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The problem I have with these guys is that both Blinken and Stoltenberg look like imbeciles and unfortunately I mean it literally not as an insult. It is truly frightening to think that the most powerful people on the Western side do not have the caliber to occupy the positions they're in. And then there's the "others", The Baltic Chihuahuas who growl at the border, the rabid anti Russian Poles, the panicked French Macron, the clueless German scholz... It would all be so funny in a Simpsons episode ending with a yellow mushroom cloud. In reality, they are sinister.
US
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday addressed a meeting of NATO
foreign and defense ministers in Prague. The meeting is being held in
preparation for a bigger Washington summit set to take place in July.
Blinken previewed that the later summit will bring Ukraine closer to
NATO.
"At the summit we'll be taking concrete steps to bring Ukraine closer to NATO, and ensure that there's a bridge to membership - a bridge that's strong and well lit," he said in an address.
As
the Alliance continues to grow in strength and numbers, we look forward
to welcoming our NATO Allies to Washington, DC for the Summit in July. pic.twitter.com/Iuv6qkDD1P
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 31, 2024
Touting
that the alliance is "stronger" than ever with the recent addition of
two new members (Sweden and Finland), he said that the Western allies
are also committed to rebuilding Ukraine after the war.
"NATO will
help build Ukraine's future for us - one that effectively deter
aggressive and defend against it as necessary," Blinken continued.
The US top diplomat said further:
We'll advance Ukraine's integration with NATO. 32 countries are also negotiating individual bilateral security agreements with Ukraine.
Thirteen have already been concluded. I expect many more will be concluded by the time of the summit.
"We'll bring them all together to show how powerful that commitment is," the continued to preview of the July summit.
From
the start of the Feb. 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia's Putin
and top Kremlin officials have consistently pointed to NATO expansion to
Russia's borders as a prime cause of the conflict.
🇺🇦 ⚡️BREAKING: “Ukraine will become a member of NATO."
"We will make sure that there is a bridge to membership. Strong and well-lit.” pic.twitter.com/8WXFoAhQom
And
yet, Washington is more intent than ever on seeing Ukraine's eventual
and full integration into the NATO alliance. This is of course a recipe
for world war and nuclear-armed confrontation between Moscow and the
West. Also, the US on Thursday approved for the first time the ability
of Ukraine to hit Russian territory using American-supplied weapons
systems.
Blinken's "well-lit" path of Ukraine to NATO may in the end be "lit" with the blinding flashes of nuclear bombs.
Climate science is exactly like virus science, weaponized science for morons.
Scientists who actually study climatology or virology, look for patterns, create models, find interesting facts, test ideas and discuss hypothesis. They tend to know more and therefore be less certain about what is true. It's complicated, there are many variables, a lot of uncertainties... Often, you can only offer questions where people expect "truths" and answers.
We've come a long way over the last 300 years of science. We've learned a lot and still, we know almost nothing about the nature of reality for example or the complexity of the biosphere. Is the Gaia hypothesis correct? In other words, is the planet alive? A difficult question that we still cannot answer although depending on the answer, our understanding of our environment could change drastically.
Even what we think we know is probably wrong. Dark matter means we have no clue what it is. We need it otherwise what we see makes no sense but maybe we just don't understand what we see. Dark energy, even worse. Well at least, we've learned that the Universe is at least 13.7 billion years old. Maybe but then why do we find stars which looks older than the Universe or galaxies fully formed very close to the origin? It makes no sense.
In fact, the more questions you ask the more you realize how little we know about almost everything. It is truly frightening. Except for climate science. Here we know that there is global warming and that it is anthropomorphic. And that if "you" do not stop producing CO2, we're doomed. Finally, one certainty we can nail on the wall!
Most people by now are familiar with the narrative that our planet faces a dire crisis due to rising temperatures.
In
January 2023, former Vice President Al Gore provided a graphic
depiction during a World Economic Forum summit, informing attendees that
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are “now trapping as much extra heat as
would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding
every single day on the Earth.
“That’s what’s boiling
the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and
sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts, and
melting the ice, and raising the sea level, and causing these waves of
climate refugees,” he stated.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed these remarks at the U.N. Environment Assembly in February of this year, warning: “Our planet is on the brink.
“Ecosystems are collapsing,” he stated. “Our climate is imploding, and humanity is to blame.”
Despite ubiquitous reports
that there is an overwhelming consensus among scientists in support of
this narrative, many scientists, like John Clauser, a 2022 Nobel Prize
recipient in physics, see it differently.
Mr. Clauser stated
in 2023 that “the popular narrative about climate change reflects a
dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and
the well-being of billions of people.
“Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience,” Mr. Clauser stated. “In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis.”
How can there be such a vast discrepancy on such an extensively researched topic?
Having
studied the production of climate data for decades, physicist Steven
Koonin said he has “watched a growing chasm between what the
politicians, the media, and the NGOs were saying, and what the science
actually said.”
“Nobody has an incentive to portray scientific truth and facts,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr.
Koonin was the undersecretary for science in the U.S. Department of
Energy, under President Barack Obama. He is a former physics professor
at Caltech and is currently on faculty at New York University.
He also has expertise in the development of analytical models.
In
2021, Mr. Koonin published a best-selling book titled “Unsettled: What
Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t and Why It Matters.” The book
analyzes where climate data comes from and how it makes its way from
dense, thousand-page scientific reports into headline news for public
consumption.
The United Nations’ IPCC
One of the most
often cited sources of climate information is the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a collection of scientists and
government appointees that, according to its website, is dedicated to “assessing the science on climate change.”
The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization established the IPCC in 1988.
The
IPCC is both a scientific and a political body. It doesn’t conduct its
own research but rather assembles teams of hundreds of scientists in
working groups that collect reports from scientific journals regarding
climate change, its effects, and what should be done about it.
