Our attempts to manage the pandemic have presented us with a variety of problems and paradoxes: Why have lockdowns and other containment measures proven so generally ineffective against SARS-2?
Very interesting piece. But how do you explain recovered people (especially in the early days) testing negative on what are widely regarded to be over-sensitive PCR tests? How is this compatible with the idea that the virus remains post-symptomatically in some people? Wouldn't we have seen this by now?
From the Foreword: "Infectious disease has not been conquered." Implicit in the statement is that infectious disease is the problem to be solved. It it? The terrain view suggests we are looking in the wrong direction.
Be prepared . . . the book is like a detective novel . . . outlining the problems then steadily building up the evidence and giving hints as to his hypothesis. Only in the last chapters is the denouement. I enjoyed the book . . . great insight into how good scientists used to work.
I certainly hope that the asymptomatic spread portion doesn't bear out. As ineffective as masking has been, if asymptomatic spread were proven then the pressure to "do something" by masking up would overwhelm all rationality and logic, and we would once again be forced to wear face diapers.
i wouldn't worry too much about this aspect of the theory. the story would probably end up being something similar to the whole debate around 'presymptomatic' transmission: it's very hard to tell what it actually means to be presymptomatic, and it seems we're mostly discussing people who are inattentive to mild symptoms and/or unwilling to tell investigators that that they didn't immediately self-isolate despite not feeling totally healthy.
And it follows we are all constantly pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic to one or more viruses and bacteria and should spend the entirety of our lives being continuously tested for every disease causing pathogen known to science - and of course stay in perpetual self-isolation.
I think unless something is done, masking will be with us seasonally anyhow.
What we need to underline, highlight, emphasize, and broadcast is what masking did, does, and will do. What were the results of the mandate? If masks are so significant as the surgeon general asserted, then surely we should see how masks affected case numbers in non mandate/mandate areas of the country. Surely Florida should be in peril while California should be a place nearly devoid of disease. Are they?
masking has never left us. People still walk around masked up eben here in florida were mandates have been gone for years. im convinced Some people will simply never leave there house ever again without one on. They will never breath clean fresh air for the rest of there lives. As for mandates, if they emerge in the blue hellholes I presume there will be alot more noncompliance. Only the real worshippers of everything covid will go along, and enforce them.
The interesting thing to do is to observe those people and see how "faithful" they are to the dogma of fear. I've watched many of the mask wearing public, and they don't realize how intellectually inconsistent they are. Here are just a few examples:
1. If you have a beard and you are wearing a mask, why bother? The only reason I can think of is to wear a mask without having to wear a mask. By the way, I have a beard and realize that when I have to wear a mask, it's completely ridiculous.
2. Any mask will do. If you wear a Gater, a bandana, your shirt, anything bedazzled, anything pretty much other than an n95, you're doing it wrong.
3.Replacing the mask. I believe that a mask should optimally be replaced and washed regularly. Yet how many people are doing just that?
4. Proper placement of the mask. I can't tell you how many people remove the mask to tell me things after mumbling to me multiple times. To be honest, I have given up trying to "hear" those who wear masks. I might try once or twice, but it could be inconsiderate of me to lean in to hear you better because you have already declared that the mask stops large droplets and therefore to decrease the social distance between you and I would be intellectually inconsisent of you if you were to allow it.
5. If you believe in masks, no restaurants for you. Sorry, but no. If you believe in a mask, then you have to wear it for all reasons indoors. So you should only take your food for takeout. If you believe that masks are only required at certain times indoors and not others, that's intellectually inconsistent. The virus doesn't transmit while eating or drinking? The virus doesn't transmit while you are sitting, but does when you are standing?
there consistent at marking themselves as a moron, thats all. Like you said, they are wearing them wrong and using cloth and other cheap masks. They take them down to eat. My only conclusion for someone still wearing a mask is they are a complete idiot incapable of rational thought. They are also id say most definitly triple jabbed at a minimum as well. So they have literally "drank the kool aid" just like a cult member that they probably claim to not understand "how could they possibly do that" has done and will do again. They are members of a cult and they dont even know it. I avoid these people whenever possible. I have a low tolerance for complete stupidity.
I've said this elsewhere, but will bring it up again here.
There are many reasons people wear masks, some of my favorite people wear and wore masks, including myself. I am guilty as charged of wearing masks on Uber Rides and to doctor's offices. Ironically, the price was my health. I am a recent amputee and I need a doctor's approval for a prosthetic, home health, medications, etc. I imagine if I stood my ground and didn't wear a mask, I would not have been removed from the doctor's office or thrown out of the Uber, but I didn't want to deal with the conflict. That's my price. I have to live with that. I won't revise my history.
Before my amputation in November, I could count twice the times I wore a mask, once to get into a bank and another time to attend a one-man show for a friend I was supporting. Both times I wore a mask a grand total of five minutes a piece. Don't get me started on the intellectual inconsistency of the ordeal. I was against the gene therapy passing itself off as vaccination from the start. I did stand my ground there..I was asked while in the hospital, and also at the doctor's office why I didn't want to get vaccinated. I told them why in plain terms. My most recent doctor's visit, they didn't even ask me.
Even while in the hospital and in recovery, I only wore a mask outside of my hospital room as mandated by the hospital policy. I guess Covid only travels in hospital corridors and not in the rooms?
I have family members close to me who are conservative and democrat who wore masks to visit me, so it's not strictly political. So for these others that are wearing masks I can tell you there are other reasons than stupidity.
1. Move along to get along. In my case that was why I wore a mask. If you berate me for it, I agree. I constantly berate myself. Before my amputation, I would go out to restaurants many times a week not wearing a mask, singing karaoke, which apparently is a dangerous Covid activity. After my amputation, I wore a mask way too often for my taste (zero mask wearing is my goal).
I knew a doctor on a podcast admit to getting the vaxx and wearing a mask and adhering to the Covid rules in order to travel. This made me livid, because out of everyone, he is a health professional, he should know better. He got Covid before the vaccine was availabe, and knew that it was absurd to get vaxxed.
To hear him talk about Covid now is interesting because he is outraged about the how irresponsible the public health officials have been. One huge reason he is ranting is he asks the question now that I did from the start "Why do what China did?" And yet most of the world did just that, followed China. I call it the "monkey see, monkey do" reason for doing it. I wish now that Covid had originated in Sweden.
2. Too busy to know the truth. I know, it's hard for me to wrap my mind not educating yourself on unprecedented government policies, but it happens. The people close to me who wore masks have families, work hard, and have little time for looking for answers. So, they do what they are told.
Many of us can't fathom not having time to educate ourselves, but I can imagine it. There are only so many hours in a day. After Work, Sleep, Family, how many more hours are left in a day? Also, demanding that everyone must educate themselves sounds an awful lot like coercion. On the flip side of that, if they are coercing me to do something, they had better know exactly why and for what reason they are telling me to do what they want me to do. This is why I don't demand people not wear masks or not get vaccinated. Do what you want, but could I recommend at least it being informed consent?
3. Trust in authorities. It wasn't too long ago, maybe ten years, when I still had a little faith in the media and at least some authorities, but that time is gone. First of all, I don't like being nannied or babied. Around this time each year, news reports crop up telling people to "wear sunscreen." If I am stupid enough not to wear sunscreen (and I have been that stupid) that's on me. I am not about to sue the media or government agencies for ignoring common sense.
You can also tell the media are biased in how they deliver the news and what language they use. The average citizen doesn't question this at all. But if you listen you can catch it. If you are "anti" anything you are bad. If you are "pro" anything you are positive and good. This is how the media indicates what side it is on something. It usually skews in one direction.
During the last couple of years it has gotten much worse to the point of not having a different slant, but a different reality. If you break the windows of the Capitol and walk around inside taking pictures of the interior because you are protesting the election results, you are a dangerous insurrectionist. IF you are rioting out on the street following a number of racial incidents and looting buildings and burning them down, you are in a "mostly peaceful protest."
I am more in the camp of "Forgive them, they know not what they do." What we have to do is break it down for them. Show them how they are being manipulated. Find something that the media or health officials say that they disagree with, and use that as a way to "show" that if they are wrong in this area, what makes them think they aren't wrong in other areas?
I think many many of us knew the science, understood the scientific dynamics of the "virus"
I did also go along to get along.
I had abdominal surgery in May. No one asked me (iNova Hospital in Northern Virginia) if I had been "vaxxed" no one asked me for a covid test pre op. I went into the hospital. they asked us to wear masks, hubbs and I did. Our noses were sticking out, no one berated us. We were in a little pre-op room and even post op.
We wore the masks to make the people happy, so the people would not freak out
you make several valid statements here. However, the intellectual inconsistencies continue.
Touching things, objects, door knobs hand rails, doors, walls. shoes, legs of pants, out door clothing, anything really.
In medical school we learn "sterile technique" that is the constant, undeviating from the operation of sterility, or close to not passing on pathogens to a person at risk, or a person that is infectious. Additionally there is protocol for the operating room, and medical offices in general to a degree.
I do not think that we should ever attempt to control our lives as if we are living as if everything is poison.
