Beijing Tightens Grip Over Coronavirus Research, Amid US-China Row on Virus Origin (cnn.com) 162
Nectar Gan, Caitlin Hu and Ivan Watson, reporting for CNN: China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web. Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts.
A medical expert in Hong Kong who collaborated with mainland researchers to publish a clinical analysis of Covid-19 cases in an international medical journal said his work did not undergo such vetting in February. The increased scrutiny appears to be the latest effort by the Chinese government to control the narrative on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives and sickened 1.7 million people worldwide since it first broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December. Since late January, Chinese researchers have published a series of Covid-19 studies in influential international medical journals.
A medical expert in Hong Kong who collaborated with mainland researchers to publish a clinical analysis of Covid-19 cases in an international medical journal said his work did not undergo such vetting in February. The increased scrutiny appears to be the latest effort by the Chinese government to control the narrative on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives and sickened 1.7 million people worldwide since it first broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December. Since late January, Chinese researchers have published a series of Covid-19 studies in influential international medical journals.
Too late to memory hole (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too late to memory hole (Score:5, Interesting)
Finding the wild reservoir could be a major step toward stopping the pandemic. The wild virus from bats (or whatever) may lack the mutation that allows human-to-human transmission. We may find a strain with much milder symptoms, but which still triggers enough of an immune response to confer immunity. It could be used as a vaccine to stop C19 just as cowpox was used to stop smallpox.
Re:Too late to memory hole (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Too late to memory hole (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, stop spouting communist propaganda.
The only reason to control your scientific bodies is to control the narrative because you know you don't want the truth to be published. This is information control, as much as you complain about Trump spouting off, Winnie the Pooh gets a pass because you're afraid?
Who is taking China to what court? There is no international court that China has signed off on having supremacy nor can any international court enforce any of its decisions. That's why the UN is basically a paper tiger, it can say all it wants, the conventions after WWI didn't stop Germany from building into WWII, or North Korea, Iraq and Iran from doing whatever it wants to do.
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Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
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You know that description also fits Trump, right?
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So Trump is reviewing every scientific paper coming out of the NIH on COVID? You are a moron to draw a moral equivalence in the first place.
Re: We can't have the truth be known... (Score:2)
Princess Leia was right (Score:5, Funny)
The more you tighten your grip, the more academic papers will slip through your fingers.
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"Streisand Effect" was my first thought.
What a great way to convince everyone that Chinese carelessness did let something out of the lab. Or even that it was some half done bioweapon.
Communism plus a culture of face-saving is not a good combination.
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It's not as if Americans don't hunt/eat absolutely anything that moves down in the deep south
"Cajun Flu" means you drank too much Saturday night and need to hit the confessional Sunday morning.
Re: Princess Leia was right (Score:5, Informative)
The problem doesn't appear to be the consumption of unusual meat sources. The problem is in keeping all the meat together in the market where disease can breed, mutate, and jump from species to species.
Killing a possum or squirrel in the woods isn't going to cause this sort of species jump, which likely required multiple jumps to become humanly viable.
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"The problem is in keeping all the meat together in the market where disease can breed, mutate, and jump from species to species."
That sounds reasonable, but has there been actual studies showing this is true?
Re: Princess Leia was right (Score:3)
My limited and uneducated understanding is that this is the working theory based on the similarity to bat-virus DNA, and the fact that the bat-virus would be unlikely to infect humans with a single jump; it more likely had to jump through multiple species, which makes it very likely that species crowding played a role.
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Please tell me where I can sign up for the Chinese to pay me to post crap. Does it pay per posting, per hit, or some other metric?
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This is what Trump's tantrums bring to the world.
Stage 3 TDS detected. Bias suspected.
Clue: This isn't a "Chinese" virus, or a "foreign" virus, it's just a virus, mmmmmkay.
Where did it first manifest? Wuhan, China. There's a market where they slaughter all manner of animals right there in the open, with zero concern for sanitation or separation.
