Back a year ago I blogged some of my thoughts on COVID-19: Spanking Blogger's Thoughts on COVID-19. I went on the record as saying I believed it was bio-engineered to some level in the Wuhan Institute of Virology as part of virus research and accidentally leaked from there. The very first comment was:
Just started reading this and BOOMM!!! julie hits us with another conspiracy theory about the virus being manufactured in a lab lol.
That was the prevalent view at the time, that it was a "conspiracy theory" to say it was leaked from the lab. All the fact checkers said it was definitely false, the social media companies started labeling it as "misinformation" and banning Facebook posts, YouTube videos, and tweets; and kicking people off the platforms who said otherwise. A number of Very Important People in the UN and government said they investigated and it was definitely false. Uncritical people, like the commenter above, believed what they were told and amplified it in the manner above.
Since then, the consensus has turned, and now the lab leak theory is certainly accepted as legitimate, and based on what I have recently read, I think 99% certain, with the 1% missing because the Communist Chinese Government, very suspiciously, refuses to fill in the missing pieces.
Before I get into what makes me now 99% sure, it's worth pausing and reflecting on the wisdom of "trusting the experts" and being so quick to "ban misinformation".
Folks, we're being manipulated, and if you don't see that by now, you likely never will. In this case, the manipulation is coming from China, from the UN, from the major Western Governments, from the left-of-center mainstream media (MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CBC, BBC, ...), and from the social media giants (Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, ...). Let this particular example be a lesson for us all.
Let us instead uphold the primacy of free speech and free interchange of ideas. Bad speech should be countered by more speech, not censorship, and this is the perfect example of that.
Why do you think they were all so eager to censor the lab leak theory? What benefit does that serve? Why not allow free discussion? What other things are being censored because of an agenda which is not a search for truth? I can think of a few. Let me know in the comments what things you see being censored where you think we should be allowed to discuss.
And further, what things do you feel you have been programmed to feel or believe? One of the best examples, I believe, is feelings regarding Trump. I can't tell you how many people I've interacted with who hate him with such a burning intensity but are unable to rationalize why based on policy decisions or actions. Only easily debunked hoaxes come up (Russiagate hoax, koi pond hoax, mocking disabled reporter hoax, fine people hoax, drinking bleach hoax, Ukraine impeachment hoax, Jan 6 hoax, and the list goes on). And if out of this entire blog post, this is the paragraph that makes you turn red and exhaust steam from your ears and makes you post a comment on, yeah, you've been programmed.
Am I programmed as well? Of course I am. I like to think since my eyes are open a bit more than the average person, and my critical thinking skills and bullshit detector are a bit more refined, that I am less susceptible. But even so, there are things that I accept uncritically that are almost certainly false. Am I "better than you" because I fall for being programmed, say, only 20% of the time as opposed to a higher number? I won't say that, but I will say I am better than myself 6 years ago when I happily and uncritically fell for almost everything. For me, it was having my husband give me a deep dive on climate change so that all the bullshit came clear. And if they were doing that to me on climate change, I became skeptical on other things. Hopefully this virus origin thing will open more eyes.
At any rate, back to the virus! The recently released book (November 16, 2021) I read was this one:
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| Click here to see a preview and buy it on amazon |
If you're not the reading type, there are a umber of podcasts that have been on promoting the book, such as this one:
The authors are Matt Ridley, a well-known UK-based science writer; and Dr. Alina Chan, a post-doctoral researcher originally from Canada working for the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (one of the top genetics research institutes in the world). Alina was born in Canada, seems wicked smart, and is cute to boot:
She first came to people's attention when she published a scientific paper with her boss at the Broad Institute and a colleague at the University of British Columbia here in Canada. Here is the first part of the abstract:
In a side-by-side comparison of evolutionary dynamics between the 2019/2020 SARS-CoV-2 and the 2003 SARS-CoV, we were surprised to find that SARS-CoV-2 resembles SARS-CoV in the late phase of the 2003 epidemic after SARS-CoV had developed several advantageous adaptations for human transmission. Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV. However, no precursors or branches of evolution stemming from a less human-adapted SARS-CoV-2-like virus have been detected.
This was a somewhat stunning revelation. In the case of the 2003 SARS outbreak, investigators traced the origin and evolution of the virus from bats, to civet cats (consumed in China), to humans, and then within humans until it became sufficiently well-adapted so as to become a pandemic.
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| A masked Civet cat. Considered a delicacy in China |
By contrast, the very first ever samples of COVID-19, in animals or humans, is of the fully adapted virus that can efficiently bind to human ACE2 sites on cells. While she did not say it in the paper, this obviously points to a lab-leak hypothesis, where it was modified to be more infectious in the lab prior to accidental release, and many picked up on that. And that, combined with other facts, is what effectively changed the narrative.
The earliest confirmed case of C19 was in a human in Hubei province (where the city of Wuhan is) from a sample taken November 17, 2019. The Chinese have not disclosed who he is, where he worked, where he lived, or any of his contacts.
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| Wuhan City in Hubei Province |
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| Map of China Note Hubei under the "A" in CHINA Note Wuhan in Hubei |
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| Map of Wuhan Note Seafood market top left. Note CDC and virology institutes nearby |
The virus began spreading around Wuhan in December and January of 2019, with many cases concentrating in and around the Wuhan seafood market. As the virus was spreading in Wuhan, the Chinese authorities went to extraordinary lengths to try to contain the news. At least 254 people were punished in a single week for the crime of "spreading rumours" about COVID-19, many doctors and scientists amongst them.