All of the mind numbing rules the "CDC" and others have given to prevent spread, or to become infected is just a sloppy mess.
My father has told me so many stories of his life living in Rotterdam, as a kid, poor. He was brilliant and began working at age 14. He worked as an accountant at age 15. Well, this brought him much earlier than well, any kid today, into the world of working men.
The soup for lunch. Was brought in the work place in a large pot. Huge, like a caldron. It was made by some lunch supply company. Everyone ate the soup, and a chunk of bread. Everyone supplied their own cup and dipped their cup into the soup, sometimes immersing their entire hand to get to the bottom for the vegetables. That is one thing. even my dad thought that was odd as a kid but oh well
Once the boss dropped his wax pencil into the pot, it fell off of his ear.
He reached in and felt around for it.
When my dad was older, 19 he was taken up in a razzia by the Nazi's .
He went to a place in Northern Germany near Poland to "clean up rubble"
He said the food there was also rather questionable.
Once on the train, the young prisoners would steal mailed packages for the soldiers. They would eat up all of the goodies in the packages. Once they ate RAW, one of the soldiers pet rabbit.
... and here we are worrying about some stupid virus.
My daddy is 98 and does not have such great hygiene, rarely washes his hands and he uses the same old hankie for a few days.
Additionally. Leaving aside, not air-tight and whether masks can stop viral particles - they can’t.) After about 10 minutes a mask - whatever material and even the sacred N95 - becomes waterlogged with those water droplets they are supposed to stop. One would think that is obvious - apparently not.
Once that happens, pathogens can move through the material driven by hygroscopic action. Pathogens on the inner surface move to the exterior to be shed into the air (or transferred by handling), and pathogens landed on the outer surface migrate to the inner to be inhaled.
All masks should therefore be changed every ten to fifteen minutes and disposed of in a sanitary manner.
This is why ‘proper’ masks to protect against viruses are made of waterproof materials, like rubber, are skin tight, cover the whole face and eyes, and have changeable hepa-filters.
A common sight I've seen throughout this pandemic is all the masks littering parking lots. When I see that, I think to myself "Then, what's the point?" If you truly believe in the mask an the whole "it's not for me, it's for everyone around me" then shouldn't you burn the calories and throw it into the trashcan when you are done with it? I imagine though that the person littering the parking lot are part of the "move along to get along" crowd. In that case, I would ask them to be like me, and just go without the mask at least in places where there is no hard mandate.
Yes! Finally, I see someone else saying what I've been saying from the beginning. If one is going to wear a mask, it must be changed every 10-15 minutes! And ideally tossed in a hazardous waste bin. Anything else is pure theater. Not to mention the other comments about how if you believe you need a mask then you simply cannot eat out in a restaurant. Sorry. If one is so afraid to go out without a mask, then they simply need to eat in at home for the duration.
1 your observtioins of bearded maskers is spot on. NO beard will llow the infernal ting to SEAL and without that bit, ight as well not wear one at all, as it then only serves to placate the screaming harpies. The two times I ws FORCED to don one of those wretched mug nappies, I dropped my chin, tilted my head dowward, opened my lower jaw as far as it would go, and breated normally BELOW the charade rag. Had to. I was getting faint from lack of oxugen and likley reuptake of CO2. was suffocating behind that thing till I "fixed " it Never got called on how I"wore" the wretched piece of bother.
2 anything other than N 95? You have been duped, or reporgammed. Ive used N95's for decades doing body work, sandblasting, etc, can only wear the bloody thing for about 3/4 hour, then I have to put that project down and go do somethig else. When I take the fool thing off, my face that had been behind that mask would be thick with the grit from my work, I'd be blowing snot with gobs of sanding particles out my nose, and could FEEL the grit from which I was sort of protecting myself between my teeth. If I can FEEL the particles, they are thousands of times larger than the WooFlew viral particles are. Duped again. Stop it. If that N 95 mask cannot filter the sanding dust, grit, etc out tof the air I am trying to breathe, there is NO WAY that same piece of equipment will be able to filter out viral particles that are thuosands of times smaller. Like trusting a piece of chicken wire to keep out things like flies, mosquitos, yellow jackets... and hoping it will also prevent entry of gnats.
3 read the medical protocols for the PROPER wearing of N95 masks. In public I hve NEVER SEEN anyone practice these, yet they are essential to having even a glimmer of hope that the mask will be able to prevent passage of any disease vectors It CANNOT and WILL NOT. Wearing them for hours, right THERE is the incubator for the variants to form.
4 how about schoolyard chums likeing each others' masks and swapping? This has been documented. People are SO clueless about the wretched pieces of stuff.. medical professionals must go through traning on HOW to put them on, wear tem change them take a break from them throughout the workday.... get their O2 St levels back up. Yes, oxyge sturation drops as one wears the infrenal tnings, and CO2 levels climb, because one cannot expel enough CO2 with one of those jokes on yer mug.
5 Sure... but whether I "believe" in them or not makes not one half a whit of difference. They do not work. They are a pacifier to the eyes of the fearfuln who have bought the "message" that if we don't DOO something NOW, we're ALL gonna die next week.
GROW UPP The nasty inventions are being mis-applied for a purpose for which they are totally incpable of making any measureable difference.
Dump them, along with the politicans and tyrants that would have us all slap them accross our mugs.
About two months or so following the end of the lockdowns, we decided to once again recall our writing critique group that we held at a Cafeteria. The first few times we went there were people wearing masks in line, but there was no restaurant policy regarding masks. I imagine at that time their thinking was that everyone would "do the right thing" which meant they would wear a mask. I wasn't going to wear a mask.
A few times later, they instituted a new policy no doubt to assuage those who were marinating in fear. The chalk board outside read "Masks required while in line." I stood and stared at the sign for a couple seconds, then went to the back room where we had our critique group. I guess I wasn't going to eat, I thought. I wasn't going to ask someone else to grab me a plate either because that would be a cop out.
An employee was inside the back room cleaning and disinfecting the place. He was wearing a mask. I asked him if we wanted me to leave. He asked "Why?"
I responded "Because I don't have a mask."
He stopped for a moment and then he, along with one of the other writers in my group said "You can use mine."
My brain tilted. I think I made a gesture in their direction communicating "This is why this is all BS."
I finally spoke and said, "I need to clarify, I don't own a mask, I will not wear a mask."
He asked me, and it seemed sincere, "Why?"
SO I gave him the breakdown. I related to him the death rate numbers, common sense about why masks don't work, etc. He had no real response to the amount of things I knew about the virus at that point. He also said I didn't have to leave, but that I couldn't get food since a mask was required to stand in line.
And then I remembered that they had drive up service. So I went out, got in my car, ordered my food over the phone, got it, went back and parked, and triumphantly brought the food back into the restuarant and to the back room
I think I wasn't the only one that did this, as about a month later the policy changed from masking while in line to "masks are required upon entry and while walking through the restaurant." That was the last time I went to the critique group.
N95 masks are only good for things like spray painting and scooping kitty litter. Anything else is simply compliance BS - you are doing it because it is required. And the only effect wearing masks has on virus transmission is it is a signal to other people to keep away from you - especially when everyone is NOT masked. It is really nothing more than a keep away from me sign.
I don't talk to anyone if they have a mask on ,it's below my standard . Masks are out of date now since the monkey pox is in fashion. A store in California opend selling Men's chastity belts .
It never struck me that mask enthusiasts were over-concerned with consistency (or even that the concept had occurred to them).
My favourites are those who wear them without covering the nose. They may as well have 'Bereft' tattooed on their brows; it would send the same signal.
Those wearing masks aren't even thinking about it. They are many times too busy. Someone close to me said, when I voiced my objections to masks, "Well, I can wear them for eight hours a day, so it's no big deal." I think she says this because she has a job in government schools.
Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done. Thare are a lot of things in life that are "no big deal" at least in the short term. My question is, does it make sense?
I'd be the first to tell you there are things I o that don't make sense. The difference is these are things I choose to do and I don't inflict them on other people.
Face condoms? Hand condoms? It gets kind of ridiculous.
But seriously, MPX spreads by close skin contact especially with pustules, and it is the kind of virus that might be a threat to massage parlors - especially since masseuses are mostly young women, and therefore never had a smallpox vaccination.
don't be fooled. 'They" will come up with SOME bogus way of forcing us al to protect ourselves, or make things appear that THEY are protecting us from it. ButI'll no more put one of those on than I ever did the blighted blue pleated mug nappie. I never wore the stuipd rag, went wherever/wheneever I pleased, never got sick.and I KNOW I never spread it because I never GOT it. "symptomatic spread" is a joke, too.... mediclly impossible. IF one's viral load is large enough to spread it, that one WILL have symptoms. Virlogy 301.
We should just, in that case, insist they follow the science which shows masks are pretty well ineffective against stopping the spread of viral infections, whether the carriers or symptomatic or asymptomatic.
Imagine. Living (or something-like-living) things behaving in complex interrelated ways.
I keep trying to tell you how much I enjoy these posts but never quite manage to encompass the full extent of it. You make scientific theories quite pleasurably interesting.
