COVID Deception: Sen. Rand Paul's Book charges Fauci and others with funding dangerous research and then covering it up.

Remember when Sen. Rand Paul accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of funding China’s Wuhan virus lab?

The media loved it. Vanity Fair smirked, “Fauci Once Again Forced to Basically Call Rand Paul a Sniveling Moron.”

But now the magazine has changed its tune, admitting, “In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan … Paul might have been onto something.”

Then what about question two: Did COVID-19 occur because of a leak from that lab?

When Paul confronted Fauci, saying, “The evidence is pointing that it came from the lab!” Fauci replied, “I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating.”

Was Paul lying? What’s the truth?

The media told us COVID came from an animal, possibly a bat.

But in my new video, Paul points out there were “reports of 80,000 animals being tested. No animals with it.”

Now he’s released a book, “Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up,” that charges Fauci and others with funding dangerous research and then covering it up.

“Three people in the Wuhan lab got sick with a virus of unknown origin in November of 2019,” says Paul. The Wuhan lab is 1,000 kilometers away from where bats live.

Today the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Energy and others agree with Rand Paul. They believe COVID most likely came from a lab.

I ask Paul, “COVID came from evil Chinese scientists, in a lab, funded by America?”

“America funded it,” he replies, “maybe not done with evil intentions. It was done with the misguided notion that ‘gain of function’ research was safe.”

Gain of function research includes making viruses stronger.

The purpose is to anticipate what might happen in nature and come up with vaccines in advance. So I push back at Paul, “They’re trying to find ways to stop diseases!”

He replies, “Many scientists have now looked at this and said, ‘We’ve been doing this gain of function research for quite a while.’ The likelihood that you create something that creates a vaccine that’s going to help anybody is pretty slim to none.”

Paul points out that Fauci supported “gain of function” research.

“He said in 2012, even if a pandemic occurs … the knowledge is worth it.” Fauci did write: “The benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.”

Paul answers: “Well, that’s a judgment call. There’s probably 16 million families around the world who might disagree with that.”

Fauci and the National Institutes of Health didn’t give money directly to the Chinese lab. They gave it to a nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance. The group works to protect people from infectious diseases.

“They were able to accumulate maybe over $100 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars, and a lot of it was funneled to Wuhan,” says Paul.

EcoHealth Alliance is run by zoologist Peter Daszak. Before the pandemic, Daszak bragged about combining coronaviruses in Wuhan.

Once COVID broke out, Daszak became less eager to talk about these experiments. He won’t talk to me.

“Peter Daszak has refused to reveal his communications with the Wuhan lab,” complains Paul. “I do think that ultimately there is a great deal of culpability on his part … They squelched all dissent and said, ‘You’re a conspiracy theorist if you’re saying this (came from a lab),’ but they didn’t reveal that they had a monetary self-incentive to cover this up,” says Paul.

“The media is weirdly un-curious about this,” I say to Paul.

“We have a disease that killed maybe 16 million people,” Paul responds. “And they’re not curious as to how we got it?”

Also, Our NIH still funds gain of function research, Paul says.

“This is a risk to civilization. We could wind up with a virus … that leaks out of a lab and kills half of the planet,” Paul warns.

Paul’s book reveals much more about Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance. I will cover more of that in this column in a few weeks.

Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”

No. It means that they had an indirect connection which was not revealed during the epidemiological investigations.

Facile claim without evidence.

Prove it.

Your word or opinion is insufficient.

You said in the post I am replying to (emphasis mine):

The refusal to provide links to support your claims is, in fact, a hallmark of professional antivaxxers/anti-sciencers who only make vague references to some researchers somewhere who did a study showing something. The professional charlatans do NOT want their marks to actually read those articles. I'd say that they don't want *anyone* to read the source material, because some people (like me) actually understand them, and scientific understanding kills pseudoscience. But, despite their vagueness in actually providing any information about supposedly "smoking gun" research, someone who is deeply familiar with the medical literature and how to do literature research can usually find the actual study mentioned.

First problem.

So tell me.

Is Dr. Malone incompetent to understand the science?

You spent a great deal of time explaining in some detail how he personally mentored you.

I have the links you claim I am hiding.< I'm not hiding them; I said at the time I wanted you to hunt them down.p> But you made the claim earlier (emphasis mine):

Oh, finally, at last, some links. Unfortunately, they are to other FR posts, not directly to the scientific literature. This makes more work for me, since I actually do track down the original sources and read them before I can comment. Link #1: The assertion that The Lancet's reputation has been damaged is an opinion/wishful thinking written by a blogger who published in American Thinker and who used the less-than-credible magazine Vanity Fair as a source. This is not based on any survey of how scientists view the credibility of The Lancet.

And in this post

*The significance of medical library access is that it allows me to read articles for free that are behind a paywall for the general public.

In other words, you're ticked off that I called your bluff.

If you hadn't gone about on an open thread wrenching your shoulder out of its socket patting yourself on the back over your WORLD-CLASS SCIENTIFIC!™ ability to track down papers, I wouldn't have done that.

If I could find the article without benefit of a medical library subscription, why can't you?

Your blind lashing out accusation is wrong in any case, because all I did was quote two numbers from an individual table in an article in The Lancet and a line from a summary of that report in science.org, drilling down a bit further on the details.

There's nothing to misinterpret or misrepresent. 13/41 is 13/41.

But this brings up another interesting aside.

In this thread we're in now, you said:

Real scientists provide links and detailed references for every one of their claims that is not a result of their own research. The reason for this is that they have to demonstrate to the rest of the scientific community that everything in their paper is supported by previous research or direct experimental evidence.

