Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures • Hacker News Board

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#231

Post by desine » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:18 AM UTC

desine wrote: post #198

dnautics wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What aspect, specifically, is suspected to be wrong? The scientific understanding of viruses might be further along than most doctors suspect. There are concepts like pangenome that are becoming appreciated at the research level that might not have gotten to doctors yet.

>What aspect, specifically, is suspected to be wrong? That depends on who you ask. Different people have different hypotheses and concepts they explore.

Too late to edit, but I'm getting mixed votes (which I usually don't pay much attention to), so I will explain:

There's a few different frameworks people are working within. From my experience, linking or forwarding to any "outside the box" ideas in this sphere will only invite more downvotes, argumentation over the details, and flamewars. Any linking of these ideas would be interpreted by some to be an endorsement of them. In my parent comment I made sure to mention that none of them were worthy of my endosement at this time, though I do find them interesting. Anyone reading this comment, buried deep in "hacker news" is capable of finding alternative ideas outside the norm. You can do your own research, if you like.

I mentioned them because the idea of people disagreeing on this was actually more foreign to me than "flat earth" which I find "pretty far out there", when I first stumbled upon it. It's very uncommonly discussed, and I don't have the clout to either endorse or properly antagonize these ideas. It's intriguing to me that something as preposterous as "the earth is flat" can be much more widely known and discussed than "maybe the way we frame viruses is incorrect".

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#232

Post by hnaccount_rng » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #143

benjaminwootton wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just spent 10 minutes Googling for a good source and surprisingly couldn’t find one. For under 65 say, the fatality rate is well under 1%. This was before vaccines and Omnicron is estimated as 70% lower. We must be well under the IFR of flu already.

The CDC has published estimates of fatality rate by age group. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

That’s interesting data. Thanks for the link

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#233

Post by AnxietyJello » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:24 AM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #226

petercooper wrote: post #25

Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…

There is this old grandma theory that "don't run outside with wet hair, you'll catch a cold". Then we learned that viruses cannot spread like that, and so that old theory is basically invalid. But some time ago I read somewhere that this theory might still hold true somehow, because our nose stores all kinds of viruses, and they might burst out when we are weakened. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about this might c…

I thought the reasoning behind this saying was that when your body is cold your immune system needs to work harder to fend off Viruses and it was still true in that sense? Is that not the case?

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#234

Post by henrikschroder » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:25 AM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #25

Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…

Note that the flu disappeared pretty much everywhere, regardless of interventions and restrictions. The likelihood that lockdowns or masks eradicated the flu is very low. More probable explanations are that we pretty much shut down international travel, which is how new flu strains get around, or that the coronavirus out-competed the flu, by being more easily transmitted.

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#235

Post by CryptoPunk » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:28 AM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #195

claytongulick wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I personally know three and have seen many videos of others who feel that the risks outweigh the benefits for healthy people who have natural immunity. So, that's more than one.

Just nonsense. “Natural immunity” is another one of those amazing shibboleth words for those who don’t understand probabilities. It’s kind of amazing how innumerate most antivax people are.

Can you elaborate on what your problem is with the term "natural immunity"?

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#236

Post by CryptoPunk » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:32 AM UTC

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #91

enchiridion wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about scale up the hospitals, or at least covid capacity in a meaningful way. How long does they public have to bear burden of insufficient health infra. EDIT: Sorry that might have come off a bit blunt. But the entire pandemic response has been frustratingly insufficient in my opinion. A variant like Omicron was long predicted and expected. How are we not prepared with a plan to end lockdowns? And blaming unvacc…

And who will staff them? https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/uk-lacks-nursing-staff-to-...

Here are a few options:

* Spend tens of billions training new medical staff so you can save hundreds of billions / trillions on not having to lock people down

* Stop admitting COVID patients at government subsidized hospitals when there is a shortage of hospital beds, with the exception of essential and frontline workers, so that hundreds of millions of people don't need to be locked down

* Make those who are not vaccinated, or do not have recent booster shots, ineligible for care for COVID at government subsidized hospitals, when there is a shortage of hospital beds, so that hundreds of millions of people don't need to be locked down

But the go-to solution seems to be: massively violate the civil and economic liberties of the entire population, to prevent COVID surges from causing a shortage of hospital beds.

