Dope Tech Episode 2

<<@Thunderf00t says : ..... to anyone typing 'gain of function'....... thanks for showing us you never watched the video!>> <<@Cancun771 says : I don't dispute the core message about the Covid virus not being "engineered in a lab". However, I do take objection to the entire tin foil hat disparagement. Here's a list of two dozen conspiracy theories that were ridiculed and mocked and used by the guilty to deflect and gaslight *until they were confirmed.* I can easily list another two dozen. 1) Watergate. President Nixon sent a bunch of vile thugs to break into the DNC headquarters to plant bugs. 2) MKUltra. An illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used in altering human behavior. Ran from 1953 into the 1970s. 3) NSA surveillance scandal. Edward Snowden is a former NSA intelligence contractor and whistleblower who in 2013 leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs. He was stranded in Russia by the U. S. government which revoked his passport. 4) Operation Gladio, clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance during the Cold War. Involved assassination, psychological warfare, and false flag operations to delegitimize left-wing parties in Western European countries, supported right-wing terrorism and torture. 5) Operation Paperclip. Secret U. S. intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of WWII, including former Nazis, SS and SA personnel. 6) Tuskegee Syphils experiments. A study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service and the CDC on nearly 400 African American men with syphilis as well as a control group without. 7) WMD in Iraq. In the lead-up to the invasion, the USA and UK falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, covertly supporting al-Qaeda, and that he presented a threat to Iraq's neighbors and to the world community. None of the felons were held accountable. 8) COINTELPRO. A series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the FBI aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political parties and organizations perceived as subversive. None of the perps were ever held accountable. 9) Pentagon Hormone Bomb or "Gay bomb". A real and declassified proposal that the U.S. Air Force considered in 1994, part of a broader effort to develop non-lethal chemical weapons, though the idea was ultimately rejected and never developed. It was exactly what you think it is. 10) Barschel affair in Germany. On 31 May 1987, shortly before the start of the 1987 state election campaign, Barschel survived a deadly plane crash. On 13 September 1987, the day before the election, a surveillance scandal against his opposition broke. Barschel died under unclear circumstances. 11) Poisoned alcohol during the age of prohibition. In 1926, the federal government had the FBI poison industrial alcohol to curb consumption. The measure was unsuccessful, so the poison was ramped up. By the time Prohibition ended in 1933, an estimated 10,000 people had died from this poisoning. 12) Even the Iran-Contra-Affair was initially treated as a crazy conspiracy theory. It was never "solved"; it was streamlined and then covered up - and there are even more obvious links to Trump, Epstein and the current American puppet regime, first and foremost Bill Barr whose father gave Epstein his first job even though he had no formal qualifications as a teacher and was indeed a drop-out. 13) Doping in cycling / Lance Armstrong 14) Doping of German football team at World Championship 1954 ("Miracle of Bern"). Players were injected with Pervitin, which was legal back then. The point is it was covered up as a supposed "conspiracy theory." Several players contracted jaundice, one of them died eight years later of cirrhosis. 15) VW Diesel scandal. 16) Tobacco and lung cancer. Big Tobacco orchestrated a sophisticated, multi-decade campaign to actively manufacture the appearance of a controversy. The "tobacco industry playbook" was then used as the template for doing the same with global warming. 17) Global warming. The fossil fuel industry orchestrated an ongoing, sophisticated, multi-decade campaign to deliberately cover up their own knowledge and manufacture public doubt about climate science. Meticulously documented, it is a direct successor to the tobacco industry's playbook. Climate action gaslighting—the deliberate undermining of climate progress by framing mitigation efforts as inadequate, hypocritical, or counterproductive—has emerged as a critical barrier to global survival. And now the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is collapsing, like in _The Day After Tomorrow,_ which will cause arctic winters and tropical summers in central Europe, if not over night. 