But in this other post in this same thread we're on now, you said:

Okay, for this, I have to draw directly upon my extensive experience with using antibodies in research (so I cannot provide a reference). Antibodies are really not very specific. Yes, they will attach to the antigen used to provoke their development. The antibody specifically learns to recognize anywhere between 5 and 8 amino acids on the antigen. The problem with such a small recognition area is that many proteins have quite a bit of sequence similarity. In addition, the antibodies will recognize amino acids that are chemically or structurally similar to the amino acids they are "supposed" to recognize.

So by your own stated requirement, in your post I am replying to, if you didn't report a reference, that means it came from your own research.

Did you yourself discover it for yourself, that antibodies will recognize peptide chains of between 5-8 amino acids in length? If not, you're supposed to provide a reference.

If it you can provide a link to a standard biochemistry textbook, used at (say) an Ivy League University, or a major research University, or if you can reference the specific University and class you took, where you learned this, I'll accept that.

Again, you are breaking your own rules, within the space of a dozen or so posts, in the same thread. Once again illustrating that for those pushing the clot shots, there are two sets of rules. One set for the people advancing the narrative, another for everyone else.

As for the fact that "mere motals [mortals]" cannot understand the scientific literature, well, that's just how it is. I spent years learning the language while getting an undergraduate degree then a PhD. When I first entered graduate school, scientific papers looked like this: "Έτσι έγραφε το τεφτέρι της Παγώνας, της νεκρής μαμής του Παράδεισου, του χωριού όπου μεγάλωσε η Ανθή, η κόρη του πανούργου παπα-Δρόσου τη δεκαετία του ’60. Από αυτό το κειμήλιο και από τη Λούλα την πόρνη γύρεψε απελπισμένα βοήθεια για να σωθεί από το δίλημμα στο οποίο βρέθηκε άθελά της εγκλωβισμένη."

I seriously doubt your scientific papers were written by gender feminists.

I looked up the book your quote is from. The webpage for the book (using the translation from the Greek, as the author is Greek), says this about the author:

"Travlou's Easter Paschalia Travlou was born in Tripoli, Arcadia and from an early age expressed her love for painting, music and writing. He studied Classical Philology at the Athens School of Philosophy and attended a postgraduate program for the Latin poetry of Horatio and Virgil, in. Particularly sensitive to gender issues, she pursued postgraduate studies at the University of the Aegean entitled « Gender and Youth, as well as at the School of National Security entitled « National Security Policy ». He is a member of the Society of Greek Writers. He is involved in the presentation and critique of books at diavasame.gr. Her works With Balander the Loneliness, I only wanted one Goodbye, The Matzika of Love,Locked Drawer, Silk Wings, At least One Time, The Woman of the Lighthouse, The Lovers of the Bible and Glass Time are released from Psychogios Publications. She has been awarded for her literary presence by the Women's Association « Eleptron » in 2016, while the book of Fexia. (Source: "Dioptra Publications", 2021)"

Nice bit of mishmash between he/she there. The picture makes the author look more like a woman however.

But by choosing to quote from that book (it is fairly obscure: most people looking for a section of Greek to enter into an internet argument would likely have chosen, say, Homer, or the New Testament, since they tend to come up more often in web searches), it's a pretty good indication of where your insecurity and overcompensation come from.

As well as your personal disloyalty (if you are telling the truth at all) to someone you described as your mentor.

Have you written to Dr. Malone yet, btw, to see if he is back to pushing the clot shots? You did say in public, in writing, that you'd have to look into it.

Dingbat.

First of all, I have never seen any reputable report that the three researchers at the lab all had a respiratory illness in (IIRC) November, 2019.

This proves you are engaging in scripted talking points, Dingbat.

1) "any reputable report" == "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Remember the number of MDs and PhDs, including some at the top of their fields, who had the rug yanked out from under them for threatening the narrative.

We have your playbook.

2) I never mentioned anything about "all three researchers at the lab"; I never mentioned researchers at the lab at all.

You did.

Therefore, it cannot be a refutation of, or a valid response to, my direct quoting of numbers from a single table in a specific Lancet article which you refuse to look up despite your unwarranted braggadocio.

Better reload before you shoot yourself in the foot with your foot in your mouth again.

(SeekandFind, obligatory courtesy *ping* to you. I am not asking you to enter into this particular subthread.)

Here's another example of your lying hypocrisy.

You wrote to SeekandFind:

SaF:Me and my family did and are doing very well with no vaccinations.

Dingbat: Just because you and your family are lucky does not mean everyone is. When 1% of the people who catch Covid die, and another 20-30% experience long-term health impairments because of Covid, that actually does mean that the majority of people will get over it and feel fine afterwards. Is smoking safe because most smokers don't develop lung cancer?

From a public health perspective, a disease that kills off 1% of those who catch it is devastating.

But in an earlier post in this thread, you wrote:

As for the protection provided by Covid vaccines, I will share a personal anecdote. My husband, son, and I took a cruise a while back. We had to provide proof of full vaccination as well as evidence of a negative Covid test within 24 hours prior to boarding. We all stayed in the same cabin. The day before the cruise ended, we had to take another Covid test. Hubby and I were negative, but son--who vapes and had been around someone who was quite symptomatic on the smoking deck--came up positive. We were confined to our cabin until all of the other passengers had disembarked and ship personnel escorted us off the ship and turned us over to Canadian border patrol agents. Those agents did not look at our passports or have us go through any sort of customs, meaning that we technically entered Canada illegally. The border patrol arranged for a taxi to take us to a hotel for quarantine, where we all stayed in the same room. We ended up staying there for a week because even though Canada required a two-week quarantine, our home state of Texas only required a one week quarantine (the TX department of health called and informed my son of this fact). We ended up renting a car and driving across the border so that we could get a flight back home. The American border patrol agent had a lot more questions for us than their Canadian counterparts did.

