As space quickly fills a vacuum and half of businesses around here (Bay Area) shut for good., looks like there will be more room for big companies to replace them.

https://www.sfgate.com/business/arti...d-15513726.php

Bottom of the page cmon you guys cracked 200,000 deaths. Guess its cause your testing more

Steve Bannon Is Behind Bogus Study That China Created COVID

The study goes against basically all scientific evidence and expert opinion. But it fits with the former Trump adviser’s anti-China posture.

ET Published Sep. 15, 2020 3:16PM ET

A new study purporting to show that the novel coronavirus was manufactured in a Chinese lab was published by a pair of nonprofit groups linked to Steve Bannon, the former top Trump strategist now facing felony fraud charges.

The study, co-authored by a Chinese virologist who fled Hong Kong this year, claims that “laboratory manipulation is part of the history of SARS-CoV-2.” Its findings were quickly picked up by a handful of prominent news organizations such as the New York Post, which hyped the “explosive” allegations that run counter to virtually all existing scientific literature on the source of the virus...

I see that on various places on the internet (and on this forum occassionally, from people who have not read the sticky) Sweden is used as an example to tout theories that downplay the severity of the virus, used as an example of a country that didn't treat the virus as serious as others.

This is a false and misleading claim. While it is correct that Sweden took an approach gambling on herd immunity, it was not done without taking several powerful and sweeping measures, such as:

- Made calling in sick from work available without loss of pay.
- Removed upper limit on days from calling in sick.
- Issued social distancing guidelines
- Issued recommendations to work at home
- Issued personal hygiene recommendations
- Made large social gatherings forbidden
- Made isolation and quarantine requirements from doctors mandatory with legal punishment for people who do not comply
- Made a new crisis governship act into law, giving the cabinet greatly expanded powers to handle the crisis
- Issued various workplace laws to reduce spread of virus

Nor have they in any way or form downplayed the severity of the virus or issued statements that treat the virus as a disease people should not take seriously. A key reason that they in some instances used recommendation over regulation is that they knew from data that the Swedish populace as a whole has a high level of trust in health authorities and would follow such recommendations.

People interested can check out their efforts here: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/...trol/covid-19/

They also have a functioning healthcare system afaik.

Daily mail has also started reporting this.

WSJ reported in august that a company tied to Bannon and Guo Wengui was under US investigations on state and federal levels. Guo Wengui is the person Bannon started the non-profits with that funded these studies.

Bannon was also onboard Guo Wengui's yacht when he was arrested in August.

Weather it came out of a wet market or a lab is still up in the air. It came from China is not. Also China tried to hide it and denied western scientists access. As well China does have influence over the World Health .

China will and is the biggest threat to the democratic west. And we have ourselves to blame

It is likely a very important factor that there is minimal to no economic loss for using health services and they are universal. The US probably has better facilities in the top end, but they are far from available to all. For a pandemic effort which requires population-wide measures, this probably makes the US approach more ill-equipped.

Have you come across any "expert" who actually addresses the argument being presented, and doesn't just try to assassinate the character of the author?

At the end of the day either the argument being presented is sound scientifically, or it isn't, and this is completely independent of Steve Bannon's patronage.

If the science behind this is bogus, I would prefer scientists addressed this directly instead of character assassination by association with Steve Bannon.

lol the guy who endlessly attacks academia while giving zero attention whatsoever to the actual arguments presented DEMANDS that we take seriously arguments paid for by Steve Bannon

Yes, there are plenty of experts who has been forced to waste precious time addressing this absolute drivel. As would be completely and utterly obvious for anyone willing to do their due diligence instead of googling why their own bias is true.

But by all means, jump through mental hoops to accept non-peer reviewed "studies" funded with white-washed funds sifted through fake non-profits by people undergoing federal investigations for fraud if you want to. I'm sure there are no shortage of various pundits and alternative media who will present this as indisputably true, and they are probably looking for subscribers.

Yes, obviously medical scientists must spend every waking minute addressing nonsense dreamed up by fake think-tanks where political pundits have taken unethical, if not illegal, steps to hide their involvement. It's not like there is a health crisis going on and the world would perhaps be a bit better of if conspiratorial drivel could be ignored.

--So I went down the rabbit hole a little looking for scientific arguments why SARS-COV2 isn't laboratory based, the below paper was presented by a virologist named Kristain Andersen as a rebuttal to the paper above. His basic argument is that Wan's group doesn't articulate an effective way one would even go about making the virus, and as proof showed a paper of a group that actually made the virus in a lab. I did find it interesting that in the conclusion the author's noted that not only was the virus easy to make, but would be easy to modify as well...

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....959817v1.full
Rapid reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 using a synthetic genomics platform

The appearance of SARS-CoV-2 emphasizes the need for preparedness to rapidly respond to emerging virus threats. While the availability of SARS-CoV-2 isolates is still limited, full virus genome sequences were disclosed very early during the outbreak. The rapidity of our synthetic genomics approach to generate SARS-CoV-2 and the applicability to other emerging RNA viruses make this system an attractive alternative to provide infectious virus to health authorities and diagnostic laboratories without the need to have access to clinical samples. Finally, as the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is ongoing, we expect to see sequence variations and possibly phenotypic changes of evolving SARS-CoV-2 in the human host. With the synthetic genomics platform it is now possible to introduce such sequence variations into the infectious clone and to functionally characterize SARS-CoV-2 evolution in real-time.

If it’s that important to you can find someone of questionable repute to do this for you if you pay them. That’s basically what Bannon did.

Well the US and others had feet on the ground in that lab. Not saying China was not doing any covertly, they might have been.

My view on it is that numerous countries are experimenting with all the forms of Corona virus they find. And they are actively trying to find and catalogue many.


In a defensive mind set you could argue that is smart. That you don't want nature or a bad actor to surprise the world with a bad corona virus mutation so therefore it is better for them to do so in the labs and work on vaccines and cures in that setting.

Of course that would always leave room for secret covert gov't actors to run another agenda with the virus.


I think this is true and obvious. Economically China will become the worlds biggest power. it is just a matter of time.

I am not an alarmist person but I do believe if China is the worlds biggest and military power that they will utilize a very heavy handed and militaristic approach to international disputes.

I am not suggesting that the US and other did not prior, but within China it is often solely 'might that makes right' and decent is pushed aside with brute force and camps. I think the world needs to be prepared for that.

Since it is ok to ridicule the paper, is it ok to present its arguments and critiques of said arguments. It is hard to find any actual legitimate critiques, but there are a few.

Ya, places like the Discovery Institute use the same arguments to “publish” crackpot, agenda driven nonsense then whine about political bias when scientists choose to ignore people associated with them.

I'd say the democratic west is a far bigger threat to the democratic west than china is.

Yes we have ourselves to blame. On covid alone We have the wealth, the science and the ability to have easily been prepared to prevent the vast majority of the covid threat while easily managing the rest - on this and much else we fail so miserably and fuel so much discontent/anger that we are tearing our democracies apart.

And yet in the context of coronavirus the same people who realize that Chinese govt intelligence operations are flooding our country with propaganda/fake news also take at face value everything the Chinese govt tells them that is convenient to their own biases (eg. wet markets).

I'll tell you what the paper is most likely about. More probably than not it is about something you can spread on social media in order to generate a list of responses, which in turns provides lists of people and background for targeted influence campaigns that can again be sold to lobbying firms or political campaigns. In this perspective it isn't about facts and never was, such trifles are completely and wholly irrelevant.

People tend to forget that Steve Bannon was one of the two founders of Cambridge Analytica.

If I thought one of our adversaries released a deadly virus aimed at wrecking us--that seems like a pretty damn good reason to take it Really seriously.

True or not that's still upstream of actually dealing with the reality of it as a public health issue.

Idaho pastor who prayed against a mask mandate is in the ICU with COVID

Seems like a sign from the big man

Just a sheeple herder, goof. Got one of em do the same to my brother, sister-in-law and two grown children.

Amazing almost 7,000,000 positive cases , 200,000+ dead and a 1000 folks a day dying and its back page news

Yeah, remember when we were worried terrorist?
It’s a drive-thru what’s happening this red hot minute world that matters these days.
The devastation that happened in Lake Charles LA (3 wks ago)is a distant memory to all except those that live there. Are the protests and riots still going on?

Trump brags about the shutdown of China and Europe and Bill Gates was on Fox this morning and said the shutdowns were actually the cause of the USA's high cases. As it was not a total lockdown everyone scrambled to get back and once they did the USA had nothing in place for quarantines thus spreading the virus
He figures Vaccine by May 2021 is realistic and maybe things starting getting back to normal late 2021