COVID-19 Research, Drug trials and Pathophysiology

Do you think Trumps descriptions and words were the measured ones expected from the leader of the greatest country on earth?

 

No. I think he was a poor president. That does not, however, excuse anyone else for letting animosity cloud their scientific judgment.

 

Fair do's. But if you are arguing that Trump raised the issue and others dismissed it because it was raised by Trump, then you have answered yourself.

 

No, they failed in their scientific responsibility.

 

I’m sure some dismissed it because Trump brought it up. But if everyone did so because of Trump we have a worse problem in the scientific community than even I thought. The scientific community dropped the ball on this one—no question. Instead of looking for and following the evidence they almost categorically denied it was a possibility.

I questioned the official narrative here back in May of 2020 when everyone assured me it could only have happened through natural selection outside the lab.

Now in May of 2020 I was not aware gain of function researchers had been using serial passage to modify viruses including coronaviruses. I had people who claimed to be experts on the subject tell me no such technology existed. I still believed as mentioned above recombination could be “forced” in the lab (ex vivo) without leaving genetic markers any different than ones from recombination events in living animals (in vivo).

Not knowing serial passage was being used I kind of just put this issue on the back burner. If we had been informed serial passage was being used commonly myself and others who understand recombination in coronaviruses would have never remained passive on the issue. It’s my fault for not researching things that have become common after my formal education.

Anyway, without an intermediate host harboring some virus very similar to SARS-CoV-2 we absolutely have to pursue researching the ex vivo gain of function source theory.

Even if it turns out this thing is the result of a recombination event in an intermediate host, we really need to take a serious look at how this was handled. Science by assumption, consensus, and politics isn’t science and just because someone works in a lab or wears a white coat doesn’t mean they base their opinions on empirical evidence. We are all humans and appealing to the authority of humans isn’t a good idea—especially on life and death issues rooted in science.

Of course I’m concerned about the implications of an engineered virus if that’s what we find. But the bloody nose this process has given “science” concerns me almost more. As someone who lives and loves science, this one really hurts my heart.

edit: meant to include this piece of someone finally putting the pieces together in August 2020. Guess I shouldn’t paint with too broad a brush.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202000091

 

Well we don't know that. They may well have gathered evidence, formed opinions, but decided to remain silent for the moment while we were fighting the virus.

 

As I say, it may well be that scientists have gathered evidence, but chose not to publish it at this time. I do not share the view that science is pure and non political. Just as your surgeon must choose the right moment to tell you he thinks you have an inoperable brain tumour.

 

So it logically follows that if I use an agronomic practice, say using glyphosate to control weeds in a no till scenario that has long term, very positive environmental benefits but harms some individuals here and there by causing cancer, I’m not obligated to disclose the harm? I can make the decision on when the proletariat is “ready” for full disclosure, even if I’m asked for the truth? I can straight up lie when it’s in the best long term interest of society to do so?

I just can’t condone such an approach. You have to consider the collateral damage to the institutions telling the lies. In the case of gain of function and origins of SARS-CoV-2, the scientific community is given a pass for straight up lying and praised for doing so. Then certain demographics are surprised when other demographics are skeptical of claims made by the same scientific community on the safety and efficacy of never before approved vaccines.

Honesty is the only valid path for science. Dishonesty, even ignoring ethical concerns, just has too many negative consequences.

 

That they remained silent for whatever reason was an abdication of responsibility.

 

Your analogy lacks three parts.
1,The reckoning, that you must demonstrate that it was in the public interest.
2, That it is not you the perpetrator who gets to decide if keeping it secret is in the public interest.
3, That at the end your decision will be judged and you would go to prison.

 

Not in my opinion. Just as I said with my brain surgeon is that the truth must be revealed but that the revealing can be delayed in the public interest.
Would you want your brain surgeon to tell your wife she had weeks left to live as soon as he knew instead of arranging for you to tell the family and be there before telling her.

 

Sorry, not apropos. This was a public health threat and emergency. Sooner is always better.

 

Not that part of it. There is no public gain at this time in knowing whether the virus originated in a laboratory or a bat.

 

On the contrary. Public confidence is a huge part of mobilizing in a public health emergency.

 

Knowing the virus came from a Chinese lab has no effect on public confidence in controlling or beating the virus.

 

You go first—your three points have not been addressed in relation to dismissing a likely origin of SARS-CoV-2.

1) How was lying about the possibility of an engineered virus in the public interest?

2) Who decided to be dishonest about the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 being a product of a lab, not a bat or pangolin? Does the number of people or entities in on perpetrating the fraud matter?

3) Why? None of those who misled us on origins of this virus will be formally judged. Why should I or anyone else be? That’s kind of my point. There is no accountability for those people, why should others have to be accountable in the same circumstances? Rule of law shouldn’t be just a theoretical notion.

 

On the contrary, the suspicion of a media/political cover-up is one factor in vaccine hesitancy.

