[HN Gopher] Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosi...
___________________________________________________________________
Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola
cases
Author : msyoung2012
Score : 212 points
Date : 2022-11-08 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.telegraph.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.telegraph.co.uk)
| max_ wrote:
| Ebola is already out of control! There are reports of infectious
| people collapsing all over the Kampala(on social media) but the
| government hasn't initiated any covid level precautions.
|
| [0]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkkyFfrjv2D/?hl=en
| Closi wrote:
| The quality of forecasting here looks questionable IMO... Let's
| take the only visible leaked slide below:
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/global-health/2022/1...
|
| 1) The forecast appears to be "200 new cases per month" (i.e.
| Month 1 is 200 cases, Month 3 is 600 cases (3 _200) and Month 4
| is 1200 cases (6_ 200)). This is far too simplistic, and should
| probably follow an exponential/logistic curve if r>1.
|
| 2) The graph has simple stats failures like plotting a line
| between a bar chart.
|
| Doesn't give me too much hope for the other 15 slides...
|
| (The above isn't to say that it isn't a scary situation - clearly
| this is an awful situation which needs a huge amount of support.
| But the apparent quality of analysis does worry me that decision
| makers might not be working on great information)
| martey wrote:
| I think the Telegraph article (
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas... )
| that this blog post is based on is a better read. It makes clear
| that the idea that the outbreak will become "out of control" is
| from an anonymous source, not the leaked documents.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! changed to that from https://blog.ebola-
| cases.com/leaked-ebola-projections-uganda....
| cmrivers wrote:
| The outbreak in Uganda is troubling, but a forecast that goes out
| 6+ months is silly. No professional infectious disease modeler
| will forecast out more than a few weeks because the trajectory of
| the outbreak changes in response to interventions and behaviors.
| thedorkknight wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. I'm no epidemiologist, but have
| friends who work in disease modeling, and used to follow some
| virology blogs/podcasts. They usually make lots of models, each
| with different assumptions, specifically to guess what the
| intervention of different public health measures would do.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| >a forecast that goes out 6+ months is silly.
|
| Sure is, which is why it's odd we've been bombarded with
| endless graphs with months of predictions, over the past 2.5
| years.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I guess as it transformed from epidemic to pandemic to
| endemic, it became increasingly predictable. The duration and
| peaks of the last waves could even be predicted by months
| indeed, as measures and behaviors remained practically
| unchanged. Not one of these predictions encompassed six
| months, though.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| >Not one of these predictions encompassed six months,
| though.
|
| I beg to differ. Here's a sample of what we got, on a daily
| basis, in the UK:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=uk+covid+predictions&tbm=is
| c...
|
| Plenty of those are dated from the early months of 2020.
| Finnucane wrote:
| For ebola?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| How've I not noticed this? I've instead seen a whole lot of
| graphs with no prediction whatsoever and lots and lots of
| people in positions of authority who seem totally unable to
| extrapolate from those in their heads, resulting in idiotic
| back-and-forth on various restrictions for the first 18 or so
| months of the pandemic.
|
| Shit like schools releasing plans ahead of the school year
| that they then immediately ignore because otherwise they'd
| have to close in the first two weeks of school, when it was
| _fucking obvious_ the numbers would be like that around that
| time, just from looking at the graph and knowing more-or-less
| how disease spreads. Or "Ok stop masking and open up
| restaurants wait oh shit it's going up again I thought the
| tiny dip we saw would continue forever, for no good reason".
| Just baffling levels of data-illiteracy.
|
| But not a lot of long-term prediction graphs. Who was
| publishing those?
|
| [EDIT] Wait, I _did_ see total-deaths-at-time-X predictions
| with /without measures, and with/without vaccination at high
| rates. That's true.
|
| [EDIT EDIT] Is there a tone issue or is my having seen
| _vanishingly_ few graphs for all of COVID that tried to
| predict trends more than a week or two out an outlier
| experience, and those were in fact extremely common in,
| perhaps, media I didn 't look at? Truly, the main problem I
| saw locally was an astonishing near-complete _failure_ to
| consider trends and likely projections, over and over again
| and often by the same people, who seemed weirdly incapable of
| learning a very clear lesson, rather than too many
| projections looking too far out.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| Sounds like you're in the UK. Do you consume _any_
| mainstream media?
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=uk+covid+predictions&tbm=is
| c...
|
| I didn't take in much news, and now avoid it more than
| ever, but what little I did was wall-to-wall with
| projections complete with big scary peaks and steep rises
| in numbers. I dread to think of the state of mind of
| someone who watched more like the average number of TV
| hours (for me it is zero), and took in all of this with an
| uncritical mind.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| My guess is a tone issue. It's hard to even tell that
| you're saying you haven't seen long term graphs - the first
| sentence comes across as sarcastic when followed by long
| sentences complaining about other problems.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I thought:
|
| > I've instead seen a whole lot of graphs with no
| prediction whatsoever
|
| made it pretty clear, but maybe not. And the rest was
| expressing that the actual on-the-ground problem I saw,
| and the single biggest problem with my state & local-
| level response to the whole thing, was a complete _lack
| of_ attention to future trends, not too much. But perhaps
| that doesn 't come across very well. _Mea Culpa_.
| hamburglar wrote:
| We have? I've certainly been bombarded with graphs showing
| trends, but six month predictions? Where are you seeing
| these? Can you point me to some?
| [deleted]
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| Sure.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=uk+covid+predictions&tbm=is
| c...
|
| There are plenty that stretch out for a year.
| slenk wrote:
| Doesn't seem odd for news outlets, unfortunately.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Hyped up drama sells newspapers. Unfortunately.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| How is it disingenuous to use assumptions for modeling?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| That sounds... wrong? What if the 6+ month forecast assuming no
| interventions is useful to compel an intervention, and the 2-3
| week one is not?
| cmrivers wrote:
| Then it's a scenario model, which asks what-if questions
| usually for planning purposes (e.g., what's the most hospital
| beds we might need?). Scenario models can have longer time
| horizons than forecasts, but 6 months is still quite long.
| knob wrote:
| That is a quite cool way of separating those models. Can
| you point me in a direction where I could learn more? RE:
| Forecast vs Scenario?
| mwint wrote:
| If "useful to compel" is a criteria, we can jump straight to
| flat-out lying and dispose with the statistics part.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| We already did quite a bit of lying during the Covid
| pandemic.
| jcelerier wrote:
| welcome to government!
| greesil wrote:
| Or industry!
