New Zealand records another 41 Covid cases as it braces for biggest outbreak of pandemic | New Zealand
LingonberryParking20 15 points16 points 28 days ago

They better destroy more small businesses and children’s psychology of the virus will get worse

95% hospitalizations are in the unvaccinated?
Plmnko14 18 points19 points 1 month ago

Probably because it is pretty common and they don’t want those numbers to keep people from taking the vaccine.

Delta Variant Attacks Vaccinated People with Same Viral Load as Those Unvaccinated
Representative-Bag89 92 points93 points 1 month ago

january 2020: "hey, covid is dangerous, i saw shit on reddit that you have no idea, get masks, ffp2, and food" - not it's not, stop being pessimistic.

march 2020: "Vitamin D is key." -No it's not, you are not a medic.

June 2020: "it's china's fault. lab leak or voluntarly who knows." - no, sto being racist.

August 2020: "It's not over yet, warm temperature and people being outside in the summer was the reason of low propagation." - F**k you, it's over, lets open everything.

January 2021: "Variant are not going to stop, we should avoid focusing only on vaccine during a pandemic, as it is know that coronavirus mutates too fast. we are creating an evolutionary pressure against the virus to evade vaccine" - Shut up, vaccines will get us to herd immunity.

May 2021: "I think over 60yo should all vaccinate, but healthy under 50 should not, as we are still unaware of possible side effect in the long term." - F**k you, you anti vax.

And I am surely missing something.

‘Damning’ science shows COVID-19 likely engineered in lab: experts
terminalmemelocity 0 points1 point 3 months ago

1000km is an 8 hour drive. That isn't out of the realm of possibility. Wuhan is a huge market for people from all over the country to travel through. The problem with how you're invoking Occam's Razor is that you're stepping over the things we know to be true in order to create assumptions to fit something you want.

Some of the assumptions are:

  • The lab had covid samples;

  • The lab leaked the virus.

But Occams razor would lean more towards natural origin since it's already proven that virus are created natural. That is an axiom, its a truth. We know:

  • viruses occur naturally.

  • COVID is a Coronavirus.

  • Coronavirus pandemics have occurred naturally within 8 hours of where cases first started to show up.

As for no proof of natural origin, there is evidence of natural origin. Can you show me the growing body of peer reviewed research that shows there is no evidence of natural origin? Doesn't have to be peer reviewed but peer reviewed is best because it means the people creating it are putting their money where their mouth is.

A lot of you are trying to pass of like you're seeking truth but you're not. You're pushing a story very hard. Look at all the possibilities and until more evidence is presented then lean on the one with least assumptions as its more probable since it takes the least effort to occur. Coincidences are not axioms.

Exclusive: How amateur sleuths broke the Wuhan Lab story and embarrassed the media
MikeTheHummusGuy 25 points26 points 3 months ago

I signed onto Reddit on Feb 11, disenchanted with the MSM's poor coverage of what appeared to be something big --- potentially the beginning of a potential world-wide pandemic. Within weeks I was buying masks, stockpiling food, etc. And being told I was "nuts" by friends and relatives.

I recall being the FIRST PERSON to ever wear a N95 in my local Wal-Mart. Some smart-alecky stockboy made some smart-ass remarks; I approached him and his mates, feigned a coughing fit and he fled, lol.

Adopting the username "MikeTheHummusGuy" after a hilarious post, I became a Moderator on r/China_Flu sometime after that. Always asking questions, reading every single post, (8-12 hours per day, sometimes) applying common sense. I wrote a lot of posts predicting how this pandemic would go down, often referencing John Barry's "The Great Influenza." Barry got it right.

It's funny because now when I mention r/China_Flu and r/Coronavirus, on, say, the Washington Post (comments) everyone rolls their eyes. AS IF Reddit was/is nothing but conspiracy theorists, UFO believers, Lunar Landing Deniers, Q-Anon, etc. My participation here is regularly disparaged. We were all a bunch of wing-nuts, according to "the rest of the world." So all of a sudden we're "Amateur Sleuths?" lol.

I interacted with a whole lot of intelligent people here, including some trained in biochemistry/virology, others writers like myself, simply trying to understand what happened, what the likely origin of COVID19 was, and predict how this pandemic was "going to go." The moderation team had some heavy hitters standing behind it, who shall remain nameless - forever. They deserve our gratitude.