During this time, in which we spent 8 days cooped up in the same room as a diagnosed and symptomatic Covid patient, my husband and I never caught Covid. And the disease my son had was mild, causing only a few days of sniffles.

So you notice: when someone else talks avbout their personal (N~1, family) experience, you dismiss it as luck. But when you share your own personal (N~1, family), it becomes a paean to the GLORIOUS TRIUMPH of VACCINES because SCIENCE™!

But while typing the last response, I noticed two more colossal blunders in your response. You wrote

Is smoking safe because most smokers don't develop lung cancer?

In an earlier post you wrote:

With more than 81.4% of us vaccinated (the number has not been updated since May), if the vaccines are as dangerous as antivax professionals claim, why haven't more of us dropped dead?

So in the case of smoking, you yourself admit, most smokers don't develop lung cancer.

And you point out, that even that doesn't make cigarettes safe.

(Never mind it can take decades of continuous smoking to develop cancer)

But on the other hand, you wrote, in mockery of those concerned about the safety profile of the clot shots,

With more than 81.4% of us vaccinated (the number has not been updated since May), if the vaccines are as dangerous as antivax professionals claim, why haven't more of us dropped dead?

So again, the double standard on behalf of those pushing the narrative.

Smoking: only 10% get cancer (not death but just cancer) over decades, but still not safe.

Clot shots: they MUST be safe because ~~SCIENCE™!~~ there would be a LOT of deaths IMMEDIATELY if they weren't.

Third one

From a public health perspective, a disease that kills off 1% of those who catch it is devastating.

Most of the people who die from the coof, are over 70, or have multiple existing comorbidities. From a public health perspective, COVID is just speeding things up a little bit for those people.

Which reminds me: do you support mandatory clot shots for schoolchildren, or not?

Because Martin Kuldorff, an epidemiologist from Harvard, said they shouldn't be given to anyone under 70 based on the relative risk profiles of getting COVID-1984 vs. the clot shots.

Dig up the link yourself.

...Dingbat.

RE: Do you want to try to become “naturally” immune to rabies by getting bit by a rabid bat?

I am not talking about DELIBERATELY getting bitten by a rabid bat to get natural immunity. I am talking about HAVING ALREADY BEEN Naturally immune due to inadvertent exposure to the SARS-COV-2 virus.

This is what has happened to tens of millions of people in the USA and around the world who have already been exposed to the SARS-COV-2 virus EVEN BEFORE THE mRNA vaccines went through Operation Warp Speed ( the name of the operation in itself tells you something ).

In other words, I QUESTION the necessity of having to vaccinate ( Or VACCINATE BY FORCE ) people who already have the Covid antibodies.

Look, if people are happy to be vaccinated, go knock yourself out. However, there are millions of people out there who DO NOT WANT to be vaccinated. What I don’t like about you and Joe Biden, is your FORCING them to take the mRNA vaccine under duress. It’s like holding a gun to their headas and saying: “Take this or else, I pull the trigger”.

If catching Covid for those who are young and healthy were as serious and life threatening as getting bitten by a rabid bat, explain to me why ( as an example ) colleges that DO NOT REQUIRE Covidd vaccination to be enrolled do not see more sick and hospitalized students and employees compared to those that do?

You’re trying to compare rabies and Covid, two different diseases.

There are two types of rabies vaccines: pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).

Pre-exposure prophylaxis is recommended for people at high risk of exposure to rabies, such as veterinarians, animal handlers, and travelers to countries with high rabies rates. PEP is given to people who have been exposed to rabies, such as through a bite or scratch from an infected animal.

Rabies vaccines are very effective at preventing rabies. If given before exposure, rabies vaccines are 100% effective. If given after exposure, rabies vaccines are still very effective, but they must be given immediately.

Question: WHY AREN’T RABIES VACCINES *REQUIRED* and FORCED on everyone?

And Rabies is virtually 100% fatal compared to Covid. Acquiring natural immunity to rabies is VERY SMALL, almost a handful, while acquired natural immunity to Covid is HIGHLY PREVALENT.

So, I don’t think your example is an apt one here.

RE: mRNA technology has been in development since the 1990s. That constitutes thirty years of research, so not new.

Yes, but how many mRNA vaccines have been approved before Covid hit?

I know of only two and they happen to be the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccines, both first given EUA ( yes, the ones that were forced on millions under duress ) which were suspended in some countries and reinstated after more studies were done to determine whether the benefits outweighed the risks.

We have not seen any other mRNA vaccines approved before these two that we can be given years to observe.

It is THESE SPECIFIC mRNA VACCINES that are in question. If they had been throughly tested like most other vaccines, why the need for a WARP SPEED project? Why EUA? Why suspension and reinstatements? Did other vaccines have to go through these process?

Look, As of Monday, September 11, 2023, the FDA has provided “Emergency Use Authorization” for the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine boosters.

SEE HERE:

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-action-updated-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-better-protect-against-currently-circulating

But there is no public health emergency at this time. And the “boosters” being “Emergency Use Authorized” are designed to provide protection against the Omicron variant called “Kraken”. Which was on its way to becoming extinct, outcompeted by newer variants like Eris which have evolved even further to escape the antibody pressure elicited by the globally deployed leaky “vaccines”.

As an aside, Prior versions of boosters, by the way, have been shown to have been adulterated with high levels of plasmid DNA incorporating SV40 virus promoter/enhancer sequences. Which adulteration the FDA continues to ignore.

