30 Churches Being Built in Moscow This Year Despite Pandemic Restrictions

The new Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church in northeastern Moscow. Photo: v-resin.ru

Despite the restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus, the construction of new Orthodox churches in Moscow is ahead of schedule this year.

“If in just one district we start building three churches, then we will exceed the overall plan of our program for building churches in 2020,” His Grace Bishop Paramon, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Financial and Economic Department, said during an inspection of building projects in Moscow’s Eastern district, reports Interfax-Religion.

Nine churches have already been built and put into use this year, and another nine are ready. “In total, this year, despite the pandemic, construction workers made a breakthrough—basically, the construction of 18 churches was completed, and we started building at least 10-12 more throughout Moscow this year,” commented State Duma Deputy Vladimir Resin, the curator of the 200 Program that has been building churches throughout the capital over the past decade.

The program aims to build enough churches for every resident of Moscow to have one within walking distance. It was launched 10 years ago at the initiative of Patriarch Kirill.

The construction of churches under the program is funded exclusively by charitable donations. In July, Deputy Resin reported that nearly $41 million are donated annually by sponsors and parishioners for the construction of churches. The program is the largest charity project in modern Russian history.

Dr. Ramin Oskoui, cardiologist and CEO of Foxhall cardiology, who is a regular in Laura Ingraham’s medical cabinet, just mentioned an important blog for stuff on Fauci and the gain-of-function saga. every page of the blog I try to link to comes up with:

“Internal Server Error”

presumably, this is the page:

Heraclitus on covid-19 blog: Gain of Function Research Gone Bad
https://heraclitusoncovid19.com/gain-of-function-research-gone-bad/

here is the CACHED VERSION:

Heraclitus on covid-19 blog: Gain of Function Research Gone Bad
by Heraclitus/
September 13, 2020
Here is a question. On January 9th, 11 days prior to the inauguration, the Obama Administration felt strongly enough about GOF research that they published this guidance. Why was this so important to them to get done prior to the change of government?

In the answer to that question, we now suspect, lies the seeds of everything that now has come to pass, and perhaps the likely outcome of the coming election.

Obama White House GOF deliberation announcement https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/17/doing-diligence-assess-risks-and-benefits-life-sciences-gain-function-research

NIH Pause Announcement http://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/gain-of-function.pdf

Obama White House Final Statement https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2017/01/09/recommended-policy-guidance-potential-pandemic-pathogen-care-and-oversight

Obama White House Policy Guidance on PPP potential GOF researchhttps://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/p3co-finalguidancestatement.pdf

Guidelines for Dual Use Research of Concern http://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/durc-companion-guide.pdf

Biden responsible for China’s entry into the WTO as Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee 2001 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/politics/biden-china.html

Dr. Baric’s thoughts in 2014. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/11/07/361219361/how-a-tilt-toward-safety-stopped-a-scientists-virus-research

Something going on in China in November https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273

Fauci weighed in in 2012, he knew all about it https://mbio.asm.org/content/3/5/e00359-12

Why didn’t he ever share his concerns with the American public now?

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic supports the thesis that the moratorium on Gain-Of-Function experiments with infectious agents of pandemic potential was unwise.

(1) We did not need GOF experiments to tell us that zoonoses of an animal coronavirus had pandemic potential.

(2) Most GOF experiments with coronaviruses would not have permitted us to develop vaccines or therapeutics any faster than we are now doing. Consider what in hindsight would have been the most obvious GOF experiment with a bat coronavirus — insertion of a polybasic cleavage site. Acquisition of the PCS by SARS-CoV-2 almost certainly has been important for human-to-human transmission, but it’s not a useful target for vaccines and even if targeting the host-cell proteases that cleave the PCS proves to be useful, we didn’t need GOF experiments to tell us this.

(3) If we had done GOF experiments with animal coronaviruses and found the mutated viruses to be more transmissible in an optimized animal model, it is unlikely to have had sufficient influence to increase research funding and therefore would have not increased pandemic preparedness in the way that you envision.

(4) There’s a good argument that we should have invested more in pan-coronavirus drug development, but again, you don’t need GOF experiments for that. Maybe you need chimeric viruses for animal testing, but I don’t know if these qualify as GOF, and it’s not obvious to me that these are critical path experiments.

In summary, we still think the onus is on GOF supporters to provide solid and specific arguments that the benefits outweigh the risks.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.