RFK Jr.

RFK Jr.: “The crazies are taking over the world. …We’re in the apocalypse now. This is like the dystopia that I think all of us imagined would happen sometime in the future.”

 

Fact-Checked: True

 

When I heard them on a podcast sometime back, most of their case was a series of anecdotal happenings that they don’t believe could be a coincidence. The lab being in the same place as the virus origin (even though the lab is something like 15 miles away from the wet market and almost all of the first cases were around the wet market) or lab employees getting sick in November (but people get sick all he time, there is no evidence that I know that it was Covid)

That Eddie Holmes episode you had posted was by far the most compelling account I have heard on the issue.

 

I don’t totally disagree with him, but in an entirely different context.

 

Investigators from outside of China and those inside of China have continued to find no evidence of these supposed illnesses among lab employees in November of 2019. This what I mean when I say that we have no proof one way or the other, but people are making stuff up, or believing it from Twitter and turning it into "fact" and then use it as the foundation of their position. Heck, even the Trump State Department, who did blame WIV for a lab leak, had to admit that they found no evidence of these mysterious non-existent ill workers

THAT is not science, nor is that even proper investigative technique.

https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html

 

No, that is not what the Wuhan Institute of Virology specializes in. They specialize in studying coronaviruses. Study viral kinetics through studying chimeric viruses (note - this is not the same as engineering a new virus from scratch. In a chemiric virus, the backbones of the spliced viruses are easily sequenced and identified). We, the United States pours $Millions into that very same research. Prof Ralph Baric, right here at the University of North Carolia, has been studying corona viruses, including extensive "gain of function" research on coronaviruses for years. You know why? Here is a hint...the same reason that Shi Zhengli is doing that research in China. The only difference is, she saw first hand was a SARS-Like virus could do when SARS-1 broke out in China in 2002 and 2004

Meanwhile, you understand nothing about what is required to conjure up a virus from scratch. Neither do I, but the people who are experts do, and according to them, we are decades away from being able to do that, if ever with the current state of the art knowledge and technology.

Finally, why would you pull in an example and a technological field not even remotely related, and one that is far simpler in terms of technological achievement with our current level of technology?

I completely dismiss the idea that the Chinese created a brand new to this earth virus from scratch. Now, if we find evidence that they found this previously in nature and were experimenting with it and someone carried it to the market, so be it, I will be wrong. However, considering that the simplist answer is usually the one that is correct, it is far more likely an infected natural reservoir came in contact with a human and yet another pandemic as a result of zoonotic transmission was started.

 

We are living in interesting times, but dystopian apocalypse seems pretty dramatic.

 

Getting back to the issue of RFK, Jr. as a candidate, if he is even on the ballot I expect him to end up with no more than 10% of the vote in any primary against Joe Biden. Keep in mind that he will be running in Democratic primaries and Republicans are much more likely to buy into his conspiracy theories than Democrats. My guess is that reason he polled as high as 20% in the first poll was because a number of respondents were liberals who were totally unaware of his wacky anti-vax history and viewed him as a left-wing alternative to Biden based on the family name.

 

(1) say “wacky anti-vax” three times.

(2) click your heels.

(3) pretend that excess deaths aren’t happening in highly vaccinated countries.

 

Here is your modern day Republi-ban party and their anti-vax, anti-science hench-tards in action. Dr. Peter Hotez, developer of a low cost, low tech vaccine that was given away to poor countries is being stalked, threatened and now his wife and children are being stalked and threatened. So much so, that the Houston PD, state police and FBI have to protect him and his family while he is travelling.

 

I was looking at a Twitter thread and it’s brutal. Ackman, a hedge fund guy tweeted this compendium of Hotez saying contradictory statements, ignoring the context that the situation changed with variants as new information came in, and the Twitter morons are just piling on.

He wouldn’t stoop to it but I’d like to see Dr Paul Offit debate RFK Jr. He is an encyclopedia of diseases and vaccine history and seems pretty unflappable.

 

Latest information released form the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Information continues to show no clear source is none yet. However, this latest release is in opposition to the people who continue to claim that the virus was "created" in WIV. This won't deter RFK, Rogon, Musk or all of the other will-ignorants however.

Science | AAAS

 

You could say that Offit is a leading practitioner of the dark arts.

 

Because it is hard to debate someone who has a completely different set of facts. So RFK Jr references some conspiracy about a vaccine study that was squashed, or some anecdotes or series of anecdotes, and you can’t directly address them, because you have never heard of them. All you can do is respond with actual real studies, to which RFK will say somebody involved is linked to pharma, and you can’t trust the experts, and it’s all a conspiracy. It’s impossible to debate someone who asserts real facts are fake due to conspiracy.

It would take someone who spent time digging up the misinformation and running it down in advance as preparation. Most scientists and physicians are not focusing their time on disinformation. They are focusing on actual science.

 

debating is a tradition in politics. Having said that, the first Biden / Trump debate was a complete shit show.

Science is not something that lends itself to debate, at least in front of the masses. Who “wins” a debate in the court of public opinion has nothing to do with the truth of the science. Just because a scientist/physician may not be a skilled debater doesn’t make him any less competent in science.

It is pretty much certain that RFK fans will think he “won” the debate regardless of what happens, and by giving him that opportunity you have given him validity.

Sure I’d like to see somebody competent debate RFK, but not if they aren’t a skilled debater.

Sam Harris was asked several times to debate Bret Weinstein on Covid and stuff like ivermectin. He refused to do it because he said he would not no way to anticipate or address out of left field claims that Weinstein could some up with.