monart

Yes, to some, psycho-epistemological barriers to autonomous discovery of the truth are difficult to detect and acknowledge, especially when faced with the potential feelings of fear and guilt.

Many tips and clues are posted by the participants here. The fundamental question is: Has the alleged cause of covid, the "novel SARS-CoV-2", been scientifically proven to exist and be identifiable by a process of isolation and purification? In answering this question, there may be distractions and diversions from its primacy and the controversy that, after 4 years, the answer may still be in the negative. Note that there is an as-yet unclaimed 1.5 million Euros award to any “virologist who presents scientific proof of the existence of a corona virus, including documented control experiments of all steps taken in the proof.”

What's different is that the belief in covid is based on science, so say the covid believers. Our belief is based on observation, experimentation, evidence, logic, and all the methods of reason; whereas, the belief in God is based on revelation, authority, testimonials, intuition, faith. So, do you, the covid believers, know that covid exists by your own reason? Or, do you know it by reliance on the authority of (some of the) experts in virology and epidemiology? For most of us, of course, we have to trust the consensus of experts; we don't have the knowledge or time to learn and know it for ourselves, which is normal and to be expected, for all knowledge outside our own fields. Isn't your trust in covid experts is similar to that of the God believers' trust in their pastors, priests, popes, and theologians? Not at all. Our trust is based on science and the science of the experts. So it's rational for you to trust the covid experts, but not rational for the God believers to trust their God experts. Yet you both don't know for yourself the existence of covid/God. What if belief in either is unjustified because the experts haven't told the whole truth? How do you find out?

Reflecting on all the facets of the covid pandemic tyranny, there is much to think about - even if to most people, it's like a nightmare better to be forgotten, or even if, to a few others, it's like a comedy gone stale and no longer amusing. What's more to look at? The murky reality of "SARS-CoV-2" and "Covid-19" raises doubts in the minds of independent thinkers about the objective existence and identification of a distinct, "novel" virus causing a new respiratory disease, deadly enough to justify a pandemic tyranny. But why then have so many people, the overwhelming majority, including most Objectivists, believe in covid? Consider this: For thousands of years, nearly everyone believed in some God/gods. Even today, in our enlightened, scientific age, according to surveys, 85% of the world population reportedly believe in a God, over 6 billion people – including 2.4 billion Christian (1.4B Catholic), 2 billion Islamic, and1.1 billion Hindu – all preaching and practicing selfless service to God and the needs of others. Why do these mystical beliefs in unproved, non-existent beings and irrational concepts endure and persist? What's similar, and what's different, between belief in God/Christ and belief in covid?

My "overall purpose" on this topic is to expose the truth by challenging believers in "SARS-CoV-2" and "Covid-19" to check their premises, think for themselves, and hold reason as absolute. I myself did that, and have been pointing to what I and others have found. Am I mistaken? Lying? Deluded? Ill-willed? What else have I posted, here or elsewhere? I appreciate and am grateful that, in response to this challenge, each one of you have given it attention and posted your replies. I have learned and am encouraged that there are Objectivists here who are curious and caring about the truth of covid. My will was good, and I've received goodwill in return.

That may have happened for new potential exposure to (outdoor but not indoor) air pollutants, but not to pre-existing and ongoing cases of polluted-air caused respiratory illnesses/deaths. For these prior cases, being kept indoors and wearing masks by anti-pandemic measures would have been too late and unhelpful. The significant and premier example of this was in Wuhan, where there was already an epidemic of respiratory illnesses/deaths due to the prior years of increasingly severe air pollution, against which there had been daily protests -- until the CCP's draconian covid lockdowns were imposed. How many of these pollution cases were re-diagnosed as covid? Indeed, the first paper reporting on the study that discovered a "novel coronavirus" (a paper which I read myself and have referenced a few times here), does not account for the polluted-air caused cases in the selection of patients for their study. {And the study team admitted, when asked, that they had not isolated and purified the "novel" virus and yet had sequenced "it".)

Yes, and I did acknowledge your point here, where I also wrote that not all respiratory illnesses/deaths are caused by microbes; some are caused by breathing polluted, toxic air, and some by other, non-microbial causes.