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| So you're in charge of making decisions. Hypothetically.
| Your epidemiologists believe that if no action is taken, 10
| people will die in the next two weeks, 100 people will die
| in the next 4 weeks, and 1,000,000 will die in the next 6
| months.
|
| Which forecasts would you prefer they keep to themselves?
| jakear wrote:
| Starting an implication with "if no action is taken after
| 100,000 deaths" is the same as "if false" -- you can put
| anything in the "then" and have the statement be
| logically sound - that doesn't mean it's in any way
| useful.
|
| End of the day that kind of talk just damages trust in
| the scientific process, which has to be at an all time
| low with regard to epidemiology, as a result of the
| stream of certified lies that have been presented as
| public policy over the past few years. ("Masks don't
| work" being the first of many)
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > Starting an implication with "if no action is taken
| after 100,000 deaths" is the same as "if false" -- you
| can put anything in the "then" and have the statement be
| logically sound - that doesn't mean it's in any way
| useful.
|
| 1) Not when YOU are the person who determines if action
| should be taken!
|
| 2) You seem to be implying that action can be taken at
| 100,000 which will be effective at preventing the spread
| to 1,000,000 which may be true or may be false, but it's
| going to be far easier to stop it at 10 regardless.
| viraptor wrote:
| > "if no action is taken after 100,000 deaths" is the
| same as "if false"
|
| Is useful as the higher bound and for judging the results
| of actions.
|
| But still... I think you're too sure about people in
| charge following reasonable behaviours. We don't even
| have to go as far as the great famine. There's lots of
| things going wrong now where people responsible
| explicitly do not address the issue.
| [deleted]
| wwweston wrote:
| The GP is invoking the idea of a compelling understanding,
| one that produces action by buy-in.
|
| If you're confused on that point vs sinister authoritarian
| actions, then the risk of other people lying to you is far
| from your biggest problem.
| hammock wrote:
| How far out did the Covid forecasts look, to justify global
| lockdowns?
| beebmam wrote:
| Are you claiming that the lockdowns that happened in the
| first half of 2020 had zero effect on SARS-CoV-2 infections?
| Jerrrry wrote:
| They did not.
|
| Florida vs California.
|
| read up.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| In case anyone would like to actually read up on the
| impact of restrictions:
|
| States That Imposed Few Restrictions Now Have the Worst
| Outbreaks (Nov 18, 2020)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/18/us/covid-
| stat...
| mwint wrote:
| I mean...
|
| > Nov 18, 2020
|
| Looks at deaths per capita, from Jan 2020 to today. The
| position of peaks is barely relevant compared to their
| cumulative impact.
| hammock wrote:
| I'm literally asking a question, since it is news to me
| that "no professional infectious disease modeler will
| forecast out more than a few weeks."
|
| Do I sense attitude? If so, why?
| thedorkknight wrote:
| That's not quite the right way of phrasing that question.
| Models are made with and without interventions taken into
| account, and the lockdowns were a reaction to models showing
| reduced deaths and hospital strain if lockdown measures were
| in place. I'm not sure what that guy is talking about.
|
| But if you're actually interested, you should go and read the
| papers used for modeling yourself, since the odds of finding
| a rando on hacker news who is an actual epidemiologists is
| zilch. The ones who were public communicators that I followed
| over COVID were the podcast "This Week in Virology" which is
| just about the best resource you're going to find, and the
| blog "your local epidemiologist", who is also fantastic
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The fear with COVID was mutation of the disease into
| something more deadly and more contagious. What looks like
| fearmongering now was cautious behavior around mutation at
| the time. Conversely, Ebola isn't likely to mutate now, so we
| don't need that same level of caution.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Conversely, Ebola isn't likely to mutate now
|
| Can you explain why?
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > What looks like fearmongering now
|
| We had over 1 million deaths in the US.
|
| You travel back to 2016 and tell people we'll have a
| pandemic in the US, 1 million people will die, and then
| large groups of people will attempt to shrug that off as
| "nothing to get concerned about", people would find that
| incomprehensible.
|
| If I were to post a comment on HN in 2016 suggesting that
| people would shrug off 1 million deaths due to a pandemic
| because it doesn't align with their worldview I would have
| been downvoted into oblivious for holding such a laughably
| ridiculous and cynical opinion.
|
| Same could be said of the countless other climate related
| impacts that people in the very near distant past would
| consider horrific and impossible.
|
| The power of the "this is fine" culture to not see reality
| is terrifying.
| bushbaba wrote:
| 300k Americans die each year from obesity. Yet nobody
| seems to view this as an urgent issue needing addressing.
| refulgentis wrote:
| They didn't need much more than noting Rt and experience of
| Wuhan, if you're thinking "IMHE!", sort of a red herring:
| yeah, they predicted X million of deaths, but it wasn't
| anymore complicated than take Rt, use in formula, and yeah we
| should probably see if we can eradicate this thing locally,
| early. Was never a global decision.
| cmrivers wrote:
| Update, this comment refers to the original blog post
| submission, which pulled out forecasted numbers with no
| context. The Telegraph article is better.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| The 60 Minutes episode that aired recently where they traveled to
| the hot spots in Africa is fascinating. We know about the
| inevitable. It is up to us humans what we do with this
| information. Case in point: COVID mask hostility in spite of
| caring for the health of fellow humans or getting it and denying
| it until it kills them (source: nurse friend on a cardiac ward in
| the Midwest). YMMV.
| exhilaration wrote:
| The headline is scary but #1 Ebola isn't airborne and #2 it's
| super deadly which means it kills before it really has a chance
| to spread widely.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| I don't know if you have read some of the tweets but it seems
| that ebola can remain dormant in some of the recovered
| individuals and then be transmitted(sexually in this case)
| years latter.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/ebola-may-have-
| lurke...
|
| About a 2021 outbreak: "The Ebola virus is known to persist
| in some survivors, particularly in places where it can lay
| low from the immune system, such as the testicles or
| eyeballs. A 2016 study reported resurgence of the virus in a
| survivor's seminal fluid more than 500 days after the initial
| infection.
|
| Still, the more than five-year span was "shocking" to many
| virologists and public health experts. And it raises a
| variety of concerns for the many survivors of past outbreaks,
| some of whom may have had mild cases of Ebola without
| realizing it. In particular, many people known to have
| survived Ebola face stigmatization, and the possibility of
| years-long persistence is likely to amplify that problem."
| pelorat wrote:
| And the only reason it spreads is due to lack of education.
| [deleted]
| kramerger wrote:
| Is there a particular program or degree that makes me immune?
|
| Because multiple members of Doctors Without Borders died in
| the previous outbreak.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Basically, having universal or near-universal access to
| modern sanitation is the "program". If you're not in a
| community that has this, being a member of Doctors Without
| Borders is insufficient as a guard against getting
| infected. Conversely, having running water and flush
| toilets as the norm makes it far less likely for dieases
| like ebola to spread even among non-members of Doctors
| Without Borders.
|
| So, while "lack of education" is not the right diagnosis
| here, lack of basic amenities certainly is.
| wkearney99 wrote:
| That's entirely disingenuous, and you know it. There's a
| huge difference between the uneducated public in the
| developing world (or, clearly, everywhere really) and those
| that choose to enter into those challenging conditions to
| try and help people.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| They should have had worked harder in schools. I thought
| the message was out by this point
| dwheeler wrote:
| Right. Ebola spreads via contact with infected blood or body
| fluids. That's terrible for those infected, and we should
| definitely take steps to counter its spread. But that's not at
| all the same level of risk as airborne spreading.
| throwaway920102 wrote:
| I mean it could evolve to be airborne in the wild or in a
| research lab doing intentional gain of function research (a
| practice for which funding was temporarily halted by Obama) and
| hybridization much like has been done at BSL-4 facilities
| worldwide unchecked including by EcoHealth alliance with bat
| coronaviruses via US funding at the WIV prior to the Covid
| outbreak in Wuhan.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-fai...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01209-w
|
| https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-fu...
|
| But it's probably fine and we probably shouldn't worry about
| the possibility of a global pandemic or of mutation of Ebola
| into a more transmissible form.
| benreesman wrote:
| Why is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is
| pretty mainstream these days.
|
| And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane
| and 3: a plausible way we would have a true captain trips
| style pandemic.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Gain function is only way to research pathogens.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| No it isn't.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Nature has no qualms about performing GOF research if we
| don't do it. How do we protect ourselves from future
| viral and biological evolution otherwise? Virus's evolve
| literally every day, and if we don't find a way to build
| tools, processes, and countermeasures, we will absolutely
| be strongly harmed by a future one.