About
every seven years, an IPCC Working Group called Working Group I
synthesizes the latest reports into Assessment Reports (ARs), often
several thousand pages thick, which are then reviewed and edited by
government appointees from the 195 member nations.
In 2023, the IPCC released its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).
The
information on which the ARs is based often has a bias from the start,
critics say, because research grants typically fund studies that support
the prevailing narrative on climate change, and because scientific
journals often avoid publishing studies that suggest climate change is
not dire.
“Any literature that supports alarmism is promoted and any that does not is rejected,” William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, told The Epoch Times.
According
to Mr. Happer, the source of much of today’s climate data comes from
“centers whose generous funding would cease if climate hysteria were to
abate.”
In addition, according to Richard Lindzen, emeritus
professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who
served as one of the scientists on Working Group I in the past, “the
IPCC itself is only studying anthropogenic [man-made] climate change.
“It
doesn’t do anything regarding natural climate change,” Mr. Lindzen
said, “and that’s a severe technical shortcoming because you can’t do
things like attribution unless you know what natural variability is.”
Despite
that, “when you read the [Assessment] Reports, focusing mostly on the
science, they’re actually pretty good,” Mr. Koonin said.
The data
presented in the ARs is a relatively sober analysis. However, it
provides little support for the narrative of climate catastrophe—at
least as far as what has been observed to date.
Trends in Extreme Weather Events
Chapter 12 of the AR6 details
the IPCC’s assessment of the impact of extreme weather events. The
tables provided in this chapter show that extreme weather events that
have “already emerged” are limited.
The report states a “high
confidence” of temperature increases in average air and ocean
temperatures and incidences of extreme heat in tropical and
mid-latitudes.
It also indicates high confidence in a decrease in arctic sea ice.
However,
it states “low confidence” for any increase in floods, rainstorms,
landslides, drought, “fire weather,” cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes,
sand and dust storms, hail, sea level rise, coastal flooding, and
erosion.
It also indicates low confidence regarding a decrease in
snow, glaciers, ice sheets, or lake, river, and sea ice, beyond the
Arctic region.
The IPCC’s assessment that such extreme weather
events don’t appear to be escalating is supported by the findings of
other scientific organizations.
A 30-year analysis
of “tornado trends” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) found that “the number of strong and violent
tornadoes hasn’t varied much since 1970.
“While the peak
in tornado frequency in the early to middle 1970s included the 1974
Super Outbreak, the year with the most tornadoes during that span was
1973!” the NOAA report states.
It attributed an increase
in tornadoes reported in the 1990s to the newly implemented Doppler
weather radars, the development of spotter networks, population shifts,
the proliferation of cell phone cameras, and “the growing ‘hobby’ of
tornado chasing.”
Likewise, a 2022 report in Nature, found a “declining tropical cyclone frequency under global warming.
“On
average, the global annual number of TCs [tropical cyclones] has
decreased by 13 percent in the 20th century compared with the
pre-industrial baseline 1850–1900.” the report stated.
In addition, the Drought Severity Index
published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed no
material increase in droughts in the United States between 1895 and
2020.
From Data to Narratives
How do such mundane
assessments of the impact of climate change evolve into the narrative
that “our climate is imploding” and “oceans are boiling”?
In two
ways: first, the public statements from the IPCC and the U.N. often
diverge from what their own ARs actually say; and second, the
predictions of a dire future are based on models rather than
observations.
Alongside each new AR, the IPCC also writes condensed Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs) to “inform policymakers what scientists know about climate change.”
The SPMs distill the voluminous ARs down to a short list of bullet points.
“[The
AR] gets boiled down to the Summary for Policymakers, and while it’s
drafted by scientists—a small number of them—the governments have to
approve the SPM line by line,” Mr Koonin said.
“And so you already have the potential for, let’s say, non-scientific factors entering.”
“The
SPM itself is 20–30 pages, and the media have to cover that,” he said.
“And they typically will cherry pick the most extreme parts of it, so
that’s how we get the distortions, and then that is exacerbated by the
politicians, seeing opportunity in distortion, and the NGOs,”
Despite
observing no increase in the tornadoes, cyclones, droughts, wildfires,
or floods that have been attributed to climate change, the IPCC’s 2023 Headline Statement
warns: “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a
liveable and sustainable future for all [very high confidence].”
“This
problem [climate alarmism] is especially severe in the summaries for
policymakers, which are mostly written by government bureaucrats,” Mr.
Happer said.
“Some of the scientific reviews in the
voluminous background material are sound and dispassionate,” he said.
“But it is not easy for honest scientists to buck the pressures for
alarmism from the political leadership.”
Rise of Computer Models
Much of the basis for climate catastrophism comes not from observation but from computer models.
A study
of climate models between 1970 and 2020 by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) found that “observed changes in temperature and
precipitation have generally been consistent with the changes projected
by earlier models.
“The accurate projections of future climate and
hindcasting of past climate makes us confident that models can reliably
project changes in the climate,” the USDA report states.
However, taking a closer look at the climate modeling industry raises questions about how reliable those projections are.
The
IPCC draws up its predictions based on averaged results from dozens of
models, which Mr. Koonin says “disagree wildly with one another.”
In
his book, Mr. Koonin notes that the average surface temperatures
generated by the models in IPCC reports vary among themselves by around 3
degrees Celsius or three times the amount of warming observed
throughout the 20th century.
The ARs “downplay this embarrassment”
by focusing not on the actual temperature predictions, where models
diverge, but rather on the predicted change in temperatures, where
models are more likely to coincide.
And then there is the process of “tuning” the models.
The models typically divide the Earth up into “grid cells,” each a few tens of square miles.
These
grid cells are “tuned” in a process of hard-wiring the results from the
cells to manually account for more random elements like cloud
formations, storms, or humidity, which the models can’t predict but are
material to temperature changes.
