Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.

[3catcircus]

Make it clear to everyone where you stand: You think there was not a global pandemic, right? I mean regardless of Government motives and exaggerations and danger levels and power grabs and stuff (all which you also think happened) you think there was no global pandemic, right?

I've made it very clear all the way along this discussion: no there was no pandemic.

Coronaviruses are real, there are several thousand strains of them we're aware of. Mostly, they're trivial. There was a nasty strain around in spring 2020. It didn't merit any of the measures innovated in the last 2 years. That non-existent emergency was cynically used as a means to expand government power by some very unscrupulous people. Dumbasses like you have gone along with it because you believed the ever-shifting tissue of lies they told to justify it.

What Kiero-world definition of pandemic are you using in your atrempt to deny reality? Serious question.

What part of it don't you understand?  The *only* reason that so many cases of the coof were found *is* because people specifically looked high and low for them. If the world had been testing every person in 2018, 2019, etc. for rhinovirus, other corona strains, adenovirus, etc., they'd have found a similar number of people infected by those viruses.  Likewise for flu which we don't routinely test for unless it is as a result of a sick visit. 

Any wonder why there is a big news story about kids with adenovirus 41-linked hepatitis right now?  Because they were specifically testing these kids, primarily to disprove that it was coronavirus or the jab causing them.  They *specifically* looked for these viruses.  Ad 41 causes the hershey squirts and has killed tons of kids in Africa because of it. No one gave a shit (pun intended) because it didn't fit their agenda.  There isn't sufficient evidence to prove that Ad 41 is the definitive cause of these hep cases.  There *is* proof that weakened immune systems due to 2 years of lockdowns and distancing after going to cause people to get really sick because of things that would've otherwise mildly sickened them...  We could see it coming last year when all those toddlers got out of season RSV and were seriously I'll.

Oh great, another person with the Kiero disease.

Look, most covid-19 infections, as well as the other ones diseases mentioned, aren't reported, and among those that are, most are diagnosed based on clinical symptoms rather than tests. We know novel coronavirus displaced the flu, and later the cold. So infections may be comparable. There's also a serious rebound effect from the (6?)14 days to stop the spread, because social isolation has helped population-wide immunity in a number of common endemic diseases to drop enough to cause outbreaks or even epidemics. Those things are true.

But this was a pandemic. That doesn't mean you have to agree with the insane narrative that's been pushed. But it's still a pandemic.

By the definition of pandemic, we've been in pandemics of other diseases for millenia.  *Because* most infections are never reported, we can surmise that in any given year, untold numbers of people are infected with viral respiratory infections. COVID 19 is no different in that respect.  It just so happens to have been a strain that was more virulent than usual.  What *would* have happened if governments had not have overreacted would have been that humans would still circulate viruses, resulting in COVID being out-competed - most likely by rhinovirus but perhaps adenovirus. Instead, lockdowns and social distancing in the face of an airborne respiratory virus pretty well guaranteed that it would continue to be predominant.

A few years ago we were in a swine flu pandemic that was stopped cold because we didn't panic and lockdown.  A top end estimate of over 1 billion infected in the 18 months it lasted with no official county of the number dead.

One has to ask what would have happened if we did nothing the past two years if no governments has overreacted. Which asks the question - why did they overreact in such a concerted fashion unless certain individuals knew how the virus got into the wild.  We've got the smoking gun of info that Ecohealth Alliance engaged in GoF research at Wuhan under a NIAID contract , in direct violation of US law.  Fauci, Daszak, and their comrades all need to have a fair trial followed by a fair public execution.

[Mistwell]

But this was a pandemic. That doesn't mean you have to agree with the insane narrative that's been pushed. But it's still a pandemic.

Thank you.

[Mistwell]

OK. I take it back that literally nobody here agrees with Kiero. 3cat, who never used to be this crazy, also agrees with him.

[Pat]

But this was a pandemic. That doesn't mean you have to agree with the insane narrative that's been pushed. But it's still a pandemic.

Thank you.

Fuck off.

[Pat]

Make it clear to everyone where you stand: You think there was not a global pandemic, right? I mean regardless of Government motives and exaggerations and danger levels and power grabs and stuff (all which you also think happened) you think there was no global pandemic, right?

I've made it very clear all the way along this discussion: no there was no pandemic.

