one.opinion

You asked why there aren’t millions of intact transitional human fossilized skeletons. The quick answer is that isn’t a reasonable question. I asked a question, too. What made you expect to see millions of intact transitional human fossilized skeletons? Do you believe dinosaurs were real? Do you wonder why we don’t have millions of intact dinosaur fossils? If not, why not?

Yes, the confusion is unfortunate, but real. I have focused a great deal of my adult life serving the Intelligent Designer, but I would not be very popular in the ID circles. There is an unfortunate amount of animosity between the two camps that should share a Christian faith (although unlike TE proponents, there are a few ID proponents that are quite decidedly NOT Christian).

I've spent a bit of time with him and he certainly has been somewhat eccentric in our encounters.

Fair enough, let's try one out. There is a lot of evidence for human evolution (https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils), but I'm not sure where you have set your expectations on finding millions of complete skeltons. You are probably aware that fossilization only occurs under a very special set of circumstances (https://home.nps.gov/subjects/fossils/how-fossils-form.htm), typically rapid burial in sediment. What leads you to believe that there should millions of complete fossil skeletons? Just as a point of interest, there is a remarkable fossil specimen estimated to be 3.6 million years old that you can read more about here - https://www.sciencealert.com/little-foot-australopithecus-hominid-oldest-most-complete-south-africa.

How open are you to learning?

I was in the audience when James Tour gave a talk about his views on the possibility of the chemical evolution of life at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston several years ago. This even was attended by about 200 PhDs, MDs, and graduate students. For the most part, he gave compelling arguments (personally, my beliefs line up here quite well with his). One of the questions at the end of the talk was something to the effect of "Do you accept biological evolution and common ancestry as the best explanations for the diversity of life we see today?" Knowing a little bit about Dr. Tour and his views left me keenly curious about what his response might be, so his reply has stuck with me ever since. He replied "It's the only game in town." It was a rather oblique response, but it also sounded quite a bit like an admission that there is not a viable, competing explanation for the observable biological world.

It is not deceptive if you read without an intent to misunderstand. Usually, and for most of us, the immune system’s prior exposure to an infection is sufficient to protect us from subsequent exposures. However, there are a large number of people with weakened immune systems, for one reason or another, that are not immune from subsequent disease from a pathogen that was previously encountered. For some pathogens, like SARS-CoV-2, even people with fairly normal immune systems can become reinfected with a different strain of the pathogen.

That’s ALL you have for your wild speculation. One whistleblower on one continent that is completely unverifiable. Yet, you have latched onto it like a very hungry dog on a bone. Not only do you assume that everything the whistleblower says is true, you are 100% convinced that it is perfectly reasonable to extrapolate all over the rest of the world. If this speculation came from anyone else, I would call it incredibly poor reasoning, but all things considered, I have to drop the adverb.

I’ll tell you what - pull out the relevant section of the 557 page report you want me to read that leads you to believe that the vaccines were ineffective. Let’s discuss that a bit. Otherwise, you are just using the report as a smokescreen.

Po-tay-to/po-tah-to - Whatever you want to call it, you can most certainly be reinfected with a pathogen your immune system has already warded off. I’m not the one making up 20 million deaths based on speculative testimony of a single “whistleblower” while simultaneously ignoring data from hospitals all over the world. Nah, your accusations are garbage.

You believe this because you disregard facts and data and choose instead to believe the evidence-free conspiracies of supposed whistle blowers.

That’s what immune systems do MOST of the time. Breakthroughs can and do happen, just like with vaccines, particularly in immune compromised individuals. The advantage of vaccines is that your immune system can be made ready to fight a pathogen faster and more effectively without the risk involved in an initial infection.

The fact that you call this “bonus money” reveals that you really didn’t understand the situation at the time and your understanding has not improved since. COVID patients were incredibly taxing on facilities (equipment and space) as well as the physical and emotional well-being of hospital employees. No one involved with patient care would consider this “bonus money”. The second thing that stands out about this statement is that it is another major example of misinformation being accepted as fact and repeated. Hospitals did NOT receive additional money for COVID deaths, but based on the COVID treatments they provided. https://www.aha.org/news/blog/2020-11-02-aha-continues-debunk-false-claims-about-covid-19-deaths-and-payments https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-covid-pandemic-hospitals-medicare-157398144949 In other words, there was ZERO financial motive for hospitals to inflate death claims. I can’t decide if it is more astonishing or sad that these lies are still reported on a purportedly Christian website four years after they were corrected. I’m done for now, may come back for more disappointing reading and commentary later.

How do “we” know this? If you have verifiable knowledge of a worldwide cabal, I’d be interested in seeing it. There is a lot of speculation on this topic. The truth is, we don’t know exactly where it came from, but most experts (people with far more expertise than mine in epidemiology) believe it most likely spilled over from the wet market in Wuhan into the human population. “On January 19, 2020, a 35-year-old man presented to an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Washington, with a 4-day history of cough and subjective fever. On checking into the clinic, the patient put on a mask in the waiting room. After waiting approximately 20 minutes, he was taken into an examination room and underwent evaluation by a provider. He disclosed that he had returned to Washington State on January 15 after traveling to visit family in Wuhan, China.” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7092802/ I don’t know for certain, but I do not believe the 35 year old man was in a nursing home. I’ll read and respond to more later.

There is no reasonable comparison between the number of lives lost to the virus versus those lost to the vaccines. Incidentally, the traditional COVID vaccines have not been nearly as safe as the mRNA vaccines.

Here are a few points to consider. 1. Before the heavy load of natural infection muddied the waters worldwide, the mRNA vaccines were protecting recipients at a very high rate when compared to the unvaccinated. For roughly 2 years, of those hospitalized for COVID, unvaccinated individuals were about 10X more likely to die. 2. If the level of protection from infection is the metric that you have chosen for what you will consider a vaccine or not, then you need to figure out a different term for the Influenza vaccines. Their level of protection from infection is far worse than the COVID vaccines. 3. Are you certain you know more than the world’s virologists, immunologists, and epidemiologists and are therefore qualified to tell them what should or should not be considered a vaccine? I explained this to you and you dismissed it as gaslighting (this was several days before you decided you didn’t appreciate bully behavior).

I’ll be nicer if I can pull an admission out of you that mRNA vaccines are vaccines. In all seriousness, if you - for whatever reason - refuse to admit the patently obvious, then it makes meaningful discussion extremely difficult.

This isn’t true. Breakthrough infections are a factor with all vaccines. That’s why “immunity” really isn’t a great word in dealing with vaccines. Obviously, the “immune system” doesn’t make us immune to infection, either.

Can you acknowledge that the mRNA vaccines are vaccines, or not? If you refuse to deal in reality, then there really isn’t any point for us to continue to discuss anything related to the topic.

No, the post was long enough without the detailed explanation. Hang on for a second. Are we agreeing the mRNA vaccines are vaccines yet? I’d like to have that established before we move on.

Unquestionably. It is pretty scary, even at the more conservative estimates. Despite the money we pay for it, citizens in the US have very far from the best health care in the world. We are at the cutting edge of medical research, and that’s great benefit to many highly specific cases. But it doesn’t all work out great for the regular Joes like you and me.

I said I was gonna do it, so here we go…

I have zero skin in this game, so I’m just as alarmed as anyone when news agencies were saying stuff like “Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US”, but it might be worth reading a bit more to determine if it is actually true. https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2023/07/medical-errors-are-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-and-other-statistics-you-should-question/ https://www.puffnstuff.com.au/no-medical-errors-arent-3rd-top-cause-of-us-deaths/70045 “The first problem with the study is very simple: many of the numbers extracted from the four included papers are incorrect. This is rather alarming, because those numbers themselves are the genesis of the entire estimate.” Obviously, there are more issues, but this first one should give pause.

This is true, not only of SARS-CoV-2, but many other viruses that can kill infected individuals. The term “cytokine storm” was used a lot in news articles for a few years. While death is often cause by damage initiated by the immune system, the trigger is the virus infection. It is completely accurate to say that these deaths are caused by the virus infection.

Signing off for tonight and tomorrow. Regardless of our differences of opinion, I wish you both, @Sparks and @nebula, a wonderful Christmas.