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Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#91

Post by Bukhmanizer »

pvarangot wrote: post #66
mikeyouse wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not mainstream amongst virologists.. as has been demonstrated by repeatedly debunking the latest gish gallop papers, there's literally zero evidence for lab manipulation of the sars cov2 virus. It's vaguely plausible that the virus could have been captured in the wild and then leaked, but even that seems extremely unlikely given the two separate market lineages and timeline of the earliest cases. Stricter…

> It's really not mainstream amongst virologists I mean if you seriously believe that theory you are probably going to either end, start thinking about how to end, or significantly change how you develop, your career as a virologist. Of course it's not mainstream.

It’s not common for virologists to work on GOF research or to do anything close to as dangerous.

It’s pure tin hat thinking to say that “my idea is correct and everyone who has any expertise is compromised”. I don’t know what is right or not, but I know a lot of virologists (through work) without any personal interest in the case who don’t put much stock in the lab leak hypothesis.

Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#92

Post by thedorkknight »

hammock wrote: post #73
cmrivers wrote: post #27

The outbreak in Uganda is troubling, but a forecast that goes out 6+ months is silly. No professional infectious disease modeler will forecast out more than a few weeks because the trajectory of the outbreak changes in response to interventions and behaviors.

How far out did the Covid forecasts look, to justify global lockdowns?

That's not quite the right way of phrasing that question. Models are made with and without interventions taken into account, and the lockdowns were a reaction to models showing reduced deaths and hospital strain if lockdown measures were in place. I'm not sure what that guy is talking about.

But if you're actually interested, you should go and read the papers used for modeling yourself, since the odds of finding a rando on hacker news who is an actual epidemiologists is zilch. The ones who were public communicators that I followed over COVID were the podcast "This Week in Virology" which is just about the best resource you're going to find, and the blog "your local epidemiologist", who is also fantastic

Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#93

Post by ASalazarMX »

jryhjythtr wrote: post #38
cmrivers wrote: post #27

The outbreak in Uganda is troubling, but a forecast that goes out 6+ months is silly. No professional infectious disease modeler will forecast out more than a few weeks because the trajectory of the outbreak changes in response to interventions and behaviors.

>a forecast that goes out 6+ months is silly. Sure is, which is why it's odd we've been bombarded with endless graphs with months of predictions, over the past 2.5 years.

I guess as it transformed from epidemic to pandemic to endemic, it became increasingly predictable. The duration and peaks of the last waves could even be predicted by months indeed, as measures and behaviors remained practically unchanged. Not one of these predictions encompassed six months, though.

Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#94

Post by VancouverMan »

galdosdi wrote: post #32
VBprogrammer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started wearing a mask pretty early on. The first one was a fabric one my mother in law made as it was still at a time when PPE for healthcare workers was a bigger priority. I kept wearing a mask until the overwhelming majority of people around me had long given up. I believed it was the right thing to do regardless but I'm not sure I'm as optimistic as you regarding their effectiveness.

Think back to early 2020. A lot of the serious deaths/damage were not due to covid per se, but due to (1) covid being so novel we didn't know how to treat it very well, eg using ventilators in cases that could have just used O2 tanks (2) covid spreading so fast that it was effectively a denial of service attack against the local hospitals. Both of these factors were improvable even by small measures that don't preven…

No post body was provided.

Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#95

Post by jrussino »

ajmurmann wrote: post #41
VBprogrammer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started wearing a mask pretty early on. The first one was a fabric one my mother in law made as it was still at a time when PPE for healthcare workers was a bigger priority. I kept wearing a mask until the overwhelming majority of people around me had long given up. I believed it was the right thing to do regardless but I'm not sure I'm as optimistic as you regarding their effectiveness.

I've been wearing masks from early on and only recently stopped wearing them regularly. Now I only wear them when in a crowded situation. I feel how masks were handled was completely botched in many ways. There is the politicization and communication errors. However, I also remain somewhat shocked how we never made any effort to address the biggest, obvious issues with masks to make them more effective. I saw so many…

>How about a mask with a rubber seal that goes around it

I wore one of these: https://envomask.com/

They're relatively heavy compared to paper & fabric masks (not to mention expensive), but the gel seal made it quite comfortable and it was the only thing I found that I could wear all day without ever fogging up my glasses.

Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#96

Post by throwaway0x7E6 »

chimprich wrote: post #68
benreesman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane and 3: a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic.

> The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. Mainstream, and conceivably true, but lacking in evidence. Personally I find it rather implausible due to a lack of motivation for why the lab in question would be doing secret work on coronaviruses. > fucking insane I don't think this is a helpful way to have this debate. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion on this, but a majority of virologists seem to…

>but lacking in evidence

so anything short of a public confession by a CCP spokesman isn't enough?

Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#97

Post by thedorkknight »

LatteLazy wrote: post #67
benreesman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane and 3: a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic.

>The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. So is denying climate change or the moon landings...

Side note, but is the moon landing hoax popular still? I got nostalgia when you mentioned it, boy howdy do I miss the x files days of conspiracy theories

Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#98

Post by harvey9 »

timr wrote: post #71
benreesman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane and 3: a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic.

I'll go: because while the parent comment is (loosely, tangentially) based in fact, it's an enormous leap to go from the kind of differences we're talking about with SARS-CoV2 engineering, and the differences of type required to aerosolize a filiovirus. Is it "possible"? Yes, theoretically. But it's not at all trivial, and far down my worry list. It's bit like worrying that sharks are going to evolve wings and start…

But what if lots of ebola was lifted up in a tornado and deposited on Los Angeles?

Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#99

Post by mikeyouse »

benreesman wrote: post #80
mikeyouse wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a busy day so don't want to get into it again -- but I cannot express how incapable the average (even educated!) person is to "do their own research" on something as complex and nuanced as molecular engineering and the probabilities of covid genetic engineering. Even some expert 'pre-reviewers' that received the advance of the most recent bombshell paper that supposedly proved an unnatural virus with lab ori…

No layperson is qualified to understand any advanced technical field these days. Semiconductor fabrication is utterly out of reach for the typical voter, but they still have to form an opinion on the CHIPS act. Most of us aren’t lawyers, but still sometimes need to hire them. This is the dilemma inherent in not having a /u/PhdInEverything. But the answer isn’t “go away and let the grownups decide”, the answer is to t…

You can be as infuriated as you'd like, but I consider HN to be one of the more responsible and educated forums for casual discussion and the level of straight up conspiracy-driven misinformation on everything related to Covid is astonishing. From origins to vaccines to treatments (remember all of the threads extolling HCQ and IVM?), it's as sophisticated as you'd expect from people "doing their own research" in fields they don't understand and apparently aren't equipped to develop an understanding of.

There's no political or financial implications to whether Wiles' proof of FLT is correct or not, and the proof can be checked with certainty by experts in the field -- so of course they can come to a consensus about something extraordinarily technical. Unfortunately with Covid, every question has turned into a political shibboleth so there will forever be FUD promoted by people who should know better. How is the average reader supposed to weigh the probabilities of some esoteric question like what the potential presence or absence of IIS restriction sites means when it's being promoted by people with advanced degrees as evidence of an artificial origin, even though it's nonsense?

So I retreat to my earlier advice for those trying to form an opinion here -- look into the history of claims from the various scientists, and see whether evidence is guiding their claims or if their claims are guiding their evidence.

Re: Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

#100

Post by throwaway1777 »

chimprich wrote: post #68
benreesman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane and 3: a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic.

> The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. Mainstream, and conceivably true, but lacking in evidence. Personally I find it rather implausible due to a lack of motivation for why the lab in question would be doing secret work on coronaviruses. > fucking insane I don't think this is a helpful way to have this debate. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion on this, but a majority of virologists seem to…

The new report by pro publica and vanity fair is about as close to evidence as we are likely to get. The big issue here is that we didn’t get to hear real investigation of it until 2 years after the fact aside from whistleblowers with varying level of credibility.
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