There is an old adage in political circles; “Deny, Deny, Deny”. Seems to be at work here, both in politics and in ‘elite professions’. It also seems that of late that outright lies have become ever more socially acceptable in western cultures. The consequences appear to be minor. It seems strange to me that an arm of the US government should choose to fund medical research in another country, unless they perhaps thought that distance offers safety. Don’t think they thought that one all the way through.
My wife worked for a major pharmaceutical company for five years. She was involved mostly with internal audits for compliance with FDA standards. At one point their department hired a Chinese national with a PhD. Great credentials, and a nice guy. However, he was not experienced with the degree of oversight and scrutiny required of medical related businesses operating in the US. An audit uncovered serious errors in his reports. He explained that flawed work, or data that did not meet expectations was routinely discarded. He considered it acceptable to make things “look better”. He was of course fired because the FDA considers that lying. I’m not an expert on cultures nor in China in general, but one has to ask if this is prevalent.
The studies described in you video involved modifying viruses from bats, then reinfecting new bats with the modified virus to see if it will continue to be contagious. Live bats are small flying rodents. To check for contagiousness, you would need to keep a bunch of them together. They would need to be kept in cages, and someone would need to handle them, for collecting samples, and even just for cleaning the cages. Ever have house mice, or in an out building. They are little Honey Badgers and they squeeze through the tiniest spaces. I’ll bet bats are worse, because they fly. Suppose something really simple happens, like someone forgets to properly latch a cage. You come back into the room later to discover that 11 of the 12 bats from an open cage are hanging from the overhead lights. You never find the 12th bat. If you are operating in a cultural environment that says it is acceptable to make things look good, then what you do is claim there always had been just 11 bats in the cage. I can’t say this is what actually happened, but we are all just human. It could all too easily be true.
I will be shocked if anyone ever comes clean on this.
joe quinn-
The approach you took here invites a shift toward culpability, away from solution oriented thinking, and dangerously invites more political agendas into the arena. I don’t think the public is equipped to think coherently about whose fault this was or what that might imply, and won’t be for a long time.Ooooh. The public is unable to think coherently. And you're worried about dangerous political agendas. We should really, really trust the apolitical, no-axe-to-grind, un-conflicted subject matter experts, is what you are saying. Well. I'm a member of the public. And I can think coherently. Just try me. Try facts. And evidence. Not hyperlinks. Lay it out for me in your own words. Make your case using reason, logic, and science.
…coming in to debunk or discredit, straight up or subtlely. Serious? This is the best you got?
Perhaps more importantly, the video skips the stated intention of the Ecohealth Alliance project. It was not to study gain of function as a mere academic curiosity but rather: to asses the risk of and explore the prevention of exactly the situation we are currently in.So, people form a study group about how to not burn down the barn, and those people succeed in burning down the barn (by accident or out of malice, whatever)... Who cares what the intent was (benign or malign), the outcome was heinous. This "review" of Dr. Chris' work is kinder than the one a few comments prior ("I think you need a weekend. I say this with empathy." >rolling eyes<), but it still reeks of sock puppetry. Is that a good paying gig? Undermining honest intellectual inquiry as to the state of things in this mad and maddening world? Get lost, y'all. Go plant a garden. You're gonna need one too. You think your paymasters give a tinker's cuss about your eventual end? I say this with empathy. I planted cassava, squash, kalo, garlic chives, turmeric, and vetiver today. In rain and sun and with my delighted 3 year-old by my side. Not even my own garden, just helping out a friend and her fam. A fine day on the human scale, out in the elements. Go find your humanity -- I wish for you the same. Soon as you get out from underneath the false sun of your laptop. VIVA -- Sager
I live in an apartment in New York City. I can’t plant a garden. My interest is in survival and facts I can do something with so that less of my friends and neighbors die, which is what attracted me a couple months ago to this site.
I was remembering all the talk and analysis of the 9/11 event. It went on for years. I believe that the final thought that stood out firmly, meaning we could “hang our hat on it” was building #7. It was a controlled demolition.
What about this situation? There is plenty of evidence from all over the world that HCQ + Zinc works quite well with few if any problems. Fauci is against it. I rest my case.
While showing the personal links between some of these researchers and funding organizations is valid reporting, there’s a bit too much of the “conspiracy nutter” in the tone. Dr. Martenson should be using the same level of skepticism on these reports’ conclusions as he does on the Chinese case/fatality reporting.