How it made the jump from animal to human? No one really knows how yet. But in the environment of a wet market, it's very likely it happened through an open wound on both animal and butcher or customer.
Now add in the fact that there's a viral research lab roughly 7 miles from that market.
It's v
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TDS: The derangement syndrome in where a person hears Trump talk & is not appalled.
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Exactly.
Now there you go again ... (Score:2)
TDS: The derangement syndrome in where a person hears Trump talk & is not appalled.
Now there you go again. Re-defining words in an effort to edit others' previous statements, block debate, and deflect criticism. All while issuing social-pressure hits of your own.
Typical left wing tactics.
I bet you think "well regulated" has something to do with government control and that the National Guard is a "well regulated militia", too.
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If governing was easy, even politicians could do it.
A lot of them aren't interested in that, they're after the money and power that it brings.
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The opposite of TDS is also TDS, and in my experience those who accuse others of TDS have TDS themselves.
Do you also have TDS? Do you believe everything Trump tells you? Let's find out. Tell us the last time Trump said something and you didn't believe it.
Circumstantial evidence.
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I know you be trollin' but I'll indulge you this one time:
Do you also have TDS? Do you believe everything Trump tells you? Let's find out. Tell us the last time Trump said something and you didn't believe it.
Uh.. dude. If you believe any politician you're not qualified to vote. They all LIE, every single one of them, from the town mayor to the President, Prime Minister or even Royal Sovereigns.
I'm not a trumpistador. I don't even listen to the news. I don't have "TV". I don't hang on to his every word. I don't listen intently to his speeches. I don't worship him. I don't even *think* of him. I don't go to rallies. I don't have a MAGA hat, I don't
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Yes, we shame those who racially oppress others. Either get used to it or start being nice!
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." --Desmond Tutu
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This wouldn't happen in the US or any civilized country in any meat processing plant.
It happened in Texas, where swine flu originated.
Y'all can debate whether Texas is civilized, or part of the US. I know not all Texans would agree with either point :)
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> This isn't a "Chinese" virus,
Yea! Ebolavirus has nothing to do with the Ebola River. Spanish flu started in Japan. German Measles was first described in Brazil. MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) originated in the Americas.
China does have a disproportionate number of diseases originating from within its borders. Canada needs more representation in the origination/discovery of diseases. Therefore, Canadian Virus is a perfectly logical name to a novel virus that came from Chinese wet markets that ar
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Clue: This isn't a "Chinese" virus, or a "foreign" virus, it's just a virus, mmmmmkay.
As per convention [cnn.com], it's named after where it was originally identified - Wuhan.
Even CNN - in their own report - started that way, and it was only after immense pressure from the CCP that they started using a different name.
Not a surprise, given that the pressure to appear "pure" led the CCP to spend 6 days refusing to share data [apnews.com] and worsened the spread.
It could just have easily have appeared in the USA.
This virus? Not likely, as the bridge between bats and humans is most likely the pangolin [sciencedaily.com], which exist in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa [wikipedia.org]. Not the USA.
It's not as if Americans don't hunt/eat absolutely anything that moves down in the deep south (or up north, for that matter).
And
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This virus? Not likely, as the bridge between bats and humans is most likely the pangolin [sciencedaily.com], which exist in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa [wikipedia.org]. Not the USA.
It could just have easily been a possum - or something else that doesn't exist in China.
(If you visit wet markets often you could probably import a few and make a fortune)
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It could just have easily been a possum - or something else that doesn't exist in China.
Not for this virus. You said this virus. You're wrong. And possums are found in China [a-z-animals.com].
(If you visit wet markets often you could probably import a few and make a fortune)
If I was willing to break laws, sure. I could do the same importing a possum's weight worth of coke or heroin, too. I could probably also make a fortune as a contract killer, or pimp. But I think I'll still to things that are generally not so destructive, and I'll try to avoid eating meats from a wet market, where animals live in each other's fecal matter and splattered blood from the live slaughter.
