no one seemed to mind when standard protocol was ignored when just weeks before the clinical trial’s conclusion, the primary endpoint was literally changed so that the study could still be relevant. The primary outcome measure established in the remdesivir protocol was chucked last minute to save the faith. That bold and seemingly brazen move raised red flags among most critical thinkers. Perhaps that is how much power is now concentrated in “complex” circles.
The world of drug development, involving large biopharmaceutical companies, major academic medical centers, and regulators perhaps becomes too cozy. Over the coming months, TrialSite News will certainly look for chinks in the armor of the “complex.”
