5 ms·

It’s almost like those two pieces are completely unrelated to one another. If you’re looking for someone with a clean record commenting on the viability of the

It’s almost like those two pieces are completely unrelated to one another. If you’re looking for someone with a clean record commenting on the viability of the lab leak theory for months, take a look at Bret Weinstein.

amazingman 5y ago
I took a look at Bret Weinstein, and it wasn’t good. Not good at all. He seemed to be making every effort he could to blame the mRNA vaccines for problems that —if true— could have any number of mundane explanations. But hey, maybe he’s right about the lab leak theory.
- Wolfenstein98k 5y ago
  Yeah sadly he's gone off the deep end on "spike protein", but he has been a good fount on the origins of covid.
  - bavell 5y ago
    I'm curious what makes you think he's "gone off the deep end"?
    - gameswithgo 5y ago
      bret and his brother eric have made a name for themselves as contrarians. right or wrong they will take a hot take on whatever hot topic is available and do the podcast and tweet tour with it, all the while screaming to their millions of listeners how they are being silenced.
    - nick_ 5y ago
      His ivermectin stuff is pretty wild. Also, he and his brother have (IMHO) quite obvious inferiority complexes about their academic careers. So much of what they both say boils down to how the academic system doesn't respect their intelligence, and implied is that they deserve it. I mean, who doesn't feel that way about their field? But to speak at length on podcasts about it, which are only popular due to Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, is pretty exhausting to me.
    - istorical 5y ago
      He had an academic guest on his podcast that was stating that the spike protein in covid vaccines causes damage the same way that the spike protein in the virus itself causes damage, when the vaccine creators specifically took measures to make the vaccine's version of the spike protein safer and less damaging to cells. In general there's a fine line to walk with being cautious around vaccines vs 100% assuming they are safe, but he got it wrong with the guest he had on talking about cytotoxic spike proteins in the vaccine. At least that seems to be the overall scientific consensus that I've seen (but who knows! it's a rapidly evolving topic!). Relevant: " “The sound bite ‘SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is toxic’ is not technically wrong—also not news at per se—but that has nothing to do with overall established safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, especially the mRNA vaccines,” Lee said. That’s in part because, according to Machamer, the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2 is different than the spike protein created after the administration of the mRNA vaccines. “The vaccine, at least the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines, the mRNA vaccines, they supply the information to make spike, but it’s not exactly the spike that’s in the virus,” she said. “There are changes that were made on purpose that would prevent the spike protein from being able to undergo binding to the receptor and fusion,” Machamer explained. “And so, all this business about toxicity that has been shown for the real spike protein, the one that doesn't have that block, is totally irrelevant for the vaccine.” " Source: https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/vaccine/covid-vaccine-spike-protein-not-cytotoxic/536-60122437-eaaa-458e-919a-06fa96fdf6c8 https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/v...
  - dharma1 5y ago
    I listened to a couple of Bret’s own podcasts after he was a guest on Lex’s show. I think it’s important to be able to discuss this stuff (origins of the virus, emerging therapeutics, potential risks or adverse effects of vaccines) freely without being censored by YouTube. It shouldn’t be censored and some of these ideas may turn out to be correct. In the meanwhile, I’ll happily take an mRNA vaccine based on my own personal/public health risk analysis. That said, I take everything he and his brother Eric say with a large pinch of salt - they are clearly both very intelligent but I don’t like this cult leader like absolute certainty of their own ideas and the audience (and revenue) building based on controversy and semi-conspiracy. I think it’s essential to have many voices though so I welcome what they are bringing in to the mix, but personally for me it gets tiring after a couple of podcasts.
- poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
  Look I'm not anti vaxer here but to Bret's points, entries into the physician's VAERS database as well as the UK's equivalent already show it's the deadliest vaccine in history. Even v chief of medicine at Baylor is warning the same thing that the membrane spike proteins (and lipid nano particles) are unexpectedly breaking off, circulating, and triggering immune reactions throughout the body. The fact groups about adverse reactions have been removed from FB and that data is not being collected in any systemic way by public health authorities, it's not a stretch to conclude there might be problems with the vaccine and our approach to monitoring.
  - unparagoned 5y ago
    VAERS does not show it is the deadliest in historical.
    - poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
      Which vaccine is more deadly? Reported minimum 6k deaths and double that in UK, only a minimum because the standards for incontrovertible linkage is high and fwiw Bret and co hear from physicians who claim their reports aren't being accepted. The rates are higher in younger people than in covid deaths. Clinical trials are halted after 1000x less death.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    That is nonsense
- try2figure8 5y ago
  The academic guest was Robert Malone and he invented the MRNA vaccine. He is more than just an “expert” He made the claim that the spike protein is cytotoxic. He notified the FDA And FDA has claimed it is not without any evidence
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
For well over a year. If folks don't know, in the third month of the pandemic he did a long form discussion with a geneticist about the surprising genome snippets found in the base coronavirus strain that the wuhan lab obtained from a bat cave in Hunan. They discuss gain of function practices at that lab and others. None of this discussion is new.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  The furin cleavage sites have now been pretty decisively debunked. They're found not only in many other coronaviruses, but they've independently evolved over 6 times that we know about, and they've now been found in SARS-CoV-2 related sarbecoviruses in bats. The goalpost moving has migrated to arguing that a couple of sequences in the furin sites are now "unusual". Kristian Andersen, whose early 2020 e-mail to Fauci has been passed around as evidence of the lab leak theory has more recently talked to the NYT about this: > Furin cleavage sites are found all across the coronavirus family, including in the betacoronavirus genus that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to. There has been much speculation that patterns found in the virus’s RNA that are responsible for certain portions of the furin cleavage site represent evidence of engineering. Specifically, people are pointing to two “CGG” sequences that code for the amino acid arginine in the furin cleavage site as strong evidence that the virus was made in the lab. Such statements are factually incorrect. > While it’s true that CGG is less common than other patterns that code for arginine, the CGG codon is found elsewhere in the SARS-CoV-2 genome and the genetic sequence[s] that include the CGG codon found in SARS-CoV-2 are also found in other coronaviruses. These findings, together with many other technical features of the site, strongly suggest that it evolved naturally and there is very little chance somebody engineered it. And "surprising genome snippets" don't get you past the fact that the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 is still decades of evolution away from being SARS-CoV-2 which is not something that can be engineered in the lab. See this article for a lot more: https://newrepublic.com/article/162689/bats-covid-19-lab-leak-theory https://newrepublic.com/article/162689/bats-covid-19-lab-lea...

