Shortly after the threat from COVID appeared, I came to this unhappy conclusion: Without the full cooperation of the Chinese government, we are unlikely to know definitively the origin of the virus. And unless "Emperor" Xi is overthrown, we won't get that cooperation. (I believe that, in principle, and with enough data, we could trace the "genealogy" of the virus back to an origin. Virologists should feel free to correct me, if I am wrong about that.)
I hope I am wrong.
However, we can come to tentatitive conclusions on our own governments' reactions to COVID. And I have read enough of Deborah Birx's "Silent Invasion" to conclude that Trump's blunders may have cost tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of American lives. And not just American lives, since it spread from the United States to, for example, Mexico.
(Whether Trump might deserve the death penalty for his COVID failures, perhaps "pour encourager les autres", is a question I will leave to others.)
The issue with blame for actions taken during the pandemic will be tricky, and I suspect will be rather divisive. People really ought to be judged for decisions taken only on the information they had at the time. And it’s pretty clear that all governments messed up to a greater or lesser extent. I’m not convinced there was one right answer. Lockdown to stop the spread works, but what comes next? Was it ever possible to eliminate Covid? The Scottish government believed it was and tried really hard in 2020, and to an extent blamed the the U.K. government (the Tories) for letting the virus back in in late summer (imported via a lot of holidays to Spain initially). But lockdown forever is not viable. Economic considerations matter too. Pre vaccines I don’t know what the answer was. So people will blame Johnson and Trump, and some of it will be fair, and some of it won’t be. But it was never easy.
Russian journalist who protested Putin's war live on TV placed under house arrest. Marina Ovsyannikova could face 10 years in prison if convicted of demonstration near the Kremlin.
It's not showing the funding gap. I think it's fair to say that the funding gap has always been large. I guess it's got larger in recent years, but the impression that chart gives is that funding was similar in the 2000s, which is definitely not the case.
It's not showing the funding gap. I think it's fair to say that the funding gap has always been large. I guess it's got larger in recent years, but the impression that chart gives is that funding was similar in the 2000s, which is definitely not the case.
Ah yes, I see what you mean. I was focusing on the subtitle.
If O'Rourke does win the Texas governorship he will certainly be a contender for President in 2024
But standing to be a temporary governor is not a good look. I would be surprised if he didn't have to make some public commitment to serving a full term as Governor. Though 2028?
turbotubbs said: "The issue with blame for actions taken during the pandemic will be tricky, and I suspect will be rather divisive. People really ought to be judged for decisions taken only on the information they had at the time. And it’s pretty clear that all governments messed up to a greater or lesser extent. I’m not convinced there was one right answer."
Agreed.
But I think we knew, even at the time, that Trump's unwillingness to test widely was an obvious blunder. (To be fair, the CDC was part of the testing problem, since they rejected using the faster, but more error-prone, tests.) And there are other examples, such as Trump's hosting "super spreader" events.
By the way, one of the things I like about Birx's book is her frankness about how she, and those she worked with, learned what worked against COVID, as they fought it.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I’m just reflecting my experience within science and research. I can’t even do an undergraduate research project without undergoing ethical review. I’d be astonished if these projects haven’t had ethical review at some stage.
Isn't that exactly why people do the research in places like china rather than in the us or europe, that is to say they wouldn't get past the reviews for doing it in europe or the us and doing it abroad allows them to side step it to a certain degree.
turbotubbs said: "The issue with blame for actions taken during the pandemic will be tricky, and I suspect will be rather divisive. People really ought to be judged for decisions taken only on the information they had at the time. And it’s pretty clear that all governments messed up to a greater or lesser extent. I’m not convinced there was one right answer."
Agreed.
But I think we knew, even at the time, that Trump's unwillingness to test widely was an obvious blunder. (To be fair, the CDC was part of the testing problem, since they rejected using the faster, but more error-prone, tests.) And there are other examples, such as Trump's hosting "super spreader" events.
By the way, one of the things I like about Birx's book is her frankness about how she, and those she worked with, learned what worked against COVID, as they fought it.
There was the same reluctance over lateral flow tests in the U.K. it went against decades of testing ethos, but in the face of a pathogen that spread assymptomatically or at best pre-symptomatically lateral flows, with mass use, were actually going to be the better tool. Interestingly, omicron now seems less likely to spread pre symptomatically, with lots of anecdote about symposiums significantly before testing positive. This is a GOOD thing, as conventional measures to fight disease spread (isolate if you feel unwell) will work much better.
The worst thing for me in the U.K. has been the unwillingness to update guidance. People still seem obsessed with hand sanitisation, when reall6bwe should be rolling out air purifiers in all crowded environments. The symptoms list never really changed, even if it should have.
turbotubbs said: "The issue with blame for actions taken during the pandemic will be tricky, and I suspect will be rather divisive. People really ought to be judged for decisions taken only on the information they had at the time. And it’s pretty clear that all governments messed up to a greater or lesser extent. I’m not convinced there was one right answer."
Agreed.
But I think we knew, even at the time, that Trump's unwillingness to test widely was an obvious blunder. (To be fair, the CDC was part of the testing problem, since they rejected using the faster, but more error-prone, tests.) And there are other examples, such as Trump's hosting "super spreader" events.
By the way, one of the things I like about Birx's book is her frankness about how she, and those she worked with, learned what worked against COVID, as they fought it.
Trump was/is an idiot.
But he isn't even a bit part player in what we're talking about.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
To be honestI agree with Eagles in principle, but I think this chart shows the opposite. In the 80s, private schools gave a very good education for a comparable spend to that in the state sector. And they were patronised by the middle classes - my friends' parents were university lecturers, salesmen, town planners... Nowadays, however, they spaff money up the wall on all sorts of unnecessary shit, thereby pricing all but the super-rich out. There is a massive gap in the market for mid-range private education.
Just round here, I would say that's not the case at all. You have Denstone, Newcastle under Lyme, Abbotsholme and Repton, who are definitely in that arms race but also Lichfield Cathedral, Stafford Grammar, Chase Grammar and St Dominic's who are certainly 'mid range private education' as you put it.
Similarly, in Bristol for every Badminton there is a Redland.
One thought that does occur to me though is how private schools will cope with the vast increases in fuel bills that are about to come their way. Particularly mid-range ones, usually limited companies and so not covered by the cap, whose parents will struggle most to pay the bills.