Coronaviruses are real, there are several thousand strains of them we're aware of. Mostly, they're trivial. There was a nasty strain around in spring 2020. It didn't merit any of the measures innovated in the last 2 years. That non-existent emergency was cynically used as a means to expand government power by some very unscrupulous people. Dumbasses like you have gone along with it because you believed the ever-shifting tissue of lies they told to justify it.

What Kiero-world definition of pandemic are you using in your atrempt to deny reality? Serious question.

What part of it don't you understand?  The *only* reason that so many cases of the coof were found *is* because people specifically looked high and low for them. If the world had been testing every person in 2018, 2019, etc. for rhinovirus, other corona strains, adenovirus, etc., they'd have found a similar number of people infected by those viruses.  Likewise for flu which we don't routinely test for unless it is as a result of a sick visit. 

Any wonder why there is a big news story about kids with adenovirus 41-linked hepatitis right now?  Because they were specifically testing these kids, primarily to disprove that it was coronavirus or the jab causing them.  They *specifically* looked for these viruses.  Ad 41 causes the hershey squirts and has killed tons of kids in Africa because of it. No one gave a shit (pun intended) because it didn't fit their agenda.  There isn't sufficient evidence to prove that Ad 41 is the definitive cause of these hep cases.  There *is* proof that weakened immune systems due to 2 years of lockdowns and distancing after going to cause people to get really sick because of things that would've otherwise mildly sickened them...  We could see it coming last year when all those toddlers got out of season RSV and were seriously I'll.

Oh great, another person with the Kiero disease.

Look, most covid-19 infections, as well as the other ones diseases mentioned, aren't reported, and among those that are, most are diagnosed based on clinical symptoms rather than tests. We know novel coronavirus displaced the flu, and later the cold. So infections may be comparable. There's also a serious rebound effect from the (6?)14 days to stop the spread, because social isolation has helped population-wide immunity in a number of common endemic diseases to drop enough to cause outbreaks or even epidemics. Those things are true.

But this was a pandemic. That doesn't mean you have to agree with the insane narrative that's been pushed. But it's still a pandemic.

By the definition of pandemic, we've been in pandemics of other diseases for millenia.  *Because* most infections are never reported, we can surmise that in any given year, untold numbers of people are infected with viral respiratory infections. COVID 19 is no different in that respect.  It just so happens to have been a strain that was more virulent than usual.  What *would* have happened if governments had not have overreacted would have been that humans would still circulate viruses, resulting in COVID being out-competed - most likely by rhinovirus but perhaps adenovirus. Instead, lockdowns and social distancing in the face of an airborne respiratory virus pretty well guaranteed that it would continue to be predominant.

A few years ago we were in a swine flu pandemic that was stopped cold because we didn't panic and lockdown.  A top end estimate of over 1 billion infected in the 18 months it lasted with no official county of the number dead.

One has to ask what would have happened if we did nothing the past two years if no governments has overreacted. Which asks the question - why did they overreact in such a concerted fashion unless certain individuals knew how the virus got into the wild.  We've got the smoking gun of info that Ecohealth Alliance engaged in GoF research at Wuhan under a NIAID contract , in direct violation of US law.  Fauci, Daszak, and their comrades all need to have a fair trial followed by a fair public execution.

No, that's the difference between a pandemic and endemic diseases. Those diseases are endemic. Covid-19 was a pandemic, which has now become endemic.

An pandemic is something new, and the novelty means there's no or very limited natural immunity. As a result, it spreads across a population quickly, until herd immunity is achieved. At which point, it becomes endemic.

Endemic diseases never really go away. They're continually with us. But because most people have immunity to some degree, the diseases have limited effect. Generally, we'll see endemic diseases flare into outbreaks or even epidemics when immunity drops, typically due to population turnover (a new generation), at least until they've infected most of the unimmune, and then lapse back into quiescence.

The other cause of these outbreaks in endemic diseases is minor variations that bypass immunity to some degree, allowing the disease to spread again. But this rarely flares back up into a full pandemic. There's a reason most of the worse diseases in history are zoonotic; there is generally no background immunity against a disease that jumped from another species, in contrast to the background immunity that's always present for minor variations of existing human diseases, like the flu. That's why zoonotic pandemics burn through the human population like wildfire, because there's no degree of natural cross-immunity stopping them.

