Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny

[monart]

19 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Belief in all things covid is more complicated, I think, than whether or not one believes there was a specific viron spreading through the human population.

One reason to defend one's belief 'in it' is to rationalize the relinquishing of autonomy and especially among those who are cognizant of the level of prize they allot to individualism and productivity and the associated emotional responses that are tied into that relinquishment.  

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.

[monart]

20 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

. . . Covid, on the other hand, is a specific, testable, and tested scientific claim.

 

Again, no documentation has been found or offered, verifying that SAR-CoV-2 has been isolated, purified, and distinctly identified as a new existent, and, furthermore, that it cause Covid-19. Ignoring this fact may lead one to the distraction of comparing "having covid" to having appendicitis or malaria. No tyranny has ever been imposed because of appendicitis or malaria, or the common cold.

[monart]

 

The key to not devolving into epistemological nihilism is to reject unsupported denial as a logical tool. To deny that an individual has appendicitis or the common cold, you must offer superior evidence that they have a specific alternative. My initial hypothesis regarding covid was that I had strep throat. I refuted that in two ways. First, the probative throat pustules of strep were lacking. Second, the antigen test was positive. My knowledge of what I had was not complete, for example I do not know which of 5 variants I was infested with, and certainly not which of the thousands of sub-mutations. The broader lesson is that you don’t deny knowledge just because you are not omniscient.

Again, the SARS-CoV-2/Covid -19 (S/C) non-believer is not primarily making the claim that S/C doesn't exist; the claim is that the S/C believers have yet to provide proof of S/C's existence. Your conclusion that you had covid and not strep throat (or any other respiratory illness like the cold) may be understandable at the time, "because there's a covid pandemic", but what about now? Is the fact that S/C is yet to be proven to exist as claimed, not actually a fact, and not really relevant?

[AlexL]

3 hours ago, monart said:

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.”

Interesting.

But have you checked what happened after the challenge was proposed?  Did anyone accept the challenge?

I would be cautious about a 1.5 million award: is it a honest offer, not a bogus one? Does the person/organization have this kind of money? Who will evaluate the scientific proof? Etc.

IOW: have you establish the seriousness of this award offer?

[DavidOdden]

As I mentioned at least twice above, “SARS-CoV-2 Production, Purification Methods and UV Inactivation for Proteomics and Structural Studies” provides the proof that you have demanded, which incidentally is an unreasonable demand (evidence is evidence, you don’t get to arbitrarily stipulate what constitutes evidence). You have not addressed the facts, instead you retreat behind automatic denial as a means of evading the science. In the face of evidence having been presented, it is incumbent on you to disprove that evidence. Indeed, I have no evidence that you have even looked at that article, and I can think of no rational reason for your refusal to directly address the science. You offer no alternative conclusion regarding the axiomatic (the myriad scientific observations of covid), instead you just repeat your denial without evidence to support an alternative, nor do you even state what such an alternative is. In other words, you are engaging in selective epistemological nihilism.

My current counter-offer is that you should provide evidence that malaria exists: I will take the position that you have taken, which is to just deny that malaria exists. I sincerely hope that you do not hold a political-consequences theory of epistemology, that the standards of proof depends not on the logic of the claim and the objective nature of the existent, but are determined by whether the existent has been misused to support initiation of force. Under which logic, I substitute measles, smallpox or Spanish flu in my challenge to you, all of which triggered tyrannical governmental responses. I would like to see what you consider to be acceptable proof that malaria exists, and see some reasoning as to why you find that evidence to be sufficient (unless, of course, you are also a malaria-denier).

[Doug Morris]

Isn't it proven that there was a big spike in respiratory deaths starting in 2020, which must have had some cause or causes?

 

[monart]

20 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

As I mentioned at least twice above, “SARS-CoV-2 Production, Purification Methods and UV Inactivation for Proteomics and Structural Studies” provides the proof that you have demanded, which incidentally is an unreasonable demand (evidence is evidence, you don’t get to arbitrarily stipulate what constitutes evidence). . . .enier).

Again, papers like “SARS-CoV-2 Production, Purification Methods and UV Inactivation for Proteomics and Structural Studies” appear to have identified SARS-CoV-2 definitively and independently, but a reading of the documentation shows otherwise. Yes, as I've said before, I've read the paper you named (along with several others over the years, including the progenitor paper from Wuhan, "A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019".)

