Covid 48： The Long March

[Raja]

1 hour ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

As usual Ars Technica has a great overall summary on this, including significantly less alarmism:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/energy-dept-reignites-bitter-covid-origin-debate-with-shaky-lab-leak-stance/

 

The department of energy stuff is odd but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, though they should release what they've based their conclusion on.

Edited February 27, 2023 by Raja

[Raja]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

I'll admit I don't know your posting history, so perhaps it was an unfair comment towards you.

Glad we agree.

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

As usual Ars Technica has a great overall summary on this, including significantly less alarmism:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/energy-dept-reignites-bitter-covid-origin-debate-with-shaky-lab-leak-stance/

 

So basically the only one with any High Confidence of which theory is correct is… Raja. 
 

Glad we can close the book on this then. 

[Raja]

1 hour ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

As usual Ars Technica has a great overall summary on this, including significantly less alarmism:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/energy-dept-reignites-bitter-covid-origin-debate-with-shaky-lab-leak-stance/

 

Also worth noting that all of those conclusions by the intelligence commitees are based on a 2021 report, before a lot of the newer evidence of natural spillover came out - both those papers were released in 2022.

Edited February 27, 2023 by Raja

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

So basically the only one with any High Confidence of which theory is correct is… Raja. 
 

Glad we can close the book on this then. 

I think that's not accurate; Gorn and JoannaL appear to be entirely convinced that it's now a lab leak despite the conflicting viewpoints. 

Really, I don't think that anything has changed with this DoE report. Especially since there's no indication that any new evidence has come forward. 

[Padraig]

55 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

So basically the only one with any High Confidence of which theory is correct is… Raja. 

Raja does seem to have read much more of the primary sources than anyone else here.  That's a strength.

I don't really have a strong opinion.  I do know that humans are very good at seeing patterns, even when they don't exist, so i'm a little cautious about blaming China for a supposed leak.  As Raja said, if the DoE has new evidence, publish it.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Padraig said:

Raja does seem to have read much more of the primary sources than anyone else here.  That's a strength.

Yes he ‘did his own research’ which has been a proven way of getting to the truth for many people on the internet during the pandemic.
 

Where would the world be without so many people who are able to be experts with a keyboard. 

[Kalbear]

Yes, reading the primary sources for most of the US intelligence agencies is equivalent to watching whatever the UK version of Jordan Peterson is

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Yes, reading the primary sources for most of the US intelligence agencies is equivalent to watching whatever the UK version of Jordan Peterson is

It is if you are just some bloke off the internet. 

[Frey family reunion]

The problem is all of these agencies are highly reliant on the opinions of virologists who have at least some bias for allowing labs to continue (whether those biases are academic or financial).  As someone who has had to cross-examine expert witnesses on a variety of subjects, I’ve found that very few aren’t affected by certain biases in their opinions.

[Raja]

23 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Yes, reading the primary sources

It's almost as if we should read primary evidence to make conclusions. It's basic critical appraisal, if people aren't trained to do that then fine, but anyone in the medical field/ any sort of scientific or social science field will look at the primary research.

Edit: That's how people acquire information in the scientific field, they read research, which seems to shock a few people in here, partly because they are thoroughly uninterested in reading and have zero understanding of Epidemiology, Medicine or Public Health.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Raja

[Impmk2]

I don't really think there's much to add aside from I agree with Raja. The published genetic and epidemiological data is really quite convincing and the conclusion of a zoonosis is very strongly where the weight of the published research lies.

If there's new evidence it really needs to be publicly released, but from the reporting it looks like just a rehash of the same crap from early 2020.

[Fez]

WaPo has some additional details, though doesn't list the primary sources. But does give more context as to why the Energy Department was doing it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/02/27/little-known-scientific-team-behind-new-assessment-covid-19-origins/

Quote

 

Even at low confidence, however, the Energy Department’s analysis carries weight. For its assessment, the department drew on the expertise of a team assembled from the U.S. national laboratory complex, which employs tens of thousands of scientists representing many technical specialties, from physics and data analysis to genomics and molecular biology.

