Malevolent Designer News - Is Creationism's Favourite Sadist Trying a New Tack?

New highly virulent and damaging HIV variant discovered in the Netherlands | University of Oxford

Creationist mode:

It's beginning to look like, in choosing quantity over quality, the divine sadist might have boobed with the Omicron variant of its SARS-CoV-2 virus as it seems to be a relatively mild disease compared to its earlier versions. It is very much more contagious, but the resulting infection is resulting in far fewer serious illnesses and deaths. It's still a nasty, dangerous little parasite that people need to be vaccinated against, but it iss beginning to look like a virus our health services can cope with.

So, is the realisation that it isn't causing as much death and destruction behind its recently detected super-duper new more dangerous version of HIV? HIV, as Creationists fundamentalist evangelicals were never slow to claim, was their beloved pestilential deity's attempt to punish homosexuals for the sexuality it gave them and was, in its heyday, a very serious virus that killed millions of homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, apart from lesbians who rarely, if ever, become infected during homosexual sex, and left countless children orphaned. Then medical science came up with treatments like antiretroviral drugs, which allow victims to live a relatively normal life and, better still, not pass it on to sexual partners.

Now though, according to scientists from the University of Oxford, UK, there is a much more dangerous and virulent variant, which has been detected in Holland, so it looks like any intelligence responsible for the design of these parasites has given the arms race spiral another twist, as though to resurrect one of its earlier attempts at mass killing.

According to the Oxford University news release:

Malevolent Designer News - How the Omicron Variant Evades Our Antibody Defences

A computational study shows that dozens of mutations help the virus’ spike protein evade antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2.

Credits:Image: CDC; Christine Daniloff, MIT

How Omicron escapes from antibodies | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Creationist mode:

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered how the omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, currently causing the largest wave of new and repeat infections yet in the current pandemic, manages to evade the antibodies we produce in response to either vaccinations or earlier infections.

It can do this because of the large number of mutations in the spike proteins that the antibodies would normally bind to, making it difficult for the antibodies to bind to and neutralize the virus particles to prevent them entering the cells.

The article by Anne Trafton of the MIT News Office explains what was discovered and how:

A new study from MIT suggests that the dozens of mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron variant help it to evade all four of the classes of antibodies that can target the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19.

It is important to get a more comprehensive picture of the many mutations seen in Omicron, especially in the context of the spike protein, given that the spike protein is vital for the virus’s function, and all the major vaccines are based on that protein. There is a need for tools or approaches that can rapidly determine the impact of mutations in new virus variants of concern, especially for SARS-CoV-2.

Professor Ram Sasisekharan, Senior author
Alfred H. Caspary professor of Biological Engineering and Health Sciences and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA, USA

This includes antibodies generated by vaccinated or previously infected people, as well as most of the monoclonal antibody treatments that have been developed, says Ram Sasisekharan, the Alfred H. Caspary Professor of Biological Engineering and Health Sciences and Technology (HST) at MIT

Using a computational approach that allowed them to determine how mutated amino acids of the viral spike protein influence nearby amino acids, the researchers were able to get a multidimensional view of how the virus evades antibodies. According to Sasisekharan, the traditional approach of only examining changes in the virus’ genetic sequence reduces the complexity of the spike protein’s three-dimensional surface and doesn’t describe the multidimensional complexity of the protein surfaces that antibodies are attempting to bind to.

[&heelip;]

What’s good about vaccines is they don’t just generate B cells, which produce the monoclonal [antibody] response, but also T cells, which provide additional forms of protection.

With the network approach, you’re looking at that amino acid residue in the context of its neighborhood and environment. When we started to move away from the one-dimensional sequence space toward multidimensional network space, it became evident that critical information about the interaction of an amino acid in its three-dimensional environment in the protein structure is lost when you look at just the one-dimensional sequence space.

Professor Ram Sasisekharan

Even though Omicron is able to evade most antibodies to some degree, vaccines still offer protection, Sasisekharan says.

Antibody escape

After the Omicron variant emerged last November, Sasisekharan and his colleagues began to analyze its trimeric spike protein using a network-based computational modeling method they had originally developed several years ago to study the hemagglutinin spike protein on flu viruses. Their technique allows them to determine how mutations in the genetic sequence are related in the three-dimensional space through a network of inter-amino-acid interactions that critically impact the structure and function of the viral protein.

The researchers’ approach, known as amino acid interaction network analysis, evaluates how one mutated amino acid can influence nearby amino acids depending on how “networked” they are — a measure of how much a given amino acid interacts with its neighbors. This yields richer information than simply examining individual changes in the one-dimensional amino acid sequence space, Sasisekharan says.

