Earlier quoted context omitted.
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By some measurements the Holocaust was a walloping success. What particular measurement you choose is very important, so "some measurements" is basically meaningless.
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NIH restarts bat virus grant
41–50 of 208 posts
Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant
#42Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant
#43We should warn these agencies that gain of function research is like playing Russian Roulette, but it would go in one ear and out the other.
Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant
#44Obligatory: What could possibly go wrong?
Better to study and be prepared, than to stick our head in the sand and pretend emerging infectious disease aren't a recurrent factor in our lives.
counter example: we won't know how to fight a robot apocalypse unless we go ahead and develop some super-intelligent kill bots ourselves, so we can train against it and develop strategies. Given enough time and random variation, someone or some government is bound to create them, so we should not stick our heads in the sand or let fear-mongering stand in the way of research.
In reality COVID-19 required several key mutations to be as harmful and to bind as effectively to human cells as it did. The likelihood of all of these mutations occurring naturally, in animals only, without intermediate variants to observe and develop immunity against, is very small. If only 64 amino acids must mutate exactly correctly to create the deadly variant then it would require 4^64 or 2^128 mutations, which is a large number. Assuming it mutates 100B times per year, that's still more years 3e27 years.
For example, this experiment on more transmissible HIV requires hundreds of acids (600-1000, and a 32 amino prefix).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2836558/
The point being that creating extremely unlikely events to "see what would happen" is only justified if the risk of the observation is less than the natural risk of the event. If the risk of a world-ending pandemic is 1e-128 per year, and the risk due to human-made viruses is 0.1%, then "not sticking your head in the sand" has raised your risk by an astronomical factor.
Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because of all the conspiracy theories, it is not going to be pretty if there's a lockdown in the future for any reason whatsoever. Indeed, I think governments will be very reluctant to order a lockdown even if it's the right thing to do. This has nothing to do with facts about virus research though.
It feels like (at least in my country) all the lockdowns were part of an experiment; try something else, see if it works. At some point they tried a curfew for a few weeks, it had an effect but people didn't like it and enforcement was a huge issue (naturally). The other thing is that every time a measure was effective, they would stop doing it so that the cases would go back up again. That said, as China proved, a t…
Correlation is the mother of conspiracy.
"they would stop doing it so that the cases would go back up again" is quite the statement. How about this instead: "Extreme measures to slow down cases had obvious down sides and were used as sparingly as possible, and eased up when not as necessary"?
Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant
#46I love the appeal to the "independence" of science from politics, after what may have been the single most materially and socially destructive scientific disaster since the invention of the atom bomb. We'll just act like none of that ever happened and continue with impunity.
Whatever happens, I don't think people will tolerate another lockdown ever again for at least two generations. I know in florida there could be literally airborn aids and people will still go out and live life, myself included. COVID lockdowns were a test of how much the government could push without backlash. I feel so badly for the kids that lost their last two years of high school for what?
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Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conspiracy and fact are orthogonal descriptors.
I don't understand this concept. I see it all over the internet. But I don't get it. At what point did we stop believing it was possible for people to conspire to commit crimes? Nobody disputes, for example, that the convictions of the Watergate conspirators - for the charge of conspiracy - was based in fact. So how is it that we can now say that fact and conspiracy can't be part of the same pattern? It's true that a…
Orthogonal doesn't mean opposites, it means they're perpendicular i.e. unrelated.
Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant
#48What would it even mean if we created covid 19 in a lab and it was accidentally released? Would it change anything? Would anyone be held responsible?
Someone would say "business as usual", somewhere.
Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatever happens, I don't think people will tolerate another lockdown ever again for at least two generations. I know in florida there could be literally airborn aids and people will still go out and live life, myself included. COVID lockdowns were a test of how much the government could push without backlash. I feel so badly for the kids that lost their last two years of high school for what?
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Oh yes, certain countries are just in the toilet psychologically speaking. Australia, Canada, etc. I was speaking mainly about the US. I know for a fact Florida will never tolerate those measures again.
Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant
#50What would it even mean if we created covid 19 in a lab and it was accidentally released? Would it change anything? Would anyone be held responsible?
What would it even mean if we created covid 19 in a lab and it was accidentally released?
Perhaps this may provide enough precedence to codify more specific laws, regulations, certifications, liabilities and consequences that affect funding availability, multiple levels of insurance requirements and lab safety requirements. Additionally there could also be more consequences for side-stepping direction from leadership to cease and desist research in a particular area when the risk was already deemed too great. The attitube of "It's easier to say sorry than it is to say please" should not apply to high risk research regardless of how much money could be potentially gained.
In my opinion this is important to address sooner than later. Covid may be a short walk in the park compared to the risk we are about to experience with Precision Medicine [1] also known as dual-use biology.
Would anyone be held responsible?
Proving intent is difficult without emails, contracts, voice conversations, etc... Even if these audit trails existed it is more likely to be covered up to protect all nations involved from international blow-back. More likely these people may be quietly found negligent and lose the ability to fund or manage future projects. They and their associates become a toxic investment risk thus possibly discouraging future behavior assuming only negligence was involved. A new set of people take their place and the world rinses and repeats.
I can not prove intent but I can see incentive. One need only watch V for Vendetta to see the parallels.