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Clue: This isn't a "Chinese" virus, or a "foreign" virus, it's just a virus, mmmmmkay.
As per convention [cnn.com], it's named after where it was originally identified - Wuhan.
But if you're so keen on following "convention", wouldn't you now follow the current WHO convention to avoid geographical designations? Or is it that we want to claim the appearance of authority by claiming to follow "convention" but reserve the right to select whichever convention happens to support personal ideologies?
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If CNN is so keen on following WHO guidelines: (from that article from 2015!)
"It goes against guidance from health experts
Similarly, medical experts and health officials now agree that naming infectious diseases after a geographic location is inappropriate.
The World Health Organization issued guidelines in 2015 calling on scientists, authorities and the media to use best practices when naming new infectious diseases, which include avoiding names of places, people or animals."
why were they calling it wuhan c
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The words "Wuhan" and "Chinese" are different you know?
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The WHO's Director-General was run by a PRC scientist [who.int] from 2012-2017. I wonder if that might have influenced the decision to change the rules.
Gotta be careful of those time traveling Chinese scientists. They get up to all sorts of mischief...
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The WHO's Director-General was run by a PRC scientist [who.int] from 2012-2017. I wonder if that might have influenced the decision to change the rules.
If China has time traveling scientists who wen't back from 2019 to change the rules in 2015...well yes, that might be a problem for the rest of the world.
Why they would change that though and not something actually useful I'll leave as an exercise for the readers.
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The virus traveled from 1918 Kansas to 1915 France? That's a good trick.
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Is there really a consensus? People keep saying stuff like this, but everything I read - top three links from google:
https://www.livescience.com/sp... [livescience.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
All indicate it is unclear where Spanish flu originated. Now, I don't really care what a disease is called, to me it doesn't make the people of that place at fault, it generally just describes where it is from. (Obviously it's better if it's true, so it's relevant. Similarly it's better if w
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We called it the Spanish flu, because Spain was the first country to publicly acknowledge it and was transparent. The rest of Europe (France, Germany) was hiding it for political and military reasons. The most accepted source of origin before 2005-2006 was that it originated in China and spread when the French and British mobilized people from there to work in Europe. After SARS hit, there was a subtle push in the science community to disavow China from the list of potential sources.
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"with a Communist Dictatorship running the show there, we will never know the truth"
Wherever you live, US/UK/Mexico/Nigeria/Peru/anywhere, do you honestly you ever really know the "truth" of what they are up to?
It was just in 2011 that the CIA declassified some documents from WW1. There are still some things classified from WWII.
Re:Princess Leia was right (Score:5, Funny)
Remember: H1N1 originated in the USA and killed hundreds of thousands of foreigners.
Citation: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandem... [cdc.gov]
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They've consistently proven to be bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop trusting them, stop it.
If it's not buying all the milk formula in Aussie Supermarkets, or laundering money and selling fentanyl in Canada, or buying all the property in any market they can, or sending sub-standard medical equipment to foreign countries or importing a huge bulk of medical supplies during a deliberately downplayed pandemic so others don't have their own backlog of equipment, it's lying about the causes of the virus, the treatment and the numbers.
We've sent all our manufacturing there, I've seen anecdote upon anecdote about Chinese mainlanders and what they /really/ think of the rest of the world and even if they're 'loyal to China' dozens of years after leaving.
These people are proud and loyal, to the homeland and they can and will screw the rest of us over. /already/ be too late.
Time to stop and wake up, it may
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Your rant sounds awfully close to the "America First" (replacing America with China) mentality which is lauded by many conservatives.
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These people are proud and loyal, to the homeland and they can and will screw the rest of us over.
Yeah, the USA would never engage in protectionism, would never use politics and threats to defend corporations operating internationally. /sarcasm.
Sorry if I consider your words hollow. I feel like China has done far less damage to the world than you oil obsessed nation has.
