Posted on 10/25/2023 9:36:31 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
https://nocollegemandates.com/
Here is direct link to their spreadsheet. It provides info whether vaccine mandates were required and if so when they ended or are still required. It lists 1216 colleges and universities.
Very good point to consider..
Seems pretty obvious....with all of the rapid fire wall of words.
While most movies do a poor job of explaining the science of a pandemic, a zoonotic virus outbreak, one that did reasonably well was the 2011 movie Contagion. This doctor (3 years ago) does a pretty good job of reviewing the movie - what it gets right and wrong and how it relates to COVID-19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P6nrjciiS0
What I found most interesting was the Jude Law character. That character was exactly what we see today with the social media medical misinformation stream, the mistrust of actual science and the peddling of fake cures.
The virus in the movie is based on the Nipah virus. Fortunately, the Nipha virus is not airborne except in extreme close quarters, but it has a fatality rate of 40% to 70%. But as we know, viruses tend to mutate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipah_virus_infection
I remember watching several documentaries on the 1918 influenza pandemic in the early 2000’s. I recall one where a virologist said something to the effect that “it is not a matter of if, but when the next deadly global pandemic will occur.” It may have been Dr. Fauci.
We’ve long known that “wet markets” in Asia (and not just in China) were incubation laboratories for novel viruses. The trade in exotic wild animals for food, the mixing of various animals, domestic and wild, live and dead - all in close proximity, the unsanitary conditions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eba5Sjsn4Wg
That and the deforestation of rainforests and jungles where many bats live, previously in isolation but are now forced to inhabit areas populated with people and farms, especially pig farms. The perfect laboratory for the jump of animal viruses to people.
Yes. The fact that immunity has been recognized since antiquity does not change the fact that catching a disease is a serious and life-threatening method of developing immunity. Do you want to try to become "naturally" immune to rabies by getting bit by a rabid bat?
Up until a few decades ago, infectious diseases were responsible for more than half of all deaths. I doubt we'll ever win the war against pathogens, but we have made great progress. These days, only two infectious diseases make the top ten list of causes of death. Four years ago, there was only one infectious disease on the top ten (then Covid came along). Our primary tool in combatting infectious disease has been the use of vaccines.
These days, children are vaccinated against chickenpox. You can get the chickenpox vaccine if you have had chickenpox, it just won't have much of an effect. That is because chickenpox is caused by a herpesvirus. Once you have a herpesvirus infection, you have it forever. The continued presence of herpesvirus causes your immune system to constantly respond to it, almost like having a vaccine booster built-in. Only when something happens to impair your immunity--like age or stress--does the virus flair up in a manifestation of shingles. The shingles vaccine is intended to beef up the immune system's waning ability to keep up the immune response to chickenpox as you grow older.
In this cross-sectional study of unvaccinated US adults, antibodies were detected in 99% of individuals who reported a positive COVID-19 test result, in 55% who believed they had COVID-19 but were never tested, and in 11% who believed they had never had COVID-19 infection.
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.
The tl;dr version of this is that antibodies will recognize ANY protein that has a small similarity to the antigen.
This ability of antibodies to recognize sequences on proteins that are similar to sequences on the antigen that induced the immune response is called "cross-reactivity." It is *extremely* common.
There are several coronaviruses that infect humans. Most of them just cause colds. And colds happen frequently. So, how can I or anyone else possibly be certain that the antibodies detected in the study subjects really were induced by SARS-CoV-2? I have no issue with the people who had confirmed cases of Covid who also had high levels of antibody. The issue is with the people who were never diagnosed and had antibody. Colds--coronavirus infections--are common.
The *only* way to definitively determine that a person has had Covid is by detection of viral RNA in their tissues. As the reference immediately below states, people can continue to have virus in their bodies for months after infection. [This is also one mechanism proposed for the etiology of long Covid.]
Viral persistence, reactivation, and mechanisms of long COVID.
This article also discusses the tropism (tissue specificity) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Whenever I speak of the damage SARS-CoV-2 causes to multiple organ systems within the body, it is because of this tropism. An infection in a tissue (like the epithelial layer of the upper respiratory tract) that renews itself every 24-48 hours is not very serious because even though the infecting virus kills cells, they are replaced rapidly. An infection in a tissue that only repairs itself slowly, like cardiac tissue, causes damage that can seriously impair a person's quality of life. And there is reason to think that the tissue damage caused by Covid is cumulative:
SARS-CoV-2 Reinfections and Long COVID in the Post-Omicron Phase of the Pandemic.
