SARS II: Respiratory Boogaloo

"An equally valid perspective there is that US demand is responsible for a vast illegal enterprise on Chinese soil, much as the Mexican cartels pretty much exist to service the US market.

Like the old opium trade in reverse." - Spot261

I will agree with you here. It's one reason that I don't think drug dealers should be punished harder than drug users. If some dumb motherfucker wants to kill themselves with dangerous drugs, somebody is going to come around to service them. Opioid abusers used to be "junkies" back in the day - now they are "victims" I guess. Oh that's right! It's because now white soccer moms are overdosing.
Tell me I'm wrong about that.

So you'd be in favor of legalizing hard drugs (including opioids) as well as weed, regulating them, taxing them, eliminating the middlemendealers, and paying down the debt with the proceeds. Also probably providing job placement for all those DEA personnel who'll be out of work.

Next we can discuss legalizing prostitution. Same deal - regulate it, tax it, provide free health care and counseling for sex workers, eliminate the middlemanpimp, win-win.

Too many of this country's laws are based not on law but on Puritan morality. Past time to sink the Mayflower, IMO.

I'm in San Antonio, mean old woman and repeater of fake news (by implication anyway).

Outside of Lying Mike's lying about it twice, there is no reality that I've ever even suggested Wuflu is "just a little worse than flu." You got hoaxed. : D

As I recall, the weekend before I sold all my stocks (the first Monday of long market slide down) I'd agreed w Zombie about the alarming nature of the data to date, in fact I even posted a 40 second video in support of Zombie's alarm at Wuflu's spread.

Mike lies probably from habit, or perhaps for trolling, but I believe you're genuinely ignorant - just another "dupe," it would appear. I'm glad it's not malicious.

Well now, that could make for an interesting schadenfreud alternate history fiction: A Nazi Uboat somehow winds up in the past and encouters the Mayflower en voyage to North America.

The Telegraph in Australia, unlike the British newspaper of the same name, is widely considered tabloid trash, akin to the Daily Mail in the UK, or a bit worse. It's the punchline of many a joke on Reddit in /r/australia. It's the least reputable nationwide newspaper in the country. Think National Enquirer.

You must be so proud!

"Well now, that could make for an interesting schadenfreud alternate history fiction: A Nazi Uboat somehow winds up in the past and encouters the Mayflower en voyage to North America." - Birkendan

now that's the kind of dream I should be having so I can contribute to Forbin's dream thread 2020.

I was, very, but then I got back in a bit too soon.

And it turns out I posted the video the day after the big selloff started, not the day before. My bad.

Um, either you fucked up your tags, or you believe someone's selling off San Antonio. With you, either is probable. Try again.

National Enquirer broke Lewinsky and John Edwards story.

I didn't know the Telegraph in Australia is considered a trash paper but they have a 15 page government document that was leaked to them. That's where the story comes from.

That document leak comes from the "Five Eyes" intelligence agencies. United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

The document does however state that Australia believes it came from the wet market but the others believe it's more likely a accidental release from the lab.

So even the trash can be right on the money once in a while.

The Daily Telegraph is like if a Fox News opinion program had a newspaper.

Some examples of their journalistic quality:

Where is it?

That's 2 legit stories (3, adding in Jesse Jackson's adultery) in how many decades? I'm not saying they're wrong about everything. Just not right about a lot.

So they say. Yet, notably, the government document isn't actually linked to or otherwise available on their website. Obviously just an oversight. You should tell them.

If it exists, and if it actually says what they're reporting. Every "corroborating" story eventually links to the Daily Telegraph article. And don't tell me to trust them because their reputation is on the line if they made it up. They have no reputation to lose at this point.

I'd give even odds on the report existing, about 10% on it saying what they claim.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.29.069054v1.full.pdf

Preprint paper describing strains of SARS-CoV-2 that have emerged. Most are inconsequential (at present), but two are interesting. First, there's a strain in Belgium which shows evidence of recombination with another closely-related strain. It's unique to Belgium, and widespread enough to be indicative of social distancing measures not being well-followed there.

Second and more importantly, there's a version with a single nucleotide mutation that seems to make it somewhat more transmissible. It seems to be the strain predominant in Europe, and indeed, becomes the predominant strain everywhere it spreads. It evolved late in the Chinese epidemic, and really broke out in Europe, and spread from there to New York.

These are both good news and bad news (like so much else we discover about the virus). The good news is that it pushes out the plausible upper bound on how much of the various populations are infected, and should reduce false negatives in swab tests (RT-PCR works significantly faster on this strain, indicative of larger viral loads). It also doesn't seem to have much of an effect on hospitalization outcomes - it's not going to kill anyone faster or more slowly. The bad news is that it pushes up R_0 (which, based on the latest numbers from Brazil, seems to be at least 2.81), raises the specter of infection by one strain not conferring immunity to another (although there's no evidence for sequential infection, the fact that Belgium has seen recombination definitely means simultaneous infection with multiple strains is possible), and generally means that we need to be even more careful relaxing restrictions, because our models for how contact affects R-value are probably optimistic.

Why would you sell all of your socks???

What is a wuflu? You have to stop talking to people who make up words.

Now that's just perfondulating! You should be toffenated.

Iirc, Belgium has a high immigrant population. Is this a case of social distance failure more likely with the immigrant population or across Belgium as a whole?

Since you are a math guy maybe you could show me something above the seventh prime number before cuddling up to me.

I don't understand the resistance here to the possibility that it escaped from the lab.

understanding the true origin is essential to helping prevent a recurrence.

The evil/incompetent Chinese lab theory is being promoted by the the moron-in-chief as a way of distracting from his own incompetence.

in other words Forbin, wait until Biden is elected - then when he pitches the incompetent Chinese lab theory, the left will swallow it hook, line & sinker as gospel.

I agree 100% - therefore the possibility shouldn't be dismissed angrily as partisan cum gargling. Stomping down discussion with eyerolls and insults (though it may be the Wordforge Way™) doesn't get us anywhere. I've stopped contributing links I've found because every time I do I get pummeled on sources like I'm supposed to be researching for an international news service, when I'm just some guy reading the internet for news.

Maybe, but, see above. Whatever happened AFTER the virus got out of China, its origins are totally independent of what Trump says. Deciding that Trump Must Be Wrong™, therefore discounting whatever he says, prejudices you against an actual possibility. It's possible that it's not "Trump made it up as an excuse;" it's possible that "it could be true and Trump latched onto it as an excuse."

We need to find out the truth, regardless of how our partisan politics makes us feel about it.

It's not being dismissed. Show me an epidemiologist who thinks it's likely.

You mean an epidemiologist who has been vetted by leftforge first? Just trying to clarify this.

And in Stillwater, Oklahoma:


City's Face Mask Rule Does Not Go Over Well


"I have a right to bring mah gunz to Walmart, but you want me to wear a face mask? Oh, hell no!"

Ever since last year when we found out how the NBA was sucking China’s dick and South Park called them out. Ever since most media has been regurgitating Chinese propaganda

Fuck off with that shit.

too easy IMHO. Walmart has a right to refuse service to those who don't follow the store rules. Consumers don't like it, they can shop elsewhere. End of story.