I have long thought that the SARS-CoV-II virus is a chimera, in part because of its size. Quick background: a chimera would be created if a host cell were infected by more than one virus; the hijacked cell machinery would make the components of both viruses and do its best to assemble them (not all, or even many, would be viable).
There is an old (2010) article describing the original SARS-Cov as a possible chimera (the conclusions section is frighteningly prophetic) <https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/7/3134>
There’s an article at “The Conversation” covering the possibility <https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analysis-suggests-two-viruses-may-have-combined-134059> and links to a preprint <https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.17.951335v1>
Of course, a natural origin is not nearly as much much fun as finding some humans to blame. How may “witches” have been burned in that cause?
So you need to package a political narrative to keep the 99% pacified…
Which works best?
A). SARS Cov 2 is a nasty terrible virus that is an act of nature, it was always going to happen spontaneously and it has had a cataclysmic outcome, however isn’t the planet a nicer, cleaner, brighter… greener environment as a result.
B). SARS Cov 2 is a nasty terrible virus that is a lab born experiment gone catastrophically wrong, its research that should have been banned from the outset, it has had a cataclysmic outcome, however isn’t the planet a nicer, cleaner, greener… environment as a result.
We all know the players who benefit from this outbreak, oligarchs, bankers, five eyes backed politicos of all colours hues and perspective. They are all in the same club, and you’re not in it.
We all knew life on a finite planet was no longer working for the increasingly poor, disfranchised and as Kissinger defined it “Useless Eaters…”
The grand cull is in traction, welcome to the Depop/Defrag 2.0 global agenda.
What can you do about it?
First think of yourselves as you truly are - gladiator slave performers bound to entertain in a global amphitheatre…
So smile and kneel as you take your Gates/Fauci/Brix/ endorsed vaccines, which will be an annual subscription based deal for sure.
It’s for the greater good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9_gY43iIns
Is it a conspiracy theory? Or a real issue, that we should address later? Why should we address it later if its just a conspiracy theory?
At this point in time we are dealing with an ongoing pandemic, so on the list of priorities where would you place addressing/investigating conspiracy theories?
Or are you just throwing everything you have at Chris’s evidence – and clearly you don’t have much – and hoping that something sticks?
We sure are gaining more and more knowledge of the SARS CoV 2 virus as the pandemic progresses. I t just makes more sense to wait and gather more information. Once this pandemic is over people will be (hopefully) more rational and therefore in a far better position to investigate - and remove political agendas, which unfortunately can be found at the root of conspiracy theories.
Thanks SandPuppy and Janie-Em. That information presents a pretty compelling case that SARS COV 2 could not possibly have originated in nature, but almost certainly originated as the bastard child of its architects, the United States National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
Now that we have the smoking gun proving who commissioned, funded, and defined safety protocols for enhancement of function genetic engineering of the SARS COV virus at the Wuhan Institute, who cares about who, how or why it slipped out of the lab?
It seems Dr. Fauci owes the whole world an explanation why, in full awareness that the risks of this happening were never zero, NIAID went ahead anyhow?
This seems like a “dumb” question but here goes: So our bodies consist of 6 trillion cells and we contain 60 trillion bacteria and 360 trillion viruses. Since viruses don’t reproduce, where do they come from?
…but I fear that you might have been a bit harsh here:
...that it is their own stupidity that is on display.They could just be a coward? :) But more seriously for potential new folks here, I presented a lot of data. Grant proposals, official documents, and links to everything. This is 'our way' here at Peak Prosperity. If you want to challenge anything - feel free! - but you won't get very far without actual data and sources. One item I focused on was an NPR 'article' aimed at the masses that presented 10 'leading scientists' who all agreed that it was unlikely that the virus came from a lab. Not one dissenting voice. No alternative questions. Nothing on the ultra-shady backgrounds of the main scientists quoted. The other was a study/editorial in Nature, the leading scientific journal of our times aimed at the scientific/intelligentsia class. It too had no doubts about the natural origin of the virus. I didn't have time to get to it, but the entire position of the Nature paper was framed around the RBD of the S1 protein subunit and made the case that since it matched the pangolin coronavirus S1 RBD it must have come from there, not a lab. Wut? They spent zero time explaining their theory about how a bat and a pangolin got together in the first place to create this chimera virus. And not just any bat, but a horseshoe bat from a specific region where - coincidentally - all the bat coronavirus research and gathering was taking place. And not just any horseshoe bat from that cave, but one with the RaTG13 version of SARS. And then - mystery of all mysteries - SARS2 had to have, somehow, magically, have gained a brand new, ultra-efficient furin cleavage site not found in any closely related coronaviruses. In fact, it's one of those dreaded 'inserts' rather than a set of replacement mutations where one amino acid is swapped out for another.
