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Thread: COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

  1. #18461
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    • starting strength seminar april 2024
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    ANOTHER CONSPIRACY PROVEN TRUE: The Daniel Andrews government promised Victorians their contact tracing private details would always be protected, but a bombshell court ruling has exposed the lie and the attempt to keep you in the dark.

    SCANDAL: Victorian government lied, tried to suppress the truth over QR codes - Rebel News

    Navy SEALS Achieve Stunning Victory in America's Fight Against Vaccine Mandates - Becker News

    New York hospitals are so understaffed they are asking symptomatic nurses to return to work

    #cdc #nys #fyp #gobills

  2. #18462
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    Quote Originally Posted by Subby View Post

    From memory the only isolated time that the presence of guns has worked has been the bundy ranch standoff. Because there was a higher concentration of militia than police. If the Police think they outgun you, then you get Waco.

    Police operate day to day in America with it's 400 million guns. They arrest criminals and dangerous people in the drug trade all the time. A population that is well armed and has few hesitations about committing to violence. If crack dens filled with armed high criminals get regularly raided successfully, how are you personally going to present a greater obstacle? Remember if your killed, you're an old white dude that's on the wrong side of the political fence. The media will castigate you as a trump terrorist and your governor will proclaim his allegiance to the thin blue line and say what an awful situation it is and how horrible it is that white supremacy leads to dead cops. Your death in a shootout will allow cnn to keep the lights on for about another week.
    Waco wasn't exactly a PR win for the ATF/FBI. But, yes - they ended up killing 75 people with superior firepower (including a bunch of women and children).
    You forgot about Ruby Ridge. That's probably a better example of the effectiveness of the 2nd amendment.

    No, 2A doesn't ensure that armed citizens are going to defeat a well-armed federal, state, or local law enforcement organization. But, it does ensure that 1) Government takeover is bloody and slow 2) the Government likely loses public support after bodies start to pile up.

    Note - both of the examples above were in 92, 93. (AOL went public in 1992) Imagine cellphone video being posted on Facebook of Vicki Weaver getting shot by an FBI agent in her doorway while holding a newborn.

  3. #18463
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jovan Dragisic View Post
    I mean, sure they arrest armed people, but this is a whole SWAT team going after one guy. If they do that individually for every gun owner, it would take them a very long time to disarm the entire population.
    And not all of them will agree to participate in seizing lawfully owned firearms from their neighbors, because most -- if not all -- of the cops have guns themselves, and most of them realize the importance of the 2nd Amendment, the very purpose of which is to prevent exactly this sort of thing. Very difficult to explain to Europeans.

    Quote Originally Posted by Subby View Post
    Technically in my state of SA I can carry a gun in my car too as long as it isn't being brandished. I can throw it on the back seat. Not that it matters because it's still in Australia.

    My point is that the existence of guns isn't the insurmountable obstacle that people like to think it is. It's more of a maginot line and there are more ways to undermine and encroach than there are to use it to affect change. There's not many steps between crime prevention and civil war.
    We've had crime prevention and widespread gun ownership with no civil war for 155 years. This at least suggests that there is a reasonably large space between the two.

    If 400 million guns can't be seized from the populace overnight, the government will just reduce the number of gun owners by making it hard to be one. The trend line goes down.
    How will they do this? How do you reduce the number of gun owners from hundreds of millions to a more "manageable" number by merely "making it hard to be one"?

    Re: Bundy Ranch what did actually happen? I was vaguely interested in it insamuch as I assumed it was a noteworthy event but not enough to research it. All I gathered is that the fed government wanted to run a water pipe through bundy ranch and it was a long running issue untill some fed agency sent agents to force the issue. The bundy family responded by calling out a few hundred supporters which caused a standoff. Eventually the government backed down and ran the water pipe somewhere else and continued on their merry way.

    What did happen?
    The Feds had plenty of help. They always have more help than you do. But the optics of another Branch Davidian-style massacre or another Ruby Ridge would have produced a political situation that would have been adverse for the Feds, so they elected to let it go.