“There are hundreds of such
parameters because the climate system is complicated and has many
different dimensions,” Mr. Koonin said.
“And so, as people tune the parameters differently, they get different results.”
Tuning
also helps the models show results closer to observed data, but this
highlights another shortcoming of the models—while purporting to predict
the future, they often fail to reproduce historical temperatures.
They
also struggle to separate human influence from natural phenomena, all
of which elevates the uncertainty of modeled predictions regarding human
behavior.
“If you’re trying—as a politician or NGO or
company—to promote a narrative, you don’t want to talk about the
uncertainties,” Mr. Koonin said.
“You just want to say it’s going to be five degrees warmer and the world is going to hell.”
Living In Denial
Those who question the narrative of climate catastrophism are often attacked as climate “deniers.”
“Anyone
who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the
American people to a very dangerous future,” President Joe Biden stated in November 2023.
“The impacts we’re seeing are only going to get worse, more frequent, more ferocious, and more costly.”
Absent the hyperbole, however, what do the numbers indicate about our future?
“Modest warming since the 1900s; 1.3 degrees [Celsius] at the global level,” Mr. Koonin said.
“Despite
that, by whatever measure you want to use—lifespan, nutrition, GDP,
death rates from extreme events—it’s all going in a positive direction.”
“Sea
level rise is continuing at just about a foot a century,” he said. “But
the actual and projected economic impacts of warming are in the noise …
even the IPCC says it’s small compared to many other things that
determine human wellbeing.”
A 2022 report
by the Heritage Foundation, modeling the costs and benefits to the
United States of complying with the Paris Agreement and meeting the
Biden administration’s goal of reducing GHG emissions to 52 percent
below 2005 levels by 2030, predicts these policies would reduce global
temperatures by 0.5 degrees at the end of this century.
“Even with theoretical efficiency, we find the costs of the policy to be staggering,” the report states.
“The
economy would, in aggregate, lose $7.7 trillion of gross domestic
product (GDP) through 2040, which is $87,000 per family of four.”
If the developing world is deprived of the use of fossil fuels, the impact there could be even more severe.
“The
billions of people who don’t have energy, who don’t have modern
conveniences, they will be condemned to perpetual poverty,” Mr. Lindzen
said.
“CO2 has played an important role in increasing
agricultural productivity, so we’ll see everyone paying more for food
and more people starving.”
“You are already seeing tragic
consequences even in the United States, where a whole generation of kids
has been told that they have no future,” he said.
“They’re not having children themselves, because what’s the point of having children in a world that’s going to self-destruct?”
The Epoch Times contacted the IPCC for comment but didn’t receive a response.
The job of a data scientist is to look at data and find patterns to explain what is going on. The Covid crisis has been a textbook example of "patterns" at odd with the narrative as we documented extensively on this blog.
In the 1960s following the assassination of JFK, the CIA invented the concept of "conspiracy theory" in order to dismiss more easily the proof that some people were bringing to the table that a lone assassin could not possibly have killed a president. The Warren commission wrote an absurd report full of unbelievable facts such as bullets bouncing and reentering bodies at different angles and whoever exposed the absurdity was labelled a conspiracy theorist. No need to disprove anything for the well oiled propaganda machine.
Move forward 50 years and admire the progress of social engineering. Now exposing the lies of the Covid campaign for this is what is was, a campaign, got you the fresh label of anti-vax, similar to the label of global warming denialist for looking at actual data related to the climate.
The power of such term is strong enough that you do not need to discuss any troubling data. Whatever doesn't fit the narrative is preemptively cancelled on ideological ground. If fact, if you put it in those terms, you suddenly realize that it applies to almost every controversial issue nowadays. Either you conform or you are a heretic who deserves to be silenced.
And on and on, we move from subject to subject, crimes are exposed, whistleblowers are shunned, the narrative is restored. They "own" the science!
Except that they don't. Science is not yet dead and the truth can still be exposed for all to see. The only thing they own is the medias that fewer and fewer people listen to.
Now bird flu. The latest iteration of genetic manipulation being presented as natural evolution even though absolutely nothing is natural about the virus and its behavior as exposed below...
What should be abundantly clear by now is that the problem we have is not "climate", "virus", "terrorists" or any other emerging factor but a more fundamental one of a system gone rogue using the scare of the day to push an agenda of world domination and enslavement of bodies and minds.
The good thing is that more and more people are coming to this view and understand what is going on. The less good one is that the people doing these things are ruthless and will stop at nothing. They will play with fire, nuclear, AI or genetic engineering until eventually some sparks ignite a global conflagration. Now faced with a collapsing financial system, why not push all the buttons at once. Isn't it the modern equivalent of upturning the apple cart? What could go wrong?
In the past six months, bird flu has surprised scientists at least twice.
Bird
flu viruses have circulated mainly in birds for a long time. However,
in early December 2023, an outbreak occurred in U.S. dairy cows, even
though cattle are not typically susceptible to avian influenza A, the bird flu virus.
Since bird flu infections in humans are rare, these incidents have raised significant concern among scientists.
Why is this happening, and how concerned should we be?
This
article aims to avoid unnecessary fear about a potential future
pandemic. Instead, we encourage people to think rationally and make
appropriate adjustments for the future.
Rapid Spread in Birds
The history of the H5N1 virus family can be traced back to 1996 when it was first discovered in a sick goose in the Guangdong province of China.
H5N1 has evolved, resulting in different genetic lineages
(clades) as they mutate, similar to a typical pattern of behavior for
RNA viruses such as the ever-emerging COVID-19 variants. In 2013, the
H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b emerged. Since then, it has spread rapidly to nearly
100 countries across Asia, Europe, Africa, and America, becoming the most dominant clade and causing significant losses to the poultry industry.
