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NIH restarts bat virus grant

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Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#131

Post by runsWphotons »

jeremyjh wrote: post #120
runsWphotons wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible the reorganisation of supply chains post covid will be punishment enough in the long run. But a government that would unleash a biological attack on the world (not claiming they actually did, idk more than anyone else) is an existential threat itself. So an international effort of sanctions and pressure for regime change even at great risk might make sense, yes. A war would probably not risk ending civ…

This is just fucking absurd. Are you serious suggesting its remotely possible the Chinese government would release a deadly bioweapon in their own city without even developing and distributing a vaccine first? Because I don't think anyone is suggesting that, but maybe I'm not following the same news sources that you are. To be clear, I don't think they would develop a vaccine and virus first either, but the idea of "…

No, I don't think it is remotely likely they did it on purpose. But if it were proved absolutely they did, then I don't think retaliation would be off the table, which is what I responded to. The virus was most likely either natural or an accidental lab leak (I lean slightly towards latter). If anyone released it on purpose, which is unlikely, China's government would not even be my first bet...I am simply saying that if it were found a government entity anywhere did release a massively transmissible bioweapon on purpose, then I think a grave response would be warranted despite possible huge risks.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#132

Post by op00to »

foobarian wrote: post #111
dfadsadsf wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything lack of respirators saved lives. With hindsight we now know that putting people on respirator was actually the thing that killed them - not COVID. All this hospital heroic in New York and around the country was huge mistake and most people who were in hospital at the time should have stayed home. On lockdowns - you have to do them 100% (China, Australia, New Zealand) or just give up. Half measures just do…

> With hindsight we now know that putting people on respirator was actually the thing that killed them - not COVID. Do you have links on this? I'd love to know more.

Of course they don't. This is nonsense.

There are studies that said "if you were on mechanical ventilation early on in the pandemic, you were highly likely to die". Oh my! Ventilators sound bad, right? Doctors were reserving ventilators for the most critically ill people that needed them. The same patients who were most likely to die (ill, old, etc) from COVID were put on ventilators. It wasn't the ventilators, it was the god damned virus.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7682899/

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#133

Post by secondcoming »

tristor wrote: post #97
jjoonathan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you forgetting that the lockdowns had to happen because authorities (Trump, not CDC) pissed away a month of exponential growth doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on "ignore it and it will go away" instead of jumping on measures to reduce Rt? They only blinked when faced with the imminent prospect of having hospitals spill out into parking lots full of people slowly dying for want of a respirator. The pandem…

> lockdowns had to happen because authorities (Trump, not CDC) pissed away a month of exponential growth This does not match my recollection. Not to get all political, but I was headed to a conference in Belgium just weeks prior to the lockdowns starting wearing a full-face respirator and got made fun of by the TSA agents in the Atlanta airport because the CDC was telling people that masks were unnecessary/didn't wor…

You're dead right. This was a no-win situation for any politician.

Had they done little, people would be in hysterics that nothing was being done because $FOREIGN_COUNTRY had stricter rules in place.

Had they done a lot, people would be in hysterics that freedoms were being curtailed unnecessarily because $FOREGN_COUNTRY had weaker rules in place.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#134

Post by detrites »

bfung wrote: post #98
arcbyte wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Florida did lockdowns right. They flattened the curve and then managed limited social resources. Many other states just went into irrational and indefinite Long term lockdowns. Illinois for instance was locked down for months and months despite having enourmous hospital capacity - the lack of which was the whole reason for entering the lockdown in the first place. It just didn't make sense after a while except as a p…

The death rate per capita seems to suggest Florida probably could’ve done better. 20th highest death per capita out of the 50 states. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/covid19_mortality_...

And 7th highest median age, so 20th for deaths per capita for a virus far more lethal by age would be positive performance:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#135

Post by op00to »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #121
bfung wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death rate per capita seems to suggest Florida probably could’ve done better. 20th highest death per capita out of the 50 states. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/covid19_mortality_...

Florida is also a magnet for old people, and old people are a magnet for dying from COVID. I wonder how they did if we control for age?

Is it OK for old people to be culled from time to time? Or should Florida, knowing they had a higher than average number of obese, hypertensive, and elderly people, have done more to protect these vulnerable populations? Control for age, and it just shows how awful Florida's response was.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#136

Post by op00to »

willcipriano wrote: post #116
bfung wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death rate per capita seems to suggest Florida probably could’ve done better. 20th highest death per capita out of the 50 states. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/covid19_mortality_...

Doesn't Florida have lots of elderly people?

Aren't elderly people entitled to life?

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#137

Post by runsWphotons »

ethanbond wrote: post #123
runsWphotons wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible the reorganisation of supply chains post covid will be punishment enough in the long run. But a government that would unleash a biological attack on the world (not claiming they actually did, idk more than anyone else) is an existential threat itself. So an international effort of sanctions and pressure for regime change even at great risk might make sense, yes. A war would probably not risk ending civ…

And now we're to the next rung of "lab-leak hypothesis is utterly useless to talk about," which is when people start mixing in the deliberate lab-leak hypothesis. Good god.

It is you who brought up that hypothetical of a deliberate leak (when referencing "people youve met), not me. It is veey unlikely it was deliberate. What probably was deliberate is the initial Chinese response, deleting data, not being open, other aspects of their response. For this there should be consequences, but of course they don't have to mean anything like war.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#138

Post by op00to »

defen wrote: post #129
criticalmass2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with bioweapons. The reality is that throughout all of human history, viruses have evolved organically in the environment in such a way that they are infectious to humans. Viruses will continue to evolve and future pandemics will happen. This research is attempting to study how viruses might evolve in a way that is particularly concerning to humans so that we can be more prepared in terms of cr…

> so that we can be more prepared in terms of creating vaccines and understanding the preventive measures that can be taken in future pandemics. Did the existing decades of research help with that when COVID-19 organically and naturally spontaneously jumped to human hosts?

Yes! We understood within weeks how the virus infected cells. We had an INCREDIBLE head start than if we had to build all this science up from the ground.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#139

Post by eric-hu »

roenxi wrote: post #60
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> China got back to productivity faster though, and gave their population time for a vaccine to be developed and distributed. Wasn't China famously locked down long past the point where the rest of the world was back up and getting on with life? By the time we got to Omicron the vaccine appeared to be doing next to nothing and China was still locked down.

> By the time we got to Omicron the vaccine appeared to be doing next to nothing and China was still locked down.

It’s funny you say that. China disallowed their citizens from using western vaccines including Pfizer, Moderna and Astra Zeneca. Chinese citizens were only allowed to receive Chinese made vaccines. For all we know, they needed their lockdowns until so late because their own vaccines lacked efficacy in baseline protection.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#140

Post by dfadsadsf »

foobarian wrote: post #111
dfadsadsf wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything lack of respirators saved lives. With hindsight we now know that putting people on respirator was actually the thing that killed them - not COVID. All this hospital heroic in New York and around the country was huge mistake and most people who were in hospital at the time should have stayed home. On lockdowns - you have to do them 100% (China, Australia, New Zealand) or just give up. Half measures just do…

> With hindsight we now know that putting people on respirator was actually the thing that killed them - not COVID. Do you have links on this? I'd love to know more.

Hospitals put people on respirator who should have never been on it and then in New York in 2020 it was compounded by sever lack of nurses which led to shoddy care - essentially intubated and sedated patients were on their own with no help or monitoring. Relatives were not allowed in. When you are on respirator you have few days to recover and then you are starting to die due to lung damage - and 3-7 days were not enough to fight COVID so people just died. The same people would have been fine and recovered from COVID on their own.

To be fair, doctors noticed it fairly quickly (but too late for New York) and now usage of respirators for COVID is much much rarer.

My guess nobody talks or highlights blunders of New York because it goes against doctors/nurses are heroes of COVID mantra and not very relevant to current debates on COVID.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ventil...

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