The Chinese had obtained the full genome of the virus by Dec 27, 2019 (but did not share it). In fact, the genome was published as part of the routine when publishing papers, but quickly deleted as it was Chinese Government policy promulgated by the Chinese CDC requiring "all studies relating to coronaviruses be approved by higher authorities in response to important instructions from Chinese President Xi Jinping".
For quite some time throughout January the World Health Organization and China maintained that there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission, which was ridiculous according to what was going on in Wuhan at the time.
On January 22, 2020, the Chinese CDC announced "the origin of the new coronavirus is the wildlife sold illegally in a Wuhan seafood market". This was suspect from the start, as it was primarily a seafood market, and very few wild mammals (and no bats) were sold there (it was called a "wet market" because of the melting blocks of ice that kept the seafood fresh).
Between Jan 1 and March 2 the Chinese did extensive genetic tests on all the workers, surfaces, and animals in the market, and knew early-on that their own explanation did not hold water. The data was instead consistent with the scenario in which a sick person brought the virus into the market where it became amplified in a poorly ventilated and crowded space. But the Chinese were not eager to release that information, and delayed its release for over a year (!).
To try to shore up their market origin claim, 4 different Chinese research groups almost simultaneously published papers pointing to a bat, pangolin, human vector.
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| A pangolin. It's fingernail-like scales are prized in Traditional Chinese Medicine. |
They all independently reported a 99% match to C19 for a sample found in a pangolin. It turns out all the groups were in collusion with one another, but oddly did not reference one another, and they all relied on the same sample. They were very, very slow to release the genomic data, and finally, when pressured to release the full genome of the pangolin virus, it turned out to be only 90% similar, and thus unlikely to be related to C19. The whole thing seemed like a planned misdirection to shore up the Wet Market origins alibi.
So if not a wild animal market evolution, as for SARS, then where?
After SARS there was big international push to try to predict where the next big pandemic would come from. The UN and governments around the world started funneling money towards virologists and wildlife biologists in the hopes of averting the next pandemic. The biggest project was the USAID's Emergency Pandemic Threats (EPT) program which began in 2009 and ran for ten years. An organization called EcoHealth Alliance, run by Dr. Peter Daszak, collected about $120M to funnel grants to research groups cataloging animal viruses. Most of the money came from the US government, and a significant amount of it from the US Department of Defense (hmmmmm...)
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| Dr. Peter Daszak, head of EcoHealth Alliance |
A certain type of bat, native to China, was a known repository for viruses that could conceivably transmit to humans, and so EcoHealth funded research by the "Bat Woman", Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who had been instrumental in tracking down the origins of SARS in bats. Dr. Shi's group "sampled thousands of bats in the wild, took swabs and blood samples from them, analyzed the specimens for virus, sequenced the virus genomes, studied the interactions between virus and animal/human cells in the lab, and even altered the genome of the virus in a bid to understand their biology and whether or not they could become human pathogens."
All of the sampling was done far to the South and West (2000 km away) where the bats were, and the samples brought back to Wuhan for analysis. Back in 2016, after sampling hundreds of horseshoe bats from the Mojiang mine, the team discovered a novel SARS-like coronavirus they catalogued under the name BtCoV/4991. This was more than likely a virus that had transmitted to miners in the mine and resulted in several deaths.
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| A horseshoe bat from South-Western China |
Fast-forward to December 2019. As soon as the team had found the genomic sequence of C19 they compared it to their database and found a 98.7% match with certain key fragments of BtCoV/4991, and what turned out to be a very high 96.2% match across the entire genome. Suspiciously, however, the initial paper from Dr. Shi identified the virus as RaTG13 (not BtCoV/4991) and implying it was somehow newly discovered. This misdirection was found out by some Internet sleuths and they got Dr. Shi to change her story and say RaTG13 and BtCoV/4991 were in fact one and the same, with no reasonable explanation for the name change, and no reference to the name change or previous work on the virus in the paper.
This was clearly done to obscure the fact that BtCoV/4991 was gathered from a mine where miners had been infected by a SARS-like virus, and that the virus had been an active area of study in the Wuhan Institute of Virology since 2016, with the virus partially sequenced in 2017, and fully sequenced in 2018.
Very scarily, lab leaks of viruses under study are fairly common events. The original SARS virus was leaked from 4 different labs studying the virus subsequent to the initial pandemic. Plus there was a culture in China of covering up these leaks for fear it would bring shame to the institution and the Chinese government. And leaks are not just confined to China. In the US, in 2019 alone, there were 219 accidental releases of dangerous pathogens across the country.
In May 2021 a US intelligence report was leaked to the Wall Street Journal detailing how three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been sufficiently ill in November of 2019 that they went to hospital (in Wuhan) with flu-like symptoms. Notice in the map above how close the hospital is to the wet market. These were, in all likelihood, the index cases for COVID-19 and point strongly to the lab leak hypothesis. But the Chinese government is not forthcoming with any details about these individuals.
Of course, those who have the most to lose from a lab leak hypothesis are the Chinese government, Dr. Peter Daszak, his funders, and the scientists who benefit from his grants. The funding for EcoHealth was under attack once the EPT program had run its course and Daszak was trying to reboot the effort and put an even larger effort into place. Had the well-intentioned EcoHealth-funded research, rather than preparing the world for a new pandemic, be found to be the cause of one instead, all the money and influence would dry up, and their "noble cause" would be done for.
In response to a paper from a husband/wife science team running a lab in Wuhan that suggested a lab leak was the likely source, on Feb 6, 2019, before there was any evidence to contradict a lab leak hypothesis, Daszak organized a group of researchers (whom, it turned out, he funded) to sign a letter saying "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting the 2019-nCoV does not have a natural origin". There was no way to know that at the time and they presented no evidence of their assertion. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the US NIH who provided a lot of funds to Daszak's EcoHealth, was also complicit in this political operation.