Could see quite a few going the way of Ockbrook and Abbot's Bromley.
My heart bleeds.
Low level private schools fall by the way and certain PBers cry over their beer. And anything suffixed with the words Grammar School annoys me beyond belief.
Perhaps if mainstream state education was properly resourced we wouldn't need any secondary moderns for wealthy thickos. Living near Malvern as a teenager, there was the Premier League Boys, and the Girls Colleges and then the Ryman League of private secondary education. If these wealthy parents of the terminally stupid had to send their children to state comprehensives, they would make damn sure they were better funded.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
I’d be astonished if there isn’t at least a paper thin rationale behind the research, but it needs to be made illegal.
Got a couple of calls that delayed it, but finally got round to making the Ottolenghi bread and tomato salad
It’s really good
Good stuff. Happily wading through own grown spuds, tomatoes and runner beans right now.
I've had almost no beans this year. Black fly back in June and then drought seems to have done for them.
The allotment desperately needs some rain. We had an epic downour two weeks again, otherwise we would be really suffering. There is still just enough moisture for the runners, but my sweetcorn could definitely use some rain.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
I think that's right, and it does reflect the closed, dictatorial nature of Chinese leadership. I doubt if anyone said, "Oh, let's infect the world." Rather, they said, "Oh, this could be serious. But I could get in trouble if I decided to do anything. I'll report it confidentially to X, and maybe he'll do something." If something can go disastrously wrong like this, you need a culture encouraging whistleblowers and sensationalist media, tiresome though both of them are for authority.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
I don't disagree, but the paper trail leads to the very top. The committee overseeing it isn't even public.
That's why I say anyone affected by Covid should be able to file a lawsuit, just like against BP after Deepwater.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I’m just reflecting my experience within science and research. I can’t even do an undergraduate research project without undergoing ethical review. I’d be astonished if these projects haven’t had ethical review at some stage.
Isn't that exactly why people do the research in places like china rather than in the us or europe, that is to say they wouldn't get past the reviews for doing it in europe or the us and doing it abroad allows them to side step it to a certain degree.
Exactly right
GoF was banned in the USA under Obama. Fauci got round that by out-sourcing it to China
There is a video (IIRC) of Fauci actually saying "of course there is a risk we will create a pandemic, but I think it is worth it"
The evidence which is there for all to see, in plain sight, is astounding
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I’m just reflecting my experience within science and research. I can’t even do an undergraduate research project without undergoing ethical review. I’d be astonished if these projects haven’t had ethical review at some stage.
Isn't that exactly why people do the research in places like china rather than in the us or europe, that is to say they wouldn't get past the reviews for doing it in europe or the us and doing it abroad allows them to side step it to a certain degree.
Exactly right
GoF was banned in the USA under Obama. Fauci got round that by out-sourcing it to China
There is a video (IIRC) of Fauci actually saying "of course there is a risk we will create a pandemic, but I think it is worth it"
The evidence which is there for all to see, in plain sight, is astounding
That’s some quote. You sure it was him? (Not doubting, btw)
Sunak seems to be winning the hustings and on balance I would prefer him, but if it is Truss the emergency budget on the 21st September will need to be very much more supportive than she seems to be revealing at present but maybe she will surprise once elected, because if she does not support the populace at this time the conservative party will be in opposition in 2024
I was pleased to hear her backing for tidal energy, but on the hustings generally once you have listened to one they become quite tedious
Anyway just over 3 weeks to a new PM and cabinet for better or worse
Here we go. Anthony Fauci arguing FOR dangerous Gain of Function Research in 2012
"In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic? Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision?
"Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks. It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature, and the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky.
"Within the research community, many have expressed concern that important research progress could come to a halt just because of the fear that someone, somewhere, might attempt to replicate these experiments sloppily. This is a valid concern."
Hey thanks, Tony. 20 million dead. Nice one
The thing is, Fauci knew all of this was out there, and on record. So as soon as he heard of the Wuhan outbreak, he knew he was potentially a major fall guy, with millions of deaths on his hand. So he convened all his mates in Big Science, and the cover-up began. "Lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory". February 2020
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I’m just reflecting my experience within science and research. I can’t even do an undergraduate research project without undergoing ethical review. I’d be astonished if these projects haven’t had ethical review at some stage.
Isn't that exactly why people do the research in places like china rather than in the us or europe, that is to say they wouldn't get past the reviews for doing it in europe or the us and doing it abroad allows them to side step it to a certain degree.
Exactly right
GoF was banned in the USA under Obama. Fauci got round that by out-sourcing it to China
There is a video (IIRC) of Fauci actually saying "of course there is a risk we will create a pandemic, but I think it is worth it"
The evidence which is there for all to see, in plain sight, is astounding
That’s some quote. You sure it was him? (Not doubting, btw)
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
I think that's right, and it does reflect the closed, dictatorial nature of Chinese leadership. I doubt if anyone said, "Oh, let's infect the world." Rather, they said, "Oh, this could be serious. But I could get in trouble if I decided to do anything. I'll report it confidentially to X, and maybe he'll do something." If something can go disastrously wrong like this, you need a culture encouraging whistleblowers and sensationalist media, tiresome though both of them are for authority.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
I’d be astonished if there isn’t at least a paper thin rationale behind the research, but it needs to be made illegal.
I assumed that it was to develop countermeasures, with an unspoken thought that they might find it useful in extremis - exactly the basis on which Porton Down operates, as I understand it. Was it definitely just pure speculative research?
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I’m just reflecting my experience within science and research. I can’t even do an undergraduate research project without undergoing ethical review. I’d be astonished if these projects haven’t had ethical review at some stage.
Isn't that exactly why people do the research in places like china rather than in the us or europe, that is to say they wouldn't get past the reviews for doing it in europe or the us and doing it abroad allows them to side step it to a certain degree.
Exactly right
GoF was banned in the USA under Obama. Fauci got round that by out-sourcing it to China
There is a video (IIRC) of Fauci actually saying "of course there is a risk we will create a pandemic, but I think it is worth it"
The evidence which is there for all to see, in plain sight, is astounding
That’s some quote. You sure it was him? (Not doubting, btw)
The long shadow of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park.
