New Covid-19 Thread

[Chris Coles]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

[QUOTE=Techdread;320320][QUOTE=shiny!;320318]The censorship, propaganda and thought control is so pervasive, I feel like I'm in the old Soviet Union that we schoolchildren were taught to abhor. 9/11 brought us the TSA and the end to travel privacy. Pretty soon we're going to be hearing "Papers, please!" just to be out on the street. [\QUOTE]

You have no bloody clue, how the old Soviet Union was none, so please don't equate a little hardship to save others and probably your life.

You need to get hold of a copy of Plague of Corruption, Restoring faith in the promise of science by Dr. Judy Mikovits & Kent Heckenlively, JD and at the least, read the Foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, JR. When you do so you will discover that even the Soviets did not stoop so low as to harm the health of millions of their citizens; no excuses, read it.

[Woodsman]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

[Techdread]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Chris, you were asking why not publish that post as some sort of samizdat? I'd think not for precisely the reasons demonstrated here by our resident communist and big swingin' d*ck MD.

Captain: "You gonna get used to wearing them chains after a while, Luke. Don't you never stop listening to them clinking, 'cause they gonna remind you what I been saying for your own good."

Luke: "I wish you'd stop being so good to me, Cap'n."

Captain: "Don't you ever talk that way to me. NEVER! NEVER!

"What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach."

Nothing wrong with being a socialist, well I see mcCarthyism is still going strong in 20's US.

But hey thank you Woodsman for defending our rights!

Because you Americans are free thinking individuals.

[Techdread]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Youtube had been censoring a lot of early information on the plague. Maybe Americans should collectively sue Youtube for collaboration with the perpetrators?

Oh good idea, good luck in suing an algorithm.

[Techdread]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

freedom of the press exists solely for those who own presses. iirc the "fairness doctrine" went away in 1987.

i've seen videos of people screaming about their freedom to refuse to wear masks. for some reason i haven't seen anyone make the obvious response: this store is private property and the freedom of the owners allows them - within the law relating to e.g. racial discrimination - to determine who may enter. if you have no mask the owners may decide that you are not welcome, and if you enter you are trespassing. why does the "freedom" of the mask-refusers allow them the right to enter others private property?

and why does the "freedom" of any individual allow them the right to spread information or communicate at all on someone else's privately owned network?

the alternative is for communication networks to be regulated as utilities. that would stir up its own hornets nest, but would allow for a political "solution."

Well said.

Woodsman and his ilk cry about censorship, when there has never been a time where people of like minds can band together and find the material they say is censored.
You don't even have to leave your house like the old days!

[Techdread]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

[QUOTE=shiny!;320318]The censorship, propaganda and thought control is so pervasive, I feel like I'm in the old Soviet Union that we schoolchildren were taught to abhor. 9/11 brought us the TSA and the end to travel privacy. Pretty soon we're going to be hearing "Papers, please!" just to be out on the street. [\QUOTE]

You have no bloody clue, how the old Soviet Union was none, so please don't equate a little hardship to save others and probably your life.

Anybody else notice how, while barbershops and beauty salons have gone out of business and none of us could get haircuts because, social distancing! ... all the news anchors and politicians posing for the cameras are always perfectly coiffed? How on earth did they get their hair and makeup done while 6 feet away from the hair and makeup person? But hey, we're all in this together!

Moaning about getting a haircut really? who is going to see you if your're in lockdown? as for barbershop in London a lot of people start by doing it home and the move to a shop later, with rents going down for shops i expect there will be a quick bounce back to normal times. That goes for a lot of business, some in the home improvement businesses Gardeners, Builders, Plumbers etc should do better as business let their employees work at home more often.

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Youtube had been censoring a lot of early information on the plague. Maybe Americans should collectively sue Youtube for collaboration with the perpetrators?

