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First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

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Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2020 Luc Montagnier identified Covid-19 as a lab creation and predicted that, because the original strain was unnatural, later strains would be less problematic as the virus reverted to its true (less problematic) nature. In contrast, the public health conversation was about a permanent threat and how much worse can it get and generally government running around hair-on-fire. Maybe the initial quarantine recommend…

> because the original strain was unnatural, later strains would be less problematic as the virus reverted to its true (less problematic) nature Is it possible for someone to speed up this process in a lab somewhere, like South Africa, and release the less problematic version to the public to achieve the herd immunity quicker?

There are curious aspects of Omicron's emergence – more closely related to older less-circulating strains, many adaptations bursting onto scene all at once – that make people think that even if the original Wuhan strains weren't lab-creations, Omicron was – as a natural & contagious 'vaccine' against worse variants.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#202
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michael Shellenberger has done the same - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger has details, and see criticism of the Breakthrough Institute. Alex Gutentag seems to be a contributing editor to Compact, writing things like https://compactmag.com/article/how-mask-mandates-defaced-us . A brief review of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_(American_magazine) shows a lot of familiar names of people that p…

All you need for a market cluster is one infected person to visit once, & pass the infection along to one or more people who then also spend time there and pass it on. There's no challenging "why" needed.

The same explanation works in the other direction.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly off topic, but thanks to your first link I was just doing some satellite image sightseeing of Wuhan and noticed that on Google maps the streets are offset about 3 blocks east of where they should be. It's fairly obvious here [1] where the curved road extends out into a lake. Not saying this means anything, just found it amusing. 1. https://maps.app.goo.gl/reVDkMAhfMRbv1uJ8

It's fairly well-known [0] that China messes with maps data and forces Google to do so. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

I just want to add to this that when I first heard about this virus I searched the WIV on Google Maps. I believe that was 14 January 2020. When I searched it again a few weeks later, the location on Google Maps had changed.

I have no screenshots of this, but I did find it quite odd at the time.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#205
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Close proximity is a bit of a stretch. This shows people catching colds in winter. The rest is speculation

> This shows people catching colds in winter. And hospitalized? That's a bit more uncommon than catching a cold.

No it isn’t.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#206
post #77

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Twitter's own legal team has categorically said that the "Twitter Files" show no such thing. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/06/tech/twitter-files-lawyer...

The COVID vaccine reduce transmission, as demonstrated by the analysis of infections in prisons.

COVID causes far more heart complications than the COVID.

COVID totally has caracteristic found in nature; see SARS epidemic in 2003, or MERS.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#207
post #30

> "If you knew that this was likely a lab-enhanced pathogen, there are so many things you could have done differently" I'm curious - if we knew in March 2020 that covid came from a lab, what _would_ we have done differently?

In 2020 Luc Montagnier identified Covid-19 as a lab creation and predicted that, because the original strain was unnatural, later strains would be less problematic as the virus reverted to its true (less problematic) nature. In contrast, the public health conversation was about a permanent threat and how much worse can it get and generally government running around hair-on-fire. Maybe the initial quarantine recommend…

How does the virus have a "true nature", and why would it revert to it?

My understanding is that that viruses are well known to become more infectious and less symptomatic as they mutate over time. The reason for this is that causing the host to quickly hole up reduces the chance of replication.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#208
post #59
post #22

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Play the ball, not the player.

This is a nice sentiment but it just doesn’t hold up in the real world.

I’m making this statement generally as opposed to about Matt Taibbi: I don’t really follow him so I’m not evaluating him personally, just your statement in general.

I have a finite amount of time. I don’t have time to “play the ball” given how many balls are out there. Particularly if the player has proven to be a low signal-to-noise ratio source in the past.

I even do this with colleagues as well as media sources. I give people the benefit of the doubt in the beginning, but if you’ve got a track record of not having useful information for me, then I will disregard what you have to say. I’m not going to be mean about it. I might even try to give a heads up about why I think you’re not correct.

But I value my time and eventually it’s just not worth the expenditure.

So no, I’m not going to play the ball: I’ll play the player if their track record is poor. Am I going to miss out on occasion? Sure. But I just don’t have infinite time so I use heuristics and accept imperfection.

There’s another dimension of this discussion about sphere of awareness versus sphere of influence and the utility (or lack thereof) when the former is much larger than the latter. But I will sum my position up by saying that I mostly try to align them.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, given your prescience about the origin of COVID, how did that influence the actions you took to mitigate its effects?

I lived alone, stayed isolated, kept healthy and exercised, took reasonable precautions while outside, and... because this is what you're really asking... chose not to get any vaccination, because data by July 2021 showed its effectiveness waned after three months and I had no plans within the next six months to interact with any crowds or expose myself to another individual for more than fifteen minutes. Then in Dec…

Interestingly, you did much the same thing I did despite my belief that the virus arose naturally (seemed reasonable since viruses have risen naturally for give or take a billion years). I practiced the extreme social distancing for about a year since the vaccines were not available and wore KN95 masks the rare and brief times I was indoors with anyone else. I did start getting the vaccines at some point in 2021 though I was hardly in a rush and then pretty much dropped most precautions in March 2022 figuring that 2 years was about as much as I wanted to do. And then I finally got a confirmed covid case in April of this year which left me pretty weak but functional for about 36 hours and then it passed. I do think that getting a vaccine now and again probably kept the illness mild, but I suppose who can say - I certainly recommend them to people based on my experience. While I have a friend who was practically laid out by the innoculation, all I got was a little soreness.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#210
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this similar to how the US used to mandate that civilian use of GPS was off by a certain amount?

A bit different. The GPS restriction was to prevent GPS on a device moving over 400 mph (I think that's roughly the speed?), and to limit accuracy to within a few meters rather than a few centimeters. The restrictions were intended to prevent the use of civilian GPS systems in precision missiles. Not a lot of civilian uses require anywhere near that speed or accuracy. It's a lot harder to justify grossly inaccurate g…

you're referring to the CoCom Limits on GPS receives, which limits functionality when the device is moving faster than 1,900 km/h aka 1,200 mph) and/or at an altitude higher than 18,000 m (59,000 ft), so you can't build a home made ICBM with it. Technically it's supposed to be and and not or, and high altitude amateur aerial ballonists tend to hit that flight ceiling, and so have a list of chipsets they can use in their balloons that don't stop working when they get too high.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_M...

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