Ebola:

I haz a confuse. The official word is that there are no new confirmed cases since 8 May in Guinea. We mentioned last week that there were 4 suspected cases in treatment centers though. This week, official reports are that there are 5 suspected cases in treatment centers. I don’t know if the previous 4 ruled out, and these 5 are new suspected cases, or if testing is just very delayed in Guinea, and I can’t tell from the reports I can find which of those options is what’s going on. Regardless, there are no new -confirmed- cases, although a trickle of suspected cases. So there is still a risk that the clock counting down the end of this particular outbreak gets reset in the next week or so. We’ll continue to follow.

Coronavirus:

–Still a bit to cover this week. Around the horn, cases continue to rise in various places around the world. South Africa is climbing a small rise, but still no indication of a burnthrough of vaccination or previous immunity. Japan is also seeing rising cases, and another physician group there has recently challenged the wisdom of hosting the Olympics this summer, given where Japan’s vaccination campaign stands and already strained hospitals in some parts of the country. Malaysia is also getting hammered right now. In better news, India is mercifully coming down off their big peak. In South America, Brazil has stabilized a wave, but Argentina, Chile and Colombia are seeing rising cases.

In the US, cases continue to trend down. This would be the week where an “unvaccinated-are-lying-and-going-maskless-and-catching-the-COVID” should start to show up. So far, we’re all Texas. If there is not a hint of a bump by next week, in spite of what I am assuming is increasingly maskless behavior across the nation (seems to be the case around here, anyways), then we are WELL on the way to being “medically over” by July here in the states.

–But a busy week in the news nonetheless. Before we get to the more conspiracy-associated elements, we’ll talk some new vaccine news…

–So hitting the wires are reports of patients with heart inflammation who also received the vaccines. Is this a possible rare side effect, similar to the heparin induced thrombocytopenia-like blood clotting that is a lottery-level risk of some vaccines? Yeah, it’s possible. That’s why they are monitoring these reports. On the other hand, you have a LOT of people getting the vaccine, or having already gotten the vaccine. Some of them will get heart inflammation for an entirely different reason, but around the same time as the vaccine to raise questions. This is what the FDA is going to have to figure out as the reports roll in. We’ll keep an eye on this too.

–In other vaccine news, a study from the UK NHS (summary on the link) finds that two doses of the vaccines are sufficient to protect from the variant first discovered in India. As we mentioned last week, this is not terribly surprising, and fits the expected trend of virus variants towards more infectious, but not necessarily more severe or vaccine escape capable, versions.

—Another study compared antibody responses between 2 complete doses of the Pfizer vaccine and the single dose AZ vaccine in a patient population mostly 61 years and up. Consistent with the clinical efficacy from the Phase 2 and 3 studies of those vaccines, 2 doses of the Pfizer does, indeed, produce higher antibody titers in more patients than a single dose of the AZ vaccine. I will pause momentarily while you recover from your surprise at that. The authors suggest that the AZ vaccine may benefit from a second dose, and possibly sooner than the 10 weeks currently being suggested for boosting the AZ vaccine.

–The other big clinical “scare” story this week was the reports of patients who recovered from COVID, but their sense of smell has not entirely recovered. A summary of that is here. I’m not sure about their percentages for how commonly this is occurring (at least anecdotally, I have not heard many complaints about this from people who have recovered). That, at least, may merit someone doing a formal incidence and prevalence study. As they mention in the article, though, affect on quality of life can be noticeable. Smell heavily influences how food tastes, among other interesting blind taste tests you can get summarized here. Memory is also closely associated with smell, as you have undoubtedly noticed yourself when some familiar smell immediately brought back memories of your grandmother’s kitchen. More subtly, smell is associated with mood (you can read how smell matters in the real estate market here) and interpersonal attraction. Remember all of those stories of people sleeping with the shirt of their significant other for the scent when they are apart for a long period of time? Or just mosey over to how much business the perfume and cologne industries do per year.