In December 2021, this particular clade 2.3.4.4b, was first identified in wild birds in the United States.
The clade quickly mixed with other circulating influenza A viruses in wild birds in North America. This resulted in viral reassortment and recombination
of genes and exhibiting diverse characteristics. Many of these variants
cause severe illnesses in mammals, significantly affecting their
nervous system.
The Jump to Cows
The
avian influenza virus, commonly called the bird flu virus, belongs to
the flu virus family. Flu viruses have many natural hosts, including
ducks, geese, swans, gulls, terns, waders, pigs, and horses.
Certain types of flu viruses typically infect specific hosts and do not usually jump from one host to another.
There
is a wide variety of bird flu viruses, ranging from H1 to H19, but they
have mostly remained in birds and animals, rarely affecting humans.
This clade became concerning because of their frequent spillover events. A spillover event
occurs when a virus from one normal host reservoir jumps into a new or
different host species, for example, jumping from a bird to a horse or
cattle.
From
early this year, some cows have been producing less milk and eating
less. It was later confirmed that the H5Nx clade 2.3.4.4b viruses were
present in both the cows’ milk and nasal samples. The USDA reported an outbreak in this clade in cows for the first time.
The
December USDA preprint reveals that the same viral strain was found in
dairy cows that have no known connection to the infected herds.
This suggests that the transmission in cows has already started
quietly, and asymptomatic cows likely contributed to the rapid spread of
the virus.
As of May 28, there were 67 herds
infected by the H5N1 virus in nine states. Despite the low number of
infected herds, this could indicate that it is no longer just a
spillover event, but rather a significant expansion of host tropism. The
concern is when a large-scale outbreak might occur.
Furthermore, as dairy cows often live in close proximity to humans, infections in cows may also impact human health.
The Likely Jump to Humans
Although bird flu infections in humans have been rare, they can happen.
In the past 20 years, there have been sporadic human infections with the H5N1 virus. There have been 888 infected patients, resulting in 463 deaths
reported across 23 countries. The majority of cases have occurred in
Egypt, Indonesia, and Vietnam. These cases have resulted in a cumulative
case fatality rate of more than 50 percent, based on data collected by
the World Health Organization.
Since these cases are
mostly scattered throughout Asia, they haven’t received much public
attention in Western countries until recently.
In April 2022, a case was confirmed in a Colorado poultry worker
who has since recovered. This was the first known case of H5N1
infection transmitted from poultry to a human in the United States.
The second human case in the United States didn’t occur until late March. A dairy farm worker
in Texas showed symptoms of hemorrhagic conjunctivitis in both eyes and
was confirmed to be infected by the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b. He had no
respiratory symptoms and fully recovered within a few days.
However,
this person reported no contact with sick or dead birds but had close
exposure to sick dairy cows. The cows showed decreased milk production,
reduced appetite, fever, and dehydration, suggesting H5N1 infection.
This
was the first report in the United States of the highly pathogenic
avian influenza H5N1 virus suspected of transmitting from a mammalian
animal species to a human.
These cases have alerted
scientists, as they suggest that the virus may have acquired the ability
to spread between mammals and potentially infect humans.
If a
highly pathogenic H5N1 virus were to develop the ability to spread
easily among humans, including through human-to-human transmission, it
could have a significant impact on the human population, given the high
mortality rate observed in previous cases.
Since these are the
only two confirmed U.S. cases of cow-to-human transmission, the full
extent of similar infections and the mortality rate remain unknown.
The
spillover from one species to another typically happens naturally
through the food chain. For instance, it can happen when infected birds
are eaten by another species. These events generally occur on a small
scale, unlike the widespread occurrences seen in U.S. cattle.
What
caused the recent jump to cows from another species? Was it a natural,
random event as in the past, or were other factors involved?
Gained the Ability to Spread via Aerosols
The original avian H5N1 viruses were not easily transmissible between mammals.
About a decade ago, two virologists,Yoshihiro Kawaoka from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, alarmed the world by conducting high-risk gain-of-function studies on H5N1.
The
process was complex. For example, a mutant H5N1 virus was created
carrying the specific gene mutation PB2 E627K. It was then passed
through ferrets 10 times. After gaining a total of five mutations, the
mutant H5N1 virus gained the ability to be transmitted via aerosols or
respiratory droplets.
These mutations had only been found in nature, but never all within the same strain. Moreover, their lab manipulation and enhanced ability to transmit via aerosol has resulted in pandemic potential.
In
2011, Paul Keim, a microbial geneticist who chaired the U.S. National
Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), expressed concern after
reviewing their publications. “I can’t think of another pathogenic
organism that is as scary as this one,” he told Science. Having worked on anthrax for many years, he added, “I don’t think that anthrax is scary at all compared to this.”
Publishing
these key mutations enables others to replicate the work in their own
labs and marks the beginning of the unsettling H5N1 narrative.
On April 1, 2021, a three-party project
was initiated between the United States, the UK, and China that
included the USDA, the U.S. National Poultry Research Center, the
Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory (SEPRL) in Georgia, the Chinese
Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the Roslin Institute in the UK.
The USDA is sponsoring a grant of $1 million
for this project. The SEPRL and Roslin Institute provide expertise in
avian immunology genomics and viral transcriptomics analysis.
The actual experiments are conducted in China’s CAS lab. There might be a specific reason for choosing this location.
The project, as we’ll explain later, is also a gain-of-function (GOF) study.
GOF
studies on the bird flu virus have triggered broad criticism by the
U.S. scientific community since 2011. Richard Ebright, a molecular
biologist and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of
Microbiology, also told Science, “This work should never have been
done.” From a biosafety perspective, scientists have expressed concern
that a new virus generated through research could escape from the lab or
that bioterrorists could leverage the published results into a
bioweapon for malignant purposes.