So far we have traced the origins of COVID-19 to a 96% similar virus collected in 2016 in a copper mine and studied extensively in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There are no other known intermediary viruses between that and C19, despite much searching. So the question is, how and where did the virus evolve from BtCoV/4991 to C19. This is where the controversial "gain of function" research comes in.
Most (unclassified) gain of function research is well-intended. One of the earliest examples, in 2010, was studying the H5N1 avian flu virus. It was passed between poultry and directly from poultry to humans, but not from humans to humans. Were it ever to evolve to become capable of human-to-human transmission, that would be very bad. Some scientists thought that was a remote possibility, others thought it quite likely. In December 2011, a lead investigator studying this question, Dr. Fouchier, in summing up the importance of his work, told the New York Times, "There are highly respected virologists who thought until a few years ago that H5N1 could never become airborne between mammals... I wasn't convinced. To prove these guys wrong, we needed to make a virus that is transmissible." What they did was to make genetic modifications to the H5N1 and then selectively bred the virus between ferrets until they could infect one another through the air. This was conducted under high-level bio-safety conditions. The research was in large part funded by the US and Dr. Fauci. The results sent shockwaves through the virology community because it turned out to be ridiculously easy to do it, which proved the point.
Scientists fell into two camps. The pro gain-of-function group was effectively headed by Dr. Fauci, Dr. Daszak, and the NIH. Fauci's opinion was published in the Washington Post in December 2011 under the headline "A Flu Virus Risk Worth Taking". His position was that "new data provides valuable insights than can inform influenza preparedness" and that "the engineered viruses developed in the ferret experiments were maintained in high-security laboratories." If C19 was the result of gain-of-function research, you can understand why Dr. Fauci and Dr. Daszak would not be eager for that to become well-known.
However, the cat was out of the bag, and China soon was doing similar experiments mixing duck isolates of H5N1 with the 2009 H1N1 flu virus creating 127 recombinant viruses to show that the avian flu could become transmissible amongst mammals under hypothetical agricultural scenarios. And goodness knows how much of this type of research was done in secret by the US, Russian, and Chinese military?
A rash of lab leaks from "superb laboratories" combined with a flourishing of gain-of-function research around the world caused groups of concerned scientists to advocate for a moratorium on gain-of-function research. In October of 2014 the Obama white house put a funding moratorium on it which included influenza, SARS, and MERS. However it only related to new research, anything underway was allowed to go on, and there were wide loopholes.
One of the scientists deeply impacted by this was Dr. Baric in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His lab had a reputation for continually breaking new ground in manipulating coronavirus genomes. This included inserting new genetic sequences in a way that left no trace of being bio-engineered (he patented the method he nick-named the no-see'm method). He was in competition with Dr. Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Both groups were racing to publish ground-breaking bio-engineering and directed breeding methods for making animal coronaviruses capable of infecting and transmitting amongst humans by modifying their spike proteins to better cleave to human ACE2 receptors. Have you got the shivers yet?
One of the techniques they developed was to use "humanized" mice in this experimentation. Mice who had been genetically modified to have human ACE2 receptors.
The ACE2 receptor is how SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 (and other coronaviruses) infect human cells. ACE2 is important in regulating blood pressure and clotting. An important enzyme for this is angiotensin II. The ACE2 receptor in many types of cells is triggered when there is too much of this stuff floating around, and breaks it down into something that actually counteracts it. If ACE2 receptors are blocked by coronavirus (or spike protein vaccines), you get too much angiotensin II which can damage the heart and cause clotting, amongst other things.
In 2013, Dr. Baric met Dr. Shi at a conference and decided to collaborate. Baric had the experience in synthesizing coronavirus backbones and creating chimeras (artificial genetically engineered viruses), and Shi had a growing library of bat coronavirus genomes collected in collaboration with Dr. Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance. Dr. Daszak described the collaboration from Dr. Shi's point of view: "you can manipulate coronaviruses in the lab pretty easily. You can get the sequence of the spike gene, you can build the protein, and we work with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this, and insert it into the backbone of another virus."
One of the fruits of the collaboration was described by a postdoc researcher in Baric's lab. He took the backbone of a SARS virus that had been slightly adapted to grow in humanized mice and replaced the spike protein with that of a bat SARS-like virus sampled by Dr. Shi's group. The bat spike showed a gain in virulence. When tested in the humanized mice, the virus caused severe damage to the lungs. In the paper they concluded "our results suggest that the starting materials required for SARS-like emergent strains are currently circulating in animal reservoirs". The paper also warned that "scientific review panels may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue, as increased pathogenicity in mammalian models cannot be excluded. The potential to prepare for and mititgate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens".
Several months before the moratorium, EcoHealth alliance won a five-year, multi-million dollar grant from the US government with Daszak as principal investigator in collaboration with overseas partners including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Its purpose was "understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence" and the method would be "predictive models of emergence potential will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice". The Wuhan Institute of Virology received $600,000 of the grant. Defintiely playing with fire. And this is the research Dr. Fauci claimed is not gain of function research that EcoHealth funded, using monies from Fauci, after the moratorium was in place. In 2017 the moratorium expired and more work and funding continued under an even more lenient framework.
One of the ways in which C19 starkly differs from its likely progenitor BtCoV/499 - and all other viruses in its family - is something called a "furin cleavage site" on the spike protein that makes it much more pathogenic than it would otherwise be and is in the main responsible for C19 becoming a pandemic. Scientists argue whether such a targeted thing could be naturally occurring or was bio-engineered (which would be relatively simple and leave no trace).
