All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (1 Viewer)

[Maxp]

I fear we are really going to be in a bad place due to the obvious cuts to the federal agencies that deal with infectious disease, but also the negative effect the Affordable Care act has had on non urban hospitals. Our front line defenses are ineffectual and our ability to treat the populous is probably at an all time low. Factor in the cost of healthcare and I can see our system crashing. What do you think about the politics of this virus?

 

[Optimus Prime]

...........“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,” Fauci wrote, according to the Times.

“He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars,’” Fauci reportedly said.

The Times noted that Trump also added an expletive in that phone call, according to the memoir. The chapter of the book discussing Trump in the early days of the pandemic is titled, “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.”

“I have a pretty thick skin,” Fauci continued, according to the Times. “but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”..............

MSN

 

[MT15]

...........“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,” Fauci wrote, according to the Times.

“He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars,’” Fauci reportedly said.

The Times noted that Trump also added an expletive in that phone call, according to the memoir. The chapter of the book discussing Trump in the early days of the pandemic is titled, “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.”

“I have a pretty thick skin,” Fauci continued, according to the Times. “but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”..............

MSN

Telling what he cares about the most, isn’t it?

 

[MT15]

...........“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,” Fauci wrote, according to the Times.

“He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars,’” Fauci reportedly said.

The Times noted that Trump also added an expletive in that phone call, according to the memoir. The chapter of the book discussing Trump in the early days of the pandemic is titled, “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.”

“I have a pretty thick skin,” Fauci continued, according to the Times. “but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”..............

MSN

I certainly hope there is a special place in hell for people who have smeared Dr. Fauci. I really, really do hope they feel a fraction of the horror and mental stress they have put him through.

 

[Optimus Prime]

In July 2021, Joe Biden rightly inveighed against social media companies failing to tackle vaccine disinformation: “They’re killing people,” the US president said.

Despite their pledges to take action, lies and sensationalised accounts were still spreading on platforms. Most of those dying in the US were unvaccinated.

An additional source of frustration for the US was the fact that Russia and China were encouraging mistrust of western vaccines, questioning their efficacy, exaggerating side-effects and sensationalising the deaths of people who had been inoculated.

How, then, would the US describe the effects of its own disinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? A shocking new report has revealed that its military ran a secret campaign to discredit China’s Sinovac vaccine with Filipinos – when nothing else was available to the Philippines.

The Reuters investigation found that this spread to audiences in central Asia and the Middle East, with fake social media accounts not only questioning Sinovac’s efficacy and safety but also claiming it used pork gelatine, to discourage Muslims from receiving it.

In the case of the Philippines, the poor take-up of vaccines contributed to one of the highest death rates in the region. Undermining confidence in a specific vaccine can also contribute to broader vaccine hesitancy.

The campaign, conducted via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X) and other platforms, was launched under the Trump administration despite the objections of multiple state department officials.

The Biden administration ended it after the national security council was alerted to the issue in spring 2021. The drive seems to have been retaliation for Chinese claims – without any evidence – that Covid had been brought to Wuhan by a US soldier.

It was also driven by military concerns that the Philippineswas growing closer to Beijing…….

The Guardian view on the US and vaccine disinformation: a stupid, shocking and deadly game | Editorial

Editorial: Donald Trump’s military ran a covert campaign to discredit China’s Sinovac vaccine at the height of the pandemic

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as a top medical adviser to former President Trump during the coronavirus pandemic, says Trump got the idea of promoting hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for the virus from Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

“I believe he wanted so badly for this to go away the way influenza goes away, and when he saw it was not going away, then he was hoping for some magical solution, and he even used those words, ‘It’s going to go away like magic,’” Fauci said during an interview Tuesday on MSNBC. “And then when that didn’t work, then we had to have these miracle cures like hydroxychloroquine, which he got from Laura Ingraham on Fox News.”
Fauci’s comments were first highlighted by Mediaite.
During the pandemic, Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine as a potential “cure” for those infected with the virus despite warnings from medical officials at the time the drug was unproven and could come with side effects.
A study published earlier this year by French researchers found nearly 17,000 people across six countries may have died because they took hydroxychloroquine during the first wave of the pandemic.
After Fauci made his comments about Trump’s views on the drug on Tuesday, Ingraham hosted Dr. Scott Atlas on her program, who blasted Fauci.
“If it weren’t so morally repugnant to watch him, it would be comical. Let’s be very clear here, Fauci’s legacy is presiding over the biggest failure, the most immoral disaster of public health fiasco in history with his sidekick Deborah Birx,” Atlas said. “And their legacy is very clear. It’s not just the millions of people damaged, harmed and killed by his policies. It’s not just the long-lasting damage on children, particularly, poor kids. It’s also bigger things like personally destroying the trust in science and public health guidance. I’m not sure that’s even reparable.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4729686-anthony-fauci-donald-trump-hydroxychloroquine-covid-treatment-laura-ingraham/

 

[SaintForLife]

I certainly hope there is a special place in hell for people who have smeared Dr. Fauci. I really, really do hope they feel a fraction of the horror and mental stress they have put him through.

I just don't understand why you would continue to cover for the man in charge of the agency that funded dangerous gain of function research that ended up killing 20 million people and cost 25 trillion.

 

[J-DONK]

I just don't understand why you would continue to cover for the man in charge of the agency that funded dangerous gain of function research that ended up killing 20 million people and cost 25 trillion.

I don't understand why you want the guy who approved the dangerous gain of function research that ended up killing 20 million people and cost 25 trillion to be president again.