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I don't think you want to get into a body count with China, Mao's high score for a single year beat Hitler's lifetime numbers.
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Time to stop and wake up, it may /already/ be too late.
Yeah, watch out for the Chinese Fifth Column. What proves that it exists is that it hasn't done anything, it's biding its time. We'd better round up all the Chinese and intern them in relocation camps.
Why does this sound familiar?
Time to eject China out of the world economy (Score:2, Interesting)
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How do you figure ?
On a per capita the US is #10 for deaths% per capita.
Belgium and Italy are #1 and #2.
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
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Well they are also several weeks ahead of us in terms of when the first significant outbreaks occurred.
Here is the reality that everyone just needs to cut the crap and stop denying. Lots of countries and localities responded in different ways; the spread follows an exponential curve for about 6-7 weeks and than suddenly goes logarithmic in terms of new cases; and that is for everywhere for which we have any remotely trust worthy data all. COVID-19 DOES NOT RESPOND to efforts to control is spread in the popu
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That and the fact people don't start generally showing symptoms for 5-14 days and are infectious for that time, And the people that don't show any symptoms and test positive. Those people are wandering around, and spreading it without knowing or having any inkling they are infectious.
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COVID-19 DOES NOT RESPOND to efforts to control is spread in the population for the range of efforts and policies tried in the western world. The only variables that rise to more than statistical noise in terms of how many cases you have this week are how many cases you had the week before and if you are past the 6-7 week mark in your region from when the first major outbreak was observed. That is it.
That's prima facie absurd. People who are not interacting with other people cannot get the virus from other people. Yes, at about the 6–7 week mark, the people who are out doing things reach the point of having enough herd immunity to make the outbreak start to taper, but the height of that peak depends on how many people are out doing things and becoming exposed. If that were not true, we would have indisputable proof of a divine being cursing people.
Only about 20% of people who get put on ventilator survive; because just pushing air in and out of the lungs does not address the real cause of death, drop in blood oxygen, as the virus attacks the alveoli and prevents them from exchanging oxygen.
Not quite. The viral level and lung damage are
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That's prima facie absurd. People who are not interacting with other people cannot get the virus from other people.
Except that isnt what is happening. Even in Italy people are still out buying groceries. Here all kinds of places are essential - why the bloody head shop is open!
Meanwhile we are sending mail and handling packages. We know cardboard and paper are nearly impossible to sanitize and it can live on them for possibly a day or more but at least hours. So every-time something arrives on your front porch you are exposed to the FedEx guy and everyone else at the local distribution facility that morning at the lea
Re: Time to eject China out of the world economy (Score:2)
Belgium makes tremendous efforts to blame every possible death on Covid-19. Germany does the inverse. We don't know why yet, but will once we have to pay the piper.
Hence wild differences in the numbers despite very similar healthcare.
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How do you figure ?
On a per capita the US is #10 for deaths% per capita.
Belgium and Italy are #1 and #2.
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
If we had honest numbers out of China, I'm betting they'd be #1 by a long shot.
Re: Time to eject China out of the world economy (Score:2)
If we had honest numbers from Europe and U.S., they'd go up too. Not sure what your point is...
Re: Time to eject China out of the world economy (Score:2)
How do I figure? Are you joking? Do you dispute the fact that U.S. has more infections and deaths than the rest of the world?
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We tried to argue for banning flights into here, so it would be great if you all just stop flying in.
You're making my ski slopes too crowded anyway.
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Even IF China was 100% misleading, that doesn't mean the US didn't fumble the response. Eliminating China from the equation, the US has more infected and deaths than any other nation. Admittedly, per capita the US isn't the worst, but its still in the top 10 if you don't count tiny countries like San Marino with a population of 33k.
