UKC

Ph D immunologist Dolores Cahill says it is time to end the lockdown.https://www.facebook.com/MantraMuz/videos/10223696365697611/UzpfSTY2OTc3NDg...

In reply to paul mitchell:

Professor Dolores Cahill is a world leading scientist and academic. She is renowned for her work in Bio-Medicine. Dolores has been a member of the Advisory Science Council to the Irish government and a member of the International Science Advisory Board. expert in high-throughput proteomics technology development and automation, high content protein arrays and their biomedical applications, including biomarker discovery. Her team has achieved key breakthroughs in developing high-density protein and antibody array technologies and demonstrated their applications in biological and medical research. Prof. Cahill pioneered this research area at the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Germany, and holds several international patents. She has received prizes for her research, including the prestigious BMBF ‘BioFuture’ Award from the German Minister of Science. She was awarded the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) 2009 Award for her research & its significance.

In reply to paul mitchell:

"high-throughput proteomics technology development and automation, high content protein arrays and their biomedical applications, including biomarker discovery" has nothing to do with public health or epidemiology. Very talented scientists can be totally wrong outside of their specific field. See Pauling and vitamin C. 

In reply to paul mitchell:

Classic appeal to authority there. Usually used to deflect attention away from the shortcomings of the content*.

*I can't comment on the content as I haven't watched it.

Could you provide a summary of the main points?

In reply to paul mitchell:

Do you understand the meaning of a scientific consensus. It's great we have conflicting opinions. Be careful for just searching for the odd one who agrees with your own closed minded approach. But likewise the odd guy can be right. It's why we need to be open minded.

But I was a Max Planck Demographer, I could easily say I'd mapped the spread of the disease and change in mortality rates, my titles and place of work would have all shown that was possible. In reality I was working on the mortality rates of marine invertebrates.

In reply to paul mitchell:

I may be a world leading authority on Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, would you like to hear my expert opinion on epidemiology and virology ?

In reply to paul mitchell:

That's interesting, because our Director of Public Health here is a world-class epidologist who locked us down harder than the UK did and is bringing us out of lockdown in a slow, controlled manner now we've 'crushed the curve' better than pretty much anywhere else in the world. I wonder who is right?

In reply to GravitySucks:

I probably know the boulders near my house better than anyone else. I've done almost every problem on them. I'll write a guidebook for bouldering at Font. 

In reply to paul mitchell:

Googling a bit she seems to have done very little professionally in the last few years but has become the chairperson of, and stood in elections for, a tiny fringe rightwing party seemingly dedicated to "Irexit". The founder of the party has supported standard alt-right ideas like the great replacement theory. 

You should join her Facebook page though, it's full of your type of people! I particularly liked this visitor's comment "I just watched your video about Covid 19!! Please come to the USA and speak to President Trump. He's a great president and wants to do right by the people but our medical advisers are screwing everything up, so much politics. If you can't come here could you send your video to the president .
We need help from someone that doesn't have a political agenda"

I suppose it goes to show the human brain is quite an amazingly flexible thing when people convince themselves of things like that!

In reply to paul mitchell:

My son did a 6 week school placement at the Max Plank Institute last year, I'll ask him about it.

In reply to paul mitchell:

Aren't you barking up the wrong tree with the Max Plank Institute?

< gets coat >

In reply to GravitySucks:

Why the hell not, our set of experts have taken us from 2 weeks behind Italy to striding boldly out in front of the whole of Europe. I doubt you could do any worse. 

In reply to paul mitchell:  Why should you care what an epidemiologist thinks?  You said it was 5G causing Covid 19 last week?  Go call a TV repairman?

Do you believe in her other political notions?

In reply to paul mitchell:

She seems to think that an anti malaria drug and some vitamins is all that's needed.  

Is she an anti vaxxer?   

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/11/health/hydroxychloroquine-doesnt-work-corona...

In reply to paul mitchell:

The number of dislikes on this post and subsequent comments only show one thing. 

That people on UKC believe science is always in agreement as if there are no dissenting voices or variety in theory. 

Science is varied how to lockdown, when, and how long for is all a matter for scientific debate. There is no proof yet that our lockdown, or any other is the correct course of action long term. For now we can only trust.