18) Sugar and heart disease. A well-documented campaign by the sugar industry to influence scientific understanding. This was not a simple cover-up but a deliberate strategy to protect commercial interests by shaping the research agenda and public messaging around diet and health. Historical Events and Crimes 19) Spreading of the antisemitic trope that "the Jews are poisoning the wells." was transformed into a full-blown conspiracy in the Middle Ages. Systematic torture to get confessions, dissemination of false evidence, driven by political and economic motivations. 20) Same goes for "Blood libel", the systematic spreading of the antisemitic trope that "the Jews are murdering Christian babies to use their blood in rituals." 21) The Protocols of the Elders of Zion aka the "global Jewish conspiracy" or "Jüdische Weltverschwörung". Conspiracies to spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. 22) Pilot suicide, or suicide by aircraft, was long treated as a conspiracy theory. 23) As was *Planned Obsolescence.* 24) The idea of a global sex trafficking ring, never mind three or four in succession, or them having any intelligence / Russian Mafia ties ("honey trap") - Roy Cohn, Craig Spence, NXIVM, Epstein, Maxwell (Robert, Ghislaine's _father)._ "[There is a] difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory, two terms that those in power want us to believe are inseparable so that we remain ignorant of the past and passive about the future. But a conspiracy theory is _not_ the same thing as a conspiracy. Conspiracies are portrayed as elaborate and rare, but they are common and often simple in their basic goals, if not the execution. A conspiracy is an agreement of powerful actors to secretly carry out a plan that protects their own interests, often to the detriment of the public good. The mafia is a conspiracy, the drug trade is a conspiracy, white-collar crime is a conspiracy. War and espionage operations rely upon conspiracy. The American Revolution was a conspiracy. Conspiracy is baked into the founding of our nation." Sarah Kendzior, _They Knew_>> <<@brentrobot585 says : Regardless of whether it was engineered or not, it is almost certain that the covid virus escaped from that lab. Mucking about with potentially dangerous viruses in a lab with poor protocols in a major city is effin retarded. The soviets twice had bioweapons released on accident killing people. They were at least smart enough to put there labs in very remote places.>> <<@paulfredriksteiner says : HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA TRYING TO TELL US THAT THE BIOLABS DONT MAKE NEW STRAINS OF VIRUSES YOU MUST HAVE LOST YOUR MIND>> <<@BenersantheBread says : This is just sad honestly. There are like 10 completely incompatible conspiracy theories being perpetuated in the comments but it doesn't matter as long as you get to say something about covid was shady. Fuck scientific literacy, I want to feel smarter than the CORRUPT AND EVIL experts!>> <<@southpawnews says : Stewarts worst take ever>> <<@lucypeters6940 says : Jon Stewatr, Is that a Scottish Royal name? Helped fireman in 911. Good 4 him, now what>> <<@Colin_A_Love says : I don’t disagree that some designer virus wasn’t unleashed. This is outside my usual bailiwick in term’s being able to follow the science at more than a cursory level. It’s insane the amount of disinformation, media tail chasing and outright lying that gets into the everyday realm of public discourse. If there’s a conspiracy theory I could buy into it would be that hostile state actor(s) work to amplify the worst narratives found on the darkest corners of the internet. However an accidental release of a pathogen due to bad practices, arrogance, corruption eating away at an already opaque system’s safety practices. There are documented cases as far as my limited time, money and energy investment on the topic of screw ups at labs which study virology. The I’ve read a breakdown that seems to be making appearances on what appear to be legitimate sources. SARS escaped containment in Singapore in the around the early 00’s, institutional competence kept it contained to a researcher exposed on site. In Taiwan in the 90’s at a facility under the umbrella of the military studying SARS had a researcher broke all basic practices during a spill exposing himself. He went off site to his residence but then reported he had contracted the virus within hours or a couple days. Taiwan was just coming out of 40 years of martial law best practices were instituted on paper but not in practice. Saving face for himself and the army was what I heard pushed this guy to try and die quietly. While positive societal forces a (family member) tipped this bad situation back from being a catastrophe resulting in containment. We have a well documented and internationally recognized example of anthrax getting released due to a system failure venting the virus into the air in