Hi ,good news for a change .Last night I had a dream or nightmare that I had the pandemic yruss .In panic I jump out of bed to inspect myself .then I remember I can't jump out of bed if I have the yruss pandemic .So I go back to bed and crawl out slowly as one does with the plague .I make it to the mirror in the bathroom to inspect my tongue ,pulling it out as far as I can ,but I don't see the yrusses, causing my plague .So I look lower down on my body and there it is ,instead of an infection I have an erection ,something I did not have in the last 45 years .I call my wife who is 12 years older than me to tell her the good news .She hurries to the spare bedroom to lock herself in ,because she knows about the crazy things I did before and may do again .
What if SARS-COV-2 wasn't at all novel. Recall the taxonomy committee did NOT agree with the WHO in naming this sas it did, it did not regard it as novel enough.
What if it was one of a continuum of mutating coronaviruses, moving in and out of zoonotic reservoirs. Sometimes causing colds, sometimes a "nasty bug"?
What if Omicron was just another one of these? It seems to be too different to "Wuhan" to be regarded as an evolutionary descendent.
What if we are now just measuring new waves of coronaviruses we never noticed before - possibly made somewhat worse by the interventions - inc vaccination.
What if the excess death curves were not related (except to a very small degree) with a virus but rather to the disruption to healthcare, combined with teerror and fear directed at populations.?
Why - if a supposedly lethal virus was spreading for months before - did excess death curves not shoot up UNITIL - rather than before - lockdowns?
What if the entire pandemic is actually an example of confirmation and observer bias - we are (through hysteria + PCR) shining a light on what we have never observed before in such detail.
This wouldn't be the first pseudo-pandemic fueled by PCR. But we need to make sure it's the last.
You make some excellent points here. In particular, there are decades of evidence that psycholgical factors such as anxiety, lack of social contact and perceived SES considerably exacerbate the symptoms of respiratory disease and increase susceptibility. This suggests that everything done in the last two years made the problem worse. I think it is entirely plausible that there was nothing particularly special about the pathogens circulating.
It's a theory no government will want discussed at their public enquiries.
I am wonderibg how much they are actually pleased about the lab-leak vs natural origin debate going on. It acts as a massive distraction from the greatest crime ever committted - unnecessary and harmful lockdowns then prolonged and justified post-hoc by the promise of injections which were neither safe nor effective.
I had 'covid' in January and again last week, six months apart. Mild bouts both times but entirely different set of symptoms. I know people who were sick in spring 2020 and then again a year or two later and they say the same -- it was clearly not the same virus because it was not the same illness.
How can they know for sure that these are variants of the original Wuhan strain? How can they know which came first? Viruses outcompete each other all the time.
What is certain, as you and Eugyppius point out, is that the vaccines have interfered in a complex interplay of immunological and environmental factors.
Why do we have out-of-season waves, for example? Why did I get sick in June with a winter virus? I recall that there was basically no sickness going around in summer 2020...
I think the best analogy is the weather. Only idiots think that the governments can predict or control the weather. But for some reason people haven’t accepted that the CDC is incapable of predicting or controlling disease
Eh, I didn’t say “climate”. I actually think the government could control a region’s climate. For example, the government could turn the west into a barren dust bowl. And I guess the government could eradicate Covid by just killing everybody. Models can become predictive if you remove most of the variables.
Agreed, I read that Christian fascists are now controlling the US but as a formal -liberal I am confused about how the state funded drag queen story time for school kids fit 8n Christian facism. Rather I think they are dividing us on our differences. I think They are stoking the fire 1) by amplifiying privilege for minority groups to breed resentment 2) allowing kids access to mutilation of their bodies - privilege to transcon-fused kids. I was not interested in politics prior to my perceived loss of body autonomy inflicted by US gov. But now I believe naively perhaps that most people like myself are trying to figure what is happening in our country.
The lack of any real noteworthy mutations except D614G for months is hard to explain, unless you assume that once we first learned of its existence it had already stumbled upon a strong local optimum for transmission in immunologically naive hosts. Such a thing can be explained if you assume the whole thing came into existence due to passage through mice with humanized ACE2 receptors. If we go with the competing "some dude ate a bat" model, the lack of genetic diversity observed is a lot stranger.
If the vaccine trials led to the emergence of these variants, that were generally more virulent and contagious and infected mostly naive people, then they were already responsible for millions of deaths before they ever received emergency use authorization.
"So why didn't the millions of naturally immune people we must have had by April 2020 or so give rise to variants early on in the pandemic? Why would it depend on the handful of early participants in the vaccination trials?" Would be the obvious question, but it could then presumably be explained through two factors:
1. The virus had already arrived at a strong local optimum during its birth in the Wuhan lab.
2. The spike directed vaccines impose the kind of selective pressure that asymptomatic lingering infections could overcome with select spike mutations, whereas in the naturally immune, the jumps that had to be taken on the fitness landscape to both escape the host's growing immune pressure AND give rise to new variants with a transmission advantage over Wuhan in naive hosts (ie most of the population) would simply have been too big.
A distorted immune response induced by the vaccines would have allowed the kind of changes to emerge that don't have a meaningful fitness advantage in naturally immune hosts. If all you really have to deal with as a virus are a lot of antibodies against your Spike protein, you may find that mutations that wouldn't have helped you out much if you were also dealing with T cells, a trained innate immune response etc hunting ALL of your proteins are suddenly quite useful. These mutations would now under these abnormal conditions be able to overcome whatever inherent structural disadvantage they may have that normally translates into a fitness disadvantage.
Some of those spike mutations in these variants suddenly under positive selective pressure would then have had pleiotropic effects, that enabled jumps into animal populations (see: N501Y, found in Beta and known to expand the range of viable hosts). In those animals the ACE2 protein looks different, along with the immune pressure, so new variants emerged and one of those variants jumped back into our species and thereby gave rise to Omicron, which proved to be sufficiently different to enable widespread reinfection.
Why does South Africa produce all these Omicron variants? If you follow this logic, you would consider they were early with the vaccine trials, so they were early with giving rise to variants with pleiotropic spike mutations and so their local wildlife has also had far more time to give rise to variants that can jump back into our species.
If you look at it this way, then it looks as if after the original lab accident, we could have had a Wuhan wave followed by genuine herd immunity, in the absence of any attempt to vaccinate against this virus, something which many epidemiologists had anticipated.
Considering these vaccines were ever approved to begin with, it's tempting to think our policymakers and the vaccine manufacturers assumed the virus was going to run into an evolutionary dead end too. They would have failed to consider that the vaccine trials themselves were expanding the range of viable positions on the fitness landscape, both directly and indirectly (through the new variants jumping into other species).
Corona viruses mutate at a fraction of the speed of Influenza viruses and if it could not have independently gone from Wuhan to Omicron without humans providing some of the intermediate stepping stones with the Spike based vaccine trials, then the present day situation where herd immunity is now definitively out of the question could be entirely our own fault.
But there would be other conclusions to draw too. The BA.1 spike vaccines now being deployed, experiments with nucleocapsid only vaccines, or vaccine trials that only carry the receptor binding domain as opposed to the whole spike protein in hopes of reducing side-effects, could once again give rise to unique selective pressures in certain hosts who would then be able to give rise to new variants that could not have come into existence otherwise.
We would have to consider that vaccinating people with just a portion of a pathogen is intrinsically dangerous, because it generates abnormal narrowly focused selective pressures in hosts. Today nobody really cares about that idea because it's assumed some immunocompromised people are the variant factories, even though such people will generally be hampered in their ability to deal with all SARS-COV-2 proteins and thus don't seem like good candidates to impose the type of oddly narrow selective pressures we're looking for.
TL;DR: If this is how it works, if the model in which healthy hosts can be variant factories under the right conditions is correct, the implications are massive and we may be responsible for millions of deaths ourselves through the vaccine trials.
increasingly i wonder if the vaccines massively increased the number of symptomless latent carriers, moving SARS-2 from a more traditional sick-infect-healthy strategy to subtler multi-phase process of infection as Hope-Simpson hypothesised.
this would also explain the fixed form of the virus until the moment of the vaccine trials. it just didn't have any good environments to practice against human antibodies. but perhaps by inducing some level of immunity to spike, but not mucosal immunity, the vaccines created what is by now a vast population of people who carry the virus, more or less asymptomatically until the vaccine-induced antibodies wane enough (explaining out-of-season waves) or seasonal cues give the virus additional advantages.
Of course, with SARS-2 there were always many symptomless latent carriers - even from the first days at Wuhan. That is the reason that SARS-2 was so much more successful than SARS-1, which was stamped out because only symptomatic people could spread it. Of course vaccination increased the number of asymptomatic carriers because that is what it was designed to do - the vaccine prevents severe illness and death, not transmission, and was always intended to do so.
It may not be the vaccine trials that sparked the explosion of variants but mere coincidence caused by the passage of time. If you look on Nextstrain, there are variants branching off almost immediately. However, it took time for enough variation to accumulate for recombination to facilitate the creation of viable new variant lineages, since in lab-type virus, all recombinants will be identical until there are variations to swap. It is only today that there is enough variation out there circulating that recombinants are easier to detect, and many are being recorded and given a name. Very few variants have the right combination of code and transmission circumstances to spark a whole new lineage, though.