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#237

Post by _djo_ » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:40 AM UTC

chana_masala wrote: post #210

tandymodel100 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The game plan should’ve been built around there non-compliance. That is correct, and that's why they proposed the OSHA rule for mandating vaccinations after months of incentives. I think some % of non-compliance is understandable, but the remaining unvaccinated seem to be doing it for political reasons over anything else. > As far as lockdowns are concerned, we have had the mass shutdown of in person school and wor…

I am in the US and schools are still doing "distance" learning and restaurants are not allowed at full capacity.

That’s not a lockdown by any reasonable definition of the term.

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#238

Post by roenxi » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:42 AM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #226

petercooper wrote: post #25

Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…

There is this old grandma theory that "don't run outside with wet hair, you'll catch a cold". Then we learned that viruses cannot spread like that, and so that old theory is basically invalid. But some time ago I read somewhere that this theory might still hold true somehow, because our nose stores all kinds of viruses, and they might burst out when we are weakened. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about this might c…

The lesson in medical science is that being guided by anything short of actual evidence lets in a lot of pseudoscience. In this particular case; there might be a correlation but that doesn't tell us much. There are so many possible reasons even without asking an expert for possible explanations:

1) The atmosphere is in an unusual state (lots of fast moving water droplets, probably with a lot of backscatter as they hit the ground fast or bounce off leaves). Maybe bacteria use that as a travel mechanism.

2) Maybe an immune system defence is weakened by high humidity.

3) Maybe wet weather causes changes in behaviour unrelated to being wet, but that lead to higher disease transmission and the correlation is being misintepreted.

4) Maybe the bacteria really like rain and multiply like crazy when it is wet.

5) Maybe some people have an unrelated non-infectious illnesses that are triggered by the cold, damp weather and that is being misinterpreted as a cold.

6) Maybe grandmothers just say that because it seems like good advice and they don't like water being traipsed through the house.

There are enough different options there that any correlation is not actionable. Leaving aside whether any correlation even exists.

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#239

Post by astrobe_ » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:44 AM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #226

petercooper wrote: post #25

Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…

There is this old grandma theory that "don't run outside with wet hair, you'll catch a cold". Then we learned that viruses cannot spread like that, and so that old theory is basically invalid. But some time ago I read somewhere that this theory might still hold true somehow, because our nose stores all kinds of viruses, and they might burst out when we are weakened. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about this might c…

The benign herpes virus "hides" in the body and can "surface" again from time to time.

Wikipedia (I don't link cause unpretty images):

"Worldwide rates of either HSV-1 or HSV-2 are between 60% and 95% in adults. HSV-1 is usually acquired during childhood. Rates of both increase as people age."

"Following a primary infection, the virus enters the nerves at the site of primary infection, migrates to the cell body of the neuron, and becomes latent in the ganglion"

"The causes of reactivation are uncertain, but several potential triggers have been documented. A 2009 study showed the protein VP16 plays a key role in reactivation of the dormant virus. Changes in the immune system during menstruation may play a role in HSV-1 reactivation. Concurrent infections, such as viral upper respiratory tract infection or other febrile diseases, can cause outbreaks. Reactivation due to other infections is the likely source of the historic terms 'cold sore' and 'fever blister'. Other identified triggers include local injury to the face, lips, eyes, or mouth; trauma; surgery; radiotherapy; and exposure to wind, ultraviolet light, or sunlight."

Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures

#240

Post by desine » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 10:47 AM UTC

dilyevsky wrote: post #229

desine wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had your daughter had it before? Once you get strep, you tend to get it semi-frequently. I get it once every couple of years. I always kind of wondered if it's like a viral infection such as cold sores where it lays dormant permanently, and flares up on occasion. However it is bacterial, and not viral, which counts against that idea.

Why is being bacterial count against it? Lyme and tb are bacterial also and known to do such a thing

I'm admittedly pretty out of my element here. Apologies if any of the following is misinformed. Lyme and TB are chronic symptoms, from what I understand. No truly dormant stages in the infection, just slight lulls in symptoms. I was under the impression that chronic viral infections such as herpes or HIV were much more able to pass under the immune system's radar for prolonged periods of time, with unpredictable flare ups. From what I understood, this had to do with their cycles of replication and the nature of viral infections.

But again, not my area of expertise. Or even in the same ballpark.