Obelisks and viroids: kryptonite for the ‘no virus’ cult.
It didn’t take long for virus deniers to pile onto Dr. McCulloughs comments to claim this obelisk paper was all ‘modeling’.
This is common trope of the no-virus cult.
If you use a computer for any science, you are modeling like Neil Ferguson and you have committed sinful science sir!
These denialists obviously didn’t read the paper to notice this isn’t modeling.
They found these in public sequence repositories from sequencing collected from all over the world. Real RNA molecules from real patients in multiple jurisdictions across time.
It was sitting in that data waiting to be discovered by someone who had the wisdom to look for a particular feature that should exist.
Ie…
We know Lariats exist (circular intron splicing)
We know viroids exist (non coding infectious rod-like RNA circles)
We know viruses exist.(coding RNAs).
Where are the circular RNAs that should code for proteins? Where is this missing evolutionary link and how do we go about looking for it in public data so we don’t have to pipette anything?
bang! They find them.
It’s a very satisfying discovery as we all expected this missing link to exist but their group cleverly devised a method to look for them.
It’s a very large class (30,000) of entities and at the moment 50% of them are found in healthy oral microbiomes.
Not all replicating RNA is a fear factor but the virus deniers want to deny these exist as they are afraid they will be weaponized against them in the form of pandemic preparations.
This is motivated reasoning. We cannot let the implications of a scientific observation influence your capacity to measure it.
We see this in the GOF debate.
A few folks at Panda no longer want to believe that humans can GOF a virus because that leads to GOF porn, lockdowns etc…
It doesn’t matter if a wheel leads to an ambulance or a tank, circles are real.
This is analogous to the ends justifying the means. This is the prime ‘reasoning’ that motivates evil state behavior.
The conclusions don’t write the methods.
Obelisks are real. Their pathogenicity or their beneficial nature has yet to be understood.
If you fight every scientific discovery based on what evil might be empowered by it, you will end up in cave.
Why is this kryptonite?
Because you chemically synthesize 256bp circular viroids from scratch.
99.9% pure. No isolation from other biological sources that might have evil humors or ‘water terrain memory’ responsible for the cytotoxic effects.
You can inject this circular RNA into cannabis plants and witness it replicate throughout the plant.
You can measure the circular to linear RNA ratio change once in a plant cell with RNase R.
You monitor it in the roots, leaves and pollen.
Even the insects which feed on the plant (leaf hoppers) become PCR positive.
And it transmits in seeds and mechanically.
I know this because I have performed all of these steps myself and mirrors what others have found
‘But PCR is modeling!, Kary Mullis, 97% FP, Late CT… blah blah blah”. All of this irrelevant with cloned plants where quarantine isn’t controversial.
It’s not modeling for cannabis grows which have the highest agricultural overhead of any crop.
4% of the power grid in Denver CO is feeding cannabis lights as it has to be grown indoor in a video surveilled prison where every plant is RFID tagged and traced. 1300ppm CO2 is pumped in with sophisticated fertigation systems and HVAC monitoring.
If they put Jeffrey Epstein in a cannabis grow, we would know who killed him.
As a result of this overhead, no grow wants a viroid that reduce crop yield 40%.
As a result, they RT-qPCR screen their cloning operation and the savings more than pay for the qPCR.
At some point, voluntary economics explains who is right and who is just angry.
Kochs postulates has been proven with Hop Latent Viroid and Cannabis. There are arguments over isolation and proteins costs/SEMs etc.
it’s clear as day and it’s a minor evolutionary step to Obelisks, plasmids, phagemids and Viruses.
“If you fight every scientific discovery based on what evil might be empowered by it, you will end up in cave.”
Heavy sigh. Of course you’re right. It’s prudent to realize that is going to happen for a multitude of reasons.
“These denialists obviously didn’t read the paper to notice this isn’t modeling.”
Four years of Covid has revealed a great deal about human psyche. The “no virus” cult exhibits the Dunning-Kruger effect, a “cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities.” (Wiki) Competence in molecular biology takes decades to acquire through intensive study and years of productive laboratory work, data analysis, and publication (sorry but those are the facts). The “no virus” cult has skipped all the dedication and hard work, and simply jumped to a major scientific proclamation without the hard earned ability to do so. By doing so they have played (or been led) right into the hands of the perpetrators of gain-of-function and the resultant SARS-CoV-2 chimeric weapon. The structure and functions of this amazingly complex weaponized virus proves that it was artificially created. To the the cult and their followers, it does not exist, because they do not understand biology. A person may believe what they choose, but to join or lead a cult with disinformation that the person does not understand is just what the perps want. They cannot be accused of creating something that does not exist.