Lately the scam is running on variants ,some super variants ,or ueber variants, over under variants ,variants with bushy tails ,others with horns and rotting teeth . Tony Foxi is worried he may run out of names for cariations of new boogy men .Tony you can never go wrong naming your new inventions after evil men ,like your self , like Hitlerony ,Stalino ,or god forbid even Putinova .If I was you I would name the new variant after myself Foxxxirony .
So I understand correctly, one of the processes you seem to be theorizing may be at play with COVID is a phenomenon of POST-symptomatic transmission, not the pre-symptomatic/asymptomatic transmission theory used to create an unfalsifiable logic trap ("you can literally never prove or disprove that you cannot spread covid so we must assume everyone is a vector forever") that stole 2 years of our lives?
So basically, we might actually carry the proto-viruses or potential for infection around until opportunity arises for the virus. It also ties virology together with the more sane parts of terrain hypothesis, namely that external circumstances might trigger the virus to start breeding and causing an infectious outbreak in the host. Maybe our mothers were right when they said "Button your shirt or you'll get a cold, exposing your throat like that!"?
But how would one conduct a study to tst the hypothesis?
Exactly, this is what I think happens most of the time. I suppose sometimes you clear the infection completely without even realizing you had almost a cold.
We have learned that testing non-stop does not prevent catching or transmitting COVID anyway, so it is better just to forget about it and enjoy life.
That would imply that people are infected and their immune system is holding the virus in check - barely - until something like stress, cold, fatigue, hangover, etc.. weakens them and breaks the steady state standoff between the immune system and the virus. I'm sure this does happen, and I have experienced it myself.
My friend works retail and was very overworked in the lead-up to Christmas. As soon as he had time off, he came down with covid. This happens a lot -- people falling ill just after a period of stress or over-work. It's clear that many factors combine to increase susceptibility... And perhaps sometimes it's not exposure that triggers illness, but more of an activation of a virus that may be dormantly carried.
At least it should be grounds enough for research, don't you think? Everyone working as a teacher, especially with younger children, knows that all it takes is one little thing extra happening, and you come down with something from the perpetual virus-and-bacteria blender called class.
When the wife worked as kindergarten teacher for autistic children, she regularly had pink-eye, colds, upset stomach and lots of niggling ailments. Soons as she quit education alltogehter, all of those went away. Same with me, though my problems were more stress-related (rapid weight gain/loss, rashes, restless legs, snoring like you'd expect the neighbours to complain, generalized confusion and dizzy spells and such) - getting out of academics and then out of teaching altogether, moving up into the forests and gradually start the shift to "eat what you can grow/pick/catch" which by the way means a /lot/ more work per day than doing the 45hrs/week routine made all those pesky irritants go away.
Heck, last check up at the docs, the nurse had to redo the bloodwork since it looked "to good to be true" - the doc described it as "better than a 25 year olds".
I'm thinking this stuff with viral infections got to be connected to heaps more factors - maybe one vaccine isn't a biggie, like getting a tetanus shot, but dozens of them sometimes before puberty combined with all the other various chemistry we expose ourself to?
YES. That podcast blew my mind. Rancourt should be far more cited than he is.
It was restrictions, lockdowns and covid protocols that directly caused death spikes and exacerbated susceptibility to disease amongst vulnerable groups.
I observe a misunderstanding in the comments. Maybe I am wrong but his thesis states that some individuals would carry the bug asymptomatically, eventually getting SICK and then spreading it. That doesn't equate asymptomatic transmission.
hope-simpson thought that influenza carriers transmitted without a return to symptoms. how we imagine this process would work with sars-2, though, i don’t know. i think in both cases we must imagine the carriers become at least mildly symptomatic, perhaps without taking much notice of it. a lot of discussion of asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission seems to me to depend more on what people notice.
I had a brief interchange with Mike Yeadon some time ago about that. This was his response: "...
The link is filled with claims & occasionally a scientific paper.
What it lacks, though, is empirical evidence supporting what they claim.
On the actual study of transmission from people without symptoms but a positive PCR test, it’s so low as to classify S epidemiologically irrelevant. Asymptomatic includes pre-symptomatic.
This paper shows that transmission even at home from those without symptoms is incredibly low, potentially zero (because they didn’t net off false positives l, indeed they don’t even mention the limitations of the diagnostic test).
This is a “meta-analysts”, a study of a group of studies. It’s the highest level of evidence there is. So it isn’t trumped by someone finding some transmission without symptoms.
In short, for all operational purposes, asymptomatic transmission is a lie.
'Our attempts to manage the pandemic have presented us with a variety of problems and paradoxes: Why have lockdowns and other containment measures [vaccines presumed included] proven so generally ineffective against SARS-2?'
Eugyppius, I am shocked – SHOCKED – that you could say such a thing. According to everybody's favorite infallible modelers at Imperial College London, the vaccines, at least, have done a stellar job. As we all know, models never lie.
This fascinating review/update on Hope-Simpson's work was shared on Toby Young's Lockdown Sceptics site by @Nessimersion way back in Jan '21.
Key questions for the framing of a parsimonious explanation are asked that remain unanswered and the key role of VitD first came to my attention. It shows how little we know about this phenomenon, the things we call viruses and how much is a contingent construct.
Hope-Simpson's failure to identify a serial interval for influenza (where he had been able to do so for measles) seems to have been a turning point for him. He found no obvious pattern in the length time it took for household contacts of flu patients to become infected. I'm not sure how epidemiologists explain this away, but it seems to me a terribly important point. Can anyone explain it to me? If Person A, through close contact or proximity, transmits a disease to Person B, when we look at many pairs of household contacts, A and B, should be not see some pattern in the time between infections? Hope-Simpson argues, in effect, that without correlation there is no causation...he was right, wasn't he?
his argument is that they're all infected around the same time by the same symptomless carrier. they are all effects of a hidden cause, in other words; they're not infecting each other.
Quite. It just seems to me an important point which is easily overlooked or, perhaps, dismissed with a thought-stopper like 'absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence'. I just wonder whether you think his argument on this one point stands up:
If the main mode of transmission were by direct transmission from the sick to the healthy, we would see evidence of a serial interval. If a serial interval is not evident, then the main mode of transmission *cannot* be by direct transmission from the sick to the healthy.
Obviously none of this has stopped scientists calculating a serial interval for influenza, or for Covid, based on presumed transmission and then using it in their models. But, it is his statement of the problem, rather than the implied solution which I think matters most. His reasoning is sound, is it not?
The thing that made me angriest in the beginning of Covid was the notion that somehow asymptomatic people could be infectious, which is what I understand Hope-Simpson to be saying. This made everyone a potential disease vector and ramped up everyone’s fear.
If it turns out that asymptomatic people can be infectious, I just hope people will not go around avoiding each other bc of fear of potential illness.
Let us live! And if we’re actually sick, we’ll stay home.
All we need is hypochondriacs running the show. Dear God, no.
I don't understand them to say people are asymptomatically infectious "all the time" - rather, the virus is latent and only activates when the person's environment or weakened immune system causes a challenge (for whatever reason). By that theory, we may harbor latently all the viruses we've ever had, and all would be kept under control and not infectious, while we are healthy.
"The Transmission of Epidemic Influenza - R. Edgar Hope-Simpson (1992)"
PDF: https://docdro.id/pRgxQQ8
thanks
Very interesting piece. But how do you explain recovered people (especially in the early days) testing negative on what are widely regarded to be over-sensitive PCR tests? How is this compatible with the idea that the virus remains post-symptomatically in some people? Wouldn't we have seen this by now?
Thanks,
Kim G
Roma Sur, Mexico City
Thanks.
Thank you!
From the Foreword: "Infectious disease has not been conquered." Implicit in the statement is that infectious disease is the problem to be solved. It it? The terrain view suggests we are looking in the wrong direction.
Will give it a try. A long read. However, I no longer believe viruses are transmissible in the standard way as supported by germ theory.
Be prepared . . . the book is like a detective novel . . . outlining the problems then steadily building up the evidence and giving hints as to his hypothesis. Only in the last chapters is the denouement. I enjoyed the book . . . great insight into how good scientists used to work.
I certainly hope that the asymptomatic spread portion doesn't bear out. As ineffective as masking has been, if asymptomatic spread were proven then the pressure to "do something" by masking up would overwhelm all rationality and logic, and we would once again be forced to wear face diapers.
i wouldn't worry too much about this aspect of the theory. the story would probably end up being something similar to the whole debate around 'presymptomatic' transmission: it's very hard to tell what it actually means to be presymptomatic, and it seems we're mostly discussing people who are inattentive to mild symptoms and/or unwilling to tell investigators that that they didn't immediately self-isolate despite not feeling totally healthy.
And it follows we are all constantly pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic to one or more viruses and bacteria and should spend the entirety of our lives being continuously tested for every disease causing pathogen known to science - and of course stay in perpetual self-isolation.