[GeekyBugle]

OK. I take it back that literally nobody here agrees with Kiero. 3cat, who never used to be this crazy, also agrees with him.

WUT? From my reading he agrees it was a pandemic. But then again you're not known for honest interpretations of others...

[Mistwell]

OK. I take it back that literally nobody here agrees with Kiero. 3cat, who never used to be this crazy, also agrees with him.

WUT? From my reading he agrees it was a pandemic. But then again you're not known for honest interpretations of others...

LOLwut? He directly said it. Not this last post - maybe that's the confusion. Look back to the post Pat was responding to of his.

[3catcircus]

Make it clear to everyone where you stand: You think there was not a global pandemic, right? I mean regardless of Government motives and exaggerations and danger levels and power grabs and stuff (all which you also think happened) you think there was no global pandemic, right?

I've made it very clear all the way along this discussion: no there was no pandemic.

Coronaviruses are real, there are several thousand strains of them we're aware of. Mostly, they're trivial. There was a nasty strain around in spring 2020. It didn't merit any of the measures innovated in the last 2 years. That non-existent emergency was cynically used as a means to expand government power by some very unscrupulous people. Dumbasses like you have gone along with it because you believed the ever-shifting tissue of lies they told to justify it.

What Kiero-world definition of pandemic are you using in your atrempt to deny reality? Serious question.

What part of it don't you understand?  The *only* reason that so many cases of the coof were found *is* because people specifically looked high and low for them. If the world had been testing every person in 2018, 2019, etc. for rhinovirus, other corona strains, adenovirus, etc., they'd have found a similar number of people infected by those viruses.  Likewise for flu which we don't routinely test for unless it is as a result of a sick visit. 

Any wonder why there is a big news story about kids with adenovirus 41-linked hepatitis right now?  Because they were specifically testing these kids, primarily to disprove that it was coronavirus or the jab causing them.  They *specifically* looked for these viruses.  Ad 41 causes the hershey squirts and has killed tons of kids in Africa because of it. No one gave a shit (pun intended) because it didn't fit their agenda.  There isn't sufficient evidence to prove that Ad 41 is the definitive cause of these hep cases.  There *is* proof that weakened immune systems due to 2 years of lockdowns and distancing after going to cause people to get really sick because of things that would've otherwise mildly sickened them...  We could see it coming last year when all those toddlers got out of season RSV and were seriously I'll.

Oh great, another person with the Kiero disease.

Look, most covid-19 infections, as well as the other ones diseases mentioned, aren't reported, and among those that are, most are diagnosed based on clinical symptoms rather than tests. We know novel coronavirus displaced the flu, and later the cold. So infections may be comparable. There's also a serious rebound effect from the (6?)14 days to stop the spread, because social isolation has helped population-wide immunity in a number of common endemic diseases to drop enough to cause outbreaks or even epidemics. Those things are true.

But this was a pandemic. That doesn't mean you have to agree with the insane narrative that's been pushed. But it's still a pandemic.

By the definition of pandemic, we've been in pandemics of other diseases for millenia.  *Because* most infections are never reported, we can surmise that in any given year, untold numbers of people are infected with viral respiratory infections. COVID 19 is no different in that respect.  It just so happens to have been a strain that was more virulent than usual.  What *would* have happened if governments had not have overreacted would have been that humans would still circulate viruses, resulting in COVID being out-competed - most likely by rhinovirus but perhaps adenovirus. Instead, lockdowns and social distancing in the face of an airborne respiratory virus pretty well guaranteed that it would continue to be predominant.

A few years ago we were in a swine flu pandemic that was stopped cold because we didn't panic and lockdown.  A top end estimate of over 1 billion infected in the 18 months it lasted with no official county of the number dead.

One has to ask what would have happened if we did nothing the past two years if no governments has overreacted. Which asks the question - why did they overreact in such a concerted fashion unless certain individuals knew how the virus got into the wild.  We've got the smoking gun of info that Ecohealth Alliance engaged in GoF research at Wuhan under a NIAID contract , in direct violation of US law.  Fauci, Daszak, and their comrades all need to have a fair trial followed by a fair public execution.

No, that's the difference between a pandemic and endemic diseases. Those diseases are endemic. Covid-19 was a pandemic, which has now become endemic.