In the United States,
gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, Middle East
respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome
coronavirus were banned from October 2014 through December 2017. The moratorium was lifted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Dec. 19, 2017.
Chinese labs often have sufficient technical capacity but face a major challenge due to relatively loose biosecurity regulations.
Former CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, recently stated,
“Bird flu, I think, is going to be the cause of a great pandemic—where
they are teaching these viruses how to be more infectious for humans.”
A Severe, Rapidly Spreading Virus
Chinese scientists are not opposed to doing risky gain-of-function studies on bird flu viruses.
For
example, in a study published in Science in May 2013, scientists led by
Chen Hualan at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in Harbin, China, combined the highly lethal but not easily transmissible H5N1 virus with the highly contagious H1N1 swine flu strain, which infected millions of people in 2009.
At least three aspects
of the three-party collaborative project study design strongly indicate
its gain-of-function nature. However, these may be difficult to discern
without reading between the lines.
One significant issue is the experimental approach known as “serial passage.” The process of serial passage research is widely acknowledged by scientists as a tool for gain-of-function studies.
Serial
passage involves growing and reproducing the virus from one cell to
another or from one animal to another. These studies have high risks of
generating mutations that can lead to greater transmissibility,
pathogenicity, and zoonotic transmission. The more potent mutants can be
selected for the next passage.
As written in their proposal, CAS
scientists are responsible for measuring “fitness,” which indicates the
outcome of a viral infection—whether it develops faster or slower and
whether it results in a severe or mild illness. Samples are collected
before and after each round of passages to identify patterns of
transmission and pathogenicity. This increases the likelihood of creating mutant H5N1 strains that can cause more severe diseases with faster transmission.
The
second clue is linked to the animal models they carefully selected to
reproduce the virus—mallard ducks, Chinese geese, and Japanese quail.
The
mallard duck is the most abundant migratory and wide-ranging duck on
Earth and can crossbreed with 63 other species. It is an asymptomatic
carrier harboring many bird flu viruses, potentially allowing more
mutated viruses to recombine.
Flu viruses are large, single-stranded RNA viruses comprising an eight-segmented
genome. This unique feature of the virus genome implies that it is easy
to reassort to one another, resulting in different combinations of
genomes, especially when given a perfect condition of many different
types of viruses residing in one host.
Furthermore, the Japanese quail has a dual expression of two bird flu virus receptors on both avian and mammalian species.
It is such an ideal host that after a series of passage trials, people
can identify those strains that are more adaptive to mammalian receptors
but not bird receptors.
Therefore, this study design favors the
selection of a mutated H5N1 virus that has enhanced tropism for
mammalian hosts with a higher pathogenicity or transmissibility.
This
is a technologically well-designed study setting to achieve the
gain-of-function purpose, in which the study objective appears to be
about enhanced surveillance, monitoring, fitness, and vaccine studies.
In
addition, this study plans to use live viruses to challenge mallard
ducks with low-pathogenic bird flu viruses first, followed by a
high-pathogenic virus.
Because the bird flu virus is highly prone
to recombination, a genome reassortment among high- and low-pathogenic
bird flu viruses could generate new recombinant influenza viruses with
unpredictable host tropism or pathogenicity.
Therefore, this creates an even higher potential of generating new gain-of-function mutants.
Since 2021, the bird flu virus H5N1 of clade 2.3.4.4b has had an explosive geographic expansion among wild birds and domestic poultry across Asia, Europe, and Africa, and spread to America at the end of 2021.
Response to Criticism
There has been longstanding criticism of gain-of-function research. Several members of the U.S. Congress have also expressed serious concern about collaborating with the Chinese on bird flu research.
“We
are disturbed by recent reports about the U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s (USDA) collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP)-linked Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on bird flu research,”
they wrote in an April 12 letter.
“This research, funded
by American taxpayers, could potentially generate dangerous new
lab-created virus strains that threaten our national security and public
health,” they added.
When interviewed by the Science journal in February, the lead investigator denied that they planned to do gain-of-function studies. However, the experimental approach includes “in vivo passage of viruses through mallard ducks and Chinese goose species to predict evolution in natural hosts.”
The
lead scientist at CAS involved in this study, Wenjun Liu, emphasized
that the Chinese government has strict regulations for lab safety. However,
this argument is far from convincing since even a biosafety level 4
lab—the highest safety level—can have serious safety compliance issues,
as demonstrated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and COVID-19.
The recent suspension
of funding for scientist Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance,
sends a clear signal that people distrust virological studies linked to
Chinese government-controlled labs.
Increased Pathogenicity
The pathogenicity of H5N1 in animals has increased.
In a 2023 study published in Cell,
researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the Vaccine Research
Center of the NIH, used their existing model of cynomolgus macaques to
test the effectiveness of the H5N1 vaccine.
In this study, an
inhaled aerosol dose of 5.1 log10 plaque-forming units (PFU) caused a
strong fever and acute respiratory disease in four out of six macaques,
resulting in their deaths. PFU is a method of measuring the amount of
the virus.
In comparison, in studies conducted from 2001 to 2014
with cynomolgus macaques, when these monkeys were given high doses of
H5N1 (6.5–7.8 log10 PFU) through various routes (nose, throat, mouth,
and eyes), they usually developed mild illness, and only 2 out of 49
monkeys died from the infection, based on previous reports.
Compared
to the studies done 10 to 23 years ago, a much lower dose used in the
2023 study caused a much higher percentage (half) of the monkeys’
deaths. This indicates that the pathogenicity of the H5N1 virus has
dramatically increased.
History Repeated?
While we
retrospectively reviewed the timing of the GOF studies in 2012 and 2021
and the outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu viruses in birds and mammals in 2013
and 2021, it is clear that there is a close temporal relationship
between them.
