Dr. Anthony Fauci Says New Virus In China Has Traits of 2009 Swine Flu, 1918 Pandemic Flu (cnbc.com) 182
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that U.S. health officials are keeping an eye on a new strain of flu carried by pigs in China that has characteristics of the 2009 H1N1 virus and 1918 pandemic flu. The virus, which scientists are calling "G4 EA H1N1," has not yet been shown to infect humans but it is exhibiting "reassortment capabilities," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee during a hearing.
"In other words, when you get a brand new virus that turns out to be a pandemic virus it's either due to mutations and/or the reassortment or exchanges of genes," he told lawmakers. "And they're seeing virus in swine, in pigs now, that have characteristics of the 2009 H1N1, of the original 1918, which many of our flu viruses have remnants of that in it, as well as segments from other hosts, like swine." Fauci said Tuesday there's always "the possibility that you might have another swine flu-type outbreak as we had in 2009." "It's something that still is in the stage of examination," he said. It's not "an immediate threat where you're seeing infections, but it's something we need to keep our eye on, just the way we did in 2009 with the emergence of the swine flu."
"In other words, when you get a brand new virus that turns out to be a pandemic virus it's either due to mutations and/or the reassortment or exchanges of genes," he told lawmakers. "And they're seeing virus in swine, in pigs now, that have characteristics of the 2009 H1N1, of the original 1918, which many of our flu viruses have remnants of that in it, as well as segments from other hosts, like swine." Fauci said Tuesday there's always "the possibility that you might have another swine flu-type outbreak as we had in 2009." "It's something that still is in the stage of examination," he said. It's not "an immediate threat where you're seeing infections, but it's something we need to keep our eye on, just the way we did in 2009 with the emergence of the swine flu."
Meh. (Score:2)
G4 EA H1N1, has not yet been shown to infect humans
Alright, it's a non-event then. Don't get me wrong. It's good to have these stories. Journalists doing their job. Sorta. Saying it has traits like the 1918 pandemic is alarmist and typical bullshit journalism. But 2020 has everyone on edge for the other shoe dropping. And apparently 2020 is some sort of caterpillar with serious arch support.
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Some pig farmers have caught it. What hasn't happened is person to person infection. The fear is a mutation that does make it person to person communicable.
The bright side is that we know a lot more about the flu then corona, including how to make vaccines. Still it is something to watch closely.
Re: Meh. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Interesting)
An obvious precaution would be to vaccinate the pig farmers.
That way they won't get it from their pigs and the human-to-human transmission will never have a chance to evolve.
Another obvious precaution would be to vaccinate the pigs.
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Or perhaps social distance the pigs? It's not like pigs have the right to freely associate. Or that China upholds that right in the first place, but I digress.
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Make pigs wear masks. Problem solved.
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Please explain how you get pigs to socially distance? Pig farming these days is most definitelyhigh density [google.com], with hygiene an afterthought.
Re: Meh. (Score:2)
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Yep, and Influensa is one recombinant mutating little motherfucker.. Fortunately, we also know all about making vaccines for these things too.
Yo China, make up for Covid by getting out ahead of this one with a Vaccine, in big supply, thanks!!.
Re: Meh. (Score:2)
Dont you find it a bit odd that the strain of covid that hit chicago and most of europe (often referred to as the G strain based on its sequencing) is an exponential factor more contagious than the strain that hit china? They wont distribute a vaccine even if they discover it. Any dr that leaks it will be disappeared. How is it that this G strain never made it back to china?? Hmmmm
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"Some pig farmers have caught it. "
Naughty.
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Well, WHO infamously said COVID didn't transmit from person to person either...
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Yeah, how dare they not know absolutely everything about a newly discovered virus on day one!
Re: Meh. (Score:2)
Your âoeDay 1â was a bit more than a couple of months after the fact. Whatever, you probably believe BLM protesters will never catch it.
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Oh really? Care to point to when they made that statement?
Re: Meh. (Score:2)
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The thing with the flu vaccine is which types of flu it targets, there are a lot of flu strains and it is an educated guess which to target. In this case they'd know what to target.
And banning international travel only works so far. There's always exceptions. Can't ban citizens returning. There's usually essential worker travel and trade travel. For example, the Canadian US border is closed but there is still commercial traffic (trucks), people working in the other country, people passing through Canada to
Re: Meh. (Score:2)
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Some pig farmers have caught it. What hasn't happened is person to person infection.