  4. #18464
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    And not all of them will agree to participate in seizing lawfully owned firearms from their neighbors, because most -- if not all -- of the cops have guns themselves, and most of them realize the importance of the 2nd Amendment, the very purpose of which is to prevent exactly this sort of thing. Very difficult to explain to Europeans.
    Yeah, a lot of things are really hard to explain to Europeans. They buy all the bluffs, then call this being rational. For instance, France has been having 200k+ "cases" of "omicron" for the past couple of days, where previously they had 50-100k. Yet as far as I can see, people in Europe are buying this obviously bullshit number as real.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jovan Dragisic View Post
    Yeah, a lot of things are really hard to explain to Europeans. They buy all the bluffs, then call this being rational. For instance, France has been having 200k+ "cases" of "omicron" for the past couple of days, where previously they had 50-100k. Yet as far as I can see, people in Europe are buying this obviously bullshit number as real.
    Bought by Europe, Sold by America (Bill Gates), Made in China. A global shit show.

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    Why do people assume Europeans are in any way smart? Didn’t all the smart ones leave and go to the United States?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Satch12879 View Post
    Why do people assume Europeans are in any way smart? Didn’t all the smart ones leave and go to the United States?
    There are plenty of smart Europeans, they are just all giant pussies.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    In my office right now, I have a shotgun and 3 handguns within 4 feet (1.2m) of me right now. And that's just my office. You Australians are an odd lot. They have really beaten the balls off of you, and you have some serious misconceptions about life in a nominally free society.

    You seem to know a lot about Texas. Where do you live again? Let me help you out: in Texas, any law-abiding citizen can carry a firearm in the car. I have a License to Carry. When I'm stopped for a traffic violation, the officer comes to my window, tells me his name and agency, and asks for my driver's license and proof of insurance. I provide these as well as my LTC (which requires a background check to obtain). He says, "Are you carrying a weapon now?" I say, "I am, two of them." He says, "Where are they?" I say, "I have one in the console and one in that brown bag." He says, "Thanks, just leave them alone while we're talking." I say, "Absolutely, officer." Happened two weeks ago, in fact. I don't drive in states like Maryland, New Jersey, New York, California, etc., where the state laws are similar to Australia's.
    Coach Rip, Happy New Year.

    Re: the Yankee states you mentioned and California.... a joke among pro-Second Amendment residents of states near NY and NJ (such as Pennsylvania) is that once one drives from NJ into PA, one is greeted with a sign on the highway that says, "Welcome to Pennsylvania! America starts here!"

    https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/welc...n-52257541.jpg

    Whoever put that up most likely wasn't taking a shot at those northern liberal states, but it's still worth a chuckle.

    Quote Originally Posted by Satch12879 View Post
    Why do people assume Europeans are in any way smart? Didn’t all the smart ones leave and go to the United States?
    Foolish, dangerous, and counterproductive state policies are not necessarily a reflection of the average IQ of the general population. European countries (most of them) have average IQs of about 100.

    Europeans are a diverse bunch, but it's out of Europe that composers, philosophers, artists, writers, scholars of the finest caliber were born. The Founding Fathers were of British stock; one may quibble about whether Britain is part of Europe given it was a historically insular archipelago, but does the average Englishman see more in common with the average western European or the western American today? All the more given the proximity from Britain to Europe?

    And however much I may get criticized for this - Germany. Home to some of humanity's greatest minds in art and literature and science. Outstanding vehicles, world-class organizational skills. Wherever a German diaspora went, the German immigrants and then, their progeny contributed; this has been the case in North America (including Texas of course) and in South America as well. Even in Russia, ethnic Germans rose to positions of power before the Bolsheviks took over. And if Germany had been a country of very low average IQ, there's no way they would have nearly subjugated the Soviet Union after taking France and pushing Britain to the brink.

    There's a reason most of Europe is comprised by advanced first world countries. To think intellect is irrelevant to that fact is to ignore reality.

    Quote Originally Posted by Subby View Post
    If 400 million guns can't be seized from the populace overnight, the government will just reduce the number of gun owners by making it hard to be one. The trend line goes down.
    This is already being implemented in certain U.S. states. Of course, the powers that be will never admit it unless they're caught a la Project Veritas. But they have been imposing very restrictive measures in states like MD, NY, NJ, and CA which would be both causes for shock and laughter in states like TX and FL.

    These measures include the restriction of magazine capacity, the prohibition of certain makes/models of firearms, and exhausting conditions on what specifications a weapon must have for it to be legal in said state. A resident of FL, TX, PA, or AZ may own an AR15 platform and own 5, 10, 100, or however many muzzle devices he wants - flash hiders, muzzle brakes, etc., and swap them at will. In a state like NJ, flash hiders are illegal and muzzle brakes must be pinned and welded. In those same free states, a rifle's buttstock may be collapsible or fixed; in NY, it must either be built in such a way that it is a physical continuation of the lower receiver; or, if it will be built the traditional way, the rifle must be fed sideways (really).

