OTOH if we knew that China was responsible, won't the future be better served by putting safeguards to prevent a worse thing happening again?
from NIH https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/
"Ivermectin: an award-winning drug with expected antiviral activity against COVID-19... with demonstrated antiviral activity against a number of DNA and RNA viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)"
Whether or not ivermectin ultimately turned out to be efficacious against Covid19 is not the main point, it was/is a widely known, completely safe, anti-viral, and while everything else in the toolbag was being thrown at Covid19, ivermectin was a good candidate, especially since it showed positive results in some clinical conditions. (and I've heard it pointed out that in order to get profitable approval for experimental mRNA vaccines to be released, there was a huge financial incentive to declare a priori that ivermectin did not work)
If you "believe in science" you wouldn't call people who tried ivermectin "doofuses", doing so you're simply looking in the doofus mirror.
It's best not to join one partisan camp or the other and politicize science, but look at evidence. Ivermectin has well known antiviral properties, and coronavirus is a virus.
> I don't think that we would have done anything differently if we knew that China was responsible
you are fixating on the wrong aspect. Whether or not covid19 is the result of the leak of "man-made" gain-of-function research is extremely important to what we do in the future. The public has a right to know.
you keep arguing your own point here, that "no harm is no foul and we wouldn't have done anything differently so we don't need to look" and to me that's simply you saying you support the politics that played out and you don't want to look at it. To me, science was ignored in favor of politics and it's all exactly what I want to look at.
I do think knowing the actual source of COVID is good information to have.
Given it's long history and safety, why was this necessary? Much is learned in medicine by practitioners trying things and sharing their results amongst each other.
It astounds me how so many people continue to buy into the mainstream covid narrative. It just doesn't make any sense. Just doesn't add up. It never did.
I agree, there is no conspiracy. It is just that when scientists, journalists and public servants are usually on the same side of the political spectrum, there is no need to central coordination (conspiracy). Society seems more polarized than recent times which leads to greater uniformity of ideas on each side.
Regarding Ivermectin, though the evidence was flimsy, it got quickly identified by one side as a problem because it put at risk some core beliefs on how to combat the pandemic (lockdowns, forced vaccination, sanitary passes). Even though the evidence for some of these beliefs were also flimsy or speculative.
VACCINES
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31494-y
> Our results demonstrate that vaccinations reduce susceptibility to infection as well as infectiousness, which should be considered by policy makers when seeking to understand the public health impact of vaccination against transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
> The SAR [secondary attack rate] in household contacts exposed to the delta variant was 25% (95% CI 18–33) for fully vaccinated individuals compared with 38% (24–53) in unvaccinated individuals.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9807772/
> SAR was 35% and 23% for unvaccinated and vaccinated delta variant exposed contacts, respectively. SAR was 44% and 41% for unvaccinated and vaccinated omicron exposed contacts, respectively. Booster dose immunisation of contacts or vaccination of index cases reduced SAR of vaccinated omicron variant exposed contacts.
IVERMECTIN
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
> For outpatients, there is currently low‐ to high‐certainty evidence that ivermectin has no beneficial effect for people with COVID‐19. Based on the very low‐certainty evidence for inpatients, we are still uncertain whether ivermectin prevents death or clinical worsening or increases serious adverse events, while there is low‐certainty evidence that it has no beneficial effect regarding clinical improvement, viral clearance and adverse events. No evidence is available on ivermectin to prevent SARS‐CoV‐2 infection.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9308124/
> The evidence suggests that ivermectin does not reduce mortality risk and the risk of mechanical ventilation requirement. Although we did not observe an increase in the risk of adverse effects, the evidence is very uncertain regarding this endpoint.
The last time this happened we created the Nuremberg Code.
What would a modern day Nuremberg trial look like?
> Also, ivermectin has not been tested in any pulmonary cell lines, which are critical for SARS-CoV-2 in humans
> Furthermore, these authors did not show whether the reduction seen in RNA levels of SARS-CoV-2 following treatment with ivermectin would indeed lead to decreased infectious virus titers.
> Importantly, the drug concentration used in the study (5 μM) to block SARS-CoV-2 was 35-fold higher than the one approved by the FDA for treatment of parasitic diseases
"demonstrated" is doing a lot of lifting in that abstract given those caveats (and there's several more pages of caveats and "could", "maybe", "might", "may" hedging after those.)
The ivermectin stuff is irrelevant.
