The issue is the wrong guy, a dishonest blowhard trying to cover his own failures, claimed this early on with absolutely zero evidence. It was a clear dodge, his normal MO. Refusing any responsibility for ending the international pandemic response team that would have been able to actually say when and where the outbreak started, and likely be able to keep it relegated to one small area in China. By blaming it on a Chinese lab, actually saying it was intentional, he deflects from his abject failure to protect America from a clear, obvious, incontrovertibly deadly threat on the horizon….or any time after it’s discovery.
Were the Chinese studying Covid, yes, so were we. That’s not an indication of where it came from. There’s no evidence it came from any lab, only supposition at best.

Edit:Even if the guess that it came from a Chinese lab is correct, it doesn’t excuse one second of Trump’s (lack of) response and outright denials for months-years. The origin has nothing to do with the danger level, in fact, if it WERE enhanced/created in a lab as he claimed, that’s more reason to consider it MORE dangerous, not reason to claim it’s just a cold or mild flu and will disappear like magic in a few weeks. Granted, it was fun to see him (only after his trade deal fell apart) blame this deadly virus on the Chinese as an unforgivable deliberate act of germ warfare and accuse them of minimizing the danger and hiding the size and severity of the outbreak and in the same breath claim it’s nothing to worry about, not dangerous, probably not deadly, not worth any action to protect against, and just a minimal annoyance soon to disappear….but also disappointing to see how easily so many Americans glossed over the two faced hypocritical responsibility shirking stance he took.

This guy claims most, nearly all viruses can’t both infect people and be transmitted….what utter nonsense. If that were true, there would have never been epidemics, pandemics, not even outbreaks. Credibility destroyed.

I guess he didn’t hear about swine flu, or bird flu, or flu, or colds, or any transmittable virus. 🤦‍♂️
I guess they haven’t heard new mutations are far less deadly (but more transmittable) than earlier versions, so they are getting less dangerous, contrary to his claim.

Not transmitting well outdoors means it’s not natural?! Bullshit, animals nest together. Many natural viruses require close contact to transmit.

DNA testing proved early on that this is not a man made virus. Is it possible a Chinese lab made a natural virus more dangerous, then a lab mistake released it? Yes, but there’s no evidence that’s the case, even these people who’s livelihood relies on people accepting “the lab hypothesis” (hypothesis=guess) admit it’s all conjecture, there’s no evidence, certainly no proof. It’s not the lab theory because it’s unproven.

Duh.

BTW, this couple are married, anti vaxers, Ivermectin proponents, and were thrown out of Evergreen College, and are now both now discredited and disgraced. Their main source of income is now their anti vax, pro Ivermectin, Covid isn’t dangerous podcasts loved by morons like Joe Rogan, and a source of much of his misinformation that’s getting him removed from his platform.
“Bret Weinstein is one of the foremost purveyors of COVID-19 disinformation out there,” says Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist and professor at Wayne State University who also debunks quack remedies as managing editor at a website called Science-Based Medicine. “Weinstein can be ‘credited’ with playing a large role in popularizing the belief that ivermectin is a miracle cure or preventative for COVID-19, that the vaccines are dangerous, and that the disease itself is not. Why are Rogan and Maher attracted to his messages? Contrarians and conspiracy theorists tend to be attracted to each other.”
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/09/16/bret-weinstein-and-heather-heying-go-unvaccinated-take-ivermectin/

Downvote discredited shills who profit from misinformation. No surprise at all, considering who posted this dishonest propaganda from discredited propagandists.

"Two weeks ago a 30 year old came into my hospital perfectly healthy dead....dead from the swine flu."....really?! What kind of nonsense is this? How often does he treat perfectly healthy dead people? Wasn't he surprised when a dead man walked in?

Bill is 100% correct that the average American diet leads to a large percentage of American health issues across the board, and exacerbates others.

Islam today is largely fundamentalist. Any religion practiced like Islam is practiced by many today is bad and evil. That is Bill's position. Christianity had it's fundamentalist period....we call it the dark ages....it's seeing a resurgence in America.

Milo on Bill was not a platform, more an expose. He didn't look intelligent at all. Bill's show is about getting both sides of a debate, even when one side is abhorrent. It's about exposing Nazis, not pretending they're right.

Compared to right wing talking heads, Bill is 100% right about everything....which is to say, those who complain about his mistakes and odd opinions AS A COMEDIAN are invariably the same people who back outrageous nutjobs like Beck, Jones, Limbaugh, Trump, and all the other feckless and feculent right wing propagandists who never honestly explain positions they disagree with and always create paper tigers and windmills to fight. Bill has them on to have their say in their own words to expose the insanity, and often goes on to contradict them.

