Oh, 2022 • Hacker News Board

Re: Oh, 2022

#351

Post by xmprt » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #171

xmprt wrote: post #159

I think just as his previous article might have been overly optimistic, this one is overly pessimistic. As the pendulum is in the process of swinging to the other extreme, I think we will see a lot of negative events slowing down now that people are seeing the negative consequences of their actions and try to revert course. For example, even though the world is tending towards a worst place in terms of things like cl…

Considering how US food policy continues pushing sugar consumption, driving mortality from secondary effects of liver disease (diabetes, high blood pressure, circulatory disease, cancer metastasis, obesity, gout) and tertiary effects of those, that makes COVID-19 look like, well, flu, he is not pessimistic enough. On the other hand, eliminating sugar (actually, just fructose, and then only with not enough accompanyin…

Vaccinating everyone is a near impossible task but as with most things, you can get almost all the benefits by getting an 80-90% vaccination rate and letting herd immunity take care of the rest.

Re: Oh, 2022

#352

Post by runarberg » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 4:46 AM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #304

runarberg wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: How is starlink going to be a game changer in ways publicly funded infrastructure (either traditional cables or cables + 5G towers) aren’t? Your anecdote doesn’t really cover “game changer” since land outside of suburbia is pretty either scarce, big and expensive, underdeveloped, etc. and not many people want to live there (and I doubt fast broadband is the only thing holding people back). I honestly don’t…

> How is starlink going to be a game changer in ways publicly funded infrastructure (either traditional cables or cables + 5G towers) aren’t? Starlink exists.

People spend money on things that aren’t “game changers” all the time. A business can certainly exist while only offering a quality of life improvements to a small minority.

Re: Oh, 2022

#353

Post by mikewarot » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:10 AM UTC

>Remember, this isn't a simple pneumonia bug. It's a virus that attacks the RAAS/ACE2 system, in particular all the epithelial tissues, and any other cells that express ACE2 receptors on their surfaces. It can mess with your kidneys. It can mess with fat cells, changing their response to insulin. It apparently shows up in brain tissue.

Long Covid is my new normal. If 15% of everyone who gets Covid ends up like me, heck even if it's 1%, we're in for a wave of hurt.

If we assume it becomes endemic, and we all just treat it like the flu, then assume 1% of cases for each new variant also end up like me. At one variant/year, we're looking at decimating the working population before 2030.

This alone is a big enough shift, in our "just in time" world, to set of societal changes like the end of the feudalism and the beginning of the enlightenment.

> it may have long-term sequelae, like Shingles, which only show up years to decades later.

It is important at this point to remember that the first wave of the 1918 pandemic was much like the first wave of Covid, it mostly effected the old. The second wave of the pandemic was the one that killed more people than WWI, mostly the young and healthy.

Re: Oh, 2022

#354

Post by perryizgr8 » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:11 AM UTC

> If the SARS family of coronaviruses had emerged just a decade earlier it's quite likely we'd be on the brink of civilizational, if not species-level, extinction by now...If SARS1 had gone pandemic we might plausibly have lost a billion people within two years.

Huh? Losing a billion people in two years is not "brink of civilizational, if not species-level, extinction". I hate this kind of over exaggeration wrapped up in seemingly reasonable and scientific sounding statements.

Truth is that if covid/sars had occurred a decade ago, it wouldn't have been much different in the infection and mortality stats. What might have been different is the population's reaction to the extreme authoritarianism displayed by governments.

Re: Oh, 2022

#355

Post by djtango » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:12 AM UTC

Jedd wrote: post #268

the_arun wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t starlink internet connection expensive atm? $99 per month plus one time h/w costs?

In Australia, it's $140 / month, plus the capex of $700 for the dish, which obviously won't work on any other provider. I suspect resale on that device, if the carrier allows it, would be reasonable, but I don't expect I'd be moving away from this service. People are comparing (sub)urban US multi-carrier options, or heavily populated countries (like Italy), that have much cheaper pricing. It's not surprising that ter…

>but unusable in storms

Dumb Q - is satellite any better in a storm?

Re: Oh, 2022

#356

Post by Houshalter » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:18 AM UTC

scatters wrote: post #247

Houshalter wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is still under covid restrictions and went into a huge amount of debt during the crisis. The events are not remotely comparable.

The UK is not under any real level of restriction, and the (own-currency) debt taken on is not of a form that would harm growth. Compared to its peers the UK is doing abysmally; the distinguishing factor is Brexit.

So far as I have heard, the UK went way harder into lockdowns and other measures than the US. And from what I saw, what happened to the US was insane. Everything was closed down for months (or longer depending on the industry.) Supply chains were incredibly disrupted. The government went deeply into debt and inflation is skyrocketting. There are still shortages of many things for the forseeable future. Unprecedented numbers of people have lost their jobs.

I literally can not imagine thinking this is comparable to any other economic event, since the world wars or great depression anyway.