Because the mechanism whereby the furin cleavage site on the spike protein makes a virus more virulent is still not fully understood, several labs around the world deliberately inserted furin cleavage sites into coronavirus spike proteins to see how this impacts the virus' ability to infect different types of cells. Dr. Numberg in 2006, A Cornell team in 2009. the Wuhan Agricultural University and Utrecht university on 2015, Drs. Shi and Baric in 2015, and October 2019 in the Key Laboratory of Animal Epidemiology of the Ministry of Agriculture in Beijing. In short, by 2019, the practice of bio-engineering furin cleavage sites into viruses was quite routine.
The New York Times quotes the eminent Nobel-prize-winning virologist Dr. David Baltimore as saying "When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the SARS CoV-2 viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus. These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2."
Suspiciously, the first published paper by Dr. Shi and 28 colleagues out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to analyze and discuss the genome sequence of C19 in great detail did not mention anything about the furin cleavage site addition and how completely unique it was in this family of coronavirus. They zeroed in on the spike and paid careful attention to all the other differences with SARS, but omitted this glaring difference. As Alina and Ridley wirte, "It is one of the strangest omissions in a scientific paper. The sarbecovirus specialists were clearly paying extremely close attention to this part of the genome, but the most remarkable feature of all escaped their attention. It's as if you discover a unicorn and you compare it with horses, describing in detail the differences in hair and hooves, but you don't mention the horn."
Eventually, in early 2021, an international enquiry was conducted, but the Chinese were quite uncooperative, and the American appointee and chair of the committee was, incredibly, Dr. LPeter Daszak. They concluded it was definitely not a lab leak because the Chinese said so, without evidence.
So, let's summarize.
- Unlike for SARS, there is no observed genetic evolution of the virus. It's very first appearance is 100% adapted to humans.
- It's closest genetic relative, with 96% similarity, is a bat coronavirus collected in a mine in 2016 2000 km from Wuhan and transported from there to the Wuhan Institute of Virology where it was experimented on.
- At the time, there was a "genetic arms race" done for possibly misguided, but nonetheless altruistic reasons, to understand how bat coronaviruses can mutate to infect humans which involved actually making them, via "gain of function" research, transmissible amongst humans. This research was being actively pursued at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with grants from Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance funded by Anthony Fauci's NIH.
- Lab leaks are distressingly common. The research on coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute was treated casually, at BSL2 level, which is hardly any protections at all. After all, they had been doing this kind of research for 20 years and nothing bad had happened in that time.
- US Intelligence reports that the index cases were Wuhan Institute lab workers. It initially spread through the crowded Wuhan Seafood market close to where the research was taking place.
- The Chinese Government, the World Health Organization, Peter Daszak, and Anthony Fauci have been actively covering up, stonewalling investigations, and promoting (without evidence) competing theories to lab leak.
So I think it's pretty clear by now the origin of the virus that caused such tremendous death and destruction. How about let's not deliberately create human transmissible viruses in labs?
Way back on a Sunday morning in December 2019, when the first stories of the coronavirus were reaching our shores, I said to my dad "What are the odds the Chinese Communist Party was fucking around with something they shouldn't have which got out?". He put it at 2 to 1. It looks like we were right.
ReplyDeleteOne reason that leads me to believe the CCP at least let it spread on purpose was that the press went out their way to stoke people's initial fears by broadcasting footage of people purportedly collapsing in the middle of the street of corona complications without any attempt to verify if that were actually the case or not. They and His Lordship Anthony of House Fauci can go to the devil.
Your Dad was right on.
DeleteAnd I didn't get into whether they deliberately let it spread, or whether it was just that Xi did not realize how bad it was until too late, and the toadies down the chain delayed telling him and did not make any decisions on their own, which seems more likely if you've ever worked in a big organization.
If they deliberately let it spread this is the biggest war against the world. It also seems pretty suspicious that China has so few cases of Covid compared to their population while the rest of the world is so affected. Either that or they are hiding their numbers. Regardless they are defo hiding something.
DeleteI think it was more likely big Chinese government incompetence that let it spread, plus a little of, "well if we have it let's make sure every one else has it too"?
DeleteI believe history will eventually regard Fauci as a monster responsible for the death of millions. Describing mainstream media outlets as “left of center” is charitable. Censorship is contagious and may end up costing more lives than any virus. It’s starting to pop up in unusual places. An natural health, vaccine skeptical Instagram account that I followed just blocked me for making a joke about one of their posts and suggesting that getting too woo-woo on the health spectrum might diminish their audience. So yes, people that complain about censorship on the vax issue are just as quick to cancel people with opinions they don’t like as elitist establishment forums are. david
ReplyDeleteI think Fauci was well-intentioned in that he thought he was supporting research that would save the world from the next pandemic. He is egotistical and arrogant, and lacks all humility, and did retry to cover it up, though.
DeleteThis won’t get published, and I don’t care. I just want you to know that you’re really fucking stupid.
ReplyDelete😂
DeleteThis the same anon who keeps coming here for porn to jerk off to but ends up posting inane things in your non-porn write ups?
Delete-Kasey
Hopefully the same one. Scary to think there may be more than one!
DeleteMen are usually so one minded, they only think with their penises... why is, seemingly, the only male on earth who deprives his penis for his brain this much of a moron?
DeleteOffer substance, debate, do something. Just to mindlessly comment insults does nothing to further the conversation or to add any depth to the discussion whatsoever.
Anon, if you bother to read this please let me offer you some advice: See that post directly above this one? The one where Julie has to beg her husband to sodomise her? Yeah, ignore this post and go to that one. Get your dick out, wank to it and continue with your day. It's much better for everyone if you do this.
-Kasey
Oooh... you're sexy when you're angry!