I. personally took Vince Racaniello's online Virology Class (free, Columbia U) just so I could understand more of what I was reading. It's a great class and a LOT to learn!"

The one thing I got very very wrong was NOT foreseeing a vaccine in such short order. AFter all, ten years had elapsed and there was STILL no vaccine for SARS. I figured, sans vaccine, I'd still be isolating in my mountain cabin right now. I got other things right, and other things wrong as well. I even created a post for "early adopters" asking THEM "what did you get wrong about the Coronavirus." I'll try and find it and post a link.

The MODS on r/China_Flu did, I believe, a pretty good job, despite early prohibitions on any post SUGGESTING the virus was man-made. There was, apparently, a deliberate effort to conflate "man-made" with "gain of function research," etc. Which was undeniably going on, hell Fauci even paid for some of it.

There were other prohibitions on keywords I still cannot use here, which I chafed against. Would anyone be so foolish as to suggest China doesn't have a nuclear weapons testing and development programs?

I haven't even read this article. TBH, the "media," MSM, at least, was so far behind the 8-ball during this entire pandemic --- it's why I and so many others found our way to r/China_Flu. "Amateur Sleuths," lol.

There are "problems," I believe, caused by the CCP's "investment" in Reddit. Discussion of how Chinese "influencers" have attacked, distorted, and deluged "the truth" often revealed in Reddit subs... well I wrote about that too, and.. 100% of copies of my " FIfty Cent Army 'Wxuxmxaxo 'expose'" have since been "sanitized" from Reddit. From EVERY forum.

Example: Redditors claiming certain videos were NOT of Wuhan, because "the trees wouldn't be in bloom this time of year." Then less than a week later an "official" CCP video released showed disinfectant trucks spraying down the streets of Wuhan --- and the trees in full bloom"

I'm left, 16 months later, deeply concerned about the ability of a foreign power like the CCP to exert such great influence over American social media. It wasn't just Reddit, Google, Facebook, ALL of them "sanitized" the news, modified search results, censored videos from Wuhan. (e.g. doors being welded shut) , etc. Out of fear of making the CCP unhappy, apparently. Using the excuse "to prevent panic"

Without a Free Press --- and uncensored Internet, social media --- bad things can happen. Especially so when the leader of the United States himself is denying, minimizing, lying. The "Previous Guy" did SO MUCH more damage than the virus itself, which COULD have been contained. We blew through "the golden hour" when USA only had 15 reported cases --- at 100mph. Windows down.

Cheers, and a big shout out to the REAL "MikeTheHummusGuy" who served as a warning to the rest of us not to pontificate too heavily!

To every one of you I interacted with on r/China_Flu, thank you. It was an exciting time to be out on the leading edge. I especially want to thank Tool101, head moderator, and my mentor.

Wuhan Lab Researcher’s Wife Died Of COVID-Like Illness In December 2019, Former Lead US Investigator Says
roosterAK 26 points27 points 3 months ago

I mean the only people I met in real life who even looked further into this story were anti-vax or Q crazies. It’s a weird skill to be able to read about things that are not main stream and be able to pull out what is real and what is fake. The intersect between the people who were willing to research the previous tests of mRNA vaccines, their safety, and who also believed it was a lab leak is close to zero in the wild.

The only reason I knew about it (and have been harping about it to everyone even when they think I’m crazy) was because of this sub, and starting to follow the story really early on. If you were here in December 2019, it was pretty clear it was a lab leak based on all the info we were getting. We were already debating if it was a man made virus or an unlucky study of a natural virus. But if you were not interested in this early on the information was quickly buried, and only appeared online beside crazy conspiracy theories. That’s the issue with real conspiracy theories, not a lot of people trying to tease out which 5% are real (or what parts are real), and which 95% are fake.

I believe as well that governments use the crazy people to bury things intentionally. Think about an event like 9/11 and all the conspiracy theories that came out about it, and how 95% of them are easily disproven. The other 5% are all presented on the same websites, with the same credibility as the easily disprovable, or just outright crazy ones. If you question any of the government story you are looped in with the 95% of easily disproved theories, instead of people focusing on the one discrepancy you are asking about. It’s basically impossible to research anything without ostracizing yourself, because your not crazy enough for the conspiracy nuts, but you are lumped in with them by everyone else. You can bury the truth by surrounding yourself with crazies, or feeding the crazies the right amount of disinformation.

