China PCR Purchases Spiked In Months Before First Known Covid Cases, Firm Says (bloomberg.com) 219
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Chinese province that was the initial epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak made significant purchases of equipment used to test for infectious diseases months before Beijing notified international authorities of the emergence of a new coronavirus, according to research by a cybersecurity company. The province's purchase of polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, testing equipment, which allows scientists to amplify DNA samples to test for infectious disease or other genetic material, shot upward in 2019, with most of the increase coming in the second half of the year, the Australian-U.S. firm Internet 2.0 found. Hubei province is home to Wuhan, the large Chinese city where the first known cases of the virus emerged. The World Health Organization reported that its China Country Office was informed on Dec. 31, 2019, that cases of pneumonia from an unknown cause had been detected in the city.
Based on the research, Internet 2.0 concluded with "high confidence that the pandemic began much earlier than China informed the WHO about Covid-19," according to the report. The cybersecurity firm, which specializes in digital forensics and intelligence analysis, called for further investigation. But several medical experts said the Internet 2.0 report wasn't enough information to draw such conclusions. For one thing, PCR testing, which has been in broad use for several decades, has been been growing in popularity as it has become a standard method to test for pathogens, according to one of the experts. In addition, PCR equipment is widely used in laboratories to test for many other pathogens beside Covid-19, including in animals, and is commonly found in modern hospitals and labs. China was also dealing with an outbreak of African swine fever across the country in 2019.
Based on the research, Internet 2.0 concluded with "high confidence that the pandemic began much earlier than China informed the WHO about Covid-19," according to the report. The cybersecurity firm, which specializes in digital forensics and intelligence analysis, called for further investigation. But several medical experts said the Internet 2.0 report wasn't enough information to draw such conclusions. For one thing, PCR testing, which has been in broad use for several decades, has been been growing in popularity as it has become a standard method to test for pathogens, according to one of the experts. In addition, PCR equipment is widely used in laboratories to test for many other pathogens beside Covid-19, including in animals, and is commonly found in modern hospitals and labs. China was also dealing with an outbreak of African swine fever across the country in 2019.
China lied to everyone else?! (Score:5, Insightful)
In all seriousness, this tracks perfectly with how Chinese government operates. Lie, cover it up, deflect blame. There is zero incentive for your average party operative to take any responsibility, and a helluva lot of downside. It makes perfect sense that they would lie to the world while stocking up for the pandemic they (now almost certainly) created.
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Well, China is known to clone everything, including Washington DC.
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What I would like to find out is whether and to what extent China promoted western antivax sentiment. This alone would be a cases belli, independent of any involvement in creating the virus itself.
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Wow, China went crazy funding the trolls on this article.
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You sound a lot more like Yall'Queda than a typical brit.
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Re: China lied to everyone else?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's get real for a minute.
China, like many governments in that part of the world, had experienced SARS and other highly infectious diseases, and was making sure it was ready for the next time. South Korea and Japan both made similar preparations, and Europe should have done with hindsight. When the pandemic hit we were unprepared and it turned out our governments had often ignored recommendations to stockpile PPE and test equipment.
If China did intend this to be a weapon, it was a pretty shit one. Indiscriminate and very difficult to effectively control, but also not deadly enough to weaken other countries to an extent that would really help China in any way. They didn't do a very good job of keeping their bioweapon programme secret either, given that it was partly funded by the West and large amounts of research were published.
China is nothing like Germany or Japan in the 1940s. Both those countries wanted to expand their empires through military force and subjugation. They were ideologically motivated to do it. China's military budget is about 1/3rd of the United States', and more over the kind of war that Germany and Japan embarked on is largely impossible now due to nuclear weapons.
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The lab-leak theory has genetic evidence behind it that can be sequenced by any genetics lab from material collected from all over the world. Whether the leak was accidental, the weapon was finalized, or it was purposeful, this research needs to stop.
So why didn't the US provide any of this "evidence" with their big review of all the secret info?
Is the US also in on the conspiracy?
And if so, what on Earth makes you think they are going to attack themselves? Or are you calling for the rest of the world to team up against China and the US?