So, From the FDA’s own website regarding Emergency Use Authorization-

https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-legal-regulatory-and-policy-framework/emergency-use-authorization#abouteuas

COPY AND PASTE:

“Under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), when the Secretary of HHS declares that an emergency use authorization is appropriate, FDA may authorize unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.”
[END QUOTE]

So, basically, the FDA administrative bureaucracy self-determined that they could continue to bypass their normal (already lax) procedures for evaluating vaccine purity (including lack of adulteration), potency, safety and efficacy pretty much for as long as their hearts desire, at least until November 7, 2023. And that is the administrative basis used to enable the September 11, 2023 “Emergency Use Authorization” for the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine boosters. Will that authorization sunset on November 07, 2023? I very much doubt it.

And you’re still trying to push Covid vaccination today for some strange reason and even more disturbing, wanting to FORCE people to take them or lose their livelihhod!

The data clearly demonstrate that there is no longer a COVID public health emergency, and there are no human data demonstrating safety and effectiveness of these mismatched “vaccine booster” products.

What do the current CDC data show in the USA (total deaths)?

271 deaths per week, 38 deaths per day WITH COVID. In contrast, we lose 200 - 300 mostly young people per day to Fentanyl and other opiates. That is 1400 deaths per week from drug overdoses. As if one 737 full of young US citizens crashed and killed all passengers per week. Five times the COVID deaths. If opioid deaths are not a public health emergency, then why is COVID an emergency?

The obvious answer is that it is not.

I will agree that Hospitalized cases are up in the USA. But deaths are down. Not surprising, as the majority of currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 virus are more highly evolved Omicron variants. Typically more infectious, less pathogenic, and better adapted to evade the narrow antibody-based anti-Spike immune responses elicited by these leaky vaccines.

And Who are the ones that are being hospitalized? More of them are the ones that have received a Moderna or Pfizer Emergency Use Authorized mRNA “vaccine” product than have not. That is a fact long known by the US Government, but hidden until internal government discussions about this were recently documented by FOIA request.

SEE HERE:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/fda-cdc-hid-data-on-spike-in-covid-cases-among-the-vaccinated-documents-5483439

and here:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/boosted-people-more-likely-than-unvaccinated-to-be-infected-study-5487833

and here:

https://www.foxnews.com/health/covid-booster-warning-florida-surgeon-general-advises-people-not-get-new-vaccine

Lets discuss the data which the FDA cites. Here is their statement:

[COPY AND PASTE]

The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines approved and authorized today are supported by the FDA’s evaluation of manufacturing data to support the change to the 2023-2024 formula and non-clinical immune response data on the updated formulations including the XBB.1.5 component.
[END QUOTE]

OK, what does that mean? Non-clinical immune response data? What it means is that they administered the XBB.1.5 (that would be Kraken) variant vaccine products to mice, drew blood, and tested the mouse antibody responses to the XBB.1.5 as well as EG.5 (Eris) and BA.2.86 (that would be Pirola, previously discussed here) viral variants to see if the mouse serum would stop the ability of these viruses to infect cultured cells.

Neither of which viral variants (XBB.1.5, EG.5, or BA.2.86) present much of a health risk. And they assert that they found that the mouse antibodies cross reacted against Eris and Pirola in a virus neutralization test. But they did not bother to share those data with the public, so we have no idea of how convincing or even how rigorously controlled those studies were.

But somehow, we are to trust that the FDA finds these studies involving mouse model testing using a method that has not been demonstrated to predict protection against infection, replication, or spread of this virus in humans. But which the corporate media thinks sounds very sciency and so they breathlessly repeat the FDA and Pfizer statements about mouse neutralization assays as if they demonstrate that these “boosters” will be effective.

Is This is not how modern immunological science is done?

Note that nothing in the FDA justification addresses the risk to human health posed by these viral variants. The FDA has completely avoided any justification for the use of the emergency use authorization pathway, rather than a more standard, traditional testing and evaluation process. Because they do not think that they need to.

Once again- VIRUS NEUTRALIZATION IS NOT A PROVEN CORRELATE OF PROTECTION. Back in the day, before 2020, if a vaccine company were so bold as to assert that a mouse virus neutralization assay (or any other lab test) predicted vaccine protection in humans without having proven that the assay actually predicted whether or not the vaccine would protect humans, they would be sued and blocked from making such false unsupported claims. But somehow, since 2020, this type of claim has become routine.

And then there are the many analytical flaws in the cited data analyses. Which always seem to be biased in favor of vaccine effectiveness. For a deep dive into that, I recommend the following:

https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj-2022-074404/rapid-responses

TITLE: “The imprinting effect of covid-19 vaccines: an expected selection bias in observational studies” (Response)

TITLE: “Long-term COVID-19 booster effectiveness by infection history and clinical vulnerability and immune imprinting: a retrospective population-based cohort study”

[QUOTE COPY AND PASTE]

In the seventh month and thereafter, coincident with BA.4/BA.5 and BA.2·75* subvariant incidence, effectiveness was progressively negative albeit with wide CIs. Similar patterns of protection were observed irrespective of previous infection status, clinical vulnerability, or type of vaccine (BNT162b2 vs mRNA-1273).

Interpretation
Protection against omicron infection waned after the booster, and eventually suggested a possibility for negative immune imprinting.

Interpretation

Protection against omicron infection waned after the booster, and eventually suggested a possibility for negative immune imprinting. However, boosters substantially reduced infection and severe COVID-19, particularly among individuals who were clinically vulnerable, affirming the public health value of booster vaccination.

[END QUOTE]

ONE MORE LINK FROM THE JOURNAL OF EVALUATION IN CLINICAL PRACTICE:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jep.13839

TITLE: Sources of bias in observational studies of covid-19 vaccine effectiveness

by Kaiser Fung MPhil, MBA, Mark Jones PhD, Peter Doshi PhD

[QUOTE COPY AND PASTE]

In late 2020, messenger RNA (mRNA) covid-19 vaccines gained emergency authorisation on the back of clinical trials reporting vaccine efficacy of around 95%,1, 2 kicking off mass vaccination campaigns around the world. Within 6 months, observational studies reporting vaccine effectiveness in the “real world” at above 90%, similar to trial results,3-6 became the trusted source of evidence upholding these campaigns. While the contemporary conversation about vaccine effectiveness has turned to waning protection, virus variants, and boosters, there has (with rare exception) been surprisingly little discussion of the limitations of the methodologies of these early observational studies.