Re: Oh, 2022

#357

Post by drzaiusapelord » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:20 AM UTC

mikewarot wrote: post #353

>Remember, this isn't a simple pneumonia bug. It's a virus that attacks the RAAS/ACE2 system, in particular all the epithelial tissues, and any other cells that express ACE2 receptors on their surfaces. It can mess with your kidneys. It can mess with fat cells, changing their response to insulin. It apparently shows up in brain tissue. Long Covid is my new normal . If 15% of everyone who gets Covid ends up like me, h…

I had debilitating long covid for 18 months and honestly I thought it was going to be for a lifetime, especially when I read so many success stories of others getting over it after 3-6 months and reading online wisdom about it pretty much being CFS. I'm not sure what my body did but I'm thankful it healed itself and I now live in fear Omicron, which if caught might set off another 18 months for me. My brain is not nearly where it used to be and my body tires out very easily, but the bad brain fog, intense irritability, and incredible fatigue episodes are gone and I'm thankful. I don't think people realize how common this is and what it can do to you. The only reason I still have a job is because I was able to hide this because of work from home and some creative solutions on my part and a checked-out, mostly apathetic supervisor. I think I slept 1-3 hours of the workday everyday and maybe could have enough mood, focus, and energy to be productive for a window of maybe 60-90 minutes a day.

I hope you recover soon.

Re: Oh, 2022

#358

Post by JohnBooty » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:21 AM UTC

rektide wrote: post #345

JohnBooty wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a lot I loved about Slashdot's moderation, and it really was a step forward, but ultimately it was a failure. The end product was a giant hivemind where a narrow range of opinions (essentially: "libertarianism good, Linux good") would be automatically upvoted and everything else was quashed. It was a step forward but I'm not really pining for it 30 years later. I agree about the lack of progress in the mean…

I agree I too am not sure this is a solve able problem. But the dominion of Big Social has aborted the freewheeling idea of the web to be able to better suss out democratically truth & idea & reason is absolute & tragic, has been at the wheel for well over a decade, and it fucking sucks and has brought us no good, no attempts. Slashdot was one of the last attempts that seemed to try. We need to loosen back up & start…

Hopefully I'm spectacularly wrong, but I don't think it's possible.

     the freewheeling idea of the web to be able to 
     better suss out democratically truth & idea & 
     reason is absolute

I think most of the 1990's-style optimism about the web was strictly an illusion, based on the fact that early netizens were more educated/intelligent than the general population, simply due to the fact that they tended to get net access through academic institutions or were highly motivated tech-savvy individuals. It sure wasn't perfect, as many of those people weren't exactly amazing, but it was better than what we see in 2021.

That, and the fact that the web's reach was much smaller, making it a much less attractive target for malicious disinformation campaigns.

Once everybody's racist, uneducated uncles started logging major minutes surfin' the web things deteriorated fast.

I'm not convinced anything can possibly be done, at least not within the scope of better internet forum design, to somehow coax a better level of discourse and truth-finding out of (pardon my frankness) lower-quality individuals who are actively having their minds poisoned by disinformation campaigns.

Honestly, the places doing this best these days are some sub-reddits, and HN itself. If you spend enough time on Reddit, you can find some absolutely lovely niche subreddits with strong, caring, and active moderation teams. Most subreddits do not fit this description; some do. HN takes a similar approach; most don't realize the level of human moderation by dang et al that goes into keeping this place from becoming a cesspool.

But, we could definitely at least do better than something like Facebook which seems actively designed to reward inflammatory posts and conflict in general.

Re: Oh, 2022

#359

Post by Barrin92 » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

mikewarot wrote: post #353

>Remember, this isn't a simple pneumonia bug. It's a virus that attacks the RAAS/ACE2 system, in particular all the epithelial tissues, and any other cells that express ACE2 receptors on their surfaces. It can mess with your kidneys. It can mess with fat cells, changing their response to insulin. It apparently shows up in brain tissue. Long Covid is my new normal . If 15% of everyone who gets Covid ends up like me, h…

also interesting to think about, if people are not convinced by the health situation itself, what happens on the world stage and the distribution of power if some countries are able to protect and even improve the health of their populations while others just accept this long term degradation as inevitable or normal.

Re: Oh, 2022

#360

Post by supperburg » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #341

supperburg wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve told you who he is. What do you think?

I think you could probably choose worse sources, as many people have. I also suspect you could choose better ones, but what you really need is more sources. (It's also possible that you misunderstood him, or that he didn't do a good job expressing the point.) What's not debatable is that the fatality rate is not 0.02%, or anything close to it. The numbers don't work. If that's what he's saying, then he's telling you…

He seemed to have plenty of hard science to cite in his hours long conversation with lex fridman, MIT alum and lecturer. It’s available for anyone to watch. If later on it becomes clear I was spreading wrong information then I’ll own up to it.