That "PRRA" insert sequence followed by RS is the thing that takes my breath away. It's the smoking gun, and every journalist interested in chasing this down needs to focus like a laser on that short sequence and stick to it. Don't ask any other questions.
It is *that* which confers the ridiculously strong ability of HB-19 (SARS2) to gain entry to cells.
From an exhaustive and extraordinarily well-done article on the whole affair:
(Source)
And here's why that's important; the virus has a two step process to gain entry into a cell. It must first bind the receptor, in this case ACE2 or CD147, and *then* it has to have a protease from the host perform a very careful snip at a very specific spot. This allows the virus membrane to fuse with the host membrane. If that doesn't happen, no entry, no infectivity, no problem.
From the same source as above:
The fusion process is started by the fusion peptide marked in yellow, but in order for it to engage in its dirty deed, someone must cut the S protein at one of the sites marked by diamonds in the diagram above. The virus does not have its own such “cutters”, so it relies on various proteases of its victims. There are several types of such proteases, as can be deduced from the abundance of colors of those diamonds. But not all proteases are equal, and not all types of cells have proteases needed by the virus. Furin is one of the most effective, and it is found not only on the surface of cells, but also inside. [I]n the case of CoV2, thanks to the furin site, it is not two, but three classes of proteases that can cut its S protein outside the cell. But perhaps the most important difference is that furin is also present inside the cell, so it can cut the S protein immediately after virion assembly, thereby providing new virions with the ability to merge with new cells right off the bat (no pun intended).It is the furin cleavage site that gives this virus its extraordinary transmissibility. Sure the ultra-efficient, high binding-affinity RBD is important, but it's the furin cleavage operating both inside and on the outside of the cell that really pushes this whole thing into some brand new, high gain-of-function territory. The Nature paper was written by five of the most prominent virus research scientists and it passed peer review and somehow they skipped right over the profound oddness of furin cleavage site. They simply mentioned it's there. Weird, right? So the mysteries mount. Somehow the right bat with the right coronavirus had to find a pangolin and somehow a zoonotic species jump had to occur. Then some other magic had to happen for the virus to gain a furin cleavage insert that conferred an enormous gain-of-function to it. Then the whole thing had to jump to humans. Oh, by the way, furin cleavage motifs have been inserted into other viruses by researchers many times in the past, including into SARS (classic) by American researchers, so there's that. In closing, this video stirred up quite the hornet's nest. So many CCP/NIH trolls on my Twitter feed this morning. A few will be showing up here as well. Be kind to them, they are probably earning substandard wages for their efforts.
Thanks Sand Puppy. Through that link, I found JC on a bikes YouTube channel, I loved his video on this subject.
Dear community - the trolls desperately need your help.
Here’s how they work. They are tasked with muddying the waters of content that their employers don’t like.
They might work for a corporation, a three letter agency, or a foreign government. They might be prisoners in China, or they might be in a cubicle at Facebook. That doesn’t really matter, but it’s interesting to note.
Job #1 one is to cast a variety of shade, or aspersions, against the content. It’s very rare that they do this by using actual countervailing facts or arguments. More often it’s by one of several tactics such as (a) claiming that the public will somehow be harmed by the material (but not they themselves, of course, just ‘the public’) or (b) making an ad hominem or personal attack of some sort (“Chris, liked your work 'till now, but you really lost me here!”) or (c) just tossing in links meant to drag you away form the content or (d) pulling out the old ‘show stopper’ of calling something “a conspiracy theory.”
Job #2 is to create conversation around their diversions and deflections. I think this is how they are measured by their controllers. It’s how I’d do it. You get a penny for every time you force someone to respond to you distractive nonsense.
Job #3 is to create traction around their point of view. Voting really helps because that creates the appearance of traction.
Here’s today’s examples from this site. Note that one easily spotted feature of a troll is that they often (but not always) have brand-new accounts.
Example #1: A brand new account is “liked” by another brand new account (could be same person).
Example #2: Another critical comment liked by both itself and the same other brand new account. See how they are gaining in numbers and traction?
And here are some from Twitter this morning. The feature of most Twitter trolls is that they have very few followers, most of which are probably automatic back-follows. The high following-to-follower ratios are a dead give-away:
Most of the above strike me as CCP trolls. Stilted language, complete lack of data or logical arguments, and very odd ‘bios’ combine to give that appearance. Of course, they could be bots too. Hard to say anymore in the deep-fake world.