In reply to JohnBson:

"That people on UKC believe science is always in agreement as if there are no dissenting voices or variety in theory. "

That's really not true. It's like the crackpot saying Fauci had her jailed. when you read the story she was jailed for breaking into a lab and this was after she had a paper retracted because she'd produced results which could not be repeated.

You can question and not believe a scientist, and still be an open minded scientist. Did you watch the video? I watched bits and couldn't take anymore but I don't think she's right. We're seeing the bounce back already in the US.

In reply to JohnBson:

Or maybe that Paul has a history of posting some pretty weird stuff

In reply to paul mitchell:

I've watched bits of the video now - you do realise how much bullshit the presenter is talking don't you? Currently he is claiming that the entire increase in deaths in the UK is because of the lockdown stopping people going to hospitals for normal treatments, not that people are dying from covid19. Do you actually believe this sort of crap?

edit: I've watched more now and regardless of what she has done in the past she comes over as pretty mad now. 

In reply to paul mitchell:

I wonder why people bother replying to mitch. He posts something up then f*cks off till next tin hat post. The only time he replies is when folk take him to task for banging pegs in.

In reply to JohnBson:

Maybe I'm crazy but I trust that if it was as simple as giving people vitamins and existing drugs someone would be doing it already.  

In reply to webbo:

I reply in case someone who is vulnerable to believing this stuff needs to see an alternative view.  I don't think the OP will change his mind but it is important to me to challenge snake oil sales and anti vaxxers.  

In reply to paul mitchell:

What does she have to say about 5G...?

In reply to TobyA:

David Icke was a half decent sports presenter...

Paul may think this is an endorsement of his latest discovery...

In reply to TobyA:

You're a better man than I am Gunga Din.

In reply to TobyA:

I’ve watched some of the video but I’m losing the will to live.  I don't care what she’s done in the past, she’s being dishonest at least about the Nature Medicine paper (that she says is so prestigious and peer-reviewed) and the furin cleavage site mutation.  

She says this could not have happened naturally.  One of the explicit conclusions of the paper is that there is no evidence that the virus has been modified artificially.  She describes how the new sequence could easily be inserted by restriction and ligation (rather old school these days) but this would easily be detected by the presence of the enzyme recognition (restriction) sites.  Bafflingly, she admits that the paper also discusses how other viruses in this family also acquired this furin cleavage site and how it changes the infectivity of the virus.  So, this very thing she says could not happen naturally, she then says has happened several times before.  Or did the Chinese do that too?

One obvious way viruses can acquire such a gain of function mutation is by recombination with other similar viruses that already have it.  It happens all the time when two such viruses co-infect the same cell.

She’s citing someone else’s work, selectively showing part of figure from the paper and then implying the paper concludes exactly the opposite of what it actually says.

As for of the stuff about the PhD student from Wuhan Insitute who died, who knows whether that’s even true but she’s clearly implying that somehow proves it was a laboratory acquired infection.  Actually, does that even fit with the timeline she’s suggesting?  Never mind, I’m not listening to it again.

In reply to marsbar:

Yes. Either we have a 'no platform' policy for dangerous nutjobs on UKC, or we have to vigilantly point out that they are dangerous nutjobs.

The sad thing is that other vulnerable people will probably ignore us anyway, since they seem to be masters of selective reading.

In reply to JohnBson:

I certainly don’t think that and I absolutely accept that competent scientists can differ in their interpretation of the modelling and statistics and about how we should manage spread of the infection.

However, when someone is apparently trading on their scientific credentials to misrepresent some else’s work to a lay audience, that’s way beyond honest scientific disagreement.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

I'm glad you know enough to see the mistakes she is making in the science, the bit about the PhD student in Wuhan sound pretty standard wackjobbery but I don't know anything about the virology/immunology. Is it the same drug she is going on about that Trump was shilling for?

More in my wheelhouse is the looking at the presenter in context - Irish alt-right with some pretty unpleasant views by the looks of it https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Computing_Forever whilst Prof. Cahill seems to have been busier in politics in recent times standing a number of times for Irish Freedom Party, of which she seems to be the chair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Freedom_Party

It's odd that in her science CV she mentions all the EU programmes she has been centrally involved in but she wants Ireland out of the EU.

