Cont: Corona Virus Conspiracy Theories Part IV

[Petra]

Asking if agents provocateur carried flags among the truckers caused a stir... Should I apologize?

Oh yeah, Agents provocateurs - they're everywhere.

The fake opposition has a stranglehold on the genuine opposition big time.

 

[Petra]

OOPS, Off Guardian a mighty conspiracy website, how did you find it, and are you pretending to be a conspiracy theorist, or are you a conspiracy theorist?

Double OOPS... Off Guardian is an intense pseudoscience website, and you like it because it promotes unproven conspiracy theories and false information regarding the Coronavirus. You won, you found the dumbest web site for the virus.

BTW, actually deaths from Corona Virus are higher than reported, and you don't care why, or are able to figure out why - because you prefer misinformation about the pandemic.

Cluelessly spreading BS

Good news, you are in the correct sub-forum, where you can post the most idiotic conspiracy theories, and be on topic.

Why don't you put forward a specific item of criticism? Your comment is simply a string of propaganda jargon. There is a brain inside your head you know. You don't have to just accept what the mainstream shills say about websites who criticise the mainstream narrative. You can think for yourself. Why don't you take a look at the pseudoscience conspiracy theory and report back on just one specific item.

 

[Petra]

I've noticed that the people who don't think it exists, either haven't had it, or haven't met anyone who has, which means they are likely a bigger shut in than I am, which is saying something.

For a long time I knew no one who tested positive and didn't hear about them and then suddenly loads of people testing positive ... but who all seemed to just have the symptoms of a cold. Currently, a friend is staying with me who tested positive a week ago with no symptoms (previously had a cold) and thus couldn't get her flight. Fortunately, tonight she was advised her test this morning yielded a negative result.

I think people are getting sick, they just don't have the designated illness covid which, after all, doesn't have a distinctive set of symptoms and isn't diagnosed but determined purely on the result of a test which isn't a diagnostic test.

 

[Blue Mountain]

Oh my goodness. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Just go to the article and you will see all the citations you need.

https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/

I'm not sure what you're referring to. I summarised the article with a link to the article.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/

First, thank you for replying to my post twice. (I'm not trying to insult you in any way with this comment; it's a light-hearted response to the fact you actually did respond twice within a minute to my post.)

First off, Off-Guardian is a psuedo-science site. They're not over-the-top tin foil hat crackpots, but they don't have a good rating:

Overall, we rate OffGuardian a Strong Conspiracy and Strong Pseudoscience website that frequently promotes unproven conspiracy theories and false information regarding the Coronavirus.

Bias Rating: CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE
Factual Reporting: MIXED
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY

Source

That said, I went ahead and read the article. Here are some comments.

This indicates that the belief in the validity of the PCR tests is so strong that it equals a religion that tolerates virtually no contradiction.

But it is well known that religions are about faith and not about scientific facts. And as Walter Lippmann, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and perhaps the most influential journalist of the 20th century said: “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

Here the authors take a bunch of quotes about testing for the virus, extrapolate them into a mantra, call the mantra a "religion," then dismiss the lot of them for being religious. Nice rhetoric, but it doesn't address they key point they're trying to make, that COVID-19 PCR tests are scientifically useless.

So to start, it is very remarkable that Kary Mullis himself, the inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology, did not think alike. His invention got him the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1993.

Unfortunately, Mullis passed away last year at the age of 74, but there is no doubt that the biochemist regarded the PCR as inappropriate to detect a viral infection.

Good! They've made a point and back it up with a link. Where does the link go? A web site called Uncover DC.

Overall, we UncoverDC extreme right biased and Questionable based on the promotion of debunked conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, the use of poor sources who routinely fail fact checks, and a lack of transparency with ownership.

Questionable Reasoning: Conspiracies, Pseudoscience, Propaganda, Poor Sourcing, Lack of Transparency, False Claims
Bias Rating: EXTREME RIGHT
Factual Reporting: LOW
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY

Source

It was founded by Tracy Diaz (also known as Tracy Beanz), a QAnon supporter. As far as I am concerned, that's a fail! Unless there's a better site than Uncover DC that quotes Dr. Mullis in full regarding PCR testing I'll discount that statement entirely.

We're off to a bad start: one meaningless piece of rhetoric and a failed fact check from a crank site.

How declaring virus pandemics based on PCR tests can end in disaster was described by Gina Kolata in her 2007 New York Times article Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t.

