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U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

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Re: U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

#21

Post by we_never_see_it »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #13
matt3210 wrote: post #6

Typical… during peace time nations often get complacent. During healthy time, nations often get complacent. I thought it would take longer given just two years ago most stuff was shut down.

Perhaps the complacency was assuming people would treat dangerous viruses as deadly weapons, and we've decided it's not worth the risk. So not: "Scientists working in this field might say—as indeed I have said—that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3484390/ (Of course, common sense would say that if you're not willing to do t…

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Re: U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

#22

Post by anonporridge »

we_never_see_it wrote: post #20
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #16

> DEEP VZN drew especially sharp scrutiny because the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that specializes in sampling animals in attempts to prevent emerging diseases, played a central role in the PREDICT consortium. (EcoHealth also had a long-standing collaboration with the Wuhan lab at the center of the lab-leak theory.) This is why it actually matters to try to figure out if the lab leak is the most probably cause, t…

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Please stop injecting political tribalism into this discussion.

Re: U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

#23

Post by dvngnt_ »

anonporridge wrote: post #19
sp332 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still over 100 deaths per day in the US. And those are official numbers, certainly an undercount.

2400 die every day from heart disease in the US, but those who are still terrified of Covid today generally aren't allocating 24x of their fear budget towards heart disease and starting a regular running habit or improving their diet to flatten that curve. Life belongs to those who learn proper fear prioritization.

heart attacks don't spread in enclosed spaces

Re: U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

#24

Post by anonporridge »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #23
anonporridge wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2400 die every day from heart disease in the US, but those who are still terrified of Covid today generally aren't allocating 24x of their fear budget towards heart disease and starting a regular running habit or improving their diet to flatten that curve. Life belongs to those who learn proper fear prioritization.

heart attacks don't spread in enclosed spaces

No, but they do spread via memetic infection of cultural norms that direct us as individuals to adopt unhealthy lifestyles.

Re: U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

#25

Post by [deleted] »

we_never_see_it wrote: post #20
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #16

> DEEP VZN drew especially sharp scrutiny because the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that specializes in sampling animals in attempts to prevent emerging diseases, played a central role in the PREDICT consortium. (EcoHealth also had a long-standing collaboration with the Wuhan lab at the center of the lab-leak theory.) This is why it actually matters to try to figure out if the lab leak is the most probably cause, t…

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[deleted]

Re: U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

#26

Post by cameldrv »

jakderrida wrote: post #18
omginternets wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most disappointing part of the pandemic has been the utter lack of curiosity and professional duty displayed by journalists. The only other time I can think of such blatant dereliction of duty was the beginning of the war in Iraq.

What would you have them do? Go sneaking around the Chinese Science Academy in Wuhan trying to find hard evidence in the dumpsters 4 years later? I'm not a fan of some "journalists" saying, "it's just the flu" and worried more about Trump's re-election than those that they no doubt killed, but I'm actually not sure what real journalists should have done either. Also, people were crying out for their blood while indul…

They have tried something similar (getting to the bat cave in Yunnan), but the Chinese put literal roadblocks in their way (parking a truck in the middle of the road to stop them from getting to the cave) https://www.businessinsider.com/china-policing-bat-caves-sci...

Getting any information from China has been made extremely difficult. I think it's reasonable to draw some conclusions from that.

Re: U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

#28

Post by Kerb_ »

kevlened wrote: post #10

This is fantastic news. I recommend listening to Rob Reid's interview with Kevin Esvelt on the topic. The gist is the program was designed to find potential viruses, then share them openly so countries without resources for this research could still prepare for future viruses. Obviously, open access to recipes for pandemic-grade viruses means they could also be used for nefarious means. It's worth listening to the an…

China hiding evidence of a pandemic-grade virus is exactly why it spread globally before anyone was able to do Jack shit about it

Re: U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

#29

Post by psychlops »

jwineinger wrote: post #11
psychlops wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't been over excess mortality since January according to the CDC. People will always be dying of something, today it's with covid.

How often do they update their baseline?

Their website has their charts and methodology pointing out the good and bad:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm...

Re: U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

#30

Post by findalex »

we_never_see_it wrote: post #20
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #16

> DEEP VZN drew especially sharp scrutiny because the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that specializes in sampling animals in attempts to prevent emerging diseases, played a central role in the PREDICT consortium. (EcoHealth also had a long-standing collaboration with the Wuhan lab at the center of the lab-leak theory.) This is why it actually matters to try to figure out if the lab leak is the most probably cause, t…

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> proven in science

What does this mean?

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