"Truth is the First Casualty of War" - Quote Investigator ---- It's interesting to me that many of the same people who do not trust the vaccine, also do not w

"Truth is the First Casualty of War" - Quote Investigator ---- It's interesting to me that many of the same people who do not trust the vaccine, also do not want the FDA to complete their review process of medications. Those are opposites! The 'Expert' is well and truly dead. ---- We do NOT need scientific dissidents, we need everyone in a position of responsibility to be clear about the line between knowledge and belief. We need scientists to say "We don't know that". We need journalists who accept that answer and ask "How can we find out", instead of just finding a scientist who will answer an impossible question. We need a better informed and more skeptical public. We should not accept something as a final answer just because it's interesting or satisfying. We need to be prepared to be unsatisfied. For instance, we do not now and will never know how contagious the virus is to a naïve immune system. To know that we have to perform 'challenge trials'. It is unethical to perform a challenge trial without effective treatment, so we did not do any early in the pandemic. Now everyone is vaccinated or exposed, or must be considered to be exposed; so any evidence now would only answer questions about a post-pandemic world. ---- Writing a serious article about a "lab leak" without clarifying what exactly you mean is irresponsible to the point of professional negligence. Lab Leak means many things: 'It walked out of the lab on someone's shoe', 'Secret Research', 'Illegal Research', 'Malicious Research', 'Modified Virus', 'Man-Made Virus', etc... So a scientist says "I think it's likely that the virus came from the lab" - which do they mean? The audience is free to assume that the scientist supports their pet theory. If a lab in China was doing anything nefarious, what would you actually do about it? Consider that the human mind really loves conclusions. Consider that we look for motivations at a less-than-conscious level. When people say "conspiracy theory", I hear "motivation theory", as in, I think this group has a motivation to cause this disaster. So here's my motivation theory: Chinese officials are VERY sensitive to embarrassment. I think they are highly motivated to destroy any evidence that might embarrass them. That includes the 'liquidation' of the wet market where viral traces of Sars-Cov-2 have been found. It might also include any research related to Sars-Cov-2 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It's most likely that the virus was not modified by humans, but I do hold a place in my reasoning for the idea that it might have been. I'm reminded of the Oppenheimer movie - people don't like it when you have a complex view of a moral question, and the question of the lab leak is heavily moralized by many people. ---- It is clear to me that individual people can make masks work to prevent the spread of contagious disease; in much the same way as individual people can live off-grid. In both cases it's more work than most are willing to do, or it's in some way beyond our capabilities. I saw a woman wearing a mask, but with it pulled below her nose - the 2020 Karen/Ken classic look. But I saw this in 2022, WELL after masking orders were over. Entirely of her own volition, she was wearing a mask, but without any care for actual function. Was it misunderstanding? Was it moral signaling? Was it habit? People are hard to understand. ----