Most surprising to me is that 12% of Americans are estimated in some published papers to have some form of smell deficiency. So will COVID be used to fund investigation of this more “forgotten” sense? Probably. But given the curiosities we do know about smell and how it affects us as we move through the day, I’m not complaining…

–And no. No known association of loss of smell with the vaccines so far.

–In less surprising news, physicians report greater dissatisfaction with hospital and healthcare system administration during and after COVID. Been hearing anecdotes of more physicians leaving practices or retiring altogether, so this article seems directionally accurate.

–Alright, was talking to a reader on the phone this week, and had the imaginary gun put to my head–do I think SARS-CoV-2 is an escaped virus from the Wuhan virology laboratory?

As we covered before, the SARS-CoV-2 genome can be explained by descent from a bat coronavirus. That could have occurred naturally, as original reports surmised. That crossover could also have happened in a laboratory, either as deliberate gain of function mutation for studies of “what it would take” for a coronavirus to become more dangerous (and thus what to look for and how to stop it), or a leap of nature that occurred during experiments involving different forms of coronavirus. The reports this week of hospitalization of several Wuhan virology employees in the expected time frame to kick off the outbreak do raise one’s suspicions of a lab accident a little more.

So, if I had to call it right now, based on all available evidence, I would say more probable than not SARS-CoV-2 escaped the lab. But that’s like 51% to 49% more probable.

I am certain of the following facts though.

1. Even if it was, we don’t get 2020 back. At best, we “learn” that lab controls in that specific virology lab in China may be a little sus.
2. It is still highly improbable that SARS-CoV-2 was developed as a bioweapon. Release was still accidental. Again, China is a nuclear armed country. When you have nukes, bioweapons, a “nuke” that can mutate and come back at you even if you have a cure already, make very little sense. The economic and reputational damage to China has already been significant, calling into further question the “strategy” of bioweapon development and release. As mentioned before, some of the vaccines China has developed and sold around the world to mitigate the reputational damage have, ah, not exactly had the early success that one would expect if you were launching an offensive bioweapon that you had already “cured” to protect your own people (or post-release reputation). In short, if this was their dastardly plan, we should feel fortunate that evil was so incredibly dumb. And I mean “incredibly” in the Webster’s Dictionary, “not at all believable” sense.
3. This is a hot point in a broader China-US Cold War, and the propaganda probability on both sides is quite high. Because of this, we will likely never know the full, accurate story in our lifetimes. Our kids and grand-kids might. But not us.

–On a totally, totally unrelated note, here’s a great thread on the playbook for how enough money and will can be used to push public perception towards a desired belief and/or action. In this case, it’s about crypto–but imagine for a moment the players involved had state-level actor money and a Higher Purpose for their country to achieve. Or perhaps were a PAC or Super-PAC. Or well funded interest group for some special interest. Think this playbook stops at crypto?

Nah. It’s only the people who don’t agree with you who might be tempted to sway public opinion in such an underhanded and deliberate way…

…Right? : )

–Again speaking of conspiracy, the other “pick one” question from that call with a reader this week was about the UFO report that is set to be issued next month. Since we linked one of the more compelling reasons for the recent interest in UFO reports as a “your chances are equivalent” comparison, specifically, the Navy commander who was in the air and saw the objects captured in the “Go Fast” and “Tic Tac” videos, we’ll call it “close enough” for inclusion this week. So the specific question put to me was “aliens–yes or no?”

So for what little it’s worth, my thinking on this breaks down as follows.

First, extraterrestrial origin, aliens, is an extraordinary hypothesis and requires extraordinary proof. Mundane terrestrial explanation is -FAR- more probable than aliens. And I say that for the following reasons.

1). Stealth technology is 40 years old at this point. We know that prototypes of the stealth fighters and bombers flew at the Groom Lake test facility, better known as Area 51. You can expect that some UFO sightings from 30-40 years ago were these stealth prototypes. As well as prototypes for other designs that never got past the prototype stage.

