Coronavirus news

[Charles Austin]

On the advice of my doctor, I had a Covid booster yesterday.

[Michael Slusser]

On the advice of my doctor, I had a Covid booster yesterday.

Despite being fully boosted, I caught Covid19 the first weekend in May. They gave me the antiviral combo Paxlovid. The latter has all the same side effects as Covid itself, as far as I can see. But I was out of quarantine (and smelling/tasting again) by May 14.

Peace,
Michael

[James S. Rustad]

On the advice of my doctor, I had a Covid booster yesterday.

Despite being fully boosted, I caught Covid19 the first weekend in May. They gave me the antiviral combo Paxlovid. The latter has all the same side effects as Covid itself, as far as I can see. But I was out of quarantine (and smelling/tasting again) by May 14.

Peace,
Michael

Yep.  Vaccines are not perfect.

[James S. Rustad]

The lab leak theory is looking even less like a conspiracy theory...

U.S. Funded Scientist One of Several Wuhan Lab Researchers Sickened During Early Covid Outbreak
In November of 2019, less than a month before the covid-19 pandemic took off and spread to nations all over the world, several scientists working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China fell seriously ill from an unknown virus. One of the researchers was Ben Hu, a scientist who had received significant funding from the U.S. government and whose research has focused on "how coronaviruses infect humans," new reporting by the Wall Street Journal shows.

[Jeremy Loesch]

The lab leak was never a conspiracy theory; it was only such to those in the media who didn't want to dig into the truth, who didn't want to believe that US dollars funded that research that then accidentally leaked from the lab into the world. 

Thanks for sharing that bit of info.  However slow it may happen, I'm glad that the news is coming out. 

Jeremy

[James S. Rustad]

The Lab Leak Theory Still Counts as Misinformation in a New Study of COVID-19 Claims
A new study of COVID-19 narratives makes the very mistake it purports to correct.
...
Statements counted as misinformation included the notion that "the virus originated in a laboratory in China." The authors, as if anticipating strenuous objection to this, weakly insist that the lab leak theory "contradicted scientific evidence at the time." But this gets to the very root of the problem: There was no smoking gun indicating either a natural origin or a lab leak, and yet a group of scientific experts released a paper—at the behest of federal health czars Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins—that explicitly ruled out a lab leak despite their own private concerns that this was a perfectly compelling explanation. Scientists who publicly leaned toward the lab leak theory—like Alina Chan, of MIT and Harvard—were condemned.

The lab leak theory did not "contradict scientific evidence at the time." The evidence was ambiguous, and some scientists preferred the lab leak while others preferred natural origin.

In any case, a scientific study released in August 2023 has no excuse for continuing to promote the fiction that the lab leak theory is misinformation. The theory is now endorsed by both the U.S. Department of Energy and the FBI. The Wall Street Journal has confirmed key reporting that would make the lab leak all but certain—namely, that the first people to contract COVID-19 were scientists working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

[peter_speckhard]

The Lab Leak Theory Still Counts as Misinformation in a New Study of COVID-19 Claims
A new study of COVID-19 narratives makes the very mistake it purports to correct.
...
Statements counted as misinformation included the notion that "the virus originated in a laboratory in China." The authors, as if anticipating strenuous objection to this, weakly insist that the lab leak theory "contradicted scientific evidence at the time." But this gets to the very root of the problem: There was no smoking gun indicating either a natural origin or a lab leak, and yet a group of scientific experts released a paper—at the behest of federal health czars Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins—that explicitly ruled out a lab leak despite their own private concerns that this was a perfectly compelling explanation. Scientists who publicly leaned toward the lab leak theory—like Alina Chan, of MIT and Harvard—were condemned.

The lab leak theory did not "contradict scientific evidence at the time." The evidence was ambiguous, and some scientists preferred the lab leak while others preferred natural origin.

In any case, a scientific study released in August 2023 has no excuse for continuing to promote the fiction that the lab leak theory is misinformation. The theory is now endorsed by both the U.S. Department of Energy and the FBI. The Wall Street Journal has confirmed key reporting that would make the lab leak all but certain—namely, that the first people to contract COVID-19 were scientists working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

That's a big key to reading the news. The people who suspected at the time Fauci was blowing smoke (and were 100% right) were derided as fools by the real fools who were buying Fauci action figures. Similarly, Epstein did not commit suicide. I don't care how many experts assure me he did. Their explanations are less likely and require greater suspension of disbelief than the simple theory that he was bumped off because of what he knew. Occam's Razor has an impressive win percentage. Scientists, reporters, politicians, like everyone else, only get stringent and really testy demanding you trust them when they know they are not being trustworthy. The rest of the time they're content to explain things as they see them and let you think what you want.