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NIH restarts bat virus grant

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Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#171

Post by School-Cotton »

jjoonathan wrote: post #147
specialp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lockdowns went on far longer than the "flatten the curve" phase. I think the lessons learned here were: 1. Once something like this escapes its confines and starts spreading as COVID did, it is here to stay and any lockdowns that are not to avoid hospital capacity problems just prolong the inevitable 2. Compromised people due to health conditions and age should definitely lay low when there is an outbreak. But lo…

> The lockdowns went on far longer than the "flatten the curve" phase. Did they? Is the table on wikipedia wrong? Outside of California (which I feel no desire to defend), it looks like the actual lockdowns were 0-3 months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns 0-3 months doesn't sound nutty to me. Perhaps 3 months was a bit on the high side, sure, but it's also on the high side of actual policy. What does…

Sorry but I consider social distancing measures and forced mask wearing to be "lockdowns", colloquially, as do many other people.

The life-altering consequences of COVID policy lasted much, much longer than three months.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#172

Post by peteradio »

jeremyjh wrote: post #151
peteradio wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully automated underground bunkers stocked with precursor pathogens and humanized lab rats equipped with firebombs with the intention of complete evisceration at conclusion of experiment. Dig a deep hole in the desert crane drop in the prepared apparatus wait for experiment results, burn it all down. None of these precautions would prevent someone from using the results of the experiment for ill purposes.

Yes but there is a lot of waste in a system like that and after 10 years of spotless safety record the MBAs will start dismantling it, like re-using facilities instead of firebombing, and the re-fitting inevitably requires some humans on-site etc.

Ok, so put a big fence around it and then find a way to turn people into zombies and fill the fence with said zombies so nobody would even dare go inside the fence.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#173

Post by m3047 »

bbarn wrote: post #45
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…

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"?

(Proven) correlation is not causation. It's correlation, meaning things are related. Causation would mean that something causes something else.

Correlation, meaning things are related, means that one of them might be the cause of another, or they could all be the effects of some unrecognized / unobserved phenomenon.

Correlation is the mother of conjecture; conspiracy is a bunch of people huddling in a small space breathing the same air and posting about it on twitter.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#174

Post by pupppet »

dfadsadsf wrote: post #105
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…

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…

Oh god help us, the HN tech bros believe they're doctors now.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#175

Post by TechBro8615 »

caned wrote: post #83

> The project no longer involves collecting new bat samples or working with live viruses. WIV has no role beyond contributing more than 300 whole and partial genome sequences of SARS-related bat coronaviruses from its collection, Daszak says. I join others in their skepticism, but, as a layman, I'd like to know: Is this gain-of-function research as described? What are the risks if the research doesn't involve live vi…

Does it really matter? Given how much they've already obfuscated the semantics and definition of "gain of function," why should we trust that this time, they're really not doing anything resembling gain of function? And even if we could give them that benefit of the doubt, why should we? The board members of EcoHealth should be receiving federal prison sentences, not grant money.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#176

Post by hgsgm »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #117
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #55

EcoHealth should not be allowed to participate in Federal grants. If there is a reason we don't have confidence as a society where Covid came from, it's because of efforts taken by Ecohealth to short-circuit reasonable scientific inquiry. EcoHealth doesn't do science and should be banned.

I think this your point is very important to highlight. I'm very uncomfortable with all the posts that posit "Covid came from the lab" is a conclusive fact. There is considerable evidence, and it's certainly plausible, that it did come from a lab, but it's likely we'll never know with certainty. That said, EcoHealth's cardinal sin was the Feb 2020 Lancet letter ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)…

It's additionally a shame that instead of pursuing this legitimate angle, many politicians and billionaires went off the deep end with the "prosecute Fauci" ranting, which made people feel forced to defend the EcoHealth side out of a sense of civility.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#177

Post by hgsgm »

criticalmass2 wrote: post #107
galangalalgol wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatvare the arguments for gain of function research? Is there any reason to think the mutations gained as a virus adapts to mice with human lung tissue will resemble the ones it makes when it crosses in the wild? Or is it kind of like the old giant nuke plants, a way to peace-wash war tech? Edit: Vouching for the reply wasn't enough to resurrect it. It was a claim with no support other than an appeal to authority, b…

The term “gain of function” is used by different people in different ways. It is a broad category of research and the misguided attempts to categorize it as dangerous in one broad stroke are not helpful. To quote Dr. Fauci: "If all gain-of-function stops, you will have no vaccines for flu. You will have no vaccines for any of the other diseases, because all of that manipulates a virus or a pathogen to gain a certain…

I love me a flu vaccine. But if Covid-19 was the cost, I'm not sure it's worth it.

Also Fauci played a bit of Motte&Baily the other way, by defending ALL GoF research with that argument.

People opposed to gain of function are specifically opposed to attempts to make viruses more communicable or more dangerous

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#178

Post by v0idzer0 »

hgsgm wrote: post #176
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this your point is very important to highlight. I'm very uncomfortable with all the posts that posit "Covid came from the lab" is a conclusive fact. There is considerable evidence, and it's certainly plausible, that it did come from a lab, but it's likely we'll never know with certainty. That said, EcoHealth's cardinal sin was the Feb 2020 Lancet letter ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)…

It's additionally a shame that instead of pursuing this legitimate angle, many politicians and billionaires went off the deep end with the "prosecute Fauci" ranting, which made people feel forced to defend the EcoHealth side out of a sense of civility.

Nobody was forced to do anything. They defended ecohealth because they were told to do so by mainstream left wing media, who pushed that shaky narrative with no evidence purely because anything that disagreed with Trump was profitable

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#179

Post by eli »

jonhohle wrote: post #167
peteradio wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I disagree but you are accusing OP of shilling/astroturfing and I suspect its one reason why threads like these get downmodded.

[flagged]

Yup everyone who disagrees with you is taking payoffs as part of a big conspiracy. What other explanation could there be for why people disagree with you?

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#180

Post by hgsgm »

Eumenes wrote: post #40
op00to wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They literally study viruses that don’t infect humans but they purposely mutate them so they can study the “what if they mutate in real life” - this is cover to study bioweapons

If you want bioweapons, you'd start with viruses that conveniently already infect humans, and probably wouldn't indiscriminately infect the whole world including yourself.
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