201–210 of 217 posts
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Your numbers are completely and utterly wrong, please stop spreading misinformation.
Italy, Germany, France, the UK, and Spain are indeed in the range of 1,200-2,000. I got Austria mixed up with Australia.
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I understand the need to understand why but if we can't mount a response to any virus, it again, ultimately doesn't matter. We've instituted safeguards against car accidents (seatbelts, speed limits, harsh penalties for driving drunk, etc). What have we done for wide-spread, novel disease response?
This line of thought supports my connection to postmodernism. Or at least, to today's culture of... I don't even know what to call it. You're suggesting we put barriers in our minds as to what questions should be asked. No more open ended inquiry, no more search for truth. Truth should be a tool in the service of a goal, nothing more. Searching for it without a good reason is to be discouraged as a waste of effort. T…
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Because if we had a competent strategy for dealing with the virus, you wouldn't have been locked in your house for months. This is entirely a failure of government. The origin is for all intents and purposes irrelevant. "Why" ultimately doesn't matter because viruses can just spontaneously evolve in carrier animals, in a lab or by whatever other means causes a mutation where it is now infectious to us. People searchi…
> This is entirely a failure of government. The origin is for all intents and purposes irrelevant. Whos government? This is a global issue. It doesn't care about governments.
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I mean... Maybe? I don't think I ever saw evidence that they moved that needle. And to your previous point, a ton of damage came from politicizing the issue.
https://www.aidsmap.com/about-hiv/do-condoms-work
That is, I did not intend my "maybe" to cover the question of if condoms can do what they are designed to do. I meant that I wasn't aware of any studies showing how effective they are as a policy.
And again, to your point, there are plenty of places where these are taken off the table as a policy, out of some misguided sense of propriety for the population. Please do not take my point as one that is against the use.
The article notes that a lab leak or gain of function research or both are suspected because research with cultivated influenza strains was common at that time. In contrast, attempts by researchers at Wuhan to consistently cultivate coronavirus were unsuccessful. That is why they decided to work with chimeras instead of pursuing gain of function research. All of this focus on the point of origin is misplaced. We know…
> All of this focus on the point of origin is misplaced. What matters is how we respond to them. We won't be around to respond to them when the next engineered one is potentially much worse. This is an enormously dangerous global issue, we need to address origins.
It should not need saying that if millions of deaths are the result of a simple, easily avoidable mistake (or gross negligence) then that is kind of a big deal. The Titanic led to better lifeboat regulations. We need to understand our role in the origin of this disease even if only so that we can learn our lesson, whatever that may be.
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https://www.aidsmap.com/about-hiv/do-condoms-work
I'm not sure what you are getting at with posting that. Of course condoms work when used properly. Problem is that there is a high rate of not getting used properly, such that I'm not clear on how effective that is as a policy. The very first key takeaway is "Laboratory testing shows that condoms are impermeable to viruses, but protection rates are lower in real-world studies." Seeming to support my "maybe?" That is,…
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I'm not sure what you are getting at with posting that. Of course condoms work when used properly. Problem is that there is a high rate of not getting used properly, such that I'm not clear on how effective that is as a policy. The very first key takeaway is "Laboratory testing shows that condoms are impermeable to viruses, but protection rates are lower in real-world studies." Seeming to support my "maybe?" That is,…
If one cannot figure out how condoms work, I'm hoping they can't figure out the rest either lest they reproduce, but that's probably unrealistically optimistic.
Though, again, my question is of how much it helps. I cede and expect that it helps. Some or a lot, though? And, in either case, what gets it to contained?
And I fully acknowledge that my opening "maybe" wasn't as clear on that as it could have been. My intent was to push back on forgone conclusions without hard data.
Why the hell would you put a virology lab in the middle of a huge city with millions of people? I am not a virologist, but to me it seems like if covid was a lab-leak then it could have been avoided very easily just by having the lab in the middle of nowhere, like in the desert or the artic. Instead of the whole world having to go into lock down, with millions dying, just put the lab in a remote location, and make it…
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This line of thought supports my connection to postmodernism. Or at least, to today's culture of... I don't even know what to call it. You're suggesting we put barriers in our minds as to what questions should be asked. No more open ended inquiry, no more search for truth. Truth should be a tool in the service of a goal, nothing more. Searching for it without a good reason is to be discouraged as a waste of effort. T…
I'm not saying we never answer the question, I'm saying there's more important things to focus on right now. Many people are more concerned with the specific question of "where did it come from", I'm more concerned with the specific question "how do we prevent or mitigate this in the future." People are using the former question to reenforce biases against other countries or place blame where, to be frank, is a compl…
You might, in a different universe, argue that there are too many resources spent on investigating the origin on the pandemic. This is definitely not the case in our universe, where the investigation is laughably small. There are murder or missing person cases where there is more information available to the public than what we have now, and they affected 1 (one) victim. As for China's cooperation... I understand they have a different way of doing things, but it's kinda a global problem, so maybe we shouldn't be ok with doing the investigation their way, aka without any public involvement at all.
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If it was a lab leak it very much does matter and can be dealt with by stopping such stuff.
The point being made is that even if you stop all pandemics with a lab leak origin, pandemics will still happen. So at the end of the day if you prove covid was lab leak and put in safeguards that will, with 100% certainty stop pandemics with a lab leak origin, you’re nonetheless going to encourage yet pandemics because they are a fact of nature. Therefore it’s more important to respond pandemics rather than prevent…
Preventing pandemics _is_ the best way of responding to them. If we're going to have 10 big epidemies next century, doing whatever we can to make sure 3 don't happen at all is by far the best response to those 3.
So researching the sh*t out of the causes of this particular pandemic is likely to get us extremely good return of investment.