Dr. Fauci “not convinced” coronavirus developed naturally

[crimson5pheonix]

Why does the default assumption be that it's natural?

Because diseases happen naturally, especially coronaviruses, especially coronaviruses in the area it came from. What, do you assume that every flu variant every year is equally likely to come from a lab as just evolving naturally? Is ebola just man-made? Chickenpox? I think anthrax is the only disease that if there were an outbreak, your first thought should be a lab-made variant. Otherwise in any disease outbreak you assume it's natural.

Unless you're a political hack.

I really don't care much over if it's natural or not, I just very much dislike all the censorship

It hasn't, there's been plenty of research into the lab leak theory all throughout the year. The only thing that could theoretically be called censorship in all this is the Chinese government not letting people into their lab, which others have already explained why the Chinese might do this even if they were innocent.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

There's nothing inconsistent here. I've not said the US shouldn't have been more cautious to begin with (it should). And I've not said Marty Makary is always wrong (he's not).

There's no inconsistency in also holding the position that he's wrong on other stuff. He's a human being, with some tangential experience (surgical), but working in a field that's mostly unrelated to epidemiology, virology, or immunology.

I'm not judging it on who's saying it. I'm basing it on the claim itself, and whether it's been borne out by the past year's evidence (it hasn't, the US did not reach herd immunity in April).

You've still not provided anything that Marty said that ended up being wrong. I'll talk about herd immunity below.

Do you genuinely believe that herd immunity offers the sole explanation for a drop in cases?

Regardless, what actually happened with the case numbers? They dropped in April... and then, when restrictions lifted, they rose again. By July they were higher than April. By December/ January, they were many times higher than April. And in April 2021, they're higher than they were in April 2020.

Are we to believe that the US gained and then lost herd immunity? Or are we to recognise that the RE is subject to more than one factor, the US did not attain herd immunity over a year ago, and Makary was mistaken?

I don't know how you're making a point that the US gained and lost herd immunity, when? Unless you're confusing 2020 and 2021 infection numbers. Since mid-April 2021 (what Marty said, not last April 2020), the US cases have steady gone down, there's been no spike since then (that's why I posted the US infection curve and made April 14th the highlighted date) and the country has only opened more and more since.

....packed sporting events daily, people going to bars and restaurants, people not wearing masks.... a world-beating death toll and infection rate, a massive spike over December & January....

That wasn't happening last year during the spike, some NFL teams had limited capacity.

Here's the packed crowd (1st 10 seconds) at the Astros/Dodgers game in Texas late May of this year. Where's the world-beating death toll and infection rate in Texas from all these crowds?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Because diseases happen naturally, especially coronaviruses, especially coronaviruses in the area it came from. What, do you assume that every flu variant every year is equally likely to come from a lab as just evolving naturally? Is ebola just man-made? Chickenpox? I think anthrax is the only disease that if there were an outbreak, your first thought should be a lab-made variant. Otherwise in any disease outbreak you assume it's natural.

Unless you're a political hack.

A disease that starts so very transmissible in humans is not normal, which is why the former CDC director thinks it was from the lab as the most likely scenario.

It hasn't, there's been plenty of research into the lab leak theory all throughout the year. The only thing that could theoretically be called censorship in all this is the Chinese government not letting people into their lab, which others have already explained why the Chinese might do this even if they were innocent.

It's been heavily censored in science circles (as mentioned below) along with Facebook outright banning discussion of it.

Yeah, there was absolutely no censorship going on with regards to the lab leak theory in the scientific community

The rejections kept coming. The coronavirus was a topic of intense scientific fascination, yet the four Australian researchers challenging conventional wisdom about how the pandemic originated couldn’t find a publisher for their study.

“We were quite stunned,” recalls one of that study’s authors, Dr. Nikolai Petrovsky, an endocrinologist at Flinders University in Australia who is also developing a coronavirus vaccine. The work he and his group had done only received what he called “blanket rejections.”

