Comments by "TaichiStraightlife" (@TaichiStraightlife) on "NBC News" channel.

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  9.  @ShadyCool  - "Wildly unsubstantiated claim"? Yeah, I know the drill, Ec 1; you have "alternate facts" that agree with your political interpretation of history. Well, here's John M. Barry, a graduate degree in history, and the reception his book received: "...His 2004 book The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History was also a New York Times Best Seller, and won the 2005 Keck Communication Award from the United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for the year's outstanding book on science or medicine. In 2005 he also won the "September 11th Award" from the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens at Brown University. He has served on a federal government's Infectious Disease Board of Experts, on the advisory board of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Engineering Fundamentals, and on the advisory committee at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for its Center for Refugee and Disaster Response." John M Barry himself: John M. Barry (b. 1947[1]) is an American author and historian who has written books on the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the influenza pandemic of 1918, and the development of the modern form of the ideas of separation of church and state and individual liberty. He is a professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and Distinguished Scholar at Tulane's Bywater Institute. But then there's the "eclectic 1" , w/ his "wildly unsubstantiated" alternate facts exhortations... gee; which one shall I believe??
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  27.  @Ryanboy2020  - While I'm not exactly sure what you're on about, I can only assume that not only do I not agree with it, but that you obviously have no idea what I believe, though you seem to think you do, especially with your patronizing and conspiratorial air. In short, I remember the rapid fall of South Vietnam (a war that consumed all of us, in one way or another). The South Vietnamese government had no legitimacy among the people in S.V.; we'd been propping them up for ages, and when we left they collapsed like a house of cards. I see the same thing here. Your assumption that I'm somehow misled, and that somehow YOU know the real story is frankly offensive. Your suggestion that somehow I should only "do your research and reevaluate your assessment" and that somehow the scales will fall from my eyes, even without regard to the work of trained reporters for the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post etc. is a joke that reminds one of the MAGA rant about news sources being "enemies of the people". I've been to Afghanistan; it's a complex place with many different tribes and clans (Pashtun, Hazara, Uzbeks) and languages like Pashto and Dari and dialects of Farsi and Urdu, none of which I speak, so pardon me; when I have cancer I don't go to "natural healers" (see: Steve Jobs ), I go to MD.s; and when I want information I read the experts. There was zero chance that we'd succeed in nation building in Afghanistan, especially with the back door that Pakistan provided the Taliban (and also North Vietnam provided for the Viet Cong). There comes a time and it's now, after 20 years, when the Afghani army has to simply stand or fall on its own. They seem to be choosing to fall. I'm truly sorry for the women of Afghanistan... but don't blame us; blame their armed men who are collapsing everywhere without a bullet being fired in many cases, and simply handing over their arms and ammunition (paid for by American taxpayers) to the Taliban.
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  33. For John C. (his "red blood" comment) and Harold Morris (for his  "Homozygous carriers of the Delta 32 mutation"):How blood group A might be a risk and blood group O be protected from coronavirus (COVID-19) infections (how the virus invades the human body via ABO(H) blood group carbohydrates).2020-05-02T13:42:20Z (GMT)                                   by                     Peter Arend                                                      When according to the numbers of Wikipedia (although they are disputed) in countries like Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Simbabwe and Mexico 59 to 85 percent of the people have  blood group O and these countries officially publish extremely low COVID-19 cases and death rates per 1 million inhabitants, this may not alone result from insufficient investigations but might suggest a lower susceptibility of blood group O to the disease. The molecular biology of a virus infection pathogenesis determines the genetic target and the human phenotype-determining enzymes decide about the difference between infection and disease. In the case that O-glycosylation plays a key role in the pathogenesis of coronavirus infections, as was discussed already 14 years ago in a SARS-CoV virus infection and is currently again predicted for SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19, this would involve the formation of hybrid, serologically A-like, O-GalNAcα1-Ser/Thr-R, Tn (“T nouvelle”) antigenic structures. Although the ACE2 (angiotensin-converting-enzyme 2) protein is defined as the primary SARS-CoV receptor, it is the history of the amino acid serine, suggesting the actual or additional binding via an intermediate hybrid O-glycan. The protease-mobilized, virus-encoded serine molecule gets access to the host's N-acetyl-D-galactosamine (GalNAc) metabolism and the resulting intermediate, hybrid A-like/Tn structure performs the adhesion of the virus to host cells primarily independent of the ABO blood group, while the phenotype-determining sugars become the final glycosidic target: individuals with blood group A cannot  respond with either acquired or innate antibodies to the synthesis of A-like hybrid structures due to clonal selection and phenotypic accommodation of plasma proteins but perform a further (blood group-A-specific) hybrid binding. A first statistical study suggests that people with blood group A have a significantly higher risk for acquiring COVID-19, whereas people with blood group O have a significantly lower risk for the infection compared with non-O blood groups (Zhao, J. et al., 2020). While these findings await confirmations, blood group O individuals, lacking the blood group-A-determining enzyme, may develop the least molecular contact with the virus and maintain the anti-A/Tn cross-reactive, complement-dependent isoagglutinin activity, which is exerted by the polyreactive, nonimmune immunoglobulin M (IgM), representing the humoral spearhead of innate immunity and a first line of defense.                            Reference: Zhao, J. et al. Relationship between the ABO Blood Group and the COVID-19 Susceptibility. medRxiv (2020) doi:10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096.
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