So now it's off to the New York Times article. It's from 2007, more than a decade before COVID, but that's not reason enough to dismiss it. It's a cautionary tale about using in-house, home brew tests to determine if a pathogen is loose in a facility. When these tests were followed up with a much better test (cell cultures,) the home brew tests were discovered to raise a lot of false positives.

Except PCR tests aren't "home brew." They're an established technology being used for the purpose for which they were invented: amplifying DNA sequences.

Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the PCR tests used to identify so-called COVID-19 patients presumably infected by what is called SARS-CoV-2 do not have a valid gold standard to compare them with.

This is a fundamental point. Tests need to be evaluated to determine their preciseness — strictly speaking their “sensitivity” and “specificity” — by comparison with a “gold standard,” meaning the most accurate method available.

Repeating the Off-Guardian article, it says there is no better ("gold standard") test for Sars-Cov-2 than the PCR test itself, which is a circular reference and not a good thing. It back up its statement with an article in the British Journal of Medicine:

Jessica C. Watson from Bristol University confirms this. In her paper “Interpreting a COVID-19 test result”, published recently in The British Medical Journal, she writes that there is a “lack of such a clear-cut ‘gold-standard’ for COVID-19 testing.”

Yes, she did say that in the article and indicated it was a problem. She then went on for five paragraphs with numerous references on how to improve the state of testing and interpretation.

The Off Guardian article went on to say:

.. it is downright absurd to take the PCR test itself as part of the gold standard to evaluate the PCR test ...

Both the Off-Guardian and the BMJ articles are from the first half of 2020. They're over a year and a half old by now. And guess what—there is a now gold standard for Sars-Cov-2. We have its genome and we have pictures of it. We're sequencing hundreds of thousands instances of the virus using second and third generation techniques: Genomic sequencing: Here’s how researchers identify omicron and other COVID-19 variants [The Conversation.]

In case you're wondering:

Overall, we rate The Conversation Least Biased based on covering both the right-center and left-center politically, as well as covering evidence-based topics. We also rate them Very High for factual reporting due to excellent sourcing of information and a clean fact check record.

Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED
Factual Reporting: VERY HIGH
MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

Source

One little point:

In addition, “experts” such as Watson overlook the fact that only virus isolation, i.e. an unequivocal virus proof, can be the gold standard.

The use of scare quotes when describing Dr. Watson as an expert is evidence of the authors' bias and not their objectivity.

The remainder of the article gets into territory where I'm not an expert, and it would take me considerable time and resources to get to the point where I'm comfortable interpreting their commentary. Therefore, I must fall back on the fact the article comes from a site with a poor reputation, and further references a site with an even worse reputation. It makes me inclined to question the motives of the writers and their conclusions.

One final thought: Just because a year and a half ago there was some question about the effectiveness of the PCR test, it does not stand to reason the Sar-Cov-2 virus does not exist, as you so boldly claim. The virus most certainly exists: we have its genome and pictures of it. Science overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that it causes a disease called COVID-19, one that so far has killed about 5.7 million people worldwide.

 

[Petra]

Petra, I think if you start your investigation with the belief that Covid does not exist (as you said), you are not honestly "thinking for yourself."

One might, if perhaps a rigid empiricist, begin with the question of whether or not Covid exists, and, after looking at the evidence from the least partisan sources or a mix of them, come to a conclusion. But if you start from the assumption that it does not, you are either fooling yourself or trying unsuccessfully to fool others with the notion that you're "thinking for yourself." Someone else did that thinking.

And understand that this would be entirely true even if your starting point were correct, and even if all your conclusions were correct.

You can be the fastest human ever, but if you jump the gun at the starting blocks, you've cheated, even if you win the race by ten times the difference.

I'll tell you how I came to not believe in the virus.

As soon as we were shown images of people falling flat on their face in Wuhan I have to admit I thought, "Psyop"! Immediately. Because people falling flat on their face due to a virus is in complete contradiction of reality and in psyops they always feed us obvious nonsense. Other nonsenses were people laid out on the ground and on hospital floors and stories about hospitals being erected in 48 hours, snakes found to be "reservoirs" of the virus and a few other things.

I always keep an open mind, however, because if evidence contradicts what I believe I have to accept it, right?

Well, none came along. We see all the PPE, the coffins, the digging of graves, the spraying of streets, hazmat suits. So what?

