Fauci and gain-of-function research thread.

[Jimmy Cliff]

 

 

[Jimmy Cliff]

 

 

While speaking over the following slide – “Pandemics: Opportunity” – Baric posits that “pandemics really are times of opportunity.”

“There is an opportunity for people to have political gain, financial gain, and personal gain during times of social upheaval, and that will probably occur,” he adds.

 

Ok.

[BacktoCricaddict]

^^ :facepalm: 

 

So, if he is advising people that they should take advantage of the pandemic, is he also advising people to come up with conspiracy theories?  That's on his slide too ... and it looks like you have taken his advice to heart!   

 

What he is doing is ... pointing out that there are scamsters of all sorts who will take advantage of the pandemic to make money, get political gain, conjure conspiracy theories etc.  He is warning against people like that.  Not saying you should do it.  

 

Here's a link to his entire speech.  Title:  Imaging the next Flu pandemic - And Preventing it.  Not "how to cause it."

 

 

 

Reminds me of a scene from My Cousin Vinny. 

 

The cops are questioning this guy and ask him: "at what point did you shoot the clerk?" 

The guy says incredulously "I shot the clerk?  I shot the clerk?" 

The cop jots it down. 

In court, he tells the jury that the suspect confessed because he said "I shot the clerk.  I shot the clerk." 

The cop was not lying, of course. 

But he was using the guy's statement out of context.   

 

 

Edited June 15, 2021 by BacktoCricaddict

[Jimmy Cliff]

6 hours ago, BacktoCricaddict said:

^^ :facepalm: 

 

So, if he is advising people that they should take advantage of the pandemic, is he also advising people to come up with conspiracy theories?  That's on his slide too ... and it looks like you have taken his advice to heart!   

 

What he is doing is ... pointing out that there are scamsters of all sorts who will take advantage of the pandemic to make money, get political gain, conjure conspiracy theories etc.  He is warning against people like that.  Not saying you should do it.  

 

Here's a link to his entire speech.  Title:  Imaging the next Flu pandemic - And Preventing it.  Not "how to cause it."

 

 

 

Reminds me of a scene from My Cousin Vinny. 

 

The cops are questioning this guy and ask him: "at what point did you shoot the clerk?" 

The guy says incredulously "I shot the clerk?  I shot the clerk?" 

The cop jots it down. 

In court, he tells the jury that the suspect confessed because he said "I shot the clerk.  I shot the clerk." 

The cop was not lying, of course. 

But he was using the guy's statement out of context.   

 

 

 

Err. Did you miss this part? 

 

During his 2018 speech “Imagining the Next Flu Pandemic – and Preventing it!” he presents a slide titled “Global Catastrophe: Opportunities Exist.” The slide outlines what type of stocks and industries surged during the Ebola outbreak, which he uses to extrapolate financial advice on how to “make money in the next pandemic.”

“I wanted to give you good news. There are winners out there, right? So if you ever want to be prepared and make money in the next pandemic, if that’s what you want to do, buy stock in Hazmat suit makers and protective clothing or companies that make antiviral drugs for that particular pandemic,” he notes.

Baric adds that the aforementioned sectors and stocks would “probably do pretty well” before highlighting that “there are actually mutual funds for pandemic preparedness.”

 

Your defense of these guys reminds me of this scene from Sholay.

 

 

 

Mausi: Toh kya Scientist hone ke baad bhi Pandemic ka faayda utha ke $$$ banane ki planning karta hai?

 

Jai: Toh usme kaunsi buri baat hai Mausi. 

[BacktoCricaddict]

During his 2018 speech “Imagining the Next Flu Pandemic – and Preventing it!” he presents a slide titled “Global Catastrophe: Opportunities Exist.” The slide outlines what type of stocks and industries surged during the Ebola outbreak, which he uses to extrapolate financial advice on how to “make money in the next pandemic.”

“I wanted to give you good news. There are winners out there, right? So if you ever want to be prepared and make money in the next pandemic, if that’s what you want to do, buy stock in Hazmat suit makers and protective clothing or companies that make antiviral drugs for that particular pandemic,” he notes.

Baric adds that the aforementioned sectors and stocks would “probably do pretty well” before highlighting that “there are actually mutual funds for pandemic preparedness.”

---------------------------

I did see that part.  I actually watched the whole speech.  He is telling people about how they should make money during the pandemic that he is trying to stop.  Wah, what a speech-maker - "Here's how you all can make money ... but I am doing research to stop that from happening!"

 

He is not giving financial advice.  I watched the whole speech (and I linked it for you - watch it, good for your BP).  With that slide, he is trying to inform the audience (with a horrible attempt at humor - "you can do anything in America") about things people will do to take advantage of other people.  

 

Anti-vaxx tweeters and their out-of-context tweets.

 

And also, do you think slime-balls who are planning to make money during a pandemic will give a public speech in an academic conference center during a session that is open to the public?  That would be like Bill Clinton telling a public audience where to get Jeffrey Epstein's phone number.  

Edited June 15, 2021 by BacktoCricaddict

[Jimmy Cliff]

On 6/15/2021 at 5:28 AM, Jimmy Cliff said:

 

 

While speaking over the following slide – “Pandemics: Opportunity” – Baric posits that “pandemics really are times of opportunity.”

