GOP Insanity Containment: Beets, Gazpacho, and Lube

Riverman · July 20, 2021, 6:47pm

While we all know anyone willingly associated with Donald Trump is a piece of shit, the track record of people raising and managing the money are the scummiest of them all.

Hired_Goons · July 20, 2021, 6:53pm

uh,

catfacemeowmers · July 20, 2021, 7:12pm

But Paul broke in to say that according to the report he cited, a scientist at the Wuhan lab took an animal virus and increased its transmissibility to humans.
“You’re not saying that’s gain-of-function,” Paul pressed.
“That is correct,” Fauci said.

Uh… yeah. Get him Fauci!

JordanIB · July 20, 2021, 7:25pm

I haven’t yet gone down the rabbit hole of the gain-of-function conspiracy, but based on the little I know, it seems to essentially be studying viruses in a way where you see how they might become more transmissible, how they might infect new hosts, etc? This seems, like, completely normal and useful. Why is it some conservative “gotcha” that it might have been happening and we might have known about it?

catfacemeowmers · July 20, 2021, 7:31pm

I agree it seems normal and useful, although apparently there’s some debate about the risk/reward and the US government halted funding of it for a few years.

The only “gotcha” is that Fauci insists on lying about it. I originally thought he was claiming that the specific work funded by NIH grants wasn’t GOF, but in this exchange Paul describes research that is, by definition, GOF and Fauci says it isn’t. But we got a cool sound bite of him dunking on Rand so it’s all good.

anon46488499 · July 20, 2021, 7:32pm

I asked something similar in the orgins thread and this was the best reply I recieved:

On the Origins of Covid

The risks from gain-of-function mutations, at least on whole viruses, are pretty large compared with the benefits, at least in the short term. Let’s say you find a bat virus, induce a mutation, and then find that the mutation makes it highly infectious to humans. What’s the plan, then? Vaccinate everyone against that? Well, that’s pretty damn expensive, and unless you’re going to share with literally everyone on the planet, and not just, say, your own country, you’re going to get accusations of designing a bioweapon. Are you going to do that for every functional mutation you find? That’s going to add up quickly, and you can pump out new mutations faster than we can verify the safety and efficacy of a new vaccine and then pump out 7 billion doses. Essentially anything you’d design, whether vaccine or small molecule drug, would take considerable expense to produce and would be largely worthless unless it actually did turn into a pandemic, and if you actually start a pandemic with a new mutation, then the prior vaccines and drugs may be ineffective and again a waste of effort.

There’s potentially some good work that can be done on gain-of-function mutants of isolated proteins from the virus, but you don’t need to have viruses that can infect cells in order to do that. You can have bacteria or yeast produce those proteins en masse for you from templates that contain only the code for just those proteins on plasmids. For example, you could do random mutagenesis on just the spike protein and find sequences that don’t bind human antibodies generated by the immune response to one or more of the vaccines and crosscheck those for the continued ability to bind ACE2. That could potentially alert you to some sequences that would be cause for extra alarm should they pop up in viral surveillance sequencing, and there’s no risk of starting a pandemic with it (outside of someone literally and maliciously manipulating whole viruses according to your data to (re-)start a pandemic, I suppose).

Trolly · July 20, 2021, 7:44pm

Yeah, he’s not; there’s considerable disagreement about what kinds of studies should be considered “gain of function” work.

Melkerson · July 20, 2021, 7:46pm

Can someone ELI5 this to me?

When Rand reads that definition (apparently from Fauci himself), it sounds like he is the one whose claim is correct.

I’m hoping I’m just understanding it wrong and one of you will set me straight.

Devil · July 20, 2021, 7:51pm

Even better if there’s an extended cut with Paul spitting up his water.

hokie · July 20, 2021, 7:51pm

I have no doubt that Rand Paul is capable of dishonestly using some mundane semantic detail as an attempted gotcha. I don’t understand why this particular hill is one for Conservatives to die on, though I assume it’s some stupid line of thinking that somehow leads to this all being Obama’s fault. That being said, I’m also in the confused-about-the-definition-of-GOF camp.

I also wouldn’t mind if more Congressional witnesses took the “fuck off” approach to GOP questioning.

Melkerson · July 20, 2021, 7:55pm

But Paul has circumvented this entire problem. He asked Fauci if X was done? Fauci said yes. Then he read a quote (I think) from Fauci himself which said X = gain of function.

That is how it sounded to me just hearing the clip once. I haven’t really done a deep dive yet as I figured someone around here is following it closely and can just lay it out for me. Yeah, I’m lazy.

hokie · July 20, 2021, 7:56pm

Yea sorry I wasn’t clear, I meant that as in I agree with you and am similarly confused.

Danspartan · July 20, 2021, 8:01pm

https://twitter.com/joycewhitevance/status/1417574961414344704?s=21

Trolly · July 20, 2021, 8:20pm

I went down a rabbit hole and it seems that experts argue a lot about what exactly GoF means and what kinds of projects shouldn’t be allowed.

TrollyWantACracker · July 20, 2021, 8:32pm

Back in the good old days we made our own opiates right here in the USA

MattyLice · July 20, 2021, 10:31pm

https://mobile.twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1417611922321690632

Danspartan · July 20, 2021, 10:39pm

BecAuse you……They made those products 5% better but 5000% more expensive.

Riverman · July 21, 2021, 1:14am

https://twitter.com/sawyerhackett/status/1417487109531881483?s=21

prana · July 21, 2021, 1:22am

party of fiscal responsibility imo. A lot of printing costs were just reduced.

mosdef · July 21, 2021, 1:26am

Have you been in a coma for 7 years?