Coronavirus

As in much of the "breaking news" reporting on Covid19 this article cherry picks fragments of the grant proposal to insinuate some nefarious agenda. But it even notes that the grant was never awarded. It did not publish from the proposal as to why the scientists wanted to create an "average" virus strain. Would such a strain make research more consistent with repeatable results? Could possible vaccines be evaluated quickly?
I especially liked the reference to Dr. Faucci that tried to imply that he lied about funding of virus research. If US government money was spent on creating a virus then it would have been authorized by congress and there is no need to ask the CDC.

Some countries seem to have more serious Covid issues than the USA or the UK.

Brazil's Bolsonaro should face homicide charge for COVID-19 errors, says Senate report

Why are there fervent claims of efficacy?

www.statnews.com/2021/08/25/ivermectin-for-covid-19-abundance-of-hype-dearth-of-evidence/

a trial by Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt. In this trial of patients with severe Covid-19, one group received ivermectin while the other, the control group, received hydroxychloroquine (people in this group should have received a placebo). According to the researchers, there was a 90% reduction in deaths in the ivermectin group, a degree of effectiveness strikingly at odds with most other studies of ivermectin and considerably better than even FDA-approved therapies for Covid-19.



A British medical student, Jack Lawrence, was assigned to evaluate the Elgazzar paper for a course and encountered a potpourri of apparent plagiarism and data fabrication. The Elgazzar paper had not been formally published in a medical journal, but had appeared instead on a preprint website called Research Square. Upon learning of Lawrence’s analysis, Research Square promptly retracted the paper.



Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an Australian chronic disease epidemiologist who also reviewed the Elgazzar data, found faults similar to Lawrence. Researchers often summarize large bodies of literature by statistically synthesizing trials in what are called meta-analyses. “If you remove this one study from the scientific literature,” he told The Guardian “most meta-analyses that have found positive results would have their conclusions entirely reversed.”


Most, if not all, positive reports are based on using a single study out of Egypt known to include fabricated (made up) data.

I'd rather take my chances with syphilis. 

Syphilis is much easier to deal with. One dose of penicillin used to do  the trick. Hopefully it still does....

I always figured having someone you know die from COVID would inspire some to see the light.

Any such effect at the shop?

One guy being close to retirement suggests he was older, and at greater risk.  I'd say "too bad" but his decision to work his whole life and opt out of "golden years" makes everyone else's retirement that much more solvent, so...  yeah, guys. It's a hoax. Don't get the jab. It has the Soros sterility chip in it or something.

That said, I could see someday a CRISPR vector being included in a jab of the future and wiping out huge swaths of our population without a shot fired if we have a president like this one not balancing risk with his dicta.