Re: Time to eject China out of the world economy (Score:2)
Huh (Score:2)
Re:Huh (Score:4, Insightful)
Politically connected groups of people don't want their supply of 'rich guy stuff' blamed and thus potentially cut off. Kinda like how in America if you even THINK about blaming the cattle or corn industries for anything they throw a fit and astroturf the hell out of it.
keeping up with the Joneses^W Li's (Score:2)
Re: Huh (Score:2, Funny)
WHO has people in China who confirm China's success in quarantine. You don't trust the WHO? Is this a new mistrust? You know, did you stop trusting them when Trump told you to stop trusting them?
And did you just give a thumbs up or did you take Trump's cock out of your mouth long enough to give verbal confirmation?
Seems like relevant background info before judging your statements...
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Well my first posts about it were February 27th. Do I get to say whatever I want or are you going to "judge" me for having "Trump's cock in my mouth?"
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Hm, maybe Trump reads my Slashdot posts. What power!
Re:Huh (Score:5, Interesting)
I've done extensive study of the lab work being done in and around Wuhan surrounding the possibility of a lab release. The possibility is much higher than people realise. Wuhan does extensive work collecting novel coronavirus strains from bats and intermediate species. Their work involves hosting live animals to the extent they had a job posted online for someone with experience breeding animals. If you want to consider human activity as a causal factor the research the lab performs looks very similar to wildlife trade. They also receive samples and animals that they work on confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade.
A pathway that leads through that research is absolutely possible and it's not extremely improbable either.
An accident, being not a conspiracy, means that no one may know even if it did spread from a lab or someone involved in the research.
From China's perspective that's a bad situation to be in. It's like being a murder suspect but having lost your memory so you don't know. A worse situation to be in would be if it were linked to the lab. IT would be especially bad for the lab given the point of the research is to stop something like this which paradoxically also means making yourself a part of the risk.
If you study the facts then the conclusion is it's a very real possibility science had some involvement. That's a risk China will have acknowledged and managed. If that possibility turns out to be the case then the culpability skyrockets with limitless potential for political fallout and demands for recompense. The origin of the virus or more specifically the step it took to spread into the human population is an utmost matter of national security for China.
I don't agree with them putting themselves in a position to censure research on the origins but it makes perfect sense. If you assume the intentions are innocent, even a paper raising the possibility or that's genuinely in error might cause some fallout.
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People are going to try to find out but it's also China's turf and they're in a good position to block investigation. Sometimes in cases like this I've se
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I mean there's where the lab/wet market overlap starts to become a consistent enough theory that it really is hard to just hand wave away as tin foil hat stuff.
It's not like business corruption, including the melamine contamination of the food supply, hasn't been a long-standing problem in China. Xi has been trying to crack down on corruption, but mostly it seems focused on eliminating potential wealth power bases outside of CCP control, not actually eliminating corruption as a practice.
With this in mind,
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Now would be a good time (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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What you describe sounds just like Trump followers! How do you tell them apart?
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Not unique to China (Score:2)
Pointless anyway (Score:2)
China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus
...and nothing of value was lost. The world needed accurate information out of China 4 months ago, so they could determine how to prepare and how much they needed to lock down travel. It's pointless to get information from China now. Highly accurate case information is now available directly in countries doing research on the virus. I can't think of anything China can provide, as far as "academic research" goes, that would be beneficial now.
China and the USA's leadership has this in common: (Score:3)
Putting political grandstanding ahead of saving lives.
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It's too bad the US police is on their way to toss you in a prison to let you think long and hard about the bad things you just posted. Oh wait. That's China.
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And that has what to do with people dying in American hospitals while Trump attempts to deflect all blame to the other side of the world?
No one gives a shit how big your strawman is.
Looking Beyond the Current Crisis (Score:2)
So China is leaning Evangelical Christian now?! (Score:2)
Will the progressives now admit that denying science is more a political trait than a religious one?
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Will the progressives now admit that denying science is more a political trait than a religious one?
No, because whether you take it as a story or reality, Truth was crucified. Politicians and religious leaders both wanted it that way. Even the working man was in on the fun, taking bets and poking Truth with a stick.