“There is an opportunity for people to have political gain, financial gain, and personal gain during times of social upheaval, and that will probably occur,” he adds.

 

Ok.

 

 

 

No conflict of interest or any attempt to make financial gain here. Just desperately trying to save lives with a "game changing" drug.

 

[Jimmy Cliff]

 

 

Cc @ravishingravi

[BacktoCricaddict]

^^

You'd rather that Gilead Biosciences collaborate with Dr. Amar Akbar Anthony at Peeweepodunk university in Middleofnowheristan with no experience in virology to develop a drug?  These collaborations are key to developing medicine and technology development in all areas of science.    This guy Baric has been studying coronaviruses for decades, and has the tools to test new molecules against the virus in his lab.  Who else should work on drug development?  

 

That said, Baric turned out to be completely wrong about Remdesivir.  It is not a game-changer.  It's results are underwhelming in the real world.  He should retract.   

[BacktoCricaddict]

4 hours ago, Jimmy Cliff said:

 

 

Cc @ravishingravi

Fauci hero-worship is effin ridiculous. 

 

But it is also ridiculous to say that you won't get funded if Fauci found out you criticized GOF research.  This guy is speaking out of his arse.  Just because his parents were profs does not mean he knows how the system works.  I have criticized the USDA on many things *on their website* and have still received USDA funding for my research.  Yes, there is politics everywhere.  And science is not insulated from it.  But the head of NIAID is not sitting in his office scouring 1000s of grant proposals and being vindictive against individual scientists and cutting off their funding. 

[BacktoCricaddict]

2015: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.19078

Nine scientists are being investigated for a possible role in enabling an outbreak of a disease that is ravaging olive groves in Puglia, Italy. The public official in charge of containing the epidemic is also under investigation.

Public prosecutors announced the formal investigation at a press conference in Lecce in southern Italy on 18 December. At the same time, they ordered an immediate halt to measures put in place to contain the spread of the disease, which include chopping down and burning infected and vulnerable trees, and spraying insecticide. The prosecutors argue that too little is understood about the science of the disease to justify such measures.

 

2019:  https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.5155786/charges-against-scientists-dropped-in-italian-olive-tree-devastation-1.5155817

Populist politicians whipped up anti-science conspiracy theories.  Last week in Italy, a judge dismissed charges against scientists accused of being responsible for the spread of a disease that has led to the death of thousands of olives trees in the southern Italian region of Puglia.  The accusations against the scientists date back to 2015, two years after the Xylella fastidiosa disease began killing off the olive trees of Italy's boot-shaped region.  "There are millions of olives which are affected and possibly several tens of thousands of olives already dying or even dead," Temple University biologist Enrico Bucci, one of the first people to write about the disease, told As It Happens host Carol Off.  

 

When the disease was discovered, scientists advised farmers to destroy infected trees, as well as healthy trees within a certain radius, in order to prevent its spread.  They also told farmers to monitor the presence of the spittlebug, an insect that spreads the disease from tree to tree. Those guidelines sparked a backlash against the scientists in an area where olive trees are incredibly important, both economically and culturally.  Local politicians, many part of the Five Star populist movement, accused the researchers of spreading the disease to get more money to study it, and for the companies they worked for. And they blamed the European Union for imposing drastic solutions from afar.  "There were riots and revolts starting," Bucci said. "Interestingly, most of them were not led by farmers, but by activists, basically. So even people [who didn't] own a single olive tree, they started spreading misinformation."

 

 

 

 

Edited June 20, 2021 by BacktoCricaddict

[Jimmy Cliff]

 

 

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

This Peter Daszak guy needs to be interrogated like crazy.  

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/lab-leak-pandemic-origins-even-messier/620209/

 

He submitted a grant proposal to DARPA do some dangerous gain of function work.  His proposal was rejected. 

 

The latest piece of evidence came out this week in the form of a set of murkily sourced PDFs, with their images a bit askew. The main one purports to be an unfunded research grant proposal from Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a global nonprofit focused on emerging infectious diseases, that was allegedly submitted to DARPA in early 2018 (and subsequently rejected), for a $14.2 million project aimed at “defusing the threat of bat-borne coronaviruses.” Released earlier this week by a group of guerrilla lab-leak snoops called DRASTIC, the proposal includes a plan to study potentially dangerous pathogens by generating full-length, infectious bat coronaviruses in a lab and inserting genetic features that could make coronaviruses better able to infect human cells. (Daszak and EcoHealth did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

 

the very fact that these experiments were even on the radar raises significant concerns. “I recognize this revelation opens up legitimate lines of questioning that are serious and need to be addressed by the people involved,” Goldstein told us via email. Crits-Christoph told us that it pushed the existing evidence “one step closer to the lab-engineering hypothesis”—but added that, given the improbable timeline, it moved things “one step further as well.”

 

Vaughn Cooper, who studies pathogen evolution at the University of Pittsburgh, told us that he hasn’t changed his view that SARS-CoV-2 is extremely unlikely to have been created in a lab—but the lack of candor is “really concerning.” The DARPA proposal doesn’t “mean that much for our understanding of the origins of the pandemic,” he said, “but it does diminish the trustworthiness of the research groups involved.”