Is covid's existence not "the question", because it's definitively proven, or because it's a trivial, unimportant question? Why was the "government response "100% wrong", if covid is real, deadly, and contagious, given the legal emergency and quarantine powers, and the moral-political principles prevailing? Indeed, the government had the legal responsibility, if covid is real, to STOP THE SPREAD, even at the suffering and loss of individuals.

Double-checking back, I acknowledge that I don't clearly know what you did or did not claim. What do you really claim?

The "massive amounts of health care workers", or any number of believers or partial believers, don't need to be "lying", they don't need to be"involved in a huge conspiracy". They don't even need to know the truth; they just need to believe, trust in the "experts" and authorities, do their jobs, keep their head and eyes down, and just do as they're told. The "list" of "evidence" are all downstream and derivative, contingent for validity on the primary evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has been proven to exist definitively and distinctly, by its having been isolated and purified. Verified documentation is yet to be found for this proof. Continued attempts to use "deaths", "vaccines", and consensus as "evidence from reality" are really just circular reasoning and begging the question, along with appeals to popularity, authority, and ignorance. My "overall purpose" on this topic is to expose the truth by challenging believers in "SARS-CoV-2" and "Covid-19" to check their premises, think for themselves, and hold reason as absolute. I myself did that, and have been pointing to what I and others have found. Am I mistaken? Lying? Deluded? Ill-willed? What else have I posted, here or elsewhere?

That's about sums it up. Add: "And that's sufficient justification to impose global pandemic tyranny (following the WHO-extolled exemplar of China)."

Where is the "massive amount of evidence"? Do you know of one paper clearly showing that SARS-CoV-2 was isolated and purified?. Investigators have searched and have yet to find or receive one. As has been repeatedly pointed out, the claim that SARS-CoV-2 has not been proven, by isolation and purification, to exist with a distinct and definite identity, is not the same claim as that it doesn't exist. It's not a "conspiracy theory" to not accept a claim without proof. The burden of proof is on they who assert, not on the non-believer to disprove the assertion. It's a credit to Objectivism, on this topic, that its epistemology (and ethics) are applied and Ayn Rand's advice is followed, to "check your premises", think for oneself, with "reason as one's only absolute". "Nothing to do with Miss Rand's philosophy in any manner"?

To claim that covid vaccine research is "direct proof" of SARS-CoV-2's existence and identity, is the same circular reasoning as the claim that covid deaths are also proofs. They both assume that which is yet to be proven (proven with a definite, not probabilistic identity). Even if 99% of the FOI request were administrative exclusions (which they're not, as shown by Christine Massey's notarized documents), why aren't there the 1% of records (research papers) of SARS-CoV-2 having been isolated and purified? Moreover, a sampling of papers, including the first one from Wuhan, show no isolation and purification were done. Authors of some of those papers, when contacted, confirmed that they did not do isolation and purification. Even more revealing, apologists have insisted that current microbiology neither practice nor require virus isolation, and that virus identification is in percentages of probability. (See earlier posts on all this.)

What are your grounds for claiming that the anti-pandemic measure did reduce the cases of covid (when the existence of covid is yet to be verified without using circular reasoning or appeals to authority)?

Yes, the asserting side ultimately says: no definitive proof is available or required, just percentages of probability of existence and identity. That's sufficient to justify tyranny. Have trust in the goodwill of governments and their medical expert authorities.

Good point - but not for all cases. Some of the anti-pandemic measures may have reduced the spread and reported cases of some respiratory diseases due to microbes, but not those from other causes like asthma, malnutrition, or air pollution (in heavily polluted cities like Wuhan, Beijing, and Mumbai). And, like Tad asked, why did the anti-pandemic measures not also reduced the covid cases in the same way? Moreover, the funding and group-thinking factors would have biased diagnoses in favor of covid rather than other diseases, especially when misdiagnosed by the unreliable and inaccurate PCR/PCR-derived tests yielding significant false positives of covid due to over-amplification (assuming SARS-CoV-2 has been definitively identified).

Yes, a conflict of interest. And yes, "interesting", in the Spock's sense. "Fascinating" is how so many so easily suspended their own judgement and gave away their trust.