That finally changed late last month, when Nature Scientific Reports published their paper, “In silico comparison of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species and implications for virus origin.” The journal is part of the prestigious Nature family of publications. Acceptance there has given greater credibility to a theory that until recently was taboo: that the coronavirus could have emerged from a laboratory.

Lab leak theory, once 'political dynamite,' gains credibility in new study

The release of a scientific paper that was long in finding a publisher has given greater credibility to a theory that until recently was taboo: that the coronavirus could have emerged from a laboratory.

news.yahoo.com

 

[Eacaraxe]

Because diseases happen naturally, especially coronaviruses, especially coronaviruses in the area it came from. What, do you assume that every flu variant every year is equally likely to come from a lab as just evolving naturally? Is ebola just man-made? Chickenpox? I think anthrax is the only disease that if there were an outbreak, your first thought should be a lab-made variant.

Purely for the sake of conversation, a ways back -- long enough I don't remember the source -- I read a series of articles written with virologist, epidemiologist, and military contribution, discussing traits that would be considered ideal in diseases for use in biological warfare, and those traits that would negate their utility as biological weapons. What stuck with me about these articles, is how counter-intuitive popular assumption is when faced with the realities of various diseases and whether they'd be successful vectors for bio-warfare. Which is pretty much the only reason most states would be interested in genetically-modified disease strains, other than as a vector for vaccination against more serious diseases (see, the intentional spread of cowpox to vaccinate against smallpox in the days before contemporary vaccination).

What struck me as interesting about these articles, was the traits the public typically associates with diseases that would make good bio-weapons (thanks to the media) are traits that would actually make them non-viable as such. The multitude of VHF's for example being discountable almost immediately, because they're lethal but not terribly contagious, and their high-profile symptoms make them unlikely to spread in a population once the disease is identified and quarantining can start. Even anthrax was largely discounted by these articles as an artifact of early- to mid-20th Century medicine, because while spores may be resilient and easily spread, it's not communicable and vulnerable to contemporary antibiotics.

The thing with COVID that makes its epidemiology suspect, is that it does -- by accident or not -- hit all the major markers of a disease ideal for biological warfare. Highly contagious, short latent period but a longer period in which a patient is asymptomatic but infectious, not terribly lethal but crippling to a population and infrastructure. Key to remember with this, is the goalpost of biological warfare isn't necessarily to kill large swaths of a target population but rather to incapacitate them and thereby degrade economic or warfighting power.

More than anything else, I believe that's the muscle behind the perpetuation of the "lab-made" origin theory. And I say that as someone who does buy somewhat into the theory -- enough to believe it worth serious investigation, at least.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

A disease that starts so very transmissible in humans is not normal, which is why the former CDC director thinks it was from the lab as the most likely scenario.

Literally the Spanish flu. It's not something that happens every year, but it is something that happens naturally.

It's been heavily censored in science circles (as mentioned below) along with Facebook outright banning discussion of it.

It's been researched over the year. If nobody else has, I've provided sources saying as much. And you can't gaslight me, I remember the scientific results over the past year being used for political football. As always, scientific papers almost never made hard, sure statements like "it probably came from a lab". It's why the media obsessed have forgotten about them since they've been published, they say unsexy things like "cleavage sites contain inefficiencies that slow the rate of infection".

Purely for the sake of conversation, a ways back -- long enough I don't remember the source -- I read a series of articles written with virologist, epidemiologist, and military contribution, discussing traits that would be considered ideal in diseases for use in biological warfare, and those traits that would negate their utility as biological weapons. What stuck with me about these articles, is how counter-intuitive popular assumption is when faced with the realities of various diseases and whether they'd be successful vectors for bio-warfare. Which is pretty much the only reason most states would be interested in genetically-modified disease strains, other than as a vector for vaccination against more serious diseases (see, the intentional spread of cowpox to vaccinate against smallpox in the days before contemporary vaccination).

What struck me as interesting about these articles, was the traits the public typically associates with diseases that would make good bio-weapons (thanks to the media) are traits that would actually make them non-viable as such. The multitude of VHF's for example being discountable almost immediately, because they're lethal but not terribly contagious, and their high-profile symptoms make them unlikely to spread in a population once the disease is identified and quarantining can start. Even anthrax was largely discounted by these articles as an artifact of early- to mid-20th Century medicine, because while spores may be resilient and easily spread, it's not communicable and vulnerable to contemporary antibiotics.

