omicron gain of function research

truly, there is no practice so stupid that humans will not keep doing it

there are times when all one can do is stand back in bewildered awe and mutter “you cannot possibly be serious…”

alas, in so many cases, they are indeed and sometimes deadly so.

it appears that, not content with one global disaster, a group of researchers from boston university, the cleveland clinic, brigham hospital, and harvard (there is a strong boston slant here) are hotwiring omicron to (wait for it) see if they can make it much more deadly.

and guess what? they did!

THIS STUDY is simply terrifying.

this is like running up and playing doorbell ding-dong-dash with the end of the world button.

now, i am not generally one for histrionics but seriously

“hey, what if we could make omicron even more immunity evading and as deadly as ebola?”

asked no sane person.

ever.

this is the biomedical equivalent of jumping up and down on a pogostick while holding the nuclear launch trigger. granted, this was just done in mice, but hey, that was good enough to approve a booster, right? (and this hACE model has been pretty decent in terms of infection and risk prediction especially around cell lines)

i’m just utterly astonished that anyone would even consider playing with this. it’s not even clear to me what worth this research holds. what of any useful value or application was learned here? even if this had zero cost and zero risk, what was the point?

(i’m asking in all honesty as i cannot see it and anything gleaned about vaxx evasion here seems like it could easily have been studied in far safer fashion)

what certainly is clear is that the risk reward around creating this viral strain cannot possibly be positive. even a 1 in 100,000 chance of this leaking would make it on the order of 60,000 probability weighted expected deaths from doing this work because you’re talking about 6 billion dead if you have another oopsie-daisy.

surely there was some better research that could have been funded instead:

here is a list of the folks that were involved and their affiliations.

and, alas, the funding sources were entirely predictable:

tony fauci’s NIH/NIAID fief.

yup, the same folks who so infamously funded ecohealth, daszak, baric, and the rest of team wuhan bat botherer who not only seem so likely to have caused the last mess

but are still getting grants to do more of the same sorts of work.

seriously, is there ANY end to this?

is there any oversight at all? (LOLZ, JK! of course there isn’t. the head of NIAID ethics is teflon tony’s wife. they are literally the bonnie and clyde of bioethics on a world wide crime spree for fun and funding.)

the bonnie and clyde of bioethics

and team wolf seems all good with the current state of the sheep pen.

seriously step back and ask yourself what kind of wild sociopathic hubris would be required to, in the light of all that has transpired lo these last 3 years, to be right back in the saddle funding even more dangerous versions of the same damn thing.

i sort of pride myself on being able to image the mindsets that make people do things, but this one is just past me.

you’d need to be a flat out monster who sees naught but the huge power, profits, and prestige of presiding over ruination and be thrilled to the urethra to send the whole world to hell in a bucket so long as you get to be the one holding the handle.

i just lack any other possible explanation. there is no way they can possibly profess ignorance or incomprehension at this point.

the hotwiring hobbits of wholesale world wrecking are clearly just never going to stop.

they will not learn.

they will not change.

they will not self-regulate.

this system is obviously, irretrievably, and grotesquely broken.

the entire idea of the NIH/NIAID funding fiefdom needs to be reassessed. it distorts and politicizes science, colors outside the lines, and runs amok with graft and goodyrooms.

no one can be trusted to run or oversee it. this corruption is foundational.

the NIH needs to stop existing and be replaced by open systems of open data accessible to and verifiable by all. it’s time public health became the province of the public and where its claims and ideas must be subject to rigorous adversarial challenge not preening private pseudo-review.

it’s time that funding flowed from private actors that allocate by usefulness and promise of program, not nepotistic connection.

every program currently funded by NIH needs to be rigorously and forensically audited for ethics, safety, and nepotism. then they need to be wound down and no new programs funded.

ever.

what’s wrong in this system is not fixable.

it’s time to demolish the ivory tower and replace it with a marketplace of ideas.

now.

given what’s going on here, do you really want to wait any longer?