An pandemic is something new, and the novelty means there's no or very limited natural immunity. As a result, it spreads across a population quickly, until herd immunity is achieved. At which point, it becomes endemic.

Endemic diseases never really go away. They're continually with us. But because most people have immunity to some degree, the diseases have limited effect. Generally, we'll see endemic diseases flare into outbreaks or even epidemics when immunity drops, typically due to population turnover (a new generation), at least until they've infected most of the unimmune, and then lapse back into quiescence.

The other cause of these outbreaks in endemic diseases is minor variations that bypass immunity to some degree, allowing the disease to spread again. But this rarely flares back up into a full pandemic. There's a reason most of the worse diseases in history are zoonotic; there is generally no background immunity against a disease that jumped from another species, in contrast to the background immunity that's always present for minor variations of existing human diseases, like the flu. That's why zoonotic pandemics burn through the human population like wildfire, because there's no degree of natural cross-immunity stopping them.

No, stupid. Every year we have both endemic viruses and new pandemics of other viruses. Most of them are silent because they are asymptomatic. Occasionally they are symptomatic, and sometimes they are very virulent.  I guarantee that if you were to look at any given person, you'd find about a half dozen viruses infecting them.  That's just the way viruses do what they do.

The question remains: is any given pandemic of airborne respiratory viruses of such consequence that it requires lockdowns and masks?  The answer is decidedly no. It didn't stop the 1918 flu, it didn't stop Hong Kong Flu, it didn't stop MERS or SARS1, and it didn't stop this.

Ebola? Yeah, given it kills at least 50% of those infected. COVID with its < 1% not so much.

Again - the only reason COVID was noticed as killing people was because people were specifically looking for it - no one has ever bothered paying attention in the past when the dying were in nursing homes or hospices, or died at home - or died of a "some viral" pneumonia at age 80 in hospital.

[Pat]

No, stupid. Every year we have both endemic viruses and new pandemics of other viruses. Most of them are silent because they are asymptomatic. Occasionally they are symptomatic, and sometimes they are very virulent.  I guarantee that if you were to look at any given person, you'd find about a half dozen viruses infecting them.  That's just the way viruses do what they do.

The question remains: is any given pandemic of airborne respiratory viruses of such consequence that it requires lockdowns and masks?  The answer is decidedly no. It didn't stop the 1918 flu, it didn't stop Hong Kong Flu, it didn't stop MERS or SARS1, and it didn't stop this.

Ebola? Yeah, given it kills at least 50% of those infected. COVID with its < 1% not so much.

Again - the only reason COVID was noticed as killing people was because people were specifically looking for it - no one has ever bothered paying attention in the past when the dying were in nursing homes or hospices, or died at home - or died of a "some viral" pneumonia at age 80 in hospital.

No, you drooling moron with barely enough brainpower to sustain your autonomic functions, we do not have yearly pandemics. As I described, we have endemic diseases that occasionally flare up, when they're exposed to a population with a lower level of immunity (like the next generation), or when they morph into a new variant that only provides partial cross-immunity (like the flu). That's what "endemic" means. They constantly exist within the population, but they have little or no effect most of the time because people have a high degree of immunity, and only flare up when they find a pocket of people with lower immunity. Pandemics only occur when a new disease arrives that almost entirely bypasses any natural cross-immunity, which generally means they've jumped from a different species. Which is rare.

If you think the average person is infected with a half a dozen viruses, you've underestimated the real number by a many orders of magnitude. We are host to gut flora, skin flora, and an absurd number of other flora, including viruses. Viruses are even in our DNA. But if they're asymptomatic, it's not a pandemic. That's not the case with covid-19, which did cause a spike of deaths among the elderly. Also, we saw classic signs of viral displacement. It replaced the flu, and later the cold.

Yes, there could conceivably be an infectious respiratory disease that's severe enough to require extreme measures. But covid-19 wasn't it, highly infectious respiratory diseases are almost impossible to stop, and the government has demonstrated they're completely incompetent when it comes to responding to pandemics, anyway.

Ebola isn't a significant threat because it's too deadly. It kills people before they can infect others, and the short incubation and gory results means people take severe actions to isolate the infected.

