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Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

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Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#161

Post by dent9876543 »

switch007 wrote: post #153
Izkata wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've maintained for a while the worst thing that happened early on was calling it a "novel coronavirus". In this context, "novel" is medical/scientific jargon that doesn't mean what the average person thinks it means. It should never have made it to the public, because it created a misunderstanding about what was going on. It simply meant "humans haven't encountered this virus before so no one has immunity". Instead…

They knew what they were doing

Yes, I think that's correct.

There was an absolute willingness to allow views in support of a fear narrative win through. (No matter their grounding.) The probing/questioning threads were quickly closed down.

Some of it was done by the social media companies acting at the direction of the state. But much of it was actioned by military information security units acting against the general population.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#162

Post by vitehozonage »

archagon wrote: post #155
vitehozonage wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have the timing all different compared to my memory. I remember when there were less than 1000 cases worldwide (i remember clearly because i developed a tracker that kept count even then). That was when i personally was scared because we knew nothing about it. But during that time, the mainstream opinion was that nobody cared. Infected Chinese people were allowed to fly all over the world, there were zero…

You are misremembering. The “irrational over-response” came once we realized just how incredibly contagious the disease was, since it ran the risk of completely overwhelming hospitals and causing a collapse of health care systems. (And came very close in some places such as Italy.)

I disagree. I looked up dates to verify. I suppose if you got your information from mainstream media it would seem like it went as you say. But it is a fact that the spread started in December 2019 [1], and the Diamond Princess data was available in February [2], and lockdowns started in March [3]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_Diamond_P...

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#163

Post by archagon »

vitehozonage wrote: post #162
archagon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misremembering. The “irrational over-response” came once we realized just how incredibly contagious the disease was, since it ran the risk of completely overwhelming hospitals and causing a collapse of health care systems. (And came very close in some places such as Italy.)

I disagree. I looked up dates to verify. I suppose if you got your information from mainstream media it would seem like it went as you say. But it is a fact that the spread started in December 2019 [1], and the Diamond Princess data was available in February [2], and lockdowns started in March [3] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_Diamond_P... 3:…

I don't see how this contradicts what I said. Serious lockdowns started in response to hospitals getting swamped, too late to actually stop the virus but just in time to barely keep health care afloat. As such, I fail to see how you could call such a response "irrational" unless you've memory-holed the corpse trucks, treatment tents, and so on.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#164

Post by tptacek »

logicchains wrote: post #62
alex1138 wrote: post #43

[flagged]

Science has meant that for over a decade since it started deplatforming any scientist who studied the link between race and intelligence. And before anyone says "why does it matter, only racists would care about that", it matters because some social scientists are claiming that the disparity in outcomes for different races across society is due to society being unfair/biased, but such outcomes would be expected even…

No such deplatforming has happened. Rather, the results have not said what heriditarians hoped they'd say, and it doesn't make any sense for them, rhetorically, to write updates about GWAS studies that complicate or rebut their claims, so they're left citing bizarre claims Richard Lynn made about the relative IQ of different countries.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#165

Post by oneshtein »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #141
oneshtein wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we look at final report of Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: COVID-19 ORIGIN: COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The FIVE strongest arguments in favor of the “lab leak” theory include: 1) The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature. Yes. 2) Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary t…

I think many of those points are pretty flimsy. But even if they weren't I don't know how you get to your conclusion. That part of the world has a biolab doing gain of function research on that kind of virus because that part of the world has had problems with that kind of virus in the past. It receives finding from other countries because now that we know the source of the threat it makes sense to study it on the co…

I cited the US congress commission report[1]. It further explained in full report[2].

In short:

1) WIV proposed to modify CoV virus to infect humans in same way as SARS CoV2 using BSL-2 lab to save costs (see screenshot). BSL-2 means that protective masks are not required.

2) No such variation of CoV virus is found in nature.

3) Paper written by Dr. Baric and Dr. Shi which describes how to perform that insertion of furin cleavage sites into SARS CoV.

So, arguments in favor of accidental leak from Chines WIH lab are strong.

However, I'm biased against Russia (it saves lot of time), so I see few more arguments in favor of accidental leak from Chinese «Vector» lab in Koltsevo (Novosibirsk), which then transferred to Wuhan by Wuhan military police after shared military training with Russian military police in Koltsevo, because «Vector» BSL-4 lab had major incident (small bang and fire which broke windows, then doors are broken and equipment is stolen by Russian military looking for a fire) few weeks before that training. Paper with instructions was published, so it was open knowledge, so Russians may tried to reproduce it in preparation to the war.

[1]: https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec...

[2]: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024....

[3]: https://meduza.io/en/news/2024/12/19/trump-s-ukraine-envoy-n...