^This,
"Tests showed that one type of virus, which the researchers call G4, can proliferate in human airway cells. In ferrets, which are a model for human flu, G4 causes lung inflammation and respiratory symptoms, including coughing. The virus can spread between ferrets by direct contact or through airborne particles of mucus or saliva. The researchers found that about 10% of 338 pig-farm workers tested had developed antibodies against the virus, which suggests that the virus can jump from pigs to people."
ht [nature.com]
"No evidence" (Score:2)
Don't confuse absence of evidence with evidence of absence. The WHO wasn't lying - regardless of how contagious a disease is, until a significant number of people have caught the disease from person-to-person transmission, no evidence of person-to-person transmission exists. And should an entity delete the evidence of person-to-person transmission, again, then it can be truthfully said that, "No evidence of person-to-person transmission exists".
See how that works? Anyone can be disengenuous without ly
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While you are right, the underlying science makes no sense.
The virus is transmitted by air.
Pig breathes out, other pig breathes in.
Pig breathes out, human breathes in.
Human breathes out, human breathes in.
Absolutely no difference.
If you can catch it, you transmit it. An absolute no brainer.
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Gotta get them ad dollars.
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Well every single time the mention corona virus change the channel, drop the stream, let them know you are no longer interested and they will stop pushing the yarn.
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G4 EA H1N1, has not yet been shown to infect humans
Summary got this wrong.
There are cases of G4 EA H1N1 making the jump from pigs to humans.
There are no cases of G4 EA H1N1 making the further jump from human to human.
As of now, it is a hazard to pig farmers. If it becomes transmissible from human to human, it has the potential to become the next swine-flu pandemic.
Meat is mutation (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nope, pro-vegan comments!
Not becoming vegan at this point is basically as homicidal and moronic as not wearing a mask!
*Vegetarian mask wearer here, virtuously virtue signalling.
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I eat heavy metal
Gargle premium gas
I drink heavy water
Nitro-demitasse
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There are plenty of places where meat is grown on grass land - I never will be vegan.
Stop buying factory meat.
Re: Meat is mutation (Score:3)
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(Now let the derogatory remarks about China commence /s)
It's about swine, not cats and dogs...
But that being said, does anybody else find it strange that here in Europe we have so many COVID-19 outbreaks among slaughterhouse personnel?
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Slaughterhouses are the perfect storm of cramped quarters, low wages, and not being able to clean your hands every few minutes. You'd never finish your workday if you had to thoroughly wash your hands all the time in a place like that.
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Re:Meat is mutation (Score:4, Informative)
Well Mad Cow Disease was due to feeding cows bits of other cows and was only transmitted to humans when they ate that beef, so not really the same thing at all.
I expect there will be another big cull of pigs in China if this thing spreads. I don't recommend looking but there are videos from the swine flu epidemic where they literally bulldozer hundreds of them into mass graves, still alive.
Re:Meat is mutation (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting Fact: There used to be a yearly celebration here which included an area set aside for a petting zoo for the kids. The animals came from various local farms. One year it was cancelled because of a disease which was affecting sheep and had spread around Great Britain, Ireland and possibly Europe. Since many international visitors would attend they canceled the petting zoo for fear they could transmit the disease to the animals. And then they would carry it back to the various farms.
This decision was made in less than 15 minutes.
Compare that to the decisions which are being made now about food safety. From Jan 2017 - May 2019 the FDA issues 37% less Food Safety warnings than the previous administration.
"Enforcement of environmental and health protections at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has similarly declined, according to a report from the advocacy group the Environmental Integrity Project. The group found the EPA is conducting 60% fewer inspections of violations than the annual average and is referring fewer polluters to the justice department for civil prosecution." - Source: The Guardian
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Instead of feeding pigs antibiotics by the pound, they could feed them Remdesivir by the kilo.
Re: Meat is mutation (Score:2)
Did you read the article where its going to cost $4k for a 5 course treatment but that same 5 courses are estimated to only consume $10 in ingredients? Nobody is going to feed a pig $5k worth of medicine.
Re: Meat is mutation (Score:2)
Maybe theres something to the whole .. the jews are poisoning the wells .. accusations again. They were resistant to the plague due to hygiene rituals.