central Sverdlovsk USSR. A case that the Russian government admitted to in the 90’s in which hundreds I believe were infected while the death toll is disputed. The foremost Beijing virology lab suffered a leak in the 00’s of SARS where if sources are to be believed which is difficult in an opaque regime like China. A lab that was operating using some of the worst Soviet era practices, described like a better funded and more modern version of the conditions on Anthrax Island in the Aral Sea. Non specialized refrigeration was used, isolation in contained areas was foregone. The university lab the foremost in China at that time was built in the 50’s and had not been significantly overhauled. Overcrowding was blamed for the systemic breach which became standard operating procedure at that time. Loss of power possibly turned off by accident during cleaning caused a sample to become active. A grad student was infected and she then took the train home to her parents for a state holiday when everyone else has the day off and does same. The researcher realized what happened and contacted authorities but the amount of primary and secondary contacts was very high. Only two cases were reported but as is common in systems opaque by design dozens or hundreds may have been exposed. Only prominent cases unable to be hidden were admitted to, this would be a very ugly situation. Biological warfare is something that is pretty well documented for a clandestine program as many Eastern Bloc and other states with programs have undergone regime change. I take a dim view that a virus was weaponized to do something other than making it more efficient at what it already does. For me the suspect scenario is the fact that pro-democracy protests shut down Hong Kong as Beijing asserted control breaking the UK-China handover treaty. I could realistically entertain the notion that if Beijing thought it was facing potential threat to rule of the party they might be crazy, desperate and uncaring enough to let a “mild” domestic SARS outbreak spring up. That the world caught Covid in that case is collateral damage. More likely a government famous for short cuts and facades screwed up. The virus is native to the area and health and safety are not taken seriously so we will probably never know. Of course unless somehow China undergoes a democratization so rapidly that state security doesn’t have time to burn all the archives. A suspicious mind could say the guilty party flooded the zone with disinformation and China played the race card like they do when they get caught spying at American universities. I’ve enjoyed watching some of your work and the fact that people turn on a dime when a person doesn’t fully line up with their way of thinking is worrying. I’m not a long term viewer or anything but I’ve seen good work that played out well over time like with the Titan. I’m not sure what I would be doing in your position I probably would be trying to play triage and staunch the bleeding due to disinformation. The lab leak has taken on an insane life of its own used to help justify war for example. Facts are getting the beat down and the results are going to hurt for years if we can right the ship.>> <<@Ioganstone says : semantic trash>> <<@BornTrespasser says : Fort 'D'-trick (sound it out) then look it up. Look up mysterious illness at nursing homes article in NY Times in areas around the base in the Fall of 2019. This vy-Russ was detected in waste water in Italy in September 2019.>> <<@gulanhem9495 says : It's amazing how ideology and political indoctrination can suppress critical thinking and sense of judgment.>> <<@KBA3AP says : Why virus biolabs exist? Because we figured out how to increase the incidence viral mutations with radiation exposure. If you can select mutated viruses for virulence or compatibility with human tissue, that obviously becomes a accelerated viral evolution, bound to a lab. Once you have those viruses, you can obviously try to target them with meds before said virus appears in nature. The lab leak of said virus will result in what we've observed.>> <<@ikonikontheychsop says : You have good videos too. Not just these lies ;)>> <<@ikonikontheychsop says : Yt keeps deleting my comments 😂>> <<@justincartwright6907 says : Why was this video even made? You're debunking claims that weren't ever made...>> <<@Loomr says : You are an intellectually dishonest man mr Thunderfoot as usual. The modification of viruses has been demonstrated many times and you are completely mischaracterizing these results. Even the sentence in the wikipedia article that you highlight is misleading ; try reading the previous sentence. You seem to be making a strawman argument about the impossibility of engineering a virus, by that I assume you are trying to say that we cannot build a virus from the scratch. But no one made that claim, expect you. You further make a claim that because we can't cure cancer, we couldn't modify viruses - which we actually have done. You then try to switch your argument to why it would not be in the interest of someone to release a modified virus ; again a completely different issue. The reason you are doing this is because your original argument is a dishonest strawman argument. You sir, are essentially a liar.