The lack of critical discussion is notable, for even highly effective vaccinations could only partially explain the drop in rates of covid-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths by mid-2021. For example, by March 2021, cases in the UK and United States had dropped roughly fourfold from the January peak, when the “fully vaccinated” population only reached 20% and 5%, respectively. At the same time, in Israel, cases took longer to drop despite a substantially faster vaccine rollout (Figure 1). The vaccination campaigns in these countries can thus only be part of the story.

[END QUOTE]

I am going to end this already long post by quoting the Surgeon General of Florida, Dr. Joseph Ladipo

“There’s been no clinical trial done in human beings showing that it benefits people… There’s been no clinical trial showing that it is a safe product for people — and not only that, but then there are a lot of red flags.”

So, my friend, with all these questions and concerns, I go back to my original policy stance -— You want people to take the Covid shots and boosters? Fine, that’s your prerogative. But LAY OFF THE BODIES OF THOSE WHO REFUSE TO TAKE THEM — MY BODY, MY CHOICE.

RE: The J&J Covid vaccine was built on an adenovirus platform. This means that part of its mechanism of action was identical to the mRNA vaccines: it caused cells to produce spike protein.

Personally, if worse comes to worst and I hit a birck wall and find that I have no choice but to take the Covid vaccine because the USA has turned totalitarian, I would probably have chosen the J&J vaccine BECAUSE the technology it uses, unlike mRNA, has had several approval histories for vaccines after LONG YEARS OF THOROUGH TESTING.

Thankfully, even in my state with its almost dictatorial governor, there are numerous counties that REFUSE to bow to his and federal dictats and allow people like me to freely choose what we want to do for ourselves. My county and the neighboring one( which voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016 and 2020 ) is one such country.

Thank God for Federalism.

Now Adenovirus vector vaccines are different from mRNA ones in that they have LONGER histories of vaccine development.

Many of these vaccines are approved for use in some countries, while others are still in development. ALL of them have had YEARS of several testing phases before approval.

Here are some examples:

* Ebola: There are currently two adenovirus vector vaccines for Ebola that are approved for use in some countries by my understanding: Ervebo and Zabdeno. Both vaccines have been shown to be highly effective in preventing Ebola infection.

It took over 5 years for Everbo to be approved for Ebola.

The Zabdeno vaccine was approved for Ebola in May 2020, which took about 6 years from the start of development in 2014.

* HIV: There are a number of adenovirus vector vaccines for HIV that are currently in clinical trials. These vaccines are designed to stimulate the body to produce immune cells that can attack and destroy HIV-infected cells. HOWEVER, unlike the J&J Covid vaccine, I know of NONE that have been approved yet. Which means that unlike J&J’s Covid vaccine, they are TAKING TIME to develop, which is a it should be.

* Malaria: There is also an adenovirus vector vaccine for malaria that is currently in clinical trials. This vaccine is designed to protect against infection with the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, which causes the most deadly form of malaria.

And yes, there is ONE adenovirus vector vaccine for malaria that has been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is called R21/Matrix-M and was approved in October 2023. It is a four-dose vaccine that is given to children under the age of 5.

And NOTE: It took approximately 20 years to develop the vaccine from the initial concept to approval.

The vaccine was developed by the University of Oxford and the Jenner Institute, and it was manufactured and scaled up by the Serum Institute of India. It was first tested in humans in 2013, and it entered Phase 3 clinical trials in 2019.

The Phase 3 clinical trials were conducted in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, and Tanzania. The trials enrolled over 15,000 children aged 6 weeks to 17 months.

The results of the Phase 3 clinical trials were published in the journal Nature Medicine in September 2023. The study found that the vaccine was safe and effective, reducing the risk of malaria infection by 77% in children aged 6 weeks to 17 months.

The WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) reviewed the data from the Phase 3 clinical trials and recommended the vaccine for widespread use in October 2023. The WHO Director-General accepted SAGE’s recommendation and approved the vaccine for use in children under the age of 5 in malaria-endemic regions.

Did the J&J vaccine go through a similar process before being approved ( actually given EUA )?

* Cancer: Adenovirus vectors are also being used to develop vaccines against cancer. These vaccines are designed to stimulate the body to produce immune cells that can attack and destroy cancer cells.

I know of ONE adenovirus vector vaccine for cancer that has been approved: nadofaragene firadenovec-vncg (Adstiladrin). It was approved by the FDA in December 2022 for the treatment of high-risk Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) with carcinoma in situ (CIS) with or without papillary tumors.

Nadofaragene firadenovec-vncg is a gene therapy vaccine that delivers a gene for a protein called interferon-alpha 2b directly into the bladder tumors. Interferon-alpha 2b is a protein that has anti-tumor and immune-stimulating effects. The vaccine works by stimulating the body’s own immune system to attack and destroy the cancer cells.

It took approximately 15 years to develop nadofaragene firadenovec-vncg (Adstiladrin) from the initial concept to approval by the FDA in December 2022.

The vaccine was developed by the biotech company Ferring Pharmaceuticals. It entered Phase 1 clinical trials in 2011, Phase 2 clinical trials in 2015, and Phase 3 clinical trials in 2018.

The Phase 3 clinical trial was a randomized, double-blind trial that enrolled 157 participants with high-risk BCG-unresponsive NMIBC. Participants were randomized to receive either nadofaragene firadenovec-vncg or a placebo.