This research on the bird flu viruses and
current outbreaks in birds and cows should also remind us of the
fiercely debated origin of SARS-CoV-2.
A widely
discussed, evidence-based viewpoint on the origin of the SARS-CoV-2
virus suggests that bat-derived coronaviruses, previously harmless to
humans, gained the ability to infect humans through lab manipulation.
It’s
particularly important to consider the current focus of scientific
research after experiencing an unprecedented, challenging period due to
COVID-19. Some Chinese government-controlled labs are still creating
more dangerous viruses and enabling them to spread on a large scale in
the name of pandemic preparedness. This raises the question of whether
they are truly helping people or creating more diseases.
These
alarming facts and circumstances should prompt immediate, thorough
investigations into Chinese labs and their potential connection to the
H5N1 bird flu outbreak.
In the pursuit of advancing science and
researching more effective ways to protect people, such as developing
vaccines, the underlying driving force behind such endeavors is often
technological competition. However, scientists may have created more
problems than solutions for humanity.
Editing
the virus to enhance its transmissibility and pathogenicity, and
researching its pandemic potential, only fuels more fear, rather than
resolving the issue.
Ironically, some modern technology can have
an extensive negative impact on society. The ability of scientists to
conduct GOF research does not justify its necessity.
It’s time for people to wake up.
More About Bird Flu Viruses
There
are four types of flu viruses: A, B, C, and D. Based on our current
knowledge, only type A can cause global pandemics. A pandemic can occur
when an influenza virus has the ability to create long-lasting human-to-human
transmission in a population with limited immunity against the virus.
In history, three type A flu viruses have triggered human pandemics:
H1N1 (1918), H2N2 (1957), and H3N2 (1968).
Influenza A viruses are classified into dozens of subtypes according to two types of glycoproteins on the surface of the virus.
The first glycoprotein, hemagglutinin (H), allows the virus to bind to a celluar surface receptor known as sialic acid and enter the cell.
Its name comes from its ability to cause red blood cells to clump
together into masses. The second one, neuraminidase (N), is a
receptor-destroying protein and enzyme that cleaves the glycosidic bonds
of the neuraminic acid, which helps release new viral particles from
infected cells. The balance between the H and N function has potential
implications for transmission, host adaptation, and pathogenicity
between species.
A total of 19 H proteins (H1–H19) and 11 N proteins (N1–N11) have been identified. Different combinations of H and N can be used to name a flu virus. H5N1 has a type 5 H and a type 1 N, so its name is H5N1.
The “H5Nx” nomenclature indicates different neuraminidase types (such as N1, N2, N6, N8) are paired with the H5 protein.
A
“clade” is like a branch on a family tree. In a virus family, a clade
refers to a group of viruses from a common ancestor with similar
characteristics. Clade 2.3.4.4b includes various viruses from H5N1, H5N2, H5N5, H5N6, and H5N8.
Five subtypes of avian influenza A viruses, H5, H6, H7, H9, and H10 are known to have caused human infections.
Bird flu viruses are classified as either low or highly pathogenic avian influenza based on the disease severity they trigger.
The
H5 and H7 subtypes are highly pathogenic. Specifically, A(H5N1) and
A(H7N9) viruses have caused most of the avian influenza A viral
infections reported in people.
HPAI A(H5N6) and LPAI A(H9N2) viruses have also caused human infections in recent years.
Views
expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
We have been warning about the risks of escalation since the beginning. We are now slowly but surely approaching the point of no return. What can Russia do? Maybe not much if the global West is hell bent on starting a conflict.
The analysis of this blog is straightforward. Thanks to 70 years of profligacy the West is bankrupt and in need of a reset. But the scale of the crisis prevents a simple jubilee as in the past. Covid was the first shot in an attempt to take control. It succeeded in the short term and allowed the Central Banks to inject trillions of dollars in the system buying 3 years in the process but failed in the long term as people could see through the machiavellian plan.
Option B is more risky, create a limited war to justify restrictions and limitations. This is where we stand now, on the edge of the precipice. War between East and West is almost unavoidable at this stage. This is not an ideological but a resource conflict: Russia has the resources, the West, especially Europe doesn't.
Chances for war: Almost 100% now.
Compared to this, what's happening in Gaza and the guilty verdict of Trump are almost anecdotes although indirectly they do increase the odds for a global conflict.
President Putin shared a lot of insight about the NATO-Russianproxy war in Ukraine during the press conference that he held during his latest trip to Uzbekistan. The
first point of relevance that he made is that Zelensky is no longer
regarded by Russia as Ukraine’s legitimate leader after his term
expired. According to President Putin’s “tentative estimate” of this
legal question, Rada Speaker Stefanchuk should now be seen as Zelensky’s
legal successor.
The
Russian leader also speculated that the only reason why the incumbent
remains in power is for him to carry out scandalous moves like possibly
lowing the draft age to 23 and even 18 years. In his words, “I
believe that after this and other unpopular decisions are made, those
who are acting today as representatives of executive government would be
replaced with people who would not be responsible for the unpopular
decisions made. These representatives will be simply replaced in a
snap.”
Moving along, in response to a question about
NATO chief Stoltenberg’s suggestion for members to let Ukraine use
their arms to hit targets inside of Russia like the US just tacitly approved of
Kiev doing, he reminded everyone that long-range precision strikes
require space reconnaissance data. Since Ukraine lacks these
capabilities, such strikes can only be carried out with NATO support,
including through instructors inside Ukraine masquerading as mercenaries for plausible deniability purposes.
President Putin advised the West to think twice about this and then addressed Russia’s fresh push into Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, which he confirmed was in response to the shelling of Belgorod and aimed at carving out a “security area” exactly as he earlier warned he’d order if those attacks didn’t stop. On
the topic of Belgorod, he lamented that the Western media doesn’t
report on Ukraine’s strikes there, and hinted that his envisaged
“security area” could expand to stop longer-range attacks if need be.