>> <<@User-s7j5u says : The amount of government trust on display in this video is astonishing>> <<@DominicFlynn says : Evidently Thunderfoot didn't even bother reading The Lancet COVID-19 Commission>> <<@PlumeBlue says : Yes, humans can create viruses. In laboratories, scientists use advanced biotechnology to modify existing viruses or synthesize entirely new ones. These activities are usually conducted for legitimate purposes, such as developing vaccines, studying diseases, or exploring gene therapies. For example: 1. Vaccine Development: Scientists sometimes create weakened or inactivated versions of viruses for vaccines. For instance, the polio and flu vaccines are based on modified viruses. 2. Gene Therapy: Modified viruses, like adenoviruses, are used to deliver genes into human cells to treat genetic disorders. 3. Research: Creating or altering viruses helps researchers understand how viruses evolve, spread, and cause disease, which can aid in preventing future outbreaks. However, there are risks associated with such research, especially if it involves gain-of-function experiments, which enhance a virus's ability to infect or transmit. To mitigate these risks, strict ethical guidelines and safety protocols are in place. While bioterrorism or misuse is a concern, most scientific efforts aim to benefit humanity, not harm it.>> <<@Mystic_Robot says : It took me 1 year of elementary chemistry, 1 year of general inorganic chemistry, 1 year of organic chemistry, and 1 semester of biochemistry just to be able to understand and mix a few chemicals, a 3 week project, just to make a luminol reaction that lasted HALF a second as my midterm project. Fireflies made me realize how much Hollywood blinded me to how litltle progress science actually has made at the nano level. Yet, these same movie amd conspiracy addicts think several million doctors are all out in perfect coordination to depopulate the world.>> <<@LD-qj2te says : Thanks for sober scientific truth and logic>> <<@Dan-The-Kayak-Man says : Well yeah the idea that this was some cleverly engineered bioweapon is stupid. But the lab does just breed viruses and study the mutations. Eventually you and up with some pretty gnarly viruses. It’s not impossible that a virus that was mutated in a lab and being tested on escaped especially given what we have seen are massive holes in safety protocols in the Wujan lab.>> <<@TarasKur says : Flawed logic with the hurricane research center in Florida, which shows that the presenter is an idiot. Bats with the suspect corona viruses live 1000km south of Wuhan. Good analogy is a hurricane research center in Toronto, Canada.>> <<@doliniplanini2260 says : the herd is vaxxed here. move along, goy.>> <<@tonymacaroni7458 says : You must be a paid shill, your a scientist? GTFOH, this wont age well uidiot>> <<@brianmurphy8790 says : Ya should probably stick to taking the piss out of Elon.>> <<@ScottAmbrose-rc2xq says : Thunderfoot needs to read Micheal Chrighton. Unintended consequences, nature finds a way ect. So impossible that people did stuff with repercussions beyond what they intended?>> <<@ExodusCore says : Thunderfool became a communist CCP mouth piece.>> <<@thepuncakian2024 says : Apparently artificial selection does not exist>> <<@DoubleBob says : Why is thunderf00t so deliberately dishonest in this video?>> <<@clearlypellucid says : This is just about the dumbest take I've ever heard. What makes you think Wuhan is the most virus-driven place in the world? It's nowhere near the city with the highest population density. It's not built in a highly mosquito-prone region compared to other places. It's not even in the top 100. I mean...you've based your entire argument on so many faulty premises it's absurd. I used to respect you, man.>> <<@williamcashell6357 says : Just some thoughts. I am in agreement with all your main ideas, I may have misunderstood parts of this and I’m too tired to listen again but I do have some constructive criticism. Humans do have a history of weaponizing viruses, just to no great effects. I can think of the Germans using hoof and mouth disease in America in ww1. I’m not debunking anything you said but it’s an example. It didn’t work and that furthers your point but I’m just being accurate. We can use viruses to infect people in controllable ways with gene therapy, can’t we? I really asking I’m not sure. Anyway, I highly doubt I’ll ever feel the need to do this again, you seem very smart and your videos are great.