[…]

Sasisekharan’s lab has previously used this technique to determine how mutations in the hemagglutinin protein of an avian flu virus could help it to infect people. In that study, he and his laboratory identified mutations that could change the structure of hemagglutinin so that it could bind to receptors in the human respiratory tract.

When Omicron emerged, with about three dozen mutations on the spike protein, the researchers decided to rapidly use their method to study the variant’s ability to evade human antibodies. They focused their analysis on the receptor binding domain (RBD), which is the part of the spike protein targeted by antibodies. The RBD is also the part of the viral protein that attaches to human ACE2 receptors and allows the virus to enter cells.

Using their network modeling approach, the researchers studied how each of the mutations on the RBD changes the protein’s shape and affect its interactions with four classes of human antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2. Class 1 and 2 antibodies target the RBD site that binds to the ACE2 receptor, while class 3 and 4 antibodies bind to other parts of the RBD.

The researchers compared the Omicron variant to the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as the Beta and Delta variants. The Beta and Delta variants have mutations that help them evade class 1 and 2 antibodies, but not class 3 and 4. Omicron, on the other hand, has mutations that affect the binding of all four classes of antibodies.

With Omicron you can see a significant number of sites being perturbed compared to Beta and Delta. From the original strain to the Beta strain, and then the Delta strain, there is a general trend towards a greater ability to escape.

Our hope is that as we understand the viral evolution, we’re able to hone in on regions where we think that any perturbation would cause instability to the virus, so that they would be the Achilles heels, and more effective sites to target.

Professor Ram Sasisekharan

Those perturbations allow the virus to evade not only antibodies generated by vaccination or previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, but also many of the monoclonal antibody treatments that pharmaceutical companies have developed.

As patients began to appear with Omicron infections, researchers and pharmaceutical companies sought to guide treatment by predicting which antibodies were most likely to retain their efficacy against the new variant.

Based on their one-dimensional sequence and single point mutation analyses, pharmaceutical companies believed that their monoclonal antibodies were likely to bind Omicron and not lose any potency. However, when experimental data became available, the Omicron variant was found to substantially escape from monoclonal antibodies known as ADG20, AZD8895, and AZD1061, as predicted by the network analyses in this study, while the activity of monoclonal antibody S309 was also reduced by threefold.

Additionally, the study revealed that some of the mutations in the Omicron variant make it more likely that the RBD will exist in a configuration that makes it easier to grab onto the ACE2 receptor, which may contribute to its enhanced transmissibility.

As any Intelligent [sic] Design advocate will argue, a combination of just the right mutations arising together is so vastly improbable that it must have been intelligently designed. So the Omicron variant must be the intended outcome of intervention by their divine malevolence for the purpose of giving the spiralling arms race between it and medical science, another twist.

Creationist mode:

Of course, as with so many Creationists arguments this ignores reality and relies on ignorant incredulity.

The fact is that, in a process that can produce trillions of new viruses from the few hundreds or thousands in the initial viral load, the one-in-a-billion chance of any particular combination of mutations arising happens a thousand times on average. In a population with millions of unvaccinated people, the probability is very high that a novel variant which is better able to spread and infect people, including those with immunity to the earlier variants, will arise frequently. Omicron is just the latest in a sequence of such variants, and there will be others so long as there is a large pool of unvaccinated people for them to evolve in.

The MIT team's findings are published, open access, in Cell Reports Medicine:

Highlights

• Network analyses offer distinct insights into RBD–neutralizing Ab interactions
• Omicron mutations broadly and deeply perturb networks across RBD epitope classes
• Networks capture indirect effects of Omicron mutations on Ab escape potential
• Omicron mutations provide plausible structural rationale for enhanced transmission

Summary
The Omicron variant features enhanced transmissibility and antibody escape. Here, we describe the Omicron receptor binding domain (RBD) mutational landscape using amino acid interaction (AAI) networks, which are well-suited for interrogating constellations of mutations that function in an epistatic manner. Using AAI, we map Omicron mutations directly and indirectly driving increased escape breadth and depth in class 1-4 antibody epitopes. Further, we present epitope networks for authorized therapeutic antibodies and assess perturbations to each antibody’s epitope. Since our initial modeling following the identification of Omicron, these predictions have been realized by experimental findings of Omicron neutralization escape from therapeutic antibodies ADG20, AZD8895, and AZD1061. Importantly, the AAI predicted escape resulting from indirect epitope perturbations was not captured by previous sequence or point mutation analyses. Finally, for several Omicron RBD mutations we find evidence for a plausible role in enhanced transmissibility via disruption of RBD-down conformational stability at the RBD_down-RBD_down interface.

Miller, N.L., Clark, T., Raman, R., Sasisekharan, R.
Insights on the mutational landscape of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant receptor binding domain
Cell Reports Medicine (2022), doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100527.

Copyright: © 2022 The authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

If you are a Creationist, then, you have two choices:

• You can ascribe this clearly malevolent piece of redesign to your beloved intelligent [sic] designer and continue to argue that the sheer number of ‘right’ mutations needed to get the desired result proves intelligent intervention. This will tell the world your beloved designer is a malevolent deity who is actively working to make people sick and die and has gone into competition with medical science to make sure it's design keeps on doing that, while ignoring the 'fact' that it also designed the immune system that medical science is using against its design and is now stupidly treating its design, which was intended to protect us against its parasites, as a problem to be overcome.
• You can go against the dogmas of your cult and do what people who understand science do - ascribe it to an evolutionary process in which no intelligence or intent was involved - which lets your favourite deity off the hook, explains the appearance of design and explains the uncaring nature of the process and its random victims.

Which will you plump for?

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False Prophets For Trump - Talibangelical Hank Kunneman Believes God Has Given Him a Veto Over Biden's Presidency

False Prophet, Hank Kunneman
Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha, Nebraska, USA

'Prophet' Hank Kunneman Says Biden Has No Right to Appoint a New SCOTUS Justice Because He's 'Illegitimate' | Right Wing Watch

Just over a year on from the inauguration of President Joe Biden, that Hank Kunneman claimed God told him he wouldn't allow to happen, Biden having won an election with the largest popular vote in US history, that Kunneman claimed God told him he wouldn't allow him to win, false prophet, Hank Kunneman still can't accept that he's outed himself as a false prophet and a liar.

If you don't believe Hank Kunneman lied to his cult, you must believe God lied to Hank Kunneman, because manifestly, none of his prophesies ever came true despite the fact that Kunneman claimed God revealed them personally to him - the very definition of a false prophet.

Faced with the evidence of his false prophesies, Kunneman now has two choices: he can admit he lied and bore false witness to his cult or he can double down on his lies and pretend he was right all along and that God really did prevent Biden's victory (only no-one noticed) and just rely on his credulous cult not accepting the evidence either.

The Old Dead Gods of Wiltshire are Still Hiding Their Secrets

Stonehenge at dawn

Photograph: Chris Gorman/Getty Images

How science is uncovering the secrets of Stonehenge | Heritage | The Guardian

Rosa's Laws of Theodynamics.

First Law of Theodynamics

Gods can be created out of nothing and will disappear without trace.
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Third Law of Theodynamics

Gods disappear completely when the number of believers in them reaches zero.
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The vast complex of Late Bronze/Early Iron Age monuments, burial chambers and earthworks on Salisbury Plain, in central southern England about which I've written before, continue to remind us how, when a religion and its god(s) disappear into the mists of time and no-one remembers them, unlike a science could be, they cannot be reconstructed from real-world sources, because they were never founded on real-world sources in the first place. They arose entirely in the imaginations of people who lacked the scientific method to discover the truth about the world about them.

But to their believers, as we can see by the evidence of the resources they devoted to them, they would have been no less important and no less 'proven' than are the modern gods of present days religions. The evidence for them would have been 'all around them'. It would have been in the 'design' of trees, sunsets and flowers and in the way they always answered prayers like ensuring the sun rose in the morning and the crops continued to grow in the fields, and when they failed this was proof of the failure of their followers to pray hard enough or to believe with enough faith or not having performed the required ritual correctly, or because the god(s) said no, for reasons which could only be guessed at.

Religious Child Abuse News - Pentecostals Cover Up Down Under

Brian Houston, charged with concealing evidence of child abuse
"Stepping aside as global senior pastor"

Facing trial, Brian Houston steps aside as global senior pastor of Hillsong

I doubt anyone will be the least surprised that another Christian sect is embroiled in a child sex abuse scandal.

This time it is the Australian Pentecostal mega-rich Hillsong megachurch and global Christian music publishing empire. Its founder, Brian Houston, has agreed to step aside as global senior pastor until the end of the year, while he faces criminal charges in Australia alleging that he concealed the predatory paedophilia of his father, Frank Houston, who died in 2004.

Christian Hate News - Pastor Greg Locke Says Children With Autism are Possessed by Demons.

Pastor Greg Locke, Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee.
"Autistic children are possessed by evil demons"

Greg Locke Says Autistic Children Are Demonized: ‘Ain’t No Such Diagnosis in the Bible’

Preacher of hate, Talibangelical Pastor Greg Locke of the Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, USA has turned his hate from face masks, social distancing, anti-COVID vaccines and people who didn't vote for Donald Trump, to autistic children.

Failing to find any mention of autism in the Bible, he has concluded that autistic children must be possessed by evil demons. There is no mention of cancer, diabetes, sickle-cell syndrome, cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s dementia, viruses or bacteria in the Bible either, but Locke seems blissfully unaware that when he tells us the Bible disagrees with science, he is telling us the Bible is wrong. This is something we have known for hundreds of years of course, ever since the scientific method gave us the tool to discover the truth and we discovered the truth was very different to what the Bible said.

Covidiot News - Antivaxxer Claims Are Becoming Indistinguishable from The Claims of Lunatics

Dr Sherri Tenpenny
Osteopath and self-proclaimed 'expert' on the anti-COVID vaccines

Anti-Vaccine 'Expert' Sherri Tenpenny Says COVID-19 Vaccines Will Turn People Into 'Transhumanist Cyborgs' | Right Wing Watch

Is fanatical Trumpanzee covidiocy a form of insanity?

I pose this question because Dr Sherri Tenpenny, an osteopath and self-proclaimed expert on the anti-COVID vaccines, who has had no formal training in immunology or epidemiology, puts me in mind of a distressing incident I and my crew mate had to deal with as ambulance Paramedics many years ago. It involved the lawful detention of a female doctor and pathologist under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act (MHA).

The unfortunate lady was being held under Section 136 of the MHA in a local police station as a place of safety, having been apprehended running around the town stark naked and shouting hysterically for people to take cover from an invisible, odourless gas that was pervading the streets and turning them into automatons.

Covidiot News - New York Unvaccinated 26 Times More Likely to Die of COVID-19 Than Vaccinated

At the peak of the Omicron wave, New York City saw 26 times more deaths among the unvaccinated than vaccinated people. A pop-up COVID-19 testing site is shown in a neighbourhood among those that have seen some of the highest number of city deaths on February 23 in the Queens borough of New York City.

Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Unvaccinated New Yorkers 26 Times More Likely to Die of COVID at Omicron Peak | Newsweek

Antivaxx covidiots, scraping around for something to support their selfish stupidity will often point to the fact that vaccinated people are still catching the omicron variant of COVID-19 as evidence that the vaccines don't work. At least only the lunatic fringe conspiracists are still coming up with the more insane claims such as that the vaccine is designed to turn you gay, or make you magnetic so you can be controlled by Bill Gates, or that it is designed to kill you as part of some nefarious eugenic population control.

But what are the merits of this claim of non-effectiveness, as though governments worldwide are spending vast sums of money to give their people something that doesn't work, as well as being in on a vast global conspiracy involving tens or hundreds of millions of people?

The facts are, as explained in this Newsweek report, not on the side of the antivaxxers, not because they are wrong to claim that vaccinated people can still catch COVID-19, but because they are wrong to claim this means the vaccines are not effective.

In fact, the evidence is that, as the vaccine manufacturers always claimed, that, while not 100% effective and while not giving permanent protection as immunity was likely to decline over time, so top-up boosters will be needed, the vaccines give you a very significantly increased probability of avoiding serious illness and death. And this is borne out by the facts, both in the USA and in the UK.

COVID-19 News - It Doesn't Matter Which Booster You Have, So Long as You Have One!

Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (gold) within endosomes of a heavily infected nasal epithelial cell.

Credit: NIAID

Mix-and-Match Trial Finds Additional Dose of COVID-19 Vaccine Safe, Immunogenic | NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

My first two anti-COVID vaccines were the Astra-Zeneca vaccines but, for reasons of availability, my booster was the Pfizer vaccine. None of the vaccines caused anything more than the slightest discomfort at the injection site which lasted about 2 days. However, a friend of mine declined an offered booster because it wasn’t the same as the initial vaccine and thought there might be a smaller boost as well as doubling the risk of an adverse reaction.

So, which of us was right?

The preliminary results of a clinical trial by the US National Institute of Health, show that there is certainly no disadvantage in a mix and match approach and there may even be a benefit. The trial results are reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.

As the NIH News release explains:

Malevolent Designer News - How the Omicron Variant of SARS-CoV-2 Was Created

The Omicron variant was first detected in Botswana in October 2021 and has quickly spread throughout the world. A large international team of researchers, including Maciej Boni, associate professor of biology, Penn State, was the first to describe the genomic profile of Omicron and explore the origins of the variant.