I wonder if Paul and other people who like sharing these sorts of conspiracy theory videos are interested in the backgrounds of the people producing them and appearing in them?

I did find that Prof Cahill is still listed on University College Dublin's staff listing and her name is listed among the Conway Institute's fellows - https://www.ucd.ie/conway/research/researchers/conwayfellowsa-z/#C but click on to "view full profile" and you get 404ed! I suspect it's all Bill Gates and the other illuminati who are trying to silence the truth. That was sarcasm by the way, just in case anyone wondered.

In reply to JohnBson:

this should be good.

ermm no. What is shows is that people arent overly convinced by appeals to authority possibly because we take the Royal Societies motto seriously (since sod it why not appeal to authority).

No we cant "only trust" that really is the wrong approach. Leaving aside anything else science is only part of the equasion. I mean if you go for basic science then you can say if everyone gets completely locked down for a year then that will almost certainly solve it (wind blown particles aside). However this obviously comes with one or two downsides.

In reply to JohnBson:

That an awful lot of people who champion many different perspectives on any given issue are all capable of agreeing on something after all?

There never will be a definitive proof.  Every country is different and we can’t see our country in alternate timelines.  Meanwhile: Crisis Management 101 - tackle the immediate problems now and worry about later problems when we get to later.  The dead can’t be resurrected but the economy can be reshaped.  This pretence than the economy is some law of nature like the virus is growing old.  It’s been within our power to help raise the minimum standard of living for decades but the people who want to lift the lockdown now are by and large the same people who resist any and all attempts to raise social welfare standards.

In reply to wintertree:

You made a mistake! 

In reply to marsbar:

I get your point but don't you think in paul mitchell's case it might be better if we just ignored him? Very few replies support him.

In reply to aln:

I broadly agree and was planning not to reply to this thread until seeing your post. However I must say that I’ve asked Mitch before (on one of his 5G threads) what he hopes to achieve with his posts on here given the response they always get (my question was intended to be for the benefit of his mental health, as it can be upsetting to meet with near-universal disapproval and mockery) and to his credit he gave a solid answer. To my discredit I’ve forgotten the details of it but the gist of it was that he’s not trolling, he knows the response he will get, he still believes in his “causes” and he just wanted to get the information out there, in case it reaches one or two people who might otherwise not “know”.

Admittedly in this case there is the aspect of damage to public health to consider but on the whole he seems to be causing no harm (better that he wastes energy posting here, than adding to the voices in an echo chamber) and clearly not breaking any forum posting guidelines.

In reply to aln:

You might be right.  

In reply to Blue Straggler:

This is the one (look, aln, a link)! It wasn't, in this case, a question about what he hopes to achieve, but about his methods of insulting people. His reply, however, could apply in either case.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/electrosensitivity-716625?v=1#x...

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

He doesn't seem to use much energy on this as he appears to have posted then f###ed off.

In reply to paul mitchell:

I was hoping this would be one of those interesting physics threads but instead it was this cr*p.

In reply to paul mitchell:

I really do prefer to use Facebook as an authoritative source of scientific information and consensus rather than say The Lancet or an immunology journal. 

Meanwhile where i live: https://www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/news/opinion/anti-lockdown-protest-calderd...

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Perhaps he's trying to become the ultimate troll?

In reply to paul mitchell:

Paul,

You really should start avoiding YouTube. This sort of rubbish won't make you a happier person.

In reply to captain paranoia:

She said, 5G is very widespread in South Korea, where cases of CV-19 have been kept to a minimum, by the use of tinfoil hats.

In reply to JohnBson:

You're right about our lockdown,  but look at Greece, Japan and South Korea. Any one with eyes can see that seems to have worked, but there again, they did it properly.

We came late to the SV-19 party, and even though we could see it coming we did nothing for at least two weeks, and NOW we're lifting restrictions at the same time as others who have testing, tracking and a much lower R0. It really doesn't take a lot of scientific thought to see this might not be the best course of action. We might well be pissing away 7 weeks of lockdown and need to do it all again. If people think we need to get back to work now because of the economic situation, imagine what it's going to be like after another six weeks or so.