The censorship, propaganda and thought control is so pervasive, I feel like I'm in the old Soviet Union that we schoolchildren were taught to abhor. 9/11 brought us the TSA and the end to travel privacy. Pretty soon we're going to be hearing "Papers, please!" just to be out on the street.

Anybody else notice how, while barbershops and beauty salons have gone out of business and none of us could get haircuts because, social distancing! ... all the news anchors and politicians posing for the cameras are always perfectly coiffed? How on earth did they get their hair and makeup done while 6 feet away from the hair and makeup person? But hey, we're all in this together!

[touchring]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Youtube had been censoring a lot of early information on the plague. Maybe Americans should collectively sue Youtube for collaboration with the perpetrators?

[Woodsman]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Chris, you were asking why not publish that post as some sort of samizdat? I'd think not for precisely the reasons demonstrated here by our resident communist and big swingin' d*ck MD.

Captain: "You gonna get used to wearing them chains after a while, Luke. Don't you never stop listening to them clinking, 'cause they gonna remind you what I been saying for your own good."

Luke: "I wish you'd stop being so good to me, Cap'n."

Captain: "Don't you ever talk that way to me. NEVER! NEVER!

"What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach."

[jk]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

freedom of the press exists solely for those who own presses. iirc the "fairness doctrine" went away in 1987.

i've seen videos of people screaming about their freedom to refuse to wear masks. for some reason i haven't seen anyone make the obvious response: this store is private property and the freedom of the owners allows them - within the law relating to e.g. racial discrimination - to determine who may enter. if you have no mask the owners may decide that you are not welcome, and if you enter you are trespassing. why does the "freedom" of the mask-refusers allow them the right to enter others private property?

and why does the "freedom" of any individual allow them the right to spread information or communicate at all on someone else's privately owned network?

the alternative is for communication networks to be regulated as utilities. that would stir up its own hornets nest, but would allow for a political "solution."

[Techdread]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

You admit that you have no argument, making your case entirely on appeals to authority and ad-hominem attacks, and yet insist that I'm the one incapable of considering the available evidence and that my mind is filled with garbage.

That's an interesting perspective, bpr. Almost charming in its child-like attachment to authority figures and lacking a scintilla of self-awareness, but interesting.

Update: Did anyone notice the censors deleted the video in question? I have to wonder, if its mere fringe, why bother censoring it? Why not let the truth or falsehood of it stand on its own?

I'm old enough to remember a time when those of us of a liberal mindset who considered themselves committed to free inquiry held the view that the best way to expose spurious argumentation was to air the information openly, understanding that the truth would out and required nothing more than a fair hearing. Now it seems that's not the case. Someone in authority has decided which ideas we get to contemplate and which ones we won't, which institutions and figures are open to criticism and which ones are to be protected from it. All in the name of science and free speech, of course.

What utter bollocks, I'm sure Google - YouTube thought that right up to ISIS started posting recruiting videos. Now we have Flat earther's. anti-vaccinations videos to deal with, The older generation is so stupid they believe that if it is in video that it must by true. My 3 year old has more critical thinking skills than the Boomer generation.

Now some seem entirely at ease with this consistent and accelerating pattern of powerful plutocratic institutions collaborating with the centralized government to control what ideas people around the world are permitted to share with each other. These people seem to believe that authoritarian control over the ideas people are allowed to discuss is somehow less dangerous than the ideas themselves. Instead of asking calmly if something works, or if a response has merit, or questioning certain assumptions about institutions and its leaders, or that they might be off track or oriented toward a particularly sub-optimal outcome, we denounce the questions and the questioner as infamous. Now questions of reliability and authoritativeness are important, certainly. And if one examines which content is always considered “authoritative”, you’ll find a bunch of elite media, corporate, and government outlets who have consistently lied to the world about such items of import as war, peace, wealth, health, and liberty.

This has always been the case, go look up how many of your fellow countrymen let alone the world died of the Spanish Flu (Kansas flu). The media Governments would find it near impossible to cover that up in this day, Communist China would have a hard time.

