Thursday, July 22, 2021

the gain of function kerfuffle: The facts

Someone posted a snippet of this on twitter: 

Ah: Fauci lied. He knew that gain of function research was dangerous> but what is being overlooked is that this basic rexearch is needed to understand dangerous viruses so scientists can figure out how to protect people.


the snip on facebook was taken out of this longer video which is a long discussion about the risks and benefits of doing gain of function research. from Dec 2012... and it was about bird flu, not SARS.


Dr. Rand Paul was right: by funding Wuhan, it gave money to that lab to do gain of function research.

why send the money to China to do the research? the problem is that the US labs had had accident problems so it was banned in the US....but a loophole let the funding be sent to Chinese labs to do the research... ignoring of course that lab accidents happen in China too...where corruption is widespread and covering up mistakes is the norm.

and it didn't even bother to discuss "dual use" of the research: I.e. it could be used for biowarfare.

But Dr Fauci made things worse by denial to Dr. Paul: instead of giving a nuanced answer, he simply denied the fact that is well documented.


In both of their defences, I should add the MSM and the right wing counterculture news would probably distort their answers.

Which brings us to epidemic threats in the modern world.

The lecture is about bird flu, which had infected a few hundred people mainly in Asia, but had a very high mortality.

Bird flu jumped the species and infected humans, but it did not mutate to the next step, which was to enable human to human transmission. And it is simply a matter of time until this happens.

So a lot of the research was about bird flu, and a lot of the adenovirus and mRNA research for vaccine was being done so that there would be a fast development of vaccine for bird flu.

The adenovirus technology was used for Ebola, and is one reason that, despite the chaos/war/refugees etc. in central Africa, that the public health authorities managed to keep that epidemic under control.

as for the conspiracy types who see the covid epidemic as an evil plot to kill off excess population: 

Well, if that was the plan, they chose a weak virus to do their dirty work. (indeed, the shutdowns probably killed more people than the virus. The problems of the supply chain the increase in prices of commodities, and as my earlier post on increase in fertilizer prices suggest, the possibility of famine related deaths, not to mention riots and uprisings when food becomes too expensive for people, will be a threat for the next few years).

I have to wonder about conspiracy theorists who see this as a bio attack by China, or by the NWO. (it was probably an accidental release, covered up to save face, similar to how the Chernobyl disaster coverup attempt).

Sorry, guys, it just isn't that lethal.

Bird flu would be a better way to kill off the population. Half of the patients died.

the threat of bird flu was so scary that the US prepared plans on how to stop or minimize the epidemic: LINK

The conspiracy theorists see the Johns Hopkins meetings about a Sars like outbreak before Covid appeared as a NWO plan to give the world a dangerous disease: but like hospital disaster drills, city EMS disaster drills, or like war games, the meeting was about figuring out what one should do if something happened.

for example, the Dark Winter exercize ( June 2001) posited a terrorist attack with small pox. After 911, this became a big worry, and our public clinic was sent the plan of how we should set up ring vaccinations and isolation of patients outside of hospitals. I was put in charge of reading and teaching our clinic how to do this. Luckily, Saddam's small pox was not released on the USA, (destroyed or maybe just never existed) only a weak type of anthrax was released, the same strain one finds in barnyards and is used to make vaccines.

as for vaccines: 

Anti Vax is not limited to the right: it was a big push by KGB disinformation in the third world in the past, and in the US and UK it was pushed by celebrities not scientists.

The pseudo science against the vaccines just say vaccine, nothing specific. But the Sinovax (Chinese) uses an old fashioned technique that goes back 100 years. 

And the Astrozeneca and Sputnik use an adenovirus template, which is new, only a decade of so old. But adenovirus based vaccines have stopped recent epidemic of Ebola in central Africa.

As for the mRNA: this is more experimental, but the science suggests it is working and will be an easy and fast way to make vaccines in case of a really scary epidemic. 

So if you don't want to contaminate your body with newfangled vaccines, hey, ask for Sinovax. And if you are a radical prolife catholic who shouts about using vaccines that use fetal cell lines that came from fetuses aborted many years ago, then find, use Sinovax.

This group is more catholic than the pope ( yes, I know: Some of them don't consider Francis Catholic, but several previous popes said  it was okay to use rubella vaccine derived from fetal tissue from long ago aborted fetuses, as long as the fetus was not aborted to make the vaccine, but aborted for other reasons.) 

and if you are young and healthy, then fine. Get the disease. no problem.

one of these days the experts will say you should be checked for immunity instead of being checked if you had the vaccine, especially when there have been break through cases.

but for the vaccine, it comes down to risk/benefit ratio;



https://www.businessinsider.in/photo/81968506/one-chart-explains-why-the-uk-pulled-the-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-for-under-30s.jpg?imgsize=89123


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