It’s possible Covid is Obama’s fault. By imposing a temporary halt in the us, it ended up taking place in China, with less safety, and a higher chance of it going badly wrong.
Here we go. Anthony Fauci arguing FOR dangerous Gain of Function Research in 2012
"In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic? Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision?
"Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks. It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature, and the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky.
"Within the research community, many have expressed concern that important research progress could come to a halt just because of the fear that someone, somewhere, might attempt to replicate these experiments sloppily. This is a valid concern."
Hey thanks, Tony. 20 million dead. Nice one
The thing is, Fauci knew all of this was out there, and on record. So as soon as he heard of the Wuhan outbreak, he knew he was potentially a major fall guy, with millions of deaths on his hand. So he convened all his mates in Big Science, and the cover-up began. "Lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory". February 2020
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
I’d be astonished if there isn’t at least a paper thin rationale behind the research, but it needs to be made illegal.
I assumed that it was to develop countermeasures, with an unspoken thought that they might find it useful in extremis - exactly the basis on which Porton Down operates, as I understand it. Was it definitely just pure speculative research?
The stated aims seem to be to anticipate future challenges, but in this case it may well have caused the very issue it sought to preempt.
For Dr Who fans, echos of Day of the Daleks. “The Daleks didn’t blow up the peace conference, you did it yourselves”
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Are you sure you are a scientist? If you have a finite amount of sunlight falling on a finite amount of field, and two things directly competing for the sunlight, what do you think the answer might be?
Depends if sunlight is the limiting factor for grass growth in a British field or not. And I don't know the answer to that- it might be water; it certainly is this week. (Please, let the weather forecast for next week be true...). Or more likely, it varies depending on the time of day and time of the year. I wouldn't be shocked if grass has evolved to grow just fine in the light of a bright but cloudy day, and bright sunshine isn't that much extra benefit.
I bet the farmers involved have a better idea than I do, and I'm pretty confident that I have a better idea than Liz Truss.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
I’d be astonished if there isn’t at least a paper thin rationale behind the research, but it needs to be made illegal.
I assumed that it was to develop countermeasures, with an unspoken thought that they might find it useful in extremis - exactly the basis on which Porton Down operates, as I understand it. Was it definitely just pure speculative research?
Yes probably countermeasures but it's stupid because the biggest risk factor for future pandemics is lab leaks of potentially dangerous and modified viruses. If you don't do the research then that risk factor goes away.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
You have unselfconsciously used the expression "signed off" in three different posts in this one thread, which to me suggests that you are incapable of autonomously addressing moral questions at all.
There's a bit in Douglas Adams where someone proposes inventing the wheel and someone else says Oh yeah, well I do this for a living, I work in marketing, and I bet you haven't even the first idea what colour the wheel should be.
I’m just reflecting my experience within science and research. I can’t even do an undergraduate research project without undergoing ethical review. I’d be astonished if these projects haven’t had ethical review at some stage.
Isn't that exactly why people do the research in places like china rather than in the us or europe, that is to say they wouldn't get past the reviews for doing it in europe or the us and doing it abroad allows them to side step it to a certain degree.
Exactly right
GoF was banned in the USA under Obama. Fauci got round that by out-sourcing it to China
There is a video (IIRC) of Fauci actually saying "of course there is a risk we will create a pandemic, but I think it is worth it"
The evidence which is there for all to see, in plain sight, is astounding
That’s some quote. You sure it was him? (Not doubting, btw)
The long shadow of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park.
It’s possible Covid is Obama’s fault. By imposing a temporary halt in the us, it ended up taking place in China, with less safety, and a higher chance of it going badly wrong.
The politicisation of this whole debate, at a time when America is so deeply polarised, is a disaster
One way the scientists were able to silence discussion of lab leak for 18 months was by saying "Look. Trump believes it" (and he did, and he was unfortunately right, it seems). So they got all the US liberal media and social media on board at once. Twitter and Facebook would ban you for simply mentioning lab leak, for a whole year
Insane
And, as you say, if anyone is to blame then it is ALL US admins - left and right - for quite a while. They all tolerated this troubling and evilly dangerous science, in different ways
But let's not forget how much responsibility falls on China. It's unfair to blame America entirely, which at least tried to get a grip on the fucking bonkers science
The difference between the Met Office and the BBC forecasts on temp becoming starker by the day.
BBC talking about 35 or 36 in my neck of the woods. Met says 32 at most.
Does anyone actually check back on the Beeb stuff to see what actually happens?
BBC forecast is significantly less accurate in my experience.*
"On 6 February 2018 BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to MeteoGroup, after being required to put its weather services out to tender."
Another triumph of market competition, eh?
(*In fairness, as it happens, the BBC and Met Office forecasts for my area for the next week are pretty much identical.)
Sunak seems to be winning the hustings and on balance I would prefer him, but if it is Truss the emergency budget on the 21st September will need to be very much more supportive than she seems to be revealing at present but maybe she will surprise once elected, because if she does not support the populace at this time the conservative party will be in opposition in 2024
I was pleased to hear her backing for tidal energy, but on the hustings generally once you have listened to one they become quite tedious
Anyway just over 3 weeks to a new PM and cabinet for better or worse
FWIW, my gut says this will be closer than predicted. Sunak is doing a hell of a lot of members meetings out in the sticks rather than just media and hustings.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
I’d be astonished if there isn’t at least a paper thin rationale behind the research, but it needs to be made illegal.
I assumed that it was to develop countermeasures, with an unspoken thought that they might find it useful in extremis - exactly the basis on which Porton Down operates, as I understand it. Was it definitely just pure speculative research?
Well if the aim was to develop counter measures we now have conclusive proof that the reasoning behind that is based on wishful thinking as when it was released into the wild human population there was no sign of any countermeasure from the research. Indeed the chinese vaccines they developed who's creators likely had the best access to the wuhan research was pretty ineffectual.
As a side note and a public service announcement to fellow PB'ers living in the west country my long anticipated relocation to devon is now in progress and I will be haunting your area from tomorrow afternoon.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
I’d be astonished if there isn’t at least a paper thin rationale behind the research, but it needs to be made illegal.
I assumed that it was to develop countermeasures, with an unspoken thought that they might find it useful in extremis - exactly the basis on which Porton Down operates, as I understand it. Was it definitely just pure speculative research?
