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What we learned doing Fast Grants

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Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#41

Post by andreilys »

cbsmith wrote: post #37
draklor40 wrote: post #9

Individuals are more ready to take risks than institutions. To me this was the most damning indictment of all. Once founders leave a compnay (or an institution), as BalajiS says, they become a shell of their former selves,with the individuals mostly in for self-preservation rather than set out fulfill the purpose of the institution.

I wouldn't call it a damning indictment. You set up institutions to protect the status quo. Individuals can go ahead with risks and experiments, but you don't want to risk an entire society with someone's wild idea. For every wild idea that works out, there's many more that didn't. Of course we should mitigate risks before potentially destroying society.

Institutions operating in "peace-time" mode during war-time are failing the people they are supposed to represent.

Continuing to protect the status quo during a national emergency is irresponsible and leads to countless lives lost.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#42

Post by bsder »

draklor40 wrote: post #9

Individuals are more ready to take risks than institutions. To me this was the most damning indictment of all. Once founders leave a compnay (or an institution), as BalajiS says, they become a shell of their former selves,with the individuals mostly in for self-preservation rather than set out fulfill the purpose of the institution.

> Individuals are more ready to take risks than institutions.

> To me this was the most damning indictment of all.

Why?

One company in Texas geared up and started emergency mask production back when the original SARS/MERS hit. And it almost killed his company. He refused to wind up production for masks during Covid without cash and a contract. That's just smart business.

In the US, the Trump administration and a Republican Senate had absolutely demonstrated that it would absolutely leave people in the lurch who didn't kowtow appropriately.

That is NOT an atmosphere where you are going to bet the company on the fact that the government will do the sane thing.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#43

Post by nickthemagicman »

teclordphrack2 wrote: post #40
nickthemagicman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we quit treating people like children and make all drugs legal? The FDA stamp will just be a stamp of quality to help guide people to a known quality product. No enforcement of drug laws at the barrel of an authorities gun. But if people want to do some experimental off brand use that their doctor recommends then they can. If people do their own research and want to self prescribe they can. Getting the mono…

The only reason I like this idea is that we know a certain political segment of society would of been killed off by dumb decisions in this area via hydroxychloroquine.

Didn't that turn out to work?

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.28.21258012v...

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#44

Post by nickthemagicman »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #35
buu700 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought the same thing and generally agree with it. Why shouldn't I be able to walk to CVS and pick up a bottle of heroin and various prescription drugs? I'm an adult; I shouldn't even owe anyone an explanation. At the same time, I think we would need to concurrently ban drug advertisements as other countries have. To me, that seems like a better balance between treating individuals as adults with autonomy and m…

The reason you can't go to CVS and pick up heroin or crack is: Inevitably, lots of people would become addicted and there would be many deaths. Very critical news stories would run. People neglecting their children to use drugs. Testimonies of loved ones and shattered families. Politicians would be inundated with calls to regulate these dangerous substances. Politicians who refused to do anything would be mired in co…

Your entire post is pure speculation and fear mongering

All drugs are decriminalized in Portugal, Uruguay, etc. with less addiction and better addiction outcomes than the U.S.

They treat addiction like a disease like diabetes instead of a crime.

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/18/524380027/...

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#45

Post by nickthemagicman »

cbsmith wrote: post #30
DrJones1098 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between people who don't think vaccines are good as a whole...and people who question a rushed vaccine developed with no FDA oversight or testing by companies who have absolutely no liability if things go wrong for a disease that has 99.99% survival rate for most people. And then there are questions about it even WORKING fully and one still has to wear a mask and you can still be contagious and i…

> There's a difference between people who don't think vaccines are good as a whole...and people who question a rushed vaccine developed with no FDA oversight or testing by companies who have absolutely no liability if things go wrong for a disease that has 99.99% survival rate for most people. > > And then there are questions about it even WORKING fully and one still has to wear a mask and you can still be contagious…

> Covid chance of death in general population (Deaths / US population):

100 - (600000/350 million) = 99.9982857143% survival rate

> "Currently, no coronavirus vaccine is fully approved by the FDA, but three were given emergency use authorization by the agency"

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/coronavirus/are-covid-vaccin...

> The demand on our healthcare infrastructure is potentially crippling, as we've seen Completely false. Not a single hospital was crippled.

Most of what you said is false information and the idea of a 'having my bell rung' appears to be a subtle violent threat!

Such a rational critical thinking person you seem to be and the others like you!

Best wishes sweetie!

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#46

Post by eganp »

jvanderbot wrote: post #7

The US went all in on vaccines. I'm disappointed but not surprised that the US didn't fund more academic R&D; that's the MO I expected during that administration.

I'm glad we did. Vaccines were a home-run solution. In a crisis, what does academic R+D get you on the margin? Better testing for sure, but that wouldn't solve the crisis like vaccines would.

I will say the drug repurposing landscape was an absolute fiasco last year. Every funding opportunity wanted reams of data supporting use in COVID19 which takes time to generate. Yet, somehow on-patent anti-IL-6 drugs were tried again and again and again even in the absence of elevated IL-6.

