Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Gain of function experiments? Evil Trump stopped them

 At least that is what this LATimes article says.

Uh, actually these experiments were stopped by President Obama and then given an ok to restart a week or two before Trump took over (and in the chaos I guess they figured this would be overlooked).

But now the LATIMES Business page  (not the science page?) insists:

Column: How Trump’s anti-science meddling erased 3 years of crucial COVID research...

yup. he stopped EcoHealth from funding gain of function research, something that a lot of scientists think developed the covid strain that killed a couple million people.

I discussed all of that in the past LINK but one does wonder at this part of the article:

Trump’s action magnified what already had become a targeted attack on EcoHealth and its president, Peter Daszak. Republicans and advocates of the theory that the COVID virus leaked from a Chinese lab have tried to depict them as villains of the pandemic.

hmm... Peter Daszak? Wasn't he the guy who in January 2020 got a lot of scientists together to write an article in Lancet saying covid was not from a lab leak?

The problem? He funded the Wuhan lab, so should not have been allowed to do this. 

Indeed: he has now been thrown off the Lancet panel still investigating the origin of covid.

Yahoo news :Jerry Dunleavy June 22, 2021· 

 Peter Daszak Zoologist, disease ecologist Peter Daszak, a longtime collaborator with the Wuhan Institute of Virology who steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in National Institutes of Health funding to the Chinese lab, has been recused from a COVID-19 origins investigation run by a commission organized under the auspices of the Lancet medical journal.

 italics mine. Recuse means removed because of a conflict of interest. 

 But hey, don't mention that in your article LATIMEs writer. If you do maybe your propaganda that Trumpieboy hated science might not be believed.

So the lies and coverup continue, but hey, what do you know peasants?

As I said in my earlier post: One arguement that covid originated in the wet market was believable because it was a mile or two away from the lab, and at least two strains of the virus were found there. 

Then Mosher's article in the NYTpost connected the dots by pointing out that some personnel were stealing and selling lab animals, and that explains the missing link of how the wuhan lab animals went to the wet market and spread the virus.

Conspiracy theory? Uh not if you are familiar with a culture of corruption. In the Philippines, double dead meat is a problem. so is stealing /diverting stuff by underpaid staff.

So why wouldn't scientists figure this out?  

Because they are scientists, not cops. 

Scientists ask a question and figure you are telling the truth so believe you. 

Cops however might dig a bit and find things being covered up. 

MIT technology Review shows how scientists examine the lab leak vs market theory: 

Drawing on myriad sources, including peer-reviewed papers, insights from epidemiologists who had access to first-hand information, and media reports, he tried to determine whether bias crept in when clinicians in Wuhan were trying to understand the viral outbreak.
What he found—not only that there was no obvious bias, but also that many of the first diagnosed cases of covid were either people who worked at the market or lived nearby—has settled his mind that the virus is unlikely to have emerged from a lab leak and that the market was the site of a spillover from animals.

A virologist would assume these people were truthful.

But what if they lied, or didn't want to tell about rumors about their friends on the staff diverting animals to be sold, or maybe just they were snobs who didn't notice the lower paid staff exist: You know, the ones who might be the ones most likely to divert sick animals because they are underpaid.

Corruption is behind counterfeit drugs that kill people, much of which comes from China or India.  UKGuardian article is from 2019 but is probably still valid.

as for Mosher: He was the one who spilled the beans on China's forced abortion policy, back in the 1980s when few westerners living with the elite in the big cities didn't notice this was going on.

Westerners simply do not understand that such things happen. 

The Tabloid the UK Mail discusses the problem of wild animals being sold in wet markets in China.

A study from researchers in China, the UK and Canada that went unpublished for more than a year has been posted online
It finds that more than 38 species of wild live animals were sold for food and as pets from the markets in Wuhan
Many of the animals were sold infected with diseases, including coronaviruses that originate in birds and in fowl
The findings may offer a clue in the origins of COVID-19 and whether it jumped from animals to humans or escaped from a lab
Researchers sent the study to a journal in February 2020 and was rejected, was rejected twice more and than sat in a WHO inbox for more than year

Italics mine.

So the problem was known: What was not known is where the animals came from.

Sceptics say yes they sell animals but no proof they were the covid ones, However they quote a few Chinese sources about the problem.

Animals 24 7 notes the monkey trade going on. This is not about covid, but gives one an idea on how corruption works.

The reason I posted the Professor Feynman videos in an earlier blog post was that the Space Shuttle investigation was all set to assert it was an accident that could not have been forseen, but Feynman, who was a regular mensch, not a big shot or a bureaucrat, actually went and talked to the lower staff and figured out the problem. And being a non bullshitter, dared to say this out loud.

I was going to say with more scientists like Feynman we wouldn't need to go to conspiracy sites to figure out the problem. 

But of course, one of the scandals of the Covid debacle is the censorship of experts who did not support the official story.

Joe Rogan, call your office. 

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Update: Dr C has a short video on big shots questioning stuff (and the video has links to more information). And he does mention about good intentions leading to bad stuff happening.


then we have this report by an evil Republican.(/sarcasm).

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