BTW, Bill did get fully vaccinated for Covid....and one month ago he contracted it anyway. This broke his perfect attendance record of never missing a show since 93. He is not a crazed anti vaxer, he simply believes in America that the health crisis and poor overall health of Americans comes mainly from our diets since >70% of us are overweight and >42% are clinically obese. He's right.

I thought I addressed that. Travel was also open between states, and many countries with "free travel amongst nations" had no-travel/stay at home orders in place, unlike the U.S., and afaik, mandatory quarantine for all international travelers.

Again, because he eradicated the international Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, I can legitimately ascribe every single non Chinese death and most Chinese deaths to his actions directly. A pandemic on this level WAS foreseen after SARS, Ebola, and Swine Flu, it's why we created the GHSB. It's why we had a pandemic response plan that Trump completely ignored and actually denied it existed for months and months.

I also am going by facts. My facts say that at least four things Trump did against professional advice took us from prepared to minimise any pandemic to at worst a foreign epidemic to a place where months after pandemics start our leader denied any danger and made no moves to stop it.
1) Eradication of the GHSB, missed opportunity one to have zero US cases and avoid a pandemic completely.
2) Repeated early public denial of the danger while encouraging others to do the same and go about business as usual, missed opportunity two to have zero US cases, and a missed opportunity to minimize any spread if quarantining travelers (something else he failed miserably to even consider early on) failed.
3) Encouragement of those who trust him to ignore all mitigation efforts, don't mask, don't social distance, don't shut down non essential businesses, don't close schools, don't listen to medical professionals....missed opportunity number three to minimize US infections to thousands instead of hundreds of thousands. Remember the many months he said grandma would gladly die to get people back to work, pretending many months in that only feeble octogenarians get sick?
4) Denial of a prepared response plan, never following it and claiming total ignorance, missed opportunity number four to follow prepared plans based on science from day one, missing the opportunity to keep our infection rate at S Korean levels.

That's four well researched and vetted moronic, irrational, and irresponsible mistakes he personally made that multiplied our infection rate by 100- infinity times (if we could have had zero without his multiple massive and stupid mistakes, which is not just possible but likely, he can be said to have CAUSED every single US case, multiplying our infections by infinity.). There were more, but I'm beating a dead horse.
Remember, his real plan was natural herd immunity, with an expected 3-60 million deaths depending on who you asked.

I say if intelligent decisions could have avoided all US infections, and that's undeniable IMO, you can lay the blame for as high a percentage as you like on the leader who made bad dangerous decisions out of pure narcissistic ignorance and hatred of his predecessor...up to 100%. 80-90% still seems like I'm coddling him, at least two failures could have made cases zero, and others minimized it to under 10% of what we have. All four I listed almost certainly allowed >90% giving every doubt and giving him all possible credit....so yes, I'm satisfied I'm not exaggerating.

Obama's responsible and responsive planning and execution stopped Ebola from ever spreading here despite it making it to our shores, and it was FAR more contagious and deadly. Had we had Trump then doing the same things, there would be tens of millions dead and likely still spreading disease, imo.


Edit: let me try analogy...If a mayor removes the stop signs from 4 way highway intersections, they are responsible for every wreck that happens, even though other towns with stop signs still have wrecks at intersections. Trump pulled the signs, removed the flashing red light, and cut first responder funding, and claimed there never was a highway code to follow and he takes no responsibility for the jump in highway deaths.

Lol. So sad Bobby.
12000 total died vs >210000 and rising fast expected to top 400000 before Biden takes office, and Trump's new plan if he is successful with his coup is to raise that to 8 million dead or more.
Swine flu is the flu, not even a bad one by the numbers, Covid 19 is not. Covid kills 1 in 33 infected, swine flu killed 1 in 5000, and didn't put 20% in the hospital.
Obama put out science based guidelines and warnings quickly, trump continues to lie and claim Coronavirus is less deadly than the flu, nothing, go out and get it.

Trump ignored warnings, trump ignored pandemic specialists and fired them, trump cut travel from China eventually, but only of Chinese, no quarantine for the 40000+ non Chinese he let come in from China, trump ignored the pandemic response plan, and claimed for 5+ months there wasn't one, Trump stupidly blames the last administration for his total lack of preparedness, but he had been president for three+ years when he even noticed, but he takes NO responsibility, not a leader's actions. Trump let 210000+ Americans die according to him to avoid people getting worried, and continues to give horrifically wrong and deadly advice from the Whitehouse now to avoid admitting his total failure to lead.....what a plan.