The thing with COVID that makes its epidemiology suspect, is that it does -- by accident or not -- hit all the major markers of a disease ideal for biological warfare. Highly contagious, short latent period but a longer period in which a patient is asymptomatic but infectious, not terribly lethal but crippling to a population and infrastructure. Key to remember with this, is the goalpost of biological warfare isn't necessarily to kill large swaths of a target population but rather to incapacitate them and thereby degrade economic or warfighting power.

More than anything else, I believe that's the muscle behind the perpetuation of the "lab-made" origin theory. And I say that as someone who does buy somewhat into the theory -- enough to believe it worth serious investigation, at least.

And it's easy for people to see that since it did grind the world to a halt and the results still have brains leaking from people's ears (lol Bidinflation). And it's hard to respond with just "it affected the whole world, whoever released it would have to be an idiot" since states frequently shoot themselves in the foot and don't think things through.

EDIT: In short, it's entirely possible and plausible it came from a lab, and the people who used statements like "cleavage sites aren't as efficient as they could be" to mean that it's impossible it came from a lab are dumb. But it's not like a virus has a Made in China sticker, so the only real way it's going to get proven one way or another is investigating the lab or having some sort of document surface.

 

[Silvanus]

I don't know how you're making a point that the US gained and lost herd immunity, when? Unless you're confusing 2020 and 2021 infection numbers. Since mid-April 2021 (what Marty said, not last April 2020), the US cases have steady gone down, there's been no spike since then (that's why I posted the US infection curve and made April 14th the highlighted date) and the country has only opened more and more since.

I don't believe that the US gained and lost herd immunity. I'm saying that if you regard the RE being below 1 as proof that herd immunity has been achieved, that means that you must believe that the US gained and then lost herd immunity.

The RE was below 1 in the US in April 2020. And then it rose over it again.

An article here providing three scientists (in more relevant fields than Makary, such as disease ecology and epidemiology) debunking his Wall Street Journal op-ed.

That wasn't happening last year during the spike, some NFL teams had limited capacity.

Here's the packed crowd (1st 10 seconds) at the Astros/Dodgers game in Texas late May of this year. Where's the world-beating death toll and infection rate in Texas from all these crowds?

I believe in mid-May the US was at about 20 - 30,000 per day. So, not quite world-beating (...anymore), but certainly nothing to be proud of. Worse (per capita) than the vast majority of Europe, excepting the UK, and about ninth or tenth in the world.

 

[Eacaraxe]

And it's easy for people to see that since it did grind the world to a halt and the results still have brains leaking from people's ears (lol Bidinflation). And it's hard to respond with just "it affected the whole world, whoever released it would have to be an idiot" since states frequently shoot themselves in the foot and don't think things through.

The problem is, just as the case with 9/11 and many other famous conspiracy theories, discourse gets stuck between two equally-idiotic extremes, with each side having a vested interest in poisoning the well and painting the other as extremist, successfully excluding the middle -- which almost always includes theories with vastly greater parsimony and likelihood of truth. If SARS-CoV-2 was lab-made and not of natural origin -- or even if it was of natural origin, but the outbreak started from a containment failure within the lab -- it doesn't follow this was some form of Chinese state bio-terrorism. More likely was some idiot selling animal carcasses as a side gig, or someone poking themselves with a needle and not reporting it out of fear.

But it's not like a virus has a Made in China sticker, so the only real way it's going to get proven one way or another is investigating the lab or having some sort of document surface.

Given the incredibly shady shit the Chinese government was pulling in the early months of the pandemic -- disappearing whistleblowers, expelling foreign journalists, brickwalling international health organizations and feeding the rest of the world obvious disinformation, twisting the WHO's arm to force it to repeat their own now-disproven propaganda, using the outbreak to wage economic warfare through global PPE purchases and resale, making sweeping and excessive theater of early relief efforts whilst feeding clearly false casualty metrics to the outside world -- I very strongly doubt that's even possible. The Chinese government has had nearly two years to disappear any damning information or evidence.

