- Jul 5, 2011
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Failed to ensure the safe removal of allies before withdrawing m8. Are you honestly suggesting that the withdrawal could not have been handled better?
Society/Culture Tucker Carlson - Fired from Fox. Sacked. Terminated. Given the heave-ho.
- Thread starter Mara Singha
- Start date
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- Banned
- #452
How would this have prevented the Taliban taking over?
Are you pretending you know?
- Banned
- #453
See what you need to understand, FireKrakouer is that you must never question the experts.
No matter how many times the experts get it wrong. No matter how many times they say the Taliban won’t overrun Kabul. No matter how many times they say the rain won’t fill our creeks and dams. No matter how many times they say this is the lockdown to end all lockdowns.
They are the experts. We’re not.
- Sep 17, 2019
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- Moderator
- #454
Is it really any safer in the USA though?
Mass Shootings in 2024 | Gun Violence Archive
Gun Violence Archive (GVA) is a not for profit corporation formed in 2013 to provide free online public access to accurate information about gun-related violence in the United States. GVA will collect and check for accuracy, comprehensive information about gun-related violence in the U.S. and...
www.gunviolencearchive.org
- Banned
- #455
I'm just asking you to explain your specific criticism. Why can't you?
It's like you want to be critical of Biden but don't know enough to say how or why.
Is that a fair assessment?
- Banned
- #457
Its estimated up to 40,000 US citizens are still in Afghanistan who should have been evacuated before Biden decided to withdraw the military.
- Banned
- #458
Yes. But I apologise, it was a Senate hearing.
Paul: You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans, you're saying that is not Gain of Function?
Fauci: That is correct.
Chief
~ Shmalpha ~
- Admin
- #460
Gain of function seems to have no single definition. If Fauci doesn’t use the definition given by Paul, then he is fine to disagree with that definition.
One Google search:
“The NIH has not funded gain-of-function work,” Kessler said in email exchanges. “EcoHealth Alliance was funded by the NIH to conduct study of coronavirus diversity in China. From that award, we subcontracted work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help with sampling and lab capacity.” He said the citation in the paper was mainly the result of researchers’ desire to cite any possible research that contributed to the findings, with much of the funding coming from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. (Another funder listed was USAID’s Predict program, which helped collect animal viruses and also funded EcoHealth.)
“As described in the paper, all but two of the viruses cultured in the lab failed to even replicate,” he said. “None of them had been manipulated in order to increase their ability to spread, all the researchers did was insert S [spike] proteins in order to gauge their ability to infect human cells.”
Kessler added that “much of that work [described in the grant] wasn’t done because the grant was suspended. But GoF was never the goal here.” As he put it, “gain of function research is the specific process of altering human viruses in order to increase their ability (the titular gain of function) either to spread amongst populations, to infect people, or to cause more severe illness.”
One Google search:
“The NIH has not funded gain-of-function work,” Kessler said in email exchanges. “EcoHealth Alliance was funded by the NIH to conduct study of coronavirus diversity in China. From that award, we subcontracted work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help with sampling and lab capacity.” He said the citation in the paper was mainly the result of researchers’ desire to cite any possible research that contributed to the findings, with much of the funding coming from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. (Another funder listed was USAID’s Predict program, which helped collect animal viruses and also funded EcoHealth.)
“As described in the paper, all but two of the viruses cultured in the lab failed to even replicate,” he said. “None of them had been manipulated in order to increase their ability to spread, all the researchers did was insert S [spike] proteins in order to gauge their ability to infect human cells.”
Kessler added that “much of that work [described in the grant] wasn’t done because the grant was suspended. But GoF was never the goal here.” As he put it, “gain of function research is the specific process of altering human viruses in order to increase their ability (the titular gain of function) either to spread amongst populations, to infect people, or to cause more severe illness.”
- Banned
- #461
This paper (2016) gives a broader understanding of GoF and the circumstances surrounding the "pause" in its funding. And why.
Gain-of-Function Research: Ethical Analysis
Gain-of-function (GOF) research involves experimentation that aims or is expected to (and/or, perhaps, actually does) increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens. Such research, when conducted by responsible scientists, usually aims to ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Fauci's position is indefensible.
Following controversy surrounding research, published in 2012, that led to the creation of highly pathogenic H5N1 (avian) influenza virus strains that were airborne transmissible between ferrets—and more recent reports of biosafety mishaps involving anthrax, smallpox, and H5N1 in government laboratories—in 2014 the administration of US President Barack Obama called for a “pause” on funding (and relevant research with existing US Government funding) of GOF experiments involving influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses in particular. This pause applies specifically to experiments that “may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes … such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route” (White House 2014). With announcement of this pause, the US Government launched a “deliberative process … to address key questions about the risks and benefits of gain-of-function studies” (White House 2014) to inform future funding decisions—and the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) was tasked with making recommendations to the US Government on this matter.
- Banned
- #462
This has nothing to do with the broader failure of the Taliban retaking the country.
Chief
~ Shmalpha ~
- Admin
- #463
In the end you'd need full context to decide that.
The definition doesn't seem to be settled, and they don't seem to have given the Chinese lab any money for that part of it anyway.
I'm not trained in this so it's neither here nor there. My money is on Rand Paul looking for headlines over the idea that a man who has spent decades studying infectious disease is trying to breed super-viruses that will take your jobs and your women.
The definition doesn't seem to be settled, and they don't seem to have given the Chinese lab any money for that part of it anyway.
I'm not trained in this so it's neither here nor there. My money is on Rand Paul looking for headlines over the idea that a man who has spent decades studying infectious disease is trying to breed super-viruses that will take your jobs and your women.
- Banned
- #464
My interpretation of Rand Paul was that he wasn't accusing Fauci of being involved in creating the virus, Fauci went hard on the "how dare you accuse me" and Paul said "I'm not accusing you".
The bigger issue Paul was going after was the initial denial that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory when Fauci knew damn well that GoF experiments were being performed with bat coronaviruses by the Chinese in Wuhan.
- Aug 23, 2011
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- Grand Finals at the Gabba
Tucker's hair is exceptional. Like Trent Cotchin levels of exceptional
- Banned
- #466
I would have said Paul Roos.
- Banned
- #468
I've watched all of the interchanges between Fauci and Paul in the Senate.
It really is that straightforward. Gain of Function funding was supposed to have ceased. The NIH got around that by changing the definition of Gain of Function.
Fauci's only response now is "You don't know what you're talking about."
- Banned
- #470
It is still a catastrophic failure for Biden to leave 40,000 US citizens behind in Afghanistan after pulling out the military on the false belief that the Afghanistan army could hold back the Taliban.
- Banned
- #472
- Banned
- #473
No. That's not a fair assessment.
- Sep 21, 2004
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lol. Just own it.
- Banned
- #475
That's the not "the catastrophic failure" in Afghanistan.
We're talking about a 20-year failure of US foreign policy and you guys are trying to hang your hat on a mismanaged evacuation like that's the big story.
It's quite clear that you prefer to focus on anything that can be used to criticise Biden specifically, as opposed to the more consequential failure, which encompasses four administrations but probably should be sheeted home to the Bush era above all.
I get it, you've got a talking point you want to hammer home. But it's not that compelling when you look at the scale of the foreign policy failure in Afghanistan. I hope everyone gets evacuated safely but that's not the main takeaway here in terms of policy critiques.
