I’m neither a physician nor a zoologist, and what I know about the SARS-2 has been gleaned from my own reading and talking to people who are actually qualified to give me information about it. I’ve learned a lot in the last two weeks, and I thought I’d share some of the conclusions that have been shared with me. I think this is important, because the majority of the information presently circulating is bad.
Despite what you’ll read on various neo-Nazi web pages, SARS-CoV-2 is not related to influenza, and the pandemic is not a conspiracy, engineered by the government and liberal media to strip us of our constitutional rights. I have read this sort of conjecture regularly in the past few weeks, and while I think it’s unfortunate, I have some amount of sympathy with the people who have spread these strange ideas, because the government and media have responded to the virus in such a heavy-handed and stupid fashion. For example:
CBS News and the U.S. Government want your grandmother to get sick
If I were the typical IQ 100 conservative, I’d have lost faith in Donald Trump and the corporate media, too. Maybe I’d respond with “It’s just the flu” denials, and maybe I’d become an “accelerationist,” but either way, I would feel betrayed by the government and its propaganda organs.
Men in this post code have always known that the government and its media hates us, so our skepticism serves us well in this new duplicitous era. Aside from reading a bunch of journal articles, I’ve had the chance to hang out with actual doctors in the past 72h, and I’d like to pass on some of the conjecture they’ve spilled to ya boy Boxer. I’d also like to clear up some misinformation I previously posted.
Unlike CBS News and the Trump administration, I own my mistakes
A couple of weeks ago, I blindly assumed some of the data out of Wuhan was, in the first place, accurate, and in the second place, applicable to the present American outbreak. I ran some of the Chinese numbers, and I got a mortality rate of around 0.009.
Whether my first assumption is justifiable is a matter of conjecture, but the second assumption I made was completely wrong. In my defense, I didn’t know how RNA virii operated when I wrote this, and while I didn’t willfully lie to anyone, I did talk out my ass. I’m fairly confident that I can do basic arithmetic, but I’m completely clueless about biology, and I shouldn’t have been so irrationally self-confident as to make some general declaration.
SARS-CoV-2 is the name of an RNA virus, not a disease. The disease caused by virii of this type is called Covid-19. The corporate media uses all of these neologisms interchangeably, but it’s important to be precise.
Coronavirii come in five different genera. SARS-CoV-2 is a betacoronavirus, and its related most closely to a common coronavirus that’s passed around in rodents and birds. Surprisingly, SARS-CoV-2 is not closely related to the betacoronavirus that caused the original SARS. It’s not nearly as deadly, which is part of the problem.
SARS-CoV-2 has a close genetic relative that is rarely fatal. This relative causes about 25% of all the typical “cold and flu” infections in America. The reason that SARS-CoV-2 is such a pain in the ass is due to a tactical quality it shares with this other relative.
About ten years ago, people were researching this relative and decided to run large tests on the general population. They found that a large majority of people had antibodies for this relative, but most people did not actually get ill with it.
SARS-CoV-2 is thought to work in this same fashion. The guy I talked to told me that he guessed that 10-30% of all the people who caught Covid-19 didn’t know they had it. Consider the consequences… I might catch it tomorrow, and not notice it. My immune system tamps down on it, I have no symptoms, and feel great. In the interim, I’ve got it holding on in my respiratory tract for the next month. During that month I shake hands with Derek, kiss Feeriker’s mother on the cheek, pick up Honeycomb’s niece when she falls on the playground, pay back Renee with cash I handled in my wallet, and do any number of other normal things that regular people do in day-to-day life. Nearly all of the people I’ve infected are likely to either show no symptoms, or maybe think they caught a cold, all while they repeat the process. In the mean-time, all our older relatives are suddenly gravely ill, and the bodies start piling up.