Kosher food prep thing after all (minus the prayer part). If your theory proves correct, stand by for a new wave of
Quota on bad news exceeded (Score:4, Funny)
ERROR: Quota on bad news exceeded. News Buffer Closed to New Content.
Illuminatus Trilogy come to life! (Score:2)
This has to be our version of Anthrax Leprosy Pi.
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Ewige Blumenkraft.
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So few bother to find out what the founder, Adam Weishaupt, says the Illuminati actually is.
Ah well, still quite pragmatic.
'Wet markets' likely launched the coronavirus. (Score:2, Interesting)
Chinese citizens push to abolish wildlife trade as Coronavirus persists [nationalgeographic.com] (Jan. 30, 2020)
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Most of the early origin stories speculating on the exact location where the leap from animal to human host occurred haven't held up well.
There was, without a doubt, an earlier cluster of cases associated with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, but since that hypothesis was popularized in the press, earlier cases have been found with no connection to that or any similar market.
Which is not to say that markets selling bush meat can't be a problem. Public heath people have been complaining about them for ye
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Why name it after the goddess of the Earth? (Score:3)
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G4 comes form the protein identifier. EA comes form Eurasian-Avian. And it is a H1N1 type flu. The notion that you see G4EA = GAEA is just pareidolia.
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How are we going to "Keep an eye on it?" (Score:5, Insightful)
How are we going to "Keep an eye on it" when the Trump administration plucked its eye out when it cut funding and collaboration with the Chinese? Now we have to rely on the goodwill of our allies and whatever intelligence we can gather through covert means. Imagine how much more intelligence we can gather while working with them.
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I think Dr Fauci should be President (Score:3, Insightful)
Trump and Biden look like pretty bad choices in comparison
It's a threat alright (Score:2, Insightful)
If it's being found in China, where the hygiene conditions for animals are can be utterly terrible, then it's a threat to all of us. They need to stop treating animals like garbage in China or all this research is about as meaningful as staring down the barrel of a gun.
Why only 3-4 vaccine strains per year? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do authorities limit the vaccine to only 3 or 4 strains, and only one batch per year? Why not do two flu vaccines per year, with totally different strains in each? They could use #1 for the "core" strains, and #2 for "emergent" strains.
Influenza isn't just a winter disease. In cities like Miami, flu season is year-round. Why? We get lots of visitors from South America. July is the middle of THEIR flu season. And half the time, American influenza vaccine is worthless against those strains, because they're either too new,or weren't deemed important enough by whomever is in charge of picking strains for American influenza vaccine.
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Flu antibodies don't last forever. They are pretty good at figuring out which antibodies will cover like 60-80% of the cases.
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The current flu vaccine tech will support four strains per year, so each time manufacturers have to guess which 4 strains will be worst next year. A new version will be out soon that will support nine strains.
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> A new version will be out soon that will support nine strains.
That's awesome news. Do you happen to have a Google'able name or unambiguous phrase to search for? I'd like to learn more.
The fundamental problem with American influenza vaccine right NOW is the fact that it overwhelmingly favors protection from strains that are lethal to vulnerable populations, over strains normal people are likely to actually CATCH. I know there was one particular year between 2012 and 2015 when they INTENTIONALLY made a c
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Why not do two flu vaccines per year, with totally different strains in each?
There *are* two vaccines a year. They alternate between each hemisphere and each flu season. Despite what you seem to think these don't just get ordered at McDonalds, the viral patterns are analysed, a vaccine is proposed, developed, trialled approved for use then mass produced and distributed, often this process barely gets the vaccine into the hands of those about to enter the flu season despite the process starting 6 months earlier.
Influenza isn't just a winter disease. In cities like Miami, flu season is year-round. Why? We get lots of visitors from South America.
That still makes it a winter disease and we should support progra
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Great, just what we need (Score:2)
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Reasonable, scientifically proven counter-measures (Score:2)
Enshrouded-RNA viruses such as influenza, SARS, MERS, and CoVID-19 are known to be mildly sensitive to temperature, moderately sensitive to humidity, and quite sensitive to UV. This has been known by virologists in general since shortly after the 2003-vintage SARS outbreak, and
In other words, a non-story (Score:2)
that have characteristics of the 2009 H1N1, of the original 1918, which many of our flu viruses have remnants of that in it
emphasis added. In ohter words, nothing in particular to see here except for the fact that scientists have been wo
Practice makes perfect (Score:2)
Nature's just going to keep at this, until all countries are as good at responding to a pandemic as Ghana and South Korea and Japan.