I think unless something is done, masking will be with us seasonally anyhow.
What we need to underline, highlight, emphasize, and broadcast is what masking did, does, and will do. What were the results of the mandate? If masks are so significant as the surgeon general asserted, then surely we should see how masks affected case numbers in non mandate/mandate areas of the country. Surely Florida should be in peril while California should be a place nearly devoid of disease. Are they?
masking has never left us. People still walk around masked up eben here in florida were mandates have been gone for years. im convinced Some people will simply never leave there house ever again without one on. They will never breath clean fresh air for the rest of there lives. As for mandates, if they emerge in the blue hellholes I presume there will be alot more noncompliance. Only the real worshippers of everything covid will go along, and enforce them.
The interesting thing to do is to observe those people and see how "faithful" they are to the dogma of fear. I've watched many of the mask wearing public, and they don't realize how intellectually inconsistent they are. Here are just a few examples:
1. If you have a beard and you are wearing a mask, why bother? The only reason I can think of is to wear a mask without having to wear a mask. By the way, I have a beard and realize that when I have to wear a mask, it's completely ridiculous.
2. Any mask will do. If you wear a Gater, a bandana, your shirt, anything bedazzled, anything pretty much other than an n95, you're doing it wrong.
3.Replacing the mask. I believe that a mask should optimally be replaced and washed regularly. Yet how many people are doing just that?
4. Proper placement of the mask. I can't tell you how many people remove the mask to tell me things after mumbling to me multiple times. To be honest, I have given up trying to "hear" those who wear masks. I might try once or twice, but it could be inconsiderate of me to lean in to hear you better because you have already declared that the mask stops large droplets and therefore to decrease the social distance between you and I would be intellectually inconsisent of you if you were to allow it.
5. If you believe in masks, no restaurants for you. Sorry, but no. If you believe in a mask, then you have to wear it for all reasons indoors. So you should only take your food for takeout. If you believe that masks are only required at certain times indoors and not others, that's intellectually inconsistent. The virus doesn't transmit while eating or drinking? The virus doesn't transmit while you are sitting, but does when you are standing?
there consistent at marking themselves as a moron, thats all. Like you said, they are wearing them wrong and using cloth and other cheap masks. They take them down to eat. My only conclusion for someone still wearing a mask is they are a complete idiot incapable of rational thought. They are also id say most definitly triple jabbed at a minimum as well. So they have literally "drank the kool aid" just like a cult member that they probably claim to not understand "how could they possibly do that" has done and will do again. They are members of a cult and they dont even know it. I avoid these people whenever possible. I have a low tolerance for complete stupidity.
I've said this elsewhere, but will bring it up again here.
There are many reasons people wear masks, some of my favorite people wear and wore masks, including myself. I am guilty as charged of wearing masks on Uber Rides and to doctor's offices. Ironically, the price was my health. I am a recent amputee and I need a doctor's approval for a prosthetic, home health, medications, etc. I imagine if I stood my ground and didn't wear a mask, I would not have been removed from the doctor's office or thrown out of the Uber, but I didn't want to deal with the conflict. That's my price. I have to live with that. I won't revise my history.
Before my amputation in November, I could count twice the times I wore a mask, once to get into a bank and another time to attend a one-man show for a friend I was supporting. Both times I wore a mask a grand total of five minutes a piece. Don't get me started on the intellectual inconsistency of the ordeal. I was against the gene therapy passing itself off as vaccination from the start. I did stand my ground there..I was asked while in the hospital, and also at the doctor's office why I didn't want to get vaccinated. I told them why in plain terms. My most recent doctor's visit, they didn't even ask me.
Even while in the hospital and in recovery, I only wore a mask outside of my hospital room as mandated by the hospital policy. I guess Covid only travels in hospital corridors and not in the rooms?
I have family members close to me who are conservative and democrat who wore masks to visit me, so it's not strictly political. So for these others that are wearing masks I can tell you there are other reasons than stupidity.
1. Move along to get along. In my case that was why I wore a mask. If you berate me for it, I agree. I constantly berate myself. Before my amputation, I would go out to restaurants many times a week not wearing a mask, singing karaoke, which apparently is a dangerous Covid activity. After my amputation, I wore a mask way too often for my taste (zero mask wearing is my goal).
I knew a doctor on a podcast admit to getting the vaxx and wearing a mask and adhering to the Covid rules in order to travel. This made me livid, because out of everyone, he is a health professional, he should know better. He got Covid before the vaccine was availabe, and knew that it was absurd to get vaxxed.
To hear him talk about Covid now is interesting because he is outraged about the how irresponsible the public health officials have been. One huge reason he is ranting is he asks the question now that I did from the start "Why do what China did?" And yet most of the world did just that, followed China. I call it the "monkey see, monkey do" reason for doing it. I wish now that Covid had originated in Sweden.
2. Too busy to know the truth. I know, it's hard for me to wrap my mind not educating yourself on unprecedented government policies, but it happens. The people close to me who wore masks have families, work hard, and have little time for looking for answers. So, they do what they are told.
Many of us can't fathom not having time to educate ourselves, but I can imagine it. There are only so many hours in a day. After Work, Sleep, Family, how many more hours are left in a day? Also, demanding that everyone must educate themselves sounds an awful lot like coercion. On the flip side of that, if they are coercing me to do something, they had better know exactly why and for what reason they are telling me to do what they want me to do. This is why I don't demand people not wear masks or not get vaccinated. Do what you want, but could I recommend at least it being informed consent?
3. Trust in authorities. It wasn't too long ago, maybe ten years, when I still had a little faith in the media and at least some authorities, but that time is gone. First of all, I don't like being nannied or babied. Around this time each year, news reports crop up telling people to "wear sunscreen." If I am stupid enough not to wear sunscreen (and I have been that stupid) that's on me. I am not about to sue the media or government agencies for ignoring common sense.
You can also tell the media are biased in how they deliver the news and what language they use. The average citizen doesn't question this at all. But if you listen you can catch it. If you are "anti" anything you are bad. If you are "pro" anything you are positive and good. This is how the media indicates what side it is on something. It usually skews in one direction.
During the last couple of years it has gotten much worse to the point of not having a different slant, but a different reality. If you break the windows of the Capitol and walk around inside taking pictures of the interior because you are protesting the election results, you are a dangerous insurrectionist. IF you are rioting out on the street following a number of racial incidents and looting buildings and burning them down, you are in a "mostly peaceful protest."
I am more in the camp of "Forgive them, they know not what they do." What we have to do is break it down for them. Show them how they are being manipulated. Find something that the media or health officials say that they disagree with, and use that as a way to "show" that if they are wrong in this area, what makes them think they aren't wrong in other areas?
I enjoyed reading this and I completely agree.
I think many many of us knew the science, understood the scientific dynamics of the "virus"
I did also go along to get along.
I had abdominal surgery in May. No one asked me (iNova Hospital in Northern Virginia) if I had been "vaxxed" no one asked me for a covid test pre op. I went into the hospital. they asked us to wear masks, hubbs and I did. Our noses were sticking out, no one berated us. We were in a little pre-op room and even post op.
We wore the masks to make the people happy, so the people would not freak out
Love the pro and anti part. So true.
Of course, if you are anti-something, you are automatically pro-opposite-of-something. But nobody expects intelligence on the true believers.
Here in Northern Virginia there are many many people still wearing masks.
I often see people outside walking alone, in the wind, the sunny day, or maybe it is raining. They are wearing an N-95 mask.
The world has gone mental
you make several valid statements here. However, the intellectual inconsistencies continue.
Touching things, objects, door knobs hand rails, doors, walls. shoes, legs of pants, out door clothing, anything really.
In medical school we learn "sterile technique" that is the constant, undeviating from the operation of sterility, or close to not passing on pathogens to a person at risk, or a person that is infectious. Additionally there is protocol for the operating room, and medical offices in general to a degree.
I do not think that we should ever attempt to control our lives as if we are living as if everything is poison.
All of the mind numbing rules the "CDC" and others have given to prevent spread, or to become infected is just a sloppy mess.
My father has told me so many stories of his life living in Rotterdam, as a kid, poor. He was brilliant and began working at age 14. He worked as an accountant at age 15. Well, this brought him much earlier than well, any kid today, into the world of working men.
The soup for lunch. Was brought in the work place in a large pot. Huge, like a caldron. It was made by some lunch supply company. Everyone ate the soup, and a chunk of bread. Everyone supplied their own cup and dipped their cup into the soup, sometimes immersing their entire hand to get to the bottom for the vegetables. That is one thing. even my dad thought that was odd as a kid but oh well
Once the boss dropped his wax pencil into the pot, it fell off of his ear.
He reached in and felt around for it.
When my dad was older, 19 he was taken up in a razzia by the Nazi's .
He went to a place in Northern Germany near Poland to "clean up rubble"
He said the food there was also rather questionable.
Once on the train, the young prisoners would steal mailed packages for the soldiers. They would eat up all of the goodies in the packages. Once they ate RAW, one of the soldiers pet rabbit.
