As do it. That’s imposing their opinions on others, an entirely different discussion. But I couldn’t care less if the kid sitting next to mine continues to wear a mask. Looking down on them for their choice is just as bad as them attacking my own choices.
(Perhaps you misunderstood my use of “respect”? I mean accept that others have reached their own conclusions regarding their well-being, not that you should defer to and accomodate their wishes.)
That said, I’m also a big proponent of the Golden Rule, the whole “do unto others” and whatnot. Anyone insisting on imposing their opinions on me, is obviously demonstrating how they want me to do the same to them…
There’s a reason the most impressive ivermectin studies came from parts of the world where worms are prevalent, he says. Parasites suppress the immune system, making it more difficult for the human body to fight off viruses. Thus, getting rid of worm infections makes it easier for COVID-19 patients to bounce back from the virus.
Much, much better discussion than screaming “BASELESS!” when there are tangible results clearly showing otherwise.
It then continues in more general terms:
It is also worth considering why so many people convinced themselves that ivermectin was a COVID-19 super-drug. Alexander argues that ivermectin fanaticism is connected to anti-vax sentiment, in the sense that both are wacky pseudoscience beliefs to which certain people are attracted.
But there’s a much simpler explanation: Many of the same people who were drawn to Ivermectin are wary of the COVID-19 vaccines because they are skeptical of the public health consensus in general. They see health officials stressing and in some cases mandating vaccination and are repelled by this. They see health officials rejecting ivermectin and other COVID-19 treatments as nonsense and are drawn to them. Their beliefs aren’t so much an embrace of pseudoscience as they are a flat rejection of an authority that has failed them.
If we want to make people more willing to get vaccines, or less willing to take ivermectin, we have to make the scientific establishment feel less like an enclave of hostile aliens to half the population.
The problem with this is much of the scientific establishment seems to want to come across as, to borrow Alexander’s phrase, hostile aliens.
I agree wholeheartedly. Much of the hardline disagreements are due to really really crappy optics that practically beg for criticism. Crappy optics that have been entirely self-inflicted.
My take is still that there is something being withheld from the public. And that many many people have that same feeling, where those vague suspicions are fueling the contempt. I dont know what, or how significant it may be, but the powers that be have taken what is likely a 5-cent coverup nobody would’ve even cared about and bent over backwards to turn it into a hundred dollar conspiracy theory.
He went through all the IVM studies and looked at each one in detail, decide which seem decent vs unreliable, and then look at the combined evidence that remained. He concludes it maybe helps, or is close to being statistically significant if not.
the worms thing is certainly a plausible explanation, but at the same time, the pro-ivermectin doctors in the US have been giving it to people who have been at least somewhat sick and seen pretty good improvements at least to hear them tell it, often very quickly after the first dose. So it may be some of both, or a stronger benefit in places with too many worms but still somewhat helpful anyway.
So he can advise on how to treat my dead grandfather? Probably not acceptable to the wokers, since he as born during the Civil War. Sad, since it would be nice to know if Quinine, Ivermectin, or vitamin D would help bring him back.
Or does that headline mean he can only contact healthy dead relatives?
Doing the job the CDC won’t - tracking breakthrough infections in the vaccinated. No surprise - high risk people generally are at high risk for bad covid outcomes if they get a breakthrough infection despite being vaccinated.
Spotty U.S. data have clouded the view of just how many fully vaccinated people are getting Covid-19, landing in hospitals and dying. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t publish a running tally on raw breakthrough numbers. The Journal reviewed medical-record data for a total of more than 21 million fully vaccinated people, and an array of state reports, to compile its analysis. In particular, people with diabetes, chronic lung disease, kidney disease and compromised immune systems were at risk of serious outcomes from breakthrough cases, the data show.
The Epic Health Research Network’s cumulative data show about 1.2% of fully vaccinated people had a breakthrough case, similar to findings among states that publicize such data. The company also found a tipping point for breakthrough cases at about 20 to 22 weeks after people got their latest shot.
They will do the job, once they’ve figure out how Fauci can explain it, and continue to make a profit on it. Can’t believe I’m quoting a MA Kennedy, and not for swimming lessons.
last month a bunch of emails, uncovered by a lawsuit from the so-called White Coat Waste Project, … comprised an exchange between the American virus-hunting foundation, the EcoHealth Alliance and its funders in the US government. The scientists discussed collecting viruses from bats in eight countries including Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos between 2016 and 2019. But to avoid the complication of signing up local subcontractors to their grants in those countries, they promised to send the samples to a laboratory they already funded. And where was this lab? Wuhan.
Some of the emails talk about sending data, not samples; but some talk repeatedly about sending actual samples. “All samples collected would be tested at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” reads one from 2016. Another in 2018 even talks of sending bats themselves. The emails make it clear that Wuhan scientists would sometimes be working in the field alongside their US colleagues.
