Bill Maher invites guests to talk about The "lab" origins of SARS-CoV-2 - aka "The coronavirus"

[Deleted member 42253]

I guess I really should pay attention to the rest of the world more; I'm a little shocked to hear that some governments actively did worse than Trump did in this.

So far only the UK(which is a giant disappointment) and Brazil, which was to be expected.

Look at it from the bright side, many governments have done really great(Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, all Island nations except the UK, the whole of Australia, all the nordic nations, except Sweden, and China) and lots of government have done much better than anyone would have expected, like Greece and the whole continent of Africa. Honestly, cant praise the Greek government enough, no clue how they did it.

And I am making use of the Corona tracker to try to memorize all the countries in the world .. keeps me from getting nightmares after looking at the numbers. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Always look on, the bright side of life.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Psikh - I'd recommend you get your facts from a far more reliable source than 21st.

First, let's quickly establish a metric of what's bad - there are many ways to do this, but I would suggest that one most would agree is reasonable is covid related deaths per million.

COVID-19 deaths per capita by country | Statista

COVID deaths worldwide were highest in Peru, topping a list that compares deaths per million in 210 countries worldwide.

www.statista.com

You can rank nations (with reported data) by deaths per million, and one of the first things you'll see which comes as a big surprise is that there's an entire page of nations before the UK and the US, for example.

Peru, for example, has experienced 5804.5 per million as compared to the US with 1819.52 per million - that's a sizeable difference.

Why I think this comes as a surprise is because the US and UK did so badly early in the virus' spread, but eventually enacted some of the strictest legislation and put the most resources into place to counter it. They did shit at the outset, but then improved dramatically later.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

The "death in the last 7 days" from yours is pretty interesting.

And yeah, impossible to accuratly rank countries on how bad or good they did, too many factors to consider, Time, distance to the outbreak, geographical advantages, disadvantages, infrastructure, population, population density, cultural quirks etc..
I tend to just compare countries to their neighbors or similiar countries.

Still, seems safe to say that the US and UK did pretty badly, certainly could have done much better. Hope they got the worst of it behind em.

 

[Nesslig20]

I previously mentioned the Segreto and Deigin papers on the lab origin hypothesis for the virus, but here is Potholer again tackling the same paper and more.

 

[Sparhafoc]

It is fun when you react negatively to someone citing the Daily Mail and they respond by pretending that it's like shooting the messenger.

What they don't realize is that it's perfectly justified to shoot a messenger with a track history of bigotry, stupidity, abject failure of journalistic standards, and general malicious bullshit-mongering.

Get yourself a credible source instead of whining when no one takes your rag seriously.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Since it seems as apt here as anywehre, a quick and dirty debunk of some of the bollocks doing the rounds about herd immunity, masks,m etc...

Qualified Immunity

 

[Sparhafoc]

Since last I paid attention to his comments section, Potholer's viewership seems to have grown to include a large number of post-truthers trotting out the same lines, absent any clue, and yet oh so very convinced their special little ideas are true.

Not one of them seems able to understand that the complete absence of evidence does not give them license to contend that there's a grand conspiracy; quite the contrary, absent evidence you can retain the hypothesis for future consideration when some form of evidence is available, but you can't even justify that your own hypothesis has any real world merit at all, and no.... blaming your inability to uncover evidence for your Made In China hypothesis on the Chinese Communist Party's suspicious and secretive behavior doesn't absolve you of needing to have that evidence to justify the hypothesis in the first place.

It's like a litany of fallacies, predominantly genetic, but nearly every sentence contains examples of people clearly not giving any fucks about what's true, but launching into increasingly outrageous speculation as if merely being able to have ideas validates the truth or merit of that idea.

Creationism I think ushered this kind of bollocks in, but it's becoming ever more wide-spread in the West - I think post-truthism is the actual catalyst to many of our current woes, and it seems to me to be an example of Sagan's warning about the combustible mix of ignorance and technology, of scientifically dependent societies comprised of people completely unable to understand or engage with science or scientific reasoning. The internet is H sapiens tree to shake, or to squirt its urine up - yelling to anyone who will listen that I'm special, and those driven by irrationality have the most need to shout the loudest.

 

[Deleted member 619]

There's a degree to which I'm quite thankful for creationism. Who knows what a gullible fool I'd have been had I not gone there.

