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Oh for fuck’s sake, I thought I was done with this bullshit, but nooooo.

The CIA report on COVID origins is not new. The conclusions were previously released, and there isn’t anything new this week.

The CIA report is at odds with many other reports on the subject. We will probably never know for sure, but multiple lines of evidence reviewed by actual infectious disease experts, epidemiologists, and viral genetics experts, suggest an origin in “wet markets” over a roughly 2 month period.
1/5

Perhaps more important, though, is that the origin isn’t actually all that interesting in the grand scheme of COVID. What is interesting is how leaders responded. Oddly enough, the folks who tend to push the lab origin theory are the same people who called COVID a hoax, and actively undermined any effort at harm reduction in 2020. The focus on the origins now is an attempt to blame China for the failure of US leaders to do their jobs.
2/5

China absolutely hid the outbreak. They hid data on the virus, the disease, and the spread. They reacted too slowly, and with too much focus on suppressing news of the virus. So yeah, fuck ‘em. None of that mattered, because when it hit the US, the sitting president said it was a hoax, undermined every effort to slow the spread of the disease, and led a misinformation campaign that resulted in death threats to people treating patients. This killed hundreds of thousands.
3/5

McNadoMD

So I don’t give two fucks that a recycled report from CIA was once again released. I was there in 2020, in the hospital, treating COVID patients. I was there on social media talking with docs all over the world to figure it out. I was there getting DMs begging me to accept patients from 600 or 1000 miles away in states that lifted restrictions. I wore the filthy N-95s we baked in UV ovens. I watched people die, many of them needlessly after an effective vaccine was available.
4/5

Some fuckwit thinks he’s going to rehab a bunch of politicians who made the wrong call, and killed their constituents. He thinks by telling people China made COVID in a lab, that will lift the blame from leaders here. It doesn’t. Our people died because our leaders let them. People were told it was a hoax, while ICUs overflowed into PACUs and ERs and ambulances. People were told the vaccine was poison, and died because of it. COVID deaths here were a leadership failure here. I remember.
5/5

@mcnado seriously. The "it's a bioweapon" crowd ALSO wanted to "let it rip" and take horse meds.

@StevenSavage yeah. Drives me nuts. If it was a bioweapon, why did we re-open schools, theaters, and churches? Why did conservatives spend 2 years suing, with the end result being a complete undermining of future public health responses. We can’t do shutdowns anymore. You can’t close a church if Ebola is spreading nearby. In some states, you can’t mandate masks unless the legislature convenes and agrees (during a pandemic!). Nonsense all of it.

@mcnado @StevenSavage
"You can’t close a church if Ebola is spreading nearby."

Stop for a second and consider just how completely fucked that is.
☠️

"Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are - hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones."
--Thomas Ligotti

@mcnado as soon as you step back you see it. People saying whatever got a reaction but theres no story. No causality.

I mean people acted like it was a Chinese attack and then did what? Declare war? Sanctions?

@mcnado @StevenSavage

Also, it’s not like Spy Club isn’t known for making crap up whole cloth to get what they want.

@mcnado @StevenSavage

It wasn’t a bioweapon because “bioweapon” implies intent.

Rather, Trunp’s incompetence, corruption, and depraved indifference to human life made it into the equivalent of a bioweapon.

@mcnado Also a mainstream press failure with too much playing along and not enough holding to account. Still doing it too. Haven’t seen much written on how leadership failure caused deaths. attention and division were paid for with lives. Only sociopaths act that way

@mcnado They just keep repeating the same lies. No self-reflection needed when you lie for a living.

@mcnado exactly. A much higher percentage of the population in the U.S. died from COVID than in any other country, regardless of population size. It's telling.

@Linza @mcnado I appreciate the correction. I was misinformed.

@Linza

Like a map of how vulnerable each country is to misinformation, overlaid with a map of poverty.

If corrected for poverty, this would show where the public has been conditioned to be credulous.

@kimlockhartga @mcnado

@kimlockhartga @mcnado 1.2 million+ died in US SARS2 totals.

More than the cumulative sum of all COMBAT deaths since the US Revolutionary War. Includes the Civil War, Vietnam, and also include Kansas Flu of 1918.

More people preventably dead than killed by the nuclear bombs in WW2 Japan.

The probably biggest single cluster of deaths in US history is passed off as hoax and false memory. And Tiktok is more important.

Describing US people as sheep is not strong enough of a word.

@mcnado

We remember too, and remember all of your and your colleagues' work and sacrifice. I'm devastated that we couldn't ensure an Administration that would finally take these threats seriously, and support all of you the way we need to.

