141–150 of 339 posts
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everyone talks about the death rate, but for survivors there's evidence of severe permanent damage in some cases.
Also the death rate as a catchall metric completely ignores people who here in absolutely critical, life-or-death condition but were only saved from death by incredible medical intervention and/or just pure luck.
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1. In 40 years, there have only been 20 protein drugs approved. 2. Yes the cells go back to to normal after the mRNA degrades. The mRNA does not last long, it is like data in ram vs data on a hard drive. See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4-DMKNT7xI
20 protein drugs? mAbs are proteins and hundreds of those have been approved.
The layman's explanation I've seen about how these mRNA vaccines work is that they get some of your cells to manufacture a protein that is characteristic of the virus, which the cells release and the immune system takes care of. Then later if you get the virus, the immune system already recognizes that protein and takes care of the virus. Question: why do we need to have our cells make the protein? Couldn't we synthe…
2. Yes, the mRNA is ultimately degraded. But part of the process of developing the vaccine is fine tuning the precise rna sequence in order to achieve the desired half life.
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High lethality is often associated with reduced transmissibility. Which makes sense - dead people certainly aren't going to cough on you. In a Sci Fi movie maybe the virus has a long delay, you're infectious for a month with no symptoms, then drop dead in seconds. But in the real world that's less likely the more extreme it gets. One thing that did make this virus more dangerous was that many humans became infectious…
It makes me wonder how the world would cope today with a Bubonic Plague or Spanish Flu, those two I reckon would probably be more similar to your hypothetical Sci-Fi disease.
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Didn't nz had strict lockdown? Also from the article: However, Stats NZ national accounts manager Paul Pascoe said the effects of Covid-19 on different industries had varied “and for some industries these may persist for some time”. The rebound was not enough to make up for the lost activity during the lockdown period, with GDP in the 12 months ended on September 30 down 2.2 per cent on the prior year.
I am certain GDP has been nobody’s primary concern in NZ during this time, but -2.2 % is not bad considering how international NZ’s economy is. For comparison, UK is at -9.6 for the same period US -2.9 with a far higher human cost.
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There's a sci-fi example of this in the TV show Counterpart. Kind of surreal watching it and then becoming a part of a real life pandemic.
What does "non-hypothetical sci-fi" mean? Surely all sci-fi is hypothetical, in that "fi" stands for "fiction"?
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What’s the death rate of COVID-19 compared to for example common flu for working age people (30s, 40s)?
For every person who dies of COVID, nineteen people are hospitalized. Eighteen of those will have permanent heart damage. Ten will have permanent lung damage. Three will have strokes. Two will have neurological damage leading to permanent muscular disability. Two will have neurological damage leading to cognitive impairment. Don't be afraid of covid killing you. Be afraid of it turning you into a mentally disabled cr…
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> Flu $90b per year versus the covid cost of $16t. I mean that miiiight have something to do with the fact that we basically ignore the flu despite tens of thousands of deaths every year. Whereas with Covid we collectively decided to shut down the entire world.
Yes, and why were the shutdowns done? If you compare what happens with uncontrolled covid spread to a those of a flu season, they aren’t really all that similar. Even with the lockdowns, the deaths have been considerably more than tens of thousands.
There are these 2 quotes from the article that I think are a little too "handwavy" over potential real problems for the future: > Since the platform itself is pre-tested, we won’t need to do months of testing before distribution. Still, we may need to do some testing on the specific vaccine. Perhaps much of this testing can be done with computer modeling, and some with animal testing. and > The question ultimately co…
Rationality can be induced if the vaccine is highly effective. If I get my family vaccinated and learn that the neighbors died due to the disease, it will be common wisdom that they died due to poor decision making.
so when, for example, someone gets raped after a night out while intoxicated or dies due to alcohol overdose after joining a frat...is the socially acceptable response now "poor decision, didn't assess risk correctly."?
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To get worse than COVID you'd need a virus that takes a long time to develop symptoms and then has a high death rate. In that scenario there would be a lot more public fear and we'd have an easier time keeping people at home. So I'm still of the opinion it's harder to have a worse situation than COVID.
Yeah this pandemic has been described as the perfect middle ground for politicization, denialism, and just laissez-faire attitudes. Any more deadly (like Ebola) it becomes incredibly scary and people likely do whatever it takes when they see people around them dropping like flies (especially in horrific ways). Any less deadly (basically the yearly flu) and it becomes easy to ignore and just becomes part of the backgr…
Was it not though? I assume you'd want a pandemic deadly enough for that convinces a majority of the populace that it's a serious event (to encourage downstream change to better prepare for a worse pandemic), while at the same time not causing people to drop like flies. As you stated, anything less severe would be taken less seriously. To have something to be taken more serious, it has to be more deadly.
Despite the denialism we currently have, it seems to have made the world recognize the importance of preparation.