I will also point out that, according to this article, a SARS-CoV-2 can reactivate other viral infections, such as Epstein-Barr (another herpesvirus).
A comment about the cross-reactivity of antibodies that I discussed above: A cross-reactive antibody can still provide protection, even if the virus you are exposed to is not represented in the vaccine or you were sick with a different but similar virus. It is the cross-reactivity of antibodies that made the first smallpox vaccine a success. The vaccine was actually targeting cowpox.
And, while I greatly appreciate your desire to "pick my brain" about scientific matters (I learn a lot in the process, too), I have to go soon and don't have time to write any more analysis.
If you remind me later, I might analysis the rest of your post. It would help if you link the post directly that you want me to finish commenting on.
I think you are looking at this all wrong. Antivaxxism(tm) has nothing to do with the decline in Covid jabs. Free thinking people decided the juice doesn't work as advertised and have figured out their risk factors over time. There is nothing worse than getting lied to. Fauci and Walensky pushing similar edicts that people don't get sick and don't spread the virus if they take the jab finally wore thin.
I've only heard of then from Fauci's Fascists. (Yes, that is the proper definition of the word: industry in service of the state.)
Which, since you now acknowledge I never heard of them, shows pretty well I'm not relying on them.
Dingbat.
Events have passed you by, to the point you can no longer shout "Because CREDENTIALS" and "CONSENSUS" because SCIENCE™! and expect anyone to listen.
The fact that you are doubling down on the "Russian Collusion" (right out of the Peter Hotez / leftwing "Center For Countering Digital Hate" corner --further undermines any claims you have to be arguing in good faith.
Peter Hotez has literally called for an inter-agency task force to deal with "anti-vaccine aggression," which would report not to the US Congress, but to the Secretary General of the UN.
He likens the peril posed by "anti-science" (his words, not mine) to that posed by global threats such as terrorism, cyber-attacks, and nuclear weapons.
He wrote this under his own name in the journal Nature (which is an obvious nutcase site run by people hawking supplements, right?)
Remember a couple weeks back and what Hamas did to Israeli woman and babies?
BowTie guy is likening anyone who pushes back against your Lysenkoism as equivalent to that.
Now that we know beyond any shadow of a doubt the Great COVID scare --including the frenzied demands for lockdowns, forced vaccinations, and the left-wing-touching-itself in anticipation of FEMA camps for the "resistant" was a lie -- do you think he'll admit he got a bit carried away? Or does he still really mean it, and is just seeking his next opportunity for totalitarian control?
Are you seriously trying to imply that each new pathogen presents with a pathognomonic set of symptoms?
Dingbat.
Freepmail.
No. There are many pathogens that share the same symptom set. In fact, it is sometimes hard to discern whether symptoms are caused by a virus or an allergy. Most novel pathogens are not noticed right away since they cause symptoms identical to other known pathogens.
However, the reason SARS-CoV-2 was recognized as a novel pathogen was because a Chinese physician examined an elderly couple and found symptoms unlike those she would expect to see in a typical case of pneumonia.
Who Was the First Doctor to Report the COVID-19 Outbreak in Wuhan, China?
Dr. Zhang Jixian is considered the first doctor to report the novel coronavirus before its outbreak. A senior couple living in the residential community near Dr. Zhang’s hospital went to see her for their fever and cough on December 26, 2019. When she observed their CT thorax images, Dr. Zhang found differences from pneumonia caused by common viruses. Zhang’s experience during the 2003 SARS outbreak, when she worked as a medical expert investigating suspected patients in Wuhan, made her sensitive to signs of an epidemic. After reading the CT images of the elderly couple, she summoned their son, demanding a CT scan of him too. It was Zhang’s insistence that brought her the second piece of evidence: the son’s lungs showed the same abnormalities as those of his parents. Also on December 27, the hospital received another patient who also developed symptoms of coughing and fever and showed the same lung images in the CT scan. The blood tests of the 4 indicated viral infections.
