Thread by @ReusVisser

In a fundraising webinar Andrew "no virus" Kaufman and Tom "no contagion" Cowan - who feature prominently in my book THE CORONA CONSPIRACY - presented their views on the pandemic to a group of true believers, and some fence-sitters. Meet the fringe of the fringe. 1/n

To give you some context: in the past year the public debate in the media on COVID-19 has been dominated by two voices. The dominant view sees SARS-CoV-2 as a dangerous virus that asks for drastic measures. A vocal minority view feels the virus is not that harmful after all. 2/n

Both camps, however, believe that there really is a virus to begin with. Enter the world of virus denialism, where the very existence of viruses is called into question. This eccentric view does not get much media coverage much to the chagrin of its main heroes and followers. 3/n

Their main tenet is that SARS-CoV-2 "has never been isolated", adhering to a dictionary definition of isolation which no modern virologist will subscribe to. And since it doesn't exist, they claim, it doesn't cause disease, nor can it be tested for or sequenced or monitored. 4/n

It takes a massive data blindness to deny the existence of by now 1,5 million full or partial genomes of SARS-CoV-2, which have been submitted to the GISAID database. That exquisite photos have been taken of this virus, down to the molecular level of detail, is lost on them. 5/n

But, you may ask, why have three million people died in this pandemic, and hundreds of million people been infected, if there is no virus. That, they claim without the blink of an eye, is something that still has to be "investigated", preferably in a really scientific manner. 6/n

Dismissing the great accomplishments of modern digital virology, they claim to have superior knowledge and insight into "what is really going on", often taking a deep dive into conspiracy, frequently bordering on the paranoid. For these people, it really is "us" vs. "them". 7/n

So Andrew Kaufman can come up with literary gems such as "Something that doesn't exist cannot be sequenced" or "... cannot be the cause of a disease." These people verily live in a bygone age. It is much like insisting on Newton in an age of Einstein and quantum physics. 8/n

Kaufman presents his uninformed understanding of genomics, claiming that all viral genomes are arbitrary and randomly "stitched together", overlooking the fact that they have a definite structure, and consist of several protein components, each with its own unique function. 9/n

And the many "variants" we hear of these days? They are just "failed attempts to reproduce the original reference genome." Never mind that these variants arise in one location and often rapidly spread to other countries. Exactly what you would expect with a contagious virus! 10/n

Undaunted by their lack of empirical data, they point to virus denialist Stefan Lanka, who recently announced that he has empirical proof that the so-called cytopathic effect (CPE) is an artifact of laboratory conditions, and in no way a proof of the existence of viruses. 11/n

What is more Stefan Lanka has also claimed evidence that viral genomes are arbitrary constructions without connection to real viruses, by assembling any viral genome (HIV, Ebola, SARS-CoV-2 - you name it) from a random set of RNA, extracted from a healthy cell culture. 11/n

We are eagerly awaiting Stefan Lanka's publications. To be sure, it is high time he comes up with empirical evidence for his rather outlandish notions about viruses, or rather their non-existence, and his magical genomic tricks really would make headline news - if true. 12/n

Fun fact: the webinar started about 45 minutes later than planned, because of a Denial of Service attack on the servers of the company providing the webinar. This only fuelled the paranoid feelings of the virus denying audience, as proof that mainstream science is desperate! 13/n

To add a little bit more detail: Kaufman tries to discredit viral genome sequencing by giving a misleading example where short words in a sentence lead to ambiguities because they occur in two different sentences. So? Genomics is a tad more sophisticated. integralworld.net/visser174.html

Tom Cowan too has his way of conveniently twisting scientific data. In an earlier video he (falsely) argued this virus can’t even infect human cells, this time he and Kaufman report Lanka’s spurious claim that CPE’s always occur due to lab conditions. 15/n integralworld.net/visser193.html

So these two gentlemen are happy to jump on any bandwagon that supposedly provides proof for their conviction that neither viruses nor contagion do exist. Quote mining and misrepresenting real experts (J. Hildreth!) in the process. They have their own Covid myths, for sure. 16/n

Highlight of the session was when Kaufman an Cowan were suddenly confronted during Q&A by a skeptical guy with one of the most stunning types of photography (cryo-EM) ever made of this virus. They were not aware of the paper and would get back to us. Really? We’ll see. 17/n

True virus denialists (such as Lanka, Kaufman, Cowan, Bailey, Scoglio, Eckert and others) typically have knee-jerk responses such as: must be exosomes! This can be anything (as long as it is not a virus)! As for themselves, they invariably have no empirical leg to stand on. 18/n

These virus denialists often try one last escape route: the burden of proof is not on them, but on scientists to really be... eh scientific. So non-scientists telling practicing scientists how to do their work. Interesting. Or should we say: deranged and dangerous nonsense? 19/n