America is under attack. This is not by a political foe, but by Sars-cov-2, a highly contagious potentially deadly virus of dubious origin. Sometimes you have to change your behavior for the benefit of the country. This is called patriotism. Patriotism is nondenominational in nonpartisan. I repeat, nondenominational and nonpartisan. Patriotism requires thinking ,not just watching, listening and repeating. I beg of you, for the sake of our country, that you make your first priority every day to make sure you do not get sick. The government is going to open up the country once again to pretend it’s business as usual. I won’t be going out because I’m patriotic and I don’t want to get sick.
Pangiagreg,
Thank you very much for the link. As a medical doctor (pathologist) fighting the cancer industry for 3 decades (specifically Big Pharma and Oncologists pushing 150K per year marginally effective cancer therapies benefiting them more than patients), I can certainly relate to Dr. Mikovits’ viewpoint. My efforts were more or less to no avail, but as Dr. Milkovits says in the video, the establishment may have pushed some too far this time. Doctors are speaking out about the FDA/NIH/CDC making it difficult or impossible to prescribe HCQ/Azithromycin/Zinc for their patients and they are questioning the official narrative relative to how this virus gained its infectivity and lethality and how best to contain it. Simultaneously, individuals such as Shelley Luther of Texas are not allowing bureaucrats to destroy their lives and are standing up for their rights. Maybe this combined health and economic crisis will create a watershed moment in history. Spreading this video by Dr. Mikovits can potentially ignite such a transformation.
James
I will go about my life, using a mask as needed, since we know that hydroxychloroquine works;
Hope you can access Hydroxychloroquine before you are deathly ill. In blue state Colorado you can’t access it until you are in the hospital and under their control. Physicians are told they will have their license to practice revoked for prescribing OCQ for COVID-19 and pharmacies are supposed to report on them for violations:
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I just saw yesterday’s and today’s dr Martenson’s videos and I’m starting to ask myself whether the time frame used for the excess mortality graphs can really give us a correct picture of what’s going on given that it seems to cover just a few years.
At the link below we can see that in the last 25 years there have been 5 other occasions in which deaths in England and Wales were as high as this year, or slightly lower.
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/pages/ARCHIVE_200506_home.html
I also saw the animation about Spain’s daily deaths, in which there clearly is something unusual and frightening, but I suspect (I don’t have proofs) that maybe in Spain happened something similar to what happened here in Italy.
In particular:
- patients recovering from covid-19 have been sent from hospitals to elderly’s nursing homes because of lack of beds in hospitals, causing the spread of the virus inside an old and frail population;
- intubations were the only care given in the beginning, when thrombosis was still not known to happen, HCQ not used, heparins not used, causing a 70-80% death rate and the spike we see in the animation;
- lastly it is speculated that due to in-home nurses/caregivers being infected and put into quarantine or returning to their home countries (most in-home nurses in Italy come from East Europe or South America) for fear of the lockdown, a lot of those elderly people living alone, some of whom not even fully self sufficient, died because of lack of care.
In Bergamo, inside Lombardy, during March to beginning of April, we have had 5 times more deaths than the average of the last five years, which is a spike similar to the one we see for Spain.
Best regards.
There has been some speculation that there is some seasonal variation in SARS-CoV-2 infections with different seasons of the year, although consensus seems to be that any variation is not great enough to be a significant variable in the epidemiological outcomes. Could Vitamin D levels, which are influenced by sun exposure and would be expected to vary seasonally, be a causative factor in whatever seasonal variation is seen in infections or outcomes?
sand_puppy - yes, I discovered the same problem this morning when I tried to read a PM. But it was my own avatar that was covering everything up. I had just uploaded my standard avatar picture without worrying about size, as I knew the system would downsize it as needed. Apparently it’s not doing that any more. So I went in and reloaded a much smaller version of the avatar, so now it’s only other people’s that are creating the problem 
As the manager for several community websites, I’ve seen a lot of glitches develop lately, and it looks like it may be because there are fewer tech people on duty at the server. The server for my sites is pretty much down for the duration except for anything a robot can answer. So we have to adapt. If anyone else has an overlarge avatar, you might consider downsizing it.
BTW, I was never able to see the comments on May 5th’s video - server just kept grinding but wouldn’t load them - anyone else?
I know this isn’t practical, but I think it would be an interesting game to label incoming trolls as to what team they really belong to. Take for instance Mr Super Patriot, above, telling us (with his very first message, ever) that we have to stay indoors at all costs, because he’s just that patriotic? Let’s see. Here are the options:
- CCP. Goal: Inflict maximum damage to the US economy.
- Team Blue. Goal: Inflict maximum damage to ‘The TRUMP Economy.’ (Manufacturing a recession guarantees a Trump Defeat in 2020)
Trump Economy Faces Long-Term Disaster as Job Data Looms
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-economy/index.html
I’m going to pick box #1, because: Real Americans don’t talk like this. This feels like a foreigner pretending to be an American. I could be wrong, but that’s just my gut feel.
If only PP had a troll-grouping button. CCP Troll. Gates Troll. Big Pharma Troll. CIA Troll. It would be so much faster - and even more entertaining!
But, sadly, I suspect Adam would say no.
As Jim said, when we get this much flak, we know that we’re still over the target.
vshelford,
Interesting, and thank you for uploading a smaller version of your avatar. For the last few days when I tried to read a PM, it was your avatar I would see… After reading your “re:PP mail not working”, I thought I would check… Sure enough, I still see your avatar, but it’s much smaller so I can click on messages now and read them without a workaround.