The results of the Phase 3 clinical trial were published in the journal The Lancet Oncology in October 2022. The study found that nadofaragene firadenovec-vncg was significantly more effective than placebo at achieving a complete response (73% vs. 17%). The median duration of response was 17.6 months.

The FDA approved nadofaragene firadenovec-vncg based on the results of the Phase 3 clinical trial. The agency found that the vaccine was safe and effective in treating patients with high-risk BCG-unresponsive NMIBC.

15 FREAKING YEARS !!

How long again did it take J&J to develop their Covid Adenovirus Vector Vaccine for Covid?

And what happen to the J&J Vaccine? Also known as Janssen Coronavirus vaccine.

Well, the Janssen Coronavirus vaccine was suspended in the United States on April 13, 2021, due to concerns about a rare blood clotting side effect. It was resumed on April 23, 2021, with a warning label about the potential risk. It was voluntarily withdrawn in May 2023.

Last I heard, J&J did not plan to update it to address emerging variants.

So, I can’t take this Addenovirus Vector vaccine even if I wanted to. Maybe if J&J had given it a thorough testing like the other Adenovirus Vector vaccines I mentioned above, it might not have encountered the problems that it did.

But hey, what vaccine are they going to develop for an ever changing Covid-19 variant?

Had these current vaccines gone through the thorough years of testing that the vaccines outlined above have gone through, people would have been more accepting of it.

The resistance you see from many people is PRECISELY because of COERCION, instead of allowing people the freedom to choose for themselves.

It is like forcing people to buy and drive an Electric Vehicle by a certain date. This might work in North Korea, but it’s not going to work here.

No. It means that they had an indirect connection which was not revealed during the epidemiological investigations.
Facile claim without evidence.

Actually not. Your own everyday experience should tell you why, even if a disease originated from a source, not all cases of the disease can be directly traced to the source.

Consider how many people travel and how many others they interact with during those travels. Let's say that you went hunting out in the wilderness for a few days. During that time, bats infected with a virus kept flying overhead while you were camping out at night. You're lucky--you catch your entire bag limit of deer, so you head home. You don't know that you are infected with the bat virus yet. On the way, you stop at a truck stop for lunch and fuel. During lunch, you decide to brag to the waitress about the three deer you have in the back of your truck. So you talk to her for quite a while. And then you buy a few snacks and take a few minutes to brag to the cashier about your catch. So now, you have exposed both the cashier and the waitress to whatever bat virus you picked up. And then they interact with other customers, exposing them as well. And those customers, in turn, interact with other people. In this example, the outbreak would be connected with the truck stop (not necessarily with you because often, the "index" patient in an epidemiological investigation is not identified). But the link between Harry, who was a neighbor of Sally, who is John's coworker, who stopped at a convenience store where Maria (whom he does not know) was also shopping, whose friend Laticia stopped at that truck stop and caught the virus is never going to be traced.

The fact that so many cases were, in fact, directly traced back to the Huanan seafood market and the pattern of case spread from that source (like waves spreading from a pebble you throw in a pond) are very compelling evidence. This evidence is corroborated by the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA found in environmental samples collected from in and around the market.

Is Dr. Malone incompetent to understand the science?

He is. He holds an MD degree with a specialization in pathology. This means that his theoretical knowledge of nucleic acid chemistry and function is probably not as deep as mine (half of my PhD was in molecular biology, which is the study of nucleic acids). But, yes, he knows enough to know that exogenous mRNA cannot modify the human DNA genome.

This is why I am so dumbfounded as to why he is suddenly making the rounds of nominally conservative talk shows and media outlets to tell people misinformation that he knows perfectly well is untrue.

And no, I'm not going to contact him. He may have been my mentor in the past, but that does not mean I have on-going interactions with him in the present. And I certainly don't expect him to remember me, since university professors have a lot of students. No way am I going to email him and say, "Why, Bob? Why are you doing this?" [It is graduate school custom for students to address professors by first name.] At this point, I would avoid any contact with him, just like I avoid contact with any other scammer/charlatan.

*The significance of medical library access is that it allows me to read articles for free that are behind a paywall for the general public.

In other words, you're ticked off that I called your bluff.

What bluff? You are the one who does not know how to navigate the medical literature. You seem to be unaware of the fact that many medical/scientific journals make article abstracts (summaries) publicly available but place the articles themselves behind a paywall.

Before I retired, I had access through our institutional libraries to full content from every journal. I could access it directly from my work computer or ask our librarians to order an article for me. Paywalls were never an issue because my employer paid all of the journal subscriptions.

Since I'm retired, I no longer have that access. The paywalls are a real issue now.

As a general rule, when I write posts debunking some antivax or anti-science misinformation, I make an effort to reference only open access articles. But once in a while, a paywall blocks me from accessing a relevant article and I can't find an acceptable substitute in the open access literature. I prefer not to reference abstracts of articles behind paywalls, because 1) sometimes the abstract does not accurately summarize the study and its results and 2) there are a lot of important details in the article that are not in the abstract. When I refer to a study, I want my readers to be able to read the entire thing if they want. I read it myself before posting links.

A statement of fact is not a bluff.

If I could find the article without benefit of a medical library subscription, why can't you?

You have no more ability to access a medical/scientific journal article that is behind a paywall than I have. I'm not going to pay $40-$50 dollars (or whatever) for access to an article, and I doubt you are willing to pay that, either.

I do not care to say which universities I've attended, although I will say you can probably figure at least one of them out.

But--you want links to textbooks currently in use by top research universities that I used in my own education? I'll do even better--I'll give you the amazon.com links so that you can buy those textbooks yourself (if you want to drop a few hundred dollars):

Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry Sixth Edition. This is probably the definitive textbook of Biochemistry in use by universities.