 

[Deleted member 619]

If anybody with expertise in immunology, epidemiology, virology or frankly, anything else, I'd appreciate a critical eye over that post. I didn't do much research. It's a gut response to some of the headlines here today with the first gobshiting outing of the arch-Randian that's just been appointed health secretary, so I favoured speed over diligence, and I may have dropped a bollock or two along the ride.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Interesting read.

I had a quick read through - here's some feedback:

So, the UK's gone from a randy'un to a Randian, eh?

Typos [corrections]:

However, if a new variant arises that has an advantage, such as being able to replicate slightly faster. [? I think you meant to say "faster, ,,,", where the ellipsis stands for whatever you meant to say here.]

We'll achieve herd immunity in prettyn short order, but the herd will be considerably smaller. [pretty]

Cleaning pathogens out of the air is highly effective, especially when combined with other things, like screens and masks, and regular handwashing, and not touching your hands too much. [face]

BMJ Letter to Sajid Javid detailing recommend precautions for schools, among other things. [recommended]

Suggestion:

I realise that your post is a very loose summary of what happens when a virus infects the body - I was just wondering about part of your explanatory text around the diagram.

Your T and B cells go into overdrive, throwing every kind of antibody at it, figuratively throwing shit at the wall literally to see what sticks. Once it finds a fit, it shifts into production of just the effective antibodies.

Not strictly true.

The kitchen-sink approach is correct, when there are three possibilities:

1) the virus is brought to a halt - win for the home team!;
2) the virus is slowed down giving the home team a chance to sort out a winning strategy;
3) nothing works - in the case of a new virus about which the body knows nothing, this is what happens.

However, in all cases, there are special white cells in the kitchen sink approach that break off bits of the virus and present them to the immune system to be back-engineered to develop special white cells specifically designed to combat this virus, These are then produced en masse to bind to the virus in a MAD approach - as I'm sure you know.

Just felt that your explanation gave the impression that it's something pre-existing in the "shit" that "fits", which is then produced en masse to defeat the virus.

Hope you don't mind the lese majeste on my part, Hack. *hides behind sofa*

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Deleted member 619]

Nota bit of it. That's solid clarification. I was very much in rant mode, so it was spitballing, with the only pause being to modify the diagram. Super valuable. Thanks.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Gads there are some outrageously ignorant people in PH's audience. I've still got a guy trying to tell me that his loaded questions don't need to be supported because China is being difficult so that's why there's no evidence for any of the unjustified presuppositions his questions are founded on.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Aha! Finally... after he's replied to me a dozen times, following me across multiple threads, I finally cornered him into providing some support for his contentions... his response, entirely predictably was:

I don't need to support what I said.
Every thing I said is true and easily provable.
Go look it up.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Ah, the old googleityourselfum.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Yup, thousands and thousands of words insinuating I am stupid or malicious for asking him to support his claims, and finally he exposes why: because he was just running his mouth, and can't muster a damn thing in support.

Now he's trying to make out that I am being unreasonable to ask him to support his claims because it's just a conversation, but of course he would provide citations if it wasn't obvious that I have malicious intent and thus wouldn't honestly engage with the citations he would provide in that hypothetical world.

And you have to remember, the barbaric incivility of maliciousness that started all this was me asking:

"Can you provide any citations supporting your questions?"

Downright provocative, innit?

 

[Deleted member 619]

And now, some exciting news about a groundbreaking new experiment in public health:

 

[Sparhafoc]

I've invited the guy here to represent himself as he clearly wants to prove that I am stupid and malicious.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Oh, goodie. It's gone all quiet now that Flouncy McFlounceface isn't here.

 

[Sparhafoc]

You're full of shit. You're a self admitted bad faith actor. Nobody has to justify anything to you. In your words, you're a clown that nobody has an obligation to take serious at any level. I'm not providing any "citations" for you, and I don't need to explain the one I provided for another person to you. If he has any follow questions I'd talk to him about it. You are inconsequential.

Isn't it funny the knots people tie themselves in when trying to protect themselves from acknowledging that they've got no good reasons for whatever silly little idea it is they've lent uncritical credence to.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Meanwhile, a critical update on a long-standing intercontinental competition. Just getting the final scores in and...