DeleteIt just pisses me off! If you disagree, post reasons, offer evidence and discuss your point. If you're not willing to do that, then go to another sex post, get your cock out, wank and leave the rest of us alone. I mean jesus christ it's not that hard. Why is the only fucking man on earth who thinks of anything other than his cock so fucking simple? UGH.
Delete-Kasey
The person that says you are "really fucking stupid" should learn that to point ones figner at a person means three point back at the speaker. This paragon of basement dwelling in moms basement offers no counter arguments but merely calls you vile names. that is why I have no problem believing he dwells in the basement of moms house watching porn and playing his video games, and when he has time watching MSNBC spew their propaganda. Nice article Julie!
DeleteAlthough the OPs post was unproductive he/she may have made the comment because they didn't see a reason to argue or debate with Julie as evidenced by many comments in the past that have complained that she steadfastly adheres to her statements without being willing to change her POV and then reduces the discussion into ad hominem attacks on the commenter. So maybe the person is fresh out of debating energy.
DeleteOR
They are just a troll.
PS: I am not the original commenter, am just a passer by making an observation and providing a possible reason for the rudeness. lol
It makes sens.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, I agree with your basic sentiments of "Don't get duped" and "Let's not create terrible things in poorly controlled laboratories." There was obviously a lot of chances taken and "think of the economy and hope for the best" from most governments before implementing lockdowns, implementing social distancing, mask mandates etc. There were a lot of changes being made to investment portfolios in February and it's plain to see that the rich got richer and the poor really struggled... or died.
ReplyDeleteI mentioned in my own blog that some random guy on Twitter was bragging that he was doing a lot of overtime making explosives throughout March and early April 2020, obviously the US government was preparing for civil unrest when the hospitals were crying out for PPE and/or morgue space.
I'm clearly not as well researched as you are on this, the one thing that does seem odd to me is that 96% genetically similar really isn't that similar at all. Humans and chimpanzees are 96% similar; we're 90% the same as some domestic cats and 60% genetically similar to a banana. That missing 4% is pretty important.
Viruses have much smaller genomes than humans, so 96% across the whole genome, and almost 99% on key parts, is apparently (according to Alina) very close in their world.
DeleteWell put. You have talents in many areas.
ReplyDeleteMercy buckets!
DeleteVery informative Julie.
ReplyDeleteThe truth about the origins of COVID 19 and the link to SARS will eventually come out , but I doubt if people like Fauci will be held responsible.
I am still curious about the Chinese Scientists expelled from the virolgy lab in Winnipeg who were hiring Scientists and students from Wigan to work there.
Everything was covered by the Canadian government and no details were released on the pairs dismissal or what exactly was going on at the Winnepeg lab.
Of course the mainstream press are not interested in pursuing this.
It appears the Canadian government may also be involved in this in some way and have something to hide.
Yes indeed! Very suspicious, that. There is a bit of movement on that today where a multi-party committee with three judges will make a determination on what part of the FOIA'd 250 pages regarding that will be released, so hopefully we'll see. I'm guessing it's either espionage or a cover-up of Canada's involvement in exactly the same sort of gain-of-function research.
DeleteYou are right that the MIT / Harvard experts were never so certain as to where COVID came from: that was government people trying to quell anti-Chinese sentiments.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you accept MIT / Harvard as experts on genetics / virology, but you don't accept them as experts on climate? The leaders in climate science are also at MIT & Harvard. They are unanimous in stating that climate change is happening and it is caused by human sources. Can you find me some MIT or Harvard climate scientists that say otherwise?
Just curious in how you pick your sources. You seem to value MIT / Harvard when they agree with a narrative you like, but not when they don't.
I don't trust institutions without question, or people just because of their qualifications without question, I trust well-reasoned arguments with evidence, which is what Alina demonstrated in her book.
DeleteIt's funny that you skip over my reading of an entire book, my understanding what she is saying, and my thinking that makes a lot of sense, and my recap of it in the above, and go straight to "I trust Alina without question". No. That is how YOU think, to take "the experts" at their word without analyzing what they are saying.
For climate change, I have seen no well-reasoned argument and evidence to convince me that increases in global temp due to man-made CO2 will be catastrophic to humanity. And I have seen many well-reasoned dissenting voices (including amongst eminent scientists) to that proposition.
Your stating of the climate change proposition seems a bit dishonest. You stated something no reasonable person can disagree with.
- Warming IS happening (though what is the main cause?)
- Some of the warming is due to human sources (though how much?)
- How much warming will there be due to human causes (and will it be "catastrophic"?)
- Even assuming the above, are the currently suggested policies going to even make a significant difference?
- How much harm will the currently proposed policies cause to the poorest amongst us?
I should add that for climate change we remain where we were when COVID first happened, that ALL the eminent scientists said that a lab leak was a "conspiracy theory", and you had to be a very brave and free-thinking scientist to go against that narrative. You should take a lesson from how the "consensus" changed in this case, and imagine that is what is happening with climate change now.
DeleteOn the issue of climate change, your numbers regarding human impact were inaccurate, and understated to a large extent to fit into a certain narrative.
DeleteWhat a pointless statement, since I did not give any numbers. Are you sure you aren't the one fitting a certain narrative? I mean, I did my research on the question, I doubt you did, you just "trust the experts" and "trust the government" like a lemming.
DeleteYou did present numbers regarding human impact on the environment (and how it was not as significant as it is made out to be). I countered and presented data that showed that what you had stated in the article was grossly underestimated to fit into your narrative. Go read your article and the comment section if you arent sure what am talking about.
DeleteIt would be easier if you signed your posts. I'm assuming you're the guy obsessed with the fact I used an older diagram giving FF ton emissions? It's a minor point that was not central to the argument one way or the other.