>> <<@seriousspikesam7770 says : Would it be more likely to "accidentally" release a relatively harmless virus to the world, greatly exaggerate its deadliness and then sell you the cure for it for a billion dollars? If there's a way to profit with something, there's always a way.>> <<@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan says : Didn't the soviets weaponize smallpox in the 70s?>> <<@katiebarber407 says : they "broke the big breaking news" wow thats very legit>> <<@katiebarber407 says : wow, john stweart sounds as insane as the republicans in that clip>> <<@drezmelk says : Viruses do not self replicate and require a host. You said that they do, this does not disprove your entire dissertation but it certainly taints it. Many other small flaws so far, but what would I know only perform medicine for a living. Viruses do change rapidly and pick up other characteristics and this can be forced though to the degree of humans adding “x” amino acid or if I change adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine sequence I can be certain I will get this change…. But you do get change and sometimes that change is really bad with increased virulence. And when it does this is your gain of function, though honestly there is probably a lot more loss of function than gain.>> <<@TechnicallyTechnical says : Haven't labs been able to create antibiotic resistant strains of TB or more infectious strains of anthrax?>> <<@SavingMsBlack says : Dude. You’re right about so many things, and wrong about this.>> <<@MWcrazyhorse says : The virus would not be the method to do it. The vaccine-injection would.>> <<@davidwatson8118 says : Conspiritards galore 🤣>> <<@sarahkatherine8458 says : 14:02 I think evading group behaviors is actually the easiest part, just claim that this is a deadly virus escaped from a lab in China and people in Western countries will try their best to get infected by it.>> <<@chr1sda1sey says : You do realise that John Stuart and Stephen Colbert are satirists>> <<@EdnovStormbrewer says : Engineering a virus is not impossible. Although it is difficult to maintain and try to replicate it, it is a mutation. Unfortunately it seems that Thunderf00t is more than willing to die on this hill with that title because he thinks he's right.>> <<@lorax2013 says : How can thunderfoot be so obtuse? Is it intentional?>> <<@MrDleef says : This whole video is a strawman. When he finally mentions gain of function (for like 5 seconds) he says at about 15:29 "any genetic tinkering that's been done with these things is at best a sort of mildly enhanced evolution". Yeah, that's what most people are suggesting when they mention a lab leak. 16 minutes of nonsense strawman just to offhandedly admit that what we are suggesting is actually possible and not debunked at all. We're not suggesting the "all new Ford F150" built from the ground up, were suggesting last year's model with some slight engineering modifications to the suspension system to make for a smoother ride.>> <<@mercurio822 says : Time for you to do some Criticism of Islam.>> <<@arthurv8905 says : I have been a watcher of your videos since 2009, but I do not accept the logic in this video. You seem to conflating engineering a virus from the ground up and modifying the genome of an existing virus to achieve some kind of desirable phenotypic trait, such as higher transmissibility. We absolutely can "engineer" a virus in the latter sense, and do it all the time. If your understanding of pathogen genomics and molecular biology is based in 2009, when you last engaged in a project which involved these fields of study, then you simply have no conception of what is possible in the modern era. Was SC2 engineered? I don't know. Could it have been? Yes. Would it have been a sensible way of achieving some goal of a nation like China? Absolutely emphatically not, it would have been an insane move. I say this as someone with a PhD in Pathogen Genomics, who worked with SC2 over the pandemic, and is an author on some of the highest cited papers on the subject which came out of the UK.>> <<@BetaDreTV says : How did lou gehrig get lou gehrig’s disease? How unlucky>> <<@matth1589 says : Earthquakes are studied in earthquake zones because they are not portable. Volcanologists go to volcanoes for the same reason. We in the UK studied bio weapons at Porton Down. It's not for it's bio diversity, tropical diseases or it's environmental proclivity for viral mutation. It's the same way that say if you study why sodium explodes in water you don't have to travel to a sodium processing plant. Small things are portable, and can be taken to places to study them. Tectonic fault lines are big, making their postage prohibitively expensive.>>