He was later asked about Ukraine inviting French “instructors”, to which he responded by saying that his forces regularly “hear English, French, or Polish on the radio” when
listening in their opponents, thus confirming that their mercenaries
have long been deployed there. Of those three, President Putin believes
that the Polish ones are the least likely to leave, which is an allusion
to Russian officials’ prior claims that it plans to annex Western
Ukraine or at least incorporate it into a sphere of influence.
As for how he sees everything ending, he reaffirmed his commitment to peace talks and reminded everyone that it’s Ukraine that unilaterally froze this process, not Russia. Mid-June’s upcoming “peace talks” in Switzerland are
only designed to “create a semblance of global support” for the West’s
unilateral demands of Russia aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat upon
it. Suffice to say, President Putin promised that this won’t succeed,
and he concluded by saying that it’ll only be more painful for Ukraine.
Reflecting on his remarks, the Russian leader signaled that he’s sincerely
interested in peace but is also preparing for an escalation in the
conflict since NATO’s latest moves suggest that it’s still disinterested
in compromising. The US is using Zelensky as its figurehead
for implementing unpopular decisions aimed at indefinitely perpetuating
this doomed conflict, after which it’ll likely replace him with someone
else once public opinion demands it.
Even in that scenario, however, it’s unclear whether another Ukrainian regime change would precede the recommencement of genuine peace talks that ensure Russia’s national security interests. President Putin’s words about Poland came amidst it expressing support for using Western arms to strike targets inside of Russia, countenancing shooting down missiles over Western Ukraine, and repeating its position that a conventional intervention in that neighboring country can’t be ruled out.
From the looks of it, Poland is indeed preparing to conventionally intervene in Ukraine if Russia achieves a military breakthrough,
which could spike the risks of World War III by miscalculation due to
the US’ dangerous game of nuclear chicken that it’s playing as
explained here.
In sum, the NATO-Russian security dilemma is spiraling out of control,
and Russia might use tactical nukes in self-defense to stop any
large-scale NATO invasion force that threateningly crosses the Dnieper
towards its newly unified regions.
Therein lies the importance of
President Putin hinting that his country might expand its “security
zone” to defend against Ukraine’s use of long-range precise strike
systems against targets within its pre-2014 territory. He wants
NATO to know the territorial extent to which Russian forces might go in
the event that the front lines collapse, which is essentially dependent
on them and their decision to allow it to use such Western arms with the
bloc’s space reconnaissance support.
The message being
sent is that Russia has no interest in going beyond those geographical
limits that NATO itself is responsible for setting through its
abovementioned decision, which is meant to prevent the bloc from
overreacting if their opponents achieve a military breakthrough. A
Polish- and/or French-led
conventional intervention would already be dangerous enough, but that
invasion force’s potential crossing of the Dnieper could trigger a
tactical nuclear response from Russia in self-defense.
The
latest military-strategic dynamics suggest that a conventional NATO
intervention is seriously being considered, even if it’s only a partial
one that remains west of the Dnieper. The signals coming from
NATO as a whole and Poland in particular show that they want an
escalation in order to continue fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian,
but President Putin just countersignaled that his country is prepared
for all eventualities.
It’s therefore up to the West whether or not everything spirals into World War III.
Another great interview of Douglas Macgregor which as usual will probably be cancelled by YouTube, the paragon of free speech or what's left of it in the West. (So listen quickly, the clock is ticking.)
The only subject on which I disagree with him is that the West facing financial disaster is looking for trouble in Ukraine and negotiation for this reason is quasi impossible. I hope I am wrong...
A little wordy but the analysis and information are complete and thorough. Is the situation as dire as Canadian Preper presents? Hard to tell but the stakes for Russia and NATO are very high. We are literally playing with fire but is there any adult left in the room to cool down the rhetoric? Or are we seeing the switch from a local conflict to a real world war?
How far will NATO go to provoke Russia? Red line after red line eventually, a real one will be tripped.
I do believe that it is wise for Russia to not answer immediately especially as the country is winning in Ukraine. The answer should be asymmetric and not expected.
But clearly tensions are rising. A matter of months?
More
and more European officials and NATO countries are on board with
allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to strike deep inside
Russian territory. Among the latest to speak openly about this
are NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, EU foreign policy chief
Josep Borrell, and the government of Sweden, which is the NATO
alliance's newest member state.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday issued one of his more dire warnings yet, putting Europe on notice by commenting on their possessing small land areas and dense populations.
The veiled threat is very ominous especially in light of the fact that
Russia just wrapped up tactical nuclear drills near Ukraine...
Putin
told reporters gathered in Tashkent during an official visit to the
central Asian country of Uzbekistan, which is a former Soviet
Republic, "Constant escalation can lead to serious consequences."
He
also hinted at the prospect of nuclear war in posing: "If these serious
consequences occur in Europe, how will the United States behave,
bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons?"
"It's hard to say - do they want a global conflict?" Putin questioned,
warning that Ukraine hitting Russian territory with externally supplied
long-range weapons would make the West directly involved in the
conflict.
He also appeared to reference a new agreement between Kiev and Paris which will see French military trainers be deployed to Ukrainian soil.
Putin remarked that this puts the situation a big step closer to major
direct confrontation between Russia and France - and ultimately the NATO
alliance. That's when he warned the following...
They... "should be aware of what they are playing with" as they had small land areas and dense populations.
"This
is a factor that they should keep in mind before talking about striking
deep into Russian territory. This is a serious thing, and we are of
course watching it very closely," Putin said.