DeleteThat isnt a minor point lol
DeleteThat only demonstrates you do not understand the discussion. Don't be proud of that.
DeleteRight again Julie, keep it up.
ReplyDeleteYou are right on Julie, thanks for the great research and perspective.
ReplyDelete2 10th of one percent (in Canada) have been identified with Corona, 20 pea recent are sick, 20 per cent require hospitalization, 20 percent require ICU and 20 percent of those die... The old, the sick the obese. The same people that are kicking off anyway.
ReplyDeleteMath is science ... Epidemiology is just a good guess... we think, it looks like... not science !!!
Yes, the olds and the fats caught it bad. The rest of us not so bad. I've argued before that health policy should have recognized that and been designed accordingly when that became clear.
DeleteGlenmore wrote:
ReplyDeleteI am still curious about the Chinese Scientists expelled from the virolgy lab in Winnipeg who were hiring Scientists and students from Wigan to work there.
Wigan??? Wuhan, surely. I doubt that there are any scientists in Wigan.
Writer & Editor
PS: I'm a Brit, and so allowed to be rude about Wigan.
😊
DeleteMaybe you should also publish these essays on a separate blog, so they can be shared with friends and family without any unnecessary complications. Then we could all feign astonishment if we learned somehow that Julie also had a NSFW blog??? No way!!!
ReplyDeleteBut here, people from both sides of the political spectrum come for the porn and we wind up having some good healthy political discussions with all sides represented.
DeleteYou can always keep publishing it here also. Just consider publishing it separately on another blog as well -- maybe "Innocent Julie's Musings".
DeleteGot it!
DeleteNice investigation Julie.
ReplyDeleteThe reversal of the story is very romantic.
While we were being sold a wicked market of more or less horrible animals, carrying death, here we are with an innocent seafood market, more, a "wet market". We imagine the octopuses, cuttlefish, the fresh and wet bodies of fishes and all this melting ice. The death's carriers are now laboratory workers of the Wuhan institute and the lethal disease is coming from where it was not expected: the Institute of Virology.
Your maps are useful!
Indeed. Quite some plot twists and turns. Should make a good movie.
DeleteHello Julie,
ReplyDeletereading a book about Covid-19 does not make you an expert on the matter, do not start jumping to conclusion and/or make unfunded accusations, it's too dangerous.
It's no small step finding a Coronavirus in country X and then say that is engineered in a lab.
These kinds of viruses are not uncommon to humans and they pop-up every once in a while.
MERS and SARS are known Corona-viruses.
In 2003 a new Coronavirus was identified in the Netherlands and New Haven, Connecticut.
I don't recall the Chinese calling it the 'America-virus' at the time.
Furthermore, what would be the point in constructing a virus that makes most people sick, some more, some less, but not dead?
It has no military use in that and there are far more deadlier viruses around at this point in time than Covid-19.
We conclude that the virus was able to connect itself with the humans, a small mutation that enables it to spread and survive.
That's not uncommon either and make perfect sense in 'survival of the fittest'.
Free speech is a great thing, expecially when it's done by people who know their stuff.
On the internet, any idiot can drop false claims, like you accidently did here.
It doesn't matter how ridiculous the claims are, people will believe it, simply because they want to.
Your Trump did it all the time, leaving a trail of stink behind him.
'Global warming', is just a hoax, just like the Corona virus, right?
Interesting enough is that in 1977 Exxon already knew that carbondioxide will cause global warming and conducted research to counter the effects.
The former president believed that lies are a powerful tool and made use of it. He claimed in 2016 and 2020 that the elections were rigged, but failed to provide proof in both cases.
The namecalling of MSM as 'left' or 'right' is deadly in itself.
Trump made use of that if the facts didn't point his way.
His redcaps stop listening to any news from the other side and enter a 'echo-room' in which they only hear themselves.
The 6th of January showed us what can happen if idiots follow orders from a bigger idiot.
Why don't start a topic and call it how to prevent catching Covid-19 and get your shots.
That would be a great idea and it doesn't hurt or divide.
Kind regards,
Marco
Marco, I'm not saying it was weaponized. There was lots of research going on to take bat viruses and understand how they can evolve to infect people. Why do you think there was a funding moratorium on this sort of research? As I described, there was a lot of it going on. This virus was very unlike SARS and MERS in that it cannot be traced back like those can. And I present myself as no expert. Alina is the expert, I am merely summarizing her work for you. I encourage you to listen to her interviews and read it yourself.
DeleteThat there will be catastrophic global warming in the future mainly due to humanity's use of fossil fuels does have many hoax-like elements to it, as I've blogged about previously. Again, I am no expert, but I am reporting on the work of experts.
Jan 6 was rather mild by the standard set during 6 months of BLM-inspired riots.
I did post an article a while back about the COVID vaccines and suggested folks in high-risk groups should take it. But more important is for everybody to decide for themselves.
Hello Julie, you have been reading a book that contains something that appeals the public, 'there is something wrong with this virus'.
DeleteWould you have read it if it would say, 'the virus is normal in it's origin and there's nothing wrong with it?'
The writer wrote a book that sells.
SARS en MERS are related to Covid-19, there's nothing special about it'.
Viruses are not alien in this world, nor in our body.
What special about this is our response to it.
You give the example yourself by stating 'everyone to decide for themselves'.
The individual American, European is confronted with something that is beyond his control, but effects him/her directly.
Our leaders had the wishful thinking that a lockdown would solve the problem.
That is not the case.
A lockdown prevents the healthcare system to crumble, like vaccinations also prevent people from getting extremely sick.
It's like handing out a piece of protection, but you still can get hurt.
