What does it mean to graciously disagree about COVID?

True, I know many who made book prescribing and selling ineffective and unproven treatments, and many politicians who have and still are reaping political gain by victimizing the gullible.

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This might help:

On January 31, 2020, Fauci received an email from Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust, an influential health research foundation based in the U.K. ā€œTony, really would like to speak with you this evening,ā€ he wrote.

ā€œWill call shortly,ā€ came an emailed response from Fauciā€™s assistant.

Farrar then wrote to Fauci: ā€œThanks Tony. Can you phone Kristian Anderson [sic] ā€¦ He is expecting your call now. The people involved are: Kristian Anderson ā€¦ Bob Garry ā€¦ Eddie Holmes.ā€ Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, Robert Garry of Tulane University, and Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney are all eminent biologists and virologists, and all three would go on to be co-authors of ā€œProximal Origin.ā€ Garry and Andersen have both been recipients of large grants from the NIH in recent years, as has another ā€œProximal Originā€ author, W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University.

Fauci had his phone call with Andersen that night, and what he heard clearly disturbed him. In an email to Farrar after the call, he wrote the following: ā€œI told [Andersen] that as soon as possible he and Eddie Holmes should get a group of evolutionary biologists together to examine carefully the data to determine if his concerns are validated. He should do this very quickly and if everyone agrees with this concern, they should report it to the appropriate authorities. I would imagine that in the USA this would be the FBI and in the UK it would be MI5.ā€

What were Andersenā€™s concerns? And why were they so dire they might merit a call to the FBI?

ā€˜Andersen laid them out plainly in an email to Fauci that same evening. ā€œThe unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered,ā€ Andersen wrote in the email. ā€œI should mention,ā€ he added, ā€œthat after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.ā€

One might conclude viable evidence was put forward then covered up.

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It doesnā€™t. What specific features in the viral genome are you saying indicate genetic modification by humans, and why?

What viable evidence would that be? We are all looking at the same viral genome. Nothing is being covered up.

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I am sure that you can ask many questions that I canā€™t answer, and youā€™re asking them is a much quicker thing to do than answering.

But thanks for responding more quickly than the time it would take to read the article I posted a link to.

I just noticed this.

Not sure exactly where you see the lie in what I said. While you are probably correct in saying Covid naysayers made a lot of money (although probably not nearly as much), it does not negate the fact that many on the other side made a lot of money also.

I just read a CNN piece that said 9 big pharma execs became billionaires during Covid. Newseek said pharma made record profits over Covid.

ā€œ2022 was a record-breaking year for Pfizer, not only in terms of revenue and earnings per share, which were the highest in our long history, but more importantly, in terms of the percentage of patients who have a positive perception of Pfizer and the work we do,ā€ Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.

Who gave it to them? The US government.
Where did they get the money? From taxes paid by the citizens.

Therefore lots of money did in fact go from the many to the few, which is all I said before.

Whatever money the Covid naysayers made, it didnā€™t come from tax money. They got it from private individuals, misguided as they may or may not have been. I know they didnā€™t get a penny from me, unlike big pharma.

As far as Collins or Fauci making money or not, Iā€™d have to do actual research, but Iā€™d be surprised if they didnā€™t reap a windfall of some sort. Still, Iā€™m open to maybe they didnā€™t. Do you have any figures on that?

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Thank you for sharing the article. Iā€™m glad that I read it, but it doesnā€™t sit well with me.

"As to publishing this document in a journal,ā€ he added, ā€œI am currently not in favor of doing so. I believe that publishing something that is open-ended could backfire at this stage.ā€ Andersen suggested that the scientists wait and collect more evidence so they could publish some ā€œstrong conclusive statements that are based on the best data we have access to. I donā€™t think we are there yet.ā€

ā€œThough it is unclear from the documents what convinced them to do so, the scientists decided to publish the final paper the following month.ā€

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i agree that executives are overpaid if that is your point, but remember that Pfizer is a publicly traded company, so all the profits go to shareholders. If you have a retirement plan in diversified mutual funds, that includes you in addition to millions of other plain ordinary people. From what I have seen, drug companies donā€™t make more on their investment than other average companies. In fact, sort of mediocre return over 5 years:

I share in yours, and the over-all disgust about those who consume billions - even if they were heroically involved in helping mitigate a disaster; which I doubt any of the CEOs directly were; it would be the scientists employed who would probably come closer to being worth large sums (though never billions).

As to what Collins made in that position ā€¦ I donā€™t have that figure off the top of my head - it should be all public (and less than the president) - all of which will be peanuts compared to big pharma CEOs. So my confidence wasnā€™t ā€˜data-basedā€™ so much as person-based and knowing (of) Dr. Collins almost personally just having seen and heard his involvement here. Dr. Fauci, I donā€™t know of as much, but Iā€™ve heard Collins (his former boss) speak highly of him, and thatā€™s good enough for me. As to all the nay-sayers, I canā€™t vouch for their characters at all other than that they have garnered quite an audience and in many cases a lot of money spreading what itching ears want to hear. Come judgment day, I would want to be in Collinsā€™ shoes any day over theirs.