Physicians, due to their involvement in patient care, are the first-line identifiers of novel pathogen outbreaks. They don't know how to design or run PCR tests or culture viruses or anything else about characterizing a pathogen, but what they DO know are symptoms. And when the symptoms are nothing the physician has seen before, the physician becomes suspicious. It is then that she turns over analysis of the novel pathogen to PhD doctors such as myself, who have the education, tools, and expertise to characterize the pathogen.
Had those patients turned up in Dr. Zhang's clinic with symptoms identical to other viral pneumonias, she might not have realized that she was dealing with a novel pathogen.
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Now, do you see the difference between merely insulting me and actually giving me material to work with? I can't write educational articles when all you do is call me a dingbat or whatever because there is nothing there to work with. But by actually asking a question, you give me something to work with. Oh, and kudos on your use of the word "pathognomonic."
Finally, thank you for calling me a "dingbat." When people realize that I have real scientific expertise and they cannot possibly win an argument with me based on evidence and facts, they resort to insults. So, thank you for the recognition of my expertise.
Yes, and no one has sued him for it.
Dingbat:Clearly, they did not display the symptoms that alerted Chinese physicians that they were dealing with a previously unknown pathogen.
{Editorial note: this implies that unknown pathogens NECESSARILY come with unique symptoms, which are promptly noted and used to restore health instantly by noble, dedicated, heroic physicians who are wiser than mere mortals. Or to nobly and heroically stooping to save humanity by shouting out the dangerous existence of a NOVEL PATHOGEN™. (*)}
MeL:{with amused contempt} Are you seriously trying to imply that each new pathogen presents with a pathognomonic set of symptoms?
Dingbat. Which leads me to this post.
Your fatuous, self-congratulatory, condescending response:
No. There are many pathogens that share the same symptom set. In fact, it is sometimes hard to discern whether symptoms are caused by a virus or an allergy. Most novel pathogens are not noticed right away since they cause symptoms identical to other known pathogens. And this is exactly the first point I was trying to make. I repeat, for the benefit of onlookers my actual phrasing.
"Are you SERIOUS trying TO IMPLY"
You appear to be so impressed with yourself for having actually been accepted to grad school, that you mistranslated my statement into the following:
"WOW! That means each and every pathogen has its own set of symptoms, and those dumb doctors didn't catch it! I guess I really put on over on SCIENCE™!-Girl!"
Ummm, no.
If you can stop patting yourself on the back over your own imagined brilliance, you might understand why the distinction is important.
And it doesn't have to do with lab results, either.
Dingbat.
(*) The last one if foreshadowing of where I had bee going to go before you jumped the gun to pat yourself on the back.
I don't do this because I hope to convince those who are so sunk into antivax/anti-science/anti-medical profession/anti-government conspiracies that they have lost their ability to think rationally.
The thing is, much of the anti-whatever propaganda is created using real scientific papers and facts. An ordinary person might be confused by such propaganda and think it is legitimate because the rhetoric sounds so plausible.
So, then, my goal is to put the real facts that the propagandists present out of context into context. For example, there is so much antivax hype about the "unnatural" way the mRNA vaccines force cells to make modified spike protein but the reality is that every virus forces cells to make every virus RNA or DNA, mRNA, and protein (the SARS-CoV-2 virus contains 29 proteins). I also debunk the outright lies that antivax propagandists tell (no, the mRNA vaccine is not a gene therapy and does not affect DNA at all).
I think that my expertise and level of knowledge on the subject are self-evident. So people reading my rebuttals of antivax propaganda know that they can learn something.
Ironically, I watched the movie Contagion shortly before I began work on a pandemic preparedness team. I recall reading in a magazine article that someone from the CDC provided scientific guidance to make the movie more realistic. That youtube video was a good analysis of what the movie got right and wrong. The vaccine development timeline presented in the movie was both right and wrong. Another aspect of vaccine development that the movie got completely wrong (which the physician in the youtube video did not mention) was that, in the movie, several monkeys were given prototype vaccines. One of the prototype vaccines worked and the monkey did not get sick after being exposed to Nipah. This led up to a very dramatic moment when one of the main characters (Elliot Gould?) started barking orders to ramp up vaccine production and get it out to people. Excuse me? No health agency or pharmaceutical company in the world would initiate a massive vaccination campaign using a prototype vaccine that prevented one monkey from dying!
