Your guest is delightful and informative, and also a bit frustrating. I have a degree in chemistry and have rudimentary biochemistry knowledge, but was lost much of the time. Still it was informative, and never boring.
Re the regulation debate: I am old enough to remember when regulatory agencies actually did regulate, and the Democratic Party was more known for its tough-on-industry stance. Think Ralph Nader in the 60s. In the 90's w Bill Clinton (and deregulation had begun before, w Jimmy Carter & Ronald Reagan), everything flipped - the Democrats dropped their watchdog role & Republicans demanded user fees to pay the budgets of agencies. My older brother was a Federal transportation inspector, old school Marine vet Republican, who saw this happening on his job, and I was a support staff person in a state ag regulatory agency, where my bosses were so interested in pleasing Big Ag, they rarely enforced anything against Big Ag (without consulting them first. FYI, Pfizer has had an animal health division for decades, & it's not an accident the CEO of Pfizer was a veterinarian.) I heard constantly how industry wanted user fees (because they knew they could capture agencies by paying their budgets), and these guys were also more mixed up in GATT negotiations than guys in a sleepy backwater state agency should ever have been. I recognized all this because I had also worked in East Coast corporate legal support staff (I think I was hired cause they thought I'd be another industry admirer/loyal subject).
I agree w Dr McKernan though, that more regulation won't fix this - decentralization is the real solution. Federal control results in capture.
Thanks for this. Don't feel bad; Kevin could be a tough interview for the general audience because his knowledge is WAY up there! I've had to re-educate myself to sort of be able to comp along with scientific discussions but it is fascinating. And worth it. I'm sure those with a science background got a lot out of it. I enjoyed the discussion on direct evolution.
The current status quo is that the latest iteration of the Covid-19 PCR tests as interpreted according to the latest standards used in China has an extremely low false positive rate. Somehow it seems that the quite a bit of progress was made since the Drosten paper came out in January 2020. It would be very interesting to hear if Kevin has any idea what has changed since then.
Excellent interview.
Your guest is delightful and informative, and also a bit frustrating. I have a degree in chemistry and have rudimentary biochemistry knowledge, but was lost much of the time. Still it was informative, and never boring.
Will watch!
Here's another perspective on the Veritas video:
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/omg-pfizer-is-mutating-covid
I'm not taking a hard stance either way right now.
Re the regulation debate: I am old enough to remember when regulatory agencies actually did regulate, and the Democratic Party was more known for its tough-on-industry stance. Think Ralph Nader in the 60s. In the 90's w Bill Clinton (and deregulation had begun before, w Jimmy Carter & Ronald Reagan), everything flipped - the Democrats dropped their watchdog role & Republicans demanded user fees to pay the budgets of agencies. My older brother was a Federal transportation inspector, old school Marine vet Republican, who saw this happening on his job, and I was a support staff person in a state ag regulatory agency, where my bosses were so interested in pleasing Big Ag, they rarely enforced anything against Big Ag (without consulting them first. FYI, Pfizer has had an animal health division for decades, & it's not an accident the CEO of Pfizer was a veterinarian.) I heard constantly how industry wanted user fees (because they knew they could capture agencies by paying their budgets), and these guys were also more mixed up in GATT negotiations than guys in a sleepy backwater state agency should ever have been. I recognized all this because I had also worked in East Coast corporate legal support staff (I think I was hired cause they thought I'd be another industry admirer/loyal subject).
I agree w Dr McKernan though, that more regulation won't fix this - decentralization is the real solution. Federal control results in capture.
I liked this conversation.
Thank you!
Great interview with a Very Smart Guy!
Thanks for this. Don't feel bad; Kevin could be a tough interview for the general audience because his knowledge is WAY up there! I've had to re-educate myself to sort of be able to comp along with scientific discussions but it is fascinating. And worth it. I'm sure those with a science background got a lot out of it. I enjoyed the discussion on direct evolution.
"And Are we Living in One?"
Always have been.
The current status quo is that the latest iteration of the Covid-19 PCR tests as interpreted according to the latest standards used in China has an extremely low false positive rate. Somehow it seems that the quite a bit of progress was made since the Drosten paper came out in January 2020. It would be very interesting to hear if Kevin has any idea what has changed since then.
We wrote about this here: https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/lessons-to-be-learned-crematoria-over-capacity