|
| This always feels like the "we can't afford to fix
| climate change so we just will ignore the problem" take.
| justapassenger wrote:
| To study how they evolve and their potential to become a
| problem? Yeah, that's the only way to go.
|
| And given how fast viruses evolve, there's no real
| alternative.
| benreesman wrote:
| I think everyone agrees that observing live virus in the
| lab is a critical (if dangerous) part of studying them.
|
| _Intentionally_ engineering them as high as possible on
| transmissibility and morbidity is bioweapon development
| being money laundered through conventional science: it's
| an insane thing to do.
|
| Leaving SARS-COV-2 out of it completely: there have
| indisputably been other leaks. It's the height of
| irresponsibility and shortsightedness to engineer
| civilization-ending viruses, which is why it's banned
| under multiple international conventions that GoF is a
| workaround for.
|
| You don't need a vaccine for the fucking superflu if you
| _never develop the fucking superflu_.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's a hell of a leap to go from gain of function research
| has ever happened at all to gain of function specifically
| on Ebola is a near-term serious risk. Is there any evidence
| that gain of function has ever been conducted on Ebola?
| I've never heard of it, and don't know where to look other
| than a search engine, and conducting a search there returns
| exactly two sources making that claim, one called
| "scamdemic" and one called "goldismoney." Neither seems
| like a particularly reputable source.
| [deleted]
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's really not mainstream amongst virologists.. as has
| been demonstrated by repeatedly debunking the latest gish
| gallop papers, there's literally zero evidence for lab
| manipulation of the sars cov2 virus. It's vaguely plausible
| that the virus could have been captured in the wild and
| then leaked, but even that seems extremely unlikely given
| the two separate market lineages and timeline of the
| earliest cases.
|
| Stricter control of GoF makes a lot of sense but the reason
| everyone was studying coronavirus pandemics in the first
| place is because we'd had several near misses and everyone
| in the virology community knew it was only a matter of time
| before the right circumstances allowed a spillover to do
| exactly what Covid19 did.
| pvarangot wrote:
| > It's really not mainstream amongst virologists
|
| I mean if you seriously believe that theory you are
| probably going to either end, start thinking about how to
| end, or significantly change how you develop, your career
| as a virologist. Of course it's not mainstream.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| It's not common for virologists to work on GOF research
| or to do anything close to as dangerous.
|
| It's pure tin hat thinking to say that "my idea is
| correct and everyone who has any expertise is
| compromised". I don't know what is right or not, but I
| know a lot of virologists (through work) without any
| personal interest in the case who don't put much stock in
| the lab leak hypothesis.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist
| right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But
| WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came
| outside of China. Even western virologists have been
| supporting Chinese scientists. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII
| S0140-6...
| benreesman wrote:
| I think there is a lot more controversy than you're
| implying, even among serious scientists, but an HN
| comment thread is probably not the right place to
| litigate a complex issue that is also a partisan
| political football.
|
| I'll leave it at this: I would encourage everyone to do
| their own research on this and try to look past the
| elephant in the room of the politics angle.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I find pretty often when people resolve conversations
| like this by saying 'do your own research', particularly
| when the research to be done requires any homework at
| all, it is shorthand for 'find a loud voice saying things
| that are compatible with the worldview you've decided on
| already'.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If "you do your own research" to confirm your own pre-
| existing ideas, then yes, you're going to get where you
| wanted to go.
|
| I read "do your own research" differently. I think it can
| go two different directions.
|
| In the positive direction, it can mean "Ignore all the
| loudmouths, all the liars, all the self-anointed experts.
| Even ignore me, the speaker. Find out who really knows
| what they're talking about, and listen to them." This
| assumes, though, that the listener _can_ do that. Am I
| actually capable to discern truth from lies, or even real
| expertise from incompetence, in virology? Maybe, if I
| devote enough time to it. Do I have that kind of time for
| every topic on which someone tells me "do your own
| research"? Probably not. So what it really turns into is
| finding someone who at least sounds like they are doing
| their own research (and doing it well), and listening to
| them.
|
| More negatively, I suspect that "do your own research" at
| least sometimes is a veiled way of saying "If you really
| knew, then you would agree with me" in a much less in-
| your-face way than just saying it. The person saying this
| may have done their research as you say, finding a loud
| voice that said what they wanted to hear, and now be
| totally convinced that they are right, and that if you
| did your research, you would wind up agreeing with them.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I've got a busy day so don't want to get into it again --
| but I cannot express how incapable the average (even
| educated!) person is to "do their own research" on
| something as complex and nuanced as molecular engineering
| and the probabilities of covid genetic engineering.
|
| Even some expert 'pre-reviewers' that received the
| advance of the most recent bombshell paper that
| supposedly proved an unnatural virus with lab origin
| missed obvious tells that completely invalidated the
| authors' claims. E.g. this thread; https://twitter.com/Ba
| llouxFrancois/status/15870905072887767...
|
| If people do want to make up their own minds on this -
| I'd encourage you to track down people making falsifiable
| claims _and then changing their priors based on the
| results of that research_ instead of people jumping from
| one conspiracy theory to the next to avoid changing their
| views.
|
| As one data point, several prominent "lab leakers" on
| Twitter are now insisting that prior strains are fake and
| were invented by virologists since those strains disprove
| recent papers instead of considering that maybe those
| recent papers were flawed. It's bizarre to watch. (One of
| the authors of the most recent 'bombshell' LL paper
| claiming that two related field-collected coronaviruses
| are fake / manipulated:
| https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1584920770605621248)
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > I've got a busy day so don't want to get into it again
| -- but I cannot express how incapable the average (even
| educated!) person is to "do their own research" on
| something as complex and nuanced as molecular engineering
| and the probabilities of covid genetic engineering.
|
| I don't think you can claim to have consensus on this
| matter since Dr. Li-Meng Yan who worked at the lab and
| got the CCP scrub when she went public had been speaking
| out about this since 2020 after having been in hiding and
| then fleeing China for her claims. Moreover she detailed
| how people who worked at the lab in Wuhan have been in
| retrospect beholden to the CCP for not discussing the
| poor safety record of the lab.
|
| And your position about how it's not worthy of discussion
| makes it very clear you speak with a sense of bias
| because ultimately a conclusive epidemiological study
| will prove impossible since the floods in Wuhan in 2020
| took place that coincided with the CCP's abject refusal
| to have outside investigators come in and search for the
| possible origin of the COVID, and even accused the US of
| creating the virus and spreading it--much how Russia has
| made to justify it's illegal invasion into Ukraine to de-
| nazify it and now de-satanize it after claims of US COVID
| biolabs in Ukraine.
|
| For what's it worth, I have a BSc in cellular and
| molecular biology, and I was also involved in the plight
| of the HK people since the Umbrella Revolution, and had
| people been actually abreast of that situation they would
| have known that something was going incredibly wrong by
| November 2019: the CCP/Lam regime forced the protests for
| the extradition bill (and possibly declare independence
| the way things were going since the Summer) in HK to be
| quelled altogether for a fear of contagion of what had
| been going around in order to prevent the calamity of the
| Avaian Bird flu that is still in recent memory for many
| in HK--which was much worse on the mainland than it was
| in HK because of the abysmal health and safety practices
| by the CCP.
|
| And had people paid attention, the CCP not only arrested
| many dissenters and created a massive diaspora in one of
| the most affluent and well educated countries in Asia
| that served as an economic hub to the West it got the NSL
| to pass during this time, it also continued to arrest and
| intimidate Hong Kong into abject repression all under the
| pretense of COVID. when they themselves, via the Lam
| regime, kept the borders open and allowed mainland
| Chinese to enter HK and their were plenty of recorded
| footage of them violating covid practices (quarantine)
| and actively going into public areas and act as vectors
| (coughing and spitting on elevators), going into
| restaurants despite quarantine practices etc...
|
| Lastly, Propublica released an investigative piece last
| month about the lab leak theory [0] under the auspicious
| of the US senate, which I'm not denying has glaring geo-
| political overtones; especially given the CCP's saber-
| rattling towards Taiwan and well documented tyrannical
| behaviour in Xinjiang and Hong Kong; the latter violated
| the Sino-British treaty and dismissed international Law
| which effectively mean it illegally annexed a territory
| imposed a repressive law (NSL) to suppress any dissent
| which was to operate autonomously until 2037--which can
| be seen as hostile as Russia violating both the Budapest
| Memorandum and the Minsk agreements when it invaded
| Ukraine in 2014 and illegally annexed and occupied
| Crimea/Lugansk/Donetsk and has led to full invasion and
| crimes against Humanity ever since with indiscriminate
| shelling on civilian areas under the aforementioned
| pretenses.
|
| I'll leave it here because quite honestly I can't fathom
| anyone to be so brazenly reductionist in their thinking
| and claim to have the 'upper hand' when their is clear
| violations all the way which implicate not just the CCP
| but the US (via NIH funding) as well for funding the GoF
| research in Wuhan [1] despite repeated safety record
| violations.
|
| And on a personal note: it's because the health sciences
| is filled with people like you that I had to turn to tech
| in the end. I was sent into such a forlorn depression
| after a short career in it when I found the Industry is
| was mainly filled with people who will cling on to any
| party-line in order to continue their work and research.
| In retrospect I wish I had chosen something else to give
| so much of my time, effort and passion had I known how
| quickly it becomes a way to legitimize the commonly held
| narratives of the State or a Corporation, and how quickly
| it willing compromise itself for such short-sighted goals
| in the process.
|
| 0: https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-
| covid-19-or...
|
| 1: https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-
| director/statem...
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Me: "Doing your own research on this is very difficult
| due to people with credentials selling their reputations
| to service political goals."
|
| You: "What about this Chinese scientist who lied about
| their experience and had no actual evidence of anything
| but who was working with Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui and
| repeatedly platformed on Tucker Carlson?![1] Oh and a
| Senate Republicans minority committee just released a
| report that mistranslates standard Chinese party doctrine
| as menacing![2]"
|
| Admitting that Covid19 was very likely a spillover of a
| natural virus doesn't mean that you trust China, that you
| think their labs are run well or are incapable of
| accidents, that they've been transparent or helpful with
| the investigations, or that the possibility of new
| evidence pointing to a lab origin is foreclosed -- just
| that the actual physical evidence we have today about
| _this virus_ and _this pandemic_ overwhelmingly points to
| a natural origin.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/business/media/steve-
| bann...
|
| [2] - https://twitter.com/janeqiuchina/status/15890981670
| 51911169
| we_never_see_it wrote:
| > [2] - https://twitter.com/janeqiuchina/status/158909816
| 7051911169
|
| Since you put the Twitter handle as an evidence for your
| argument. This particular Chinese jounalist is using
| Twitter and publishing articles in Western journals *
| _while living in China*_. What makes you think she is
| more trustworthy than Steve Bannon? Even if she is an
| honest and trustworthy person why would CCP let her
| publish anything that goes against their narrative?
|
| > just that the actual physical evidence we have today
| about this virus and this pandemic overwhelmingly points
| to a natural origin
|
| actual physical evidence * _provided by China*_ FTFY. You
| don 't think China will readily handover the data to you
| if it came from lab, do you? And what physical evidence?
| The evidences are just some early patient data and virus
| gene sequences. By that logic HIV spillover happened in
| US, not in Africa. Because early HIV cases have been
| detected in USA.
|
| > overwhelmingly points to a natural origin
|
| according to whom? The virologists who also have a
| history of covering up lab leaks. The virologists who
| will have the most to lose if lab leak is true. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/20/world/europe/coron
| avirus-...
| benreesman wrote:
| Why are you so insistent that there shouldn't be a
| discussion on this?
|
| For you to say, e.g. "My bona fides are such and such, I
| find this theory highly implausible for $REASONS" would
| be eminently useful and helpful and very much in the
| spirit of the site.
|
| In case the multiple people saying this aren't saying it
| clearly enough: you sound more like "Serious people all
| agree about this, only cranks disagree with us, and you
| plebs wouldn't understand even if I explained it".
|
| Love #1. Fuck #2 in fucking particular.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| > _Serious people all agree about this, only cranks
| disagree with us_
|
| Mostly joking but if the shoe fits... As one example, one
| of the authors of the famous 'Viral' book pointing to a
| Lab Leak is a coal baron GW denier who chaired a bank
| that failed due to subprime loans and who previously
| claimed that HIV was a man-made virus derived from failed
| polio vaccination experiments[1]. How much credence
| should we give someone like that? How many hours of time
| should be spent debunking every new theory he promotes
| rather than just casting him aside and looking for non-
| morons to engage with?
|
| Or how should one engage with this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33522713
|
| It's just a smattering of grievances and debunked
| conspiracy theories. How would virologists begin to
| respond to that?
|
| I mean I said it above, and I'll just copy/paste it here;
|
| > _Admitting that Covid19 was very likely a spillover of
| a natural virus doesn 't mean that you trust China, that
| you think their labs are run well or are incapable of
| accidents, that they've been transparent or helpful with
| the investigations, or that the possibility of new
| evidence pointing to a lab origin is foreclosed -- just
| that the actual physical evidence we have today about
| this virus and this pandemic overwhelmingly points to a
| natural origin._
|
| There _are_ well-intentioned scientists testing theories
| that could point to a lab origin of Covid, it would be
| extremely interesting and important if they find
| something to indicate that 's the case. Unfortunately to
| the casual observer of the actual state of science here,
| they'd be led to believe that there's consensus about a
| lab leak or at least a strong likelihood backed by
| evidence when that's not remotely true.
|
| [1] - https://www.bmartin.cc/dissent/documents/AIDS/River
| /Prospect...
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| I'm not going to engage with the 'me vs you' narrative
| you have going here, because you are forcing this into
| the polarization tactics that social media uses: I
| presented not just sources to those claims but I also
| followed up with ACTUAL incidents that took place that
| you could research yourself that make it impossible to
| arrive to that conclusion that it's _overwhelmingly of
| natural origin_ which has been at the core of the CCP 's
| discourse (despite conflicting claims of it being a US
| bioweapon) which absolves everyone involved and will
| ultimately be the highly contentious but acceptable
| narrative if you want any funding in the future and don't
| want to rock the boat, or if you're a mainlander released
| from indefinite lockdown.
|
| I'd rather question your claims than your position,
| because I know where you stand anyway, which is the crux
| of my response: so, where was it revealed that Dr. Yan
| lied about her credentials and her experience at the
| Wuhan lab? To date that has never been proven despite
| constant criticism, what has been proven is that she was
| scrubbed from the Internet when she went public and that
| the CCP targeted her family (she is a Chinese National)
| while she was still in HK. She continues to publish her
| work in peer-reviewed journals [0] and her work stands
| alongside her colleagues who continue to publish their
| work on other journals. I'm willing to review these
| sources that discredit her in order to contrast with my
| currently held position and arrive to a better informed
| position, which is something I'm not sure you are willing
| to do.
|
| I will agree that those who ran with the story first have
| a clear and unscrupulous bias, but that is the very
| definition of shooting the messenger which never result
| in her claims being thoroughly vetted--she released her
| scientific papers after having arrived to the US and
| fleeing from China then HK and finally to the US. That
| takes resources she likely didn't have after the ordeal.
|
| This has to be seen as dire as the exodus of Jewish
| scientists fleeing Nazi Germany for it to be seen in
| proper context, as that is what has happened in Hong Kong
| since the Summer of 2019 and ultimately what set the NSL
| doctrine in HK, but since so many dismiss things based on
| association then you're making my point for me that is
| continues even in the upper echelons of Academia as I
| presume you are given what you have said and how you have
| expressed yourself thus far.
|
| > Admitting that Covid19 was very likely a spillover of a
| natural virus doesn't mean that you trust China, that you
| think their labs are run well or are incapable of
| accidents, that they've been transparent or helpful with
| the investigations, or that the possibility of new
| evidence pointing to a lab origin is foreclosed -- just
| that the actual physical evidence we have today about
| this virus and this pandemic overwhelmingly points to a
| natural origin.
|
| Personally, I fully admit I do not have beyond an
| undergrads understanding of genetics/virology; my career
| was spent in the field of oncological diagnostics
| (specifically Leukemia and Lymphoma), so it's hardly the
| same field and I do not claim expertise. But, unlike
| most, I have a very clear and documented history laying
| out the violent hypocrisy of the CCP's held beliefs on
| COVID and it's actions in HK that coincided with the
| protests in 2019-2021.
|
| But, it stands to reason that anyone who remains so
| adamant of the claims (Natural origin) and is coaxing it
| as much as you are the likely cause requires much more
| compelling evidence and is otherwise ignoring the simple
| fact that we will never know what happened due to the
| refusal of the CCP to allow investigators into the
| country in the onset while having cases in HK and still
| forcing the borders open to the mainland when it was in
| lockdown and that the subsequent floods removed any real
| evidence that could identify the origin (on either side)
| in order to create a consensus is done in order to get
| back to business as usual while simultaneously trying to
| absolve anyone guilt of this as something that needs to
| be accepted--which is ironic since this naturaly caused
| illness is still forcing people in China to be locked-
| down due to China's zero-covid policy.
|
| These are the (many) mental gymnastics I underscored in
| my first post, and why I think it's deserving of such
| ire. You make claims, you cannot support and instead will
| play identity politics (entirely useless since I'm an
| anarchist and I have no political affiliation) rather
| than rebuttal with actual evidence and facts to support
| your claim. Which thus far include:
|
| - COVID is of Natural Origin due the evidence (that's not
| conclusive)
|
| - Dr. Yan is not a real scientist and lied about her
| experience and is puppet of the MAGA crowd
|
| - Lab Leak is absurd and should be dismissed because
| reasons(?)
|
| Again, I remain that any person with any shred of
| credibility would question all positions and realize we
| simply do not have, and will likely never have, enough
| information to conclusively arrive to either.
|
| But it's this forced narrative and consensus MO (and the
| arrogance that follows with it) that is strikingly
| consistent in my experience--not to mention this need for
| a 'COVID amnesty' and the blanket immunity of
| pharmaceutical corps got early on.
|
| Do I know it definitely leaked from a lab? Absolutely
| not, I felt it was rather convenient and compelling
| evidence to quell the HK revolts against the extradition
| bill (given who bird flu went down) and I saw to what
| length the CCP was willing to go to do so, and has
| continued on a belligerent war-path to achieve it's end
| thorough out it's bloody history and will disspaear, kill
| and enslave people who question it's position and
| supremacy clause on the one china policy.
|
| And this is why I think it's not beyond reason that they
| used the pre-tense of a wet-lab based disease in order to
| achieve their end(s), which ironically was supported by
| the US via NIH grants to study GoF at the Wuhan lab until
| 2017 and had a documented lengthy history of safety
| violations and had reported cases of similar symptoms in
| the Fall of 2019 which was critical in suppressing the HK
| protests.
|
| 0: https://www.scirp.org/(S(lz5mqp453edsnp55rrgjct55))/re
| ferenc...
| benreesman wrote:
| No layperson is qualified to understand _any_ advanced
| technical field these days. Semiconductor fabrication is
| utterly out of reach for the typical voter, but they
| still have to form an opinion on the CHIPS act. Most of
| us aren't lawyers, but still sometimes need to hire them.
| This is the dilemma inherent in not having a
| /u/PhdInEverything.
|
| But the answer isn't "go away and let the grownups
| decide", the answer is to try to learn what constitutes
| an expert, try to understand what degree of consensus
| does or does not exist amongst those experts, try to
| ferret out some obvious biases (e.g. red team / blue team
| idiocy) and be as informed as possible.
|
| The standard model of particle physics, or Wiles FLT
| proof, or 1000 other things are every bit as technical as
| _anything_ in virology, but you'll notice the
| mathematicians all agree: the layperson doesn't have to
| look very hard to know what the takeaway is there.
|
| It's medicine's (including virology's) job to get its
| shit together on the public's behalf, not the other way
| around.
|
| This kind of condescension infuriates me, I'm working
| hard to be as polite as possible here.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| You can be as infuriated as you'd like, but I consider HN
| to be one of the more responsible and educated forums for
| casual discussion and the level of straight up
| conspiracy-driven misinformation on _everything_ related
| to Covid is astonishing. From origins to vaccines to
| treatments (remember all of the threads extolling HCQ and
| IVM?), it 's as sophisticated as you'd expect from people
| "doing their own research" in fields they don't
| understand and apparently aren't equipped to develop an
| understanding of.
|
| There's no political or financial implications to whether
| Wiles' proof of FLT is correct or not, and the proof can
| be checked with certainty by experts in the field -- so
| of course they can come to a consensus about something
| extraordinarily technical. Unfortunately with Covid,
| every question has turned into a political shibboleth so
| there will forever be FUD promoted by people who should
| know better. How is the average reader supposed to weigh
| the probabilities of some esoteric question like what the
| potential presence or absence of IIS restriction sites
| means when it's being promoted by people with advanced
| degrees as evidence of an artificial origin, even though
| it's nonsense?
|
| So I retreat to my earlier advice for those trying to
| form an opinion here -- look into the history of claims
| from the various scientists, and see whether evidence is
| guiding their claims or if their claims are guiding their
| evidence.
| benreesman wrote:
| Neither the GP nor myself said that SARS-COV-2 escaped
| from the Wuhan lab, let alone that it was the result of
| GoF research.
|
| I called it a _theory_ , as in, neither conclusively
| proven nor conclusively disproven. It's a theory about
| which there has been significant controversy. I didn't
| even say there was significant evidence for it.
|
| Acknowledging the existence of a controversy is not the
| same thing as promoting a conspiracy theory, and as you
| yourself point out, basically everyone, from word-
| renowned virologists down to the man in the street, has
| skin in the game on this one.
|
| The world's medical community had a COVID response that
| was a fucking disaster: inconsistent and constantly
| changing guidance, conflicts of interest, geopolitical
| 4th dimensional warfare, rushed and sloppy-looking
| vaccine approvals.
|
| It's no wonder the public believes a bunch of crazy shit:
| the experts dropped the ball. Trying to blame that on the
| ignorance and gullibility of the layperson and flip the
| script like that set back the public's willingness to
| take vaccines and listen to the authorities by 50-100
| years.