    Other restrictions include limiting how many firearms may be purchased in a given time period, onerous requirements regarding paperwork, the outlawing of certain types of ammunition, the essential turning of these states into "shall NOT issue" rather than "may issue" states, and the near-criminalization of otherwise legal uses of lethal force in self-defense situations.

    More than one former resident of NJ, NY, CA, etc. has packed and moved to states like PA, TX, FL, AZ, and others so they could exercise their Second Amendment rights with freedom and with peace.

  10. #18470
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shiva Kaul View Post
    Then what do you think? Not about junk blogs or silly stuff that gets posted, but about deceptions committed by those working in your field and its vicinity. People expect you to have a public opinion about this.

    The rest of the scientific world is losing patience with the silent treatment. In Viral - the recent book coauthored by the Broad Institute's Alina Chan, endorsed by computer scientist Scott Aaronson, among others - you can find a withering assessment of Peter Daszak, who prominently funded research in your field.

    That's awfully broad, but given the context of the rest of your post I'll assume that you're asking about lab leak vs spillover and related issues. If I'm off-base, please feel free to redirect me. To preemptively address a criticism from Rip...I understand that there are other important issues here, like power, freedom, money, etc. etc. (iow...'it's not about the virus and never has been'). Just because I stick to my area of expertise, doesn't mean that I don't understand that these other things are important, and that some are more important than the virus. I just rely on others with expertise in those areas.

    I am going to set aside the bioterror/intentional design hypothesis for now. The data so far do not favor this hypothesis, but as I mention later...very few things in biology is 'settled' and we should be willing to reconsider if the data point in that direction

    In May of '21 Jesse Bloom, Alina Chan, Ralph Baric, and others published a letter in Science that called for more careful consideration of the lab leak hypothesis. I agree with that letter. I've not read Viral, and I've not been following Alina Chan, so I can't speak to the issues she has run into with not getting questions answered, but if there was a lab leak, covering it up would obviously be a despicable act. I can understand the hesitance for complete transparency. Sometimes, internet sleuths looking into these types of issues will draw connections between unrelated events and use phrases like "follow the money" to paint a picture that doesn't end up representing the truth. However, even though I can understand it, avoiding complete transparency is a despicable act.

    It's important that we sort out whether this was a lab leak or a spillover event and how it occurred in the first place. That way we can put things into the correct context and plan for the future. If it was a spillover event, then the work that was done by Shi's group in China should have been taken more seriously. Her group showed in 2013 that there were SARS-like viruses in bats that could bind to human ACE-2. Especially if this was a spillover event, we should have taken that finding more seriously and poured real effort into developing pan-coronavirus vaccines and antiviral agents. Those vaccines and treatments could have been tested in a way that would not only demonstrate their safety and efficacy, but it would also allow for more trust in the process. We should then pour more effort into other similar programs that seek to identify infectious agents with pandemic potential AND develop and test therapeutics that would combat those agents.

    If it was a lab leak, we need to know how it happened, so that we can reassess the worth of research like this. I don't know about the actual conditions that were used in those labs, as I wasn't there. However, the few papers that I spot-checked indicate that BSL-3 conditions were used. If that is not the case, we obviously need to know about it, so that we can assess what conditions need to be used if this type of research is to be done in the future. We also need to assess whether this type of research should be done at all. If this turns out to have been a lab leak, I would argue that especially if we are not going to follow up on the development of things like pan-coronavirus vaccines and antiviral agents, this sort of research is too dangerous. We can't make those sorts of decisions unless we know how this started, and we can't know that unless we have transparency and open discussion.

    The way some of my collogues have behaved towards the lab leak hypothesis has fallen short of how science should be conducted and how scientists should conduct themselves. Very few things in biology are 'settled'. However, many of us are uncomfortable communicating uncertainty with the public. People don't like uncertainty. They like answers. That leads us to state things that are not 'settled' as undeniable facts. Clearly, this has been a mistake. It has led to the reversal of advice on several key issues when other data became available, which contributed to the distrust people have in what we do.

    I hope I didn't wander too far afield from what you were asking about. Thanks for the book recommendation and the link to the review. I'll put it on my reading list.

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