You don't even think through your conspiracy even a little bit do you?
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Re: China lied to everyone else?! (Score:3, Informative)
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Re: China lied to everyone else?! (Score:2)
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Re:China lied to everyone else?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except theres only circumstantial evidence being shown here and then conclusions are being jumped to.
Yes, there might have been an uptick in PCR purchases, but the summary already gives two possible reasons for this - an already known infectious disease being dealt with (African Swine Fever) and a general pick up in use of PCR tests across the board.
Theres also another reason to doubt this think tanks conclusions - China may indeed have been battling Covid-19 around the same time, but it might not have been pandemic material at that point.
We know that the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released a media statement describing a "viral pneumonia of unknown cause" cluster in December 2019, and since then we have seen dozens of Covid-19 variants, resulting in the current most virulent strain - Delta. Its entirely possible that the strain identified in December 2019, and subsequently reported to the WHO, was not the first strain in circulation - there may have been significantly less virulent strains of Covid-19 in circulation in August 2019, causing viral pneumonia but not at a level significant enough to constitute a cluster or crisis, or even be reportable to the WHO.
Remember that there are thousands of coronavirus strains in circulation each year, but we have only had two serious enough so far to be identified to the public - sars-cov-1 (known as SARS) and sars-cov-2 (Covid-19). Its entirely realistic that China simply had on its hands in August 2019 just another coronavirus causing non-concerning levels of illness. And then it mutated and got worse.
People are going out of their way to try and blame China, when there are legitimate reasons for all of this. If China reported every single coronavirus strain it comes across in the manner that people seem to think it should have been reporting Covid-19 on at the "start", then people will be shitting their pants with the hundreds of reports a year - pretty much all of them having no effect, but causing panic.
Re:China lied to everyone else?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there might have been an uptick in PCR purchases,
Here is a graph of their purchases [imgur.com]. From what I can see, there was no significant uptick, it was right in line with what you would expect based on the multi-year trend.
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It certainly looks pretty much like a geometric or exponential growth curve at first glance, so I think you make a good point there. The problem is that the rise from '17 to '18 was much smaller than the one from '18 to '19 and that's about the depth of numerical analysis that conspiracy theorists will perform.
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and that's about the depth of numerical analysis that conspiracy theorists will perform.
That is exactly what happened.
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People are going out of their way to try and blame China, when there are legitimate reasons for all of this. If China reported every single coronavirus strain it comes across in the manner that people seem to think it should have been reporting Covid-19 on at the "start", then people will be shitting their pants with the hundreds of reports a year - pretty much all of them having no effect, but causing panic.
China attempted to suppress news of a new SARS variant from becoming public knowledge, rather than trying to control it. Have you already forgotten?
https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
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It wasn't a cover-up, it was a mistake. China's government doesn't like rumours that cause people to panic, and suppressing them is one of the main functions of the Great Firewall.
Initially they were not willing to call it a pandemic, and were worried that if people got scared they would try to leave Wuhan and spread it further. We have seen that happen in the West - government announces a lockdown will begin in a few days, everyone panics and gets out, often on public transport, and we have a superspreader
Re:China lied to everyone else?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that China silences reporting, arrests their own doctors when they try to release information, most definitely lies, and continuously spouts as many false and implausible narratives as they can (Ft. Detrick!?) because to them it is politically unacceptable to even entertain the possibility of anything that could possibly put the CCP in a bad light. Yes, politicians everywhere lie and try to cover stuff up, but in civilized countries there are politicians across the aisle to call them out on it, and a free press to referee.
We will probably never know what really happened because the CCP has gone to great pains to destroy the evidence, whatever evidence there may be. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the CCP *doesn't* know what they're covering up, only that they *must* cover up whatever happened. There's also a good possibility that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing -- party bosses are notorious for covering things up preemptively just so news of problems won't make it higher up the chain.
So yes, we *CAN* blame the CCP because regardless of the details, they at the bare minimum made the problem worse with their behavior and burned any data that could teach the world potential lessons for how to avoid similar problems in the future.
If this happened in the US, sure there would be crazy conspiracy theories, some of them promoted by actual politicians, but there'd also be adults in the room to debunk them (or not, because sometimes, rarely, something that seemed crackpot at first turned out to be real).
Re: China lied to everyone else?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, and the Western response was appalling. Most of the media and institutions appeared to be adopting positions based mostly on not agreeing with the then President. Whether he was right or wrong, regardless of this the narrative needed him to be wrong. That is insanity. It'd be like refusing vaccination simply because of Biden's mandates - ignoring medical evidence.
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Trump wasn't just wrong, he was dangerously wrong. It's important for the media to call out the government when it makes catastrophic errors.
The medical advice was often at odds with what Trump said.
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...I wouldn't be surprised if the CCP *doesn't* know what they're covering up
There seems to be a culture in China that local officials cover up anything bad happening on their patch, because they will probably get the sack or worse if higher authorities find out what happened. Whether you can call that the CCP covering up, I don't. know. These local officials are presumably party members. The point is, authorities in the CCP that are responsible for disclosing things to the world outside of China might well have been kept in the dark by local officials desperately trying to keep th
Re: China lied to everyone else?! (Score:2)
Except theres only circumstantial evidence being shown here and then conclusions are being jumped to.
Didn't you get the memo? China are out to get us, whatever they do, they only do to stiff us and kill everyone. They hate us for our freedom. /s
Re: China lied to everyone else?! (Score:5, Insightful)
How did it get to the US? Someone carried it, like every other illness.
I know people want to strive really hard to see conspiracy theories here
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The issue isn't that the virus traveled. The issue is that it traveled without somehow causing an outbreak along the way. The virus made it all the way to Wuhan without infection clusters appearing near the point of origin. I doubt some coal miner in Yunnan got infected and then immediately hopped on a plane to Wuhan without infecting anyone else. Meanwhile we know that there were people intentionally collecting the virus (both in fluid samples stored in sealed containers, as well as in bats stored in secur
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The issue is that it traveled without somehow causing an outbreak along the way. The virus made it all the way to Wuhan without infection clusters appearing near the point of origin.
Why would anyone detect an outbreak along the way for a virus that nobody even knew existed at the time?
We all know about asymptomatic people. How would they even know they were infected with this "unknown at the time" virus? Most of the symptoms are 'flu like' anyway, even if people had symptoms. You're expecting a bit much.
It wasn't until a big enough cluster was present in the same place that people even noticed to think to check for a new disease.
It's quite likely cases that sprung up "along the way" [sciencedaily.com]
Forgot to add (Score:2, Informative)
The original strain of SARS-CoV-2 became epidemic, the authors write, because it was widely dispersed, which favors persistence, and because it thrived in urban areas where transmission was easier. In simulated epidemics involving less dense rural communities, epidemics went extinct 94.5 to 99.6 percent of the time.
Vast majority of "cases along the way in rural areas" could have died out.
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Novel coronavirus circulated undetected months before first COVID-19 cases in Wuhan, China [sciencedaily.com]
The original strain of SARS-CoV-2 became epidemic, the authors write, because it was widely dispersed, which favors persistence, and because it thrived in urban areas where transmission was easier. In simulated epidemics involving less dense rural communities, epidemics went extinct 94.5 to 99.6 percent of the time.
Vast majority of "cases along the way in rural areas" could have died out.
This also explains why rural areas in the US aren't so quick to get vaccinated. Diseases like this mainly affect denser populated areas. The problem is that it doesn't take a large outbreak to completely overwhelm the healthcare facilities out in the boondocks.
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There are direct flights from China to the US. Trump didn't introduce a travel ban until it had already arrived, and even then IIRC it excluded American citizens returning home.
you aren't very bright are you? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes but origin of virus was from bats sitting in caverns 1600 km. Away from Wuhan. How did it get there ?
Nobody ever visits caves do they Luckyo...
It's not like bats can fly around and interact with other bats either can they...
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> How did it get there ?
I heard theories that there was a BSL-4 lab in Wuhan that specialized in collecting and testing bat corona virii.... but that sounds a little TOO coincidental to me. It sounds more like a typical ant-Chinese lie spread by conspiracy theorists. So I doubt it's true. /s
Re: Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a graph of equipment purchases by the government over time [imgur.com]. It seems fairly clear that the 2019 purchases were merely part of a trend, and not a significant uptick. Furthermore the paper claims that COVID was in Wuhan by summer 2019. Given how infectious COVID is, if that were true, then by autumn we would have been seeing hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. But that didn't happen, so this paper needs to at least adjust its conclusions, if not disregard them altogether. It's not peer reviewed.
Let's be scientific about it. This piece of evidence is useless/meaningless towards finding the source of the virus.
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Plot it quarterly and it tells a different story
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Typical autist response. You're interpreting the data wrong!
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Quoted for the truth.
The fine details of *exactly* when it first attacked humans, and the exact provenance of the very first cases, isn't known and will probably never be known. And of course, anything in the early stages like that is not governed by smooth exponential growth, but subject to large stochastic fluctuations. Including fluctuations down to zero... Computer
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Here is a graph of equipment purchases by the government over time [imgur.com]. It seems fairly clear that the 2019 purchases were merely part of a trend, and not a significant uptick. Furthermore the paper claims that COVID was in Wuhan by summer 2019. Given how infectious COVID is...
Given how infectious the current variants are, you mean. What you're missing is that what we call "alpha" is the first one that we noticed, but not necessarily the first actual strain of the virus. Any pre-alpha variants could have been much less transmissible and could have been passed around for some time without anybody thinking it was something other than a pneumonia that isn't new. This is the most likely scenario.
Governments lie (Score:2)
Considering that our own (US) government has repeatedly made statements that later turned out to be untrue (masks don't work - yes they do, 14 days to slow the spread, there's no evidence of airborne transmission, etc...), I would find it a bit odd if China didn't lie. Even though the US was founded on Christian principles (one prominent example is, "Thou shalt not bear false witness"), our history is replete with examples of times when the government failed to live up to those principles. Given that Chin
There was a massive flu outbreak (Score:2, Interesting)
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Dispute over Italian coronavirus study shows challenges of probing origins [reuters.com]
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Actually there is no debate. The experts have moved on a while ago from this theory. There are just a few non-experts that need this to be true, so they keep ignoring reality.
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For the love of God, I really wish non-experts like these "cyber security" experts would give it up. We are very, very, very sure that Covid did not start earlier.
They probably know they are out of their depth. But in the current climate with a large number of non-experts massively overestimating their level of insight and willing to believe random crap as long as it sounds somewhat possible, these supposed cyber-security "experts" got their 15 minutes of fame and it may get them significant business.
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How did the purchases compare to other provinces? (Score:2)
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From TFA:
A control sample was taken from China's provinces and cities, and the top areas for PCR procurement were compared to Hubei to rule out that an increase was occurring across China. PCR-related purchases were relatively flat or went up or down slightly in most of the other areas.
Hubei's purchases increased 84% from 2018 to 2019.
There's also a bit about "out of trend" purchases of PCR equipment or supplies that supposedly suggest China knew they were dealing with an outbreak earlier than admitted, but those look like thin gruel after a closer look: The first was a PLA hospital buying PCR equipment, the second was by the local CDC in the run-up to the World Military Games in Wuhan, and the third was by the WIV in November. All things considered, only the third is very plaus
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Looking at the graph [imgur.com], it doesn't seem too surprising.
Sometime in fhe future, a book release... (Score:2)
"What if we did it?" by Anonymous Chinese Scientists.
Foreword by O.J. Simpson.
Hm. Skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
Let us say it is 100% NEFARIOUS (Score:2)
Why it has to be a lab leak (Score:5, Insightful)
For America, a lab leak gives us people to blame, shifting the blame comfortably away from a certain Administration's handling of the pandemic. This wouldn't work if it was caused by broader policy or systems as they're too abstract for this sort of blame game. When shit hits the fan people want a scapegoat.
For China, the last thing they want is to address the real cause: Deforestation & the Wet Markets. Both of these practices are very profitable, and absolutely necessary for the function of their rural economies. China would like very much for you to think it's a lab leak.