The purpose of the paper is to offer a new, better method of purification that can be applied to SARS-CoV-2 (SC2). The method was developed using an SC2 sample that the authors did not acquire themselves directly from a patient, but from another, outside source, "SARS-CoV2 isolate Finland/1/2020". They cultured and re-purified it, then compared it with "the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan (NC_045512.2) reference genome" for validation of their new purification method. So the paper is actually a description of how the authors (re)purified what they assumed to be SC2 (from Finland) and then compared it with the originally alleged SC2 genome (from Wuhan).

The first study from Wuhan that reported a "novel coronavirus" is the primary reference study to which all subsequent studies. As I pointed out before, and as close reading would show, the Wuhan study is biased, flawed, and suspect, in ways that include the authors' not taking into account the pre-existing respiratory disease epidemic from the severe air pollution in Wuhan.

[monart]

21 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Isn't it proven that there was a big spike in respiratory deaths starting in 2020, which must have had some cause or causes?

 

I didn't find any proof. I'd be glad to see any that you've found.

[monart]

22 hours ago, AlexL said:

Interesting.

But have you checked what happened after the challenge was proposed?  Did anyone accept the challenge?

I would be cautious about a 1.5 million award: is it a honest offer, not a bogus one? Does the person/organization have this kind of money? Who will evaluate the scientific proof? Etc.

IOW: have you establish the seriousness of this award offer?

Good cautionary questions. No, I've not given it a serious look; I just note that it would be an easy award to win if SARS-CoV-2 has already been isolated.

[AlexL]

3 hours ago, monart said:

On 2/20/2024 at 8:32 PM, AlexL said:

But have you checked what happened after the challenge was proposed?  Did anyone accept the challenge?

I would be cautious about a 1.5 million award: is it a honest offer, not a bogus one? Does the person/organization have this kind of money? Who will evaluate the scientific proof? Etc.

IOW: have you established the seriousness of this award offer?

Good cautionary questions. No, I've not given it a serious look; I just note that it would be an easy award to win if SARS-CoV-2 has already been isolated.

Yes, indeed,  it would be an easy award to win if SARS-CoV-2 has already been isolated. You suggest that, as nobody took up the challenge, SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated.

If you have given it a serious look, you would have seen that the offer is not quite serious:

From the site and the video linked to, I saw that the person who initiated the challenge and offers the reward is a certain Mr. Samuel Eckert.

On October 17, 2022, Fr. Prof. Dr. Ulrike Kämmerer from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg contacted this Samuel Eckert through her lawyers. She accepts the challenge. She will provide the required proof. For the fact that she, as you requested, is indeed a virologist, she sent attached her publications.

She then asked Mr. Eckert to prove that he does possess the amount of the award, e.g. by depositing it in an escrow account.

Now this Mr. Eckert answers something like: wait a minute, the objective of this challenge is not to pay 1.5 million, but to open a debate etc. !

In another video (this one, minute 15:43), Mr. Eckert explains that first should Dr. Ulrike Kämmerer provide the required proof for existence of SARS-CoV-2, and only then will Mr. Eckert prove that he has the money ! A bogus award, in other words.

It would have been better if, before suggesting that nobody accepted the challenge and implying that this is an additional indication that  SARS-CoV-2 doesn't exist, you would have given this challenge a serious look.☹️

His site indicates that this Mr. Eckert is a conspiracy theorist (no viruses exist etc.).

This is not the first conspiracist you are approvingly citing on this Objectivism forum: it was also Christine Massey (from YogaEsoteric and FluorideFreePeel), then the book Virus Mania: Corona/COVID-19, Measles, Swine Flu, Cervical Cancer, Avian Flu, SARS, BSE, Hepatitis C, AIDS, Polio. How the Medical Industry Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense.☹️☹️

Edited February 21 by AlexL

[necrovore]

Actually it wouldn't surprise me at all if this Mr. Eckert were secretly working for the CDC or the FDA or something.

[monart]

On 2/21/2024 at 3:38 PM, AlexL said:

In another video (this one, minute 15:43), Mr. Eckert explains that first should Dr. Ulrike Kämmerer provide the required proof for existence of SARS-CoV-2, and only then will Mr. Eckert prove that he has the money ! A bogus award, in other words.

No, it doesn't follow that it's a bogus award, just because Mr. Eckert wants proof of virus isolation from Dr. Kammerer first, while Dr. Kammerer want proof of the award first.  Consider the flip side, since Dr. Kammerer doesn’t want to show her proof first, does it follow from that alone that she doesn’t have it?  No.