|
| Don't try to blame that on us plebs.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist
| right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But
| WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came
| outside of China. Even western virologists have been
| supporting Chinese scientists. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII
| S0140-6...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It sounds like you and the other person agree (edit:
| regarding the need to trust experts). You've just chosen
| to trust different sources of information than the other
| person.
|
| I agree with the other person though, there is a
| correlation between people I've heard say "do your own
| research" and people with less reasonable beliefs. (Hi,
| mom).
| benreesman wrote:
| I'm aware that "do your own research" is a common phrase
| among people who want to believe that "9/11 was an inside
| job" or whatever (also Hi Mom).
|
| I meant it in the more nuanced sense of trying to
| actually do research. A layperson who wants to be
| informed has to start _somewhere_ , and when the stakes
| are as high as with global public health, I think it
| behooves the person in the street to try to at least read
| the _abstracts_ of some papers, try to identify experts
| on both sides of a controversy, and be aware that
| credentials are no guarantee of reasonability.
|
| Shockley played a big role in the transistor, IIRC got
| the Nobel, and later spent years advocating for racist
| eugenicist horseshit: credentials are a good guideline,
| but they can't be blindly trusted.
|
| I really wish the medical community just agreed about all
| this stuff: then my job would be easy, do what they say.
|
| Unfortunately you seem to get one group of MD/PhD people
| saying those other MD/PhD people are cranks, we're the
| "real" scientific consensus. This does not make it easy
| for the well-intentioned layperson.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Most of controversy comes from scientists, often
| biologists and doctors, yeah. But not virologists. You
| know, people who actually know what they're talking
| about.
|
| Biology is such an enormously wide and diverse field that
| opinions of someone who's not a virologist is often as
| relevant as an opinion of the software engineer.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's like asking the DB admin about which machine
| learning framework to use for the new project, instead of
| your data scientist. Sure, the DB admin likely has an
| opinion, but it will almost never be as well formed an
| opinion as the one from your data scientist, even if
| their opinions are in agreement.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| >The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days.
|
| So is denying climate change or the moon landings...
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist
| right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But
| WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came
| outside of China. Even western virologists have been
| supporting Chinese scientists. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII
| S0140-6...
| Closi wrote:
| > So is denying climate change or the moon landings...
|
| Ah yes, so I would assume that the WHO would conclusively
| say that the lab leak theory is incorrect then?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/09/who-sago-
| cov...
|
| Oh... they say they are still investigating it and that
| the theory should be left on the table... but I guess the
| British Medical Journal would say it's total nonsense
| right?!
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656
|
| Hmm... Maybe not, they say it's plausible too. Presumably
| Nature just flat-out tells us that it's a total
| conspiracy theory though right?!
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01529-3
|
| Ah, they stay on the fence and say that it's plausible.
|
| So it's not exactly like denying the moon landings, as I
| haven't heard NASA saying "the moon landings might have
| been faked, but we can't prove either way" anytime
| recently.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| And this is the amazing leap so many people seem to make:
| If it is technically possible, then it must be true.
|
| That's what baffles me here: "We cannot _conclusively_
| say it 's wrong" so it must be right. When did that
| become a popular mode of reasoning? I can only assume
| people are so desperate to believe they will swallow this
| rather than accept reality.
| Closi wrote:
| That's not what I'm saying - Where did I say it must be
| true? I'm saying "We cannot conclusively say it's wrong,
| thus it's not in the same category as the moon landing".
|
| In reality nobody knows the origin for certain, but IMO
| you seem to fall for the fallacy you are describing but
| with the opposite premise - i.e. "We cannot conclusively
| say that the lab leak theory is right or wrong, thus it
| cannot possibly be a lab leak".
| thedorkknight wrote:
| Side note, but is the moon landing hoax popular still? I
| got nostalgia when you mentioned it, boy howdy do I miss
| the x files days of conspiracy theories
| LatteLazy wrote:
| 6% of Americans (10% of millennial Americans) supposedly.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_the
| ori...
|
| Despite actual pictures taken recently...
| postalrat wrote:
| You are claiming 6% is mainstream?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I will say that the evidence is the same for either.
|
| What percentage you think makes an idea mainstream I will
| leave up to you...
| serf wrote:
| let's leave it up to the word definitions instead :
|
| mainstream : the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are
| regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in
| opinion, fashion, or the arts.
|
| So, no, 6% is not mainstream. Moon landing conspiracies
| are by no means a dominant trend anywhere aside from joke
| books and parody.
| chimprich wrote:
| > The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days.
|
| Mainstream, and conceivably true, but lacking in evidence.
| Personally I find it rather implausible due to a lack of
| motivation for why the lab in question would be doing
| secret work on coronaviruses.
|
| > fucking insane
|
| I don't think this is a helpful way to have this debate. I
| don't know enough to have a strong opinion on this, but a
| majority of virologists seem to think it's necessary, so I
| wouldn't automatically label them as lunatics.
|
| > a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style
| pandemic
|
| Other plausible ways are a mutation from an existing
| pathogen or another zoonotic spillover event, which gain of
| function research could potentially predict or help
| mitigate.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| The new report by pro publica and vanity fair is about as
| close to evidence as we are likely to get. The big issue
| here is that we didn't get to hear real investigation of
| it until 2 years after the fact aside from whistleblowers
| with varying level of credibility.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| China was never going to let a legitimate investigation
| happen, no matter what. They have nothing to gain by
| letting people know exactly what happened (because they
| think they can manage things on their own) and everything
| to lose by letting someone prove that wet markets are
| horrific or that bio labs in china have terrible safety.
| rngname22 wrote:
| > why the lab in question would be doing secret work on
| coronaviruses
|
| what was secret about it? the lab in Wuhan was literally
| doing research in 2015 on how bat coronaviruses could
| adapt to spread in humans vs ACE2 receptors and developed
| their own strain: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
|
| from the linked study: "Using the SARS-CoV reverse
| genetics system, we generated and characterized a
| chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus
| SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results
| indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike
| in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple
| orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin
| converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in
| primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers
| equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally,
| in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the
| chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable
| pathogenesis.... On the basis of these findings, we
| synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014
| recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral
| replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests
| a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses
| currently circulating in bat populations."
| chimprich wrote:
| Thanks, that's exactly what I mean. They were publishing
| their work and making public what viruses they were
| working on with collaborators and public databases etc.
| There doesn't seem to be a plausible explanation for why
| they'd be working on a related but entirely new virus and
| keeping it secret.
|
| I suppose they could have just received some samples and
| then that triggered an immediate outbreak before anyone
| heard of it, but having an instant spillover event from a
| handful bat samples with workers using biosecurity
| measures doesn't seem to me especially likely compared to
| the many more interactions humans have with animals
| outside lab settings. (For example, the tens of thousands
| of live animals kept caged in extreme proximity with each
| other and unprotected humans in the huge Wuhan wet
| market).
| throwaway920102 wrote:
| I'm totally trying to be good faith here, but are you
| aware of the recent admissions by NIH that EcoHealth (the
| funders of the research at WIV) basically did exactly
| this?
|
| "On Wednesday, the NIH sent a letter to members of the
| House Committee on Energy and Commerce that acknowledged
| two facts. One was that EcoHealth Alliance, a New York
| City-based nonprofit that partners with far-flung
| laboratories to research and prevent the outbreak of
| emerging diseases, did indeed enhance a bat coronavirus
| to become potentially more infectious to humans, which
| the NIH letter described as an "unexpected result" of the
| research it funded that was carried out in partnership
| with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The second was that
| EcoHealth Alliance violated the terms of its grant
| conditions stipulating that it had to report if its
| research increased the viral growth of a pathogen by
| tenfold."
|
| Further in the article:
|
| "As scientists remain in a stalemate over the pandemic's
| origins, another disclosure last month made clear that
| EcoHealth Alliance, in partnership with the Wuhan
| Institute of Virology, was aiming to do the kind of
| research that could accidentally have led to the
| pandemic. On September 20, a group of internet sleuths
| calling themselves DRASTIC (short for Decentralized
| Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19)
| released a leaked $14 million grant proposal that
| EcoHealth Alliance had submitted in 2018 to the Defense
| Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
|
| It proposed partnering with the Wuhan Institute of
| Virology and constructing SARS-related bat coronaviruses
| into which they would insert "human-specific cleavage
| sites" as a way to "evaluate growth potential" of the
| pathogens. Perhaps not surprisingly, DARPA rejected the
| proposal, assessing that it failed to fully address the
| risks of gain-of-function research."