[3catcircus]

No, stupid. Every year we have both endemic viruses and new pandemics of other viruses. Most of them are silent because they are asymptomatic. Occasionally they are symptomatic, and sometimes they are very virulent.  I guarantee that if you were to look at any given person, you'd find about a half dozen viruses infecting them.  That's just the way viruses do what they do.

The question remains: is any given pandemic of airborne respiratory viruses of such consequence that it requires lockdowns and masks?  The answer is decidedly no. It didn't stop the 1918 flu, it didn't stop Hong Kong Flu, it didn't stop MERS or SARS1, and it didn't stop this.

Ebola? Yeah, given it kills at least 50% of those infected. COVID with its < 1% not so much.

Again - the only reason COVID was noticed as killing people was because people were specifically looking for it - no one has ever bothered paying attention in the past when the dying were in nursing homes or hospices, or died at home - or died of a "some viral" pneumonia at age 80 in hospital.

No, you drooling moron with barely enough brainpower to sustain your autonomic functions, we do not have yearly pandemics. As I described, we have endemic diseases that occasionally flare up, when they're exposed to a population with a lower level of immunity (like the next generation), or when they morph into a new variant that only provides partial cross-immunity (like the flu). That's what "endemic" means. They constantly exist within the population, but they have little or no effect most of the time because people have a high degree of immunity, and only flare up when they find a pocket of people with lower immunity. Pandemics only occur when a new disease arrives that almost entirely bypasses any natural cross-immunity, which generally means they've jumped from a different species. Which is rare.

If you think the average person is infected with a half a dozen viruses, you've underestimated the real number by a many orders of magnitude. We are host to gut flora, skin flora, and an absurd number of other flora, including viruses. Viruses are even in our DNA. But if they're asymptomatic, it's not a pandemic. That's not the case with covid-19, which did cause a spike of deaths among the elderly. Also, we saw classic signs of viral displacement. It replaced the flu, and later the cold.

Yes, there could conceivably be an infectious respiratory disease that's severe enough to require extreme measures. But covid-19 wasn't it, highly infectious respiratory diseases are almost impossible to stop, and the government has demonstrated they're completely incompetent when it comes to responding to pandemics, anyway.

Ebola isn't a significant threat because it's too deadly. It kills people before they can infect others, and the short incubation and gory results means people take severe actions to isolate the infected.

For such an educated person, you're extremely lacking in the critical thinking skills department.

There are untold numbers of pandemics - they don't need to be symptomatic to be pandemics.  Every year, viruses and bacteria mutate, causing widespread infections of people all across the planet.  Most of them are don't cares because they cause no symptoms - which is why no one actively tracks them.  In some cases, people start paying attention but don't equate localized symptomatic infections to actually being widespread.  In rarer instances, people get sick enough to seek out medical care in sufficient numbers that people pay cost attention.

In the case of COVID it was infecting people in large numbers in China as far back as August or September of 2019. Ecohealth Alliance (and hence NIAID) knew about it and did nothing until early 2020.  Then they overreacted.  The *only* way you do not say or do anything and then suddenly, in concert with other nations, act as if it's like Ebola is if you have a vested interest in hiding the origin and/or formulating a cover story...

[HappyDaze]

The *only* way you do not say or do anything and then suddenly, in concert with other nations, act as if it's like Ebola is if you have a vested interest in hiding the origin and/or formulating a cover story...

You say that is the "*only way*" but there have many explanations given for the responses taken, But, by all means, keep your tinfoil hat in place--go ahead and use some long carpentry staples to make sure it really stays put--you won't damage anything that's serving any purpose.

[Pat]

For such an educated person, you're extremely lacking in the critical thinking skills department.

There are untold numbers of pandemics - they don't need to be symptomatic to be pandemics.  Every year, viruses and bacteria mutate, causing widespread infections of people all across the planet.  Most of them are don't cares because they cause no symptoms - which is why no one actively tracks them.  In some cases, people start paying attention but don't equate localized symptomatic infections to actually being widespread.  In rarer instances, people get sick enough to seek out medical care in sufficient numbers that people pay cost attention.

In the case of COVID it was infecting people in large numbers in China as far back as August or September of 2019. Ecohealth Alliance (and hence NIAID) knew about it and did nothing until early 2020.  Then they overreacted.  The *only* way you do not say or do anything and then suddenly, in concert with other nations, act as if it's like Ebola is if you have a vested interest in hiding the origin and/or formulating a cover story...