Not much help, but we're glad you're here. 💜

@mcnado Have Americans wiped the horrors of the pandemic from their memories?
In its first year alone, Covid killed as many Americans as we lost in World War 1 and World War ll combined. Are they forgotten?
That so many of us decided to voluntarily hand over our health and welfare to a vile, woefully ignorant liar will never cease to astonish me.

@Barbramon1 @mcnado Anti science moronic Darwin Award winners.

@mumbojumbo @mcnado
I say let them go, but they are going to take the rest of us with them. 🤬

@mcnado when I encountered people making this argument in real life and online I've tended to feign agreement: "Yeah COVID is clearly a Chinese bioweapon, we should take / have taken it far more seriously, don't you think?"

@mcnado rehabbing all the way into a top spot at NIH, no less.

@mcnado

What astounds me is why China doesn't make public that the lab accused was working with US money on things deemed to dangerous to do in the US. Looks to me like silent collusion by facist elites.

@oldoldcojote @mcnado No China was NOT doing anything deemed too dangerous to do in US labs.

@samueljohnson @mcnado

gain of function by recreating and testing function is extremely controversial

@oldoldcojote it is public knowledge that the US had a research partnership there. However, the types of work being done are also done in specialized US labs.

@mcnado

If I can find the NIH grant response recomending it not be done this way w corona virus, I'll send it to you. Seems to have disappeared. Work like this is of course done in the US. Its a common research technique. Doesn't mean virologists recomend making corona viruses zoonotic.

@mcnado - there’s no question our leaders allowed people to die from COVID to fit a narrative.

How many due annually from lack of healthcare, addiction, and suicides? The American people are considered expendable and many were indeed expensed during COVID.

@mcnado Thanks for the #Covid reminder. We can’t forget

@mcnado I thought "rehabing a politician" was code for taking them out back and double-tapping.

@mcnado Simpleshit answer to all the questions:
It doesn’t matter where it came from or who we blame…only what we’re going to do to keep it from spreading more.
Once again

@mcnado :1000: I don't really give a shit where Covid came from. None of those "OMGLABLEAK!!1" assholes is going to wear a mask either way, so fuck' em!

@mcnado it's a hard situation, bc:

- in order to understand how experts in epidemiology & related fields were able to predict that a coronavirus would eventually jump from bats to humans if given enough chances, you need to understand evolution, and the Very Large Numbers of natural mutations in play.

- in order to get politicians who understand evolution, it helps to have a voting population that also understands evolution.

and...

@mcnado
- apparently, at most 1% of the population seems to understand evolution (even though most people definitely have the *ability* to understand it, because they did get quizzed on it in high school at some point).

This problem really needs to be solved.

"best time to plant a tree", etc

@mcnado i think people latch on to conspiracy theories *mainly* because they don't understand evolution, so they don't understand how a virus that only affects bats could jump to humans.

Or at least, that makes people highly prone to conspiracy theories.

But also, we need to get to a point where people understand mutation & evolution of viruses, because it motivates prevention of transmission. (Fewer copies means less surface area for mutations, & longer duration of effectiveness of vaccines.)

@mcnado also, "There's no conspiracy; it's just that you, and every news outlet you trust, and every politician you vote for (regardless of party), are all currently dominated by your own ignorance."

...is kind of a bitter pill to swallow.

@mcnado
think this Times Radio interview based on the Sunday Times investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology is worth the⏱️

that being said, the people pushing the lab leak theory… do not care for ANY of them whatsoever & think they’re all morons for🚫😷 considering they believe it’s a bio-weapon🙄& other nonsensical beliefs

and no, do not think🇨🇳 should be scapegoated especially when funding🇺🇸 & potentially the research🇺🇸.. but that’s what appears to be the agenda

used to say didn’t care lab or nature but that’s when my understanding of biology was zero… now do think it does matter….

also used to believe it was natural origin but def not anymore

anyways, a worthwhile listen by a reputable source & even if it isn’t💯 accurate come to find later, a lot of it definitely is
Part 1:
youtube.com/watch?v=nygbE3pDv8

Part 2:
youtube.com/watch?v=WyhNVAAA26

@mcnado Speaking for a sec not as a rando but as a professional evolutionary biologist, there is statistically high probability covid spread from wild animal(s) at the wet market in Wuhan.

All you can say about spread from a lab is that it's not impossible. The weight of evidence is against it. There's no real evidence for it. (Distribution of early human cases, early viral lineages compared to those in bats.)

_Proving_ it's impossible, however, is trying to prove a negative. Not happening.

@quixote that has been my assessment as well based on those lines of evidence in the published literature. As you say, hard to prove it either way unless some lab tech walks up and says “‘Twas I all along!”

@mcnado Trump has blood on his hands! His covid response was criminal.

@mcnado and people are still dying and being disabled - healthcare workers like you at a disproportionate rate

Sincerely, condolences.