2). Organizations like DARPA, tasked with developing the cutting edge of military technology, have not been sitting idle in those past 40 years. Novel propulsion systems are possible. So are drones. Combine those two, and you get pilots watching craft that can do maneuvers at acceleration and speeds that seem to exceed what a human pilot could endure at current technology. That might look light years past “anything we’ve got”–except it’s a test of what we are “trying to get working”, and not aliens.

3). Let’s say it’s 40 years ago. You are DARPA, testing early versions of stealth airplanes. It would be nice to know if they could get past modern military radar under expected field conditions, right? So maybe you buzz the tower of a base or two or twenty and see what the pilots and radar guys file in their reports? As long as your buddies deep in the government know, it’s safe enough to run that test. You might also want to test anything new over the last 40 years in a similar way.

So let me put it this way. Is the fact that a lot of these sightings happen around military aircraft/spacecraft and bases at least equally plausibly explained by DARPA (or others) testing new equipment in “real world” settings (and fucking around with the regular military as an added giggle bonus) where you do not have to invoke aliens?

4). Let’s continue that thought. First, remember the Navy commander mentioned above said that when they got the call to check out the unidentified craft popping up on their ship’s radar, the call operator mentioned they had been tracking a number of similar encounters for “weeks”. Theirs was the first flight of planes close enough to try and get a visual–and they were specifically asked if they were running with live missiles on their training exercise by their flight controllors (they were not).

If “DARPA testing an unmanned drone with a new propulsion system” was the real explanation, how much of that would you expect?

One of the aspects that most freaked out the Navy commander mentioned above was that after the craft he observed hit an impossible g-level acceleration to escape him and his wingman, they followed their standard operating procedure and returned to a set point on their combat air patrol… and the unidentified craft was there waiting for them.

Again, assume “DARPA testing an unmanned drone with a new propulsion system” is the real explanation for a second. What are the chances that the guys flying the DARPA drone learned the exact same SOP that our Navy commander executed, and that’s why it’s there waiting for them–and not “aliens that can read minds/patterns and anticipate our woefully underequipped military’s moves, man”?

5). That same Joe Rogan interview with the Navy commander also mentioned rumors that the commander confirmed he had heard about craft mysteriously shutting down test nuclear missile launches.

Again, if you were DARPA, would you have an interest in a technology that could remotely disrupt the launch of a nuclear weapon? Would you want to test that, somehow, under field conditions, before you had to use it for real?

6). Speaking of Joe Rogan, yes, I have heard the Bob Lazar interview too. I don’t know what to really make of Bob. There are elements that make him seem credible, and to make me go “hmmm…” There are parts of that, based on my limited knowledge of engineering and chemistry, that make me doubt a bit. For instance, the stable element 115 isotope he describes, if they know for a “fact” that it’s element 115, could easily have been narrowed to a range of possibilities by getting some ballpark of the atomic weight of the materials he supposedly worked on that used it. In those 30 years since, those possibilities could have been tested to arrive at the stable version of the element–if it exists. Why that didn’t happen or wasn’t the first thought to those working on it makes me wonder about Bob’s role. And then his claim that some of those alien craft were recovered at archeological digs. Okay. So we can do what we did to phones in 40 years… but apparently over the span of centuries alien beings who have mastered interplanetary travel have not managed to significantly improve on their spacecraft designs or technologies? Like I said, there are parts that make me doubt a bit too.

7). “But there’s no way we could have anything doing the speed and maneuvers of the things in those videos!” Again, stealth technology is 40 years old. Look at just where phone and computer technology have gone in that span. Have you noticed that suddenly everyone seems to have hypersonic missiles and that they just “appeared” in news reports one day? Or railguns (which basically fire hypersonic bullets) are suddenly all over science fiction and have prototypes announced in the news?

And do you think that stuff, which is in the public domain already, is the bleeding edge stuff?

