Galactic Housekeeping (#14 -- COVID Clarification, Farewell to Google)

 No quote today, as I have to correct something I've written.

A few days ago I posted this. It contains the following passage that needs clarification.

"I have it on good information that this "delta variant" now going around is not the same virus as your garden-variety COVID-19. I have read, heard from individuals in the know, and from other sources, that the Chinese were not just working on ONE coronavirus, but rather several, and in some cases were trying to figure out how to tailor them to infect specific populations.

The "delta variant" outbreak began in India. The "delta variant" is genetically distinct from the COVID-19 varieties we saw here and in Europe in the early days of the outbreak, I'm told. If this is true, it's quite possible that the disease is not "mutating" as scientists believe, but rather they are looking at a variety of engineered viruses which are similar and drawing the wrong conclusions.

We now have to consider the possibility that the lab in Wuhan didn't just leak (or let loose?) a single coronavirus, but several, either simultaneously or serially."

Starting with the word "distinct". This is a poor choice of words, perhaps, on my part. What was perhaps closer to what I've been told is that what we're looking at are viruses that have a common ancestor and differ from one another slightly, but not enough to call them "distinct". The point being that the variants are easily attributed to a single pre-cursor virus, an Ur-Virus, if you will, but that there are small -- but measurable and observable -- differences among them.

The question then becomes "are the differences the result of a natural process of mutation that occurs as a virus passes through a population"? An (singular) immunologist I've spoken with -- who works for NIH and whose name I will not reveal for obvious reasons-- says she does not think this to be the case; that what some scientists believe to be a single virus mutating and changing may, in fact, be several similar viruses derived from a common source which have had their differences deliberately engineered. She likened the process to that of building a prototype machine.

Let's say you want to design and build a widget. You figure out what you want the widget (Widget #1) to do, you design it to do what you want it to do, and then you thoroughly test it to discover if a) it's does what you want it to do, b) if it doesn't do what you want it to do and why, and c) if it surprises you by doing something you didn't expect it to do.

You now have a list of what worked, what didn't, and what you didn't expect to happen, but happened anyway, you take the experience and go on to Widget #2. Widget #1 gets put on the shelf and the blueprints filed away, because data is never destroyed and you may need to refer back to both at some point. You test Widget #2 rigorously, and repeat the process for Widget #3.

You keep doing this until you get the Widget you want, so that by Widget #7, you've "got it right". But Widgets #1 through #6 are still sitting on the shelf in anticipation of possibly being needed for new-and-improved Widget #8.

Bio labs work in similar fashion. 

And the point she was trying to make is that it is foolish to assume that the Wuhan Institute only had ONE modified coronavirus stored inside of it, and it would also be foolish to assume that only the one escaped.

As to the "tailored to specific populations", one of the goals of "gain-of-function" is to find out how a specific virus will react or interact with specific maladies that may be often limited to specific populations, or which can be singled out of a general population. For examples, Sickle Cell Anemia or AIDS. It is possible to engineer a virus which targets people with specific maladies or genetic markers while leaving everyone in proximity alone.

Similar therapies are being developed to fight several forms of cancer, and in Mrs. Overlord's realm of Muscular Dystrophy, engineered viruses are being used to help patients fight some aspects of  the disease and improve quality of life. In fact, one such viral therapy for Muscular Dystrophy was so successful in trials the FDA waived the usual testing regime to put it on the market immediately. This is not new stuff.

The Wuhan Flu is an engineered virus. It is a bat virus that has been modified to attack human lung tissue. This much is confirmed by both the science and the literature the Wuhan Institute, itself, has put out in the past. In its grant applications that Anthony Fauci now suddenly doesn't know anything about, the process of transplanting human lung cells/tissue into laboratory mice so that they can be deliberately infected with constructed coronaviruses is extensively described and discussed. This is not even a secret.

What this immunologist (mentioned above) is perplexed about is the persistence of the virus, whether it has mutated naturally or occurred naturally, or not. She believes this is a factor in the scattershot and repetitive "response" to the pandemic by the bureaucrats who have ignored the scientists and browbeaten many scientists into repeating the "company" line-- medical authorities are perplexed and the supply of arrows in their quiver is running low, yet the virus persists. She also believes they have only themselves to blame, because many have obviously abandoned science for politics, CYA and Chinese cash. The authorities have failed to adhere to standard epidemic practices, to begin with, and the disease has exploded because they aren't following them, still.

For example, another doctor I know can speak with authority on the fact that people are not being asked about their immigration status when they're being tested/treated and this makes tracking and tracing impossible. This was a political decision, not a medical one. If you're ending your questions with "what's your immigration status?" , then the next question, "who have you been in contact with in the last ___ days?" never gets asked, and so much for tracking and tracing.

No one wants to be branded "a racist" for asking it; no one wants to give the impression a particular ethnicity or race is being singled out; there is incredible pressure brought to bear to ensure that immigration officials don't potentially get their hands on that information for fear of starting rumors of mass deportations linked to COVID infection and "underground" populations, or use it to round up illegals.

In the meantime, if millions have to get sick and maybe die, that is a small price to pay to avoid charges of "xenophobia" according to the dim lights who have shown no competence in the last year-plus.

According to several medical professionals of my acquaintance old enough to remember, the response to COVID in the United States is resembling the response to AIDS in the 1980's. Considering Dr. Anthony Fauci was in charge of that, too, it shouldn't surprise anyone. One of Fauci's greatest concerns at the outset of the AIDS epidemic was that gays should not be singled out for fear of "backlash" -- meaning standard epidemic practices were abandoned until too late --  and millions had to be infected needlessly so that no one could ever think that we were mean people.

It is apparent that Fauci is one of those idiots who doesn't seem capable of learning from his mistakes. Possibly because he's arrogant enough to believe he doesn't make any. After all, his paycheck is larger than the President's, right? 

I have made a serious boo-boo in translation. And for that, I must apologize.

On to other stuff...

* It has been decided that by January of 2022, I will no longer be on Blogger.  Whether it is to be early or late January is still an open question.

I will be moving to another hosting site and also going "live", as they say. So that instead of my rambling word vomit on screen, you will get my rambling word vomit in your ears. You lucky bastards. I'm told some of you may be turned on by that, and I want to say that I find that highly disturbing.

Anyway, The Logistics are being planned right now. The drawback is that the service I plan to use is subscription-only, and so the question is "how many of you are willing to pay a minimal fee to listen to me pontificate?". Shoot me some responses in gmail on what you'd like to hear and if you think I'm worth paying to listen to.

The fee will really be nominal (like, I'm thinking $5 a year?), as the Overlord does not need the money, himself, but servers and the equipment needed to produce podcasts, not to mention the production expertise, is not cheap. I will most likely begin in audio format, and it might very well be a "call-in" type of thing until I figure out the video end. This seems the easiest to produce, initially.

The part I'm looking forward to is the merch, though. (that's only half joking, and not for the reason you think).