Or if we're lucky, it's not as bad as he fears, and everyone figures that out before embarking on unfortunate paths.
Bingo! (Score:3)
Just checked off another box on my apocalypse bingo card!
They mean (Score:2)
Dammit China (Score:2)
Knock it off already, its not funny anymore.
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Bill Gates and virgins, would've never seen the connection.
Re: What a strange Cohenincidence... (Score:2)
I think you mean illusory correlations. We see them in behavioral research data all the time. They are exactly what the words suggest.
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Back to the asylum for you. How do you lunatics even rationalize Q's continued failures of prophecy?
Re: What a strange Cohenincidence... (Score:2, Insightful)
China is a country all free people are at war with. China is certainly at war with them.
Re: What a strange Cohenincidence... (Score:2)
You know its sad people do not realize this. Coexistence is NOT in their vocabulary. Its merely a systematic process of acquisition. They cant even leave tibet alone. Russia will find out the hard way that in the case of China, the enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend. They behave like the tolkein wormtongue.
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These sorts of flu come from China because in S. China, the farmers work very closely with their animals without a lot of health safety protections. The Chinese CCP gov., as usual, is asleep at the switch. As long as production keeps up, they do not care.
The CCP economy is very close to the Soviet economy in that production quotas are the yardstick, not whether anyone wants to use the production. That's helpful in export industries and makes the CCP feel all warm and fuzzy. But what really gets them all hot
Re: What a strange Cohenincidence... (Score:2)
Its systemic. The written symbols for china include the symbol that translates to center. It literally means Center Kingdom. They think they are the center of the universe ordained to rule everything. This predates the CCP, the PRC, and even the ming dynasty. Just imagine if Galileo had been born in china back then.
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I see you put civilization in quotes, rightfully so. Since a lot of their history is full of feudalism, war lords, and the sort. China has quite the history of inventing history though. You cant sell Calgon by calling it soap, nope, ancient chinese secret. I can give you a semi-recent examples of this invented history.
The martial art currently referred to as Tajiquan (Tai Chi Chuan when written in Wade Giles instead of Pinyin) gets its origins by this name from a martial artist known as Yang Luchan. Lucha
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I agree this applies to China but I also think it applies to every country. Agriculture is sacred and runs pretty much with only minimal regulations all over the world. The US, for instance, has outlawed even exposing pollution and animal abuse. Factory farms everywhere are a blight.
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It's not strange at all. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the reverse-telescope effect. Everything that is far away looks smaller than it actually is.
These influenza outbreaks are coming from Chinese farms. There are over *forty* Chinese farmers for every American farmer. Many of Chinese farms are small time operations producing a variety of goods for local markets -- like most American farmers did 100 years ago
Chinese consumers like pork and duck, which makes a small Chinese farm an ideal breeding ground for influenza -- again like American farms of a hundred years ago. "Spanish" flu probably emerged on an American farm that had chickens and hogs and was transported by wartime mobility around the globe.
China has been on an infrastructure binge for years now, linking its remote rural areas to cities whose scale and crowding is simply mind-boggling to an American. More people live within the city limits of Shanghai than live in all of Florida. And because of China's preeminence in world trade, those cities are linked by jet travel around the world.
Once you try to wrap your brain around the scale of China and conditions there, it doesn't seem strange at all that novel pathogens should emerge there regularly.
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They certainly have the resources and the opportunity to orchestrate the 'accidental' rel
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Who wants to listen to an idiot that doesn't know that heat inactivates viruses?
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mmmm raw bacon.
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Mmmm Pigs Feet Loose
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Who wants to listen to an idiot that doesn't know that heat inactivates viruses?
He did say "undercook it"
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It's not the eating of pork, undercooked or otherwise, that sees viruses leap from pigs to humans, it's the close proximity between farmers and their animals that does. The constant proximity greatly raises the possibility of a virus infecting a human. In most cases if an animal handler is infected, the ability of the virus to change its vector from animal to human doesn't happen, but RNA viruses are highly unstable, so once it does infect a human, there will be some horizontal gene transfer and the virus w
Re: Clockwork (Score:5, Insightful)
Ebola, SARS, AIDS, Asian Flu, Swine Flu, Zika... Just to name a few in the last 50 years. And 5 of those are in the top 20 worst in human history. 3 of which were handled by ONE president!
