:lifter Nuff said!

Until I see the word "Moderator" on your profile, I do no answer to you.
Stop harassing me or I will take it up with the people who really do operate this forum

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4. No verbal attacks, flaming etc. Verbal assaults on a member of Professional Soldiers ® will result in a warning and/or immediate banning from the bulletin board. Likewise a malicious verbal assault on a Quiet Professional will result in amusing the other Quiet Professionals and a possible banning by the board administrators.
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ITB you are treading on thin ice here. Be vewy, vewy, kaweful now ya hear?

Poor situational awareness.

:lifter Finest Kind!

Virtually every virologist and research scientist I know—not unanimous but a big majority—have a visceral and knee jerk antipathy towards anything other than zoonotic transmission from bat to some mythical mammal intermediate vector (pangolins are a cuddly favorite) to human.

These guys are finally rock stars and anything that besmirches their guild is attacked with vigor. They don’t want to think that their research projects may be contributing to global risk.

They ARE hugely contributing to global risk, and they ARE complicit.

I see this exactly as WD surmised: a sample obtained in the wild, then studied, played with, and accidentally released. I use “played with” because there is scads of enhancement research conducted on a whim.

There are several recent (post 2015) journal articles that report enhancement studies where researchers added the very same glycoprotein spike to viruses that makes COVID-19 so transmissible. There are also studies that report running coronaviruses through serial generations of mammals, usually ferrets, to induce the presence of a furin cleavage site, needed for mammal cell entry.

The scientific community circling the wagons on this issue is not proof. There is no way, none, to either prove or disprove that serial ferret infection studies did or didn’t change this virus.

These people discount the possibility of accidental release of an enhanced virus out of one side of their mouths while lauding researchers who are studding yeast cells with glycoprotein spikes via genetic manipulation to allow rapid manufacture of Covid antiviral antibodies.

I think this pandemic was an accidental release of a naturally occurring but obscure virus originally sourced from bats. I have no idea if it was manipulated prior to release, but until someone rediscovers this exact virus in the wild (expect the Chinese to do that soon, now that they’ve apparently abandoned their “it was caused by the US army” conspiracy theory) we'll never know if it was manipulated.

Please don’t ban hammer ITB, it’s a shock to lose trust in scientific authority figures when you’ve hung your hat on trusting scientific authority figures.

ITB, every QP is a moderator. Every non-QP is a guest here.

And there are some non-QPs that are moderators too.

Just some thoughts Re potential banning - FWIW nerves are frayed. Tempers are running hot.

Many are staring at economic meltdown for all they’ve worked hard for.

Some may also know someone infected, actually be infected or be in a high risk group or have loved ones in a high risk group.

Some may even be in both groups.

Discussion - even if it is controversial often (not always though) adds to knowledge.

Please factor that into your consideration during this highly unusual time.

Very respectfully.

T

ITB crossed the line. He stomped on it several times, but we overlooked that. We have real medical Drs. and Drs. that run laboratories on here. There are folks here that live it, not just read about it and regurgitate. ITB may have been educated beyond his intelligence with little SA.

I didn’t even like ITBs posts but they seemed to stimulate some good discussion - even if most of it was beyond me - but it provided mug additional opportunity to elaborate on his perspective. Which was valuable.

No doubt ITB stepped on it multiple times.

ITB failed to realize something about this site. Bad SA. It belongs to the QP's. Everybody else is a guest.

Yes, we have Mods but.......

QP's rule

I just received an invitation from Bentham publishing to become an executive editor for their new journal, "Chinese Medical Sciences".

I am very suspicious of this as a possible hook for misinformation/disinformation dissemination or other nefarious activities.

What say yous guys?

Know your enemy, the enemy inside the gate is more formidable than the enemy outside the gate.

As editor are you not required to read unpublished information?

Bada bing bada boom!

But as an editor I would suggest topics and yes, I would be reading unpublished data.

I just like the idea of using my name or company to lend credibility to science that is questionable. Unless someone here can convince me otherwise, I am not going to do this.:eek: