Alina Chan weathers the storm

The "lab leak hypothesis" (why not give it its abbrev: "LLH") broke out of Q-e-stan, for me anyway, when Razib Khan approved Alina Chan's findings on his blog. Chan then co-wrote a book, Viral. Stephen Glass' former digs at The New Republic trashed that book.

Kelsey Piper finds something interesting: there are no scientists, immunologists, epi people, public health people, people who've worked on the Covid origins questions, no one, quoted in the whole piece. The whole piece would refer to piece that's reviewing [the] book. 'Tmay be of interest how TNR is getting funded these days.

Whilst we're here, soi-disant Lion Of The Blogosphere / HalfSigma is onto Xi's nu "Omicron" variant. Ν-Ξ-Ο diverged from the others' base mid-2020 and is only rising up recently. In my esteem generally "Lion" ranks alongside RawMuslGlutes, on account of both clowns Asking Questions about Sarah Palin's pregnancy back in 2008. Although, that was a long time ago; Lion did better at predicting just how bad the virus would get. So, you might not want Lion as your gynaecologist, but he's doing fine as epidemiologist.

The present leonine take is that Omicron only seems mild because CoVID always starts mild whilst it's ruining your lungs - Gradually Then All At Once, as they say. But also if you took the jab (or already had the bug) it's mild. Milder, if you're not a fat old slob. From my perspective the only reason "to boost" for this is to avoid Teh Crud like I'd caught last June.

Which reason is, I concede, a good reason. When we get that Ν-Ξ-Ο booster.

UPPER 12/15: This variant has min/maxed to spread through the bronchials. Not the lung. So, indeed, pace "Lion": less dangerous. Pretty much an airbourne vaccine, itself . . .

KENNEDY 12/15: The Associated Press on the grassy knoll. Except: this shot is a miss. The piece is so unbalanced, including so many slanders and guilt-by-association ("adjacency", in Newspeak), that it nears unreadability. It just adds more fuel for those who claim that Big Journalism cares more for divisa et impera than for the facts. h/t Drudge but it's not that site's fault, not really.