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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

#101

Post by uni_rule »

michaericalribo wrote: post #76
qzx_pierri wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monkeypox was always a money grab perpetuated by fear mongering media conglomerates. Those companies found some other "boogeyman" to chew on for the time being. And I'm not denying Monkeypox was real, it was just completely overblown and being used to scare people into clicking on spooky headlines.

I think this is needlessly pessimistic. A virus spreading uncontrolled in one of the world’s largest cities? It would be journalistic malpractice _not_ to report on it in the current climate

Sometimes the tinfoil hat mindset is appropriate but sometimes it also eats holes in your brain.

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

#102

Post by bushbaba »

time_to_smile wrote: post #90
jimbob45 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fear with COVID was mutation of the disease into something more deadly and more contagious. What looks like fearmongering now was cautious behavior around mutation at the time. Conversely, Ebola isn't likely to mutate now, so we don't need that same level of caution.

> What looks like fearmongering now We had over 1 million deaths in the US. You travel back to 2016 and tell people we'll have a pandemic in the US, 1 million people will die, and then large groups of people will attempt to shrug that off as "nothing to get concerned about", people would find that incomprehensible. If I were to post a comment on HN in 2016 suggesting that people would shrug off 1 million deaths due t…

300k Americans die each year from obesity. Yet nobody seems to view this as an urgent issue needing addressing.

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

#104

Post by lazyasciiart »

yamtaddle wrote: post #74
jryhjythtr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

How've I not noticed this? I've instead seen a whole lot of graphs with no prediction whatsoever and lots and lots of people in positions of authority who seem totally unable to extrapolate from those in their heads, resulting in idiotic back-and-forth on various restrictions for the first 18 or so months of the pandemic. Shit like schools releasing plans ahead of the school year that they then immediately ignore bec…

My guess is a tone issue. It’s hard to even tell that you’re saying you haven’t seen long term graphs - the first sentence comes across as sarcastic when followed by long sentences complaining about other problems.

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

#105

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jimbob45 wrote: post #77
hammock wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The fear with COVID was mutation of the disease into something more deadly and more contagious. What looks like fearmongering now was cautious behavior around mutation at the time. Conversely, Ebola isn't likely to mutate now, so we don't need that same level of caution.

> Conversely, Ebola isn't likely to mutate now

Can you explain why?

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

#106

Post by unethical_ban »

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 is it disingenuous to use assumptions for modeling?

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

#107

Post by VancouverMan »

joshuamorton wrote: post #85
VancouverMan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masking was never inherently a political issue, even if some people tried to make it one. From a purely scientific perspective, and regardless of one's political leanings or preferences, it was obvious from the start that widespread everyday masking simply isn't effective, nor is it practical. If such masking was even just somewhat effective, the entire situation would have been over by mid-2020 at the latest. That c…

I'm curious, when you say "masking works" what do you mean? Because you seem to mean it as "prevents 100% of transmission", and therefore anything less than that means masking isn't effective. And that's simply untrue. Masking does, really, truly, assist with covid spread. It doesn't prevent 100% of transmission, because nothing does, especially something that requires active participation, but yeah it helps a lot if…

As with other actions, it's the relationship between the benefits that something brings versus the costs associated with doing it that determine whether or not it's "working".

The costs associated with widespread everyday masking are severe. You even quoted the ones that I'd mentioned earlier.

Just to overcome those severe costs, masking would have had to consistently bring astounding benefits.

At a bare minimum, that should have been a nearly-complete end to the transmission of not just this virus, but others, as well.

Unfortunately, we didn't see that happen, because masking isn't effective.

We experienced the severe costs of masking, but without receiving any benefits from enduring those costs.

This was demonstrated by what's among the largest set of scientific experiments ever performed, involving many millions of people, in many nations, and over two years of masking in some cases.

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

#108

Post by LatteLazy »

thedorkknight wrote: post #97
LatteLazy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

6% of Americans (10% of millennial Americans) supposedly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori...

Despite actual pictures taken recently...

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

#109

Post by ipaddr »

harvey9 wrote: post #98
timr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Now we have the basis of a movie.

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

#110

Post by benreesman »

mikeyouse wrote: post #99
benreesman wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fiel…

Neither the GP nor myself said that SARS-COV-2 escaped from the Wuhan lab, let alone that it was the result of GoF research.

I called it a theory, as in, neither conclusively proven nor conclusively disproven. It’s a theory about which there has been significant controversy. I didn’t even say there was significant evidence for it.

Acknowledging the existence of a controversy is not the same thing as promoting a conspiracy theory, and as you yourself point out, basically everyone, from word-renowned virologists down to the man in the street, has skin in the game on this one.

The world’s medical community had a COVID response that was a fucking disaster: inconsistent and constantly changing guidance, conflicts of interest, geopolitical 4th dimensional warfare, rushed and sloppy-looking vaccine approvals.

It’s no wonder the public believes a bunch of crazy shit: the experts dropped the ball. Trying to blame that on the ignorance and gullibility of the layperson and flip the script like that set back the public’s willingness to take vaccines and listen to the authorities by 50-100 years.

Don’t try to blame that on us plebs.

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