The sentence I highlighted is objectively and indisputably untrue. I myself have replied to that at least twice (see quotations below), and others have replied as well.
Petra doesn't like those replies, but to say no one has even replied is either (1) a lie or (2) symptomatic of losing all touch with reality.
Here is the relevant portion of my first reply to that:
Here is the relevant portion of my second reply:
Petra is still asking the same thing while claiming no one has even replied to it. Here, therefore, is my third reply:
Not to mention almost 400 million subsequent cases and more than 5 million deaths.
If you had paid attention and responded honestly, I would not have had to repeat that.
I didn't think it was necessary to point out that "the association between pneumonia and the novel virus"
has never been lost.
I note also that
Petra's obviously false claim that no one has replied to
Petra's statement reflects poorly on
Petra's credibility.
I looked at the rationale for his belief
before calling him a crackpot. Come to think of it, I don't recall ever calling Mullis a crackpot, although I can't deny that
Mullis exhibited many traits generally associated with crackpots:
In 2010,
Mullis said
That was an odd thing for Mullis to say, because "
In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family." Yet
retroviridae is a family. That means Mullis was saying he had come to believe AIDS is caused by retroviruses belonging to some genus of the retroviridae family.
Mullis was also saying he didn't think AIDS was caused by just one species of some genus of retroviruses, but that was an odd thing to say because the word "species" doesn't really apply to retroviruses, which do not reproduce sexually.
Summing up: Kary Mullis eventually came to believe AIDS was caused by retroviruses, though not all genuses of retrovirus cause AIDS. That is of course the mainstream opinion. Mullis apparently didn't know enough biology to state that mainstream opinion clearly, but we can forgive that: He was 65 years old at the time, speaking off the cuff, and his academic training and professional experience were in chemistry, not biology.
Having been on both sides of the peer review process, I can report that some heretical work does get submitted to mainstream publications and funding agencies, but it seldom survives peer review.
Having published a couple of articles that overturned conventional wisdom on some esoteric subject that is not otherwise relevant to this thread, I can also report that while it's harder to publish surprising results that go against the mainstream, it is also possible (with persistence) to publish such results in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals.
Is that the same principle that leads us to doubt the credibility of someone who lies about whether anyone has replied to a post? And also ignores and/or misrepresents Kary Mullis's (admittedly rather confused) opinions on the cause of AIDS?
Ahem.
Petra has been wrong about so many things, ranging from the trivial (whether anyone has replied) to the semi-relevant (Kary Mullis's eventual agreement with the mainstream opinion that AIDS is caused by retroviruses) and relevant (whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus exists at all), that what
Petra may be "clear on" is not a reliable guide to anything. From the evidence
Petra has supplied within this thread, it would be fair to say
Petra's opinions on matters of science are worthless.
It would be nice to see some evidence of that.
No credible source has disputed the fact that SARS-CoV-2 has been sequenced.
Petra continues to rely upon incredible sources:
That's Sam Bailey, who denies that any virus has ever caused any disease.
Bailey's opinion is at odds with Kary Mullis's opinion that AIDS is caused by retroviruses, and with the opinions of all credible scientists, including scientists who have won Nobel prizes for showing that specific viruses cause specific diseases.
I'm sorry to disappoint
Petra by refusing to waste my time rebutting an obvious crackpot's obvious crackpottery, but others have already done that within this thread.
As Aesop explained millennia ago, life is too short to pay attention every time the village idiot cries wolf.