More evidence it was planned or opportunistic (Score:2)
Well... (Score:2)
China will deserve everything that will happen to em on the next years.
In the end (Score:2)
Any association of China with the Covid-19 virus will likely see the same level censorship as we see today with Tiananmen Square.
In a few years, China will completely deny the virus ever existed and it's all US propaganda designed to make them " look bad ".
China probably won't be able to hide some of the impact from this event, though it will be amusing to see them try.
I can see a big shift in reliance on Chinese manufacturing coming which is going to cost them dearly.
Sad it took a pandemic for the CEO's t
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Anyone who believes the CCP who said C19 wasn't communicable person to person is an idiot. The only "QA" they want is for everyone to applaud them and genuflect.
Re:Sounds like a quality control issue (Score:4, Interesting)
There's an infinite number of papers being rushed out about Covid19, many of which are crap. For example a French doctor who denies evolution and climate change and doesn't believe in controlled clinical trials published a paper that met absolutely none of the requirements for a randomized double blind placebo controlled study pushing a dangerous medication that was then touted by a foreign leader as being a miracle cure, despite it killing more people in one trial (Brazil, 13.5% fatality rate) than the virus it was supposed to cure. So you can see why China wants to make sure there's some level of quality control for what gets published.
They aren't controlling for other papers, only origin stories. This has nothing to do with quality and likely more to do with something to hide.
As far as the so called unproven therapy, it currently is the second best treatment option we have after blood plasma donations.
Thousands of doctors are using it all over the world with great success: https://app.sermo.com/covid19-... [sermo.com]
We should have more studies soon as multiple trials are currently underway testing it as both a treatment and a preventative.
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Bullshit. A Brazilian study was halted due to the drug's toxic effects.
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Not only that, it was used on people who were probably going to die, anyway.
Did you know that ventilators have a 20% success rate? Can you imagine if we held other treatments to that standard?
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> DIFFERENT drug, chloroquine, NOT hydroxychloroquine.
From my limited chemistry understanding.
Adding the oxygen and hydrogen to cloroquine allow the body to more easily excrete the drug in the urine as it will bind to water more easily to be excreted. The active drug quinine will have the same effect on the body. There is a fine line between poison and medicine. Dosage matters and build up in the body also matters. Removing the medicine from the body is just as important as adding the right amount.
A good
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They aren't controlling for other papers, only origin stories.
As far as we know. This is a regime that disappears people - even the extremely wealthy [cnn.com] if they don't publicly toe the Party line.
Re:Sounds like a quality control issue (Score:4, Informative)
The doses they gave in Brazil faaaar exceeded the drug's guidelines.
Try taking a whole bottle of aspirin and let us know how that turns out.
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The words "China" and "Quality Control" in the same sentence without any negative connotation or dripping with sarcasm?!?
Wow, it really is the end times
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I wonder if you realize that Dr. Fauci published [lww.com] papers [psu.edu] that made him "famous" that did not use "randomized, double-blind placebo" trials.
Additionally, quoting fatality rates without knowing the actual infection rate is like saying I have 7 more than you. Without an actual baseline against which to compare, discussing a rate of ANYTHING is a mathematical and logical fail.
The best data we have is from Iceland [usatoday.com], with 10% of the population tested (36K), with 1727 infected and 8 dead [worldometers.info].
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Small nitpick, Didier Raoult (the "French doctor") doesn't deny evolution, he criticises Darwinism, which is different.
The idea behind Darwinism is that species evolve through random mutations natural selection, forming a tree of life. Didier Raoult idea is that there is a lot of gene exchanges between species, with bacteria and viruses being major actors, i.e. it is not a tree, it is a complex graph. It is real science, and it is within his field of expertise. And it is not even that controversial, the pla
Re: We need a discussion about this (Score:2)
Never. Never has an act of censorship been an act of war, crazy person.