Credit: Justice Hubane, Unsplash.

Omicron genetics and early transmission patterns are characterized in new study | Penn State University

Creationist mode:

A team of scientists led by Maciej Boni, associate professor of biology, Penn State University, USA have discovered how, where and approximately when the omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was created.

Of course, being proper scientists they say this was an evolutionary process, but, as any devotee of Creationism's divine sadist will tell you, evolution doesn't happen so all these changes must have been intentionally designed by their beloved malevolence.

We have seen SARS-CoV-2 generate three major variants — Alpha, Delta and Omicron — in about 16 months, which is very surprising because other viruses do not make such repeated big evolutionary leaps. The latest variant — Omicron — is extraordinary because of the even bigger jump it made in the evolution of its spike protein.

Associate Professor Maciej Boni
Penn State University.

The discovery is that omicron (B.1.1.529) is a descendant of the alpha (B.1.1.7) variant, that replaced the original virus at about the beginning of October, 2020 and caused the second major wave of infections. Alpha was of the B.1.1 lineage but was much more transmissible. It was itself replaced by the delta (B.1.617.2) variant which caused the third wave starting in about June, 2021.

Despite expectations that a subsequent variant of concern (VOC) would evolve from delta, the team found that omicron is not closely related to delta, but is a highly modified version of alpha.

The team's findings are published in Nature, sadly behind a paywall. However the abstract can be read here and a PDF is available to download from here.

What this means is that although Omicron belongs to the same lineage as the Alpha variant, it has changed to such a great extent that it is largely unrecognizable as a cousin or nephew of the Alpha variant. When the Omicron genome was first sequenced, it became clear that this virus had the potential to be phenotypically very different from previous SARS-CoV-2 variants that we were familiar with.

This finding led to our conclusion that adaptive evolution played a significant role in the early emergence and establishment of Omicron. This finding suggests that Omicron is likely the result of an evolutionary process that created a highly transmissible virus that partially evades our antibody responses.

Maciej Boni

The Penn State news release explains:

Catholic Child Abuse News - Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI Misled Enquiry into Munich Abuses

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Future Pope Benedict XVI.
Complicit in the abuse of 4 children by paedophile priests in Munich.

Editorial: In penance for mishandled abuse cases, Benedict needs to give up 'pope emeritus' | National Catholic Reporter

More information is emerging from the enquiry into the sexual abuse of children in the Munich-Freising Archdiocese, Germany, when, as Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI was in charge of the archdiocese.

The enquiry by the law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, who had been commissioned by the Catholic Church to investigate the numerous reports of cases in the dioceses, has concluded that Ratzinger was complicit in the abuse of 4 of the 65 victims by failing to act, even though he was aware of the predatory paedophile nature of the priests involved. The investigators also concluded that Pope Benedict's 80 plus page submission to the enquiry contained claims and assertions that were not credible - in essence, accusing Pope Benedict XVI of lying to them to try to cover up his culpability.

They also revealed that he had stated that he did not think a priest acted improperly when he masturbated in front of pre-pubescent girls, because he didn't touch them!

According to this editorial in the National Catholic Reporter:

In his 80-some pages of written testimony for the report's investigation, the 94-year-old Benedict initially denied any wrongdoing and drew some disturbing conclusions, such as indicating that a priest did not "act improperly" because he didn't touch prepubescent girls while masturbating in front of them.

In the same document, Pope Benedict XVI claimed he was not present at a 1980 meeting to discuss the transfer of a priest accused of misconduct. The enquiry team called this claim, "not very credible" and produced the minutes of the meeting which clearly recorded his presence. As I reported earlier, Benedict’s initial response was to claim that the minutes were "only proof that something was written down, not evidence that he read it". Through his private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, has since admitted that Ratzinger was present at the meeting and his denial had been "a clerical error - an oversight in the editing of his statement."

Funny how one of the most damaging allegations - that the then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger was aware that a predatory paedophile priest was being moved around in his dioceses and allowed to continue working as a priest - was the subject of a clerical error that should have been edited out, but was not!

According to this report in the Guardian:

In one of the cases examined by Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, a now notorious paedophile priest, Peter Hullermann, was transferred to Munich from Essen in western Germany where he had been accused of abusing an 11-year-old boy. He was reassigned to pastoral duties despite his history.

In 1986, he was convicted of molesting more children and given a suspended prison sentence. He continued to work with children for many years and his case is regarded as a pertinent example of the mishandling of abuse by the church.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the current archbishop of Munich and Freising, was also found to have failed to act in two cases of suspected abuse. Although he tendered his resignation to Pope Francis, this was rejected.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is calling for Benedict to give up his title as "pope emeritus". There are also calls for Pope Francis to impose sanctions on 94-year-old Benedict XVI, but, since a Pope is elected for life being officially chosen by God who guided the Conclave of Cardinals that elected him, and since having two popes in the Vatican simultaneously is unprecedented, the rules are being made up as they go along, so it is not clear what authority, if any, Pope Francis has over Benedict or whether Benedict can even resign his position and title.

For Benedict to be convicted of misconduct by a special Vatican tribunal would be cataclysmic for the Catholic Church and would raise all manner of questions of basic doctrine such as the doctrine of papal infallibility and divine guidance as God's personal representative on Earth. It would undermine the entire credibility of the Papacy.

There is probably more of this scandal to come and, if I can obtain an English translation of the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl report in full, I will post it here. So far only the index and the first 21 of the more than 1200 pages have been translated and published. A German language version is available here [PDF].

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Malevolent Designer News - If Frogs can Regrow Limbs, why Can't Amputees?

A normal African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis.
“It’s exciting to see that the drugs we selected were helping to create an almost complete limb” - Nirosha Murugan.

Photo: Pouzin Olivier, via Creative Commons

Scientists Regrow Frog’s Lost Leg | Tufts Now

Discounting the account of the almost laughably fake 'miraculous' regeneration of Miguel Juan Pellicer's leg in Calanda, Spain in 1637, there are no authenticated accounts of a mammalian limb ever having regenerated or having been miraculously restores to an amputee. And yet, as scientists have now shown, the ability to regrow an amputated limb is stull present, having been inherited from remote salamander ancestors whose salamander descendants can still regenerate missing body parts. All it needs is the right cocktail of drugs to stimulate it.

Admittedly, this is only for frogs so far...

The scientists in question work at Tufts and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. According to Mike Silver, writing in Tufts Now:

Unintelligent Designer News - Birds Have a Unique Immune Pathway and Viruses are Finding a Way Round It.

A New Avian Immunological Pathway Discovered

Scientists discover new avian immunological pathway | News

Here is one of those papers where its difficult to decide which discovered facts best refute Creationism when so many do - at least for those who understand both Creationism and biology, which sadly, hardy ever includes Creationists.

Scientists lead by biochemists from the University of California, Riverside, have discovered a hitherto unknown immunological pathway, unique to avians but absent in all other vertebrates.

Covidiot News - Unvaccinated People Are Still Worse Off Even if They Survive an Infection

Vaccination before or after SARS-CoV-2 infection leads to robust humoral response and antibodies that effectively neutralize variants

A second research group has reported that vaccinations against COVID-19 given before or after breakthrough infections, significantly enhances antibody levels, again making the case for vaccination unarguable. Readers may remember how I reported on a similar paper a few days ago.

This time the research comes from the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), Portland, Oregon, USA. The team found that it makes little difference whether you have the vaccine after being infected with SARS-CoV-2 or whether you are unlucky enough to get a 'breakthrough' infection after having been vaccinated. However, with the virus now being so common in the environment, the chance of a breakthrough infection, post vaccine is high, though not as high as for an unvaccinated person. Without the vaccine, however, natural immunity following infection is much lower.

It makes no difference whether you get infected and then vaccinated, or if you get vaccinated and then a breakthrough infection. In either case, you will get a really, really robust immune response — amazingly high.

The likelihood of getting breakthrough infections is high because there is so much virus around us right now, but we position ourselves better by getting vaccinated. And if the virus comes, we’ll get a milder case and end up with this super immunity.

Fikadu Tafesse, Ph.D., Senior author
Assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology
OHSU School of Medicine
Portland, Oregon, USA

The OHSU news release accompanying the team's open access publication, in the journal Science Immunology, explains:

Unintelligent Design News - Did Creationism's Beloved Pestilential Sadist Blunder with Omicron?

Researchers from the University of Kent, UK and Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany find explanation why the Omicron variant causes less severe disease – Aktuelles aus der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Creationist mode:

It's beginning to look like Creationism's divine malevolence may have blundered badly in its eagerness to modify the SARS-CoV-2 virus so it could overcome the vaccines made by medical science and kill more people and leave more with long-term disabilities.

At least this has to be the conclusion for Creationists who are obliged by dogma to reject the idea that a natural, evolutionary process could be behind the modifications which can only occur if their putative intelligent (sic) supernatural designer makes the changes.