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#166

Post by forgetfreeman »

Izkata wrote: post #150
forgetfreeman wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might benefit from a more robust understanding of filtration mechanisms and updating your mental model of airborn covid to include the medium in which it's broadcast. Folks aren't outgassing raw virii with no associated droplet material, so your particle size is off. Additionally N95 can absolutely filter particulate well below the rated 0.3 microns, it's just less effective at doing so. Summary: masks absolutely…

I don't think that matters. We exhale so much moisture that cloth masks are saturated in 10-15 minutes, and after that the air pressure just recreates the droplets as it goes through the mask, spreading it from the outside.

Lol what. You do understand that van der Waals force is a significant driver of filtration at this scale yes? We're not talking about corralling coffee grounds here.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#167

Post by born2web »

on_the_train wrote: post #156
modeless wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but not getting sick also won't cause your body to "learn again to fight against viruses" as OP claimed. Regardless of whether you wear a mask or not.

This is out of my expertise but I have a hard time believing that

same here... at a species level, I would expect evolutionary benefits if immunity increased with exposure

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#168

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

oneshtein wrote: post #165
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many of those points are pretty flimsy. But even if they weren't I don't know how you get to your conclusion. That part of the world has a biolab doing gain of function research on that kind of virus because that part of the world has had problems with that kind of virus in the past. It receives finding from other countries because now that we know the source of the threat it makes sense to study it on the co…

I cited the US congress commission report[1]. It further explained in full report[2]. In short: 1) WIV proposed to modify CoV virus to infect humans in same way as SARS CoV2 using BSL-2 lab to save costs (see screenshot). BSL-2 means that protective masks are not required. 2) No such variation of CoV virus is found in nature. 3) Paper written by Dr. Baric and Dr. Shi which describes how to perform that insertion of f…

The trouble with the "not found in nature" business is that we have found far less than 1% of of the viral features that exist in nature. If you go pick a random subset of a randomly selected viral genome and determine its function, you're virtually guaranteed to have found something in nature which--until then--was not found in nature. We only bother doing that kind of research after a virus has started making people sick because it's expensive.

It's called a spillover event and not a spillover status quo because it's new to us. To argue that it's manmade because we didn't see it coming is a gross overestimation of man's ability to make such things and of his ability to anticipate them. Even if we can glue things together that we found in nature, the threatening part is not the glue.

The rest appears to be politics and has no bearing on what science might learn from COVID. Especially the first link, which reads more like a bunch of people patting their boss on the back in hopes that they don't get fired and nothing like the result of any kind of research. Nevermind their conflict of interest, what would congresspeople know about it in the first place?

Some may release viruses of surprising structure on purpose or by accident, and nature does it also. That makes it relevant to understand ways to prevent and mitigate the impact of such events, but the nationalities of the people involved just doesn't impact the science in any way.

I would be interested in reading the paper about the furin cleavage. Are you sure your link 3 is going to the right place?

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#169

Post by anonymous »

oneshtein wrote: post #105
alex1138 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lab leak matters when studying viral transmission (and general characteristics of the virus), especially if it's been enhanced via gain of function research It also matters when the basic doctor-patient relationship is interfered with

If we look at final report of Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: COVID-19 ORIGIN: COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The FIVE strongest arguments in favor of the “lab leak” theory include: 1) The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature. Yes. 2) Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary t…

No post body was provided.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#170

Post by oneshtein »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #168
oneshtein wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cited the US congress commission report[1]. It further explained in full report[2]. In short: 1) WIV proposed to modify CoV virus to infect humans in same way as SARS CoV2 using BSL-2 lab to save costs (see screenshot). BSL-2 means that protective masks are not required. 2) No such variation of CoV virus is found in nature. 3) Paper written by Dr. Baric and Dr. Shi which describes how to perform that insertion of f…

The trouble with the "not found in nature" business is that we have found far less than 1% of of the viral features that exist in nature. If you go pick a random subset of a randomly selected viral genome and determine its function, you're virtually guaranteed to have found something in nature which--until then--was not found in nature. We only bother doing that kind of research after a virus has started making peopl…

This article https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7836551/ has good explanation about furin cleavage site. Basically, it just fragment of genetic code, which allows virus to fuse with human cells much more easily.

It more interesting HOW this fragment get there. Recombination with an other virus is ruled out, so only 3 options are left: 1) virus evolved in an animal (none found), 2) virus evolved in a human (none found), 3) virus created in a lab (paper exists with exact instruction how to do it).

Yes, third link is not correct. It just catches my attention, because if Russians did it (accidentally or not) then general Kirilov must be responsible for it, so the link between Kellog (Trump) and Kirilov (Putin) surprised me.

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