I was able to see the comments, but it did take a few minutes of buffering…
Linda
Dave,
That is so hysterical! My stomach hurts from laughing it’s making it hard to type. Too bad there isn’t a button next to the thumbs up to signal “possible troll”. We certainly are having quite a few lately!!! When I read one of their “postings”, I think to myself “WT??” and they usually have a certain vibe to them as well, and I look at the date they joined.
And we could add AMA troll, Neocon troll, Oil troll, oh!!! what about a Sheeple troll?
“Alert alert Will Robinson!” “Error error” said Vger to Captain Kirk in one of the original episodes. “You will be assimilated, resistance is futile.” The Borg sure do want to assimilate us, no thanks!!!
Sorry, weird mood.
Linda
DSL, I posted this elsewhere on PP.com today. Here is a recent paper whereby the authors conclude that Vit D levels are a real factor in Covid-19 outcomes. Now that the website is working better I can post the data grab that I wanted to post earlier from the paper - it’s a fascinating look at disease rates vs. population density, by latitude;
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20087965v1
Evidence Supports a Causal Model for Vitamin D in COVID-19 Outcomes
but I’d really appreciate any input, especially from any medical background - have we any idea whether this virus is or likely to be transmissible in a swimming pool or hot tub? The water is chlorinated of course, but as people use it, the chlorine levels go down and have to be raised again. Any guesses?
A couple weird things in the last few days:
-Mutation! blog comments would not load. I tried all day.
-Completely unable to view the site on mobile phone.
How to download YT playlists and/or whole channels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A-HLSvtBWc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wfUUZvybPY
https://youtube-dl.org/
Chris, I really appreciate all that you’re doing, and I hate to play devil’s advocate, but your arguments about the possible origins of the virus would be a lot more convincing if you could also attempt to debunk clues that others are putting forward such as this:
"Two features of the virus, the mutations in the RBD portion of the spike protein and its distinct backbone, rules out laboratory manipulation as a potential origin for SARS-CoV-2."https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-scientists-think-of-the-coronavirus-was-made-in-a-lab-rumour https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 And there are other theories about what happened. For example, there could be another (possibly natural) virus than RaTG13 that is at the origin of COVID-19, something called BtCoV/4991 that was apparently partially sequenced back in 2016:
In an article that appeared on February 6, 2020, scientists at the State Key Laboratory of Virology, Modern Virology Research Center, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University wrote that the partial RdRp gene sequence of bat coronavirus strain BtCoV/4991 (GenBank KP876546) had a 98.7% nucleotide identity with COVID-19.https://www.wionews.com/opinions-blogs/is-bat-coronavirus-4991-a-smoking-gun-in-chinas-covid-19-cover-up-294760 In my opinion, we won't know for sure until Chinese authorities come forward, but I would really hate it if your message were to get lost because of loose ends like this.
Is the shortage mainly because India banned export? I ask because 6 months ago travel doctors were giving them out like jelly beans to people travelling to Africa and Asia, at least the parts where resistance hasn’t formed. Without all that travel, a large flow/stock should have been freed up for coronavirus treatment without impinging on lupus and arthritis patients. Yet it was almost instantly out of stock. What happened?
Officials have mentioned "fecal shedding " in swimming pools. Keep head out of water, shower post swim. However, kids, swimmers always splash and sprays create aerosols. Also, temperature needs to be above 170F to kill SARS cov-2. Need a helmet contraption with breathing filters. Big pain for those of us who like to swim. Maybe market for home pools.
The discussion starting at 29:55 suggested that changing an RNA base is frequently inconsequential. The pattern is more interesting than that. There is only one way to get methionine or tryptophan, so for those two amino acids, any change in the codon changes the aa. For everything else in the table, C and U in the third position are silently interchangeable. In almost all cases A and G in the third position also are silently interchangeable. However, usually third position C/U are not silently interchangeable with A/G. Second position substitutions always change the aa. First position substitutions usually change the aa. The only exceptions to the usual patterns involve leucine (leu) and arginine (arg), which both have 6 ways to code, involving 2 options in the first position, 1 option in the second position, and either 2 or 4 options in the third position, depending on what the first position was.
Taking the proline example, the codon is CCX, so yes, there are 4 ways to fill the third position to get proline, but of the 16 ways you could fill positions 1 and 2, only one, CC, gives you proline. Changing two of the three bases changes the aa, and a lot of those aa changes alter the character of the aa (positive to negative side chain, hydrophobic to hydrophilic side chain, etc), potentially rendering the protein non-functional. The non-silent mutations occur more frequently but are seen less frequently because most are not viable. Only silent mutations are nearly guaranteed to be viable (although even those might change the RNA folding or something).
What’s really bizarre is that ZC45 and ZXC21 are 100% homologous in this supposedly marginally important E protein described at 34:00, even though these strains display steadily accumulating non-synonymous discrepancies all along their genomes. How is it that any of the top four E protein sequences (Feb 11, ZC45, ZXC21, & RaTG13) match any of the others, much less all of the others? Very odd. If it were a medical record, you’d think of lazy copy and paste behavior as the cause. Was there a good reason to trust the E protein sequence for ZC45 and ZXC21? If E protein is so highly conserved between these two, and also in Feb 11, why is it subsequently so much less important to conserve the sequence?
It’s very appropriate. Chris and Adam are hitting the marks.