amazingman 5y ago

I took a look at Bret Weinstein, and it wasn’t good. Not good at all. He seemed to be making every effort he could to blame the mRNA vaccines for problems that —if true— could have any number of mundane explanations. But hey, maybe he’s right about the lab leak theory.

Wolfenstein98k 5y ago
Yeah sadly he's gone off the deep end on "spike protein", but he has been a good fount on the origins of covid.
- bavell 5y ago
  I'm curious what makes you think he's "gone off the deep end"?
  - gameswithgo 5y ago
    bret and his brother eric have made a name for themselves as contrarians. right or wrong they will take a hot take on whatever hot topic is available and do the podcast and tweet tour with it, all the while screaming to their millions of listeners how they are being silenced.
  - nick_ 5y ago
    His ivermectin stuff is pretty wild. Also, he and his brother have (IMHO) quite obvious inferiority complexes about their academic careers. So much of what they both say boils down to how the academic system doesn't respect their intelligence, and implied is that they deserve it. I mean, who doesn't feel that way about their field? But to speak at length on podcasts about it, which are only popular due to Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, is pretty exhausting to me.
  - istorical 5y ago
    He had an academic guest on his podcast that was stating that the spike protein in covid vaccines causes damage the same way that the spike protein in the virus itself causes damage, when the vaccine creators specifically took measures to make the vaccine's version of the spike protein safer and less damaging to cells. In general there's a fine line to walk with being cautious around vaccines vs 100% assuming they are safe, but he got it wrong with the guest he had on talking about cytotoxic spike proteins in the vaccine. At least that seems to be the overall scientific consensus that I've seen (but who knows! it's a rapidly evolving topic!). Relevant: " “The sound bite ‘SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is toxic’ is not technically wrong—also not news at per se—but that has nothing to do with overall established safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, especially the mRNA vaccines,” Lee said. That’s in part because, according to Machamer, the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2 is different than the spike protein created after the administration of the mRNA vaccines. “The vaccine, at least the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines, the mRNA vaccines, they supply the information to make spike, but it’s not exactly the spike that’s in the virus,” she said. “There are changes that were made on purpose that would prevent the spike protein from being able to undergo binding to the receptor and fusion,” Machamer explained. “And so, all this business about toxicity that has been shown for the real spike protein, the one that doesn't have that block, is totally irrelevant for the vaccine.” " Source: https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/vaccine/covid-vaccine-spike-protein-not-cytotoxic/536-60122437-eaaa-458e-919a-06fa96fdf6c8 https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/v...
- dharma1 5y ago
  I listened to a couple of Bret’s own podcasts after he was a guest on Lex’s show. I think it’s important to be able to discuss this stuff (origins of the virus, emerging therapeutics, potential risks or adverse effects of vaccines) freely without being censored by YouTube. It shouldn’t be censored and some of these ideas may turn out to be correct. In the meanwhile, I’ll happily take an mRNA vaccine based on my own personal/public health risk analysis. That said, I take everything he and his brother Eric say with a large pinch of salt - they are clearly both very intelligent but I don’t like this cult leader like absolute certainty of their own ideas and the audience (and revenue) building based on controversy and semi-conspiracy. I think it’s essential to have many voices though so I welcome what they are bringing in to the mix, but personally for me it gets tiring after a couple of podcasts.
poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
Look I'm not anti vaxer here but to Bret's points, entries into the physician's VAERS database as well as the UK's equivalent already show it's the deadliest vaccine in history. Even v chief of medicine at Baylor is warning the same thing that the membrane spike proteins (and lipid nano particles) are unexpectedly breaking off, circulating, and triggering immune reactions throughout the body. The fact groups about adverse reactions have been removed from FB and that data is not being collected in any systemic way by public health authorities, it's not a stretch to conclude there might be problems with the vaccine and our approach to monitoring.
- unparagoned 5y ago
  VAERS does not show it is the deadliest in historical.
  - poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
    Which vaccine is more deadly? Reported minimum 6k deaths and double that in UK, only a minimum because the standards for incontrovertible linkage is high and fwiw Bret and co hear from physicians who claim their reports aren't being accepted. The rates are higher in younger people than in covid deaths. Clinical trials are halted after 1000x less death.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  That is nonsense
try2figure8 5y ago
The academic guest was Robert Malone and he invented the MRNA vaccine. He is more than just an “expert” He made the claim that the spike protein is cytotoxic. He notified the FDA And FDA has claimed it is not without any evidence

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

poorjohnmacafee 5y ago

For well over a year. If folks don't know, in the third month of the pandemic he did a long form discussion with a geneticist about the surprising genome snippets found in the base coronavirus strain that the wuhan lab obtained from a bat cave in Hunan. They discuss gain of function practices at that lab and others. None of this discussion is new.

lamontcg 5y ago
The furin cleavage sites have now been pretty decisively debunked. They're found not only in many other coronaviruses, but they've independently evolved over 6 times that we know about, and they've now been found in SARS-CoV-2 related sarbecoviruses in bats. The goalpost moving has migrated to arguing that a couple of sequences in the furin sites are now "unusual". Kristian Andersen, whose early 2020 e-mail to Fauci has been passed around as evidence of the lab leak theory has more recently talked to the NYT about this: > Furin cleavage sites are found all across the coronavirus family, including in the betacoronavirus genus that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to. There has been much speculation that patterns found in the virus’s RNA that are responsible for certain portions of the furin cleavage site represent evidence of engineering. Specifically, people are pointing to two “CGG” sequences that code for the amino acid arginine in the furin cleavage site as strong evidence that the virus was made in the lab. Such statements are factually incorrect. > While it’s true that CGG is less common than other patterns that code for arginine, the CGG codon is found elsewhere in the SARS-CoV-2 genome and the genetic sequence[s] that include the CGG codon found in SARS-CoV-2 are also found in other coronaviruses. These findings, together with many other technical features of the site, strongly suggest that it evolved naturally and there is very little chance somebody engineered it. And "surprising genome snippets" don't get you past the fact that the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 is still decades of evolution away from being SARS-CoV-2 which is not something that can be engineered in the lab. See this article for a lot more: https://newrepublic.com/article/162689/bats-covid-19-lab-leak-theory https://newrepublic.com/article/162689/bats-covid-19-lab-lea...