Remember the central issue is how a bat virus got to Wuhan. So now, in both Yunnan and Laos, the only people who knowingly transported bat virus samples to Wuhan — and only to Wuhan — were scientists.
As for that missing furin cleavage site, another leaked document revealed… Dr. Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance, spelled out plans to work with his collaborators in Wuhan and elsewhere to artificially insert novel, rare cleavage sites into novel SARS-like coronaviruses collected in the field, so as to better understand the biological function of cleavage sites. His 2018 request for $14.2 million from the Pentagon to do this was turned down amid uneasiness that it was too risky; but the very fact that he was proposing it was alarming.
Most of the funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology comes from the Chinese not the American government, after all; so the failure to win the US grant may not have prevented the work being done. Moreover, exactly such an experiment had already been done with a different kind of coronavirus by — guess who? — the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
While scientists say they are still figuring out the exact effects of the more than 50 mutations they have identified in the new variant, it has been driving a sharp rise in infections in South Africa over the past two weeks, albeit from very low levels. It has also been detected in Botswana and in two travelers in Hong Kong. Israel, one of the countries that restricted travel from southern Africa, said Friday it had identified the B.1.1.529 variant in a traveler from Malawi and was investigating whether it had also infected two others.
Data from South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases shows how the new variant over the past two weeks quickly crowded out the highly transmissible Delta variant. It now makes up around 90% of infections in the country’s most populous province, home to its political and economic capitals of Pretoria and Johannesburg.
The B.1.1.529 variant has more than 50 mutations compared with the coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, in 2019. More than 30 of those mutations are in the spike protein
Botswana’s government said Thursday that all four infections with B.1.1.529 it had detected were in people who were fully vaccinated and got tested ahead of planned travel.
The variant harbours a high number of mutations in regions of the spike protein that antibodies recognize, potentially dampening their potency. “Many mutations we know are problematic, but many more look like they are likely contributing to further evasion,” says Moore. There are even hints from computer modelling that B.1.1.529 could dodge immunity conferred by another component of the immune system called T cells, says Moore. Her team hopes to have its first results in two weeks.
On the bright side, the existing PCR tests can tell the difference between this Nu one and the older ones, so at least surveillance should be fairly easy.
Some places are already banning flights from Southern Africa, but that’s not the US. We’re are sticking to the approach that got us into the pandemic in the first place.
‘AT THIS POINT, IMPLEMENTING TRAVEL MEASURES IS BEING CAUTIONED AGAINST’ - WHO SPOKESMAN SAYS ON B.1.1.529 VARIANT
TOP U.S. INFECTIOUS DISEASE OFFICIAL FAUCI: WILL DECIDE ON TRAVEL BANS AFTER GETTING MORE INFORMATION
Exactly. We now have running our store the same guy who viciously excoriated Trump when he correctly, if not belatedly, banned China travel end of January 2020.
America first? No longer, not in the least. More like “let the chips fall where they may”, with denials of responsibility certain to follow as required should this new variant prove a disaster for Americans.
And as for that clown Fauci, don’t get me started. He still believes gain of function research is a good idea. So no surprise he is willing to await proof this new variant might threaten us seriously. And by the time that proof is made manifest the new virus variant is already spreading uncontrollably across the USA.
How many times are we supposed to accept claims of “worst ever” before we stop paying attention? I know a lot of people who have already stopped believing such claims.
At my age I’m too often a little slow on the pickup. This time it took me an hour before reality kicked in and I connected the dots:
Biden is hesitating because South Africa is a black country. He is afraid of offending his American black constituency.
Outcries of “you are discriminating against our black brothers and sisters in South Africa” would be terrifying and intolerable for Biden. He simply cannot risk such an outcome. Better, for Biden, to instead risk exposing Americans to a new virus variant.
I made some stock trades this am based on this news (bought BNTX, reduced market exposure) and think it’s at least credible that this could be qualitatively worse that what we have now. Might not be in the end (hopefully), but govt actions can be worse than the disease too and those might be prompted as well if it looks bad and they feel they need to “lockdown even harder” or whatever. But it’s already spread to half a dozen countries, at least in small numbers, and probably moreso once they actually start looking carefully for it.
From just over 200 new confirmed cases per day in recent weeks, South Africa saw the number of new daily cases rocket to 2,465 on Thursday. Struggling to explain the sudden rise in cases, scientists studied virus samples from the outbreak and discovered the new variant.
My opinion:
It’s in the bag this variant is coming to the USA. Only thing in doubt is how fast.
I’m really starting to subscribe the philosophy best articulated in the great movie Men in Black:
There’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!
Knowledge may be power, but ignorance is bliss. Sometimes its better not knowing what’s out there. Some people seem to have undertaken the mission to ensure no one is happy ever again, by continuing to flood them with so much information that they have no control over and no meaningful way to respond.
Sad, since it would be nice to know if Quinine, Ivermectin, or vitamin D would help bring him back. 