 

It wasn't lying, You can't lie about something being possible. All you can say is there's a lack of evidence.
Not speculating on it in the middle of the pandemic was in the public interest because it didn't waste precious time in investigating something that wouldn't help.

From my point of view the only people who have decided it was dishonest is you and Jack Hays. Before this I just thought there was little evidence.

They have not been judged yet because there is no evidence. Further as far as I know, not claiming the pandemic came from a lab has not caused any loss of life, whereas your proposition by your own claim would kill people.

 

We were told the virus had been studied and it was impossible for it to have been engineered. One main reason was lack of genetic markers that supposedly can’t be removed when viruses are engineered in the lab. This is false, because these same people who made this claim have been using technology that allows for marker free manipulation of viruses for years. As I said, I was foolish enough to take these experts at their word and I know better. Twenty minutes of research and I could have educated myself on serial passage and destroyed their argument last spring—but I didn’t do the research. That’s an admitted failure on my part.

They flat out lied. Period.

Again, they claimed to have investigated it, so wasted time argument isn’t really valid. And we wasted how much time and money politicizing the virus domestically? But we couldn’t spend any of that energy on national security issues? If this was engineered I can’t think of a more important place to spend some resources than on ensuring it doesn’t happen again.

Until I educated myself on serial passage and what the scientists who claimed it couldn’t have been engineered have known for years I was in the same boat with you. I’ve disembarked from the sinking ship.

The evidence is overwhelming that there was deception.

I believe there is also evidence the lie caused harm or certainly endangerment. At this point with no intermediate host identified the evidence points more heavily to engineering even if only slightly. We’ve spent lots of resources looking for intermediate hosts and playing with bats all over Asia. But we won’t spend a penny or any time looking for more evidence of the other valid theory.

If this was engineered, the people who did it and the lab/records are sources of lifesaving information. Saying it doesn’t matter if it came from a lab is like claiming getting information from the manufacturer of a bunch of complex live explosive devices wouldn’t be the best way to approach defusing them, especially after the first attempts fail killing many. That’s why we have been looking for intermediate hosts. Because if we found the host we would gain valuable information on the virus that could save lives. Over a year late now though. Now is when it probably doesn’t matter. A year ago when we knew very little about the virus such information from it’s developers would have been invaluable life saving information.

Furthermore, if this is a lab product, whoever did it is still in business and a further threat. From an epidemiological standpoint, finding out the truth of origins isn’t a matter of convenience if we get around to it—it’s paramount. Unfortunately it looks like this may be just another (intentional) “failure” of Covid epidemiologists to add to the ever growing list. I can’t stress enough how lies like this damage the credibility of public health in the future. This is unacceptable.

 

I was never told that, who told you that? Which government did they represent?

What harm? endangerment?
So we researched whether it could come from bats, so?
All your claims say is "could of" Even if you are right and genetic markers can be removed from lab viruses it is not proof that the virus is lab formed.
As for spending money investigating the lab theory, the WHO were in China for months getting nowhere and nothing was going to without the cooperation of the Chinese.
You haven't changed my mind as yet of the best way to use resources in the middle of a plague, to discover where it came from is very low on my list.
Neither will it matter if the investigation starts after the virus is gone. Any evidence the Chinese wanted destroyed was gone long before the WHO got there.
So your argument is one of pedantry and I am a pragmatist through and through.

If there was any chance of getting that sort of information then it would have happened at the beginning. What sort of pressure do you think you could have bought to bear on the Chinese to come clean when we had no real evidence they were guilty of anything.

 

Scientists told us that.

". . . A second statement that had enormous influence in shaping public attitudes was a letter (in other words an opinion piece, not a scientific article) published on 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine. Its authors were a group of virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute. “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the five virologists declared in the second paragraph of their letter.

Unfortunately, this was another case of poor science, in the sense defined above. True, some older methods of cutting and pasting viral genomes retain tell-tale signs of manipulation. But newer methods, called “no-see-um” or “seamless” approaches, leave no defining marks. Nor do other methods for manipulating viruses such as serial passage, the repeated transfer of viruses from one culture of cells to another. If a virus has been manipulated, whether with a seamless method or by serial passage, there is no way of knowing that this is the case. Andersen and his colleagues were assuring their readers of something they could not know. . . . "

The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora's ...
https://thebulletin.org › ... › Biosecurity

May 5, 2021 — - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ...

 

I had two medical/science PF members assure me last spring/summer it wasn’t possible to be lab produced. In one of my above posts (#655) I quote myself responding to one of them.
There are numerous sources cited in this article that said such things. I believe some in this source like Dr. Fauci and the Director of National Intelligence represent the US government.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.la...res-what-the-genetic-evidence-shows?_amp=true

Here is one directly from the scientific community.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sc...ot-human-made-lab-genetic-analysis-nature/amp

And the author, who has a Ph.D in molecular genetics and a masters in science journalism doesn’t fact check her source, Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University in New Orleans who makes this claim.

Of course this means Garry is lying or ignorant because here’s a study published months before Covid entered stage right categorizing pangolin coronavirus genetics in detail. Of course the research was done in China by the folks who “blew the whistle” on pangolins to begin with.
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/11/11/979/htm

Abstract pull quote:

Location of research.