Now we see a group of people which totally ignore any rules about protection and prevention and decide, for themselves, that Covid-19 forces the leadership to go from lockdown to lockdown.
The individual forces the group. The individual that always thought that he/she could do anything, at will, any time.
You can easily figure out how this is going to end.
The BLM-inspired riots were the response to the racial problems that go round in America.
There comes a time when people have had enough of it and respond in a kind of matter that is violent.
It is not helping the matter, it is an act of frustration.
Trump did little to nothing to solve the matter, instead he pounded on the 'drum of war', blaming everyone with the exception of the root of the cause.
Trump was a president for the white rich, American, not the American. His redcap followers never did see this.
Calling the direct assault to democracy rather mild by standard? A bould statement for someone who lives in extreme liberty. How many people die in this world, fighting for that liberty? A liberty that you take for granted and dispose off, because some losing president told proven lies to individuals that fail to see what is really going on?
Trump was, is, a bully and he got enough support by people who should known better after 4 years of his show.
MSM that bring his lies to the light are called 'fake news'.
How ignorant can people be of trusting a guy who broke every rule in the book?
Having a blog and writing about stuff you have been reading is fine. Putting down conclusions of the matter is something else, especially when you don't bring other books/conclusions to the footlight.
In the case of viruses, these books are a counterpoint:
https://bookriot.com/nonfiction-books-about-viruses/
I can go on and on about global warming, but I will retain myself to a few basics.
Oil is the result of carbon-based organisms put into the ground for millions of years, under pressure and temperature.
The world 'produces' 80 million barrels of oil each day.
One barrel is 42 US Gallons.
80% of the Gallon is used to make some kind of fuel, the rest is for plastics or medicin.
One Carbon burned brings, with enough oxygen, one Carbondioxide.
When you know that the world has been burning this stuff, full throttle, since the 1960's, day in, day out, millions of barrels a day, and the exhaust can only go into the atmosphere and oceans.
Remember that all this carbon was 'stored' for millions of years and our plantlife today can only absorb a certain amount each time, in order to grow.
All this extra carbondioxide can't escape out planet.
It only makes sense that global warming is the result.
Julie, I will not go further in debate on this topics.
It's not that I fear a dispute between us or fear to lose a discussion, since my words hold truth.
I just hope that you use your blog for speaking 'all' the words, instead of the ones you fancy when adressing topics beyond spankings.
Kind regards,
Marco
Sorry Marco, too much evidence that the virus was a lab leak in this case. Don't understand why you ignore the evidence and insist it is natural. Do you understand the evidence? As an exercise, can you paraphrase the main arguments (whether you agree or not) for it being a lab leak? The link you gave is about viruses in general. We are discussing this one in particular. Your links are not evidence, just general knowledge.
DeleteSociety's response to the virus has failed miserably. Forced lockdowns, forced masks, forced vaccines, all a failure.
Your statement about CO2 is not any kind of good argument at all.
I encourage you to be much more critical in your thinking.
Hello Julie.
DeleteOkay, let's play ball.
Society's response did not fail miserably.
The amount of victims would have been much higher if any of the restrictions would not have been conducted.
Like any spreading disease, containment helps.
Covid-19 is not different from others.
It really doesn't matter if the virus originates from a lab or not. The fact is that we have to deal with it.
The virus does not act different from other Corona-related viruses, such as MERS or SARS.
It's not alien, it's not different and with the right regulations we can deal with it.
The complaints are about the restrictions, since some of us think that the whole world revolves around humans.
Nature has some ways of telling us that humans are not absolved from nature.
My link is not intended to be evidence, it's telling you that COVID-19 is not different from the other viruses.
It's basic science.
As I have pointed out, Exxon already knew what was going to happen regarding to global warming in 1977.
Shell did know it from at least 1982.
Two major companies, in the market of oil and gas, knew about the dangers.
Denying this smoking gun and still believing that global warming is a hoax, with all the knowledge available, is just acting stupid.
Again, it's basic science.
Anyone with 2 years in chemistry can explain this.
We can go back and forth on the matter and you can stay in Wonderland, I don't care.
If people like think Trump is a great guy, Covid-19 is a hoax, Covid-19 is superficial, global warming is a fairytale, science is false and everyone is out to get them, go ahead.
I have done my say.
hope to make a difference,
Marco
Remember "15 days to slow the spread"? Yeah it failed compared to the promises made. Maskless, lockdownless, and mandateless Florida and Texas have fared just fine economically, in disease impact, and in preserving human rights. C19 is the first virus where we have quarantined the healthy as opposed to the ill.
DeleteExxon, like everybody else, knew of the possibility of global warming due to FF use. In 1977 the temperature was plummeting down and there were fears of the next ice age. Scientists continue to debate about the impact of CO2 when the radiative energy transfers (which would, by themselves, cause warming) are taken together with all the other energy transfers and reservoirs - complex, chaotic, non-linear system that cannot be solved, only simulated poorly.
You are wrong on many points, Marco, because you believe as you are told to believe.
I dont know what is true and what isn't anymore. As usual I didn't really read your blog, I often just read the title and get straight to the comments because am that fucking lazy and its tldr - yup am a millenial lol.
ReplyDeleteI initially started off trusting the experts. But after all the bullshit dogma about vaccine passports, vaccine mandates, masking mandates, lockdowns, flip flopping etc that I have seen in the last 18 months, I dont know who to trust anymore.
Hopefully we will get to the actual truth one day and not this right wing left wing bullshit dogma that we have been and continue to be subjected to.
I see the left politicking it like crazy in order to get Trump, but I don't see as much from the right on this.
DeleteThe right and the left both do it. The left does it on the behalf of the "oppressed" and the right does it on the behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride. Accordingly there is also the culture where if someone on the left says something, the right HAS to oppose it regardless of whether or not it is true. And vice versa.