The labs were established as part of the U.S. nuclear weapons program and operate largely in the classified realm. The department’s cadre of technical experts includes members of the Energy Department’s Z-Division, which since the 1960s has been involved in secretive investigations of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons threats by U.S. adversaries, including China and Russia

 

 

[Zorral]

The covid numbers here are way down, particularly in comparison to what they were at January 1st.  Great time for numbers to be down here, in terms of socializing and traveling.  Fingers crossed for us going to Europe for two weeks.  We are requesting Paxlovid from our doctor before we go though, in case.

[Larry of the Lawn]

On 2/27/2023 at 2:51 PM, Heartofice said:

Yes he ‘did his own research’ which has been a proven way of getting to the truth for many people on the internet during the pandemic.
 

Where would the world be without so many people who are able to be experts with a keyboard. 

He's a fucking doctor 

[Zorral]

And ... it turns out that 'Havana Syndrome' bs that Bolton and tRump grabbed upon with glee to roll back the Obama-Cuba rapprochements, and the all the agencies call the lab escape of 'low confidence level for them.  

Edited March 2, 2023 by Zorral

[Zorral]

A bill introduced by Montana legislator l banning vaccinated blood donations would ‘decimate’ blood supply, opponents say

https://dailymontanan.com/2023/02/27/bill-banning-vaccinated-blood-donations-would-decimate-blood-supply-opponents-say/

Quote

 

A bill to ban donors who have received the COVID-19 vaccination from giving blood will “decimate” blood supply in Montana and leave patients at risk of even death, said opponents of House Bill 645.

“Montana’s blood supply could be cut by up to 80%, leading to adverse patient outcomes including unnecessary and unconscionable death,” said senior vice president of blood collection nonprofit Vitalant, Cliff Numark.

Numark said most blood banks are barely meeting the needs of patients today, and with an 80% reduction in blood supply, procedures for accident victims, pregnancy complications and more mundane blood transfusions would not be possible.

House Bill 645 would ban individuals who received the COVID-19 vaccine from donating blood, making it a misdemeanor with a $500 fine to donate or accept blood from vaccinated donors. The bill would also ban people who have had a diagnosis of “Long COVID,” medically defined as “postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 due to chronic 27 SARS-CoV-2 viral infection.”

In addition to creating a severe shortage of blood in the state, opponents said there’s no way to test blood for both Long COVID or the vaccines.

However, proponents said the bill, a continuation of anti-vaccine legislation that passed last session, was about medical autonomy and the right to receive blood from donors had not been vaccinated against COVID-19.

“We hear these two words ‘safe and effective’ a million plus times. Does that make them true?” said bill sponsor Rep. Greg Kmetz, R- Miles City.

Emails exchanged during the drafting process show Kmetz included language from anti-vaccine legislation passed last session, House Bill 702, which outlawed discrimination based on vaccination status. A portion of that bill was struck down as unconstitutional in December. ....

 

 

[Which Tyler]

 

No wonder Sunak wants maths taught at school for longer, if he was party to these discussions.

Not to mention that he's trying to fight his actual science advisors with a misquote from the financial times.
ETA: and well done Dom Cummings for putting on his idiot-explaining pants, to actually explain things in (hopefully) Boris-friendly bites.

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by Which Tyler

[Zorral]

If anyone still wonders why just now this escape from the lab bs has reappeared, here we go.

There ain’t no cure for long covidiocy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/03/select-subcommittee-coronavirus-pandemic-covidiocy/

Quote

 

The pandemic has faded, but one of the least understood effects of the virus still eludes treatment: There is no known cure for long covidiocy.

House Republicans presented with a textbook case of the ailment this week. The newly formed select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic met for the first time for what its chairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), said would be some “Monday-morning quarterbacking.” It instead became a Tuesday afternoon of false starts and illegal blocks.

Republicans on the panel, some of them medical doctors and others just playing one on TV, offered their predictable assessments. Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) kicked off with the unsupported allegation that “covid was intentionally released” from a Chinese lab because “it would be impossible for the virus to be accidentally leaked.”

Vaccines make you more likely to get covid! Thank you, Dr. Jewish Space Lasers.