It sure is looking like a landslide, with Biden ahead double digits in every poll besides a few pro Trump internet polls open only to Republicans by non pollsters. It's so bad Trump is calling on Barr to prosecute Biden now....the problem being he doesn't know for what, and worse, the Republican Senate report already cleared Biden of ANY crimes....and accused every Trump official of lying during his impeachment, including trump himself who they confirmed WAS helped by Russia...remember, that country that put bounties on American soldiers that Trump ignores to this day? Your homeland.
Moscow's Emissary Governing America...no thanks, we tried that, it cost us trillions, tripling the deficit this year, and hundreds of thousands of lives.

Red tsunami, take me away.

Still think he's handling the coronavirus well ? Yeah swine flu was just like this right ? Bird flu? Yeah i guess obama fucked up the usa response just like this right?

Enjoy the leadership ! Look! I get it. If you don't fall in line then the kgb will probably throw you out a window or something. Find a way to reach out to someone. You don't have to be a Russian troll! We can rescue you !

Yep, obama was responsible for those responses, and trump is responsible for these.

Oh i remember SARS and Swine Flu - they were just like this right?

Oh yeah and when they happened, there was a giant block of ever faithful republicans supporting everything Obama was doing.


Hmmm wait...

And saying "don't be racist against chinese americans, you can still eat in chinatown" isn't stonewalling on a travel ban.

In the description it states that these are comparisons of pandemics. If my google-fu can be trusted, this is not true. The 2009 Swine flu is the only other outbreak on the list considered a pandemic.

*quality idea
*promote her ingenuity
Recall, however, this is far from the first time we've seen pigs fly, in 2009 swine flu.

That's an insane interpretation imo. There's no reason for the 'till heaven and earth pass' part at all then except to confuse the meaning, which would be crazy.

The reason for the Heaven and Earth part is to reaffirm what He said in the previous verse, which is that He didn't come to destroy the law but to fulfill the law. He is saying the law cannot be destroyed. The reason He was strongly reaffirming that is because that is exactly what the Pharisees accused Him of doing.

As to pigs flying meaning 'never' you forget, in 2009....swine flu. ;-)

lol

I put them together because they are written together. You conflate fulfilling the law with "everything being fulfilled" for some reason, when it seems clear to me they are very different things. The Law is not "everything", right?

The law is not everything, but the context of that statement is that He is fulfilling the law. The "all" then is all that which is written for Him to fulfill. An example that ties in would be in Luke 4:21

Also, a main piece you are skipping over is where Jesus said He didn't come to destroy the law but fulfill it. That tells you the meaning of what He is talking about. He is definitely saying that the law can be fulfilled, and it can be fulfilled by Him. This is the meaning of the text, that He had come to fulfill it and would (and did) fulfill it.

Right then, Jesus opposed God's law, hardly moral by any religious standard. That Law was still in effect while he lived under any interpretation, something he reiterated in the passage.

He didn't oppose Gods law, He brought something into the situation that had never been there before, which is grace. Since He is the Lord, He can do that. That is exactly what He came to earth to do, which is to bring forgiveness and salvation by faith through grace.

You've ignored my question, or contorted around it. The Law during his life required killing infidels, either he followed it and murdered or not. If not, how is defying God and telling others to follow along not immoral, especially considering the passage where he said that's not OK for ANYONE?

I would venture to guess that the majority of the citizens of Israel had never killed anyone except perhaps if they were in the army. You make it sound like they were a bunch of barbarians running around and bashing peoples heads in. The reality is, everyone knew the law and knew the penalty of certain things was death. It probably would have been relatively rare that people were caught violating laws that led to the death penalty. Jesus followed the law perfectly but it doesn't mean He killed anyone. The only example we have in scripture of that situation is when He showed grace.

".....until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven,"
Edit: it seems you give him a 'do as I say, not as I do, I am bound by no law or rules because I am God so infallible' pass, which doesn't seem like him as he's usually described in the least (teaching by example), and goes against any interpretation of Mathew:18 since he definitely hadn't fulfilled "everything" yet.

It would have been right for Him to stone someone who broke the law but the person would be judged by the priests before that could happen. I just doubt that it ever did happen and nothing is mentioned about it in scripture.

I thought I answered, but I'll try again. As I recall, the stories, fables, and parables attributed to Aesop did a great job of not only listing and describing good morals and ethics, but explaining the why of them without resorting to supernatural whim as an explanation. Imo, a much better, clearer job than Jesus and the bible with it's cryptically described, contradictory, changing morals and ethics usually without any explanation. Granted, the man may be just another myth.

Jesus is not a myth, first of all. Even Richard Dawkins believes He was a real person. I enjoyed Aesops fables; my grandfather gave me a book of them as a child (I wish I could find it now). I haven't looked them over in awhile so I can't say what I do or don't agree with. The question is, how are they objectively good? By that I don't mean, something that appeals to you personally. What I mean is, what makes them transcendent above mere human opinion?

