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Arguing over the origins was completely orthogonal discussion to figuring out how to mitigate spread and severity, and I think most virologists made the wise de

Arguing over the origins was completely orthogonal discussion to figuring out how to mitigate spread and severity, and I think most virologists made the wise decision to stay out of a fundamentally political argument. It doesn't matter if the virus came from the moon as long as we can quarantine and vaccinate against it. And I'm sorry you feel misinformed, but nothing I read ever suggested anyone was taken by surprise by its mutagenic rate. To the extent experts thought it might be a "two shots and done" virus, they were overly optimistic about policy and vaccination uptake; were the vaccine manufactured and rolled out quickly enough and deployed globally, it could have been cut off from human reservoirs and died out, but a combination of logistics and public distrust meant we missed that window and now it's endemic. Its mutation rate pretty much guarantees it'll be with us indefinitely as long as the public has the stomach to tolerate that.

nvm0n2 3y ago
> Arguing over the origins was completely orthogonal discussion If you know it came from a lab then there's a chance that the lab workers have knowledge that can help fight it. If you lie and claim it couldn't have come from a lab, that whole line of investigation gets closed off. > they were overly optimistic about policy and vaccination uptake They were overly pessimistic and were making those claims back when they thought they'd only get 60-70% uptake. This is the famous Fauci admission that his claims about herd immunity were made up in response to opinion polls. Uptake was higher than expected and effectiveness was drastically lower. This business whereby scientists are always innocent, it's only politicians and the media that misrepresent them, is crap. Scientists lied and manipulated a naive and plastic public deliberately in order to protect and advance their own careers, they did it at scale and nobody in that community seems to care. Smart people now understand that scientists are both less honest and less wise than both politicians and journalists as a group. At least the latter groups have strong internal competition and different factions trying to establish what's true. Scientists seem to behave as a bloc regardless of what's right or wrong.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  > Scientists lied and manipulated a naive and plastic public deliberately in order to protect and advance their own careers How do they protect and advance their careers by being wrong?
Amezarak 3y ago
An injected vaccine was never going to cut a respiratory virus off from human reservoirs. The mucosal immune compartment has a nearly independent immune response, including antibody production. Mild and asymptomatic cases were never going to be prevented, and therefore neither was person-to-person spread. This is textbook immunology knowledge, so clearly the experts would have known this. That's why the vaccine protects against serious illness and death, because at that point the virus has spread beyond the mucous membranes.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Good point. Now that you mention it, I can't think of any virologists that were claiming it was a two shots and done disease. It's more likely that people misinterpreted "after two shots quarantine is no longer necessary" as "the disease is eradicated after two shots."

nvm0n2 3y ago

> Arguing over the origins was completely orthogonal discussion If you know it came from a lab then there's a chance that the lab workers have knowledge that can help fight it. If you lie and claim it couldn't have come from a lab, that whole line of investigation gets closed off. > they were overly optimistic about policy and vaccination uptake They were overly pessimistic and were making those claims back when they thought they'd only get 60-70% uptake. This is the famous Fauci admission that his claims about herd immunity were made up in response to opinion polls. Uptake was higher than expected and effectiveness was drastically lower. This business whereby scientists are always innocent, it's only politicians and the media that misrepresent them, is crap. Scientists lied and manipulated a naive and plastic public deliberately in order to protect and advance their own careers, they did it at scale and nobody in that community seems to care. Smart people now understand that scientists are both less honest and less wise than both politicians and journalists as a group. At least the latter groups have strong internal competition and different factions trying to establish what's true. Scientists seem to behave as a bloc regardless of what's right or wrong.

shadowgovt 3y ago
> Scientists lied and manipulated a naive and plastic public deliberately in order to protect and advance their own careers How do they protect and advance their careers by being wrong?

Amezarak 3y ago

An injected vaccine was never going to cut a respiratory virus off from human reservoirs. The mucosal immune compartment has a nearly independent immune response, including antibody production. Mild and asymptomatic cases were never going to be prevented, and therefore neither was person-to-person spread. This is textbook immunology knowledge, so clearly the experts would have known this. That's why the vaccine protects against serious illness and death, because at that point the virus has spread beyond the mucous membranes.

shadowgovt 3y ago
Good point. Now that you mention it, I can't think of any virologists that were claiming it was a two shots and done disease. It's more likely that people misinterpreted "after two shots quarantine is no longer necessary" as "the disease is eradicated after two shots."