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Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#71
post #68
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>lessons from COVID what in our response to COVID was better and more effective than our response to Black Death and Spanish flu? I don't see any improvement despite 700 and 100 years of accumulated knowledge and technology development since then. There has so far been no indication that the only things we were able to muster - archaic lockdown and masks - can prevent it from reaching the 20-30% spread, basically the…

Maybe not the USA but Asians countries which one could argue will carry the torch of progress did improve.

yes, like Taiwan who 1. did learn the lesson from SARS and did immediate quarantine upon just hearing (i.e. de-facto using modern communication technology) about some strange flu appearing in China. 2. Used modern technology to do contact tracing. 3. Quickly scaled up extensive testing - again modern science and technology. Most places did nothing like these 3 steps. Those steps weren't available centuries ago and could have prevented the covid from becoming pandemic.

Another noticeable difference is that Taiwan actions were real actions where the government did actually performed them whereis typical "actions" we see around like lockdown and masks are just government orders without the governments actually doing anything.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What helps me to keep faith in humanity is imagining being alive during Galileo‘s time. How suffocating it must have been for him to find everyone everywhere rejecting science..? Sure we have a large number of people now that don’t believe in masks, vaccines, etc.., but keep in mind that the majority of the popular vote in the US voted for someone that does believe in science. Progress is being made, just sometimes i…

> majority of the popular vote in the US voted for someone that does believe in science Why would Trump support accelerated vaccines if he didn’t believe in COVID and science?

Why would Trump’s administration and Trump himself be so anti-masks if they believed in science?

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#73
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What helps me to keep faith in humanity is imagining being alive during Galileo‘s time. How suffocating it must have been for him to find everyone everywhere rejecting science..? Sure we have a large number of people now that don’t believe in masks, vaccines, etc.., but keep in mind that the majority of the popular vote in the US voted for someone that does believe in science. Progress is being made, just sometimes i…

Yeah well back when YouTube started censoring videos suggesting a connection between vitamin D deficiency and covid it became pretty clear times are not particularly changed from Galieo’s.

Could you provide a source please? Were the videos making claims that taking Vitamin D would protect against COVID or some other misinformation, or were they legitimately talking about mortality rates of those with v.D deficiencies?

I think there is a clear difference in private platforms stopping the spread of misinformation (you aren’t free to use their platform to spread information harmful to society) and what happened to Galileo.

But I am making an assumption because I don’t actually know what videos you are referring to.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#74
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What helps me to keep faith in humanity is imagining being alive during Galileo‘s time. How suffocating it must have been for him to find everyone everywhere rejecting science..? Sure we have a large number of people now that don’t believe in masks, vaccines, etc.., but keep in mind that the majority of the popular vote in the US voted for someone that does believe in science. Progress is being made, just sometimes i…

Yeah well back when YouTube started censoring videos suggesting a connection between vitamin D deficiency and covid it became pretty clear times are not particularly changed from Galieo’s.

The fact that YouTube exists at all shows how much things have changed since Galileo.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too optimistic towards humanity...

One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths, there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has gone down :(

The most pressing problem we have is not Coronavirus, it's Moronavirus.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#76
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good friend of mine is a nurse. She has seen people in the ER with Covid deny that it exists too. There's people currently on oxygen who go "nah that doesn't exist I don't have it, the media made that up". So yeah

Thankfully, life has a way of selecting against people who fail to act to preserve their own. (Said as someone whose fiance is an ICU nurse)

Unfortunately that doesn't work so well for a disease whose main source of risk to each person is the behaviour of other people.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What helps me to keep faith in humanity is imagining being alive during Galileo‘s time. How suffocating it must have been for him to find everyone everywhere rejecting science..? Sure we have a large number of people now that don’t believe in masks, vaccines, etc.., but keep in mind that the majority of the popular vote in the US voted for someone that does believe in science. Progress is being made, just sometimes i…

> majority of the popular vote in the US voted for someone that does believe in science Why would Trump support accelerated vaccines if he didn’t believe in COVID and science?

Do you yourself truthfully believe that Trump wanted to make policy decisions based on the best science available?

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only in the U.S.

Unfortunately I see these peoples around in Russia. My estimation of anti-maskers is about 10-15% of population here. Mostly 35-55 males who thinks that wearing a mask is the sign of weakness and/or keeps saying that COVID is "just a flu" and those who died would have been dead anyway in 2-3 month if not from COVID then from something like common cold. Even recent death of 28 y/o school teacher and 23 y/o political a…

One of the big problems is that early in the Pandemic, the WHO, Fauci and most media said that Masks were useless. This was repeated several times. The turn-around occurred later and nobody apologised for their earlier, incorrect stances.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#79
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk is one person who is one person who thinks the restrictions are too strict. So maybe it is sensible for younger people to keep working and living near to normal.

Musk is a brilliant guy in many things, but psychotic weirdo in many others. Glad we have him, but no way he should be a model role to young folks who often can't cherry-pick the good aspects of character from flawed and dangerous ones, and rather think in absolutes.

I totally agree on Musk, but I think you could say similar things about many “role models”. We’re just going to need to teach young folks that people are complex. In situations like these I think about how Dave Chappelle speaks of Bill Cosby.

Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What helps me to keep faith in humanity is imagining being alive during Galileo‘s time. How suffocating it must have been for him to find everyone everywhere rejecting science..? Sure we have a large number of people now that don’t believe in masks, vaccines, etc.., but keep in mind that the majority of the popular vote in the US voted for someone that does believe in science. Progress is being made, just sometimes i…

> majority of the popular vote in the US voted for someone that does believe in science Why would Trump support accelerated vaccines if he didn’t believe in COVID and science?

They know COVID is real and they almost certainly believe in science. They just don't care if it doesn't line their pockets.
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