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  1. Hi there... Can you please quickly check to make sure your email address is up to date here? Just in case we need to reach out to you or you lose your password. Muchero thanks!

RFK Jr.

Discussion in 'Too Hot for Swamp Gas' started by okeechobee, Jun 20, 2023.

  1. ursidman

    ursidman VIP Member

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    Do you ever tire of being ignored?
     
  2. okeechobee

    okeechobee GC Hall of Fame

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    I can just as easily point to China's lack of cooperation and obfuscation and ask how virologists were able to rule out a lab leak so quickly when the Chinese government was doing everything in their power to withhold information. In what world does that make any sense? The FBI came to their conclusions long after the virus proliferated. There were virologists discounting the possibility of a lab leak within weeks of the outbreak. Use your brain. I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make him drink.
     
  3. duggers_dad

    duggers_dad GC Hall of Fame

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    Like you’re ignoring me now ? I’m just sitting here commentating on a futile debate.
     
  4. ursidman

    ursidman VIP Member

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    This is a very salient point and I believe gives explanation to much of China’s “response”. Saving face.
     
  5. duggers_dad

    duggers_dad GC Hall of Fame

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    Focusing on the the CPC just lets our own CPC-types off the hook.
     
  6. l_boy

    l_boy 5500

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    I tried to explain this to you, but obviously you ignored it. Virologists can look at a virus, and its components and assess the likelihood of whether it is a created virus. There are techniques to do this, and if its components are not a logical or plausible combination of how it would be constructed, you can practically rule it out. Of course, you can’t definitely prove that they had secret undocumented lineages and took those and put them together in a completely novel way, secretly, that virologists aren’t aware of, but it’s highly unlikely.

    The fact that China tries to hide something proves nothing other than China tries to hide things.
     
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  7. duggers_dad

    duggers_dad GC Hall of Fame

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    “Virologists can look at a virus, and its components and assess the likelihood of whether it is a created virus.”

    First they have to find a virus. And that I mean the first virus.
     
  8. l_boy

    l_boy 5500

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    Look at this

    There are no so-called "wildlife wet markets" in China: spokesperson - Xinhua | English.news.cn.


    That was patently untrue. Why would China lie about it if they didn’t care about it. With a lab leak, at least they could claim, with some degree of truth, that the US was cooperating with such efforts and bears some blame. Illegal sale of animals in a wet market after they have denied it makes them look weak and look like liars.


    China's ambassador to Australia denies 'wet markets' even exist
     
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  9. l_boy

    l_boy 5500

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  10. okeechobee

    okeechobee GC Hall of Fame

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    FBI uses forensic evidence, which doesn't exclude virology, by the way, to come to these conclusions. They're not simply going by the fact China lies and covers up. An agency like the FBI is not going to accuse a foreign entity of such a crime without a mountain of forensic evidence which corroborates the allegation. Again, they have no dog in the political fight or monetary incentive, but the one thing they have at stake is their credibility.

    I'm not sure what evidence an entity like the CIA would use to extend an accusation such as this, but the FBI specializes in forensic analyses and employ qualified scientists to research their conclusions. The FBI wouldn't just guess on an allegation like this.
     
  11. l_boy

    l_boy 5500

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    This is YouTube of Eddie Holmes conversation. Go to just after 30:00 minutes to 37:00 minutes. Basically it talks about the phone call that had Fauci on it, and Holmes said how he went from thinking it was a lab leak at first glance to natural origins by a day or so later.

    Again coronavirus experts on the call went through that this would not be a logical way to creat such a virus using known techniques. Then the day after the call it was found that Pangolins had a virus that was very similar, and nobody does research on Pangolins. So now you are looking at somebody who supposedly leaked Covid from a lab using unconventional techniques and the same time some how Pangolins are getting infected too. It makes no sense.
     
  12. duggers_dad

    duggers_dad GC Hall of Fame

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    I bet I’ll find a Unicorn before Holmes finds a virus.
     
  13. okeechobee

    okeechobee GC Hall of Fame

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    Given the amount of pressure that was put on the science community, I would actually defer to the FBI to cut through the BS and make a determination. Virologists really risk nothing if they go on record discounting the lab leak, because so many of their colleagues are repeating the same trope. "Well, we all thought that was impossible" is such an easy defense and they're held accountable by no one. The FBI can't do that. They have one shot to get it right and if they miss on something like this, especially given the microscope they're under with Congress at the moment, it could be the death blow to the agency. Virologists speaking in unison don't share that risk.
     
  14. l_boy

    l_boy 5500

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    So the hated in the tank for Hillary FBI is now the utmost trustworthy authority and the relevant experts in the virology field must be discounted because they are all engaged in a huge conspiracy to cover it up.

    Yep. RFK Jr is definitely the man for you.
     