Yes probably countermeasures but it's stupid because the biggest risk factor for future pandemics is lab leaks of potentially dangerous and modified viruses. If you don't do the research then that risk factor goes away.
It's also a deformity in the way science is organised and funded
Daszak needed money to continue his research at Wuhan. So he produced proposals that he knew Fauci would like (given that Fauci is on record approving of Gain of Function virology)
So Fauci - pleased with the ideas - gave Daszak money. And thus the crazy circus proceeded
Eventually Daszak came back with an idea so obviously dangerous - alter the Furin Cleavage Site to make it lethally infective in humans - even Fauci said No. This is all on the record (the US admin was forced to release these exchanges by FOIA)
But it seems - so the evidence suggests - that the Wuhan researchers went ahead and did it anyway. Altered a novel bat coronavirus so it would be dangerously infective and pathogenic in humans, using the FCS
I think that's right, and it does reflect the closed, dictatorial nature of Chinese leadership. I doubt if anyone said, "Oh, let's infect the world." Rather, they said, "Oh, this could be serious. But I could get in trouble if I decided to do anything. I'll report it confidentially to X, and maybe he'll do something." If something can go disastrously wrong like this, you need a culture encouraging whistleblowers and sensationalist media, tiresome though both of them are for authority.
Echoes of the causes of Chernobyl in that.
Yes, good point. Mind you, I'm not convinced that it would get dealt with swiftly and effectively in our society either. There is the opposite problem - people constantly allege that terrible things have happened, are happening or about to happen. Picking out the real signal of developing disaster from the noise of conspiracy theorists and media after a juicy story is pretty damn hard.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
I’d be astonished if there isn’t at least a paper thin rationale behind the research, but it needs to be made illegal.
I assumed that it was to develop countermeasures, with an unspoken thought that they might find it useful in extremis - exactly the basis on which Porton Down operates, as I understand it. Was it definitely just pure speculative research?
Well if the aim was to develop counter measures we now have conclusive proof that the reasoning behind that is based on wishful thinking as when it was released into the wild human population there was no sign of any countermeasure from the research. Indeed the chinese vaccines they developed who's creators likely had the best access to the wuhan research was pretty ineffectual.
As a side note and a public service announcement to fellow PB'ers living in the west country my long anticipated relocation to devon is now in progress and I will be haunting your area from tomorrow afternoon.
There couldn't have been any counter measures that had been highlighted by the research, because that would have revealed culpability.
turbotubbs said: "The issue with blame for actions taken during the pandemic will be tricky, and I suspect will be rather divisive. People really ought to be judged for decisions taken only on the information they had at the time. And it’s pretty clear that all governments messed up to a greater or lesser extent. I’m not convinced there was one right answer."
Agreed.
But I think we knew, even at the time, that Trump's unwillingness to test widely was an obvious blunder. (To be fair, the CDC was part of the testing problem, since they rejected using the faster, but more error-prone, tests.) And there are other examples, such as Trump's hosting "super spreader" events.
By the way, one of the things I like about Birx's book is her frankness about how she, and those she worked with, learned what worked against COVID, as they fought it.
There was the same reluctance over lateral flow tests in the U.K. it went against decades of testing ethos, but in the face of a pathogen that spread assymptomatically or at best pre-symptomatically lateral flows, with mass use, were actually going to be the better tool. Interestingly, omicron now seems less likely to spread pre symptomatically, with lots of anecdote about symposiums significantly before testing positive. This is a GOOD thing, as conventional measures to fight disease spread (isolate if you feel unwell) will work much better.
The worst thing for me in the U.K. has been the unwillingness to update guidance. People still seem obsessed with hand sanitisation, when reall6bwe should be rolling out air purifiers in all crowded environments. The symptoms list never really changed, even if it should have.
The three best things that were done in the UK were:
1. Early and generous funding of vaccine development and production expansion. 2. Hospital acute treatment studies. 3. Possibly the ventilator challenge, even though ventilators didn't end up being used so much.
The five biggest mistakes were: 1. Ventilation / hand-washing guidance emphasis (as you say). 2. The general approach to law, guidance, etc, in relation to public health measures to reduce spread was a huge mess in many and various ways. 3. The failure to learn from the successes and failures in other countries. 4. The failure to start a large medical training programme in 2020 to help expand medical capacity. 5. The half-hearted approach to the contract tracing and isolation stages of the standard public health approach to controlling infectious diseases, which meant the vast sums spent on testing were wasted.
I think it's important that we try to spend time on learning from our successes, as well as from our mistakes. It's probably easier to build on our successes than to fix our mistakes.
No, it wasn't me, it was originally @TimS - who, I believe, owns an English vineyard so is hyper-sensitive to weather
However I followed up his hints and realised he was right, super rapido. I used my innate "speed of information processing" that enables me to see things before the rest of you
Sunak seems to be winning the hustings and on balance I would prefer him, but if it is Truss the emergency budget on the 21st September will need to be very much more supportive than she seems to be revealing at present but maybe she will surprise once elected, because if she does not support the populace at this time the conservative party will be in opposition in 2024
I was pleased to hear her backing for tidal energy, but on the hustings generally once you have listened to one they become quite tedious
Anyway just over 3 weeks to a new PM and cabinet for better or worse
FWIW, my gut says this will be closer than predicted. Sunak is doing a hell of a lot of members meetings out in the sticks rather than just media and hustings.
Looking forward to a 52-48 landslide. A result that will last for a generation.
Excellent Newsnight tonight. Realist discussion about the energy crisis.
Yep. Impressive. This is what Newsnight is good at.
Only a million watching, at best, given summer hols but at least they are trying to explain the complexities to a wide audience.
FWIW I think the failure to invest in nuclear as base while ramping up solar/wind has been a massive bollock drop and there should be a public inquiry as to how we fecked up so much.
2 years ago it was 35p/therm. Now 402p/therm. Futures for delivery in Dec ‘22, 545p/therm.
Someone quoted in the telegraph is extrapolating this to mean a £5k average cap, come next April.
Ouchy ouch ouch.
This will blow every other political consideration out of the water unless HMG take some radical measures (funded by higher taxes and more borrowing).
I am still puzzled why the rising gas price seems to have such a direct impact on electricity prices when less than half our electricity is produced by gas generation plants.
2 years ago it was 35p/therm. Now 402p/therm. Futures for delivery in Dec ‘22, 545p/therm.
