Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 177 posts

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

#121

Post by LatteLazy »

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…

If 99.99% of people die, the species lives on, but everyone reading this is gone and so is civilisation.

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

#122

Post by eplanit »

newacct583 wrote: post #117
usefulcat wrote: post #102

"Studies on each of these coronaviruses indicate that they jumped into our species from bats or other mammals." Has this been proven for covid 19? I thought it was still a theory at best.

It remains a "theory" in all cases, except ones where we've managed to actually observe the jump. But yes: consensus among experts remains that this is a natural virus, precisely because (as per e.g. the linked article!) such pandemics are literally as old as life. We knew a big human pandemic was going to show up sooner or later, because it happens to some species or another every year or two. It's true we can't rul…

"It's true we can't rule out the lab theory as much as we'd like to."

Why is it desirable to rule it out? It's not only plausible, but the evidence seems to be accumulating, not diminishing. Thorough investigations seem very much warranted[1]. Let's not ignore the possibility because we wish such things can't/don't happen.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/science/coronavirus-seque...

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

#123

Post by nradov »

jeremyjh wrote: post #100
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…

> Should it though? Seems like we've survived Someone survived - but for the mutations to have a selection benefit strong enough to dominate that gene pool there would have to be more people who didn’t survive than did.

Not necessarily. Even a virus with a low infection fatality rate could have caused significant evolutionary changes if it was endemic across many generations.

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

#124

Post by hatware »

f6v wrote: post #72
hatware wrote: post #59

I'd love to never hear about another coronavirus again. We went too far prescribing a certain agenda in the last year, and it's time to reflect on that. In my opinion studies and articles like this are doing more to fuel the fear porn than they are at teaching anything substantial.

> I'd love to never hear about another coronavirus again. We should definitely hear about coronavirus again and again until everyone learns that millions of people might die unless we completely master immunology. Public awareness, safety measures, and vaccine development should get as much attention as possible until we have a pipeline that allows to develop and distribute vaccines in a matter of months. We never kn…

> until everyone learns

See, that's the problem. You can't force anything, but you present it as a "must be done at all costs" proposition. That's very disingenuous.

Regardless, I think you missed my point. Some of us are just sick and tired of every crusade that dominates the news cycle with severe lack of pragmatism. There are plenty of more important issues than coronavirus and it sounds like you're suffering from a lack of perspective.

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

#125

Post by newacct583 »

eplanit wrote: post #122
newacct583 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It remains a "theory" in all cases, except ones where we've managed to actually observe the jump. But yes: consensus among experts remains that this is a natural virus, precisely because (as per e.g. the linked article!) such pandemics are literally as old as life. We knew a big human pandemic was going to show up sooner or later, because it happens to some species or another every year or two. It's true we can't rul…

"It's true we can't rule out the lab theory as much as we'd like to." Why is it desirable to rule it out? It's not only plausible, but the evidence seems to be accumulating, not diminishing. Thorough investigations seem very much warranted[1]. Let's not ignore the possibility because we wish such things can't/don't happen. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/science/coronavirus-seque...

> the evidence seems to be accumulating, not diminishing

It really isn't. We have one good report, and a lot of conspiratorial dot connecting and string tying that is not good evidence and never was. It's enough to keep you guys going, but you're never going to win this at this rate. Consensus sits on the mechanism that produced a thousand other diseases.

And FWIW: of course it's desirable to reach a consensus. And it's decidedly undesirable for a handful of nuts deciding to have Their Own Truth in yet another area. Because the more you distrust experts in favor of your own thought leaders, the more likely this is to happen in the future.

To wit: Lab Leak Trutherism is of the same cloth as Big Lie election fraudurism, and climate denial, and 5G vaccine chipperism, and Storm Is Coming revisionism, and flat eartherism. It's one thing to investigate alternatives, it's quite another to keep flogging an unlikely theory because it fits your priors.

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

#126

Post by eplanit »

newacct583 wrote: post #125
eplanit wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's true we can't rule out the lab theory as much as we'd like to." Why is it desirable to rule it out? It's not only plausible, but the evidence seems to be accumulating, not diminishing. Thorough investigations seem very much warranted[1]. Let's not ignore the possibility because we wish such things can't/don't happen. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/science/coronavirus-seque...

> the evidence seems to be accumulating, not diminishing It really isn't. We have one good report, and a lot of conspiratorial dot connecting and string tying that is not good evidence and never was. It's enough to keep you guys going, but you're never going to win this at this rate. Consensus sits on the mechanism that produced a thousand other diseases. And FWIW: of course it's desirable to reach a consensus. And i…

You were making a good rebuttal until "To wit: Lab Leak Trutherism is of the same cloth as Big Lie election fraudurism, and climate denial, ...".

I think we have nothing left to discuss.

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

#127

Post by BlueTemplar »

justapassenger wrote: post #52
realiswhatyoufe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Again, it's a theory that has so far no basis in science - it's speculations, mostly by people who have no virology background. They maybe even PhD in other biology fields, but having them present their opinions, with no actual data to back it as facts, is as valid as database experts applying their intuition to reason about how to build ML models. Meanwhile, viruses jumping spices is extremely well document behavior…

Virologist here :

https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-is-be...

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

idiotsecant wrote: post #116
wahern wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Younger people will remember their college education better, which will also happen to be more up-to-date with contemporary perspectives and techniques. But that's knowledge, not a skill. Good journalists rely on experts, and better journalists rely on multiple experts (for a topic, but also over time) to derive a sense of what's unknown and uncertain in a field. On social media nothing is ever unknown because there'…

Boy you sure linked some concepts here. The news isn't more partisan because young reporters are introducing some kind of hyper-partisanship. Young reporters are not in charge. Old money people are. Old money people see that hyper-partisanship makes money because old people with money enjoy consuming it. Young people are much, much less partisan on average than older media consumers and that isn't something new. The…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by ajsnigrutin »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #97
jacquesm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So?

I have Perl Traumatic Stress Disorder from too much Perl in the 90s. Just looking at Perl code makes me break out in a cold sweat. I wish I were kidding. Otherwise, just noted that it was written in Perl.

The good thing with perl is, that all the code writen in the 90s still works :)

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

#130

Post by peter303 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #91
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…

Yeah, I didn't quite understand why it should make us worry. We do have a lot more tools at our disposal than people had 20,000 years ago - vaccines, antivirals (in a few years), knowing to social distance, etc.

People lived in small groups most of the time. Harder to spread.
Post reply on HN