8). “But the reports and sightings go back years!” The vast majority of which are clustered from 1940 on, with the rest largely “reinterpretation” of older texts. The 1940s were, of course, during World War 2, which saw the dawn of the nuclear era (under heavy secrecy), and conclusive demonstration that air power now ruled the seas. Aircraft carrier based bombers and fighters sank many large, modern-for-the-time battleships before the guns of those battleships were remotely in range of the aircraft carriers. The Allied control of the skies over Europe pinned the German army in place during the day on the Western Front. That period also saw the V-1 and V-2 rockets, forerunners of modern cruise missiles, and the Messerschmitt Me 262 fighter jet in combat for the Germans (fortunately too late and in too few numbers). For the record, the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star made it to the Italian front, but did not see combat before the war ended.

Or to summarize all that, the bulk of UFO sightings in the public record all happened to start in a period where it was clear that jet aircraft in particular would be a MAJOR determinant in future wars, in nations that had just been at total war with one another, with programs like the Manhattan Project that made huge technological leaps forward under total secrecy.

Programs were undoubtedly continuing on new types of aircraft, and not all those prototypes made it.

I don’t know what crashed at Roswell in 1947. Of anything, that has the best chance of being aliens–but even then, something terrestrial and top secret is still just as plausible.

9). Speaking of top secrecy, your government trotted out Dr. and Patron Saint of “Science!” Anthony Fauci around a year ago to tell you that you definitely, absolutely, did not need to buy masks and to please don’t, because hospitals still needed them for the routine stuff. Not long after, everyone needed masks, it was against new laws NOT to have them, and the unvaccinated are still recommended to use them. Explaining the about face, Dr. Fauci explicitly stated that he had willfully and knowingly lied about not needing masks, to ensure that the government could source enough to provide to hospitals, and that it was necessary to avoid panic.

Or to cite the only other honest moment in politics, “When it becomes serious, you have to lie” (Jean-Claude Juncker, former Prime Minister of Luxembourg).

If it’s DARPA, the government has every reason to say either “we don’t know what these things are, man… super weird though, huh?” in this report OR “aliens. Totes aliens.” Why? Because there are Great Game advantages to our nation’s enemies not knowing what we’ve got, and especially not knowing what we have that is working.

If the real answer is aliens, refer to Dr. Fauci’s explanation of the necessity of lying to avoid panic/uncontrolled societal upheaval, or Mr. Juncker there. If the reviewers of that report believe a greater good is served by lying in that report, they will find a way to continue to do so.

Don’t get your hopes up.

Aliens would be cool and all, but there other explanations out there which are at least as probable.

–Yeah, that one got a little long on me. Sorry… : )

Honestly, there is almost too much to go around this week, because 7 counties of Oregon have voted to secede from the state to form Greater Idaho and I cannot tell you how much fun I want to have with that…

But I don’t think we can pass on the obvious here either.  Your chances of catching Ebola are equivalent to your surprise that A) the Epstein prison guards, despite admitting to falsifying evidence and records around their actions the night he died -magically- avoided any jail time B) this story dropped on the wires at 8 pm on a Friday, so even after hours for the West Coast when no one is reading the news and C) that somehow, even with all the news about Bill Gates, none of the rich and famous implicated in Epstein’s travel logs and accuser statements have been arrested or questioned that anyone is aware of.

Hey, speaking of which, did Prince Andrew, after being “surprised” that the FBI was seeking an interview with him and complaining in the papers that his office was giving them the run around, ever make good on his published promise to clear things up with them just as soon as they could schedule a meeting?  Or do we think that his televised interview where he lied through his damn teeth cleared all that up?  Anyone know?  Anyone heard?  Or do you just get to get away with trafficking and sexually abusing minors for years?

Your chances of catching coronavirus are equivalent to the chances that if George Washington were still running the show, Harry would currently be in custody as a hostage until Andrew turned his ass up over here for a sit down with Los Federales.

Whoa…

Whoa.

James.  K.  Polk.  James K Polk running things with Prince Andrew accused of crimes against US children…

James. 

K. 

Polk. 

And that’s your chances of catching coronavirus.

<Paladin>