For months and months I didn't know a single soul or know anyone who knew anyone or very few who'd even tested positive. I had zero sense of what this "covid" was. But there was loads of propaganda 24/7, all the "cases" - the result of a test, not a diagnosis. There were 313,000 cases of the flu in 2019 in Australia. Did we get those cases told every day. Did any of us know a thing about people getting the flu and pneumonia. No.

Nothing adds up in the pandemic story and I just do not know how people continue to believe it.

 

[Blue Mountain]

You are entitled to believe whatever aspect you think is absurd, Nick, I think everything about the situation is absurd. Of course, I don't believe in the virus, its alleged variants, I believe in nothing of this pandemic, however, even if I did I'd think it absurd that someone who is perfectly well is kept under house arrest for 7 days for testing positive for an illness she shows no signs of ... and was obliged to pay the money I stated.

I'm assuming the money was paid to a private company. Have you looked into the possibility of getting reimbursed by your locality's (city, county, or state) health board?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

crystal clear

"Abstract
The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus continually lead to worldwide human infections and deaths. Currently, there is no specific viral protein-targeted therapeutics. Viral nucleocapsid protein is a potential antiviral drug target, serving multiple critical functions during the viral life cycle. However, the structural information of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein remains unclear. Herein, we have determined the 2.7 Å crystal structure of the N-terminal RNA binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein. Although the overall structure is similar as other reported coronavirus nucleocapsid protein N-terminal domain, the surface electrostatic potential characteristics between them are distinct. Further comparison with mild virus type HCoV-OC43 equivalent domain demonstrates a unique potential RNA binding pocket alongside the β-sheet core. Complemented by in vitro binding studies, our data provide several atomic resolution features of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein N-terminal domain, guiding the design of novel antiviral agents specific targeting to SARS-CoV-2." link

The crystal structures of more than one protein from this virus have been determined. If someone wishes to argue that the virus is not real, I would want to know what is diffracting the x-rays. On another front, The Economist magazine has been doing their own research, tracking excess deaths in many countries. The graphs of excess deaths versus time are one indication that the pandemic is real.

 

[Foster Zygote]

How revealing of you to say that, when the fake racists at the Youngkin event are merely the most recent proof.

Years ago I saw footage of a peaceful protest (IIRC it was in Quebec) where two guys joined the march with rocks in their hands as the march reached the police line. Some protesters pointed and shouted "They have rocks, stop them". The protestors tackled them and took them down. The two guys crawled toward the police line, which opened for them. As they disappeared among the police, a protestor pointed out that the two guys wore boots identical to boots the police were wearing.

"...invoking paranoid fantasies about sinister plots" .....Really.?

But I would understand your reaction, if the 'agent provocateur' thing is a new concept for you. I recall often seeing the same reaction from others unaware of it, when the possibility is mentioned. It still happens today.

As an example of general ignorance of such deception practices.........Just about a week ago, I noticed some of the MSM was explaining "false flag attack" to their audiences, after mentioning FFA on air regarding Putin and Ukraine. So dont feel bad if you are just now learning about agents provocateur.

Bubba, your anecdotes (and obvious lies) about "agents provocateur" (a word you've obviously just encountered and think looks cool when you write it) are as useless as your anecdotes about your "doctor friend" and your "cartographer friend".

I forgive you for your condescending comment.

If that makes you feel better, then good for you. But I still have nothing but condescension for the ridiculous arguments you've presented here. The map alignment claim is proof that you will never admit that you're wrong about anything, even when the evidence is undeniably obvious. As I've been saying for years, conspiracy theories are gnostic cults that appeal to certain people by letting them believe that they are special - that they are among the smartest people on earth because they see a big secret that everyone else isn't clever enough to uncover. That's why they dig in even harder when the ******** they conspicuously consume and regurgitate is shown to be just that - ********. It's not about finding the truth. When the truth turns out to contradict the cult dogma that gives them their special feeling of superiority, whether it's regarding QAnon, maps, or a massive scientific consensus, then the truth becomes the enemy and excuses must be found to declare it part of the conspiracy.

Some conspiracy theories are almost amusingly stupid, like flat earth. But we're now approaching 1,000,000 deaths in the U.S. alone due to COVID-19. I know people who have been made very ill by this virus, and I know people who have died. Many millions of lives have been infected worldwide. That puts this particular conspiracy theory in the 'dangerously stupid' category.

So give me all the passive-aggressive "forgiveness" you want, I don't care. Your ridiculously poor attempts to advance this dangerously stupid conspiracy theory will still earn condescension from me, and many others.

