I have promoted myself from "Armchair Virologist" to "Virologist ASAP."
USA
Joined January 2016
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Tony VanDongen retweeted
A MASSIVE signature forgery scandal just broke in Michigan. Investigators think "at least" 68,000 signatures across 10 candidates' petitions are invalid. Signature gatherers worked for multiple campaigns. 5 GOP governor hopefuls may be disqualified, including 2 leading candidates
A signature forgery scandal has turned the race for the GOP nomination to be Michigan’s next governor on its head. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/m…
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Tony VanDongen retweeted
▶️ Things the scientific community may have largely forgotten about regarding #monkeypox.
A thread,
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Tony VanDongen retweeted
▶️ In 1988 DA Henderson and colleagues at WHO published the smallpox eradication "redbook" (1473 pages, 3.1 kg!).
𝙒𝙝𝙮?? Because they were concerned their hard-won knowledge would evaporate.
▶️ And guess what?
▶️ There's a whole chapter on #monkeypox !
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Tony VanDongen retweeted
Current consensus is that the samples have been sequenced at multiple labs is that this belongs to the West African clade (good news, this has 1% mortality as opposed to 10% with the Congo clade) and appears to be very close to the Israel 2018 sequence.
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Today's recommended song (not for the faint-hearted):
invidious.fdn.fr/3H4LU-wwa-0
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A US company created a synthetic smallpox virus and nobody cared?
This live horsepox vaccine for covid was the application of earlier work by David Evan and Tonix Pharmaceuticals to create synthetic smallpox - a horrifying act that went largely unnoticed: thebulletin.org/2020/02/a-bi…
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Tony VanDongen retweeted
I wonder how many Americans actually grasp the importance of standing up to the ruthlessly authoritarian wing of the Republican party
If the latter ever get into power, democracy in the US is finished
The midterms won’t be fought over accomplishments or policies. Autocracy has gotten its hooks into our Democracy. Unless we fight that with a massive turnout, we won’t survive. And despite Trump’s threat of a Civil War, the first step for survival is his Indictment.
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3 of the world's most prominent virologists proposed to create a virus virtually identical to SARS-2 in a grant proposal to DARPA in 2018.
theintercept.com/2021/09/23/…
There are three reasons.
3. Because Trump said it came from the WIV.
2. Because the US NIH partially funded it.
1. Because no virologist wants this to be caused by a virologist.
If it was generally accepted that SARS-2 was created by a virologist, there would be OUTRAGE.
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Tony VanDongen retweeted
We just got a treasure trove of Secret Service documents about Trump. We're going to break some news. First story coming shortly.
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Tony VanDongen retweeted
I don’t know who needs to hear this but it’s wildly inappropriate to use the word “mild” in relation to a virus with a 3.6% case fatality rate.
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Those mutations are unexpected/interesting.
Thus far most mutations have been C>T, probably caused by RNA editing by APOBEC3. Now the majority of the mutations are G>A, which can be produced by another RNA-editing enzyme. Maybe all the editable Cs have been exhausted? Weird.
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