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How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

newyorker.com

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Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#21

Post by agumonkey »

covid19expert wrote: post #20

Off topic news: https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Supermarkets-in-... "A row broke out in France over the weekend, after smaller shops selling “non-essential” items - such as books and clothes" So now clothes and books are not essential. Its something we almost dont use. Who needs clothes ? Or books ? nobody of course Thing is, everything is essential... if my water glasses break, it will be essential for m…

Worst part of the way these policies are deployed is that they rarely take into account how people will react when forced to solve their issue rapidly... they'll go ask many people .. more infections.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#22

Post by dTal »

covid19expert wrote: post #20

Off topic news: https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Supermarkets-in-... "A row broke out in France over the weekend, after smaller shops selling “non-essential” items - such as books and clothes" So now clothes and books are not essential. Its something we almost dont use. Who needs clothes ? Or books ? nobody of course Thing is, everything is essential... if my water glasses break, it will be essential for m…

Okay but this really isn't the place for a political covid rant.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#23

Post by dTal »

Tomte wrote: post #5
ane wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of reporting interleaved with storytelling in a really weird voice is frustrating. Why do journalists write like this? What purpose does this word salad serve? I can do this myself! "On a bald September day, a man walks into a barber shop, languishes at the occupied seats, and voilà, while sensing upcoming bowel movements, he discovers the next great theory of economics."

> Why do journalists write like this? The New Yorker is known for that style, it may even be the prime example of it. People who don't like that style are not the audience. And there are many people who like it. It's like asking why Linux Weekly News never runs poetry. Because it's not that kind of publication.

And what a shallow, frenetic dystopia it would be if nobody even attempted to write compelling longform anymore. Remember, 90% of everything is crap. Imagine reading 3 disappointing novels and concluding that novels, as a format, were a waste of time!

(Or worse - being unable to appreciate a good novel because you're too impatient for it to get to the exciting bits!)

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#24

Post by aeyes »

ane wrote: post #4
jostmey wrote: post #2

Many paragraphs into the article and I still don’t know what important discovery or observation has been made

This kind of reporting interleaved with storytelling in a really weird voice is frustrating. Why do journalists write like this? What purpose does this word salad serve? I can do this myself! "On a bald September day, a man walks into a barber shop, languishes at the occupied seats, and voilà, while sensing upcoming bowel movements, he discovers the next great theory of economics."

You can condense the facts into 3 paragraphs but why don't we just go all in and present them as bullet points instead of full sentences?

When I see a five page article, I know that I'll get background information and I might discover something I didn't expect from the title. While you might only be looking for the study results, I like spending my Sunday afternoon reading long articles teaching me all kinds of interesting information I wouldn't have looked up on my own.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#25

Post by dTal »

ane wrote: post #4
jostmey wrote: post #2

Many paragraphs into the article and I still don’t know what important discovery or observation has been made

This kind of reporting interleaved with storytelling in a really weird voice is frustrating. Why do journalists write like this? What purpose does this word salad serve? I can do this myself! "On a bald September day, a man walks into a barber shop, languishes at the occupied seats, and voilà, while sensing upcoming bowel movements, he discovers the next great theory of economics."

Cosmos was written in a similar style. Try reading it in Carl Sagan's voice and see if it's any more interesting to you.

The purpose of longform writing is to provide flavour and context, which are important parts of an information diet. Not everything has to be about the freshest facts delivered to your brain as urgently as possible. Just because you've happened across this in a frenzied binge of clicking HN headlines, doesn't mean it was designed to be consumed that way. If you don't feel you have time to sit through a New Yorker article, save it for later.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#27

Post by ramraj07 »

Entaroadun87 wrote: post #3

Really like this analogy: It is a somewhat astonishing fact of life that the exact same DNA is shared by every cell in your body, from the skin to the brain; those cells differ in appearance and function because, in each of them, a molecular gizmo “transcribes” some DNA segments rather than others into molecules of single-stranded RNA. These bits of RNA are in turn used as the blueprints for proteins, the molecular m…

Good analogy, but there are some differences - your cells are not running one app, but just tens of thousands of routines with no clear definition of which routine is doing what function (many do multiple functions often with mix-match redundancy). And the mere fact that a routine is running is not enough, their activation state (posttranslational modifications, folding configurations, binding partners) or the values of all its internal variables is also important to know the exact function of each routine.

Even that is only theoretical - we generally know some level of detail to know what many of these routines are approximately up to, but rarely in the detail needed to figure out what a cell is up to in general.

In some ways studying what a cell is upto using our current methods is comparable in certainty to how we poll the US before elections.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#28

Post by hanklazard »

random023987 wrote: post #7
jostmey wrote: post #2

Many paragraphs into the article and I still don’t know what important discovery or observation has been made

If you're looking for the summary, it's about 1/4 the way in. > Usually, the viruses that humans care about are successful because they shut down both of these signalling programs. The coronavirus is different. “It seems to block only one of those two arms,” tenOever told me. It inhibits the interferon response but does nothing about the cytokines; it evades the local defenses but allows the cells it infects to call…

And this is why steroids like decadron are helpful in the second phase (now being called the inflammatory phase by many in the ID community) of the infection. Steroids decrease inflammation / immune response.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#29

Post by dTal »

I am blown away by this casually dropped metaphor:

>As the virus spreads unchecked through the body, it drags a destructive immune reaction behind it. Individuals with COVID-19 face the same challenge as nations during the pandemic: if they can’t contain small sites of infection early—so that a targeted response can root them out—they end up mounting interventions so large that the shock inflicts its own damage.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#30

Post by aetherspawn »

It would be interesting to see a heat map for reading an article like this.

It’s so long.. after 10 minutes I wanted to know the point of it, so I skipped aggressively to the middle, found a few points, then skipped to the end.

I wonder if there’s any value to so many words in this day and age with so many other things to read on the internet.

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