But the panel’s greatest contribution to the science of misdirection was to feature as witnesses three scientists who arguably did more than all others to champion a herd-immunity approach to covid. Two of them were co-authors of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” put out by a Koch-backed group, which argued in 2020 for letting the virus run wild through the population while somehow segregating the old and vulnerable.

Had they prevailed in making herd immunity the official policy, hundreds of thousands more Americans might have died. As it was, President Donald Trump and GOP governors used these scientists’ claims disparaging face masks, isolation and vaccines to whip up resistance to public health restrictions.

One of the witnesses, Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and Fox News regular, used the committee meeting to present a new variant of covidiocy. He declared with absolute certainty that the virus came from a Wuhan lab.

“It’s a no-brainer that it came from a lab,” he declared. What’s more, “at this point it’s impossible to acquire any more information, and if you did it would only be in the affirmative.” He even suggested that two of the nation’s top virologists knew this but “changed their tunes” because they were bribed with grant money by Anthony Fauci.

How’s that for sound science? Some (including, now, the “low confidence” Energy Department) believe the virus came from a lab. Others think it occurred naturally. Nobody knows for sure — except Makary. And he knows with equal certainty that whatever unknown evidence might emerge will back him up.

You didn’t need a peer-reviewed study to predict this sort of nonsense would occur.

Makary is the guy who predicted in late February 2021, that “covid will be mostly gone by April.” He was also the source of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s dubious claim that face masks cause unhealthy levels of carbon dioxide in children’s blood.

Jay Bhattacharya at Stanford University, where he is a professor of health policy, in 2020. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Another witness, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University (also a Fox News regular, on matters medical and nonmedical), had called coronavirus testing “actively harmful” and warned about “great harm” and “danger” from vaccination. He worked on a study that claimed the covid death rate was similar to the flu’s, and he argued in March 2020 that “there’s little evidence” that “the novel coronavirus would kill millions” if left unchecked.

The three had top-notch academic credentials, and they wore well the professorial-shabby look: One had a hole in his suit-jacket elbow, another slung a parka over his chair and the third wore Hurley athletic socks with his business suit. But when they spoke, their tone was less scholarly sobriety than cable-news combat.

Makary, mocking “King Fauci,” claimed that “the greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government.” Bhattacharya repeatedly complained that they had been “censored,” “marginalized” and “slandered” by public health “dictators.” The other witness, Swedish epidemiologist Martin Kulldorf, called covid restrictions “the worst assault” on the poor and middle class “since segregation.”

In the witnesses’ telling, public health officials and scientists were wrong about everything — masks, vaccines, natural immunity, shutdowns — while the dissidents were unerring. Bhattacharya claimed the “harsh countermeasures” against covid “failed to protect Americans” while ensuring that people “will never trust public health authorities again.”

That’s rich. Far from being marginalized, these critics became right-wing celebrities and were embraced by the Trump administration. Their ideas helped power resistance to masks and vaccines — at the cost of untold lives. Now they’re blaming the debacle on the public health officials whose advice they encouraged Americans to resist.

There is an important debate to be had about the effectiveness of school closures and vaccine mandates. Officials working with limited information made a lot of mistakes. But those seeking honest answers will apparently have to look somewhere other than the select covidiocy committee.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Ask Mike Gallagher. The Wisconsin Republican has been put in charge of the new House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party — and the chairman so far is turning his panel into everything the covid committee isn’t: bipartisan, serious and productive.

“This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century, and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake,” he said in opening the panel’s prime-time hearing Tuesday — the same day the covid committee held its frivolous forum. “Time is not on our side. Just because this Congress is divided, we cannot afford to waste the next two years lingering in legislative limbo or pandering to the press.”

He took no partisan shots, and he screened “a joint video that the ranking member and I put together to help set the stage for the hearing.” That ranking Democrat, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.), reciprocated by acknowledging that “both Democrats and Republicans underestimated the CCP” and praising the bipartisanship and “our unity as Americans.”

The witnesses (including two former Trump advisers) and other lawmakers maintained the feel-good sentiment, what Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) described as “Republicans and Democrats working together to expose the malign activities of the CCP.”