In an article reporting Dr. Kammerer's side of the dispute:

"In a letter from a lawyer dated October 17, 2022, the law firm Rogert & Ulbrich informed SaMiraFamily AG and Mr. Samuel Eckert that Prof. Dr. Ulrike Kämmerer complied with the request and will present proof of the existence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus with proof of the existence of the amount of the request."

In an article reporting Mr. Eckert's side of the debate:

"In view of the expressed "suspicion of fraud", the accusation of "cheating" and the fact that Kämmerer announced more than once to the public that she had the evidence necessary to fulfill the promise, but she did not want to "give it away" and obviously still doesn't want to, Transition News sent her and her lawyers several questions."

So, it's at least a stand-off: each side wanting the other to provide the proof first.

But the fundamental question remains. If the proof exists that SC2 has been isolated, purified, and distinctly identified, and that this proof is so widely available that asking for it is absurd, then where are the documents for it? If the proof is so obvious and publicly available as to be unquestionable and unchallengeable, then why does Dr. Kammerer not want to "give it away"?

Is it like someone claiming they have proof that Objectivism is false, but doesn't want to "give it away"?

 

 

[necrovore]

In defense of Dr. Kammerer I would say that knowledge is hierarchical.

It's much easier to prove the existence of Covid-19 if you can count on, say, a science of virology, which has, over a period of decades, developed techniques to identify the existence of various viruses.

If Mr. Eckert acknowledges the validity of virology and merely disputes the particular virus or family of viruses, then the proof is probably easy, for a competent virologist.

It becomes much harder if Mr. Eckert disputes the validity of the whole science of virology, because then Dr. Kammerer would have to prove that before getting to the part about Covid-19.

Virology itself rests on other discoveries, and if Mr. Eckert disputes those, too, then Dr. Kammerer could be in for a very long slog.

The same kind of thing happens when trying to prove evolution to Christians.

[AlexL]

17 hours ago, monart said:

On 2/21/2024 at 11:38 PM, AlexL said:

[...] Mr. Eckert explains that first should Dr. Ulrike Kämmerer provide the required proof for existence of SARS-CoV-2, and only then will Mr. Eckert prove that he has the money ! A bogus award, in other words.

No, it doesn't follow that it's a bogus award, just because Mr. Eckert wants proof of virus isolation from Dr. Kammerer first, while Dr. Kammerer want proof of the award first. 

It does follow.

If you tell me: "do <<this>> for me and I will give you 1.5 millions" then, if I don't know you, the first thing I will do is ask you to show me that you do have such kind of money.

If you refuse to provide evidence that you have the money, then I will  - rightly - conclude, on this basis alone, that your offer is bogus.

18 hours ago, monart said:

Consider the flip side, since Dr. Kammerer doesn’t want to show her proof first, does it follow from that alone that she doesn’t have it?  No.

There is no symmetry between you and me in the above arrangement, so that there is no need to consider "the flip side".

[monart]

On 2/21/2024 at 7:45 PM, necrovore said:

Actually it wouldn't surprise me at all if this Mr. Eckert were secretly working for the CDC or the FDA or something.

I'm curious: Why wouldn't it surprise you? And what would it mean for this SC2/covid controversy if Mr Eckert were working for CDC/FDA?

[EC]

55 minutes ago, monart said:

I'm curious: Why wouldn't it surprise you? And what would it mean for this SC2/covid controversy if Mr Eckert were working for CDC/FDA?

How were mRNA vaccines against the covid virus created and developed if the DNA sequence of the virus was never "purified and isolated" (concepts that do not apply to DNA sequencing btw), or are they also non-existent conspiracies?

[necrovore]

7 hours ago, monart said:

I'm curious: Why wouldn't it surprise you? And what would it mean for this SC2/covid controversy if Mr Eckert were working for CDC/FDA?

I wrote that in jest; it's an exaggeration. However, it's a known propaganda technique to discredit the truth by associating it with various crank theories, so that when people encounter the truth, they will think that it's just another crank theory.

This is similar to the way that if a group wants to peacefully protest something, you could plant some violent people in amongst the protesters, so that the whole group can then be blamed for the violence.