It seems that this has become the dividing line between free men and mere subjects, the smart and the dull. But does a free being in possession of a healthy intellect really need an alliance of plutocrats and government agencies to protect their mind from dangerous ideas? Should a person of intellect, committed to free inquiry, want an alliance of plutocrats and government agencies to exert control over what ideas they are permitted to share and what thoughts they are permitted to think? Is it smart to encourage a paradigm where human communication (and thereby thought) is controlled by vast unaccountable power structures which benefit from the absence of dissent? And is this widespread decline in respect for “experts” among the mass society a problem with the masses or with the experts themselves?

There are limits to what everyone should be exposed to.
I know people whom worked in the police force whom have been damaged at looking at horrific pornographic images of children for instance, I also think a lot of material will have to be censored from the public as groups get smarter because as tech gets cheaper it is getting cheaper for groups with agenda to pursue/carry out their aims.

The vast majority of unlettered laypeople seem smart enough to understand that experts get things wrong for reasons that are innocent (they’ve all been taught the same incorrect thing in school) and less innocent (they have a financial or professional interest in denying the truth). Despite lacking credentials, they have studied the behavior and work products of "authorities” long enough to recognize some important patterns. The mass of people have come to appreciate the untrustworthy nature of authorities, that they have an interest in denying some truths, that insular communities of subject matter experts tend to coalesce around orthodoxies that make them blind, and that as such, they often try to define truth as being whatever they say it is. Maybe it was Vietnam or the WMD fiasco, where experts of military rank and titles presented us false argument and false evidence that led to decades of pointless war? Maybe it was Russiagate, a story fueled by intelligence experts with grand titles who are now proven to have been wrong to a spectacular degree, if not actually criminally liable in pushing a fraud? Maybe it was the Tuskegee Experiment, or Thalidomide, or Vioxx? And maybe the response to COVID-19 was the last straw?

The vast majority of laypeople would not even been born if it were not for experts and if born lead more suffering lives, modern society was and still is dependent on experts and the institutions they form, How I wish Carl Sagan was still alive.
Of course experts get things wrong, they are not Gods. And anyway it is for experts to advise and politicians to to make the final decisions. Though with Trump and Boris in charge I wish we had some expert politicians.

But the functional impact of censorship enforced by social scolding and finger-wagging of the sort bpr exhibited is to stamp out discussion of things that do actually need to be discussed, like the capture of regulatory and scientific institutions by corporate and financial interests, or institutional figures with lingering questions over their ethics and financial/professional incentives, or when the damage to the economy becomes as significant a threat to the public as the pandemic. We do actually have to talk about this. We can’t not talk about it out of fear of being censored, or because we’re confusing real harm with political harm, or because we fear people who enforce orthodoxy by name calling, insults, and the threat of social isolation.

Nothing wrong with discussions.. But your mind seems to be made up already. you and your type think everything is a conspiracy and value money over lives.
While I agree that an indefinite lock-down would bring greater harm, Governments were right to stop the virus taking out their health systems.
Hopefully we will have good data so we can form a better response next time, which I have no doubt will be the case because of the economic cost of this crisis.

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

The theory that this was an accidental release from a lab keeps popping up, this time in Sky News Australia. I'm not familiar with Sky News. Are they considered MSM or tabloid? (not that there's much difference between them anymore).

Coronavirus may have been a 'cell-culture experiment' gone wrong
Sharri Markson|24/05/2020

EXCLUSIVE: The coronavirus that has become a world-wide pandemic may have been created in a “cell-culture experiment” in a laboratory, according to prominent scientists who have conducted ground-breaking research into the origins of the virus.

Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky has completed a scientific study, currently undergoing peer review, in conjunction with La Trobe University in Victoria, which found COVID-19 was uniquely adapted for transmission to humans, far more than any other animal, including bats.