The actual mortality rate of Covid-19 varies by the genetic legacy of the specific virus that’s causing a localized infection. There is a reason certain areas (Iran, Italy, New York City) are seeing something like a .12 mortality rate, and others (Germany) are at .003. This is due to the structure of an RNA virus itself. An RNA virus recombines and mutates at shocking speed. Every time the virus hijacks one of your cells, it takes some of your own genetic material with it, and rolls some deterministic dice as to what features its own offspring will have.
Scuttlebutt says that the NYC strain of the virus may be particularly deadly due to the fact that it’s closely related to the Italian variety, while on the west coast, we have been largely spared, because our brand of SARS-CoV-2 came from China or Korea. This made intuitive sense to me, when I heard it. The seeds of the American virus came from different places, and have different attributes.
When I stated that the virus had a mortality rate of less than one percent, I was talking out my ass. The virus in Germany and South Korea has a mortality rate of less than one percent. The virus in New York City has a mortality rate of around ten percent.
What I’m coming to understand is that an RNA virus is not one monolithic entity, but a very wide variety of breeds which are competing to conquer your body. Nobody wants to be chased by dogs, but a pack of pit bull dogs on your ass is a different scenario than a pack of yorkies.
The worst virii in terms of body count are not those with the highest mortality rates. The original SARS has a 30-50% mortality rate, but it only killed a few thousand people, because everyone who got sick knew it immediately, and those who contracted it died relatively quickly. Millions may die from this version, which is why the whole “social distancing” thing is sensible.
At the beginning of this week, I was told that it was possible to see five percent of the population of the county I live in die this month. I’ve been prepared to help out since, and have done very little. The makeshift overflow hospital we built sits empty, and it may never see a patient. I’m thankful for this. I wish I could give all my readers more authoritative advice on what to do, but ultimately, I’m constrained by my own lack of education.
Boxer, people of all intelligence levels and professional training can be wrong, but one major mark of intelligence, good faith, and a scientific outlook is the ability to update conclusions based on more accurate information. It’s why medicine beats out witchcraft (including Traditional Chinese Medicine) any day.
Well said. I keep telling liberals here in California “this is not reason for Trump tp declare martial law. We dont have enough military or police to do this nationwide. We dont”
Of course this brings out the attack of “im a trump supporter”
(Facepalm) I cant ever make a point in Califoria without “trump” somehow being thrown into it.
Excellent post
I say similar stuff to people in Oregon, and get similar responses (in my area they accuse me of being a niggerlover and a Jew). In the mean time there are people who are planning on staging an “open carry demonstration” up here tomorrow.
My only assumption is that the leaders of these little protest cells want their followers to get beat up by cops, arrested, and/or possibly shot. They also want them to take the ‘rona home so that granny and uncle can die from it. All around horrible advice; but, much of the blame goes to the government and media, who have handled this so badly.
China always lies. Nothing coming out of that country can be trusted. The statistics are (obviously) false and/or engineered.
I’m not hearing “we don’t have the to engineer a virus.” With all the lies, nobody knows that it is or isn’t a conspiracy or what a real conspiracy would look like. The fact is, you don’t need to assume a conspiracy when opportunism works just fine. Rights were already stripped by the (actually) evil bureaucratic machine and almost everyone agrees that it was fine.
Sensible to whom? Is it sensible to ban going to church or buying seeds, but keep the candy stores open and run the lottery? Is the.possibly permanent.economic harm sensible? I’ll isolate because the personal cost to the family is minimal (for now), but what about the millions who have lost their jobs or the resulting broken families? This is anything but a black & white situation with a single clear path of direction, yet governments have unilaterally and unanimously enacted authoritarian controls over the governed. Does that sound normal to you?
You.quite literally.live in a world where over 40% of the land temperature data used to defend AGW is fabricated (extrapolated) and then used to fabricate (extrapolate) satellite temperature data. Where the rise in CO2 predicts the adjustments to the raw data with an astounding R-squared value of 0.97. Where trend lines and error bars are replaced by a new trend line based only on the upper range. Where different data sets are spliced together to show hockey stick increases. Lies upon lies upon lies.
