‘Always check your assumptions’

Jeff Goldblum’s character from Jurassic Park could have saved the world a lot of grief.

The CDC does not have an Ian Malcolm.

“Always check your assumptions.” - Mathematician Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum) in the movie Jurassic Park.

***

I haven’t seen the movie in a while, but I remember a quote to this effect in this movie. Even if my memory is wrong, I did find this article :

“If there's a lesson to be found in Jurassic Park—besides, you know, don't clone dinosaurs—it's don’t make assumptions. A lot of trouble is caused because characters act on their assumptions instead of fully investigating the situation. Their overconfidence inevitably leads to dire consequences.”

The possible quote and memorable character were adapted from Michael Crichton’s book.

A brilliant man, Crichton was trying to give his readers a warning, one that would certainly apply to our Covid times. Alas, it was a warning or lesson most of the world missed. 

***

Regarding my Covid “early spread” hypothesis, I keep trying to point out that an important assumption of the alleged experts has been wrong all along. Because of one false assumption, experts have ignored the most important evidence.

The most important evidence actually comes from the individual case histories, from people who have convincing evidence that they did have Covid before the experts say the virus had arrived in America (January 17th, 2020 according to the first case “confirmed” by the CDC).

This evidence is based on: 

1. The positive antibody tests these people later received.

2. The fact these individuals experienced signature Covid symptoms before January 2020 (and never got sick after this).

3. The novel coronavirus is indeed very contagious. 

Basically, I’ve argued that someone could investigate possible early cases and then, based on all the supporting evidence from these cases, pretty much “confirm” these people, in fact, had Covid.

… And, I argue, from just these few cases one could logically extrapolate that millions of people also had the virus by this same time.

In a nutshell, that’s it. “Early spread confirmed.”  Furthermore, this is a very big deal (for reasons  outlined in this prior article). 

While antibody studies, sewage treatment studies or “genetic sequencing” exercises are  important pieces of the puzzle, a scientist doesn’t necessarily need data from these sources to prove “early spread” was happening. 

Some experts, in fact, seem to get this.

“By the time you see a few cases, it’s pretty certain that you already have an outbreak underway,” said Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor of biology and statistics at the University of Texas at Austin, as quoted by the New York Times in April 2020.

This quote from an article published March 1, 2020 deals with possible earlier spread in Wuhan. 

“… (Dr. Daniel) Lucey (of Georgetown University Medical Center) theorizes the virus may have been circulating under the radar for weeks or months before the first cases were linked to the food market.

“It didn’t just suddenly appear in December and somehow mutate and become very contagious,” he says. “My hypothesis is it has been around for several months, and it has been sort of accelerating and developing the ability to spread quickly.”

The Natural Origin Narrative must be important to officials ….

It’s important to note that “Team Fauci” strongly endorsed the “wet market” origination theory. 

This theory postulates that the novel coronavirus “jumped species” and started infecting humans after residents of Wuhan purchased, handled and/or ate animals sold at this live market. 

Importantly to the “official” or endorsed narrative, this human spread didn’t start to happen until around Dec. 10, 2019. So, per this “settled science,” virus-origination sleuths have no need to look for any cases before this date or before this infamous live market took place.

While I’ve written volumes on “early spread,” the actual false assumption is that “late spread” happened in China, or especially in America and other countries. 

This, one can only assume, is why influential scientists wrote a letter published in the prestigious science journal The Lancet, proclaiming that any “lab-leak” theory was craziness and anyone spreading such a theory should be instantly discredited and, if possible, be banned from social media for spreading misinformation. 

Still, I’ve just cited two certified (unbanned) experts who state that if a few people contact a virus that happens to be very contagious, you can pretty much bank on the fact that many other people had contacted the same virus. 

If officials ever “confirmed” early cases (which they won’t), the “late spread” they say happened would not have been possible.  The Wet Market Theory becomes moot and arguably irrelevant. 

(This thought leads to another “Bill Maxim” - Don’t investigate that which you don’t want to “confirm.”)

Here, the so-called “R-naught” number - “the epidemiologic measure of viral reproductive ratio” -  shows that the “late spread” theory stretches credulity. 

“R-naught is how many infected people come from a single infected person,” explained Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases as quoted in the above-cited article from March 1, 2020. “Most of the research [on 2019-nCoV] has the r-naught between 1.5 and 3. In general, you want to see an r-naught below 1, and that’s how you get the disease controlled.”

Lest we forget …

It’s important we not forget that the entire rai·son d’ê·tre for the lockdowns and non-pharmaceutical interventions was to “slow” or stop “spread” of this novel coronavirus. 