At any rate, just something to which I am pretty much immune these days. The big world of trolling needs a convention so they can discuss best practices and find a way to up their game. Too obvious these days.
“Confuzia”-
At this point in time we are dealing with an ongoing pandemic, so on the list of priorities where would you place addressing/investigating conspiracy theories?Well since you already admitted that this is a real issue, and not a conspiracy theory, I'd put this real issue right at the tippy top of the list.
We sure are gaining more and more knowledge of the SARS CoV 2 virus as the pandemic progresses. I t just makes more sense to wait and gather more information. Once this pandemic is over people will be (hopefully) more rational and therefore in a far better position to investigate – and remove political agendas, which unfortunately can be found at the root of conspiracy theories.Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't feel the need to wait any longer. So how much do they pay you guys? Is it on a per-post basis? Or are you paid hourly? And is the content composed for you, or do you come up with it de novo? Or is it a cut & paste thing? Just curious.
There is a you tube video which has been around for a few weeks It is produced by a guy that lived and worked in China for years. I do not speak Chinese but he makes a reasonable case for the accidental release of the virus from the research lab in Wuhan.
I generally believe the theory that the simplest explanation is the best one. I have seen personally how lax people can be with potentially dangerous pathogens. Years ago I was in a lab at a sewage treatment plant and the staff used the same oven that they dried sewer sludge samples to heat their lunch. I know that this is anecdotal but people tend to become lax as they become more familiar with dangerous things.
When you couple the fact that the lab in Wuhan was being funded to study the very type of pathogen(How stupid is a person who believes that making a virus more deadly is a worthwhile undertaking?) which we are dealing with and the original location of the outbreak it just adds to the mounting evidence for the source of the virus. It is time to hold the officials involved accountable.
https://youtu.be/bpQFCcSI0pU
Hi Chris,
I’ve been waiting for someone to do this scrutiny and I thought you did it very well,
I followed every word!
but it generated two follow on questions for me;
#1 if the whole purpose for GOF research is to create a new virus so they can create a counter measure for it to add to their toolkit of defences…
how many vaccines have they ever successfully developed to create a counter measure for the new threats they’ve succeeded in creating?
#2 if this virus did turn out to have escaped from this Wuhan lab, seeing as there appears to be US funding and involvement in the research into GOF happening there…
if a finger of blame is to be pointed shouldn’t it point at both China & the USA in this instance?
footnote: as a UK citizen I’m under no illusion that our biological research labs such as Porton Down aren’t involved in this tomfoolery and biological russian roulette either.
But, it has always seemed sus that such a perfectly-adapted-to-humans virus (two receptor binding sites for two completely different cell types, the furin cleavage etc) managed to spring fully formed into existence with no intervening period of spreading at a lower functionality. Also, the fact that it seems to be reasonably infectious to a wide range of mammals (tiger, domestic cat, dog, mink) and yet has only spread now from a relatively small source?
For what it’s worth, I kind of thought it might have been an accidental release of a virus that the lab was tinkering with to try and create a very mild virus for the purpose of delivering gene therapy. I think gene therapy is horrendously risky but compared to gain of function research it seems positively restrained. Gah!
As for the justification of ‘finding new treatments’ - given how specific most disease treatments are what is the point of creating franken lab diseases in order to maybe find treatments for them? By definition the diseases we need treatments for are the ones out in the wild.
If 50 million pills are coming our way from India and we aren’t allowed to have them, who do you suppose will get them?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india-hydroxychlor-idUSKBN22C2LN
To Confuzia, It’s important to know where the virus came from and whether it’s a bioweapon. Anytime I start to get lax about my PPE or see my partner get lax, I just have to remember this could be a bioweapon. I may take my chances on laxness with a natural virus, but not with a bioweapon.
I would guess that HCQ is getting a new look by physicians who are treating people for Rheumatoid Arthritis or some other autoimmune diseases. There are a lot of people who could use a less expensive alternative to current pharmaceutical treatments. I have actually thought of talking to my doctor about this to control joint pain and inflammation. I will not do this until the need subsides. There is a friend of my daughter who has Lupus and has been taking this medicine for years. With all of the hype she is only allowed to buy a 15 day prescription instead of a 90 day supply. I am not sure if this is the pharmacy or the insurance company who is reducing the amount. Also the HCQ discussion for Coronavirus is not over yet. It may turn out to be like masks. Who knows where we will go from here. If I were India I would manufacture as much of the drug as possible.