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A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

nytimes.com

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Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#41

Post by justapassenger »

realiswhatyoufe wrote: post #36
justapassenger wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agenda of science - how dare they talk about vaccines or viruses jumping between spices. I read on Facebook while I was pooping, that vaccines are evil and don't work, and viruses only exists in our world, because people are engineering them! That's the truth, that has no agenda behind it! /s

Geez. Taking the parent post in horrible faith, really unfortunate to see on this platform. All the parent did was point out a few comments from the piece which certainly add a tinge of bias - stating with certainty that Covid was not lab-made for one.

What's unfortunate to see on this platform is amount of armchair virology experts who reject scientific process.

Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#42

Post by derefr »

acituan wrote: post #35
sinsterizme wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d personally rather read the NYT article because it’s much easier to understand as a layman

I prefer just the opposite, even if the jargon is harder to consume at a glance, the extra layer of editorializing can obfuscate central facts or salience peripheral details based on whatever their target demographic wants to hear (nothing exclusive to NYT).

If I don't have time to do more than to skim the text, then my own lack of understanding / misrecognition of jargon can also "obfuscate central facts or [the] salience [of] peripheral details."

Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#43

Post by _jal »

binarymax wrote: post #29

“It should make us worry,” said David Enard, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who led the study, which was published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. “What is going on right now might be going on for generations and generations.” Should it though? Seems like we've survived this many times as a species, and now have the technology to combat it! I'm more optimistic with this information…

> Seems like we've survived this many times as a species

I'm reasonably sure the species will survive climate change. Some nation states, civilizations and cultures' odds look more iffy.

I think your bar for worry may be a bit higher than mine.

Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#44

Post by realiswhatyoufe »

avs733 wrote: post #23
autokad wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, this is where hackernews has come. All the user stated was "its hard to take the article seriously with such an obvious agenda", something along those lines. and the community thought that was flaggable? this is where we come? welcome to the great censorship. Believe in all that is holy from a political left, and disbelievers shall be punished and removed from conversation. If you can't see agenda painting in th…

calling out stupidity is not censorship. Removing stupidity from a conversation on a private website is not censorship. discussing 'agenda' is not a neutral comment or a meaningful contribution to discourse on this topic, it is stupidity.

Removing “stupidity” on any platform, public or private, is absolutely censorship. And discussing any author bias is absolutely a contribution towards conversation surrounding the authors work.

Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#45

Post by gumby »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #26
colechristensen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Groups interacted with each other. A large reason that humans are found more or less everywhere on the planet was pressure from interacting with other humans.

They absolutely did but how frequently? The first villages in China are attested 7500 BCE, that's 10 kyr later, if the dating is correct.

There are certainly older settlements (not just remains) in the americas, australiasia, India and of course Africa. Undoubtably older ones in China too, just no traces yet found.

Genetic and linguistic studies demonstrate significant mixing of communities.

Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#46

Post by kadoban »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #15
HarryHirsch wrote: post #11

So - how did this virus spread through the population? 20 kyrs ago people didn't live in cities but in small bands of a few dozen people. It's easy to see how an epidemic might spread through a village but how would it move between isolated groups?

I’m not an expert but scientists have found that coronaviruses are aerosolized. So i think the process of aerosolization probably played a part. Source for reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293495/

I don't think aerosolization matters when you're not in the same building and you're any reasonable distance away (certainly when you're miles away from the closest infected, you're safe, right?)

Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#47

Post by realiswhatyoufe »

justapassenger wrote: post #41
realiswhatyoufe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geez. Taking the parent post in horrible faith, really unfortunate to see on this platform. All the parent did was point out a few comments from the piece which certainly add a tinge of bias - stating with certainty that Covid was not lab-made for one.

What's unfortunate to see on this platform is amount of armchair virology experts who reject scientific process.

Again, it’s a very reasonable theory that the virus was lab-made. Stop taking other people’s reasonable conjecture in the worst faith, it is anti-intellectual.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#48

Post by e40 »

_jal wrote: post #43
binarymax wrote: post #29

“It should make us worry,” said David Enard, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who led the study, which was published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. “What is going on right now might be going on for generations and generations.” Should it though? Seems like we've survived this many times as a species, and now have the technology to combat it! I'm more optimistic with this information…

> Seems like we've survived this many times as a species I'm reasonably sure the species will survive climate change. Some nation states, civilizations and cultures' odds look more iffy. I think your bar for worry may be a bit higher than mine.

And specifically about a pandemic, even if 50% of humans died in it the species would continue, but that would very much be something to worry about. Even at much lower percentages it would be worrying. Or the fact that it could continue for generations.

Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#49

Post by wahern »

derefr wrote: post #42
acituan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer just the opposite, even if the jargon is harder to consume at a glance, the extra layer of editorializing can obfuscate central facts or salience peripheral details based on whatever their target demographic wants to hear (nothing exclusive to NYT).

If I don't have time to do more than to skim the text, then my own lack of understanding / misrecognition of jargon can also "obfuscate central facts or [the] salience [of] peripheral details."

Don't sell yourself short. Your ability to grok the summary (or abstract) of a research paper is probably not much worse--and possibly better--than a typical journalist, even a journalist at the NYT. Especially relative to younger journalists, who seem to rely on Twitter and other social media to contextualize things.

Re: A coronavirus epidemic hit 20k years ago, new study finds

#50

Post by subsubzero »

binarymax wrote: post #29

“It should make us worry,” said David Enard, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who led the study, which was published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. “What is going on right now might be going on for generations and generations.” Should it though? Seems like we've survived this many times as a species, and now have the technology to combat it! I'm more optimistic with this information…

I think whats going on here are people are fatigued with covid related news and in the news in general. News publications are terrified and putting out these scaremongering stories to get people hooked again.

Just like the 1917/1918 swine flu didn't last for "generations"(meaning the potency of the virus was extremely deadly) this covid virus will do the same. It will def. be around but not in the same potency as when it entered the world stage late 2019.

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