We also had doofuses claim masks won’t help and they flip flopped. They aren’t relevant either in a response for future containment and policy.
The doofuses directly and indirectly funded WIV and if shown that was harmful can act to stop that.
https://www.bbc.com/news/57932699.amp
Truth is always better even if no action is taken.
Its also worth noting that this was the direct result of off-shoring manufacturing to China, who could then threaten to withhold delivery of new PPE if they continued to pursuit the lab leak theory at the same time they were curtailing protests in Hong Kong and disspearing physicians who were speaking out about the severity of COVID and implementing their zero COVID policy and physically barricading people in their homes or comically netting them on the street.
I think HN has a this terrible need to play 'but my guy/source is more trust worthy because of X' the truth is all sides have an agenda, what I think is not in question is how revealing it was how little they respect the intelligence of the general public in what was thought to be a dire health crisis.
That's the ONLY real take away, sitting here and trying to distract from this fact, is the stark realization that there is a direct funding source for GoF viral studies provided by the NIH [0] shows that no party is innocent here.
In addition to that the CCP didn't allow investigations to take place effectively from the international community, and the subsequent floods that happened in Wuhan in 2020 ensured that the truth will likely never be known which is the best resolution to what is likely a complete debacle of epic proportions as plausible deniability and saber rattling in the Taiwan straight and the Russian invasion of Ukraine were enough to sweep things under the rug.
I unlike e rest of my friends worked in the health sciences, and to be honest I was the first to mention in my circle of friends that this was likely an unitentional lab leak situation I got the stink eye; it was because I saw what was happening in November in Hong Kong in '19 during the aftermath of the protests in the Summer that had escalated in intensity and were leading what was outright revolution as momentum increased. The Bird flu epidemic overwhelmed and devastated the medical system in HK and the CCP knew that (it was overrun by ill mainlanders) used that very real trauma and weaponized it in order force people to stop te protests in order to pass the NSL, jail dissidents and then weaponized zero COVID as a policy to illegally annex Hong Kong in direct violation of the hand-over and international law.
What was worse is the CCP forced the borders open during covid fir and used mainlanders as vectors for Chinese nationals into HK (and blatantly ignored or outright purposely spread infection) further prolonging and increasing infection rates needed to justify these measures in what was an unprecedented and alarming show of display as Lam and the police followed a more PLA playbook to handling the domestic situation.
Furthermore, the exiled virologist (Dr. Li-Meng Yan) who worked on at the WIV but was scrubbed fled the mainland and came out about the GoF work she had done there, but sadly because she was platformed by Trump affiliates her claims and work were disregarded showing how divisive and polarizing people were on this matter, despite the fact that the physician who spoke out about COVID early on died a terrible and painful death because the CCP wanted to make an example of him. This was wen clubhouse let mainlanders use a more open platform to communicate online mind you and riots were breaking out.
Again, if you think that health sciences isn't at it's core an immensely corrupt system and enterprise it's only because you neither worked in it or are benefiting from it being so. On need only look at the reputations pharma has, people like the Sacklers are only exploiting a very clear flaw in the medial system and know they can ultimately get a way with it due to the well understood conflicts of interests. It's the path of least resistance, and to think that nation states aren't looking out for their own interests an will lie and manipulate the population is the height of willful ignorance, especially since it's so very clearly effective: as seen here.
> Some of them said that. Many of them explicitly told the public that masks wouldn't help. However impeccable your motives for doing so, lying to the public should destroy your credibility.
As an Anarchist, if that were true than the entire enterprise of politics should collapse over night, but it doesn't because it is perhpas the most wide and willfully held form of ignorance and denial: we are too fixated on a chieftain based social order as a Species. Until we overcome this immense defect in the Human condition, you can rest assured that the most unscrupulous amongst us will continue to benefit and profit from this flawed system.
0: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-fu...
On one hand: yes, more data will inform future technical approaches and procedures.
On the other hand: no, people are technically ignorant, xenophobic, and more willing to scapegoat and project anger than reflect on their own behavior.
Like, in early 2020, when the CDC said masks were unnecessary, then that N95s were unnecessary, it was glaringly obvious that this was propaganda to keep the public from panic-buying PPE and causing shortages.
Some people believed them, took inadequate protections, got sick or died. It led to ineffective safety policies. It torched the CDC's credibility right out of the gate. They got called out later for flip-flopping. It led to "trust the science" being so ridiculed. Mostly, I got mad that it was such an obvious lie.