And honestly, the virus' origins pale in comparison to the global ramifications Chinese state malpractice had on the rest of the world's population in the past year and a half. What's beyond debate is how the government exploited the health crisis to further its own regional and global interests, to the cost of several million dead and trillions' worth of economic damage.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Literally the Spanish flu. It's not something that happens every year, but it is something that happens naturally.

What are you talking about? The flu was around well before the 1918 pandemic so it was in humans for a long time (time to, you know, evolve and get better at infecting humans). Plus, the 1918 flu started out mild having time to evolve. You're acting like there was no flu before 1918 and it was some new thing that was super attuned to infecting humans out of the gate.

From the very 1st result when googling "spanish flu"
The first wave of the 1918 pandemic occurred in the spring and was generally mild. The sick, who experienced such typical flu symptoms as chills, fever and fatigue, usually recovered after several days, and the number of reported deaths was low.

However, a second, highly contagious wave of influenza appeared with a vengeance in the fall of that same year. Victims died within hours or days of developing symptoms, their skin turning blue and their lungs filling with fluid that caused them to suffocate. In just one year, 1918, the average life expectancy in America plummeted by a dozen years.

Spanish Flu ‑ Symptoms, How It Began & Ended

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide—about one‑third of the planet’s population—and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans.

www.history.com

 

[Phoenixmgs]

It's been researched over the year. If nobody else has, I've provided sources saying as much. And you can't gaslight me, I remember the scientific results over the past year being used for political football. As always, scientific papers almost never made hard, sure statements like "it probably came from a lab". It's why the media obsessed have forgotten about them since they've been published, they say unsexy things like "cleavage sites contain inefficiencies that slow the rate of infection".

I didn't say it wasn't researched, my article I posted was researchers in Australia that did research during the time lab leak was very taboo to talk about (the fact it was taboo says it all, no hypothesis should be taboo to talk about). The problem wasn't that they couldn't do research, it was that they couldn't get it published. Doing research and getting it seen are two different things, and yeah no one's stopping you from posting it on the internet but they were where it's much much more likely to be seen. It's not like there was a guy with a baseball bat in every science lab hitting scientists if they did any lab leak research. It was from journals not publishing and/or not getting funding for such projects or worried about possibly future funding (researchers depend on funding) if they were to research it. NIH and Fauci control a lot of funding money, you think you'd be inclined to research something Fauci says is scientifically impossible or something else? It's like any basic politics where you're not going to do something you know your manager doesn't like so when you need a favor like a day off or leave early/come in late or whatever, you're more likely to get it.

I don't believe that the US gained and lost herd immunity. I'm saying that if you regard the RE being below 1 as proof that herd immunity has been achieved, that means that you must believe that the US gained and then lost herd immunity.

The RE was below 1 in the US in April 2020. And then it rose over it again.

An article here providing three scientists (in more relevant fields than Makary, such as disease ecology and epidemiology) debunking his Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Seriously? When things are restricted and people are staying home, what does it matter what the RE is? The RE better be under 1 in that scenario but that means nothing as far as herd immunity goes. Everyone in that scenario is protected because nobody is in a "herd". However, when everything is open and people at back to normal and the RE is under 1, then you have something.

How are you gonna provide an article debunking something that's been fucking proven by real-world data? Marty said late April and it fucking happened in late April.

That lady was complaining that she doesn't know when we'll get to 10-20 cases per 100K and currently only 5 states are at 10+ cases per 100K and the rest of the states are below 10 cases per 100K.

He was doing a basic analysis to figure out the amount infected by using the worldwide 0.23% infection fatality rate average and if you do 600,000 / 0.0023, you get 260 million. So there is data pointing to that, just data that those debunkers weren't considering even though Marty fucking said how he got it.

I believe in mid-May the US was at about 20 - 30,000 per day. So, not quite world-beating (...anymore), but certainly nothing to be proud of. Worse (per capita) than the vast majority of Europe, excepting the UK, and about ninth or tenth in the world.