How could a virologist making definitive statements on origins of the virus not know this? If he didn’t he’s not competent enough to be an authority on origins. If he did he’s not to be trusted.

Ensuring we had to start from zero knowledge on Covid instead of following a lead that could have saved lives. That’s the job of public health epidemiologists—to gather all information possible that can save life. Not attempting all avenues of protection is endangering the people those public servants are there to protect.

Also, as I said, if it is engineered the perpetrators don’t have to be accountable. This not only allows them to continue their work, but emboldens others with ill intent.

It’s no different than my analogy. There’s no guarantee any one person will be harmed by my practice. But my knowing they can be and doing it anyway isn’t correct behavior.

I’m glad we did. I’m ticked off we stopped there when we had plenty of evidence other sources were just as likely.

Genetic markers are irrelevant. They were used as a decoy away from technology that doesn’t leave markers. It was a flat out lie.

I’m not trying to prove this virus isn’t a natural antigenic shift (recombination). I’m simply pointing out we were lied to repeatedly by media, the scientific community, and politicians about potential for it to be unnatural. I’m not sure why if we didn’t want to know we couldn’t use your reasoning that it doesn’t matter. Why an intricate, well orchestrated web of deceit? If knowing is inconsequential (it isn’t to serious epidemiologists) why lie? If it is consequential the lie had to be to distract—so distract from what?

Well, it’s actually standard procedure whether it’s salmonella contamination on chicken in Pennsylvania school cafeterias or H1N1 influenza. We always look for the source if public health is top priority.

As far as the WHO, what gives you confidence in them? Are you sure it was an investigation and not a collaboration? Not even the other Asian nations trust the WHO/China relationship. They didn’t handle the pandemic well either.

I’m not one to forego investigations because the perp tore out some carpet and is suspected of throwing his gun in the river. I’m finding evidence of fraud, surely there are others out there that can as well.

I’m not trying to convince you to care about the possibility of an engineered virus killing millions and the perpetrators getting a pass. As I said originally, I’m more concerned with the sheer volume of lies told by scientists, media, and politicians. I really can’t see caring about that as pendanticism.

Something besides telling the world it couldn’t be China because we knew it couldn’t have come from a lab. Calling our President an idiot for not taking the official (incorrect) narrative of the scientific community at face value probably didn’t come off as intimidating to the Chinese government either.

Humor aside, that’s a good question. We don’t push them on human rights. We are essentially dependent on them for our survival so we are pretty impotent on Covid just like human rights, trade, etc.

We quit sending them cash several years ago so that’s off the table. You guys still send them money though, right? Maybe you have more leverage than we do.

Perhaps there isn’t a way to get information. I find that troubling considering we think we can control Iranian scientists working on nuclear weapons with a sweet deal and a smile, yet can’t get any answers out of a country built on technology they took from us.

Why would we assume all pertinent information would be in China?

Perhaps my desire to know the true origin is just a product of my line of work. When I have to deal with infectious diseases I have to know the source to find long term permanent solutions.

Anyway, good discussion my friend. You bring up good points as always.

 

So, no official peer researched statement on where the virus came from, just some people speculating. The worst you could accuse your government of is dis-interest in the origin.
Incidentally PF members have assured me the vaccine is deadly.

Assuming the Chinese did not come clean and offer their pre made vaccine, then your claim here is meaningless. There was no information that could be extra gleaned by knowing the virus came from man or animal. We knew the DNA of the virus day one.
So you will have to tell me how information you feel you now have would have been used to develop a vaccine earlier.
Not to mention that even if it did escape from a research lab the virus has mutated several times since we became aware of it.

That is a very different case for very different reasons you must be very aware of.

I have no confidence the WHO is good at their work. I have great confidence there was both investigation and collaboration. I see no advantage in anything else.

Nor am I. Another analogy I think.
You as a police officer arrive at a car crash, there are vehicles on fire and injured lying around the side of the road. What do you do first. Get the rescue services organised, check for people in the burning vehicles, clear the road?
OR
Contact your accident investigation team, photograph the scene, try and work out who caused the accident, then hunt down the perp?

I strongly suggest you focus on the results of the accident before looking at the cause.
I also suggest the evidence you need to find the perp is still there after the fires are out and the victims safely tucked up in hospital.

I also suggest that you would find it ridiculous if a member of the public berated you for not investigating the cause while you were still loading the ambulances.

But I do care. I would be as hard as anyone on the perp. You are claiming that catching the Chinese is as important than curing the virus. I disagree.
Your evidence for the need of this is that somehow that might have given us a head start, I disagree here too.
My pragmatist stance is based on the fact the Chinese were not going to fess up and it would be an unnecessary distraction for governments to spend time and money investigating the possibility at this stage.
That the gap allowed some scientists to make crappy, speculative or even dishonest suggestions is irrelevant to me.

 

This is just excuse making.

 

In your opinion.