Week
after week, officials in the West find new ways to escalate (also in
light of Russian forces making rapid gains in Kharkiv), and given that
Zelensky has said it's 'impossible' to sit down at the negotiating table
with Moscow so long as Putin is in power, there appears to be no off-ramp whatsoever.
Indeed we might add to Putin's remarks that everyone is playing with fire...
and this has been the case for a long time now. There are very few
European leaders willing to openly resist this intensifying push to
escalate at this point.
As expected we are getting very close to a major turn in Ukraine.The war is lost for the West as Macron recently hinted with his "End of Europe in sight"! Well, let's see how this play out but the omen are not good. As the president of Hungary recently said, we may have crossed the Rubicon.
A new world order is being implemented step by step. Probably slower than people expect but taking everything into consideration at a relatively fast pace.
The US office real estate bubble is huge and will probably bankrupt many American Banks by the middle of next year considering the large amount of refinance necessary which technically cannot happen at 5%+.
Of course this bubble pale compared to the Chinese real estate bubble which is imploding right now. Just as it was the case in Japan 30 years ago, the implosion will not tank the Chinese economy but it will put a severe brake on future growth. All in all, just as the Japan "miracle" ended in a bubble, the Chinese miracle will probably do likewise. To keep growing, China must transform its economy into a more modern one and in so doing enter into direct competition to Europe and the US adding pressure to the country foreign relations.
And just to prove that mankind, at the social level is unable or at the very least very slow to learn anything, Japan is blowing another real estate bubble. Luckily, 2.0 is restricted to central Tokyo and a few other major cities like Osaka and Fukuoka. It is fueled by foreign money taking advantage of the weak Yen to invest massively in the country. Taking no account whatsoever of demand or the ever present risk of a major earthquake. What could go wrong?
It
has been a year since a string of U.S. regional bank failures, together
with the collapse of global heavyweight Credit Suisse, caused many to
fear that a major financial crisis was imminent.
But, by the summer of 2023, the panicked withdrawals by frightened depositors largely subsided.
In
February, however, New York Community Bank (NYCB) appeared to resurrect
the crisis when it announced $2.4 billion in losses, fired its CEO, and faced credit downgrades from rating agencies Fitch and Moodys.
In
what has become a familiar tale for U.S. regional banks, NYCB’s share
price plummeted by 60 percent virtually overnight, erasing billions of
dollars from its market value, and its depositors fled en masse.
“I think that there’s more to come,”
Peter Earle, a securities analyst and senior research fellow at the
American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.
Underlying
this year’s turbulence is the fact that many regional banks are sitting
on large portfolios of distressed commercial real estate (CRE) loans.
according to Mr. Earle. And many are attempting to cope through a
process called “extend and pretend,” in which they grant insolvent
borrowers more time to pay in hopes that things will get better.
“There
is trouble out there, and most of it probably won’t be realized because
of the ability to roll some of these loans forward and buy a few more
years, and maybe things will recover by then,” he said.
“But all it does is it kicks the can down the road, and it basically means a more fragile financial system in the medium term.”
NYCB’s
problem was an overwhelming exposure to New York landlords who were
struggling to stay solvent. At the start of this year, the bank had on
its books more than $18 billion in loans to multifamily, rent-controlled
housing developments.
This situation was particularly concerning given that NYCB had been the safe-haven institution that rescued Signature Bank, another failing regional bank, in March 2023.
Much
of what took down banks such as Signature Bank in last year’s banking
crisis was an unmanageable level of deposits from high net worth and
corporate clients that were too large to be insured by the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
In
Signature Bank’s case, about 90 percent of its deposits were uninsured,
and depositors rushed to withdraw their money when the bank came under
stress from losses in the cryptocurrency market.
Another source of
stress for regional banks was their inability to cope with an
aggressive series of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve to
combat inflation. Many banks that held large bond portfolios yielding
low fixed rates found that the value of these portfolios declined
sharply, creating unrealized losses.
While these portfolios, often made up of U.S. Treasury securities, were considered safe from a credit perspective, they were subject to market risk,
and their loss of value sparked concerns about the banks’ solvency in
the event they had to be sold. As stock traders rushed to sell the
shares of banks with large exposures to interest rate risk, customers
became spooked and raced to withdraw their money.
Consequently,
unrealized losses quickly became actual losses as banks were forced to
sell bonds and loans at a loss in an increasingly futile attempt to make
panicking depositors whole.
Rate Hikes Cease, Problems Remain
Today,
while interest rates remain high, they are relatively stable. And yet
concerns about the health of U.S. regional banks remain because of their
large exposure through CRE, including office buildings, multifamily
housing units, and retail spaces.
While CRE loans make up about 13 percent of the balance sheets of the biggest U.S. banks, they make up 44 percent
of regional banks’ lending portfolios. CRE loans designated as
nonperforming doubled as a percentage of U.S. banks’ portfolios from 0.4
percent in 2022 to 0.81 percent by the end of 2023.
In total, there are about 130 regional banks in the United States, with a little more than $3 trillion in assets.
These banks, which each have between $10 billion and $100 billion in
assets, are typically more exposed to the boom and bust of local markets
but also to specific sectors within those markets where they have been
able to operate profitably.
While other credit sectors, such as
home mortgages, car loans, and corporate loans, are generally the domain
of larger financial institutions, regional banks have found a
profitable niche in lending to real estate investors. But in the past
several years, commercial landlords have been taking hits from two
directions.
Since the introduction of lockdowns and the rise of
work-at-home culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, many corporations
have viewed office rents as a cost ripe for cutting.
According to an April CRE report
by Commercial Edge, the office vacancy rate across the United States
was 18.2 percent as of March, an increase of 1.5 percent over the prior
year.
“U.S. office vacancy rates have increased in recent years as
companies embrace remote and hybrid work and re-examine their office
footprints,” the report reads. “The increases are not concentrated in
just one market or sector.”