For such a critical thinker, you're extremely lacking in the basic knowledge department.

The normal background noise of viruses and bacteria mutating does not cause pandemics. It causes minor outbreaks, and perhaps some very minor localized epidemics, but mostly what it does is covered by the word "endemic". Continual waves of infection and reinfection, as immunity wanes over time, in localized areas, or as new generations grow up, or as minor variations bypass a small bit of the natural immunity against the original strain, is the nature of endemicity. A pandemic can only really occur from a novel disease, to which humanity has no or nearly no immunity. Otherwise, it won't spread across the entire world in a very rapid time frame. That's why sars2 spread so quickly, because while there was some cross-immunity from sars1, it wasn't enough. The diseases that cause pandemics are almost all zoonotic, and zoonotic diseases are rare.

You could make an argument that there are invisible pandemics, which are asymptomatic or have symptoms that aren't readily distinguishable from seasonal diseases, and which don't cause any other side effects like a jump in all-cause mortality. But they'd still be pretty rare, because the basic requirement of a pandemic is that there is no real natural immunity, and that requires something extraordinary like a species jump. And it's not the strongest argument even with that limitation, because pandemic was coined to refer to diseases that were noticed based on clinical symptoms, not gene sequencing. A disease or syndrome is distinct from the bacteria, virus, fungus, genetic defect, or whatever causes it, and they don't map 1:1. The common cold is the classic example, a set of widely recognized symptoms that can be caused by a bewildering variety of microbes. Expanding the term might make sense, might not. But it's not what people typically mean when they use the word.

And no, there are other explanations for not doing anything and then overreacting. One is simply reacting to publicity. If nobody's heard of something, the easiest thing to do is ignore it. But if it's starting to make the press, then it behooves bureaucrats to overreact, because we never punish bureaucrats or politicians for excess. Cf. Andrew "I killed all your grannies but all anybody cares about is I'm a little handsy" Cuomo.

[3catcircus]

For such an educated person, you're extremely lacking in the critical thinking skills department.

There are untold numbers of pandemics - they don't need to be symptomatic to be pandemics.  Every year, viruses and bacteria mutate, causing widespread infections of people all across the planet.  Most of them are don't cares because they cause no symptoms - which is why no one actively tracks them.  In some cases, people start paying attention but don't equate localized symptomatic infections to actually being widespread.  In rarer instances, people get sick enough to seek out medical care in sufficient numbers that people pay cost attention.

In the case of COVID it was infecting people in large numbers in China as far back as August or September of 2019. Ecohealth Alliance (and hence NIAID) knew about it and did nothing until early 2020.  Then they overreacted.  The *only* way you do not say or do anything and then suddenly, in concert with other nations, act as if it's like Ebola is if you have a vested interest in hiding the origin and/or formulating a cover story...

For such a critical thinker, you're extremely lacking in the basic knowledge department.

The normal background noise of viruses and bacteria mutating does not cause pandemics. It causes minor outbreaks, and perhaps some very minor localized epidemics, but mostly what it does is covered by the word "endemic". Continual waves of infection and reinfection, as immunity wanes over time, in localized areas, or as new generations grow up, or as minor variations bypass a small bit of the natural immunity against the original strain, is the nature of endemicity. A pandemic can only really occur from a novel disease, to which humanity has no or nearly no immunity. Otherwise, it won't spread across the entire world in a very rapid time frame. That's why sars2 spread so quickly, because while there was some cross-immunity from sars1, it wasn't enough. The diseases that cause pandemics are almost all zoonotic, and zoonotic diseases are rare.

You could make an argument that there are invisible pandemics, which are asymptomatic or have symptoms that aren't readily distinguishable from seasonal diseases, and which don't cause any other side effects like a jump in all-cause mortality. But they'd still be pretty rare, because the basic requirement of a pandemic is that there is no real natural immunity, and that requires something extraordinary like a species jump. And it's not the strongest argument even with that limitation, because pandemic was coined to refer to diseases that were noticed based on clinical symptoms, not gene sequencing. A disease or syndrome is distinct from the bacteria, virus, fungus, genetic defect, or whatever causes it, and they don't map 1:1. The common cold is the classic example, a set of widely recognized symptoms that can be caused by a bewildering variety of microbes. Expanding the term might make sense, might not. But it's not what people typically mean when they use the word.