... and here we are worrying about some stupid virus.
My daddy is 98 and does not have such great hygiene, rarely washes his hands and he uses the same old hankie for a few days.
He has not had covid.
If you haven't seen it, check out the George Carlin video about germs and safety.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=george+carlin+germs&atb=v314-1&iax=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCk4ap9mb-H4&ia=videos
Additionally. Leaving aside, not air-tight and whether masks can stop viral particles - they can’t.) After about 10 minutes a mask - whatever material and even the sacred N95 - becomes waterlogged with those water droplets they are supposed to stop. One would think that is obvious - apparently not.
Once that happens, pathogens can move through the material driven by hygroscopic action. Pathogens on the inner surface move to the exterior to be shed into the air (or transferred by handling), and pathogens landed on the outer surface migrate to the inner to be inhaled.
All masks should therefore be changed every ten to fifteen minutes and disposed of in a sanitary manner.
This is why ‘proper’ masks to protect against viruses are made of waterproof materials, like rubber, are skin tight, cover the whole face and eyes, and have changeable hepa-filters.
A common sight I've seen throughout this pandemic is all the masks littering parking lots. When I see that, I think to myself "Then, what's the point?" If you truly believe in the mask an the whole "it's not for me, it's for everyone around me" then shouldn't you burn the calories and throw it into the trashcan when you are done with it? I imagine though that the person littering the parking lot are part of the "move along to get along" crowd. In that case, I would ask them to be like me, and just go without the mask at least in places where there is no hard mandate.
Yes! Finally, I see someone else saying what I've been saying from the beginning. If one is going to wear a mask, it must be changed every 10-15 minutes! And ideally tossed in a hazardous waste bin. Anything else is pure theater. Not to mention the other comments about how if you believe you need a mask then you simply cannot eat out in a restaurant. Sorry. If one is so afraid to go out without a mask, then they simply need to eat in at home for the duration.
1 your observtioins of bearded maskers is spot on. NO beard will llow the infernal ting to SEAL and without that bit, ight as well not wear one at all, as it then only serves to placate the screaming harpies. The two times I ws FORCED to don one of those wretched mug nappies, I dropped my chin, tilted my head dowward, opened my lower jaw as far as it would go, and breated normally BELOW the charade rag. Had to. I was getting faint from lack of oxugen and likley reuptake of CO2. was suffocating behind that thing till I "fixed " it Never got called on how I"wore" the wretched piece of bother.
2 anything other than N 95? You have been duped, or reporgammed. Ive used N95's for decades doing body work, sandblasting, etc, can only wear the bloody thing for about 3/4 hour, then I have to put that project down and go do somethig else. When I take the fool thing off, my face that had been behind that mask would be thick with the grit from my work, I'd be blowing snot with gobs of sanding particles out my nose, and could FEEL the grit from which I was sort of protecting myself between my teeth. If I can FEEL the particles, they are thousands of times larger than the WooFlew viral particles are. Duped again. Stop it. If that N 95 mask cannot filter the sanding dust, grit, etc out tof the air I am trying to breathe, there is NO WAY that same piece of equipment will be able to filter out viral particles that are thuosands of times smaller. Like trusting a piece of chicken wire to keep out things like flies, mosquitos, yellow jackets... and hoping it will also prevent entry of gnats.
3 read the medical protocols for the PROPER wearing of N95 masks. In public I hve NEVER SEEN anyone practice these, yet they are essential to having even a glimmer of hope that the mask will be able to prevent passage of any disease vectors It CANNOT and WILL NOT. Wearing them for hours, right THERE is the incubator for the variants to form.
4 how about schoolyard chums likeing each others' masks and swapping? This has been documented. People are SO clueless about the wretched pieces of stuff.. medical professionals must go through traning on HOW to put them on, wear tem change them take a break from them throughout the workday.... get their O2 St levels back up. Yes, oxyge sturation drops as one wears the infrenal tnings, and CO2 levels climb, because one cannot expel enough CO2 with one of those jokes on yer mug.
5 Sure... but whether I "believe" in them or not makes not one half a whit of difference. They do not work. They are a pacifier to the eyes of the fearfuln who have bought the "message" that if we don't DOO something NOW, we're ALL gonna die next week.
GROW UPP The nasty inventions are being mis-applied for a purpose for which they are totally incpable of making any measureable difference.
Dump them, along with the politicans and tyrants that would have us all slap them accross our mugs.
I have to tell my cafeteria story.
About two months or so following the end of the lockdowns, we decided to once again recall our writing critique group that we held at a Cafeteria. The first few times we went there were people wearing masks in line, but there was no restaurant policy regarding masks. I imagine at that time their thinking was that everyone would "do the right thing" which meant they would wear a mask. I wasn't going to wear a mask.
A few times later, they instituted a new policy no doubt to assuage those who were marinating in fear. The chalk board outside read "Masks required while in line." I stood and stared at the sign for a couple seconds, then went to the back room where we had our critique group. I guess I wasn't going to eat, I thought. I wasn't going to ask someone else to grab me a plate either because that would be a cop out.
An employee was inside the back room cleaning and disinfecting the place. He was wearing a mask. I asked him if we wanted me to leave. He asked "Why?"
I responded "Because I don't have a mask."
He stopped for a moment and then he, along with one of the other writers in my group said "You can use mine."
My brain tilted. I think I made a gesture in their direction communicating "This is why this is all BS."
I finally spoke and said, "I need to clarify, I don't own a mask, I will not wear a mask."
He asked me, and it seemed sincere, "Why?"
SO I gave him the breakdown. I related to him the death rate numbers, common sense about why masks don't work, etc. He had no real response to the amount of things I knew about the virus at that point. He also said I didn't have to leave, but that I couldn't get food since a mask was required to stand in line.
And then I remembered that they had drive up service. So I went out, got in my car, ordered my food over the phone, got it, went back and parked, and triumphantly brought the food back into the restuarant and to the back room
I think I wasn't the only one that did this, as about a month later the policy changed from masking while in line to "masks are required upon entry and while walking through the restaurant." That was the last time I went to the critique group.
N95 masks are only good for things like spray painting and scooping kitty litter. Anything else is simply compliance BS - you are doing it because it is required. And the only effect wearing masks has on virus transmission is it is a signal to other people to keep away from you - especially when everyone is NOT masked. It is really nothing more than a keep away from me sign.
I don't talk to anyone if they have a mask on ,it's below my standard . Masks are out of date now since the monkey pox is in fashion. A store in California opend selling Men's chastity belts .
It never struck me that mask enthusiasts were over-concerned with consistency (or even that the concept had occurred to them).
My favourites are those who wear them without covering the nose. They may as well have 'Bereft' tattooed on their brows; it would send the same signal.
Those wearing masks aren't even thinking about it. They are many times too busy. Someone close to me said, when I voiced my objections to masks, "Well, I can wear them for eight hours a day, so it's no big deal." I think she says this because she has a job in government schools.
Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done. Thare are a lot of things in life that are "no big deal" at least in the short term. My question is, does it make sense?
I'd be the first to tell you there are things I o that don't make sense. The difference is these are things I choose to do and I don't inflict them on other people.
I have information from reliable sources ,that there is no sex in heaven ,so enjoy it while you can ,right here in the earth hellhole .
Or it may be because of monkey pox we may all be wearing condoms 24/ 7 by mandate in September .
I am wondering how as a 100% woman, i would don a condom to protect myself from moneyhoax? Lol
the female condoms. 😁😁
Makes sense...the freaks come out at night. I might be asleep.
Wouldn't we all suffocate? (Asking for a concerned friend.)
Face condoms? Hand condoms? It gets kind of ridiculous.
But seriously, MPX spreads by close skin contact especially with pustules, and it is the kind of virus that might be a threat to massage parlors - especially since masseuses are mostly young women, and therefore never had a smallpox vaccination.
don't be fooled. 'They" will come up with SOME bogus way of forcing us al to protect ourselves, or make things appear that THEY are protecting us from it. ButI'll no more put one of those on than I ever did the blighted blue pleated mug nappie. I never wore the stuipd rag, went wherever/wheneever I pleased, never got sick.and I KNOW I never spread it because I never GOT it. "symptomatic spread" is a joke, too.... mediclly impossible. IF one's viral load is large enough to spread it, that one WILL have symptoms. Virlogy 301.
Masks are now independent of all reason and logic anyway. It's a means to an end.
We should just, in that case, insist they follow the science which shows masks are pretty well ineffective against stopping the spread of viral infections, whether the carriers or symptomatic or asymptomatic.
Imagine. Living (or something-like-living) things behaving in complex interrelated ways.
I keep trying to tell you how much I enjoy these posts but never quite manage to encompass the full extent of it. You make scientific theories quite pleasurably interesting.
Hi ,good news for a change .Last night I had a dream or nightmare that I had the pandemic yruss .In panic I jump out of bed to inspect myself .then I remember I can't jump out of bed if I have the yruss pandemic .So I go back to bed and crawl out slowly as one does with the plague .I make it to the mirror in the bathroom to inspect my tongue ,pulling it out as far as I can ,but I don't see the yrusses, causing my plague .So I look lower down on my body and there it is ,instead of an infection I have an erection ,something I did not have in the last 45 years .I call my wife who is 12 years older than me to tell her the good news .She hurries to the spare bedroom to lock herself in ,because she knows about the crazy things I did before and may do again .