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  15. avogator

    avogator VIP Member

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    RFK JR never says anything to get the support of the democrats who hate Trump. He spends all his time talking about issues that right wing conspiracists rant about. What does he say about making it easier to vote. health care for all. If he is a Democrat than he must support Biden most of the time. Biden got 81 million votes. Does RFK JR believe Biden got 81 million votes. Democrats believe in fighting for social justice. His dad and his uncle were murdered by gun toting assassins, does he support gun control or is he a NRA front man. Is he for free speech or MOMS for LIberty censorship. If he had courage we would know the andwers to these things. Democrats hate Steve Bannon and RFK JR considers him adviser. Bobby Kennedy is my all time political hero and I was 14 when he was killed. I see nothing in his son but a name that he is besmirching. Democrats are not afraid of RFK JR they are just mystified why he thinks he is a democrat.
     
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  16. l_boy

    l_boy 5500

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    I’m listening to an interview of him. It is so weird, sometimes he has lucid insightful and unique perspectives and other times he is batshit crazy. The problem is listening to him you don’t know what to believe.
     
  17. ncargat1

    ncargat1 VIP Member

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    Because unlike you, me, RFK, Joe Rogan and all of the conspiracy nuts including a radiologist, an ignorant state surgeon general and an internal medicine doctor who know nothing about virology, the actual virologists know exactly know how difficult it is to engineer a virus. I just watched a panel discussion on the subject, and it included a former FBI director, three (including the USA leading expert on Coronaviruses) virologists and an epidemiologist. They all agree that this cannot be a lab creation, and almost equally unlikely it is a naturally occurring virus that just "leaked" out of the lab.

    The very first, and honestly only point that needs to be made is that to engineer a virus, you have to have a backbone of genetic material to start with. You then introduce modifications to that backbone and analyze the results. However, the final product still has the signature of the original genetic backbone. Period. That is how it is done in every lab in every country, because our science has not progressed beyond that.

    However, no where in any genetic database is there a genetic backbone that even remotely resembles SARS-CoV-2 (sorry conspiracy wackos but RaTG-13 is not even remotely close, (despite what many, including some very ignorant people with the FBI, think "96.3% similar" represents). That would mean that the Chinese either found SARS-CoV-2 in the wild and infected their employees, or, would have had to have created and entire genetic sequence from scratch, somehow turned it into viable viral material, then continued to modify it until they produced replication competent virus and continued to modify until it can infect specific cells in humans. Then a worker would have to have become infected and carried the virus outside of the lab. Unless they have made quantum leaps where no one else in the world has, there is next to zero percent chance any of that can happen.

    Back to the "lab leak", which presumes that the Chinese found the natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, extracted the viral material, replicated it to the level that it could actually infect a human, then have that human leave the lab and carry it to the market and infect a whole bunch of other people. HOWEVER, somehow they had to have carried two entirely separate lineages (significant amino acid pair differences on the spike protein - usually found when the virus has infected 2 different hosts). So, somehow, this one person had to be infected with 2 lineages of the virus from the one natural reservoir and carried it to the market and infected two separate groups of people because the two "hotspots" from the market samples were basically homogenous within the lineage for that area. Again, it is possible, but it is more likely I get hit by an asteroid tonight on my way to the gym.

    I know the masses at large do not want to hear it, but you cannot fight the science, including the very real limits to our scientific understanding of our world. Right now, our science in genetic manipulation of viruses is still limited, no matter how badly people do not want to hear it.

    Now, the other great thing about science, is that you always keep learning (or at least you should). We will study this virus for 100 years more than likely, and eventually, we may even find the natural reservoir or proof that the Chinese are decades ahead of the world in genetic manipulation of virus RNA. Either way, we have barely scratched the surface of understanding.
     
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  18. duggers_dad

    duggers_dad GC Hall of Fame

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    Doesn’t curry favor with the Trump deranged.

    Wants to curb medical tyranny.

    Doesn’t prattle about race and identity.

    Wants the draw down the US military-industrial for the endless mayhem it produces.

    Sounds like a better Democrat than Democrats deserve.
     
  19. l_boy

    l_boy 5500

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    Thanks. I listened to that podcast episode too.

    What are you thoughts on Matt Ridley and Alina Chans advocacy of the lab leak theory? Unlike most of the advocates they seem credible.
     
  20. ncargat1

    ncargat1 VIP Member

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    Their entire position appears to be based on the fact that the WIV is near the market. That is pretty much it. Being that neither one is a virologist or viral geneticist, and they continue to repeat the rephrain that RaTG-13 was 96% similar to SARS-CoV-2, strongly suggests that they really do not understand the science.

    Unless they have actual proof of SARS-CoV-2 in the lab, which would be a miracle if it were kept this quiet, or they can show that China is 50-100 years ahead of the rest of the world in viral genetic modification, I discount them.

    I also cannot understand how 3 years into this, they can have an entire book published about the search for the origins of this virus. On average, it takes decades of research to find the natural reservoirs of viruses. If they created it, well, it took professor Raccinielo nearly a decade to take Polio RNA and create modified, viable virus DNA strands, ie a new virus. These people are implying that the Chinese did so on a backbone many times more complicated than polio, and did it in half the time with a top secret technology that no one else in the world knows about.

    I cannot pretend to have the expertise enough to discount them out of hands, but to my understanding of what constitutes proof vs coincident, they are just lacking, like all of the other proponents of Chinese virus manipulation.
     
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