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

science.org

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

#31

Post by omginternets »

jstarfish wrote: post #14
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.

China is very impenetrable. Too much of that line of inquiry discredits itself with speculation.

I don’t disagree with you, but it’s precisely the journalists job to lay bare these opacities and contradictions. What happened instead is that the lab leak hypothesis was treated as mere conspiracy theory.

Edit: your comment also ignores the involvement of the USA in the purported lab leak. That’s easier to investigate. There is no excuse for the collective behavior of journalists.

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

#32

Post by rngname22 »

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.

Why is yours the top comment when it's obvious you didn't read the article? Canceling this program is a move to prevent future pandemics by reducing the chance of gain-of-function research to go awry and result in accidental release of augmented viruses.

There are other types of research on viruses, zoonotic virus reservoirs, all sorts of topics that don't involve intentionally making a sample more and more contagious or deadly.

Obama also instituted a moratorium on US federal funding for this class of research during his tenure. This is a bipartisan issue. Nothing controversial for anyone other than grant recipients who need this money to keep their business afloat.

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

#33

Post by psychlops »

belltaco wrote: post #12
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.

Do they account for the covid deaths during the pandemic? Since a lot of vulnerable people died early, the number of deaths due to other causes like heart attacks, cancer, old age, diabetes etc. would be lower now than if covid never had happened.

I mostly look at the total deaths as a benchmark. The way they counted covid deaths changed and had new financial incentives which impacts numbers. Also, I would personally question the early accuracy of false/positive covid testing.

The numbers you suggest gets complicated by the fact that many people delayed care due to fear of leaving their houses, much less going to a covid-infested hospital.

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

#34

Post by omginternets »

cameldrv wrote: post #26
jakderrida wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and at a minimum, this is evidence of a literal conspiracy.

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

#35

Post by dvngnt_ »

anonporridge wrote: post #24
dvngnt_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

which is certainly a problem worth solving, but it's still a different issue than a highly infectious disease that can be spread on elevators buses

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

#36

Post by Obscurity4340 »

cameldrv wrote: post #26
jakderrida wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why can't they sanction China for obstructing this effort? They've got a real nice economy, it would be a shame if we piled on sanctions to help compound their current economic woes if they refus to allow this work to be done. That they were already read to go in blocking that cave suggests they already knew and are being obstructive.

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

#37

Post by infamouscow »

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

Who cares? Everyone has been vaccinated at this point unless you're so deluded from reality you missed the vaccination campaigns in every country on Earth.

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

#38

Post by Enginerrrd »

voz_ wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> It is blatantly and patently clear that is where the virus came from.

I don't think it's so clear. However, rejecting the lab leak is deeply unscientific.

From a Bayesian standpoint, before anything was known, it was silly to dismiss the probability. Estimates from before the pandemic suggested the annual risk was ~2.4% [1], or roughly less than a 50-year recurrence interval. Compare that to the base-rate of roughly 1% of natural spill-over once-every-hundred-year pandemics and it seems foolish to dismiss it. I tended to think the escape estimates were a bit overstated and so I reduced that to ~1% which puts it at about 50/50 without much additional knowledge.

After all the information to date has come in, there's circumstantial evidence in favor of both hypotheses. Unfortunately, it's quality is such that I doubt it pushes my truth estimate much beyond 60/40 one way or the other, so 50/50 remains a decent educated guess. The US top intelligence agencies mostly came to exactly the same conclusion.

[1] https://sci-hub.st/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00116

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

#39

Post by sp332 »

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.

I'm not talking about a fear budget, I'm talking about actual money. In 20 years we had SARS, MERS, ebola, H1N1, and then SARS 2. It makes no sense to shut down a program that keeps an eye on potential pandemics.

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

#40

Post by voz_ »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #38
voz_ wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> It is blatantly and patently clear that is where the virus came from. I don't think it's so clear. However, rejecting the lab leak is deeply unscientific. From a Bayesian standpoint, before anything was known, it was silly to dismiss the probability. Estimates from before the pandemic suggested the annual risk was ~2.4% [1], or roughly less than a 50-year recurrence interval. Compare that to the base-rate of roughl…

The vehement rejection of it out of not wanting to anger China speaks volumes to its credibility. The truth is always the opposite of what that regime says.

Nothing happened in Tiananmen Square -> We massacred pro democracy students

There is no food shortage -> There is a food shortage

We are not interning Uighers in concentration camps -> We are doing ethnic cleansing on native populations

Taiwan is not a country -> Taiwan is a fully sovereign state

So, applying that same logic, it's pretty easy to figure this one out.

On top of that, people trying to somehow decry that this is "republican" or "racist" are ignorant themselves, facts stand on their own merit, and there is nothing racist about any of these accusations. It is a pathetic appeal to partisan identity politics where there should be none.

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