The only dissent in the room came from a pair of hecklers from the far-left group Code Pink, waving signs that said “China is not our enemy” and “Stop Asian Hate.”

Gallagher waited patiently for them to be removed. “Your sign is upside down,” he told the “Stop Asian Hate” guy, who then righted his poster.

A couple of the Democrats obliquely referenced the racist remarks of Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas), who (on Fox News, naturally) challenged the loyalty to the United States of Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), who is Chinese American. But Gallagher had already called that “out of bounds” during a joint interview with Krishnamoorthi on CBS’s “Face the Nation” — one of multiple joint appearances and statements by the pair.

Gallagher is exactly the sort of person you’d want in the role as China’s growing aggression pushes us toward a new cold war. A 39-year-old Princeton graduate and former Marine captain with a PhD in international relations, he noted with satisfaction this week that his panel has “no bomb throwers.”

Gallagher, by Krishnamoorthi’s account, worked closely with Democrats to draft a rules package that will guide the panel over the next two years — “a bipartisan agreement that has my full support.” It passed Tuesday without debate, amendment, or a single dissenting vote.

That’s what happens when a leader puts country before party.

And then there are leaders such as James Comer. The Kentucky Republican, chairman of the House Oversight Committee (which includes the covid select subcommittee), has shown himself to be a bear of very little brain.

Last week, he sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about the Ohio train derailment in which he referred to “DOT’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)” and demanded of Buttigieg “all documents and communications regarding NTSB’s progress on the cause of the derailment.”

Buttigieg responded by saying he was “alarmed to learn that the chair of the House Oversight Committee thinks that the NTSB is part of our department. NTSB is independent (and with good reason).”

Comer, on Fox News, claimed it was “a typo” — a 19-word typo, it would seem.

Then, this week, Comer paused in his frequent (and sometimes contradictory) attacks on Hunter Biden to disparage the integrity of the president’s other son, Beau — who is not able to defend himself because he died of brain cancer in 2015.

Comer said on a Lou Dobbs podcast that “it was Beau Biden, the president’s other son, that was involved in some campaign donations from a person that got indicted” and “Joe Biden was involved in some of these campaign donations.” Comer suggested the president’s late son should have been prosecuted.

Alas, more of the House GOP committee chairs are following the Comer model of leadership than the Gallagher model, using their positions to give platforms to extremists. As I’ve noted, the House Energy and Commerce Committee joined Comer’s panel in elevating the voices of those who adhere to the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory.

Lat month, Rep. Jim Jordan’s Judiciary Committee featured as a witness a man who is part of the far-right “constitutional sheriff” movement. Constitutional sheriffs — an outgrowth of the white-nationalist posse comitatus movement — claim they are above federal and state government and are the ultimate arbiters of the law. The nonprofit Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting found that the witness, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, spoke at a constitutional-sheriff’s event and supports allowing sheriffs to nullify laws.

This week, it was the House Homeland Security Committee’s turn for some extremism. It hosted as a witness Pinal County, Ariz., Sheriff Mark Lamb — another constitutional sheriff. Though eschewing the term, Lamb is the “frontman” for one constitutional-sheriff group, has spoken to a second and also supports nullification, AZCIR reports. A booster of the “Stop the Steal” rally (he called the Jan. 6 rioters “very loving, Christian people”) and anti-vaxxer movements (he refused to enforce the stay-at-home orders of Arizona’s Republican governor), he responded to the Black Lives Matter movement by creating a “Citizens Posse” of residents to be deputized at Lamb’s pleasure.

Little more than a week before he came to Washington, Lamb spoke at a Second Amendment rally attended by Oathkeepers, Proud Boys and other extremists. He teased a Senate run and took photos with a few Proud Boys.

And there he was, just 10 days later, at the witness table in the Homeland Security Committee’s hearing room. Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) hailed Lamb’s “essential role in defending our nation’s homeland.”

This is precisely how Republican lawmakers bring dangerous extremists into the mainstream.

 

 

[Zorral]

However, the good news is this is a good winter wrt covid to travel in the northern latitudes, if one is traveling.

The U.S. Avoided a Massive Winter COVID-19 Surge. How? (msn.com)