My only point was that a), the drug companies made a lot of money, and still are, because of Covid and b), that it came from taxpayers.

Iā€™m not even judging whether this is right or wrong. Iā€™m just stating what it is.

I think it telling that Pfizerā€™s stock soared in 2022 and hasnā€™t gone down to pre-pandemic levels to this day.

While you right about investors making money also (alas, not me), Albert Bourl is getting around in his Gulfstream 650 and weā€™re not.

Since the pandemic more people are dependent on the government for basics such as food and housing than ever. That sure fits with money going from the many to the few. Is one a direct result of the other? I donā€™t know. Somebody with better resources than myself could answer that, but I suspect there is at least some correlation.

Besides making money directly from Covid, I wonder how much ongoing profit is due to the stress of lockdowns and the maladies they caused.

I canā€™t make heads nor tails out of any of it. Iā€™ve taken an honest look at both sides (scientific and political) and both seem equally credible to my pea brain.

Not sure whoā€™s shoes Iā€™d want to be in come judgment day, nor would I care to do the judging. I have no idea on whatā€™s in Collinā€™s or Fauciā€™s heart.

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In reading through the paper, I donā€™t see any way that one would conclude that ā€œviable evidence was put forward then covered up.ā€

There are some vague opinions, but no one is pointing to specific features and saying ā€œthis is definitely engineered because of x, y, and z.ā€ The other scenarios that others have put forward are extremely hard to falsify, such as the leak of an unmodified virus from the lab.

Of the specific arguments I have seen for the virus being genetically modified I have yet to see one that stands up to scrutiny, and I think a vast majority of scientists would agree with this.

I would love to see the evidence that led them to that conclusion.

So they said that their opinions could change with more analysis. After doing more analysis (or rather, after hearing from people who were experts on coronaviruses, which they werenā€™t), their opinions changed. From this you conclude that they deliberately covered up critically important facts for no reason that I can see, based on no evidence.

Look, I try to be civil in these discussions, but this kind of insinuation is offensive and libelous. I know Bob and Kristian, the latter very well. The idea that either would falsify scientific conclusions for any reason is grotesque.

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Apple stock went up 229% in the same 5 year period that Pfizer is up 18.2%, for comparison. Just saying that relatively speaking, they made very little money and were a mediocre investment through the pandemic to present. No doubt a lot of people profited and a lot of people lost money. I remember talking to a plexiglass installer who said they had a booming business through it, though it didnā€™t last.

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Why didnā€™t you tell me that 5 years ago?! :grinning:

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For me personally, I am not making any insinuations, but these emails raise genuine questions.

ā€œThough it is unclear from the documents what convinced them to do so, the scientists decided to publish the final paper the following month.ā€

Have you seen any explanations for the change in judgement that lead to this paper that didnā€™t express the previous uncertainty?

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Apple was the most profitable stock in the last 5 years. Apple 5 Year Price History

Yahoo Finance (I have no idea how reliable they are) thinks Apple is way over valued, for whatever that is worth.

Given that Apple had the number one highest gain and is thus an outlier, it might be best to not compare Pfizer with them.

Also, where did you get the 18.2% 5 year gain for Pfizer? According to the same Yahoo Finance data the stock was 28.7 in Feb 18 and it is now at 43.8. Thatā€™s about a 65% gain, Pfizer 5 year stock performance.

Iā€™m not a financial expert, but I think I got that right. Correct me if Iā€™m wrong.

Off the market summary I pasted above. No doubt Apple is an outlier but the S&P 500 5 year return was 46.29% so compared to average stock, Pfizer still did poorly. Point being is that stories of drug companies profiting unfairly due to covid are really not supported. Now, if you got in on the ground floor of Moderna, I am sure you would do well.

Publicly owned stock is sort of interesting from a moral/ethical standpoint. At least it spreads the Robber Baron money around to more than just a few families.

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Reading the responses from different people in the article, there wasnā€™t going to be a point in this decade, or perhaps this century, when people considering a lab leak could be convinced that there wasnā€™t one. Their position boiled down to ā€œsomeone could have handled the virus in the lab, infected themselves, and then spread itā€. How do you falsify this? They have no positive evidence that this happened in the first place. If it didnā€™t leak from the lab, the absence of evidence for a lab leak is not going to convince them. They could always say that China just got rid of all of the evidence for the existence of the virus in the lab.

I think everyone agrees that viruses could leak out of a lab. It has happened in the past. But we need something more than could have, or that China isnā€™t very cooperative. Given the long history of zoonotic transmission of viruses, the aggregation of the first cases in the Wuhan open market where wild animals are sold, and the lack of any obvious evidence of genetic modification the strongest case right now is for a natural origin. I donā€™t think this tentative conclusion needs to wait 4 more decades as there continues to be an absence of evidence for a lab leak.