Covid-19, Excess Deaths? A baker's dozen or more ways to find the truth of something like "Covid-19 Pandemic". It's as easy as pie, a piece of cake, the proof is in the pudding. Whether or not, or in whichever way, that SARS-CoV-2 has been proven to exist, just check the pre-2019 records (regional or global) for the numbers of respiratory illnesses/deaths from all causes (microbial and non-microbial). Compare those numbers with 2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023 numbers, taking into account the usual changes in demographics. The cases of "Covid-19" illnesses/deaths, if any, would be the new, excess cases, occurring in addition to the numbers trending from the previous years or even for 2023. Since it's hard to fake deaths on a massive scale needed for the pandemic, it's easier to re-label other pre-existing respiratory deaths as due to "covid" (covid, "because" there's a covid pandemic happening). Have there been excess deaths caused by covid? Or, do the numbers show that covid may be a cure for the common cold and other respiratory diseases?

No, I didn't misunderstand your implication; I chose to respond to the debunking article itself, instead of your implication, because the former is more factual than the latter (even if the latter is still interesting to me).

The onus of proof is on they who assert (the existence of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19), not on others to disprove their assertion. David, it's not worthwhile for me to keep replying to you when you don't read (carefully enough) what I write to you and to others, and not when you let yourself be stuck on "trust", "experts", and "faith". Thanks, though, for your looking at this at all.

Yes, I've read this article before, with its mutually contradictory debunkings. At the same time that it throws out links to papers that claim/appear to have isolated and purified SARS-CoV-2 (and "therefore" the virus does exist), it also links to another article that acknowledges that modern microbiology does not require or practice virus isolation or purification and thus the FOI no-records-found. The link to images show pictures with little or no captions describing what the pictures are about, besides the title, "SARS-CoV-2" and the other few words like "related to" and "models of". This is far from being an adequate debunking. Suppose that somewhere there is documentation of isolation, purification, and identification of SARS-CoV-2 showing beyond a reasonable doubt that the novel virus exists (or existed). If so, the next claim is unproven, that it causes "Severe" and "Acute" respiratory illnesses and deaths that are new and extra to the usual respiratory illnesses and deaths from other causes (including non-microbial causes like pollution and malnutrition) or from various co-morbidities like asthma or old age. Then there are the other challenges to the accuracy of PCR tests as diagnostic tools, the reliability of the covid case numbers, the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine, the legality and morality of mask mandates and lockdowns, and so on. Grant that current microbiology may not be advanced yet to easily, definitively identify new viruses (or even "old" ones), so that it's expected to yield only percentages of probability that such and such virus exists and has such and such identity. On the frontiers of research, in highly specialized fields, this may be normal and acceptable science. In most cases, this exploratory, vanguard research is of interest or relevance to the specialists and not to most others. But when such provisional findings or claims are quickly used to justify a declaration of a pandemic and the subsequent global tyranny, then suspicions about deception and malice could arise. Suppose in a court trial, an accused murderer is convicted, based on the accused being the closest one among a crowd gathered around the victim, and on the accused resembling some other convicted murderers on record. No murder weapon linked to the accused was found, nor any witnesses to the murder when it happened. Yet the judge and jury pronounced the accused guilty and sentenced to death or to life-imprisonment, depending on the jurisdiction. Is this a fair trial?