 

[Petra]

First off, Off-Guardian is a psuedo-science site. They're not over-the-top tin foil hat crackpots, but they don't have a good rating:

Source

That said, I went ahead and read the article. Here are some comments.

Those who criticise the mainstream will get bad reports from factchecker sites. Can we please dispense with factchecker sites' opinions and just stick to the actual material?

Good! They've made a point and back it up with a link. Where does the link go? A web site called Uncover DC.

We're off to a bad start: one meaningless piece of rhetoric and a failed fact check from a crank site.

In this short video Kary Mullis says: "PCR doesn't tell you that you're sick and it doesn't tell you that the thing you ended up with will hurt you ..."
https://odysee.com/@yellowgenius:0/...y-Mullis--It-doesn't-tell-you-you're-sick-.:4

I think from this quote we can infer he doesn't believe it is a diagnostic test but, in any case, on the packets of PCR tests they say things such as "For Use Under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) Only" "not for diagnostic purposes", "aid in diagnosis" so even the producers of the tests themselves don't regard it as a proper diagnostic tool. So right there is a problem, isn't there? Because cases are based purely on a test result, they are not considered in combination with a clinical diagnosis from a doctor, even though the test clearly isn't a diagnostic test

So now it's off to the New York Times article. It's from 2007, more than a decade before COVID, but that's not reason enough to dismiss it. It's a cautionary tale about using in-house, home brew tests to determine if a pathogen is loose in a facility. When these tests were followed up with a much better test (cell cultures,) the home brew tests were discovered to raise a lot of false positives.

Except PCR tests aren't "home brew." They're an established technology being used for the purpose for which they were invented: amplifying DNA sequences.

No, in the case of covid they're not being used to amplify DNA sequences, they're being used to test for infection by an alleged RNA virus.

Repeating the Off-Guardian article, it says there is no better ("gold standard") test for Sars-Cov-2 than the PCR test itself, which is a circular reference and not a good thing. It back up its statement with an article in the British Journal of Medicine:

Yes, she did say that in the article and indicated it was a problem. She then went on for five paragraphs with numerous references on how to improve the state of testing and interpretation.

I'd take that with a grain of salt.

Both the Off-Guardian and the BMJ articles are from the first half of 2020. They're over a year and a half old by now. And guess what—there is a now gold standard for Sars-Cov-2. We have its genome and we have pictures of it. We're sequencing hundreds of thousands instances of the virus using second and third generation techniques: Genomic sequencing: Here’s how researchers identify omicron and other COVID-19 variants [The Conversation.]

The claim of genomic sequencing is disputed (see below). Let's say there now is a gold standard. Are you OK with the fact that there wasn't all this time, that a test that wasn't a gold standard was being used by itself to "diagnose" a condition. Surely, if the test was admitted not to be a gold standard a covid case should surely have been determined not by the test alone but in combination with a diagnosis by a doctor.

You will not find disputation of the genomic sequence in a reputable peer-reviewed journal, you will find it places that fact-checkers label "pseudoscience" and "conspiracy theory" or completely ignore. That is a given. If you venture out of the mainstream bubble that is where you are obliged to stick your nose.
In this paper you'll find a section critiquing the science used to create the genome sequence.
https://drsambailey.com/covid-19/the-covid-19-fraud-war-on-humanity/

One final thought: Just because a year and a half ago there was some question about the effectiveness of the PCR test, it does not stand to reason the Sar-Cov-2 virus does not exist, as you so boldly claim. The virus most certainly exists: we have its genome and pictures of it. Science overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that it causes a disease called COVID-19, one that so far has killed about 5.7 million people worldwide.

If sars-2 exists or if it doesn't, just as if there is a genuine pandemic or not, there will be evidence from a number of angles, not all of them in the scientific realm. What we see are problems in the narrative at every single turn. The suspicion of a new virus in the first place is not based on a scientific foundation. So the narrative starts with fraudulent science! Why would we expect it to right itself?

I've asked a couple of times on this thread for someone to argue against the claim that the suspicion of a new virus has no scientific foundation. No one has replied yet.

1. UNSCIENTIFIC: SUSPICION OF NEW VIRUS
Suspicion of a "novel" virus is based on an alleged "cluster" of 44 cases of pneumonia of "unknown origin" in the highly-polluted city of Wuhan.
44 cases doesn't make a cluster and pneumonia has many causes - "unknown origin" makes no sense.
Then, if indeed these 44 cases of pneumonia were caused by a novel virus why is the association between pneumonia and the novel virus now completely lost?
https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2020-DON229

 

[Petra]

Dr Mark Bailey and Dr John Bevan-Smith did not use science, they used BS and seem to be conspiracy theorists.