The Jude Law character was a great embodiment of antivax/anti-science scammers. The excerpt at 14:18 is spot-on: "The government rushed the trials. The lawyers indemnified the drug companies. Maybe it causes autism or narcolepsy or cancer ten years from now." Whoever wrote that bit of dialog was clearly quite familiar with antivax rhetoric. Also, the similarities between the charlatan promotion of the fictional forsythia as a miracle cure and the real-life situation with [hydroxy]chloroquine and ivermectin is amazing.
Fortunately, the Nipha virus is not airborne except in extreme close quarters, but it has a fatality rate of 40% to 70%.
Yes. Viruses can be highly lethal, but are not considered pandemic threats due to the mode of transmission. We've always considered respiratory pathogens to have the highest pandemic potential. (Not all pandemics are spread by the respiratory route--AIDS is a blood-borne pandemic pathogen that continues to infect people and has killed an estimated 40.4 million people so far. Data on the size of the HIV epidemic.
I recall one where a virologist said something to the effect that “it is not a matter of if, but when the next deadly global pandemic will occur.”
Yes, that is an accurate assessment of the public health community's opinion regarding future pandemic. Regarding the 1917-1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic, as a child I heard my stepdad talk about growing up without a mother since she died when he was two years old. He never said why she died (and might not have known). But when I started studying that pandemic, I realized that my stepgrandmother was almost certainly one of the millions of victims of that pandemic. She died circa 1919.
We’ve long known that “wet markets” in Asia (and not just in China) were incubation laboratories for novel viruses. The trade in exotic wild animals for food, the mixing of various animals, domestic and wild, live and dead - all in close proximity, the unsanitary conditions.
Yep. Those conditions are prime for incubating novel viruses. But the fact that the US does not have those markets mean we are immune from such outbreaks. The Contagion movie described a sequence of events in which pigs caught Nipah from bats. Influenza is a bird disease. One of the primary ways it crosses over into the human population is through pig intermediaries. This is because pig lungs have certain similarities to both human and bird lungs, which allow bird viruses to mutate into mammal viruses. I think that large-scale commercial pig farms are very careful about biosecurity, but that isn't the case with small family farms. Of course, wild coronaviruses don't necessarily need an intermediary to infect humans, since they already circulate in wild animal populations.
No, not at all. Just because the existence of unfamiliar symptoms alerts physicians to a potential novel pathogen does NOT mean that every novel pathogen has unique symptoms.
How many times have you caught a cold? You have no idea what the etiological agent is, and neither does your care provider. You could have a novel virus that you picked up by being near a bat in the woods, but you would never know it because you just have a cold with typical cold symptoms. New viruses that cause colds or influenza-like diseases begin circulating in human populations every few years. It can sometimes take a while before they are identified.
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Since the rest of your post is ad hominem attacks meant to communicate that you know you can't possibly win an argument with me based on the science, I will ignore it. Remember, you must ask real questions or provide real material to debunk.
Yes, that's right, which is what I was trying to warn you of your mistake in post #69:
Clearly, they did not display the symptoms that alerted Chinese physicians that they were dealing with a previously unknown pathogen.
Either you don't know the difference, and you're covering up, or you're so busy patting yourself oh the back that you forgot to phrase your sentencing carefully.
Or you're so busy spreading propaganda that you just type whatever comes into your head.
The insults are deserved, because you are a troll.
You are in favor of people losing their jobs for not getting the clot-shots, even three years later, when the epidemiological risks have been well characterized, and when most of the highly vulnerable have died and cannot act as reseviors, and where (except for the unfortunate jabbed) herd immunity has been established.
So are you in favor of mandatory jabbing for children under the age of 12?
And are you an favor or forced quarantines for those who exercise their freedom?(Supreme Court, striking down the BiteMe Maladministration's attempted mandates; which mandates the George Winstons in the maladministration, and the MSM, are trying to deny ever existed, makes it a unCOnstitutional to enforce jab mandates with job loss.)
I wrote to you earlier, quoting Dr. Peter Hotez in Nature verbatim, saying that "anti science" is as bad as cyterattacks, nuclear weapons, or terrorism.
And I asked you, in light of the Hamas attacks in Israel, if you agree with that statement of his.