And no, there are other explanations for not doing anything and then overreacting. One is simply reacting to publicity. If nobody's heard of something, the easiest thing to do is ignore it. But if it's starting to make the press, then it behooves bureaucrats to overreact, because we never punish bureaucrats or politicians for excess. Cf. Andrew "I killed all your grannies but all anybody cares about is I'm a little handsy" Cuomo.

What have I been trying to say to you - yes there are silent pandemics all the time - which is why we never know about them to *declare* then to be pandemics.  You do not need to be symptomatic to have no immunity to something. You also don't need to have symptomatic infections for the to be a pandemic - it just needs to be wide spread enough to be a pandemic.  If something is spread amongst the global population, even if it causes no symptoms, it's still a spread of infection, and if widespread enough, it can be considered a pandemic.

As to the notion of publicity - sure, after a certain point that's probably true, but we have incontrovertible proof that there was widespread infection in Wuhan in the fall of 2019, but that knowledge was surpressed by Chinese authorities even as they closed down flights inside the country.  Western researchers in Wuhan did *nothing* beyond alerting their superiors - who did nothing until they *had* to suffer all the Chinese slave labor flew back to Italy to work in the fashion sweatshops, bringing infection with them.

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy by malice to be a conspiracy, given the Asian mindset for not wanting to be the one upsetting the group harmony by calling attention to piss poor lab safety causing a lab escape of a naturally occurring pathogen.  *That* is the most likely scenario, followed closely by a lab escape of a pathogen that underwent GoF testing by Ecohealth paid by the NIH in contravention of US law, resulting in Fauci, Dasczak, and others having a vested interest in drawing attention away from their complicity.  Third most likely is a lab escape of a GoF tested virus coopted by PLA scientists for biowarfare research.

[Pat]

You do not need to be symptomatic to have no immunity to something.

What does this have to do with anything? Are you under the impression I said the opposite? Because I didn't.

Since you haven't really addressed what I said and just repeated your initial position, there isn't anything for me to reply to.

As to the notion of publicity - sure, after a certain point that's probably true, but we have incontrovertible proof that there was widespread infection in Wuhan in the fall of 2019, but that knowledge was surpressed by Chinese authorities even as they closed down flights inside the country.  Western researchers in Wuhan did *nothing* beyond alerting their superiors - who did nothing until they *had* to suffer all the Chinese slave labor flew back to Italy to work in the fashion sweatshops, bringing infection with them.

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy by malice to be a conspiracy, given the Asian mindset for not wanting to be the one upsetting the group harmony by calling attention to piss poor lab safety causing a lab escape of a naturally occurring pathogen.  *That* is the most likely scenario, followed closely by a lab escape of a pathogen that underwent GoF testing by Ecohealth paid by the NIH in contravention of US law, resulting in Fauci, Dasczak, and others having a vested interest in drawing attention away from their complicity.  Third most likely is a lab escape of a GoF tested virus coopted by PLA scientists for biowarfare research.

Yes, China suppressed all information on a potential pandemic. Yes, NIAID clearly wanted to distract attention away from their involvement. Yes, that includes Fauci. Yes, it's clear some of the researchers lied through their teeth to protect themselves, and that influenced public policy because of, among other things, the article in the Lancet written by Daszak and others was very influential. There's also an email trail of them actively trying to discredit and deflect. Never said anything about that.

What I disputed is your claim that "[t]he *only* way you do not say or do anything and then suddenly, in concert with other nations, act as if it's like Ebola is if you have a vested interest in hiding the origin and/or formulating a cover story...".

That's still a ridiculously false general statement, which you threw in out of nowhere into an unrelated conversation. The overwhelming majority of public health workers had no connection to any of that, but still were dancing in the halls claiming the virus wouldn't spread during social [in]justice protests. You need a lot more to explain the insane overreaction by so many people.

[Zelen]

Bayesian analysis of Bangladesh study concludes masks have no effect: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360320982_The_Bangladesh_Mask_study_a_Bayesian_perspective

Negative correlation between mask usage and Covid-19 outcomes: https://www.cureus.com/articles/93826-correlation-between-mask-compliance-and-covid-19-outcomes-in-europe