The efforts against everyone of those and more were spearheaded by the US & UK! And there wasn't as much news about them as now because they were actually handled. How times have changed.
I mean for bloody sake, we have a simple & effective counter measure already proven by numerous data points around the world and live tests backing it up... and the US considers it a point of political identity.
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Ebola, SARS, AIDS, Asian Flu, Swine Flu, Zika... Just to name a few in the last 50 years. And 5 of those are in the top 20 worst in human history
The only one of those that even has potential to become one of the "worst" in human history is AIDS, and that is mostly under control now.
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"AIDS: not handled at all. Early calls for quarantine were met with derision and replies of "homophobic"" -- Actually, many gay communities called for quarantines of businesses deemed "at risk" of spreading the disease. Gay clubs, bath houses, etc.. When this was angrily debated at city council meetings they were met with the philosophy, "We can't close a business if it's the patrons fault for spreading the disease." Sound familiar?
"Swine flu: ignored, went away on its own" -- Not in 1976 it didn't. It st
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Early calls for quarantine were met with derision and replies of "homophobic""
That's because they absolutely were, and a quarantine was just a fucking stupid (I think that's the correct scientific term) proposal for a disease caused by a virus that is exclusively transmitted via heavy bodily fluid exchange.
Now if you think that quarantine and business closer were the only response to a disease then that shows just how little you seem to know on the topic rather than pointing to something "not being handled".
Re:Clockwork (Score:4, Informative)
Of course we are. It's an election year and Trump is on the ballot.
I for one can't wait for this pandemic to be cured in my country by an election in the USA.
Oh and in case you can't tell, I'm mocking you. I normally say that people aren't inherently stupid and just sometimes say stupid things, but honestly you're making me re-evaluate that philosophy.
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Is it really too much to imagine that a major epidemic is being weaponized against the sitting president by the opposing party? Is it really crazy to think that if the opposing party gets elected that we won't see the same level of panic next year?
We've seen enough nonsense about c19 to be suspicious about it. Remember when the media and politicians were having a melt down about the "Reopen" protesters? They were going to cause a massive second wave, yada yada yada? Yet the very same suspects were strang
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Is it really too much to imagine that a major epidemic is being weaponized against the sitting president by the opposing party?
Yes. Yes it is crazy. The CIA can't even keep its hacking tools secret and you think that some half of the US government (or some other world government) is able to manipulate the entire world through a virus in order to prevent Trump from being elected? The only countries that have even a remote chance of pulling it off (China or Russia) do not benefit in any way shape or form from Trump losing. His ineptitude is their greatest ally. So who does that leave? The democrats? They could never get away wit
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We know it's happening though, look at how the media and DNC are spinning it. That's quite literally what I'm talking about.
We know C19 has minimal impact on kids ( far less severe than the seasonal flu ), and we know there is minimal transmission between kids and adults...so why are the schools closed? We suspect it has a high infection rate, so why were the riots allowed to progress as they did, for as long as they did?
I'm not suggesting some nefarious conspiracy with secret shadowy string pullers; I'm
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We know it's happening though, look at how the media and DNC are spinning it.
What spin are you referring to? The under-reported case and death numbers? The fact that the reported death numbers are significantly less than the real death toll very rarely gets any press attention. That actually surprises me, given the normal "if it bleeds, it leads" approach of the media.
We know C19 has minimal impact on kids ( far less severe than the seasonal flu ), and we know there is minimal transmission between kids and adults...so why are the schools closed?
We don't "know" there is minimal transmission between kids and adults. Yes, there is some evidence that transmission between kids and adults may be low, but it's hardly proven science as yet. One or two studies don't p
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Yes it is insane to believe that for a simple reason: reduced turnout hurts Democrats, it does not help them!
I suppose it could be claimed that the pandemic is actually a plan by Trump to reduce turnout so he wins. But apparently people who might be interested in claiming that are not raving lunatic conspiracy theorists!
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Biohazard Babe?
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Rehearsal's over...
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Not all do. There's a strong possibility the 1918 influenza strain first evolved in Nebraska. But China has long had high population density as compared to other parts of the world, and thus the likelihood of pathogens making the leap between species is far higher. The Black Death, for instance, started in China.