Our study provides for the first time an explanation, why Omicron infections are less likely to cause severe disease. Obviously, Omicron can in contrast to Delta not effectively inhibit the host cell interferon immune response.

Prof Martin Michaelis, co-Lead author
School of Bioscience
University of Kent
Canterbury, Kent, UK

Scientists from the University of Kent and the Goethe University, Frankfurt have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant is less effective than delta at blocking a cellular defence mechanism against viruses - the so-called “interferon response”.

The researchers have shown that omicron variant viruses are particularly sensitive to inhibition by the so-called interferon response, an unspecific immune response that is present in all body cells. This provides the first explanation of why COVID-19 patients infected with the omicron variant are less likely to experience severe disease.

Covidiot Antivaxx News - The Child-Like QAnon Dupes are Turning to Violence to Avoid Facing the Truth.

Kirsten Weldon, Pro-Trump, Antivaxx QAnon conspiracist.
Died of COVID-19, 04 Jan, 2022.

'It's Gonna Get Bloody': Anti-Vax QAnon Conspiracy Theorist Scott McKay Threatens to Put 'Bullets Inside' Health Care Providers | Right Wing Watch

A couple of weeks ago, Cirsten Weldon, a vociferous Pro-Trump QAnon conspiracist and antivaxxer, died in hospital of COVID-19, another in a long line of similar covidiot antivaxx nutters, so doing their bit for the self-inflicted genocide being waged by Trumpanzee cult loons against their own core supporters.

According to this report in the Daily Beast:

Fruitloop Loon News - Is David Barton Paranoid or is His Lying a Pathological Condition?

David Barton
Bigger and better lies or increasingly paranoid?

David Barton and the Evolution of Lies | Right Wing Watch

It's difficult to know whether professional liar and pseudo-historian, David Barton, is just becoming more imaginative and creative in his lies, or whether he is becoming paranoid, believing himself to be the victim of conspiracies, but his lies are certainly becoming more and more elaborate. Perhaps he just ratchets them up a notch every time he gets away with them, hoping to fool more fundamentalists with them, or perhaps he really does believe people are out to persecute him.

For example, here he is telling the right-wing Christian organization, City Elders, two lies that have gotten more lurid over the years:

1. 'They' [Wikipedia] literally spent a million... er... millions of dollars a year to discredit me and keep my name high on Google searches.
2. Congress placed me on a domestic terrorism watch under Obama.

The first has grown since he first tried it in 2011 when he said he had been told that the ACLU had spent a million dollars trying to discredit him. It has now metamorphosed into the bigger and better lie, that Wikipedia spends millions of dollars a year to discredit him. A brief glance at his Wikipedia entry probably explains his eagerness to try to discredit it.

The second has grown since 2012 when the Southern Poverty Law Center included him in a list of "30 New Activists Heading Up the Radical Right", which Barton claimed was a terrorist watch list. By 2016 this lie had become that the FBI had put him and his "WallBuilders" organization on a list of hate groups. Now he claims Congress under Obama included him in a domestic terrorist watch list.

Barton, who has no formal training as a historian (his degree is in Christian education from Oral Roberts University, where he appears to have been taught that Christian education requires lies to be taught to Christians as fact) but, because he tells the lies they require their supporters to believe, he is adored by the Republican Party and plays a leading part in developing policies and campaign platforms. One of his best-selling books, with the deliciously ironic title The Jefferson Lies[sic] was pulled and pulped by the Christian publishers, Thomas Nelson, because it was full of inaccuracies, misleading quotes and unsubstantiated claims, and had been slated by real historians.

Showing his customary disregard for the truth, Glenn Beck, who wrote the forward to Barton's book, published it under his Mercury Ink imprint and then with their traditional penchant for publishing lies, disinformation and conspiracy theories, the extreme right-wing 'fringe' publisher, WND Books published a 'revised edition' of Jefferson Lies in 2016.

Barton's aim is to fool people into believing America was founded as a fundamentalist Christian nation as a prelude to the creation of a self-appointing Taliban-style evangelical theocracy in the USA, despite the expressed intent of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, who explicitly intended to build a 'wall of separation' between church and state, in order to prevent exactly what Barton and his extreme right-wing allies would like to establish.

Every time he opens his mouth, Barton discredits himself and unwittingly proves the old adage:

When you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith, you show the world you know your faith is a lie that requires fools to believe falsehoods

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Covidiot News - Boosters Give the Same Protection as Catching COVID-19, Without the Risks

Breakthrough infections spur strong antibody responses | Newsroom

Scientists working at the University of Washington Medical School (UW Medicine), Washington, USA, have shown that either a third (booster) vaccination or infection with SARS-CoV-2 gives comparable magnitude and breadth of protection, but those who have been vaccinated twice but still get a breakthrough infection usually do not have a severe infection.