So 1/50th the amount of covid cases vs a normal flu season with around the same fatality rate of the flu (since the vulnerable are protected) is something you still have to be concerned about to where we can't go out and do normal things? The risk is literally 1/50th of a normal flu season and we went out and did shit when it was 50x more dangerous during the winter. Was going to see Michael Jordon play in the 90s in say December too dangerous? Because that was 50x more dangerous than going to a NBA Finals game today (which literally starts tonight). I don't even get how this could be an argument. Going out to and doing shit is perfectly within society's acceptable risk levels.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

What are you talking about? The flu was around well before the 1918 pandemic so it was in humans for a long time (time to, you know, evolve and get better at infecting humans). Plus, the 1918 flu started out mild having time to evolve. You're acting like there was no flu before 1918 and it was some new thing that was super attuned to infecting humans out of the gate.

Are you trying to imply COVID *19* is the first coronavirus encountered by humans?

Snip to make the website happy

Again, it doesn't really square up with reality. 1 instance of a difficulty to publish does not a trend make. I'm sure the medical academics in this forum would be more than happy to tell you about the difficulties of publishing anything ever. Meanwhile there was a wealth of papers about COVID, it's genome, how it spread, etc.

 

[Silvanus]

Seriously? When things are restricted and people are staying home, what does it matter what the RE is? The RE better be under 1 in that scenario but that means nothing as far as herd immunity goes. Everyone in that scenario is protected because nobody is in a "herd". However, when everything is open and people at back to normal and the RE is under 1, then you have something.

!? What do you mean, "what does it matter"? You're the one who defined "herd immunity" as having an RE under 1. It's entirely relevant to that to point out that the RE being below 1 doesn't actually mean you have herd immunity.

RE is affected by more than just the immunity in a population. That's the point, and that can happen even without lockdowns. It fluctuated above and below 1 in the UK numerous times even outside of lockdown.

How are you gonna provide an article debunking something that's been fucking proven by real-world data? Marty said late April and it fucking happened in late April.

No. It. Didn't. We did not have herd immunity. You haven't "proven" anything except that the RE was below 1 in April, which doesn't mean very much considering the RE had already been below 1 at several points over the previous year.

He was doing a basic analysis to figure out the amount infected by using the worldwide 0.23% infection fatality rate average and if you do 600,000 / 0.0023, you get 260 million. So there is data pointing to that, just data that those debunkers weren't considering even though Marty fucking said how he got it.

Hah! So the "data" was simplistic extrapolation from an early and incomplete data set, then; and coming to a worldwide average that fails to take into consideration geographic differences or public policy.

Anybody with any grounding in data analysis should read that sentence you just wrote and recognise it for the most basic A-Level reductionism.

So 1/50th the amount of covid cases vs a normal flu season with around the same fatality rate of the flu (since the vulnerable are protected) is something you still have to be concerned about to where we can't go out and do normal things?

*facepalm*

What happened last time the numbers were as low as they were in April? That was.... June or July last year for the USA, I think. What happened when the gov decided that it's all "acceptable risk" and opened up? How did the numbers fare in December 2020/ January 2021?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Are you trying to imply COVID *19* is the first coronavirus encountered by humans?

Covid is in the family of coronaviruses, it's a novel (new) virus. Every year's flu isn't a novel virus but a different strain of a known virus. The flu is very unique because it can't actually copy itself so when you get the flu, you have thousands of different flu strains in just yourself.

Again, it doesn't really square up with reality. 1 instance of a difficulty to publish does not a trend make. I'm sure the medical academics in this forum would be more than happy to tell you about the difficulties of publishing anything ever. Meanwhile there was a wealth of papers about COVID, it's genome, how it spread, etc.

It's not like only one group of researchers have said this, from the USA Today article. I really don't get how you think the lab leak theory wasn't censored, you literally couldn't talk about it on Facebook, that is literal censorship.

“A small group of scientists, and a larger group of science journalists, established and enforced the false narrative that scientific evidence supported natural spillover, and (also) the false narrative that this was the scientific consensus,” said Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biosafety expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

There were other views out there, they just weren’t given much coverage as being credible.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

!? What do you mean, "what does it matter"? You're the one who defined "herd immunity" as having an RE under 1. It's entirely relevant to that to point out that the RE being below 1 doesn't actually mean you have herd immunity.

RE is affected by more than just the immunity in a population. That's the point, and that can happen even without lockdowns. It fluctuated above and below 1 in the UK numerous times even outside of lockdown.

*facepalm*

What happened last time the numbers were as low as they were in April? That was.... June or July last year for the USA, I think. What happened when the gov decided that it's all "acceptable risk" and opened up? How did the numbers fare in December 2020/ January 2021?

OMFG, why would anyone say there's herd immunity when well under 10% of the population got infected and there's no vaccines? Herd immunity is when you're protected from getting it because you're around a majority that has immunity. When was there a majority of the population that had immunity April 2020?

When everything is open and people are gathering like normal and the RE is under 1, you got herd immunity.

Why would anyone even argue that in say June 2020 there was herd immunity because the RE was under 1? That doesn't make sense at all. That's why the RE doesn't fucking matter in say June of 2020. You need people IMMUNE for herd IMMUNITY, not simply the virus infections decreasing (because that was accomplished artificially).

I'm sorry that I forgot to add the "you need people immune" part with everything back to normal PLUS the RE was under 1 to equal herd immunity. It was because I thought it was basic logic that I didn't need to. Why do you think I posted the crowds at the sporting events, everything open, people not masking, etc.? The US is fully open and RE is below 1 are the 2 things needed to show herd immunity.

No. It. Didn't. We did not have herd immunity. You haven't "proven" anything except that the RE was below 1 in April, which doesn't mean very much considering the RE had already been below 1 at several points over the previous year.

Again, the US fully open plus RE below 1 shows herd immunity.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Hah! So the "data" was simplistic extrapolation from an early and incomplete data set, then; and coming to a worldwide average that fails to take into consideration geographic differences or public policy.

Anybody with any grounding in data analysis should read that sentence you just wrote and recognise it for the most basic A-Level reductionism.

260 million would be over 75% of the population so Marty did make adjustments. The point isn't to get completely accurate numbers since that is impossible, but a good guess. I guess is also what the herd immunity threshold is too; is it 70% immune, 80% immune, etc.? The fact that he basically nailed it when just about every single other covid prediction by "experts" have been wrong. Remember just this March when the CDC director predicted IMPENDING DOOM, which was laughable just based on a common sense, we were adding 2 or 3 million people daily to the country's immune population and there's going to be DOOM? The US was also expected to get a spike in March because the SCARY UK variant was coming, that never materialized. The prediction of a surge because of the BLM protests, that never materialized. The "everyone gonna die" predictions when Texas removed all restrictions in March, that never materialized, cases never even went up let alone spiked. Florida is run by a crazy governor that's gonna kill everyone by opening a long ass time ago (just look at all the people at the beach!!!!! even though being outside at the beach is perfectly safe), that never materialized. Remember when the flu season + covid was gonna be like the perfect storm and then flu just vanished?

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-06-01/george-floyd-protests-likely-to-cause-increase-in-coronavirus-cases

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Covid is in the family of coronaviruses, it's a novel (new) virus. Every year's flu isn't a novel virus but a different strain of a known virus. The flu is very unique because it can't actually copy itself so when you get the flu, you have thousands of different flu strains in just yourself.

Ah, so you are. Well if you don't get that a different strain is a different mutation and that both the flu and the coronavirus can mutate to better infect humans, than I don't know what to say.

I really don't get how you think the lab leak theory wasn't censored, you literally couldn't talk about it on Facebook, that is literal censorship.

I literally give less than no shit what Facebook says, Facebook isn't a medical journal. Absolutely and totally irrelevant.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Ah, so you are. Well if you don't get that a different strain is a different mutation and that both the flu and the coronavirus can mutate to better infect humans, than I don't know what to say.