I remember seeing a lot of news in the mainstream media about "anti-vaxxers," starting maybe a year or so before Covid-19 appeared. This news was about people who objected to the requirement that their children, in order to be enrolled in school, have to be vaccinated for polio, mumps, measles, etc., and usually it was stated that their objections were religious in nature, or based on the (disproved I think) notion that vaccines cause autism, and so it was based on crackpottery. I remember at the time being puzzled about why their stories were being "pushed" so much by the news media. Of course, once Covid-19 came out, it became obvious: news about the "anti-vaxxers" had been spread deliberately, in advance, so that when the Covid-19 "vaccine" was introduced on short notice, anybody who objected to it, even doctors, even if their objections were scientifically legitimate, could be declared to just be more "anti-vaxxers," i.e., cranks who could be ignored.

When you have populations of millions of people, it is often possible to find cranks rather than having to create them. (I am inclined to think that Mr. Eckert is probably a crank, if he objects to the whole science of virology... I do remember a writer republished on Zero Hedge claiming that "there is no such thing as a virus," but I don't know if that's him, but it is a crank thing to say.) So it's unlikely that Mr. Eckert is actually a CDC or FDA "plant" put there for the purpose of discrediting others. It could be that people at the CDC and FDA are deliberately trying to give him more prominence than he deserves, deliberately promoting him to make people think he's is somehow typical of the "alternatives" to themselves, in order to get people to discredit all alternatives to the CDC and FDA.

(I also remember in one of Ayn Rand's essays, she pointed out how "The John Birch Society" was lumped in with some other things it didn't belong with, and that is an example of the same sort of technique at work.)

It is because of the use of propaganda techniques like this that you have to think when reading alternative media, but this kind of propaganda is also why you have to read the alternative media in the first place.

Edited February 24 by necrovore

[EC]

@necrovore That would mean those people would have to had advanced knowledge years prior to the pandemic of the existence of the covid virus which is a big leap implying a planned conspiracy when it is much more likely that it was simply a coincidence involving passive attacks from the Left on the religious Right. While there likely are occasional side effects of childhood vaccines (like watching a commercial for any medicine or vaccine shows in detail) we've essentially all had them and they have been scientifically proven to be extremely rare with the benefits outweighing the slight risk. Obviously, that doesn't imply forced vaccinations are moral or should be legal outside of maybe an extremely lethal and highly contagious novel disease, covid doesn't qualify, although I personally got the vaccine the week it was allowed.  (J&J which to prove the above point of risk was soon taken off the market due to the blood clot risk). The main principle involves the fact that the government should not be involved in education as it should be private or funded via charity as like most things current governments are improperly involved in when their only valid jobs are the protection of individual rights. 

[necrovore]

55 minutes ago, EC said:

That would mean those people would have to had advanced knowledge years prior to the pandemic of the existence of the covid virus

Well there was also all that "cute and campy" stuff, before Covid-19, about how we should prepare for a "zombie apocalypse." Remember any of that? That was coming out of the CDC and being circulated among other government agencies, but it also came out in the news.

[monart]

Why you keep going…

…Because you seek to know truth, to show it, to let it be known and shown. You resist and defend against the truth being denied, distorted, or defiled. And more so with fundamental, radical axiomatic truths. Objectivism is such a fundamental truth.

Objectivism is an integrated system of philosophy you come to know as truth by way of looking at reality by your own mind and reason. You did not give trust to experts, not to professors or priests, as to whether Objectivism was true or false. You know for yourself that Objectivism is true.

In the same independently thinking way, you come to know and defend the truth of covid. Or not?

[monart]

On 2/23/2024 at 5:36 PM, necrovore said:

Virology itself rests on other discoveries, and if Mr. Eckert disputes those, too, then Dr. Kammerer could be in for a very long slog.

The same kind of thing happens when trying to prove evolution to Christians.

Asking for documentation from the Science of Virology) that SC2 has been isolation, purified, and identified distinctly as an existent (with properties that causes the deadly and contagious respiratory disease called covid-19) is NOT the same as Christians asking for proof of evolution.

[monart]

22 hours ago, EC said:

 

 

Edited February 25 by monart

[Doug Morris]

It has always been true that there is a potential for a new pandemic of some sort or other, partly because of germs mutating and partly because of human expansion into more places.  It is probably wise to be prepared.  It is surely wise to at least be aware of the potential.

 

[Doug Morris]

18 hours ago, necrovore said:

about how we should prepare for a "zombie apocalypse." Remember any of that? That was coming out of the CDC

Can you give some examples of the CDC saying that?

 

[necrovore]

29 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

Can you give some examples of the CDC saying that?

https://www.cdc.gov/orr/campaigns/index.htm