Someone quoted in the telegraph is extrapolating this to mean a £5k average cap, come next April.
Ouchy ouch ouch.
This will blow every other political consideration out of the water unless HMG take some radical measures (funded by higher taxes and more borrowing).
I am still puzzled why the rising gas price seems to have such a direct impact on electricity prices when less than half our electricity is produced by gas generation plants.
Someone is getting seriously rich off the back of this.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
There absolutely is an issue around doing dangerous research "for the sake of it". It's the whole adage around stopping to think whether they should, just because they could.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
I’d be astonished if there isn’t at least a paper thin rationale behind the research, but it needs to be made illegal.
I assumed that it was to develop countermeasures, with an unspoken thought that they might find it useful in extremis - exactly the basis on which Porton Down operates, as I understand it. Was it definitely just pure speculative research?
Yes probably countermeasures but it's stupid because the biggest risk factor for future pandemics is lab leaks of potentially dangerous and modified viruses. If you don't do the research then that risk factor goes away.
No it isn't. The most obvious risk is that the hostile nation America is paying to do this research uses it for biowarfare against America. It is like wartime America paying the Nazis to research fission weapons.
No, it wasn't me, it was originally @TimS - who, I believe, owns an English vineyard so is hyper-sensitive to weather
However I followed up his hints and realised he was right, super rapido. I used my innate "speed of information processing" that enables me to see things before the rest of you
Yes, I've noticed you are frequently seeing things.
Just been to the Cheltenham hustings. Sunak clearly had more passion and charisma for me. However Truss did have some good points I liked about scrapping housing targets and giving more power to local councils. She also made clear she would not call a general election before 2024
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Glenn Kessler -- in my opinion, the best fact checker in the United States -- has this to say about the Fauci funding "gain of function" research question:
"But we see no reason to change the Two Pinocchio rating we awarded [junior Kentucky Senator Rand] Paul. There is a split in the scientific community about what constitutes gain-of-function research. To this day, NIH says this research did not meet the criteria — a stance that is not an outlier in the scientific community. Indeed, it appears as if EcoHealth halted the experiment as soon as it seemed to veer in that direction.
(Kessler assigns from zero to four "Pinocchios", depending on how bad the falsehood is. This is what two mean: '"Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people. (Similar to "half true.")'
"The move means the electorate will no longer be able to change their vote during the contest – potentially limiting the impact of any late errors in the contest."
Just been to the Cheltenham hustings. Sunak clearly had more passion and charisma for me. However Truss did have some good points I liked about scrapping housing targets and giving more power to local councils. She also made clear she would not call a general election before 2024
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
The difference between the Met Office and the BBC forecasts on temp becoming starker by the day.
BBC talking about 35 or 36 in my neck of the woods. Met says 32 at most.
Does anyone actually check back on the Beeb stuff to see what actually happens?
BBC forecast is significantly less accurate in my experience.*
"On 6 February 2018 BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to MeteoGroup, after being required to put its weather services out to tender."
Another triumph of market competition, eh?
(*In fairness, as it happens, the BBC and Met Office forecasts for my area for the next week are pretty much identical.)
I'm a big defender of the Met Office. Meteorology is an area where Britain is genuinely world-leading and a big reason for that is the success of the Met Office and the support it has received from numerous governments.
But, you could make the argument that the BBC doesn't need the best forecasts, only forecasts that are good enough for its purposes, and so saving money on weather forecasts to spend it on something else might have been the best choice for them.
Fortunately, because there is open competition, you can get forecasts directly from the Met Office on their website, YouTube, etc, and these are paid for by the Public Weather Service contract the Met Office has with the government, that comes with a bunch of performance metrics (including temperature forecasts) the results of which are still laid before Parliament every year, I believe.
Excellent Newsnight tonight. Realist discussion about the energy crisis.
What energy crisis? The high cost, or the possibility of power cuts? If cost, is that to people or industry that might drive some firms into liquidation?
It is a shame pb has no catastrophists with high "speed of information processing" to lead the debate on an energy crisis that may go far beyond choosing between heating and eating!
Remarkable, though unsurprising findings, in @IRIglobal's latest poll from #Ukraine:
✅98% of Ukrainians believe they'll win war ✅91% approve of @ZelenskyyUa's job performance ✅Support for @NATO membership continue to grow ✅Ukrainians do not want to not concede any territory
Particularly interesting that there are no real differences across Ukraine regions. That is very united as a country. Russia has created its own downfall.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Is this now accepted by most scientists?
That'll be a no.
Hmm, almost all of my university friends are in the lab leak camp and have been for ages.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Is this now accepted by most scientists?
God no. They hate the idea. Because it taints all science
But the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming (to my mind)
It is noticeable that science is spending tens of millions investigating the wet market hypothesis, and yet not a dollar on the lab leak idea. But it doesn't help
They keep producing papers and saying Look, it was the market, almost as if they want us to believe that. And yet every one of these papers folds and dies, because they cannot compete with Occam's Razor, which says: Look three hundred yards south, where there is a lab specifically investigating novel bat coronaviruses, and trying to make them more infective for humans, via the Furin Cleavage Site, and this is going on in the exact same place where a terribly dangerous novel bat coronavirus emerged, with remarkable and dangerous evolutions at the Furin Cleavage Site
No scientific study can compete with that basic truth. It came from the lab
turbotubbs said: "The issue with blame for actions taken during the pandemic will be tricky, and I suspect will be rather divisive. People really ought to be judged for decisions taken only on the information they had at the time. And it’s pretty clear that all governments messed up to a greater or lesser extent. I’m not convinced there was one right answer."
Agreed.
But I think we knew, even at the time, that Trump's unwillingness to test widely was an obvious blunder. (To be fair, the CDC was part of the testing problem, since they rejected using the faster, but more error-prone, tests.) And there are other examples, such as Trump's hosting "super spreader" events.
By the way, one of the things I like about Birx's book is her frankness about how she, and those she worked with, learned what worked against COVID, as they fought it.
There was the same reluctance over lateral flow tests in the U.K. it went against decades of testing ethos, but in the face of a pathogen that spread assymptomatically or at best pre-symptomatically lateral flows, with mass use, were actually going to be the better tool. Interestingly, omicron now seems less likely to spread pre symptomatically, with lots of anecdote about symposiums significantly before testing positive. This is a GOOD thing, as conventional measures to fight disease spread (isolate if you feel unwell) will work much better.
