All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (7 Viewers)

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    Maxp

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    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?
     
    Leaked messages from the authors of the 2020 "Proximal Origin" paper, which denied COVID-19's lab origin, expose scientific fraud and misconduct as they express disbelief in their paper's own conclusions.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, an advocate of gain-of-function research, secretly commissioned the paper and later cited it at the White House podium to dismiss the lab leak theory as a "conspiracy theory."

    The paper, which resulted in social media companies banning accounts and censoring discussions on the lab leak, concluded, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

    The author's private messages expose a different story.

    Dr. Kristian Andersen:

    "The lab escape version of this is so friggin likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work & the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario."

    "The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely-it's not some fringe theory."

    Dr. Andrew Rambaut:

    "Given the shirt show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release... We cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural processes."

    "Lab passaging might also generate this mutation."

    Dr. Ian Lipkin

    "I am concerned that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology did not take adequate precautions when growing bat viruses."

    "[There is still] the possibility of inadvertent release following adaptation through selection in culture at the Institute in Wuhan."

    Dr. Edward Holmes:

    "No way selection could occur in the market. Too low a density of mammals: really just small groups of 3-4 in cases."

    "Ian Lipkin just called - very worried about the furin cleavage site and says that high ups are too, inc intel."

    Dr. Robert Garry

    "Transmitting a bat virus-like RatG13 in HeLa cells and then asking your graduate student to insert a furin site... would get you there. It's not crackpot to suggest this could have happened given the Gain of Function research we know is happening."

    "I'm thinking mostly about the PRRA to generate the furin site. Relatively easy to drop 12 bases in. The proline is the hang-up - why add that? Makes me think the cell culture passage scenario [in a laboratory] is possible/probably assuming this has in fact been observed before by Farzan and Fouchier."

     
    posted on EE also
    ===============

    A Wisconsin doctor in 2021 prescribed ivermectin, typically used to treat parasitic infections, to two covid-19 patients who later died of the disease. He was fined less than $4,000 — and was free to continue practicing.

    A Massachusetts doctor has continued practicing without restriction despite being under investigation for more than a year over allegations of “disseminating misinformation” and prescribing unapproved covid treatments, including ivermectin, to a patient who died in 2022, according to medical board records.

    And in Idaho, a pathologist who falsely promoted the effectiveness of ivermectin over coronavirus vaccines on social media has not been disciplined despite complaints from fellow physicians that his “dangerous and troubling” statements and actions “significantly threatened the public health.”

    Across the country, doctors who jeopardized patients’ lives by pushing medical misinformation during the pandemic and its aftermath have faced few repercussions, according to a Washington Post analysis of disciplinary records from medical boards in all 50 states.

    State medical boards charged with protecting the American public often failed to stop doctors who went against medical consensus and prescribed unapproved treatments for covid or misled patients about vaccines and masks, the Post investigation found.

    At least 20 doctors nationally were penalized for complaints related to covid misinformation between January 2020 and June 2023, according to board documents, which The Post obtained by filing requests with state medical boards and reviewing public records. Five of those doctors lost their medical licenses — one had his revoked, while four surrendered theirs. Discipline is typically connected to patient care, not just what doctors say.

    It is impossible to know how many doctors were spreading misinformation because most states do not monitor or divulge those complaints. But The Post’s requests to the boards yielded at least 480 covid-misinformation-related complaints in the last three years — meaning only a tiny fraction of those led to disciplinary action.

    The Post investigation, which included a review of more than 2,500 medical board documents, lawsuits and news stories as well as interviews with more than 130 current and former medical board staffers, physicians, patients, health officials and experts, is the most comprehensive national accounting of the consequences for doctors spreading medical misinformation related to the pandemic.

    Many of the complaints relate to doctors promoting ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, which have been disproved as effective covid treatments and are not recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for covid. Health authorities caution that these treatments, which President Donald Trump and his allies frequently touted when he was in office, not only can have dangerous side effects but also may delay patients from seeking proper medical care.

    The political polarization fueled by the pandemic spawned a torrent of medical misinformation and exposed the nation’s fragmented system of monitoring the more than 1 million physicians licensed in the United States. State medical boards — the professional licensing agencies composed mostly of doctors — are supposed to investigate complaints and discipline physicians who endanger public health.

    But they are barely able to keep up with the more mundane task of issuing licenses, doctors say, let alone monitor social media, where many of the false claims proliferate. Critics say the system is not up to the task of overseeing the medical industry, and was particularly unable amid the explosion of misinformation that accompanied the pandemic.

    “We allow the profession to police themselves. And when they fail to do that, even in the most egregious cases, what they are abetting is the erosion of trust and respect for doctors,” said Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Law, who has written about the harms of covid misinformation..............

     
    Still no proof of lab leak theory.


    I don't think we'll ever get a proof of origin considering it started in China and they've never been very forthcoming about all of it. I think we just have to move on and keep our guard up going forward. Another pandemic somewhere in the world is probably going to happen at some point.

    I've always tended to think there's more to the story regarding the Wuhan Lab, but it's not really something I spend much time worrying about either.
     
    I don't think we'll ever get a proof of origin considering it started in China and they've never been very forthcoming about all of it. I think we just have to move on and keep our guard up going forward. Another pandemic somewhere in the world is probably going to happen at some point.

    I've always tended to think there's more to the story regarding the Wuhan Lab, but it's not really something I spend much time worrying about either.
    It really doesn’t matter - except to conspiracy theorists who want to smear a great scientist and a good man for no reason.
     
    It really doesn’t matter - except to conspiracy theorists who want to smear a great scientist and a good man for no reason.
    Yeah, I don't buy that conspiracy crap at all. They really don't care about the truth. More interested in scoring political points than anything else.
     
    I don't think we'll ever get a proof of origin considering it started in China and they've never been very forthcoming about all of it. I think we just have to move on and keep our guard up going forward. Another pandemic somewhere in the world is probably going to happen at some point.

    I've always tended to think there's more to the story regarding the Wuhan Lab, but it's not really something I spend much time worrying about either.

    I used to battle it out with MT15 on this subject. The truth is our own government agencies don't agree. I don't think we will ever have an definitive answer either. What's the point in talking about it anymore? Obviously, gain of function should be off the table forever. That's really the only major fallout that should come from this.

    We can also take solace in the fact that if China is at fault. They already, via Covid Zero, harmed their export trade more then any embargo.
     
    The "secret messages" does not show what they claim, but rather the opposite.

    See this thread.




    What those conspiracy theories are based on is initial evaluation from a ressearch group from winter 2020. Those initial findings were later debunked by the same researchers and this thread contains the internal communication of the group members released to debunk those spreading conspiracy theories that you quoted.
     

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