Meanwhile Epidemiologists have been warning us about this for 30 years. What's more likely, China tried to make a bio weapon in the worst way possible (you can google for yourself why contagious viruses are shitty weapons), or the thing we've experts warned about for decades finally happened exactly like they said it would?
But this is
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Good summary. Most people need to see meaning in everything and cannot deal with uncertainty. (Just look at how popular the fantasies that usually are grouped under "religion" are.) Somebody to blame is the very core idea in giving meaning to bad events. Hence they fantasize about connections and see deep meaning and conspiracies where there are none.
The fact of the matter is that statistically speaking, this pandemic is completely expected by the actual experts and it is _late_. If not Covid, we may well h
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For China, the last thing they want is to address the real cause: Deforestation & the Wet Markets.
They've cracked down on the wet markets. They take that part seriously.
After a *ton* of international pressure (Score:3)
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Probably not, they aren't that lucrative.
It's not about how much money they make (Score:2)
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Is that what you've speculated, or is this something you know?
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and if (read:when) the rest of the world stops paying attention they'll stop with the enforcement.
That is _very_ unlikely. You basically took "China is evil" and ignored every known fact. They will not forget what happened as it did cost them quite a bit of reputation, power and money.
People make mistakes. Just ask the USSR (Score:2)
The USSR had a lab leak, once.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yes. 40 years ago. Not relevant for the current situation except that, among others, Chinese researchers will be aware of this incident as a consideration.
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China would like very much for you to think it's a lab leak.
Except that... China has been vehemently denying that it's a lab leak.
Do you want to say anything else that destroys your credibility?
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It's all about "how can we not let this happen again?"
I love this way of looking at things - however it "feels" wrong, and many of the comments on the videos also, in a certain way, wan
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But people want something clear and tangible to blame
There are two main responses to an accident:
1) How do we prevent this type of accident happening again?
2) Who is to blame for this, so we can punish them, or sue them for loads of compensation?
The first approach is entirely reasonable. Following this route, vast improvements have been made in product safety and so on. In order to make this work, complete disclosure of facts is required. One of the reasons for flight recorders on aircraft is to provide detailed forensic data for accident investigations. The
Re: Why it has to be a lab leak (Score:2)
Yes but when do you plan to start yourself? "China would like to" do stuff because you are smarter than everyone in CCP. If we all just forget that China literally blamed every other country for being the origin of coronavirus, then we can continue believing what was said in the beginning to make Trump look bad. And that lancet study was published by people who denied they were involved in gain of function research. We must also never mention that it was brought to light by people, outside of China-west sys
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What's more likely, China tried to make a bio weapon in the worst way possible
I really don't know why anybody thinks it likely that this is some kind of bio weapon. It seems very unlikely to me. As you say, it would be a weapon made "in the worst way possible". The effects are indiscriminate and persistent, unlike like, say, poison gas, where your own troops could be protected by gas masks, etc, and the effect fades shortly after the weapon is used.
In any case, China is doing a good job taking over the world by economic means, so why would they need such horrible weapons? it is bad b
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No one is suggesting it is a bioweapon or man made.
Exhibit A. Saloomy [slashdot.org] is claiming both.
Or did you mean no one credible?
Glossed over this line? (Score:3)
"China was also dealing with an outbreak of African swine fever across the country in 2019. "
Anyway, did anyone download and read the report? If so, answer these for starters: Numerically, how many PCR machines are we talking about? How did they gather the information? How many orders are there typically, and what about PCR machine orders in other countries? Has the rate of PCR machine orders been growing? Was a new PCR machine model released that year? Is their data company-specific?
Plenty of warning. (Score:3, Insightful)
What did the West do? Boast about how it was a CCP plot, and that Western culture was superior because opennessfreedom.
What did the superior Western culture do? Spread the worst pseudo-scientific bullshit that downplayed the severity of the disease (which is effectively a coverup), refuse to lockdown when cases were manageable, keep banging on about freedom, anti-vaxx bullshit, hydrochloroquine, now ivermectin, 5G, on and on and on...