The worst thing for me in the U.K. has been the unwillingness to update guidance. People still seem obsessed with hand sanitisation, when reall6bwe should be rolling out air purifiers in all crowded environments. The symptoms list never really changed, even if it should have.
The three best things that were done in the UK were:
1. Early and generous funding of vaccine development and production expansion. 2. Hospital acute treatment studies. 3. Possibly the ventilator challenge, even though ventilators didn't end up being used so much.
The five biggest mistakes were: 1. Ventilation / hand-washing guidance emphasis (as you say). 2. The general approach to law, guidance, etc, in relation to public health measures to reduce spread was a huge mess in many and various ways. 3. The failure to learn from the successes and failures in other countries. 4. The failure to start a large medical training programme in 2020 to help expand medical capacity. 5. The half-hearted approach to the contract tracing and isolation stages of the standard public health approach to controlling infectious diseases, which meant the vast sums spent on testing were wasted.
I think it's important that we try to spend time on learning from our successes, as well as from our mistakes. It's probably easier to build on our successes than to fix our mistakes.
Lack of border control.
No attempt to improve the public's general health when it was quickly realised that obesity was a major factor.
2 years ago it was 35p/therm. Now 402p/therm. Futures for delivery in Dec ‘22, 545p/therm.
Someone quoted in the telegraph is extrapolating this to mean a £5k average cap, come next April.
Ouchy ouch ouch.
This will blow every other political consideration out of the water unless HMG take some radical measures (funded by higher taxes and more borrowing).
I am still puzzled why the rising gas price seems to have such a direct impact on electricity prices when less than half our electricity is produced by gas generation plants.
The market price of electricity is set by the cost of the marginal unit of electricity - this will almost always be the gas generating plant.
turbotubbs said: "The issue with blame for actions taken during the pandemic will be tricky, and I suspect will be rather divisive. People really ought to be judged for decisions taken only on the information they had at the time. And it’s pretty clear that all governments messed up to a greater or lesser extent. I’m not convinced there was one right answer."
Agreed.
But I think we knew, even at the time, that Trump's unwillingness to test widely was an obvious blunder. (To be fair, the CDC was part of the testing problem, since they rejected using the faster, but more error-prone, tests.) And there are other examples, such as Trump's hosting "super spreader" events.
By the way, one of the things I like about Birx's book is her frankness about how she, and those she worked with, learned what worked against COVID, as they fought it.
There was the same reluctance over lateral flow tests in the U.K. it went against decades of testing ethos, but in the face of a pathogen that spread assymptomatically or at best pre-symptomatically lateral flows, with mass use, were actually going to be the better tool. Interestingly, omicron now seems less likely to spread pre symptomatically, with lots of anecdote about symposiums significantly before testing positive. This is a GOOD thing, as conventional measures to fight disease spread (isolate if you feel unwell) will work much better.
The worst thing for me in the U.K. has been the unwillingness to update guidance. People still seem obsessed with hand sanitisation, when reall6bwe should be rolling out air purifiers in all crowded environments. The symptoms list never really changed, even if it should have.
The three best things that were done in the UK were:
1. Early and generous funding of vaccine development and production expansion. 2. Hospital acute treatment studies. 3. Possibly the ventilator challenge, even though ventilators didn't end up being used so much.
The five biggest mistakes were: 1. Ventilation / hand-washing guidance emphasis (as you say). 2. The general approach to law, guidance, etc, in relation to public health measures to reduce spread was a huge mess in many and various ways. 3. The failure to learn from the successes and failures in other countries. 4. The failure to start a large medical training programme in 2020 to help expand medical capacity. 5. The half-hearted approach to the contract tracing and isolation stages of the standard public health approach to controlling infectious diseases, which meant the vast sums spent on testing were wasted.
I think it's important that we try to spend time on learning from our successes, as well as from our mistakes. It's probably easier to build on our successes than to fix our mistakes.
I would add to the mistakes the constant conflation of "face mask" and "face covering" in the early weeks, which prevented a message of "cover your face" getting circulated.
"Leave the face masks for health care professionals" is fine, but follow up with "so use a scarf".
Sky News just now: "It's ironic that at the moment people are worried about hot weather, and in the winter they're going to be worried about cold weather".
They must think the average age of the audience is about 5.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
It's not really in any way like the Nazis.
Yes, really
As Churchill said, the Nazis will sadly prosper by using "the lights of perverted science"
The difference between the Met Office and the BBC forecasts on temp becoming starker by the day.
BBC talking about 35 or 36 in my neck of the woods. Met says 32 at most.
Does anyone actually check back on the Beeb stuff to see what actually happens?
BBC forecast is significantly less accurate in my experience.*
"On 6 February 2018 BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to MeteoGroup, after being required to put its weather services out to tender."
Another triumph of market competition, eh?
(*In fairness, as it happens, the BBC and Met Office forecasts for my area for the next week are pretty much identical.)
I'm a big defender of the Met Office. Meteorology is an area where Britain is genuinely world-leading and a big reason for that is the success of the Met Office and the support it has received from numerous governments.
But, you could make the argument that the BBC doesn't need the best forecasts, only forecasts that are good enough for its purposes, and so saving money on weather forecasts to spend it on something else might have been the best choice for them.
Fortunately, because there is open competition, you can get forecasts directly from the Met Office on their website, YouTube, etc, and these are paid for by the Public Weather Service contract the Met Office has with the government, that comes with a bunch of performance metrics (including temperature forecasts) the results of which are still laid before Parliament every year, I believe.
True but the BBC is the national broadcaster, effectively funded by taxes. Met Office is the national forecast service, effectively funded by taxes.
Why not just let them share data for free rather than have the ridiculous situation where the BBC end up paying a Dutch company for UK forecasts?
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Is this now accepted by most scientists?