That's an insane interpretation imo. There's no reason for the 'till heaven and earth pass' part at all then except to confuse the meaning, which would be crazy.
As to pigs flying meaning 'never' you forget, in 2009....swine flu. ;-)

I put them together because they are written together. You conflate fulfilling the law with "everything being fulfilled" for some reason, when it seems clear to me they are very different things. The Law is not "everything", right?

Right then, Jesus opposed God's law, hardly moral by any religious standard. That Law was still in effect while he lived under any interpretation, something he reiterated in the passage.

You've ignored my question, or contorted around it. The Law during his life required killing infidels, either he followed it and murdered or not. If not, how is defying God and telling others to follow along not immoral, especially considering the passage where he said that's not OK for ANYONE?
".....until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven,"
Edit: it seems you give him a 'do as I say, not as I do, I am bound by no law or rules because I am God so infallible' pass, which doesn't seem like him as he's usually described in the least (teaching by example), and goes against any interpretation of Mathew:18 since he definitely hadn't fulfilled "everything" yet.

I thought I answered, but I'll try again. As I recall, the stories, fables, and parables attributed to Aesop did a great job of not only listing and describing good morals and ethics, but explaining the why of them without resorting to supernatural whim as an explanation. Imo, a much better, clearer job than Jesus and the bible with it's cryptically described, contradictory, changing morals and ethics usually without any explanation. Granted, the man may be just another myth.

That's certainly your choice. I'll roll the dice any day if it means bacon. I respect your right to take or avoid the risks you wish until you try to remove my right to make my own choice.

It would be nice, but no, wild boar are notoriously dangerous and aggressive, and also incredibly destructive and fertile, I don't think a sterilization program would work for many reasons. What they really need is a huge, repeating, mass hunt with big prizes (to get enough people to join for a clean sweep) so they actually eradicate them. Leaving them alive in the wild, even if neutered (which I don't think could work on pigs, since one missed female can repopulate so quickly) means years of horrendous destruction of the already endangered habitats in Hawaii.
BUSTED!!! I knew it. I've wanted to ask one of you...do pigs know what to say to someone who says to them "When pigs fly"?
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A: 2009 buddy....swine flu.

@criticalthud
Yeah, I've been accused of that, but I blame that on the "arguing on the internet" aspect of things, rather than my actual mindset. For instance, as much as I talk up Medical Science, I still don't trust doctors, and in the last 10 years, have only visited to A) get a Physical Examination required by a job, B) get a prescription for a PT, C) Get innoculated for one of the bird/swine flu, as I had been sick for a week after spending a weekend at a "Gamer Convention" (PAX), where there were many confirmed cases.

But, while I don't trust doctors, I actively campaign against "Alternative Medicine", as I've seen many people hurt by it. I've seen one person poison themselves after getting food poisoning, because "like cures like", and I've had one friend commit suicide after they were convinced that the anti-psychotic medicine they were taking wasn't "natural", and quit it.

Whenever I think of alternative medicine practitioners and their criticism of Proper Medicine, I have one quote that sticks in my head, courtesy of The Big Lebowski:
"You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole"

Sure, Medical Science can be improved. But you can't improve it by removing the science. You improve it by removing the politics. Remove the kickbacks from big pharma. Remove the groveling and begging for research funds. Remove the Actual Politics of Insurance and Medicare and Medicaid and VA Benefits. Remove the Actual Politics of the 'War on Drugs".

Those are the problems in our current medical community. But rather than attempting to solve the actual problems that we all agree on, most naturopaths are just treating the symptoms... working on the edges of society, and contributing to the distrust of the individual doctors, rather than the overhaul of the entire system.

And there are certainly many types of naturopaths. Of those that I've met (my wife spent three years in a "Traditional Western Herbalism" school, so I've met quite a few), most have problems differentiating between an idea and a fact. An unsettling amount believed that herbalism is effective because the ancient aliens that brought us to earth also brought us a dramatic and intelligent plant-system which was created to diagnose and treat all of our illnesses.

They believe that through meditation, they are able to connect to this awareness, and this awareness is what will tell them what to give their patients.


It's not the individuals I have a problem with, it's their poor education that I have a problem with. Some NPs can overcome the disadvantage of their environment that de-values scientific method and fact-gathering. Many MDs can overcome the disadvantage of years of de-valuing their own intuition.

But acknowledging the similarities between the two ignores the actual harm that is caused by alternative medicine. Alternative medicine shares the same risks as Proper Medicine, with the same chances of mis-treatment.... but it removes any chance of surgery or active treatment to cure issues. It removes the huge base of shared understanding, and replaces it with a very small base of folklore that has been accumulated through "give the patient this plant, if they don't die, it must have cured them".