Professor Petrovsky, from the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University who has spent the past 20 years developing vaccines against pandemic influenza, Ebola and animal SARS, said this highly unusual finding left open the possibility that the virus leaked from a laboratory.

“The two possibilities which I think are both still open is that it was a chance transmission of a virus from an as yet unidentified animal to human. The other possibility is that it was an accidental release of the virus from a laboratory,” he said.

“Certainly we can’t exclude the possibility that this came from a laboratory experiment rather than from an animal. They are both open possibilities.”

Professor Petrovsky, who is the Chairman and Research Director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, said COVID-19 has genetic elements similar to bat coronaviruses as well as other coronaviruses.

The way coronavirus enters human cells is by binding to a protein on the surface of lung-cells called ACE2. The study showed the virus bound more tightly to human-ACE2 than to any of the other animals they tested.

“It was like it was designed to infect humans,” he said.

“One of the possibilities is that an animal host was infected by two coronaviruses at the same time and COVID-19 is the progeny of that interaction between the two viruses.

“The same process can happen in a petri-dish. If you have cells in culture and you have human cells in that culture which the viruses are infecting, then if there are two viruses in that dish, they can swap genetic information and you can accidentally or deliberately create a whole third new virus out of that system.

“In other words COVID-19 could have been created from that recombination event in an animal host or it could have occurred in a cell-culture experiment.”

Professor Petrovsky was originally modelling the virus in January to prepare a vaccine candidate. He then turned his attention to “explore what animal species might have been involved in the transmission to humans” to understand the origins of the virus - and had a “surprising” result when none were well-adapted.

“We found that the COVID-19 virus was particularly well-adapted to bind to human cells and that was far superior to its ability to bind to the cells of any other animal species which is quite unusual because typically when a virus is well-adapted to an animal and then it by chance crosses to a human, typically, you would expect it to have lower-binding to human cells than to the original host animal. We found the opposite so that was a big surprise,” he said.

Scientists worldwide have, to date, overwhelmingly said the virus was more likely originated in a wet-market and was not created in a laboratory.

Even the United States Office of National Intelligence ruled out COVID-19 being created in a laboratory.

Asked why scientists have had this view, Professor Petrovsky said scientists “try not to be political” and do not want their research impacted adversely by tighter laboratory controls.

“We just try to base our findings on facts rather than taking particular political positions but sometimes obviously the alternatives may have unintended consequences,” he said.

“For instance, if it was to turn out that this virus may have come about because of an accidental lab release that would have implications for how we do viral research in laboratories all around the world which could make doing research much harder.

“So I think the inclination of virus researchers would be to presume that it came from an animal until proven otherwise because that would have less ramifications for how we are able to do research in the future. The alternative obviously has quite major implications for science and science on viruses, not just obviously political ramifications which we’re all well aware of.”

Professor Petrovsky said an inquiry needs to start straight away, not when the pandemic is finished.

“The idea of putting it off to the pandemic is over, it would be a mistake,” he said.

“I’m certainly very much in favour of a scientific investigation. It’s only objective should be to get to the bottom of how did this pandemic happen and how do we prevent a future pandemic…. not to have a witch-hunt.”

[Chris Coles]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

It sure is. If this was 1776 this would be printed and distributed on a Thomas Paine-like pamphlet.

Shiney! you make an excellent point; we should print it and distribute it as a pamphlet; it is a wonderful example of what one might describe as words with meaning. Many of us can talk the hind leg off the proverbial donkey, yet never make sufficient sense; where this makes perfect sense; a simple description of the entire debate. So now we need Woodsman to allow us to distribute it. In my case, I had written to the editor of the Sunday Times in London, never to get an answer; this is the perfect response to anyone who refuses to listen; all we need to do is change bpr for whomever we wish to target as an audience. So, come on Woody, and of course EJ, as it first appeared here on itulip. Let the printing presses roll . . .

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Perfect reply!