God no. They hate the idea. Because it taints all science
But the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming (to my mind)
It is noticeable that science is spending tens of millions investigating the wet market hypothesis, and yet not a dollar on the lab leak idea. But it doesn't help
They keep producing papers and saying Look, it was the market, almost as if they want us to believe that. And yet every one of these papers folds and dies, because they cannot compete with Occam's Razor, which says: Look three hundred yards south, where there is a lab specifically investigating novel bat coronaviruses, and trying to make them more infective for humans, via the Furin Cleavage Site, and this is going on in the exact same place where a terribly dangerous novel bat coronavirus emerged, with remarkable and dangerous evolutions at the Furin Cleavage Site
No scientific study can compete with that basic truth. It came from the lab
I think the loudest online voices are still pushing the zoonotic origin theory but the majority of scientists are on the lab leak train. One of my friends works in a secure lab of sorts and as if by magic he has had multiple lab safety training sessions over the past year compared to just two in two years before COVID. If that isn't telling about the actual truth then I don't know what is.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
I think that's right, and it does reflect the closed, dictatorial nature of Chinese leadership. I doubt if anyone said, "Oh, let's infect the world." Rather, they said, "Oh, this could be serious. But I could get in trouble if I decided to do anything. I'll report it confidentially to X, and maybe he'll do something." If something can go disastrously wrong like this, you need a culture encouraging whistleblowers and sensationalist media, tiresome though both of them are for authority.
Echoes of the causes of Chernobyl in that.
In an interesting parallel, the experiment at Chernobyl that caused the disaster was actually a test of safety systems and procedures…..
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Is this now accepted by most scientists?
That'll be a no.
Hmm, almost all of my university friends are in the lab leak camp and have been for ages.
Ditto
I have a handful of old uni friends who are now quite senior scientists. One of them leads a team which might come close to a Nobel
Comments
Bread. In a salad. The dirty bastards!
Although around here a lot of land seems to be wasted on horses, which neither provide food (here) nor help the energy crisis.
Ban equestrianism would be my proposal!
So people will blame Johnson and Trump, and some of it will be fair, and some of it won’t be. But it was never easy.
Today, its edged back up above £4/therm.
Gonna be a cold winter for many.
Marina Ovsyannikova could face 10 years in prison if convicted of demonstration near the Kremlin.
Though proposing either of those bans might be about the only thing that causes Truss to lose.
I would be surprised if he didn't have to make some public commitment to serving a full term as Governor.
Though 2028?
Agreed.
But I think we knew, even at the time, that Trump's unwillingness to test widely was an obvious blunder. (To be fair, the CDC was part of the testing problem, since they rejected using the faster, but more error-prone, tests.) And there are other examples, such as Trump's hosting "super spreader" events.
By the way, one of the things I like about Birx's book is her frankness about how she, and those she worked with, learned what worked against COVID, as they fought it.
Interestingly, omicron now seems less likely to spread pre symptomatically, with lots of anecdote about symposiums significantly before testing positive. This is a GOOD thing, as conventional measures to fight disease spread (isolate if you feel unwell) will work much better.
The worst thing for me in the U.K. has been the unwillingness to update guidance. People still seem obsessed with hand sanitisation, when reall6bwe should be rolling out air purifiers in all crowded environments. The symptoms list never really changed, even if it should have.
But he isn't even a bit part player in what we're talking about.
The nuclear weapons programme isn't in that category, no one invented nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. They did it to win a devastating war and on the basis that the enemy was doing likewise.
The gain of function research for coronaviruses was simply an intellectual exercise, there was no benefit to anyone. It has in fact been a huge disbenefit for the whole world. The scientists involved did it for larks, "it might be interesting".
This kind of behaviour and research into know potentially dangerous viruses needs to be discouraged with long jail sentences for all of them. In the same way directors should be liable for their companies with jail time, scientists should be for their research.
Low level private schools fall by the way and certain PBers cry over their beer. And anything suffixed with the words Grammar School annoys me beyond belief.
Perhaps if mainstream state education was properly resourced we wouldn't need any secondary moderns for wealthy thickos. Living near Malvern as a teenager, there was the Premier League Boys, and the Girls Colleges and then the Ryman League of private secondary education. If these wealthy parents of the terminally stupid had to send their children to state comprehensives, they would make damn sure they were better funded.
Messed up quotes...
That's why I say anyone affected by Covid should be able to file a lawsuit, just like against BP after Deepwater.
GoF was banned in the USA under Obama. Fauci got round that by out-sourcing it to China
There is a video (IIRC) of Fauci actually saying "of course there is a risk we will create a pandemic, but I think it is worth it"
The evidence which is there for all to see, in plain sight, is astounding
Sunak seems to be winning the hustings and on balance I would prefer him, but if it is Truss the emergency budget on the 21st September will need to be very much more supportive than she seems to be revealing at present but maybe she will surprise once elected, because if she does not support the populace at this time the conservative party will be in opposition in 2024
I was pleased to hear her backing for tidal energy, but on the hustings generally once you have listened to one they become quite tedious
Anyway just over 3 weeks to a new PM and cabinet for better or worse
BBC talking about 35 or 36 in my neck of the woods. Met says 32 at most.
Does anyone actually check back on the Beeb stuff to see what actually happens?
"In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic? Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision?
"Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks. It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature, and the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky.
"Within the research community, many have expressed concern that important research progress could come to a halt just because of the fear that someone, somewhere, might attempt to replicate these experiments sloppily. This is a valid concern."
Hey thanks, Tony. 20 million dead. Nice one
The thing is, Fauci knew all of this was out there, and on record. So as soon as he heard of the Wuhan outbreak, he knew he was potentially a major fall guy, with millions of deaths on his hand. So he convened all his mates in Big Science, and the cover-up began. "Lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory". February 2020
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fauci-argued-benefits-of-gain-of-function-research-outweighed-pandemic-risk-in-2012-paper/
It’s possible Covid is Obama’s fault. By imposing a temporary halt in the us, it ended up taking place in China, with less safety, and a higher chance of it going badly wrong.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3484390/
For Dr Who fans, echos of Day of the Daleks. “The Daleks didn’t blow up the peace conference, you did it yourselves”
More than that when demand is most needed.
One way the scientists were able to silence discussion of lab leak for 18 months was by saying "Look. Trump believes it" (and he did, and he was unfortunately right, it seems). So they got all the US liberal media and social media on board at once. Twitter and Facebook would ban you for simply mentioning lab leak, for a whole year
Insane
And, as you say, if anyone is to blame then it is ALL US admins - left and right - for quite a while. They all tolerated this troubling and evilly dangerous science, in different ways
But let's not forget how much responsibility falls on China. It's unfair to blame America entirely, which at least tried to get a grip on the fucking bonkers science
2 years ago it was 35p/therm. Now 402p/therm. Futures for delivery in Dec ‘22, 545p/therm.