DeleteSaying it's all equal is a copout. Currently (it has not always been like this) it is the Dems more at fault. I call em like I see em.
DeleteSaying there is no fault with the right but only the Dems do it, is actually the copout. Its a programmed right wing talking point that I have no respect for. If you call it like you see it, then you'd have to agree that both the right and the left do it. Infact there are many similarities in their political values and what they advocate for. They are both equally dangerous.
DeleteI did not say "only the Dems do it". Read more carefully. They both do it, CURRENTLY the Dems are doing it more (and more destructively). Not really just the Dems, I lump in the RINOs and the establishment Republicans with that on the same side as the Dems. They are indistinguishable.
DeleteI read the article now. Certainly sounds like a coherent story (and almost like a mission impossible movie storyline lol). BTW what is the benefit of gain of function research? Why the fuck would you want to see what would happen if a virus was more transmissible?
ReplyDeleteImagine if the real villains behind all of this were big pharma. They fund NIH, who in turn fund Ecohealth Alliance, who inturn fund WIT and other labs who do gain of function research, only for them to "accidentally" leak the virus, and then 6 months later the big pharma companies come up with "vaccines", and make possibly trillions by implementing vaccine mandates in collusion with the political elite. Dun! Dun! Dun!.
They wanted to understand how easy it was and the mechanism for bat viruses to jump to humans. So they tried out some ideas and tested them on humanize mice. Their intent in doing this research was to prevent the next pandemic, as SARS and MERS both started this way.
DeleteI hate Trump with a burning passion. Not because I have been programmed in that way. But only because he is against legal immigration. (I know Trump says he is FOR legal immigration, but his administration and their policies are not. That nazi snake Stephen Miller was in charge of formulating these policies. Hope that scumbag gets hit by a truck). Immigration is my most passionate political topic. So fuck him and his minions. Other than that I dont give a fuck about his policies. Deport illegal immigrants, build the fucking wall, build a space force, waste money, fuck the environment, whatever. But dont fuck with my immigration status or make it difficult and uncertain for me and my future.
ReplyDeleteYou hate discussion of immigration policy? Why Trump in particular? Surely the entire Republican Party and half the population is for more limits on immigration. Do you hate them all the same way? I still say you've been programmed to hate Trump.
DeleteDiscussion on immigration policy is fine. I can discuss it and there are a lots of things I would like changed, certain limits removed, certain limits placed etc., However am talking about being against LEGAL immigration. And yes I should have also mentioned Bernie. Bernie is against legal immigration as well - he doesn't want to give a path to citizenship for H1B workers who work hard and pay their taxes, but he is A-okay with giving a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants who contribute nothing. Fuck him too.
DeleteOk, so narrowing it down, you "hate with a burning passion" anybody who has any policy that makes it harder for folks on H1N1 visas to become US citizens?
DeleteI am in Canada right now so dont care about the US anymore. But I hate with a burning passion anyone, anywhere that makes it difficult for legal immigrants on any visa category to reasonably immigrate. As long as immigrants are doing it by the books, attacks on immigrants, their lives etc that often times cause great anxiety, stress and uncertainty is racist and cruel which makes my blood boil. You have no idea how many hoops I have had to jump through despite adhering to all laws, earning in 6 figures and paying my taxes and what not. This is more an indictment of the US and its stupid broken immigration system where you can bring your dying great grandfather if you are already a PR but you cannot get a PR for 25 years even if you earn in 7 figures. Its absolutely ridiculous. Thankfully Canada is waaaaayyyy better - although there are some minor areas that need improvements and changes.
DeleteBTW didn't know viruses need visas to become US Citizens!! lmao
Well now we have common ground. I agree that the governments make legal immigration ridiculously and unnecessarily difficult. I don't agree that if you come in on a temporary worker visa you are automatically entitled to immigrate, but it should be easier.
DeleteMy point was translating this into "hating with a burning passion" Trump in particular is about media programming, not about his policies on the issue of legal immigration which are quite mainstream (though we may both disagree with them).
The temp worker visa is a dual intent visa. Its not about being automatic, but shouldn't take 25 years either. Like I said, I am apolitical. So am not really that passionate about anything else other than immigration and hate anyone - Trump, Bernie etc who fuck with my livelihood.
DeleteHappy New Year!
ReplyDeletePeople havent even got their third doses yet, and the Pfizer CEO, comes out and puts out a statement saying "We may need the fourth dose sooner". Around the same time BBC publishes an article saying "Pfizer is the only vaccine that can stop the omicron variant".
Back in July Health Canada said that both moderna and pfizer are mrna vaccines and work the same way and provide the same protection, and therefore can be mixed and matched. Now if pfizer is the only vaccine that can stop the omicron variant, doesnt that mean they lied? They clearly dont provide teh "same level of protection", nor work the same way!
These motherfuckers wanna plow our bodies with drugs. They dont give a rats ass about long term implications.
Its now become the standard that if you speak out against the vaccine, you are a conspiracy theorist. What nonsense. They are ready to trust fucking pfizer. The company that conducted tests in Kenya resulting in deaths of 300 children. Or the fact that they were sued by Nigeria for 7 billion for illegally testing on children. The company that in its vaccines contracts has stipulated that countries cannot donate vaccines. These assholes are the ones that care about public health?
Politicians, health officials, big pharma, media and "scientists" are all in collusion and this is a dangerous slippery slope.
Sorry, but came here to rant haha. Happy new year again!
Happy New Years!
DeleteI agree with your rant. Just listening to Joe Rogan today. Malone now, a guy who has the dirt on the drug companies just before. It's scandalous!