More news (Score:2)
When was the genome first sequenced? (Score:5, Insightful)
A PCR test would be worthless unless you had the genome from the virus sequenced and indicator protiens identified. Seems like a nothing-burger based on the very limited information available.
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Without going to motives we can be pretty much certain using Occam's razor that this is a lab leak.
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You suck at thinking.
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It's Ockham's razor, not "Occam's" for future reference. Also, Ockham's razor was always a bad idea because people always twist it to mean that the simplest answer _is_ the correct one. They also are typically biased so that they assume that their preferred answer is the simplest.
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It's Ockham's razor, not "Occam's" for future reference.
There is a reason why Ockham's Razor redirects to Occam's Razor, instead of the other way around. I understand the origin, but that doesn't change that Occam is the commonly accepted spelling for the principle and Ockham is the outlier. Ockham is right and well the proper modern spelling for the village, but wasn't as set in stone at the time, and thus he is William of Ockham. However, the principle is Occam's razor.
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The ham suffix means settlement or town and is literally what we derive the word home from. The name of the town is Ockham and he is very definitely William of Ockham. The reason for the Occam spelling is because scientific writings were in Latin at the time and Ockham phonetically comes out as Occam in Latin. So, it was Novacula Occami. Then, people translated it back to English as Occam's Razor. So, basically it's a game of telephone. When translation is done properly, all the words are translated to thei
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As soon as someone mentions "gain of function" I know they're a Fox News reader. It's three words they have never strung together in their entire lives and now parrot the phrase because gain of function=Fauci bad. Your signature links tell us all we need to know.
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Vaccines are the best option we have for stopping this.
Vermont has the highest percentage [beckershos...review.com] of it's population fully vaccinated in the USA. Yet, here it is still continuing to spike in cases [google.com]...
I want what Uttar Pradesh, India [google.com] did. And it wasn't these crappy vaccines.
Thanks for proving the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Vaccines are the best option we have for stopping this.
Vermont has the highest percentage of it's population fully vaccinated in the USA.
Is that the same Vermont that is 51st out of the American states* for infections per million... [worldometers.info]
It's also 51st for deaths per million as well...
Thanks for proving the point.
(* DC is also included in the list.)
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It's also a very rural state. Honestly, if I was a virus I wouldn't even go there.
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Correct, and nearly everyone in the hospital is unvaccinated. So the vaccine is working as designed. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16... [npr.org]
Thanks for playing.
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I have bad news for you, time traveller...
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Retire.
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Thought experiment: you wake tomorrow and you're Joe Biden. What specifically would you do?
I really hate to say this, but I'd probably try to figure out who I am and where I'm at. I'm sure his handlers have a rough morning most days, but he does have some good days.
Re: One more brick in the wall (Score:2, Insightful)
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No, he really isn't.
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So a pandemic caused by a novel bat coronavirus with a spike protein from a pangolin virus just happened to occur in one of 3 or 4 cities around the world with a virology lab that studies bat coronavirii and as part of that research uses recombinant techniques to create new strains of virus?
That seems like a big coincidence.
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Re: One more brick in the wall (Score:2)
The ppm levels in Beijing right now are 29. For reference, New York is 34. I am in Xining with 102 but winter is coming.
Alas, you are a jackass.
Re: One more brick in the wall (Score:2)
all of Slashdot's many, many Communists
line up to call names at anybody
Oh, the irony...
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Is this any different from Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, or any other news outlet pushing their own agenda?
If your stories don't reflect the outlook held by the executives which buy advertising, your publication goes extinct. Perhaps you're not from the US, but those of us here know that the Fourth Estate has been completely co-opted by the politics of big business; it's no longer the bulwark against the oppression of the masses, but the means by which the masses are distracted away from doing anything tha
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Also, Spanish Flu was called Spanish Flu because most other countries, including the US, censored their press and prevented them from talking about the virus. Spain had a free press at the time, so they were some of the only ones reporting on it. Even then, it may not have naturally become known as Spanish Flu, it might have actually been a nationalist propaganda campaign to deflect blame and Spain made a good target.