No, David, your paraphrasing is not correct. It's not "an act of faith" on my part, as an Objectivist, to challenge the government-medical-academic-media propagated and imposed belief held by "99.99% of people on the planet": the belief that "SARS-CoV-2" has been isolated and proven to exist, that it caused millions of new and excess respiratory illnesses and deaths worldwide, and that the spread of this "Covid-19 pandemic" must be stopped by testing, distancing, masking, lockdowns, and vaccination. Empowered morally and politically by altruism and collectivism, the consequent, even greater tyranny caused untold loss and suffering, in varying degrees and various ways, on believers and non-believers alike, and for decades to come. I am among those who challenge all this. Following the law of Identity, the principles of Onus of Proof, and other basic reasoning, the challenges by the unbelievers, (who include microbiologists, epidemiologists, and other medical specialists marginalized and muzzled by the ruling establishments) were directed at one or more claims of the "Covid-19 pandemic" -- the most fundamental challenge being that SARS-CoV-2 has not been shown to be isolated, purified, and distinctly identified. Many papers claiming or appearing to have done the isolation, on closer examination, have not actually done so. Numerous FOI requests worldwide for records of isolation have resulted in "no records found" (any administrative exclusions notwithstanding). Over the years, I, myself, have read a few of the papers, including the first, "progenitive" one from China ("A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019") and found that, among other flaws and biases, it did not report actual isolation and purification. Here are other examples of non-isolation, as confirmed by the authors themselves of those papers (quoted here from the book Virus Mania) --- Sharon R. Lewin et al. Isolation and rapid sharing of the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) from the first patient diagnosed with COVID -19 In Australia, The Medical Journal of Australia, June 2020, pp. 459-462 Jason A. Roberts and Julian Druce "The nucleic acid extraction was performed on isolate material recovered from infected cells. This material was not centrifuged, so was not purified through sucrose gradient to have a density band as such. The EM images were obtained directly from cell culture material." October 5, 2020 Leo L. M. Poon; Malik Peiris. Emergence of a novel human coronavirus threatening human health, Nature Medicine, March 2020 Malik Peiris "The image is the virus budding from an infected cell. It is not purified virus." May 12, 2020 Myung-Guk Han et al. Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19, Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives, February 2020 Myung-Guk Han "We could not estimate the degree of purification because we do not purify and concentrate the virus cultured in cells." May 6, 2020 Wan Beom Park et al. Virus Isolation from the First Patient with SARS-CoV-2 In Korea, Journal of Korean Medical Science, February 24, 2020 Wan Beom Park "We did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification." March 19, 2020 Na Zhu et al. A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019, New England Journal of Medicine, February 20, 2020 Wenjie Tan "(We show] an image of sedimented virus particles, not purified ones." March 18, 2020 --- So, on this basic challenge, the believers just have to present one paper that actually, unequivocally, definitively, shows that SAR-CoV-2 was isolated. (Excuses that current microbiology doesn't require or practice virus isolation is no excuse, professionally, scientifically, or philosophically.) If such a paper is presented and verified (unlikely because of the flawed progenitor study from China to which all subsequent studies reference for the purported original genetic sequence), then this basic challenge will be met, even if the other challenges still remain.

No, I don't know (but I haven't read all her updates) of any FOI requests by Christine Massey or her team for records of other microbes having been isolated, such as a specific bacterium or cancerous cell. I presume they were interested in SARS-CoV-2, primarily, and other infectious viruses, secondarily. That they did not do the "test-run" you suggested does not, alone, explain why the "no records found" results. As I said, in my previous reply to you: The FOI requests were carefully worded to ensure that "isolation" means separate from everything else, worded so for the very reason that those who claimed they isolated SARS-CoV-2 did not actually do so. No, David did not show it will "always" happen. (I will be responding to him.) He only showed that some FOI requests may return with "no records found", due to administrative/temporal and miscellaneous non-topic-related causes. You yourself earlier quoted one example of a FOI result that did acknowledge understanding of the terms of the request by claiming that microbiological practice does not require actual virus isolation; "therefore", no records of such isolation. Even if 99% of all the FOI requests resulting in administrative "no records found", where are 1% records that show SARS-CoV-2 having been isolated? It's a professional, scientific, and philosophic abdication of reason if current microbiology insists that isolation, purification, and definitive identification of a virus is neither required nor practiced. And, even more severe, that such an unproven claim of SARS-Cov-2's existence is supposedly enough to justify the global pandemic tyranny.

Add to that, the historical, scientific, and philosophical challenges to the claim that vaccination is actually safe, effective, necessary, and moral: such as Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History

Yes, "covid-19" wasn't the first "outbreak". The earlier ones, in retrospect, look like preparatory, regional trial "epidemics" for the global "covid-19 pandemic", when added with the pandemic simulations conducted by government/medical representatives during the year prior to the March 11 WHO pandemic declaration: simulations such as "Event 201" and "Crimson Contagion", the latter based on the scenario of a virus outbreak in Wuhan!