If one wants to know why the heroes of our Covid story cancelled church and school for more than a year - and put tens of thousands of businesses out of business - it’s because they were protecting us from the higher R-naught numbers. 

The assumption was that the virus horse had NOT not got out of the barn and galloped across the world yet. Experts assumed this novel virus spread could still be nipped in the bud. All that was required to save tens of millions of lives was to make sure that billions of (non-essential) people could not leave their homes for a year or so. 

Ian Malcolm - “Always check your assumptions.”

But in the entire global health bureaucracy and all of sciencedom no employee had apparently seen the movie Jurassic Park. Or if they had, they viewed Jeff Goldblum’s character as just another kooky science denier.

By now I’ve probably read thousands of stories about this virus. I’d estimate that 99.9 percent of these articles (and “scientific” studies) present as accepted fact - as “settled science” - that the virus “emerged” in Wuhan … probably in December 2019 or maybe November 2019. 

Nobody - at least nobody who mattered - thought, “maybe we should check our ‘late spread’ assumption,” or, for that matter, the assumption the virus first emerged in China.

In our real-world After-Action Report, we can now clearly see that the experts made one egregiously-false assumption - they assumed it was simply not possible this virus had been spreading in the days, weeks or months before a couple of people got sick at that live market in Wuhan in December 2019.

The same people also ignored what should have been a common-sense and correct assumption - e.g. if this virus is as contagious as they assured us it was, and if the experts confirmed even a few people in a few other locations were getting infected at or before December 10, 2019, the Wuhan market was not the initial source of the virus origination. 

Per the Scientific Method, it takes just one counter-factual to blow up a perfectly good (meaning bad or false) theory.

It’s the vaccine, Stupid …

While lockdowns were the issue in March 2020, the real “most important thing” was getting a new type of vaccine into the arms of potentially six or seven billion repeat, pre-paid customers. 

Conclusive evidence that millions of people had already contracted this virus (half not even suffering a case of the sniffles) might nix a pretty good profit deal.

The fly in the vials would be any evidence that “confirmed” early spread. The real hurdle that had to be surmounted was the pesky r-naught number.

That is, if the virus wasn’t that contagious, it wouldn’t matter if officials found an early-spread case in Boise, Idaho.  Who’s going to be petrified of a virus that’s only a risk to old people … and the people who did contract the virus rarely infected anyone else? 

Not only would there be no need for lockdowns, there’d be no need for a mandatory global “vaccine.” (Why would anyone create a vaccine to stop (allegedly) the spread of a virus that’s not really spreading?)

Of all the scary features of the novel coronavirus, perhaps the most important was the “settled science” that anyone and everyone could contract the virus …. by simply breathing in the Piggly Wiggly check-out line, by accidentally touching a kitchen counter top, by swinging on the playground swing, by attending an NFL game. 

Fortunately for Pfizer, Moderna and “America’s doctor” Anthony Fauci, this virus - we were assured - was that contagious. 

The world simply needed a few public-servant heroes bold enough to do the hard things that had to be done to save us all. (As it turns out, the legislatures didn’t even have to pass any legislation to allow these people to do their dirty deeds). 

Once our leaders told us we had to stay locked in our homes for two weeks (or 12 months), the public needed to do its part, trust the experts … and comply. Zoom and Amazon deliveries would get us through this once-in-a-millennia plague.

And if a decade needed to be knocked off vaccine safety trials, well, that’s also what the experts, authorities and mainstream journalists said was necessary … and we all assumed they were right about that too.

The potential nub was that if the virus was this dang contagious … then if one person got it, half his family, and half his office co-workers were going to get it too. Or actually, for many millions of people, they’d already gotten it.

Enter the grave threat of the “confirmed” early case

In Part 2, I’ll apply my amateur R-naught analysis to one of the most-compelling “early spread” cases I’ve identified - the inconvenient early cases of Tim and Brandie McCain of Sylacauga, Alabama, which is the probably the last place the experts would assume this virus was doing what contagious viruses do.

This follow-up article will show how one little r-naught number from just one micro case study could have huge macro implications, take-aways that could expose a diabolically false narrative. 

According to the old saying, when we assume a lie is the truth, we’re making an “ass” out of “u” and “me.” This is what Jeff Goldblum’s character was really trying to tell that dinosaur entrepreneur. 

“Sir, I appreciate the invitation to come here to your beautiful island. I know you care passionately about your project, which very well could make you wealthier than Walt Disney. But, with all due respect, you’re really a dumb ass. This is going to end in a disaster.”

But at least the dinosaur entrepreneur was willing to listen to Goldblum’s character. To his credit, he engaged in a real debate with a skeptic. I guess that can happen … in the movies.