One day after a report that a respected Chinese virologist fled Hong Kong to accuse Beijing of a COVID cover-up, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon told the Daily Mail that scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other labs have defected to the West and are “turning over evidence” against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for their role in the COVID-19 pandemic which has claimed over 560,000 lives worldwide since last December. […]
The 66-year-old then said that defectors are cooperating with intelligence agencies in America, Europe and the UK, which have been assembling evidence to challenge the CCP claim that the pandemic originated in a wet market – not in a lab home to scientists who have come under fire for manipulating bat coronavirus to be more transmissible to humans.
One Flu Out Of The Wuhan Nest
From well known conspiracy site, the BBC;
Despite the wide acceptance of the conclusions reached by the Nature Medicine Paper, there are still some scientists who refuse to see it as conclusive proof that the virus wasn’t manipulated in some way.
Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor of medicine at Flinders University in Adelaide and Chairman and Research Director of Vaxine, a company leading Australia’s search for a Covid-19 vaccine, believes that laboratory manipulation has to remain under consideration for being behind as a possible explanation for Sars-CoV-2’s “surprising” ability to bind to human cells.
And he rejects the argument that if it wasn’t pre-planned by a computer model, it didn’t happen.
“In science a lot of things are done on the basis of give-it-a-go, and a lot of things happen completely by accident,” he tells me. “You know, a lot of Nobel prizes have been won on the basis of accidents.”
Others refer to Wuhan’s past experiments in which genome segments from different viruses have been stitched together to investigate how spike proteins bind to human cells.
And they point out that there is no way of knowing whether or not Wuhan does in fact have, among the hundreds of coronaviruses it has collected, anything closer in genetic make-up to Sars-CoV-2 than RaTG13.
What’s more, RaTG13 is itself the subject of some speculation.
The BBC has had it confirmed, from the researchers running a respected Chinese database, that it is the same virus as one that the WIV previously referred to as RaBatCov/4991in this paper.
There is no explanation for the change of name, but that 2016 paper makes it clear that the virus appears to be a new strain of Sars-type coronavirus.
Professor Petrovsky says it would be odd if the WIV, given its interest in such viruses, hadn’t continued to work on it. But there is no more mention of it all until this year, when RaBatCov/4991 re-emerged under its new name RaTG13 as the closest known relative of Sars-CoV-2.
WHOhan Flu
The latest in the ever-changing COVID-19 crisis is that hundreds of scientists have joined forces and penned a letter to the World Health Organization chiefs to get an official, formal, authoritative ruling that the new coronavirus is airborne, meaning transmitted by breathing contaminated air.
Well, ba dum dum on that.
Salt, meet grain. Scientists — and that’s “scientists” buttressed between quotation marks — have long ago revealed themselves as factually challenged, devastatingly single-minded, even politically motivated on this whole coronavirus matter.
Related: Protests May Have Spread Coronavirus, Some Cities Admit
Floyd Flu
New York Times, with all the news that’s fit to admit.
As the pandemic took hold, most epidemiologists have had clear proscriptions in fighting it: No students in classrooms, no in-person religious services, no visits to sick relatives in hospitals, no large public gatherings.
So when conservative anti-lockdown protesters gathered on state capitol steps in places like Columbus, Ohio and Lansing, Mich., in April and May, epidemiologists scolded them and forecast surging infections. When Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia relaxed restrictions on businesses in late April as testing lagged and infections rose, the talk in public health circles was of that state’s embrace of human sacrifice.
And then the brutal killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis on May 25 changed everything.
Soon the streets nationwide were full of tens of thousands of people in a mass protest movement that continues to this day, with demonstrations and the toppling of statues. And rather than decrying mass gatherings, more than 1,300 public health officials signed a May 30 letter of support, and many joined the protests.
That reaction, and the contrast with the epidemiologists’ earlier fervent support for the lockdown, gave rise to an uncomfortable question: Was public health advice in a pandemic dependent on whether people approved of the mass gathering in question? To many, the answer seemed to be “yes.”
“The way the public health narrative around coronavirus has reversed itself overnight seems an awful lot like … politicizing science,” the essayist and journalist Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote in The Guardian last month. “What are we to make of such whiplash-inducing messaging?”
What indeed?
WHOhan Flu
Contrary to claims from both Chinese officials and the World Health Organization, China did not report the existence of the coronavirus in late 2019, according to a WHO timeline tracking the spread of the virus. Rather, international health officials discovered the virus through information posted to a U.S. website.
The quiet admission from the international health organization, which posted an “updated” timeline to its website this week, flies in the face of claims from some of its top officials, including WHO director general Tedros Adhanom, who maintained for months that China had informed his organization about the emerging sickness.