It sure is. If this was 1776 this would be printed and distributed on a Thomas Paine-like pamphlet.

[Chris Coles]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

You admit that you have no argument, making your case entirely on appeals to authority and ad-hominem attacks, and yet insist that I'm the one incapable of considering the available evidence and that my mind is filled with garbage.

That's an interesting perspective, bpr. Almost charming in its child-like attachment to authority figures and lacking a scintilla of self-awareness, but interesting.

Update: Did anyone notice the censors deleted the video in question? I have to wonder, if its mere fringe, why bother censoring it? Why not let the truth or falsehood of it stand on its own?

I'm old enough to remember a time when those of us of a liberal mindset who considered themselves committed to free inquiry held the view that the best way to expose spurious argumentation was to air the information openly, understanding that the truth would out and required nothing more than a fair hearing. Now it seems that's not the case. Someone in authority has decided which ideas we get to contemplate and which ones we won't, which institutions and figures are open to criticism and which ones are to be protected from it. All in the name of science and free speech, of course.

Now some seem entirely at ease with this consistent and accelerating pattern of powerful plutocratic institutions collaborating with the centralized government to control what ideas people around the world are permitted to share with each other. These people seem to believe that authoritarian control over the ideas people are allowed to discuss is somehow less dangerous than the ideas themselves. Instead of asking calmly if something works, or if a response has merit, or questioning certain assumptions about institutions and its leaders, or that they might be off track or oriented toward a particularly sub-optimal outcome, we denounce the questions and the questioner as infamous. Now questions of reliability and authoritativeness are important, certainly. And if one examines which content is always considered “authoritative”, you’ll find a bunch of elite media, corporate, and government outlets who have consistently lied to the world about such items of import as war, peace, wealth, health, and liberty.

It seems that this has become the dividing line between free men and mere subjects, the smart and the dull. But does a free being in possession of a healthy intellect really need an alliance of plutocrats and government agencies to protect their mind from dangerous ideas? Should a person of intellect, committed to free inquiry, want an alliance of plutocrats and government agencies to exert control over what ideas they are permitted to share and what thoughts they are permitted to think? Is it smart to encourage a paradigm where human communication (and thereby thought) is controlled by vast unaccountable power structures which benefit from the absence of dissent? And is this widespread decline in respect for “experts” among the mass society a problem with the masses or with the experts themselves?

The vast majority of unlettered laypeople seem smart enough to understand that experts get things wrong for reasons that are innocent (they’ve all been taught the same incorrect thing in school) and less innocent (they have a financial or professional interest in denying the truth). Despite lacking credentials, they have studied the behavior and work products of "authorities” long enough to recognize some important patterns. The mass of people have come to appreciate the untrustworthy nature of authorities, that they have an interest in denying some truths, that insular communities of subject matter experts tend to coalesce around orthodoxies that make them blind, and that as such, they often try to define truth as being whatever they say it is. Maybe it was Vietnam or the WMD fiasco, where experts of military rank and titles presented us false argument and false evidence that led to decades of pointless war? Maybe it was Russiagate, a story fueled by intelligence experts with grand titles who are now proven to have been wrong to a spectacular degree, if not actually criminally liable in pushing a fraud? Maybe it was the Tuskegee Experiment, or Thalidomide, or Vioxx? And maybe the response to COVID-19 was the last straw?

But the functional impact of censorship enforced by social scolding and finger-wagging of the sort bpr exhibited is to stamp out discussion of things that do actually need to be discussed, like the capture of regulatory and scientific institutions by corporate and financial interests, or institutional figures with lingering questions over their ethics and financial/professional incentives, or when the damage to the economy becomes as significant a threat to the public as the pandemic. We do actually have to talk about this. We can’t not talk about it out of fear of being censored, or because we’re confusing real harm with political harm, or because we fear people who enforce orthodoxy by name calling, insults, and the threat of social isolation.

Perfect reply!