 

[SaintForLife]

One of the few times I agree with Romney.

 

[SaintForLife]

First: COVID emerged in Wuhan, a city that is 800 miles from the closest bats harboring SARS‑CoV-2-like viruses that could have served as progenitors of SARS‑CoV-2, but that contains labs that, prior to the outbreak, were conducting the world's largest research program on bat SARS viruses, possessed the world's largest collection of bat SARS viruses, and possessed the virus most closely similar to SARS‑CoV‑2."

Second: In the four years preceding the outbreak, Wuhan labs performed research that placed them on a trajectory to obtain SARS viruses having high pandemic potential, and, in 2018, one year before the outbreak, Wuhan labs proposed research to obtain SARS viruses having even higher pandemic potential and features that match, in detail, features of SARS‑CoV-2."

"Third: Wuhan labs performed research on bat SARS viruses using an inadequate biosafety standard--just biosafety level 2--and inadequate personal protective equipment--just gloves and a lab coat."

"Fourth: In 2019, a novel SARS virus having a spike with extremely high binding affinity for human SARS receptors, a furin cleavage site inserted at the spike S1-S2 border, and a genome sequence with features enabling assembly from six synthetic nucleic-acid building blocks using the reagent BsmBI--a virus having the exact features proposed in the 2018 NIH and DARPA proposals--emerged on the doorstep of the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

"In summary, multiple lines of secure evidence point to a research origin."

"By contrast, as I hope I will have the opportunity to review in responses to questions, no‑‑zero--secure evidence points to a natural origin."

 

[SaintForLife]

In the 1st video he said there is a 1 in a billion chance that all of those lined up.

In the 2nd video he talks about how the official legal definition of gain of function that has been in effect since 2018 to now despite Fauci trying to claim the definition has changed.

 

[bird]

I just don't understand why you would continue to cover for the man in charge of the agency that funded dangerous gain of function research that ended up killing 20 million people and cost 25 trillion.

I don’t understand why you keep posting bullschlitz and why you keep supporting a guy who presided over the deaths of thousands of Americans.

Why do you hate America?

 

[Taurus]

I don’t understand why you keep posting bullschlitz and why you keep supporting a guy who presided over the deaths of thousands of Americans.

Why do you hate America?

A million Americans. A. Million.

And he fell into hapless delusions when Covid didn't turn out to be a hoax.
(Of course Trump's claim that it was a hoax was itself delusional.)

Why on Earth anyone, even a white supremacist yokel or a racist billionaire would want such an abject coward as President is beyond me.

Trump's hands are gargantuan compared to his minuscule testicles. Covid unmanned him. Made him retreat into fantasy like a child. He never had much courage to begin with but C19 ripped away every last shred.

Why would you put a craven idiot like that in charge of the nuclear football?

 

[MT15]

In the 1st video he said there is a 1 in a billion chance that all of those lined up.

In the 2nd video he talks about how the official legal definition of gain of function that has been in effect since 2018 to now despite Fauci trying to claim the definition has changed.

Ebright is not a virologist, and isn’t a subject matter expert on viruses. He’s a microbiologist and has always studied bacteria, and these are 2 very different fields.

You have a bunch of non-scientists and a few scientists who are not in the field of virology, let alone viral genetics, saying it was definitely due to gain of function research, when they cannot possibly know that. This is being amplified for political reasons because the person most to blame for the horrible US response to Covid is Trump. There just isn’t any getting around that fact.

There is no definite conclusion that can be drawn as to the origin of Covid, BUT all the genetic markers point to a natural animal origin.

Also, there was no research at Wuhan that could have developed Covid, I have seen enough scientists who know these things attest to that. And no, they are not super villains that are trying to destroy the world, like you seem to think. They know what they are talking about, I have posted one thread discussing it.

I don’t have a problem with greater oversight over gain of function research, but Fauci is correct about the term being less than useful, and changing in meaning as the field evolves. Fauci was trying to explain how the definition used by scientists has evolved.

Ebright is doing a disservice to the field by sticking his nose in here where he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Maybe he’s a partisan actor, I don’t know. But he isn’t helping here.

BTW - this field hasn’t “resisted regulation for 2 decades” as Ebright says - it was strictly regulated under Obama. Trump removed the restrictions. So he’s full of shirt on that point alone.

 

[SaintForLife]

 

[MT15]

Read the transcript. Then point out to us exactly where you think he’s being dishonest.

Listen to him when he tells you why it’s unlikely that the Covid virus came from the lab. It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation that makes sense genetically. You and your propagandists cannot debunk that reasoning, so you smear Fauci. When all along your hero Trump was responsible for hundreds of thousands of needless deaths.

That’s the only reason Trump boot-lickers are smearing Fauci. To deflect blame from their tangerine Mussolini-wannabe.

 

[zztop]

Anyone ever wonder if some people understand the concept of confirmation bias?

 

[LA - L.A.]

Anyone ever wonder if some people understand the concept of confirmation bias?

The people who understand confirmation bias and recognize it, tend to not fall prey to it.

The people who fall prey to confirmation bias do so because they don't understand it or recognize it.

People who fall prey to confirmation bias do so as a result of their emotions, not their intellect.

 

[MT15]

I just don't understand why you would continue to cover for the man in charge of the agency that funded dangerous gain of function research that ended up killing 20 million people and cost 25 trillion.

Here is a good thread from a public health physician from the Trump Administration. Your errant beliefs about Covid are just that, and being sold to you by dishonest brokers.