DID you read their BS/Paper? There is evidence or paranoia and no science.

Yes I did although I cannot claim to understand it all. Do you see how your comment has no critical content simply assertion.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Asking if agents provocateur carried flags among the truckers caused a stir... Should I apologize?

Since we all know by now that such tricksters are always a possibility...(recent example of similar players being the fake racist white supremacists showing up with torches at a Youngkin event, pretending to support him) ...I thought actual skeptics would naturally agree we dont actually know who carried the offensive flags.


Instead, we see "Defending racists", which is nonsense. Instead of apologizing, maybe I should be thanked for facilitating a lame abusive tirade, with its latest neurological payoff.

Equating a known (and possibly deployed) practice of inserting agents provocateur with 'annunaki reptilian' nonsense was a great pseudo *flag* to fly, in itself. Revealing. Good job!


BTW I did not see any pics or footage of the flag carriers.

Why didn't those not Nazis at the demo do anything to stop the Nazis carrying their swastikas?

Why aren't they all speaking out to distance themselves from the Nazi flag carriers and disown their support?

 

[Foster Zygote]

IAs soon as we were shown images of people falling flat on their face in Wuhan I have to admit I thought, "Psyop"! Immediately.

Could you share some of these images with us? And please define what you mean by "people falling flat on their faces". Are you claiming to have seen video of people standing or walking who suddenly fell forward onto their faces, and that this was attributed to COVID-19?

 

[carlitos]

This is what you do all day, just rebleat nonsense from scammers, crackpots, and propagandists. There's nothing on OffGuardian that deserves anyone's time or energy. They have nothing to contribute to science or understanding.

You've shown over and over that you don't understand science, reality, or much of anything else. Don't try to make it my problem.

Are you saying that being enough of a crank to get booted from the guardian comments section doesn’t make you highly qualified in epidemiology? What, you want them to go to school or something?

 

[Resume]

Oh yeah, Agents provocateurs - they're everywhere.

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away

 

[Resume]

This is what I'm clear on: There is no evidence of a virus sars-cov-2

Nope.

Fact Check-SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and its complete genome has been sequenced.

 

[Resume]

Asking if agents provocateur carried flags among the truckers caused a stir... Should I apologize?

No, you should provide evidence to support you claim, rather than be a serial bald asserter.

CANE.

 

[abaddon]

I asked you a simple question that you haven't answered. You pushed a link at me that was supposed to respond to an article I posted. I asked you to specify what in the article the paper addressed and you haven't done that.

It is you who have zero credibility.

This is a summary of the article I link to. See if you can debunk any of it - peer-reviewed papers - or any source at all - any at all debunking it welcome.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/

Well then we should ban voice and flight data recorders on commercial aircraft, right? we have no right to record that kind of private data, right?

snip bollocks

none of the rest of your post has any relation to truth

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Bragg's law is still in effect

I've asked a couple of times on this thread for someone to argue against the claim that the suspicion of a new virus has no scientific foundation. No one has replied yet.

See comment #2679.

 

[Resume]

Less clear:
Whether viruses exist at all

Crystal clear.

Fact check: Viruses harmful to humans are proven to exist.

A Facebook post with over 350 shares as of May 25, 2020 falsely claims that deadly viruses are a “hoax” and that no virus harmful to humans has been shown to exist.

The post includes a photo overlaid with text (here ). The text on the image contains several remarks on the issue vaccination, alongside the claim: "No "virus" harmful to humans has ever been proven to exist". This claim is untrue.

Lynda Coughlin, a virologist (twitter.com/Virusnerdette) and Assistant Professor in Microbiology at Mount Sinai Hospital (here) told Reuters: “The statement that "no virus harmful to humans has ever been proven to exist" is absolutely false. There are numerous examples of viruses which are known to cause disease in humans. In the same way we can trace DNA left at the scene of the crime, scientists can identify viruses which are the cause of human disease by isolating them from infected individuals, sequencing their genetic material to identify them, directly visualising them (by electron microscopy) and indirectly visualising their effects on cells, as well as confirming their ability to cause disease by testing isolated and characterised viruses in animal models”.

 

[varwoche]

It is you who have zero credibility.

So says a poster who doubts the very existence of viruses. Not just covid -- all viruses.

Thank you for providing this succinct opportunity to mock you.