Someone quoted in the telegraph is extrapolating this to mean a £5k average cap, come next April.
Ouchy ouch ouch.
"On 6 February 2018 BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to MeteoGroup, after being required to put its weather services out to tender."
Another triumph of market competition, eh?
(*In fairness, as it happens, the BBC and Met Office forecasts for my area for the next week are pretty much identical.)
As a side note and a public service announcement to fellow PB'ers living in the west country my long anticipated relocation to devon is now in progress and I will be haunting your area from tomorrow afternoon.
Daszak needed money to continue his research at Wuhan. So he produced proposals that he knew Fauci would like (given that Fauci is on record approving of Gain of Function virology)
So Fauci - pleased with the ideas - gave Daszak money. And thus the crazy circus proceeded
Eventually Daszak came back with an idea so obviously dangerous - alter the Furin Cleavage Site to make it lethally infective in humans - even Fauci said No. This is all on the record (the US admin was forced to release these exchanges by FOIA)
But it seems - so the evidence suggests - that the Wuhan researchers went ahead and did it anyway. Altered a novel bat coronavirus so it would be dangerously infective and pathogenic in humans, using the FCS
Et voila
1. Early and generous funding of vaccine development and production expansion.
2. Hospital acute treatment studies.
3. Possibly the ventilator challenge, even though ventilators didn't end up being used so much.
The five biggest mistakes were:
1. Ventilation / hand-washing guidance emphasis (as you say).
2. The general approach to law, guidance, etc, in relation to public health measures to reduce spread was a huge mess in many and various ways.
3. The failure to learn from the successes and failures in other countries.
4. The failure to start a large medical training programme in 2020 to help expand medical capacity.
5. The half-hearted approach to the contract tracing and isolation stages of the standard public health approach to controlling infectious diseases, which meant the vast sums spent on testing were wasted.
I think it's important that we try to spend time on learning from our successes, as well as from our mistakes. It's probably easier to build on our successes than to fix our mistakes.
However I followed up his hints and realised he was right, super rapido. I used my innate "speed of information processing" that enables me to see things before the rest of you
A result that will last for a generation.
Only a million watching, at best, given summer hols but at least they are trying to explain the complexities to a wide audience.
FWIW I think the failure to invest in nuclear as base while ramping up solar/wind has been a massive bollock drop and there should be a public inquiry as to how we fecked up so much.
I am still puzzled why the rising gas price seems to have such a direct impact on electricity prices when less than half our electricity is produced by gas generation plants.
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
"But we see no reason to change the Two Pinocchio rating we awarded [junior Kentucky Senator Rand] Paul. There is a split in the scientific community about what constitutes gain-of-function research. To this day, NIH says this research did not meet the criteria — a stance that is not an outlier in the scientific community. Indeed, it appears as if EcoHealth halted the experiment as soon as it seemed to veer in that direction.
Meanwhile, [Senators] Cotton and Cruz are spinning the letter as confirming what it does not say. They are welcome to offer an opinion about its meaning. But, so far, it’s not a fact that NIH has admitted funding gain-of-function research. So they also earn Two Pinocchios."
source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/29/repeated-claim-that-fauci-lied-congress-about-gain-of-function-research/
(Kessler assigns from zero to four "Pinocchios", depending on how bad the falsehood is. This is what two mean:
'"Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people. (Similar to "half true.")'
https://metro.co.uk/2022/08/03/tory-leadership-vote-delayed-after-gchq-hacking-warning-17117323/
"The move means the electorate will no longer be able to change their vote during the contest – potentially limiting the impact of any late errors in the contest."
But, you could make the argument that the BBC doesn't need the best forecasts, only forecasts that are good enough for its purposes, and so saving money on weather forecasts to spend it on something else might have been the best choice for them.
Fortunately, because there is open competition, you can get forecasts directly from the Met Office on their website, YouTube, etc, and these are paid for by the Public Weather Service contract the Met Office has with the government, that comes with a bunch of performance metrics (including temperature forecasts) the results of which are still laid before Parliament every year, I believe.
It is a shame pb has no catastrophists with high "speed of information processing" to lead the debate on an energy crisis that may go far beyond choosing between heating and eating!
Remarkable, though unsurprising findings, in @IRIglobal's latest poll from #Ukraine:
✅98% of Ukrainians believe they'll win war
✅91% approve of @ZelenskyyUa's job performance
✅Support for @NATO membership continue to grow
✅Ukrainians do not want to not concede any territory
https://twitter.com/katielaroque/status/1557822168674799618?t=hg9hi-aY9MB83S2R9iExnw&s=19
Particularly interesting that there are no real differences across Ukraine regions. That is very united as a country. Russia has created its own downfall.
But the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming (to my mind)
It is noticeable that science is spending tens of millions investigating the wet market hypothesis, and yet not a dollar on the lab leak idea. But it doesn't help
They keep producing papers and saying Look, it was the market, almost as if they want us to believe that. And yet every one of these papers folds and dies, because they cannot compete with Occam's Razor, which says: Look three hundred yards south, where there is a lab specifically investigating novel bat coronaviruses, and trying to make them more infective for humans, via the Furin Cleavage Site, and this is going on in the exact same place where a terribly dangerous novel bat coronavirus emerged, with remarkable and dangerous evolutions at the Furin Cleavage Site
No scientific study can compete with that basic truth. It came from the lab
No attempt to improve the public's general health when it was quickly realised that obesity was a major factor.
"Leave the face masks for health care professionals" is fine, but follow up with "so use a scarf".
They must think the average age of the audience is about 5.
As Churchill said, the Nazis will sadly prosper by using "the lights of perverted science"
What is Covid if not "perverted science"?
Why not just let them share data for free rather than have the ridiculous situation where the BBC end up paying a Dutch company for UK forecasts?
Symptomatic of neoliberalism gone mad.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
I have a handful of old uni friends who are now quite senior scientists. One of them leads a team which might come close to a Nobel
In private: lab leak
In public: they say nothing
I have no special insight, it just seems most probable given the circumstantial evidence.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I barely know who Fauci, Daszak etc are.