The critical thing about the coronavirus is that it allowed Dem govs and pressure groups to use lawfare to change election rules. All the same, Trump fumbled the response in that he should have stuck with the just the flu line, closed our borders, and offered incentives for the vulnerable (mostly elderly and/or obese people) to quarantine, while pushing hard on the vaccine as he did (but then Pfizer arranged not to announce the good news until after the election).
I've still seen no good proof the virus is not a net benefit to society, mod our costly economic interventions. If we let it rip it would burn off the dry timber that costs a ton in healthcare, while claiming only modest quality life years lost relative to the counterfactual no virus world. Trump's initial "just the flu" instinct was thus dead on target, but he got bad advice from the moron advisers he hired as usual.
Everyone got Covid wrong, but some were more wrong than others. First and foremost, the claims of exponential spread proved to be disastrouly, albeit fortunately wrong. No prediction was more wrong or more ruinous to pandemic policy.
That Trump bought into these hyperbolic Covid models proved to be his Waterloo. Not only did Covid fear rationalize destroying election integrity, but it drove Trump to empower Fauci to crush the economy.
Personally, I was right that the Covid models were wrong and that Trump choosing to extend "2 weeks to flatten the curve" greatly jeopardized his reelection.
What I got wrong: I failed to appreciate how much existing law and the 2020 CARES act created adverse incentives that amplified the pandemic pain and distorted economic priorities.
EcoHealth was collecting bat coronaviruses and modifying them to be more infectious to human lungs using "humanized" mice. They were subcontracting this work to Dr. Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan China. This isn't speculation. This is documented fact. It is speculation that the highly infectious bat coronaviruses targeting human lungs being developed in a lab in Wuhan, China had anything to do with the pandemic involving a highly infectious bat coronavirus targeting human lungs that broke out in Wuhan, China.
When Fauci said to Rand Paul "that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he was clearly lying. You can play word games with the phrase "gain of function" but modifying bat coronaviruses to be more infectious to human lungs is what would reasonably be referred to as "gain of function".
I don't see how you can reasonably discuss the pandemic without mentioning the high likelihood that it was an artificially modified virus funded by NIH + NIAID with US taxpayer dollars.
I have an idea for a FIT that's entirely made up of people who have been very publicly wrong.
It's a slim roster so far. Andrew Sullivan published a book called "I Was Wrong", and Scott from ACX has his mistakes page. And Gen. K.T. McMaster gets in for an amazing speech he gave recently. I'll post the YouTube link.
The critical thing about the coronavirus is that it allowed Dem govs and pressure groups to use lawfare to change election rules. All the same, Trump fumbled the response in that he should have stuck with the just the flu line, closed our borders, and offered incentives for the vulnerable (mostly elderly and/or obese people) to quarantine, while pushing hard on the vaccine as he did (but then Pfizer arranged not to announce the good news until after the election).
I've still seen no good proof the virus is not a net benefit to society, mod our costly economic interventions. If we let it rip it would burn off the dry timber that costs a ton in healthcare, while claiming only modest quality life years lost relative to the counterfactual no virus world. Trump's initial "just the flu" instinct was thus dead on target, but he got bad advice from the moron advisers he hired as usual.
Everyone got Covid wrong, but some were more wrong than others. First and foremost, the claims of exponential spread proved to be disastrouly, albeit fortunately wrong. No prediction was more wrong or more ruinous to pandemic policy.
That Trump bought into these hyperbolic Covid models proved to be his Waterloo. Not only did Covid fear rationalize destroying election integrity, but it drove Trump to empower Fauci to crush the economy.
Personally, I was right that the Covid models were wrong and that Trump choosing to extend "2 weeks to flatten the curve" greatly jeopardized his reelection.
What I got wrong: I failed to appreciate how much existing law and the 2020 CARES act created adverse incentives that amplified the pandemic pain and distorted economic priorities.
EcoHealth was collecting bat coronaviruses and modifying them to be more infectious to human lungs using "humanized" mice. They were subcontracting this work to Dr. Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan China. This isn't speculation. This is documented fact. It is speculation that the highly infectious bat coronaviruses targeting human lungs being developed in a lab in Wuhan, China had anything to do with the pandemic involving a highly infectious bat coronavirus targeting human lungs that broke out in Wuhan, China.
When Fauci said to Rand Paul "that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he was clearly lying. You can play word games with the phrase "gain of function" but modifying bat coronaviruses to be more infectious to human lungs is what would reasonably be referred to as "gain of function".
I don't see how you can reasonably discuss the pandemic without mentioning the high likelihood that it was an artificially modified virus funded by NIH + NIAID with US taxpayer dollars.
I have an idea for a FIT that's entirely made up of people who have been very publicly wrong.
It's a slim roster so far. Andrew Sullivan published a book called "I Was Wrong", and Scott from ACX has his mistakes page. And Gen. K.T. McMaster gets in for an amazing speech he gave recently. I'll post the YouTube link.
https://youtu.be/dvx1rmU-QAU?t=2093
Who am I forgetting?