I thinks it's you who doesn't get that every new flu strain isn't a novel virus. Covid is a novel virus. And when we have a novel virus, it takes time to attuned itself to the new host. Covid out of the gate was very much already adjusted to humans, which it shouldn't be if it came from an animal. That's what the former CDC director said.

I literally give less than no shit what Facebook says, Facebook isn't a medical journal. Absolutely and totally irrelevant.

I provided 2 sources of researchers/scientists saying there was censorship. Facebook blocked discussion, I really don't get how anyone would think there wasn't censorship over the lab leak discussion. They even claimed it was racist to talk about.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

I thinks it's you who doesn't get that every new flu strain isn't a novel virus. Covid is a novel virus. And when we have a novel virus, it takes time to attuned itself to the new host. Covid out of the gate was very much already adjusted to humans, which it shouldn't be if it came from an animal. That's what the former CDC director said.

And a lot of experts disagree, and I don't find that case compelling because diseases sprout up frequently enough that are quite transmissible relatively early on. It doesn't sound implausible at all, and it's the pervading theory. I don't see why I should trust "source: dude trust me" on this one.

I provided 2 sources of researchers/scientists saying there was censorship. Facebook blocked discussion, I really don't get how anyone would think there wasn't censorship over the lab leak discussion. They even claimed it was racist to talk about.

I
don't
give
a
single
flying
fuck
about
Facebook
it's
not
a
medical
journal.

I can't spell it out any plainer than that, go cry about your need for media obsession in matters of science elsewhere.

 

[Silvanus]

OMFG, why would anyone say there's herd immunity when well under 10% of the population got infected and there's no vaccines? Herd immunity is when you're protected from getting it because you're around a majority that has immunity. When was there a majority of the population that had immunity April 2020?

Nobody rational would say there was herd immunity in that circumstance. There was no immune majority. But the RE was below 1, that's my point.

You said herd immunity = RE<1. This categorically demonstrates that's not true.

Why would anyone even argue that in say June 2020 there was herd immunity because the RE was under 1? That doesn't make sense at all. That's why the RE doesn't fucking matter in say June of 2020. You need people IMMUNE for herd IMMUNITY, not simply the virus infections decreasing (because that was accomplished artificially).

Then why did you argue that RE<1 = Herd immunity!!??

Don't act incredulous when it's pointed out how transparently false that is.

I'm sorry that I forgot to add the "you need people immune" part with everything back to normal PLUS the RE was under 1 to equal herd immunity. It was because I thought it was basic logic that I didn't need to. Why do you think I posted the crowds at the sporting events, everything open, people not masking, etc.? The US is fully open and RE is below 1 are the 2 things needed to show herd immunity.

Again, the US fully open plus RE below 1 shows herd immunity.

"You need people immune". No fucking shit.

But the RE does not translate directly to the level of immunity. And even with the country open, you cannot conclude from a low RE that we have herd immunity, because the RE fluctuates and is affected by dozens of factors aside from immunity.

Hence why even outside of lockdown, the RE in the UK went below and then back above 1. Because RE<1 doesn't necessarily mean herd immunity.

 

[Seanchaidh]

 

[tstorm823]

Then why did you argue that RE<1 = Herd immunity!!??

That is what herd immunity is. That is the point at which outbreaks are sufficiently unlikely. That does mean that the herd immunity threshold is variable depending on the behavior of the population. Typically, when we talk about herd immunity, we're talking about under normal conditions and behavior, but that's certainly going to be a different number in different times and places. Herd immunity in rural Kansas is not the same as herd immunity in the New York subway. So it is both accurate and inaccurate in a sense to say we've hit herd immunity in a lockdown, because in a sense we have hit a threshold of immunity sufficient to lower the rate of transmission beneath 1 new infection per infection, but in the other sense that is not indicative of what would happen without lockdown procedures in place.

Where I live, all the schools and businesses are open (well, summer break is going on, but they were open before that), the masks are optional and largely left off in public, sporting events are going on, people are sitting in close quarters, and the rates of infection are still dropping. That's an indication of herd immunity.