UK and the NHS really got this right by centralizing repurposing efforts. In the US, there aren't more than ~50 experts in drug repurposing. Why didn't HHS/CDC round them up, lock them in a room, and have to rank-order molecules for proposed basket repurposing trials? We could have saved ~10-100k lives in the US with better drugs for early- and mid-stage disease, but nobody wants to fund a drug that can't generate an ROI. Truly a market, and institutional, failure here.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#47

Post by nickthemagicman »

jfengel wrote: post #28
nickthemagicman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Tribeca, as most film festivals, are about dialogue and discussion. Over the years we have presented many films from opposing sides of an issue. We are a forum, not a judge,” a spokeswoman said in a statement on behalf of the festival earlier this week. GOOD. If you're correct your viewpoint will stand up to dialogue.

That seems like an odd thing for them to say, since they are judges. They "curate" the entries that come in, and then celebrity judges award prizes. They're not really a discussion forum. They're mostly about just showing things. They have some panels, but mostly any discussions kicked off by films are arranged by the attendees for themselves. There are truly unjuried festivals, but they're much less high profile bec…

They are the people who run the show. I'm sure they know better than us!

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#48

Post by cbsmith »

andreilys wrote: post #41
cbsmith wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call it a damning indictment. You set up institutions to protect the status quo. Individuals can go ahead with risks and experiments, but you don't want to risk an entire society with someone's wild idea. For every wild idea that works out, there's many more that didn't. Of course we should mitigate risks before potentially destroying society.

Institutions operating in "peace-time" mode during war-time are failing the people they are supposed to represent. Continuing to protect the status quo during a national emergency is irresponsible and leads to countless lives lost.

Part of the trick is determining what the baseline risk levels are and what safeguards should be dispensed with. It's not binary "peace-time" vs. "war-time". It's about the baseline risk factors.

Aside from societal risk, there's individual risk too. When a society's mortality rate drops, it is appropriate to have more safeguards, and when it increases, it is appropriate to have fewer safeguards.

...and then there's also the systemic effects of a broader, more relaxed approach to funding. While distributing $50 million means you're getting high quality leads, if you're in charge of a $5 billion funding program (which the NIH did manage: https://covid19.nih.gov/funding), the net effect of opening up the flood gates is going to be very different. Even if you do a good job of distributing that money (and that is, in itself a HUGE challenge), you're going to be dealing with law suits and political challenges that you'd not deal with for a $50 million fund.

It may suck, but it's the reality of large systems.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#49

Post by eganp »

ipsum2 wrote: post #32
jvanderbot wrote: post #7

The US went all in on vaccines. I'm disappointed but not surprised that the US didn't fund more academic R&D; that's the MO I expected during that administration.

There's plenty of funding for academic R&D ( https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/COVID-Related.cfm ), TFA focuses on how slow it took to get that funding or repurpose existing funding. I was following some research into repurposing existing drugs for COVID that started early last year. Only last month did they complete gathering enough people for the experiment.

I worked with a group trying to get a drug repurposing study running in June of last year. U01 submissions were often Sept-Aug with no cash until April 2021. To a degree, these NOTs and RFAs are deeply unserious and woefully underfunded. There are 10s of absurdly narrow sub-focuses (e.g. "Medical Consequences of Smoking and Vaping Drugs of Abuse in Individuals with HIV and COVID-19" really??) that are great add-ons to some existing research problem, but totally miss the point. It's not wrong to study these the ideas, but why prioritize over larger more impactful studies of drugs to treat ARDS or ALI?

Much like The Fed provided public and private debt support, these applications are more pork for existing investigators with deep knowledge of the NIH bureaucracy, but sadly likely of little relevance to the larger issue.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#50

Post by buu700 »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #44
xyzzy123 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you can't go to CVS and pick up heroin or crack is: Inevitably, lots of people would become addicted and there would be many deaths. Very critical news stories would run. People neglecting their children to use drugs. Testimonies of loved ones and shattered families. Politicians would be inundated with calls to regulate these dangerous substances. Politicians who refused to do anything would be mired in co…

Your entire post is pure speculation and fear mongering All drugs are decriminalized in Portugal, Uruguay, etc. with less addiction and better addiction outcomes than the U.S. They treat addiction like a disease like diabetes instead of a crime. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/18/524380027/...

I didn't get the sense that GP was necessarily agreeing with those positions, more illustrating the high-level political hurdles (right or wrong) that legalization fundamentally faces.

It's similar in my mind to self-driving cars. The first post-large-scale-rollout deaths will likely cause a political backlash, even if statisticians and scientists are able to show that the proposed regulatory response would cause more harm than good.

I don't agree that the successful implementation of such a regulatory response is a foregone conclusion in either case, but we will need to be prepared to deal with the reality of some people dying due to self-driving software issues and/or consumption of non-FDA-approved substances.

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