All the noise and complaining sounds just like the tactics of the Intelligent Design folks.
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Thanks for your response. It reminds me of the work of Ben Goldacre looking at industry-funded research: Trial sans Error: How Pharma-Funded Research Cherry-Picks Positive Results [Excerpt] - Scientific American
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Interesting . . . I get the overwhelming, palpable impression from “legitimate scientists” that I’m the brainwashed idiot for questioning any of their dogma (this is always in the realm of health for me). . . I think it’s a problem on both sides. And what’s really sad is that that attitude eliminates any possibility for productive conversation/convincing people to have an open-minded look at what you believe you have evidence to support. I honestly don’t think people on either “side” of this have a desire to convince people who think differently than them- they just want to defend their own beliefs by making others looks & feel as dumb as possible for questioning/criticizing.
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The loud and obnoxious people on both sides do, unfortunately get more attention.
Thanks Ani99…I am no scientist but it is at least NOT hard to imagine the “political” implications of some of this. It’s not just an ID argument. In this case it is “politics of academe” or “politics of research.” Also — I saw an article denouncing this article on another website recently. Had no idea, when I read that refutation, what sort of article was being refuted–. Thus, I am glad to see this article posted here for all to read. I did know, just from the vocabulary of that refutation, that the writer was not an English speaker and eager to show that the virus came from some country other than the one most people think it was from… Good article at any rate and my thanks to Jessica for making it a post on BioLogos!!
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Yeah, he made a sufficiently bad hash of describing human genetics research (some of which I was involved in) that I’m not inclined to read anything else he writes.
On the origin of SARS-CoV-2, I remain steadfastly agnostic. I find some of the lab-release arguments (e.g. on the furin cleavage site) to be quite weak, while the certainty expressed by some of the anti-labbers doesn’t strike me as supported by a whole lot. Kristian Andersen (whom I know well and like – he was a post-doc in the viral lab I work in) is someone I would describe as always certain and often right. I disagreed with him about SARS-CoV-2 on Twitter just yesterday, in fact.
ETA: there was a recent letter to Science by a number of researchers that expresses my view pretty well: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1. (The authors include one of my former office-mates, by the way. It’s all one big happy family.)
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My problem is this:
We read in Investigate the origins of COVID-19 | Science (sciencemag.org)
that QUOTE:
“On 30 December 2019, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases notified the world about a pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China ( 1 ). Since then, scientists have made remarkable progress in understanding the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), its transmission, pathogenesis, and mitigation by vaccines, therapeutics, and non-pharmaceutical interventions. ”
This article Investigate the origins of COVID-19 was published in
Science 14 May 2021: Vol. 372, Issue 6543, pp. 694
DOI: 10.1126/science.abj0016
And yet remarkably, in the acknowledgements section at the end of:
Origin of Covid — Following the Clues | by Nicholas Wade | May, 2021 | Medium
We read: QUOTE
The first person to take a serious look at the origins of the SARS2 virus was Yuri Deigin, a biotech entrepreneur in Russia and Canada. In a long and brilliant essay, he dissected the molecular biology of the SARS2 virus and raised, without endorsing, the possibility that it had been manipulated. The essay, published on April 22, 2020, provided a roadmap for anyone seeking to understand the virus’s origins. Deigin packed so much information and analysis into his essay that some have doubted it could be the work of a single individual and suggested some intelligence agency must have authored it.
And this seems to be information provided in just 4 months!
COVID-19 — a timeline of the coronavirus outbreak | Devex
QUOTE:
“On Dec. 31, 2019, Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization of pneumonia cases in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China, with an unknown cause. ”
Amazing!
The debate or at least query about the origins of the virus, named coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and claims about a gain of function research to make it a bioweapon, hides a different agenda.
In total worldwide, from the link above:
Total cases as of May 14: 161,270,918, with 3,346,881 deaths.
About 80% of infected people have mild symptoms.
20% get more severe symptoms, and only 2 percent die.
The question is not of origins of the virus, but origins of the pneumonia. Why is that not talked about?
The virus, as you can read here:
Actionable Cytopathogenic Host Responses of Human Alveolar Type 2 Cells to SARS-CoV-2 (nih.gov)
aims to replicate. It has no advantage whatever in inciting the immune system to go into overdrive and damage the very cells that it depends on for replication, not to mention putting itself in dire danger of annihilation.
What is the origin of Covid 19, the pneumonia, the excessive inflammation or cytokine storms that are talked of?
Because the origin of the pneumonia – the virus SARS-CoV-2 – is obvious to just about everyone.
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from your cited paper: Finally, in this time of unfortunate anti-Asian sentiment in some countries, we note that at the beginning of the pandemic, it was Chinese doctors, scientists, journalists, and citizens who shared with the world crucial information about the spread of the virus—often at great personal cost ( 8 , 9 ).
I would think the aversions to be not against Asians but a particular regime. Its a bit like confusing anti zionism with anti semitism
Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses - ScienceDirect shows the distribution of furin cleavage sites in corona virus families
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That’s exactly where I am at as well. I am certainly not closed minded to the possibility that it escaped from a lab, but will need to see evidence before I can be convinced. Distrust of the Chinese seems to be the biggest beef people have, which is definitely understandable.
Interesting historic note. The last cases of smallpox were traced back to an accidental release from a lab, which I believe led to a worldwide ban on studying the virus.
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Not obvious to the public. The public are told what to believe.
Here we see a Doctor, who has made a lot of videos on covid 19. I’d say he is a big pharma lap dog. Give him a bickie and he’ll bark as desired. I’m not saying he is a bad doctor.
He is certainly mincing words a bit, but he is admitting that the immune system is responsible for the excessive inflammation that is characteristic of covid 19.
[COVID 19 Mystery - Doctors are Unravelling the Mystery of COVID 19 |
He admits that in the autopsies done (just about 5% of those who died of covid 19), the viral load is not consistent with the damage. Indeed I have seen elsewhere that there were cases with no virus detected in the autopsy. Probably because the immune response wiped out the virus.
Autoimmune Disease - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy2ihr-uJNY)
You’re welcome! Here’s a great article that touches on a few “politicization of science” points: Don’t Stop Believing - The G-File (thedispatch.com)
Oh, but you just did.
No. He could be a good doctor but he is also willing to toe a line in research, that he doesn’t seem to be involved in. He is selling covid 19 as a viral disease.
There is flu and then there is covid 19. They are not the same.
Viral studies are not usually done in autopsies, so I wonder about those sources. Especially with known infections. And particularly quantitative testing. Of course, around here, about the only autopsies done are on those with indeterminate cause of death and in criminal cases, so that would strongly skew the results, and cannot be extrapolated to the larger population.
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Yes, but if there is a new virus and we want to know everything about it, then why not autopsy everyone who died of covid 19 or believed to have died of covid 19. Surely that is one way to get information about the damage done and hopefully some of the immune antibodies/ products that were involved. Why not?
Less than 5% were autopsied.
Costs a couple a thousand each. No one wants to pay for them
Two different viruses. Never said they were the same.
Not so. The figures I saw were:
They test positive and
80% they just get mild flu or even asymptomatic.
16% get bad bout of the flu
2% get covid 19 (excessive inflammation ) and recover
2% get covid 19 and die
Why?
It is the same virus, so called SARS COV2