Wuhan Knew?
WSJ (paywalled); Hydroxychloroquine Given Early Helped Coronavirus Patients, Study Finds…
An antimalarial drug helped reduce deaths in hospitalized patients infected with Covid-19, according to a large retrospective study published Thursday.
Coronavirus patients treated with the drug hydroxychloroquine within the first two days of admission were more likely to survive than patients who received other treatment, according to the study, which was published online by the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Detroito News: “As doctors and scientists, we look to the data for insight,” said Steven Kalkanis, CEO of the Henry Ford Medical Group. “And the data here is clear that there was a benefit to using the drug as a treatment for sick, hospitalized patients.”
Rebound
CNBC: Record jobs gain of 4.8 million in June smashes expectations; unemployment rate falls to 11.1%
One Flu Out Of The Wuhan Nest
This is one creepy little bug.
Most of us have already absorbed the idea that the coronavirus does some weird and sinister things to the human body that are unlike most other respiratory viruses known to man. But now a new study finds yet another unsettling thing that the virus appears to do to help spread from cell to cell.
A new study by an international team led by UC San Francisco finds that cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 quickly begin to grow new arms or dendrites — referred to clinically as filopodia — which are themselves studded with fresh virus particles. These filopodia then seek to reach into and through the walls of neighboring cells, thereby infecting them. And this appears to be a second mode that the virus has for replicating and spreading itself in the body. […]
Krogan says that while other viruses — including HIV and the family of viruses that cause smallpox — also use filopedia as mechanisms of spreading infection, the way this virus so rapidly prompts the growth of these tentacles is highly unusual. And the shape of them, branching off the cell and each other like trees, is also apparently strange. Other infectious diseases like HIV don’t cause these kinds of prolific, mutant growths.
It almost sounds like something cooked up in a lab. The good news: it may lead to new treatment options.
Floyd Flu
Was there a Trump rally in Houston that I missed? https://t.co/utId1U1meA pic.twitter.com/FVyH8olnno
— The Reckoning 💥 (@sethjlevy) June 26, 2020
Things You’ll Never See At The CBC
Canada’s COVID-19 mortality rate is currently 3 full percentage points higher than the US.
Now Is The Time At SDA When Here We Go Again…
Now Is Time At SDA When We De Blasipose!
June 15, 2020 – NYC Contact Tracers Not Permitted to Ask Sick Patients if They Attended a George Floyd Protest
Mayor Bill de Blasio has forbidden the tracers from asking sick patients if they attended one of the many George Floyd related protests in the nation’s most populous city, giving the tracers an insurmountable barrier as they ostensibly keep New Yorkers safer.
June 15, 2020 – De Blasio cancels day of events Monday after waking up sick
Mayor Bill de Blasio abruptly canceled his scheduled events Monday morning after waking up feeling ill, according to his press secretary, Freddi Goldstein.
Also De Blasio: Nothing to see here, just gates and Jews.
Update:
Bravo. https://t.co/uTJy35mvLE
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 15, 2020
Interesting Covid-19 Mysteries
Dear SDA Readers, we have two intriguing questions for you:
- Why was Alex Berenson’s book about Covid-19 banned from sale on Amazon.com until Elon Musk shamed them?
- Why have the governors of Texas, Georgia, & Florida been pilloried by the fear merchants in the media for “opening too early” while the governors of Colorado & Wisconsin have not?
Wuhan Flu
This sounds promising.
Researchers at Emory University Hospital, led by Dr. Mohammad Khan, Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology, treated five COVID-19 patients with severe pneumonia who were requiring supplemental oxygen and whose health was visibly deteriorating. Their median age was 90 with a range from 64 to 94, four were female, four were African-American, and one was Caucasian.
These patients were given a single low-dose of radiation (1.5 Gy) to both lungs, delivered by a front and back beam configuration. Patients were in an out of the Radiotherapy Department in 10 to 15 minutes.
Within 24 hours, four of the patients showed rapid improvement in oxygenation and mental status (more awake, alert and talkative) and were being discharged from the hospital 12 days later. Blood tests and repeated imaging of the lungs confirmed that the radiation was safe and effective, and did not cause adverse effects – no acute skin, pulmonary, gastrointestinal or genitourinary toxicities.
The gray (Gy) is a dose unit of ionizing radiation defined as the absorption of one joule of radiation energy per kilogram of matter. The Gy replaces the older unit of the rad, and 1 Gy = 100 Rad.
It’s cheap, easy, and most hospitals already have the equipment. It’s going nowhere.