So when the government now wants to find out the “truth” (that they already know because of the publicly available info) they need to drop feed this into everyone psyche, because up until a month ago if you believed any part of the conspiracy, you believed all of it. If you were lab leak, you were anti-vax. You were labeled an anti masker. So the government drips information, slowly, so that when they do the reveal in 90 days it’s no longer a conspiracy, and no longer lumped in with the fake bullshit.

Anyways thanks for listening to my Ted talk

Timeline: How the Wuhan lab-leak theory suddenly became credible
DopeMeme_Deficiency 51 points52 points 3 months ago

It was always credible. The issue lies in that Trump and Pompeio said they'd seen evidence that it came from a lab. The left absolutely refused to be on the same side of any issue as Trump. Therefore, the knee jerk reaction was to say it was impossible. Now that he's gone, and the dust is settling, they're reversing course. Now, obviously they can't say they were wrong, so they're making it Trump's fault for being inflammatory and for not sharing the intelligence he'd seen. So, it's Trump's fault that we didn't believe him

Biden orders closer review of Covid origins as U.S. intel weighs Wuhan lab leak theory
Ariannanoel -42 points-41 points 3 months ago

I think people would have felt differently about who was in office if there wasn’t a very wide known rumor that he skipped briefings and didn’t trust the 3 letter intel groups.

Did COVID-19 Leak from a Wuhan Lab? | Circumstantial evidence that it may have is mounting.
chainsawx72 10 points11 points 4 months ago

There are fewer than 50 BSL4 facilities in the world, the majority of them not working on Covid 19 before 2019. Most have a particular focus, like tree diseases, vector borne diseases like lyme disease and malaria, agricultural diseases etc. America has 8 of these labs, far more than average and more than any other country. China only has 2. So for China, there's about 20 million people living in a possible Covid lab city out of 1.377 billion people, so about a 1 in 64 chance.

Tell me how many labs in the world had Covid samples in 2019 and I'll get you a better figure, but one in sixty-four is pretty slim odds.

U.S. still hasn't ruled out lab accident origin for Covid | A Western intelligence official who has seen classified material told NBC News the U.S. has substantial intelligence that has not been made public about actions China took related to the Wuhan lab designed to obscure the origins of Covid-19
[deleted] 34 points35 points 6 months ago

Is it naive of me to hope this will spark profound introspection among those who did the censoring?

The fact is, no new information has come to light. Those who were censoring this topic -- broadly across society, not singling out the moderators of any particular discussion forum since some are known to censor critiques of abusive censorship as "meta drama" -- were acting as useful idiots in service of those wishing to restrict free speech because of separate but overlapping geopolitical, and gain of function research agendas. People in service of both agendas clearly wielded influence over the "moderation" of public conversation.

The fact the public and scientific community can be steered away from rigorous investigation and free discussion of an issue of such magnitude, is from my perspective more concerning than the virus itself. It is a stunning show of force, and perhaps a death knell for one of the fundamental pillars of liberal democracy.

The world needs a better World Health Organisation
pneutron 0 points1 point 1 year ago

Bailout money, after the economy has already failed due to lack of tariffs, the subsequent necessity to outsource manufacturing jobs to foreign countries just to avoid bankruptcy, government encumbering raw materials extraction and manufacturing with outrageous regulation and class action lawsuits, and the intentional outsourcing of jobs in order to support materially devoid "service economy" and "information economy jobs" for those who prefer that nobody get their hands dirty dealing in those "dirty" material objects. And make no mistake, this was a deliberate policy decision starting with the Clinton administration in the 1990's. You heard Clinton talk about it often -- the move to the "service economy," perceived by so-called elites with largely useless liberal arts degrees, as an environmentally proper way to generate prosperity, without having to deal with those filthy real-world objects. Basically, the cynical decision to demolish the self-sufficient blue-collar middle class they more-or-less hated, and cast them into a state of government-dependence. It was deliberate.

And so where are we now?

Decades of misallocation of capital in "service industries" and mis-education of generations of students in touchy-feelly "humanities" disciplines and the unproductive shit jobs they produce. Blowing money on the "arts" while virtually ignoring hard engineering disciplines. And why bother if you've allowed all of your manufacturing facilities to be overtaken by foreign competitors who exploit cheap foreign labor?

Of course, if your national policy is to kneecap productive industries with regulations and lawsuits while subjecting them to unrestricted rapacious foreign competition not similarly encumbered, all of your economy will in time become misallocated to non-productive purposes in the remaining domestic market, which will remain by necessity only over-inflated real estate (as yet not easily importable), entertainment, over-priced health care, a few flailing retailers, chain food restaurants, and over-subscribed financial markets. What else is there for people to do?

These are the things that liberal arts educated dimwits do for a living.

The legitimate purpose is to use government interventions to support real-world business activities (manufacturing) producing objects that people actually need, rather than kneecap those industries and wait around to bailout all the inflated asset bubbles that evolve in the wake of their demise.

The formula is easy: subsidize and promote raw materials extraction, tariff finished goods. You don't want to do that andd instead choose to do the exact opposite? Good luck, major suckage will be your future. You can't run a viable economy on good feelings and vapor.

A conflict of interest: How can Peter Daszak, a British scientist who helped fund controversial experiments on coronaviruses by China's Batwoman, be part of WHO's team investigating the original source of the outbreak?
pneutron 7 points8 points 7 months ago

The COVID investigative team should be a forensic investigatory team, not a team of high-minded, idealized natural scientists whose first priority is to provide cover for the institution of natural science, and to implicate the people they don't like according to their mumbo-jumbo pseudoreligious-naturalist quackery.

So far as I am aware, none of the participants to the inquiry have the training nor background to conduct a forensic or criminal investigation. In contrast, it looks like a parade of politically chosen softball, largely under-qualified individuals.

At this point, given the stonewalling and lack of access from Chinese authorities, too much time has passed for a useful investigation. The conclusions of this mock investigation by the WHO should be largely ignored by the world.

The time for investigations passed long ago. Already, the world should have drawn an adverse inference based on the lack of transparency and delays in access by the CCP, and the public and policy makers should have acted accordingly in a measured fashion.

Not war, but for example, no more trade surpluses, decoupling and so forth. There is no obligation on the part of any nation to couple economically with China at this point.

Going out is disrespectful of the doctors and nurses who are working increasingly without proper PPE
Gwimm 17 points18 points 1 year ago

Imagine how stupid the average person is. Then remember half of them are stupider than that.

A detailed Twitter thread debunking studies that claim Covid-19 existed outside China in 2019.
me-i-am[S] 0 points1 point 8 months ago

Copy paste from my comment above:

Actually no. Not only am I not the author but the the thread itself contains links and analysis already from some with reputable credentials on the subject matter. Not only will I not copy/paste information here that is already provide there in a formatted thread but reddit is for sharing information on a range of platforms. If there is a rule anywhere stating elsewhere, feel free to direct me to it. If its too difficult for you to review the information there, you are more than welcome to reformat yourself it in its entirety here.

The ability of reddit to "take me seriously" is of no concern to me.

I don't have any problem reading twitter threads - please don't apply your issues concerning readability to everyone else universally.

If you find the information old, outdated, not of interest, you are more than welcome to ignore it.

Warnings Raised After 2 NHS Staff Report Adverse Reactions to Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine
hoyeto 23 points24 points 9 months ago

It is a novelty in terms of the human trials, not in terms of science. The company Moderna was funded with that technology in mind back ten years ago. By then, the mRNA research was mature enough. Before the pandemic, Pfizer was rolling out Zika and Rabbies mRNA vaccines. So, the science is solid, with many advantages over adenovirus vaccines. Many people are afraid of "messing up the genetic code", but that's not how it works. The mRNA vaccine is a piece of RNA from the virus that only codes the spike protein. It is processed within the cell's cytoplasm (because it is encapsulated inside a lypid nano-bubble), and never reaches the cell's nucleus where the DNA is stored. Once it is processed by the ribosome, it creates the protein and then is digested within the cell and then presented to the major histo-compatibility complex class I, where some immune response is created. Some spike proteins can escape the cell, and then they are processed by the major histo-compatibility complex class II, creating even more immune response. So, it never touches the DNA machinery at all.

As in many vaccines, this process hardly would create long term side effects. Most effects are immediate, like a strong anaphylactic shock, as this news reveals.

Why won't the FDA move up it's meeting scheduled for Dec 10 for emergency approval of vaccines?
PanzerWatts -1 points0 points 10 months ago

I’m assuming the people involved need sufficient time to review the data. And you don’t want to rush through something this important. If the vaccine causes injuries or other significant side effects, you risk the public never trusting vaccines again.

1,500 people a day are dying. Every day you delay to get it perfect, another days worth of people die. You have to do a risk vs reward comparison, not just focus on the risk.