A new study is out trying to find the LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). Needless to say, things got even worse for those who place their belief in Darwinian thinking. Because the Concluding Remarks section is so devastating, I’m blockquoting the whole thing: Our work furnishes a new variable for the assessment of protein family evolution which compliments previous approaches based on conserved presence and phylogenetic topology. Using phylogenetic tree based approaches of the type used here, only limited information can be gained about the LUCA, leaving specific details on physiology largely speculative. Analysis of proteins such as the reverse gyrase, hydrogenase, and nitrogenase discussed here and elsewhere (Boyd et al., 2011a, b; Catchpole and Forterre, 2019) does not support Read More ›

There is an Internet meme going around concerning a statement attributed to Trey Gowdy. In the statement the following question is asked: Is it a mere coincidence that China unleashed the corona virus on the world just before the U.S. presidential election, especially in light of the fact that we are in a global trade war with China brought on by Trump? The obvious rejoinder to that question is the Chinese people have suffered as much, if not more, than anyone else. How could a government intentionally unleash a virus that was sure to wreak such havoc on its own people? In answering that question, take this into account: Xi stands in direct linear succession to Mao. Mao once said Read More ›

When Orthomyxo says so of course. In a recent exchange I asserted that COVID-19 deaths may be overstated. Orthomyxo got red in the face, stamped his rhetorical feet, and petulantly insisted that no COVID-19 numbers are without the slightest doubt understated. There is strong evidence, however, that they are overstated, and when he asked me for data to support that claim, I gave him data in the form of this statement from the scientific advisor to the Italian Minister of Health: “On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two Read More ›

Joe Biden has just tapped Ezekiel Emanuel, the chief architect of Obamacare (and brother of “never waste a crisis” Rahm Emanuel) as an advisor on healthcare issues. Ezekiel is most famous for insisting that healthcare must be rationed, and the elderly must perforce get the short end of the rationing stick. The reason: he has a strictly utilitarian view of life, which takes no account of the inherent value of human life as such. He is also Jewish. Does anyone else find it tragically ironic that a Jew of all people would advance policy prescriptions that are in all but name based on the Lebensunwertes Leben principle? To be sure, Ezekiel has not advocated for outright euthanasia as the progenitors Read More ›

This is an excellent primer on the problem of beauty from a Darwinian perspective. Why Extravagant Beauty is Evolution’s Most Persistent Problem. It seems more reasonable, as Wallace believed, that extravagant beauty is likely to eject creatures from the gene pool. It requires more energy to develop and maintain and makes one highly conspicuous and attractive to predators. A quibble: I am not sure this is Darwinian evolution’s most persistent problem. There are so many candidates for that title, it is hard to keep count, much less come to a definitive answer as to which problem is the worst.

Jerry drew our attention last night to a radio interview by Dr Vladimir Zelenko. In this interview, he summarises his approach and rationale, giving results and making several announcements. (Unfortunately, the media cannot be embedded at UD as it is not YT. Kindly, go here; and make sure your browser has no active ad blocker.) On listening last night, here are my first observations on highlight points: Brazil and Israel are doing his early treatment, clinical diagnosis (backed up by nasal swab test), outpatient-oriented dosage for vulnerable patients protocol, ALT-1. He has treated 405 in that profile and sees 95% reduction on the expected death rate for the n-BAU baseline. He points out that the Raoult [by implication] protocol, which Read More ›

Some of those who oppose loosening the draconian restrictions the government has placed on economic activity argue that the restrictions are necessary because they will save lives.  That argument — while it may be made in good faith — is nevertheless profoundly blinkered and shortsighted, because the heartbreaking reality is that China’s criminal recklessness has put us between the Scylla and the Charybdis when it comes to the question of saving lives.  Lives are going to be lost no matter what we do.   We can continue stifling economic activity and maybe lives will be saved (though the science on that question is far from settled).  But there is a price to be paid for stifling economic activity.  We are Read More ›

Here’s the report: As the new coronavirus took root across America, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted test kits in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed. The contamination made the tests uninterpretable, and—because testing is crucial for containment efforts—it lost the country invaluable time to get ahead of the advancing pandemic. The CDC had been vague about what went wrong with the tests, initially only saying that “a problem in the manufacturing of one of the reagents” had led to the failure. Subsequent reporting suggested that the problem was with a negative control—that is, a part of the test meant to be free of any trace of the Read More ›

Yesterday ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Mark Zuckerberg about his company’s policy of censoring posts that are intended to organize protests of the government’s shelter-in-place orders.  Zuckerberg said that Facebook takes down posts that it classifies as “harmful misinformation.”  Then he said this:  “At the same time, you know, it’s important that people can debate policies, can basically give their opinion on different things.” Translation:  You can debate policies and give your opinions on Facebook as much as you want just so long as you don’t step out of line and disagree with us about the government’s coronavirus response.  Before I go on, let me say this:  Facebook is a private company.  No one is forced to use it.  No one Read More ›

See here. The estimated infection numbers are 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed COVID-19 cases L.A. County had reported at the time of the study in early April. This study seems to confirm the study reported in BREAKING: Stanford Study: COVID-19 Case Fatality Rate May Be Overstated By A Factor Of 85 It is becoming increasingly clear that we have closed the country down out of fear of a virus when the overwhelming majority of infections are so mild that the infected person never notices.