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-
| funding-r...
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| > but lacking in evidence
|
| Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist
| right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But
| WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came
| outside of China. Even western virologists have been
| supporting Chinese scientists. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII
| S0140-6...
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| >but lacking in evidence
|
| so anything short of a public confession by a CCP
| spokesman isn't enough?
| timr wrote:
| I'll go: because while the parent comment is (loosely,
| tangentially) based in fact, it's an enormous leap to go
| from the kind of differences we're talking about with SARS-
| CoV2 engineering, and the differences of _type_ required to
| aerosolize a filiovirus.
|
| Is it "possible"? Yes, theoretically. But it's not at all
| trivial, and far down my worry list. It's bit like worrying
| that sharks are going to evolve wings and start flying
| around eating people.
| harvey9 wrote:
| But what if lots of ebola was lifted up in a tornado and
| deposited on Los Angeles?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Now we have the basis of a movie.
| gatane wrote:
| Better, a one hit song (8 years ago)
| https://youtu.be/qlnsHiaAoYo
| uoaei wrote:
| Ebolavirus and coronavirus are very, very different. There is
| little in the way of comparison, transmissibility being only
| one of many differences.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| He didn't say that ebolavirus is similar to coronavirus. He
| said that Nurgle worshiping virologists are probably hard
| at work trying to 'enhance' ebola to be more transmissible,
| which is probably true.
| uoaei wrote:
| The point is, assuming that gain-of-function would have a
| viable path at turning a bloodborne pathogen into an
| airborne pathogen, rather than simply making an airborne
| pathogen more transmissible, is disappointing in its
| complete misunderstanding of virology. It de-legitimizes
| the point they're trying to make.
|
| Lab leak theory is more than a big "what if", it has
| merit to it. To try to make an analogous argument toward
| how ebola might become more transmissible in a similar
| manner ruins their credibility.
| duxup wrote:
| It could evolve is a big if.
|
| A lot of viruses could and become disastrous, but that's a
| long shot.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "It's a long shot" except for the several times in the past
| few hundred years they have done just that? We can do
| statistics on how often this happens. We know that we
| should expect it periodically. Even Obama, while on his way
| out, was able to tell Trump "hey expect a pandemic event
| soon". We literally knew this was coming.
| duxup wrote:
| > except for the several times in the past few hundred
| years they have done just that?
|
| Compared to what? The times it didn't?
| antupis wrote:
| I think more plausible is sexual transmission
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6111642/
| bergenty wrote:
| I mean it's not all that hard for it to become airborne. If
| that happens it's doesn't kill fast enough to not spread like
| crazy.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Isn't it? Some viruses are airborne, and some are not. I'm
| not aware that it's "not all that hard" for one type of virus
| to become the other, but I'm no expert.
|
| As far as I have heard, ebola outbreaks are almost
| exclusively in poor third world areas with generally bad
| sanitation and cultural practices (such as washing the
| recently deceased body) that contribute to transmission by
| contact with infected bodily fluids.
| giantg2 wrote:
| " it's super deadly which means it kills before it really has a
| chance to spread widely."
|
| I generally agree. I believe there is some lag time before
| dropping dead. Fast air travel seems like a good way for this
| to spread over a wide range. If I remember correctly, CDC was
| involved in some Ebola cases about 10 years or so ago due to
| travellers. The manpower required for the precautions to
| prevent US spread for just 2-4 infected people was massive. I
| would guess we would be overwhelmed and it would start
| spreading here if the numbers were in the dozens.
|
| I'm not saying that would be likely this time, but the
| likelihood would go up if there was a less deadly mutation.
| Operating on previously true beliefs is likely to cause the
| most damage.
| lucioperca wrote:
| It spread through multiple countries till it was contained at
| one outbreak with thousands of dead.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| For anyone who may be working in the epidemic response space I
| read that there may be problems getting PPE for the health care
| workers.
|
| There is a place that accepts products that are obsolete and
| reusable and they have a section dedicated to PPE since a lot of
| outfits obsoleted their PPE inventories once Covid was better
| controlled.
|
| They also have a shit-ton or more of other things that can be
| repurposed from their original tasks.
|
| Repurposed Materials - Sanitary stuff [0]
|
| [0]https://www.repurposedmaterialsinc.com/sanitarystuff/
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| Someone is just declaring their plans.
| msyoung2012 wrote:
| Leaked documents show the Ugandan government is not expecting the
| current Ebola outbreak to be contained, but rather expect it to
| spread rapidly into the deadliest in Ugandan history, killing 500
| and infecting at least 1200 by May of next year.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| This title made me wonder, what ever happened to monkey pox.
| Turns out that it has more or less died away.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| Monkeypox was always a money grab perpetuated by fear mongering
| media conglomerates. Those companies found some other
| "boogeyman" to chew on for the time being. And I'm not denying
| Monkeypox was real, it was just completely overblown and being
| used to scare people into clicking on spooky headlines.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| I think this is needlessly pessimistic. A virus spreading
| uncontrolled in one of the world's largest cities? It would
| be journalistic malpractice _not_ to report on it in the
| current climate
| uni_rule wrote:
| Sometimes the tinfoil hat mindset is appropriate but
| sometimes it also eats holes in your brain.
| Izkata wrote:
| Except it didn't, it fell off the news cycle before the peak in
| August and people just stopped talking about it. New cases are
| still happening:
| https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/index.h...
| thrwawy4privcy wrote:
| Community spread is now minimal and decreasing. 7D moving
| average for US cases was over 400 in August and now it's 29.
| https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/mpx-
| tre...