People knew things were not adding up. The mistrust drive them to search and search for answers, and if you search long enough on internet, something will turn up because search engine don't have discernment.
That created the breeding ground for conspiracy theorist to gain unprecedented audience.
Next crisis like this with chatGPT will be way more of this, imagine all the hallucinations.
The problem was the politicization, the dishonesty, the corruption.
Both camps were wrong plenty of times, none would admit to it, and public discourse suffered because neither side was willing to cede ground to actual science.
This one part is correct. For example, when they admitted to being wrong about masks after they had better information, lunatics claimed they were lying and corrupt. And they have been spreading wild-eyed propaganda to this day.
The argument, as far as I can tell, was just that the effect of different kinds of masks on covid transmission hadn't yet been studied. Which means that data was a priority, sure, but recommending masks as an initial precaution against an extremely contagious novel respiratory virus just seems sensible.
It's intellectually nasty and petty to spend more effort on pointing fingers than working through systemic failures and fixes.
As you said, everyone on all sides was in the wrong plenty of times.
And about what you'd expect! Having to make big calls on a novel situation with uncertain science. Nobody lucks into 100% correctness.
I'm from the south. I went to high school there, I got my college degree from there. I live there from the time I was born until my mid-20s. The south is full of racist, horrible people, it was common in my youth to hear people talk badly about Jewish people, people dropped the n word. I heard people talking about non-Christians shouldn't get to vote. I heard plenty of sexist words about women for men. It just beggars belief that you would never hear this kind of speech.
I just don't commonly hear this on the west coast in the US like I did in my years in the south. And unfortunately I still hear it when I go to visit.
Not everyone is like that! But enough people are that, so that you're going to encounter it over and over again.
Some of them are racist, millions of them are not.
Amazing these kinds of comments are allowed here. Imagine if someone made a similar comment about any other group other than "the south".
For the record, I am a brown immigrant living on the West coast.
Like it's all one thing.
You know, that big geographic area that's much larger than most countries in the world, with a population at least as diverse.
The most racist place I ever lived was about 30 mins from Philadelphia.
Grew up there, and there were literally burning crosses in people's yards and race riots in my high school.
I've lived in "the south" now for almost 20 years and never encountered even a fraction of the racism I saw growing up.
I'm sure you could find some more if you look.
It's over 38% of the county's population, and by far the most populous region of the U.S. [1].
You can find racism anywhere. Mostly in very small percentages, mostly in uneducated populations, and not restricted to any particular ethnicity.
[1]https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=gr...
Not all people are like that but there is an issue that a lot of people are like that.
> The amendment was approved with 59.5% voting yes, a 19 percentage point margin, though 25 of Alabama's 67 counties voted against it.
That was in 2000.
And just over 20 years before that there were riots in Boston over desegregation of schools.
It's so funny, this romantic notion that many from the north have of how supposedly enlightened they are, while the south is a bunch of backwater hicks. I know, I used to have it too, as did my wife then, who was Canadian. People thought we were crazy when we moved to Texas.
I really had my eyes opened. I encountered far more tolerance in Texas than anything I'd ever experienced up north.
Try being black in some communities in Vermont. See how well you do. Compare it with New Orleans.
Of course you can find racism and racist enclaves anywhere, but this asinine idea that "the south" is some sort of backwater racist hole while the north is a pristine liberal utopia is nonsense.
Also, I hate to disabuse you further, but I should also point out that the population of the capital of Alabama, Montgomery, is 60% black and 30% white. Whites are firmly a minority in the capital.
Atlanta: 50% black, 40% white. New Orleans: 60% black, 30% white.
I could go on, but it's boring. I'm not even listing any of the several large southern cities that are majority Hispanic.
The south has an incredibly diverse population. And sure, it had a dark history of racism (so does the north) but FFS it's not 1860 anymore.
I was not trying to pile on the south bashing so much as to simply point out that pockets most people would consider remarkably regressive persist, not specifically in the south per se, as just in North America at all. I was particularly interested in the last bit: 60% majority in favour, yet 25 counties majority against. Localized, varies by community. It's like that in Ontario too.
Try being black in South Dakota or Maine.
Racism and othering exists everywhere, but physical proximity and interaction with the class in question moderates it heavily. It's harder to hate someone you know personally: that's why segregationists were such staunch opponents of any social integration.
Doesn't matter. Truth should be prioritized first. There are mechanisms to deal with Xenophobia and hate and those should be strengthened.