I notice you ducked the question.
It's a fair question: Hotez was specifically addressing the made-up terms "misinformation" and "vaccine hesitancy" and doing so publicly in an editorial in one of the premiere journals in the biosciences industry. And your have presented yourself both as a scientific expert and as a champion for mandatory vaccinations.
Do you think resistance to the clot shots is as great a menace as terrorism?
Gee, the Lancet says 27 of the first 41 cases had exposure to the market.
That means 1/3 of the first 41 cases weren't connected to the market.
And in a summary of the Lancet article, science.org reported that the first patient had no connection to the wet market.
Oh, wait I forgot. The Lancet is anti-SCIENCE™!
Because it contradicts CONSENSUS™.
So no, it's not "all the available data".
Quit blowing smoke.
(And since you brag about being able to find links instantly, which mere motals cannot do, nor can they understand what is in the links, I'll leave the links out and challenge you to find them.)
No. It means that they had an indirect connection which was not revealed during the epidemiological investigations.
The statistic of 27 cases directly attributed to market exposure is very compelling.
And since you brag about being able to find links instantly, which mere motals cannot do, nor can they understand what is in the links, I'll leave the links out and challenge you to find them.
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.
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.
Remember how I said that Dr. Barry Marshall wasn't just some bloke who ran in off the streets shouting that H. pylori causes ulcers? How he had to actually do research building on past bacteriology research to demonstrate that H. pylori is the causative agent of ulcers (as determined by the Koch postulates)? The Nobel prize committee would NEVER have awarded him the Nobel prize committee if he hadn't published well-researched and adequately referenced papers on the topic.
So, if you want to make a credible claim, you absolutely MUST link to, or provide a detailed and reputable citation for, the claim.
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 figuratively had to learn Greek before I could read those papers. Why would anyone expect you to read and understand Greek if you've never studied it? (Actually, most papers are written in English, but they are as incomprehensible as Greek is to anyone who never studied it.)
Professional antivax charlatans know perfectly well that their marks can't comprehend the science. But while they use that fact to bamboozle you, I try to explain the science in ordinary language.
Oh, wait I forgot. The Lancet is anti-SCIENCE™!
Yeah, right. The Lancet has one of the highest impact factors (168.9) of any journal in print. What this means is that the scientific community holds this journal in very high esteem. For comparison, Science has a 5 year impact factor of 56.9 and Nature has a 5 year impact factor of 60.9. Publication in any of these journals is a real career-booster for a scientist. Most scientists publish in journals whose impact factors are from 2 to 10.
Clearly, they did not display the symptoms that alerted Chinese physicians that they were dealing with a previously unknown pathogen.
No, I made no mistake.
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. That is speculation that I have seen posted several times. Repeating something doesn't make it true, no matter how frequently it is repeated.
But, let's assume they did have a respiratory infection. There is nothing suspicious in and of itself in a respiratory infection that occurs during cold and flu season. Countless millions of people catch those infections every year. The fact that they (allegedly) got sick around the same time is not suspicious, either. They were coworkers. They probably had lunch together every day. They probably engaged in social activities with each other outside of work hours on occasion. They probably donned their BSL-3 or BSL-4 level protective gear and showered after work in shared locker rooms. So, yeah, they could have all been exposed to some virus at the same time.
There is a wide gap between three coworkers catching a cold at the same time and the conclusion that they had all caught SARS-CoV-2 in the lab and started spreading it. The gap between the allegation of their illness and the notion that the virus was created or modified is even larger.
If they had had the unusual symptoms associated with SARS-CoV-2, it would have been apparent. As experienced coronavirus researchers, they would have recognized themselves that they had an unusual infection.
But--let me back down on all of this. This is all speculation based on an uncorroborated claim that three scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) fell ill late in 2019. The claim was published in an on-line newsletter of questionable credibility.
One of the scientists himself denied that he or any of his colleagues became ill in that timeframe: ‘Ridiculous,’ says Chinese scientist accused of being pandemic’s patient zero.
This is an article from Science magazine that was written for the general public, not for scientists. You should be able to understand it. It also contains a link to one of the papers that conspiracy theorists (who have no idea what gain-of-function really is) love to claim is proof that they were doing gain-of-function studies at WIV (and therefore created SARS-CoV-2).
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