Wuhan Flu
“Don’t touch your face” and “wash your hands” really meant “don’t stick your finger all the way up your nostril”.
Our results show that the airborne transmission route is highly virulent and dominant for the spread of COVID-19. The mitigation measures are discernable from the trends of the pandemic. Our analysis reveals that the difference with and without mandated face covering represents the determinant in shaping the trends of the pandemic. This protective measure significantly reduces the number of infections. Other mitigation measures, such as social distancing implemented in the United States, are insufficient by themselves in protecting the public.
From a research article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America titled: “We Really Have No Fucking Clue. Keep Sending Money And Check Again Next Week.”
One Flu Out Of The Wuhan Nest
“How’s your computer?”
On April 26th, I directed you to a lengthy Medium article titled Lab-Made? SARS-CoV-2 Genealogy Through the Lens of Gain-of-Function Research and have been following the story through Deigin’s twitter account.
If you didn’t read it the first time around, I recommend you set an hour aside because the case he made is gaining support with every passing week.
Yuri Diegin was interviewed today by Bret Weinstein on Darkhorse. It gets off to a bit of a shaky start. Deigin is Russian, with the natural reluctance of Russians to venture into controversy, but he loosens up as the interview develops. Stick with it through the technical discussions, it’s not that difficult and the conversation moves on to the broader implications of what has been going on in virology research labs, along with efforts to suppress the increasing number of hands going up, saying “hey, wait a second…”
The video begins a the 42 minute mark to picque interest, but I recommend you watch from the beginning.
I’ll repost the inteview on Saturday for those who find it difficult to make time on weekdays.
Your Government Is Here For You, You Dirty Racist
The politicians and ‘experts’ have not yet comprehended the damage they did to their own credibility by shifting messaging on lockdowns based on politics. For many people, this is waking them up to how truly dishonest and despicable the government has become.
— Spencer Fernando 🇨🇦 (@SpencerFernando) June 5, 2020
#SomeDeadGuyInMinneapolisMatters
Nursing homes didn’t “matter”.
The confused and heartbroken seniors who thought families had forgotten them, the shuttered emergency rooms, the cancelled surgeries, the Easter services forbidden, the graduations uncelebrated, the bars and restaurants and other small businesses that struggled to survive for eleven long weeks in a province wide effort to protect our vulnerable?
Didn’t matter.
Now, after those eleven long weeks we learn that not one Saskatchewan senior, not one health care worker, not one businessperson, not one employee in this province was as important as some dead guy in Minneapolis.
That a random criminal turned network news celebrity corpse, who met a tragic end while high on meth and fentanyl, with a rap sheet that included five incarcerations and a home invasion (during which he held a pregnant woman at gunpoint) — would “matter” more than any of us.
Have never seen a crowd like this in Saskatchewan #skpoli #BlackLivesMatter ✊✊🏾 https://t.co/dPXCV0uPxV
— Tyler Willox (@tylerwillox) June 5, 2020
To Premier Scott Moe: as you hold your breath over the next couple of weeks over a potential new outbreak from these demonstrations know just this one thing — we’re not going back to “Phase Two“.
The March Is Black, The COVID Is White
Just a few days ago, Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, was literally accusing President Trump of “genocide” for not taking stronger measures to contain Covid-19. Today, he signed the “protests against racism are more important than stopping the spread of Covid-19” letter.
(h/t Dwayne)
The Sound Of Settled Science
A mysterious company’s coronavirus papers in top medical journals may be unraveling
On its face, it was a major finding: Antimalarial drugs touted by the White House as possible COVID-19 treatments looked to be not just ineffective, but downright deadly. A study published on 22 May in The Lancet used hospital records procured by a little-known data analytics company called Surgisphere to conclude that coronavirus patients taking chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine were more likely to show an irregular heart rhythm—a known side effect thought to be rare—and were more likely to die in the hospital.
Within days, some large randomized trials of the drugs—the type that might prove or disprove the retrospective study’s analysis—screeched to a halt. Solidarity, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) megatrial of potential COVID-19 treatments, paused recruitment into its hydroxychloroquine arm, for example.
But just as quickly, the Lancet results have begun to unravel—and Surgisphere, which provided patient data for two other high-profile COVID-19 papers, has come under withering online scrutiny from researchers and amateur sleuths. They have pointed out many red flags in the Lancet paper, including the astonishing number of patients involved and details about their demographics and prescribed dosing that seem implausible. “It began to stretch and stretch and stretch credulity,” says Nicholas White, a malaria researcher at Mahidol University in Bangkok.