Microbiology: An Introduction 13th Edition. Ditto, but for microbiology.

Molecular Biology of the Cell Seventh Edition. This is another widely used textbook. Chapter 23 discusses pathogens and infection and 24 covers the innate and adaptive immune system function. These topics are covered in much more depth in microbiology and immunology textbooks.

Protein Chemistry (De Gruyter Textbook) Kindle Edition. Protein chemistry, structure, and function is the "biochemistry" component of my PhD. To understand antibody physical function, you need to understand protein and amino acid structure and chemistry.

This is only a selection of textbooks. In the course of getting my undergraduate then my PhD degrees, I had to take physics, classes on several types of chemistry, statistics, biology, genetics, and mathematics up through calculus. Yes, I did read all of the textbooks linked here, as well as many others. This represents six years of classroom instruction (four undergrad and two grad level). Since a STEM PhD degree is awarded on the basis of laboratory research designed to add to previous research, I have also read thousands of research papers.

Have fun reading those books!

I kind of think you missed (maybe deliberately) the point of the Greek text that I posted. Someone who has never studied Greek and does not know the Greek alphabet has no idea what that passage means (without running it through Google translate). I do know the Greek alphabet because it is used a lot by scientists, but I don't know a single word of Greek. I copied that passage from a site that sells Greek books. I am not responsible for the quality of the Google translation. I could have copied a Chinese, Sanskrit, or Korean passage for the same illustrative purpose.

While Google translate is great for getting a translation of a foreign language, it won't help you with scientific jargon. Can you run the following excerpt from this paper Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR through Google translate and get a plain language translation of what it actually means?:

A 25 μL reaction contained 5 μL of RNA, 12.5 μL of 2 × reaction buffer provided with the Superscript III one step RT-PCR system with Platinum Taq Polymerase (Invitrogen, Darmstadt, Germany; containing 0.4 mM of each deoxyribont triphosphates (dNTP) and 3.2 mM magnesium sulphate), 1 μL of reverse transcriptase/Taq mixture from the kit, 0.4 μL of a 50 mM magnesium sulphate solution (Invitrogen), and 1 μg of nonacetylated bovine serum albumin (Roche). Primer and probe sequences, as well as optimised concentrations are shown in Table 1. All oligonucleotides were synthesised and provided by Tib-Molbiol (Berlin, Germany). Thermal cycling was performed at 55 °C for 10 min for reverse transcription, followed by 95 °C for 3 min and then 45 cycles of 95 °C for 15 s, 58 °C for 30 s. Participating laboratories used either Roche Light Cycler 480II or Applied Biosystems ViiA7 instruments (Applied Biosystems, Hong Kong, China).

That is extremely difficult for someone who has not studied PCR to understand--it's basically a word salad to most people. You've already told me that you do not understand many of the references I provide, which is why I try to explain what those references say in language that the ordinary person can understand.

Did you yourself discover it for yourself, that antibodies will recognize peptide chains of between 5-8 amino acids in length? If not, you're supposed to provide a reference.

Ah, you are trying to call a bluff. The process of epitope recognition by antibodies is part of the general knowledge that scientists in relevant fields are expected to know, therefore I did not provide a reference. But just because I did not provide a reference does not mean that I cannot provide a reference. I wouldn't provide a reference for stating that a water molecule is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom either, for the same reason (but I can).

Wikipedia - Epitope.

High-resolution Mapping of Linear Antibody Epitopes Using Ultrahigh-density Peptide Microarrays. Excerpt: "In general, the epitopes were from 5 to 10 amino acids long (range from 4 to 12 amino acids; Fig. 5)."

What is an Epitope?

The variability in epitope sizes (# of amino acids) in these references occurs because there is a range of sizes, and the 5 to 10 or 5 to 8 ranges are the most common sizes.

I will end the scientific discussion here by pointing out that I will *never* post any scientific fact that I have not verified. Even if it is something I learned in undergraduate school decades ago (and therefore know it very well), I won't post before verifying.

Dingbat.

LOL. You just can't help yourself, can you?

But, kudos. You are getting a lot better at engaging in an actual conversation about the science.

I'm happy to share my knowledge. It's only fair because you paid for my expensive education. (My education was paid by taxpayers. I assume you pay taxes.)

First of all, I have never seen any reputable report that the three researchers at the lab all had a respiratory illness in (IIRC) November, 2019.
This proves you are engaging in scripted talking points, Dingbat.

Scripted talking points, hmm? Who is scripting them?

In my experience in dealing with trolls (some of whom are Russian, but I think there are others hired to troll) who are paid to post nonsense and misinformation on social media, they are very good at posting talking points. But, if challenged on those talking points, they cannot defend them at all. For example, I once saw a paid troll try to promote CRT (Critical Race Theory, I'm sure you've heard of it) by saying (paraphrased) "You obviously don't understand it! Why don't you Google it and read it for yourself? CRT is good!" When challenged, this person could not provide any description of CRT or detailed explanation of why we should embrace it.

Have you ever seen an instance where I cannot defend anything I have posted or discuss it in detail? No. That's because I don't deal with talking points and I'm not a paid troll.

The reality is that the most convincing antivax and anti-science propaganda is created by people who have legitimate PhD, MD, or DO degrees. They do have an adequate understanding of the science and comb through the medical literature to find material to use in their propaganda. For someone who is not familiar with medical science, their propaganda is quite convincing.

The fact that the scientific/medical community roundly rejects antivax/anti-science propagandists has nothing to do with rugs being pulled out from under their feet because of "narratives." It has everything to do with the fact that they are scamming people.