Of course, anyone who is unfortunate enough to get a breakthrough infection or who is unvaccinated, runs a far higher risk of serious illness and long-term complications than those who have all three vaccinations, so the case for vaccination remains unarguable. The news release from UW Medicine explains:

Child Abuse News - The Evangelicals are Copying the Catholics

Former Youth Pastor, William Stefan Wahl, The River church, Kimball, Michigan, USA
Charged with six sex crimes against minors

UPDATE: Former The River church youth minister charged with six sex crimes Friday | Port Huron Times Herald

The Pro-Trump QAnon Inc, in alliance with fundamentalist evangelical Christians and their political wing, the Republican Party, has concocted a lurid conspiracy theory with absolutely no evidence, alleging a massive, world-wide satanic paedophile and child sex-trafficking ring involving prominent Democrats, and just about anyone who contradicts their increasingly lurid and ludicrous claims.

However, if you want to find real paedophile rings, you hardly ever need to look any further than a nearby evangelical church, like The River church in Kimball Township, St Clair County, Michigan, USA.

According to this report in Port Huron Times Herald by Laura Fitzgerald

William Stefan Wahl, 28, of Port Huron man [sic], was arraigned Friday on two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct [with a] victim younger than 13, two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct [with] victim between 13 and 16, distributing obscene matter to children, aggravated indecent exposure and using computers to commit a crime.

His bond was set at $25,000 cash/surety.

Wahl is accused of sexually abusing four juvenile victims that he fostered a relationship with through The River, St. Clair County Sheriff Mat King said. King identified Wahl as a former youth minister at the church.

Catholic Child Abuse - How Cardinal Ratzinger Protected Paedophile Priests

Pope Benedict, formerly, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Archbishop of Munich

Pope Benedict XVI knew of abusive priests when he ran the Munich archdiocese, investigators say - CNN

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the predecessor of Pope Francis and the first pope for centuries to resign, knew of the abuse of children by Catholic priests in his diocese when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

This is the devastating finding of an enquiry, commissioned by the Catholic Church, into historic sexual abuse at the Munich Archdiocese over several decades. In effect, this finding accuses Pope Benedict XVI of lying when he denied any knowledge of the abuses.

He was informed about the facts. We believe that he can be accused of misconduct in four cases; two of these cases concern abuses committed during his tenure and sanctioned by the state. In both cases, the perpetrators remained active in pastoral care.

During his [Benedict's] time in office there were abuse cases happening. In those cases, those priests continued their work without sanctions. The church did not do anything. He claims that he didn't know about certain facts, although we believe that this is not so, according to what we know.

Martin Pusch, Lawyer.
Westpfahl Spilker Wastl law firm.

Lawyer, Ulrich Wastl, produced a copy of the minutes of a meeting of Church leaders in Munich on January 15, 1980, when a decision was taken to appoint a known abuser (referred to in the report as "Priest X"). Pope Benedict denied being present when this decision was made, but this is contradicted by the minutes of the meeting. Benedict's incredible response to this evidence of his lies was that the document is only proof that something was written down, not evidence that he read it. However, the charge is not that he read the minutes but that he was present when the decision was made to appoint a known paedophile priest in the diocese of which he was head.

The building of lies to protect Pope Benedict has just collapsed with a crash. Benedict was complicit in the abuse of numerous victims after 1980, victims of Priest X

Matthias Katsch, Abuse survivor.
Leader of "Eckiger Tisch" which seeks justice for abuse victims.

In 2019, the then former Pope, Benedict XVI wrote an essay in which he sought the shift the blame for the paedophile priest scandals which have rocked the Catholic Church, away from the priests and the Church and onto society at large and liberals in particular by claiming it was the result of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the liberalization of the Church's moral teaching. He also blamed homosexuals whom he claimed had established cliques in seminaries which significantly changed the climate in the seminaries. In other words, it wasn't the fault of senior clerics such as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who turned a blind eye to the abuses and allowed abusers to continue their abuses under the protection of the Church, but the fault of those high in the Catholic Church's demonology, 'liberals and homosexuals'.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was effectively Pope John Paul II's deputy and enforcer and was widely believed to be behind efforts to suppress reports of clerical abuse of minors in an effort to protect the reputation of the church and minimise compensation paid to its victims.

According to this article: