Much of this reminds me of how we went to war against Iraq
The lead author of the WSJ piece on the "sick lab workers" is the same author that helped get us into Iraq with a NYT article on Hussein's nuclear WMD program in 2002.
The lead author of the WSJ piece on the "sick lab workers" is the same author that helped get us into Iraq with a NYT article on Hussein's nuclear WMD program in 2002.
If you’re looking for someone with a clean record commenting on the viability of the lab leak theory for months, take a look at Bret Weinstein.
Also, he and his brother have (IMHO) quite obvious inferiority complexes about their academic careers. So much of what they both say boils down to how the academic system doesn't respect their intelligence, and implied is that they deserve it.
I mean, who doesn't feel that way about their field? But to speak at length on podcasts about it, which are only popular due to Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, is pretty exhausting to me.
In general there's a fine line to walk with being cautious around vaccines vs 100% assuming they are safe, but he got it wrong with the guest he had on talking about cytotoxic spike proteins in the vaccine. At least that seems to be the overall scientific consensus that I've seen (but who knows! it's a rapidly evolving topic!).
Relevant:
" “The sound bite ‘SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is toxic’ is not technically wrong—also not news at per se—but that has nothing to do with overall established safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, especially the mRNA vaccines,” Lee said.
That’s in part because, according to Machamer, the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2 is different than the spike protein created after the administration of the mRNA vaccines.
“The vaccine, at least the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines, the mRNA vaccines, they supply the information to make spike, but it’s not exactly the spike that’s in the virus,” she said.
“There are changes that were made on purpose that would prevent the spike protein from being able to undergo binding to the receptor and fusion,” Machamer explained. “And so, all this business about toxicity that has been shown for the real spike protein, the one that doesn't have that block, is totally irrelevant for the vaccine.” "
Source: https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/v...
That said, I take everything he and his brother Eric say with a large pinch of salt - they are clearly both very intelligent but I don’t like this cult leader like absolute certainty of their own ideas and the audience (and revenue) building based on controversy and semi-conspiracy. I think it’s essential to have many voices though so I welcome what they are bringing in to the mix, but personally for me it gets tiring after a couple of podcasts.
Reported minimum 6k deaths and double that in UK, only a minimum because the standards for incontrovertible linkage is high and fwiw Bret and co hear from physicians who claim their reports aren't being accepted.
The rates are higher in younger people than in covid deaths.
Clinical trials are halted after 1000x less death.
He is more than just an “expert”
He made the claim that the spike protein is cytotoxic. He notified the FDA
And FDA has claimed it is not without any evidence
They're found not only in many other coronaviruses, but they've independently evolved over 6 times that we know about, and they've now been found in SARS-CoV-2 related sarbecoviruses in bats.
The goalpost moving has migrated to arguing that a couple of sequences in the furin sites are now "unusual". Kristian Andersen, whose early 2020 e-mail to Fauci has been passed around as evidence of the lab leak theory has more recently talked to the NYT about this:
> Furin cleavage sites are found all across the coronavirus family, including in the betacoronavirus genus that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to. There has been much speculation that patterns found in the virus’s RNA that are responsible for certain portions of the furin cleavage site represent evidence of engineering. Specifically, people are pointing to two “CGG” sequences that code for the amino acid arginine in the furin cleavage site as strong evidence that the virus was made in the lab. Such statements are factually incorrect.
> While it’s true that CGG is less common than other patterns that code for arginine, the CGG codon is found elsewhere in the SARS-CoV-2 genome and the genetic sequence[s] that include the CGG codon found in SARS-CoV-2 are also found in other coronaviruses. These findings, together with many other technical features of the site, strongly suggest that it evolved naturally and there is very little chance somebody engineered it.
And "surprising genome snippets" don't get you past the fact that the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 is still decades of evolution away from being SARS-CoV-2 which is not something that can be engineered in the lab.
See this article for a lot more:
https://newrepublic.com/article/162689/bats-covid-19-lab-lea...