There are a number of red flags that even someone who is not an expert can pick up on. I try to educate people about the red flags. For example, does the person promoting the antivax claim have experience in any aspect of infectious disease (ID) research or in care of ID patients which would qualify them as experts in the field? If they are claiming large-scale harm from vaccines which has never been reported within the scientific community, have they personally designed, conducted, and analyzed the results of their own independent large-scale clinical trial which had those results? If not, then they have no independent source of safety and efficacy data. They are misrepresenting the results of others' hard work. Are their claims consistent with what the scientific community as a whole says? Do they present their claims in context? (For example, hyping vaccine adverse reactions without mentioning that those reactions are mediated by the immune system which causes the same reactions during active infection.) And so on.

We have your playbook.

Do you, really? Do you have the theoretical understanding of scientific method and its philosophical underpinnings to be able to discern my "playbook"? Do you have the practical scientific background to know what is in my "playbook"?

I don't think so.

2) I never mentioned anything about "all three researchers at the lab"; I never mentioned researchers at the lab at all.

You did.

That was a reference to a Rand Paul quote contained in the blog posted at the very top of this thread. "“Three people in the Wuhan lab got sick with a virus of unknown origin in November of 2019,” says Paul." This is essentially a conspiracy theory used to promote the narrative that SARS-CoV-2 escaped during a lab accident. The researchers at the lab, of course, do not like such stories because it damages their reputation. Many Chinese researchers are educated in the US and Chinese universities are comparable to US universities. Chinese scientists observe biosafety protocols used all over the world. Biosafety Levels. No, Chinese scientists do not like to have their professionalism questioned.

You did not provide a link to The Lancet article and I only commented on the numbers you provided. No, I do not know if those are really numbers you found in a The Lancet article, but they are consistent with the body of evidence known so far on the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.

I've already explained how the inability to trace every single patient back to the market does not invalidate the fact that all evidence so far points to the market as the outbreak epicenter. The relevance of the three researchers alleged to have gotten sick with a respiratory pathogen in November, 2019, is that that is a story used by conspiracists to try to convince people that the lab, not the market, is the epicenter.

Well, you are correct in pointing out that anecdotes are not evidence. I wonder, do you acknowledge that that is the case whenever anecdotes are presented as proof of something?

The problem with the kind of story that S&F posted about his personal experience having Covid (implying that Covid is nothing to worry about) is that the body of evidence shows that Covid is not trivial. Almost seven million people worldwide have died from it. Countless others have developed long-term health impairments. Yet, despite all of the harm it causes to so many people, around 60% of those who catch it will survive without clinically detectable organ damage. (It can be there, just not apparent during a routine health check.) Making health decisions based on "well, George survived just fine" is really not a valid risk assessment. You really cannot predict how you, personally, will fare if you catch Covid. Are you that confident that you won't be among the 6-7% who develop long Covid that just does not go away or the 1% (higher for unvaccinated) who die of Covid? To me, that's an unacceptably high risk. And even if I am among the lucky ones who would survive without perceptible health impairment, I prefer not to have the experience of being sick.

My personal anecdote about being quarantined for a week in the same room of a diagnosed Covid patient is also just an anecdote, but the experience is consistent with the data that shows that people who are vaccinated against Covid are less likely to get sick, to have serious disease requiring hospitalization, or to die from Covid. The data on vaccine efficacy directly contradicts the oft-repeated antivax trope that "It's not a real vaccine because it doesn't stop people from catching Covid!"

With more than 81.4% of us vaccinated (the number has not been updated since May), if the vaccines are as dangerous as antivax professionals claim, why haven't more of us dropped dead?

Okay, since you quoted that one twice, I'll quote it again (in blue because it was my own words) and try to explain its implications, since apparently I did not make them clear.

Antivax professionals make a big deal out of drawing attention to certain serious adverse effects of vaccination. Myocarditis. Pericarditis. Blood clots. I'll stick with these, since they really do happen following vaccination. (Claims that the vaccine is, for example, a gene therapy agent are not based on any scientific data at all, so I will ignore those.) These are very rare adverse events. For the most part, professional antivaxxers are careful not to come out and say that most or even a sizable minority of people getting vaccinated will suffer those events. What they do, however, is hype up the dangers of myocarditis, pericarditis, and blood clots without mentioning that the vaccine related occurrences of these conditions are typically far milder and amenable to treatment than those same conditions when they result from other causes, such as a bacterial or viral infection or autoimmune disorder. With all of that hype, they create the impression that serious and life-threatening adverse events following Covid vaccine are common--even though they typically avoid saying so directly.

Moving away from the professional antivaxxers who originate the propaganda, there are antivaxxers who have read the propaganda and then spread misinformation based on their understanding of the propaganda. These second-tier antivaxxers make wild claims, such as calling the vaccine a "population control" scheme and claiming that the vaccinated will die off within X years (X grows larger the longer we all take to decide to die from our vaccinations).

So, as I said in my quote above, if vaccines are as dangerous and lethal as some (especially the more outlandish) antivaxxers claim, then why haven't we seen a massive die-off of the population? With more than 81% of us having received at least one dose, why haven't we dropped dead already? Why are stores still crowded? Why are rock artists still able to draw crowds of thousands of fans to their concerts? Why are airports so crowded and flights fully booked? There are still around 330 million people in the US. As a population control scheme, the empirical evidence is that the Covid vaccine is a dud.

Finally, about my use of Greek language excerpts in other posts. I don't speak Greek and have never studied it. I did not run any of those excerpts through Google translate. I chose Greek to illustrate my points about the difficulties of understanding technical jargon because it does not use a Roman alphabet and I think the Greek letters are very pretty, much more attractive than Korean or Sanskrit letters or Chinese or Japanese characters. Interesting, that you were curious enough about the meanings of the Greek text to run it through Google translate--or that you happen to actually know Greek. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't be posting feminist nonsense...

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