What if SARS-COV-2 wasn't at all novel. Recall the taxonomy committee did NOT agree with the WHO in naming this sas it did, it did not regard it as novel enough.
What if it was one of a continuum of mutating coronaviruses, moving in and out of zoonotic reservoirs. Sometimes causing colds, sometimes a "nasty bug"?
What if Omicron was just another one of these? It seems to be too different to "Wuhan" to be regarded as an evolutionary descendent.
What if we are now just measuring new waves of coronaviruses we never noticed before - possibly made somewhat worse by the interventions - inc vaccination.
What if the excess death curves were not related (except to a very small degree) with a virus but rather to the disruption to healthcare, combined with teerror and fear directed at populations.?
Why - if a supposedly lethal virus was spreading for months before - did excess death curves not shoot up UNITIL - rather than before - lockdowns?
What if the entire pandemic is actually an example of confirmation and observer bias - we are (through hysteria + PCR) shining a light on what we have never observed before in such detail.
This wouldn't be the first pseudo-pandemic fueled by PCR. But we need to make sure it's the last.
You make some excellent points here. In particular, there are decades of evidence that psycholgical factors such as anxiety, lack of social contact and perceived SES considerably exacerbate the symptoms of respiratory disease and increase susceptibility. This suggests that everything done in the last two years made the problem worse. I think it is entirely plausible that there was nothing particularly special about the pathogens circulating.
It's a theory no government will want discussed at their public enquiries.
I am wonderibg how much they are actually pleased about the lab-leak vs natural origin debate going on. It acts as a massive distraction from the greatest crime ever committted - unnecessary and harmful lockdowns then prolonged and justified post-hoc by the promise of injections which were neither safe nor effective.
Yes on all accounts IMO.
I had 'covid' in January and again last week, six months apart. Mild bouts both times but entirely different set of symptoms. I know people who were sick in spring 2020 and then again a year or two later and they say the same -- it was clearly not the same virus because it was not the same illness.
How can they know for sure that these are variants of the original Wuhan strain? How can they know which came first? Viruses outcompete each other all the time.
What is certain, as you and Eugyppius point out, is that the vaccines have interfered in a complex interplay of immunological and environmental factors.
Why do we have out-of-season waves, for example? Why did I get sick in June with a winter virus? I recall that there was basically no sickness going around in summer 2020...
"Virus gonna virus."
I think the best analogy is the weather. Only idiots think that the governments can predict or control the weather. But for some reason people haven’t accepted that the CDC is incapable of predicting or controlling disease
"Only idiots think that the governments can ... control the weather."
Oh, you've just opened up a great big ol' can of wormy worms there.
In the interest of [I'll think of something profound later], here's more kerosene for the barby:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/05/10/china-is-launching-a-massive-weather-control-machine-the-size-of-alaska/
I reckon Forbes still counts as a trusted source.
Forbes? Sorry, no.
Any particular reason you could share, it it's not too much of a bother?
Eh, I didn’t say “climate”. I actually think the government could control a region’s climate. For example, the government could turn the west into a barren dust bowl. And I guess the government could eradicate Covid by just killing everybody. Models can become predictive if you remove most of the variables.
Yup, pack the pic-a-nic basket and bring your umbrella is rather a good principle for most things, both great and small.
Agreed, I read that Christian fascists are now controlling the US but as a formal -liberal I am confused about how the state funded drag queen story time for school kids fit 8n Christian facism. Rather I think they are dividing us on our differences. I think They are stoking the fire 1) by amplifiying privilege for minority groups to breed resentment 2) allowing kids access to mutilation of their bodies - privilege to transcon-fused kids. I was not interested in politics prior to my perceived loss of body autonomy inflicted by US gov. But now I believe naively perhaps that most people like myself are trying to figure what is happening in our country.
The lack of any real noteworthy mutations except D614G for months is hard to explain, unless you assume that once we first learned of its existence it had already stumbled upon a strong local optimum for transmission in immunologically naive hosts. Such a thing can be explained if you assume the whole thing came into existence due to passage through mice with humanized ACE2 receptors. If we go with the competing "some dude ate a bat" model, the lack of genetic diversity observed is a lot stranger.
If the vaccine trials led to the emergence of these variants, that were generally more virulent and contagious and infected mostly naive people, then they were already responsible for millions of deaths before they ever received emergency use authorization.
"So why didn't the millions of naturally immune people we must have had by April 2020 or so give rise to variants early on in the pandemic? Why would it depend on the handful of early participants in the vaccination trials?" Would be the obvious question, but it could then presumably be explained through two factors:
1. The virus had already arrived at a strong local optimum during its birth in the Wuhan lab.
2. The spike directed vaccines impose the kind of selective pressure that asymptomatic lingering infections could overcome with select spike mutations, whereas in the naturally immune, the jumps that had to be taken on the fitness landscape to both escape the host's growing immune pressure AND give rise to new variants with a transmission advantage over Wuhan in naive hosts (ie most of the population) would simply have been too big.
A distorted immune response induced by the vaccines would have allowed the kind of changes to emerge that don't have a meaningful fitness advantage in naturally immune hosts. If all you really have to deal with as a virus are a lot of antibodies against your Spike protein, you may find that mutations that wouldn't have helped you out much if you were also dealing with T cells, a trained innate immune response etc hunting ALL of your proteins are suddenly quite useful. These mutations would now under these abnormal conditions be able to overcome whatever inherent structural disadvantage they may have that normally translates into a fitness disadvantage.
Some of those spike mutations in these variants suddenly under positive selective pressure would then have had pleiotropic effects, that enabled jumps into animal populations (see: N501Y, found in Beta and known to expand the range of viable hosts). In those animals the ACE2 protein looks different, along with the immune pressure, so new variants emerged and one of those variants jumped back into our species and thereby gave rise to Omicron, which proved to be sufficiently different to enable widespread reinfection.
Why does South Africa produce all these Omicron variants? If you follow this logic, you would consider they were early with the vaccine trials, so they were early with giving rise to variants with pleiotropic spike mutations and so their local wildlife has also had far more time to give rise to variants that can jump back into our species.
If you look at it this way, then it looks as if after the original lab accident, we could have had a Wuhan wave followed by genuine herd immunity, in the absence of any attempt to vaccinate against this virus, something which many epidemiologists had anticipated.
Considering these vaccines were ever approved to begin with, it's tempting to think our policymakers and the vaccine manufacturers assumed the virus was going to run into an evolutionary dead end too. They would have failed to consider that the vaccine trials themselves were expanding the range of viable positions on the fitness landscape, both directly and indirectly (through the new variants jumping into other species).
Corona viruses mutate at a fraction of the speed of Influenza viruses and if it could not have independently gone from Wuhan to Omicron without humans providing some of the intermediate stepping stones with the Spike based vaccine trials, then the present day situation where herd immunity is now definitively out of the question could be entirely our own fault.
But there would be other conclusions to draw too. The BA.1 spike vaccines now being deployed, experiments with nucleocapsid only vaccines, or vaccine trials that only carry the receptor binding domain as opposed to the whole spike protein in hopes of reducing side-effects, could once again give rise to unique selective pressures in certain hosts who would then be able to give rise to new variants that could not have come into existence otherwise.
We would have to consider that vaccinating people with just a portion of a pathogen is intrinsically dangerous, because it generates abnormal narrowly focused selective pressures in hosts. Today nobody really cares about that idea because it's assumed some immunocompromised people are the variant factories, even though such people will generally be hampered in their ability to deal with all SARS-COV-2 proteins and thus don't seem like good candidates to impose the type of oddly narrow selective pressures we're looking for.
TL;DR: If this is how it works, if the model in which healthy hosts can be variant factories under the right conditions is correct, the implications are massive and we may be responsible for millions of deaths ourselves through the vaccine trials.
thanks as always for thoughtful comment.
increasingly i wonder if the vaccines massively increased the number of symptomless latent carriers, moving SARS-2 from a more traditional sick-infect-healthy strategy to subtler multi-phase process of infection as Hope-Simpson hypothesised.
this would also explain the fixed form of the virus until the moment of the vaccine trials. it just didn't have any good environments to practice against human antibodies. but perhaps by inducing some level of immunity to spike, but not mucosal immunity, the vaccines created what is by now a vast population of people who carry the virus, more or less asymptomatically until the vaccine-induced antibodies wane enough (explaining out-of-season waves) or seasonal cues give the virus additional advantages.
Of course, with SARS-2 there were always many symptomless latent carriers - even from the first days at Wuhan. That is the reason that SARS-2 was so much more successful than SARS-1, which was stamped out because only symptomatic people could spread it. Of course vaccination increased the number of asymptomatic carriers because that is what it was designed to do - the vaccine prevents severe illness and death, not transmission, and was always intended to do so.
