https://youtu.be/q5SRrsr-Iug?t=1843
He's been the canary in the coal mine on numerous issues surrounding COVID.
edit: listen from 30:43, also from 25:11: https://youtu.be/q5SRrsr-Iug?t=1511
This is new. We don't know why the sequence was deleted; the submitter cited "version control" reasons (data was being submitted somewhere else) but then deleted both known copies.
"It turns out that mention of the sequencing project in question (PRJNA612766) also disappeared from China National GeneBank (CNGB) shortly after it was removed from the NIH Sequence Read Archive. (2/n)"
https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1407542296497688580?s=...
literally nothing in this article or in the sequences is indication of a lab leak.
it isn't even particularly clear there is any cover up here, particularly since an article on the sequences was published.
if there's any deliberate suppression it would seem to be to hide the fact that scientists were studying the virus sooner than previously admitted and that they should have raised the alarm earlier.
> I have titled follow the science except when we want you to follow us and we're just going to pretend it's because we're talking science. One of the many executive orders that Biden has introduce President Biden on January 21st requires masks in national parks. [...] News reports on this tend to say masks required inside and outside when in crowded areas like overlooks, which you know, that that would sound reasonable. That sounds like, yes a hundred percent when you're indoors with strangers you should be wearing masks at this point Correct and you know in a really crowded place on overlooks ah okay sure but the actual EO [says...] [{reading of section 1 second paragraph only}] Thank you Zach. So that doesn't actually specify that you're not required to wear a mask if you're away from people outside. And that worries me because everyone who spends any time outside now and you all should be. Especially if you should be in whatever form...
[1] - https://youtu.be/wndotTtBTZQ?t=2799 [2] - https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...
He's also been the carbon monoxide in the coal mine, steering people away from vaccines
The more people that are vaccinated, the shakier his argument becomes.
Covid19 has very real, well documented risks. The common vaccines have very low known risks by comparison. The space for unknown risks shrinks by the day.
That's the danger inherit with being a contrarian. Mostly you end up being wrong. It's a very important role though, to challenge accepted beliefs and create a dialog around them.
1. Not allowing dissenting opinions in the scientific community along with silencing any criticism from both media and big tech. If we are silencing dissenting view points, then are we really getting the truth?
2. Pushing it on pregnant women, kids and healthy youngsters where the risk vs reward isn't in favour.
3. Pushing it on people who have already recovered from COVID. There's no reason for this.
I was hoping that after what's happened in the last 1.5 year (and even past centuries), we would have learnt our lessons on how bad censorship is. But people don't learn their lessons. Bret correctly called it "intellectual authoritarianism".
He's completely right about 1 and 3.
His YouTube channel's already got strikes and videos taken down and demonetized. He's moving his podcast over to Odysee because of this. His ArticlesOfUnity twitter account (unrelated to COVID) was banned too.
I don't see a problem with the latter. It is almost always the latter.
That tells me nothing will change your mind as it indicates that you still think social media censorship is anywhere remotely fair.
Honestly, I'm seriously starting to doubt whether it's even remotely feasible to achieve herd immunity with the current vaccines - the Delta variant is looking really worrying on that front.
The Delta variant is more contagious, but has not demonstrated vaccine escape behavior against Pfizer and Moderna [1], and although efficacy was shown to be reduced by mutations in trials, both vaccines still successfully result in complete neutralization in of the virus by antibodies in test titres (in brief: you vaccinate people, then draw their blood and expose the antibodies to virus in vitro and see whether neutralization is effective - it was).
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/15/the-covid-delt...
The Shingrix vaccine is recommended for everyone over 50. It's a two-dose regimen to prevent shingles. If you've ever known anyone who has shingles, you'll rush to get those shots as soon as your doctor recommends it.
Guess what? The side effects can be rough. I know from personal experience: the second dose knocked me down for at least 24 hours. I felt awful and pretty much did nothing but sleep. By the evening of the next day, I was fine.
I also got my Pfizer vaccine shots around the same time, and had nothing worse than a sore arm. Even if someone had told me there was a 100% chance I'd have the same side effects from the COVID-19 vax as I did from Shingrix, I still wouldn't have hesitated. A day or two of feeling terrible versus the known dangers of COVID-19 is an easy choice.
Don't overplay the "major downside" bit.
Which COVID-19 vaccine did you get, and what side effects did you have, if any?
https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/feature/everythin...
It gives a lot of data on chances of symptoms and illness at various periods after the first and second doses from various studies, however the bottom line is that long term the national level studies show that:
“The vaccine also provided 97.2% protection against hospitalisation overall and 97.5% protection against severe and critical hospitalisation.”
These are outstanding results, among the best of any vaccine ever developed, and from studies of large a large and diverse population.
It was 100% effective is a study of 2,000 12-15 year olds. This is important because in countries like Brazil where the death rate is incredibly high, even the small fraction of victims that are children adds up to many hundreds, or even thousands of deaths.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-bret-weinste...