Yeah, sure, conspiracy nuts might be wrong about the pandemic, but how can they be right when everyone is telling them lies almost constantly? It’s possible to take the virus seriously while simultaneously opposing the authoritarian overreach. While my wife and daughter build face mask accessories for Philadelphia and Seattle hospitals…
…I’ve been stockpiling food in sealed long-term storage bags and preparing the largest garden I’ve had to date.
(Link to picture doesn’t seem to work when I link to my own site, either that or I messed up the HTML tag): https://derekramsey.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/MaskAccessory.jpg
1. Nothing is obvious at all. This is a completely new virus, and the experts are still learning about it.
2. China acted sensibly, from a geopolitical standpoint. If they lied consciously, they did so strategically. America would certainly have done the same (if not worse). If the outbreak first appeared in NYC, we’d have let it spread. No sense us having to suffer without everyone else doing so.
3. I get that you personally don’t like China for your own reasons, but China didn’t write the stimulus bill, which let huge private medical firms profit at the expense of small businesses and individual workers. Your government did that; and, based on your posting history, it’s safe to assume that you approved of it until five minutes before you wrote this.
The rest of this stuff (temperature statistics?) doesn’t appear relevant to anything I wrote. If you want to write a rebuttal, you should feel free to do so on your own blog, and post a link here.
Boxer
There is no “if.” They absolutely lied. There is no serious question. Why they did it is also not a mystery.
A few weeks ago it was reported that U.S. intelligence officials advised Trump that China was “minimizing the severity of the outbreak.” Just today they released an update to the official figures, modifying them by 50%. Wuhan’s official numbers of deaths (in the thousands) stands in stark contrast to reports from non-official sources that estimate the death numbers at around 50,000 to 100,000.more honest per capita numbers that are comparable to the rest of the world. Now the international community is ‘discovering’ that the origin story was probably fabricated (unless you think a bat escaped a biolab, flew into a wet market, and was sold as food).
As someone who has allegedly been to China, you seem to be ignorant of Chinese culture (e.g. see this video, and others). Lying is cultural and it is utterly pervasive. You know the reputation that Chinese goods are generally poor quality? Poorly made counterfeit products are common and expected. Not only is this true, but the Chinese people know it to be true (which is why there is a black market in non-Chinese powdered milk). The Chinese government is notorious for controlling any speech it finds offensive, saying one thing while blatantly doing the opposite.
Oh, it is relevant. It is extremely relevant. The movers-and-shakers have wholesale fabricated climate data and hoisted a massive, worldwide scam for political purposes. It is based on lies, lies, and more lies, and a majority of people have accepted it without question, just as you are doing here (see the link below).
All bureaucracies.not just China.are utterly evil and corrupt. Lies are their stock and trade. This includes America. But it’s not just government, it’s the institutions as well, including businesses, churches, and what passes for scientific research and peer review.
The bottom line is that you are “skeptical about little lies, credulous about the Big lie.” You are able read between the lines and see the small truths here and there while completely missing the big picture (e.g. your most recent post).
As you know, in my most serious writings I have consistently stated that America is lost. At best I’ve asserted that the American systems of government and economy are relatively superior and most likely to be redeemed, but only with the full restoration of Christianity.
Brother Boxer, some latest science on the virus appears to show that the New York strain is not associated with Italy – “”This allows us to see the very specific fingerprint of COVID-19 from each region around the world, and to look closely at smaller regions to see how it is different,” Rosen said. “Our preliminary analysis, using publicly available data from across the world, is showing that the combination of subtypes of virus found in New York is most similar to those found in Austria, France and Central Europe, but not Italy. And the subtype from Asia, that was detected here early in the pandemic has not spread very much, instead we are seeing a new subtype that only exists in America as the one most prevalent in Washington state and on the west coast.””
From here – https://phys.org/news/2020-04-genetic-barcode-rapidly-revealing-covid-.html