It may not be the vaccine trials that sparked the explosion of variants but mere coincidence caused by the passage of time. If you look on Nextstrain, there are variants branching off almost immediately. However, it took time for enough variation to accumulate for recombination to facilitate the creation of viable new variant lineages, since in lab-type virus, all recombinants will be identical until there are variations to swap. It is only today that there is enough variation out there circulating that recombinants are easier to detect, and many are being recorded and given a name. Very few variants have the right combination of code and transmission circumstances to spark a whole new lineage, though.
It's almost like it's really complicated with perhaps hundreds of variables we can't even identify.....
I'm just waiting for them to start blaming excessive human CO2 emissions for the viral mutants.
Stop Climate-Viral Change! I can already envision the retarded slogans and memes.
Lately the scam is running on variants ,some super variants ,or ueber variants, over under variants ,variants with bushy tails ,others with horns and rotting teeth . Tony Foxi is worried he may run out of names for cariations of new boogy men .Tony you can never go wrong naming your new inventions after evil men ,like your self , like Hitlerony ,Stalino ,or god forbid even Putinova .If I was you I would name the new variant after myself Foxxxirony .
Oh early on there were already various articles and shoddy studies claiming human encroachment into natural habitats was to blame for the pandemic.
Pangolins too... it's always the damn pangolins.
So I understand correctly, one of the processes you seem to be theorizing may be at play with COVID is a phenomenon of POST-symptomatic transmission, not the pre-symptomatic/asymptomatic transmission theory used to create an unfalsifiable logic trap ("you can literally never prove or disprove that you cannot spread covid so we must assume everyone is a vector forever") that stole 2 years of our lives?
So basically, we might actually carry the proto-viruses or potential for infection around until opportunity arises for the virus. It also ties virology together with the more sane parts of terrain hypothesis, namely that external circumstances might trigger the virus to start breeding and causing an infectious outbreak in the host. Maybe our mothers were right when they said "Button your shirt or you'll get a cold, exposing your throat like that!"?
But how would one conduct a study to tst the hypothesis?
Exactly, this is what I think happens most of the time. I suppose sometimes you clear the infection completely without even realizing you had almost a cold.
We have learned that testing non-stop does not prevent catching or transmitting COVID anyway, so it is better just to forget about it and enjoy life.
That would imply that people are infected and their immune system is holding the virus in check - barely - until something like stress, cold, fatigue, hangover, etc.. weakens them and breaks the steady state standoff between the immune system and the virus. I'm sure this does happen, and I have experienced it myself.
My friend works retail and was very overworked in the lead-up to Christmas. As soon as he had time off, he came down with covid. This happens a lot -- people falling ill just after a period of stress or over-work. It's clear that many factors combine to increase susceptibility... And perhaps sometimes it's not exposure that triggers illness, but more of an activation of a virus that may be dormantly carried.
At least it should be grounds enough for research, don't you think? Everyone working as a teacher, especially with younger children, knows that all it takes is one little thing extra happening, and you come down with something from the perpetual virus-and-bacteria blender called class.
When the wife worked as kindergarten teacher for autistic children, she regularly had pink-eye, colds, upset stomach and lots of niggling ailments. Soons as she quit education alltogehter, all of those went away. Same with me, though my problems were more stress-related (rapid weight gain/loss, rashes, restless legs, snoring like you'd expect the neighbours to complain, generalized confusion and dizzy spells and such) - getting out of academics and then out of teaching altogether, moving up into the forests and gradually start the shift to "eat what you can grow/pick/catch" which by the way means a /lot/ more work per day than doing the 45hrs/week routine made all those pesky irritants go away.
Heck, last check up at the docs, the nurse had to redo the bloodwork since it looked "to good to be true" - the doc described it as "better than a 25 year olds".
I'm thinking this stuff with viral infections got to be connected to heaps more factors - maybe one vaccine isn't a biggie, like getting a tetanus shot, but dozens of them sometimes before puberty combined with all the other various chemistry we expose ourself to?
There’s no good evidence for a novel virus causing mass illness. See work by Denis Rancourt & excellent interview on Jerm Warfare.
YES. That podcast blew my mind. Rancourt should be far more cited than he is.
It was restrictions, lockdowns and covid protocols that directly caused death spikes and exacerbated susceptibility to disease amongst vulnerable groups.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0mpJzVtCMHpGUS5PSXAMfH?si=0R7twvLaSpuV3OxnBEywIg&utm_source=copy-link
I observe a misunderstanding in the comments. Maybe I am wrong but his thesis states that some individuals would carry the bug asymptomatically, eventually getting SICK and then spreading it. That doesn't equate asymptomatic transmission.
hope-simpson thought that influenza carriers transmitted without a return to symptoms. how we imagine this process would work with sars-2, though, i don’t know. i think in both cases we must imagine the carriers become at least mildly symptomatic, perhaps without taking much notice of it. a lot of discussion of asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission seems to me to depend more on what people notice.
I had a brief interchange with Mike Yeadon some time ago about that. This was his response: "...
The link is filled with claims & occasionally a scientific paper.
What it lacks, though, is empirical evidence supporting what they claim.
On the actual study of transmission from people without symptoms but a positive PCR test, it’s so low as to classify S epidemiologically irrelevant. Asymptomatic includes pre-symptomatic.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33315116/
This paper shows that transmission even at home from those without symptoms is incredibly low, potentially zero (because they didn’t net off false positives l, indeed they don’t even mention the limitations of the diagnostic test).
This is a “meta-analysts”, a study of a group of studies. It’s the highest level of evidence there is. So it isn’t trumped by someone finding some transmission without symptoms.
In short, for all operational purposes, asymptomatic transmission is a lie.
Best wishes
Mike
https://doctors4covidethics.org/the-covid-lies/"
And this is the material I was asking him about:
https://swprs.org/pre-symptomatic-transmission-is-very-real/
Swiss Policy Research have been an excellent resource throughout.
Generally, but nobody is infallible. I also have some concerns about his takes on ivm and vxn efficacy.
'Our attempts to manage the pandemic have presented us with a variety of problems and paradoxes: Why have lockdowns and other containment measures [vaccines presumed included] proven so generally ineffective against SARS-2?'
Eugyppius, I am shocked – SHOCKED – that you could say such a thing. According to everybody's favorite infallible modelers at Imperial College London, the vaccines, at least, have done a stellar job. As we all know, models never lie.
'Covid-19 vaccines cut the potential global death toll by more than half in the first year they were available, according to a study published Thursday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases' https://www.statnews.com/2022/06/23/covid19-vaccines-prevention-global-deaths/
Praise their decisions in order to hopefully reduce their wrath -thinks the slave.
This fascinating review/update on Hope-Simpson's work was shared on Toby Young's Lockdown Sceptics site by @Nessimersion way back in Jan '21.
Key questions for the framing of a parsimonious explanation are asked that remain unanswered and the key role of VitD first came to my attention. It shows how little we know about this phenomenon, the things we call viruses and how much is a contingent construct.
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
Hope-Simpson's failure to identify a serial interval for influenza (where he had been able to do so for measles) seems to have been a turning point for him. He found no obvious pattern in the length time it took for household contacts of flu patients to become infected. I'm not sure how epidemiologists explain this away, but it seems to me a terribly important point. Can anyone explain it to me? If Person A, through close contact or proximity, transmits a disease to Person B, when we look at many pairs of household contacts, A and B, should be not see some pattern in the time between infections? Hope-Simpson argues, in effect, that without correlation there is no causation...he was right, wasn't he?
his argument is that they're all infected around the same time by the same symptomless carrier. they are all effects of a hidden cause, in other words; they're not infecting each other.
Quite. It just seems to me an important point which is easily overlooked or, perhaps, dismissed with a thought-stopper like 'absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence'. I just wonder whether you think his argument on this one point stands up:
If the main mode of transmission were by direct transmission from the sick to the healthy, we would see evidence of a serial interval. If a serial interval is not evident, then the main mode of transmission *cannot* be by direct transmission from the sick to the healthy.
Obviously none of this has stopped scientists calculating a serial interval for influenza, or for Covid, based on presumed transmission and then using it in their models. But, it is his statement of the problem, rather than the implied solution which I think matters most. His reasoning is sound, is it not?
So the virus can incubate for longer or shorter periods depending on the individual?
The thing that made me angriest in the beginning of Covid was the notion that somehow asymptomatic people could be infectious, which is what I understand Hope-Simpson to be saying. This made everyone a potential disease vector and ramped up everyone’s fear.
If it turns out that asymptomatic people can be infectious, I just hope people will not go around avoiding each other bc of fear of potential illness.
Let us live! And if we’re actually sick, we’ll stay home.
All we need is hypochondriacs running the show. Dear God, no.
We can't forget Sweden!
I don't understand them to say people are asymptomatically infectious "all the time" - rather, the virus is latent and only activates when the person's environment or weakened immune system causes a challenge (for whatever reason). By that theory, we may harbor latently all the viruses we've ever had, and all would be kept under control and not infectious, while we are healthy.
I think that they already are.......
Excellent and worth pursuing