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I didn't do exhaustive research but the first link I clicked
| suggested it had dropped by 85%.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Yes, it did. It's down 95% from its peak.
| _djo_ wrote:
| It was handled well by global public health authorities, with
| education campaigns, targeted vaccinations, early warning,
| treatment, and growing immunity in the most at-risk
| populations.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Additionally, most of the most-at-risk population has lived
| through the AIDS horror. A good gay friend of mine roughly
| summarized it as "we gays know how bad diseases can get, and
| fuck it my dating life even after 2 years of pandemic is not
| as important as is my life". Once it was clear that MSM were
| (once again) a high-risk group, they all went back to either
| reducing contacts or at least wearing condoms.
|
| In contrast, the last time the general public has had an
| issue with a pandemic has been so long ago that deniers and
| downplayers had an easy game with their bullshit. Had wearing
| fucking masks not been that politicized, I'd wager a very
| good portion of the 6.6 _million_ people that died to COVID
| would still be alive. And to come back to my gay friend, at
| least in his community there were almost no COVID cases.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| People are strange... good handwashing standards are likely
| as important as masks for preventing Covid transmission,
| but that never got politicized or became controversial for
| some reason. Also, wearing non-N95 masks appears to be most
| effective as a means of preventing aerosolized droplets
| _from_ infected people from spreading to others in public
| situations. The full PPE system is more for protecting
| nurses and doctors working with severely ill patients from
| getting infected.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _People are strange... good handwashing standards are
| likely as important as masks for preventing Covid
| transmission, but that never got politicized or became
| controversial for some reason._
|
| It's obvious isn't it? Handwashing isn't a badge you can
| wear. Meet somebody in public and you'll know if they're
| wearing a mask or not, but you won't know if they've
| washed their hands recently.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I don't know if that's enough to explain the hysteria...
| for example, people have published studies on the
| effectiveness of handwashing without fearing being
| attacked on Twitter as agents of misinformation (results
| are mixed, though generally beneficial, alcohol rubbing
| seems somewhat less helpful than soap and water, and a
| good scrubbing is better):
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250256/
|
| > "To develop clear and simple guidance for the public,
| further work should focus on identifying the specific
| times when HH should be performed in different
| communities and situations. In the meantime, current
| guidelines should be followed and should be based on
| evidence summarised here. Resources to support frequent
| hand washing, if hand washing facilities are available,
| or alternatively ABHR, should be provided in schools,
| workplaces, and public spaces and HH should continue to
| be promoted"
|
| There are some more recent studies (2022) that take a
| similar evidence-based approach to masking effectiveness,
| noting for example:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9017682/
|
| > "The author pointed out that with active COVID-19
| patients, who may contaminate the environment, a mask
| will not protect healthcare workers or other people if
| they are not accompanied by hand hygiene, eye protection,
| gloves and a gown."
|
| The autopsy of the governmental and medical responses to
| the pandemic (and the original source of the outbreak)
| will make for interesting reading for years to come.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Another part of the puzzle is telling people to wash
| their hands has been a mainstream message for decades. It
| wasn't asking people do to something new and
| uncomfortable.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And predictably, about 30% of people utterly refuse to do
| it. Usually for stupid reasons. Some people are just so
| anti-authority that they would seemingly cut off their
| own leg to spite an authority figure telling them legs
| are important.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| Masking was never inherently a political issue, even if
| some people tried to make it one.
|
| From a purely scientific perspective, and regardless of
| one's political leanings or preferences, it was obvious
| from the start that widespread everyday masking simply
| isn't effective, nor is it practical.
|
| If such masking was even just somewhat effective, the
| entire situation would have been over by mid-2020 at the
| latest. That clearly wasn't the case.
|
| Even in large regions with strictly-enforced masking (even
| outdoors, in some cases!), combined with numerous other
| onerous restrictions, we still saw massive case number
| spikes. Those would not have happened if masking worked.
|
| Of course, there are also the numerous harmful effects of
| masking that must be considered. It causes many
| accessibility problems, it causes childhood development
| problems, it causes social strife (including
| discrimination), it enables abusive policing, and so forth.
|
| Hopefully, society as a whole has been reminded how masking
| just doesn't work, and that's exactly why we didn't bother
| with it until this recent debacle.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I'm curious, when you say "masking works" what do you
| mean?
|
| Because you seem to mean it as "prevents 100% of
| transmission", and therefore anything less than that
| means masking isn't effective.
|
| And that's simply untrue. Masking does, really, truly,
| assist with covid spread. It doesn't prevent 100% of
| transmission, because nothing does, especially something
| that requires active participation, but yeah it helps a
| lot _if people actually do it_.
|
| It's likely a large part of the reason that I've never
| caught covid, despite a fairly active social life and
| continued in-person office work for almost a year now.
| And why the social events I attend, where you can have a
| hundred people in close quarters breathing on each other
| haven't had recorded transmissions, despite recorded
| isolated cases.
|
| > It causes many accessibility problems, it causes
| childhood development problems, it causes social strife
| (including discrimination), it enables abusive policing,
| and so forth.
|
| There's no evidence for any of these claims, and in fact
| you'll find the accessibility community strongly favors
| masks as immunocompromised people exist. Widespread
| seasonal masking has been common in other countries for
| decades (since SARS-1, two decades ago), and there's no
| evidence that it causes childhood development issues.
| There's, like, one academic paper whose conclusion is
| that mask wearing makes it difficult for preschoolers to
| detect the emotion of a person wearing a mask. But any
| extension of that to impacts on childhood psychological
| development isn't academic, it's you making things up.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| As with other actions, it's the relationship between the
| benefits that something brings versus the costs
| associated with doing it that determine whether or not
| it's "working".
|
| The costs associated with widespread everyday masking are
| severe. You even quoted the ones that I'd mentioned
| earlier.
|
| Just to overcome those severe costs, masking would have
| had to consistently bring astounding benefits.
|
| At a bare minimum, that should have been a nearly-
| complete end to the transmission of not just this virus,
| but others, as well.
|
| Unfortunately, we didn't see that happen, because masking
| isn't effective.
|
| We experienced the severe costs of masking, but without
| receiving any benefits from enduring those costs.
|
| This was demonstrated by what's among the largest set of
| scientific experiments ever performed, involving many
| millions of people, in many nations, and over two years
| of masking in some cases.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > The costs associated with widespread everyday masking
| are severe. You even quoted the ones that I'd mentioned
| earlier.
|
| Yes, and stated that they are, for the most part, not
| actually costs.
|
| Masks _don 't_ cause accessibility problems, they _don
| 't_ cause child development issues, they _don 't_ cause
| social strife when consistently warn and enforced, and
| they don't cause abusive policing (police don't enforce
| mask mandates anywhere in the US, and consistently were
| one of the least compliant groups!).
|
| You can't keep lying about these supposedly "severe"
| costs when anyone with eyes can see that they're made up.
| I mean you can, but it's your credibility lost.
| apetersonBFI wrote:
| What about people who have difficulty breathing, and have
| to have their breathing hindered for hours by the mask?
|
| I was in the hospital for 2 days when my wife gave birth,
| and I was supposed to wear the mask 24/7. Luckily they
| didn't enforce it strictly so I was able to sleep without
| the mask.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| Josh, I recommend that you do even just some basic
| research into this topic. It's quite complex, and I can't
| do it justice here.
|
| Masking certainly does cause accessibility problems for
| many people.
|
| For example, people with mobility and other issues
| involving their fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, neck,
| and ears can find it quite difficult, or even impossible,
| to put on, to wear, or to remove a mask.
|
| Masking can also aggravate respiratory and
| cardiovascular-related medical issues.
|
| Masking can aggravate PTSD and other psychological
| issues.
|
| Masking can cause problems for those with hearing-related
| issues, as it can make it difficult to hear the muffled
| voices of others, as well as making lip-reading
| impossible.
|
| In jurisdictions where accessibility is considered
| important, the forced masking bylaws or legislation
| typically had accessibility-related exemptions, because
| masking does cause severe accessibility problems for many
| people.
|
| The harmful social impacts of masking take many forms.
|
| Among the most egregious were when exempt individuals
| were denied service, reasonable accommodation, and in
| some cases employment.
|
| Such people also faced significant harassment when in
| public, even in so-called "tolerant" societies. Sometimes
| this would involve verbal abuse. Sometimes it would
| involve having creeps take and share photos of them, in
| attempts to socially shame them. Sometimes it would
| unfortunately involve physical abuse, even with the
| police being the perpetrators at times.
|
| A less-visible aspect to this very real threat of
| harassment was how some people just stopped participating
| in society as much as possible, even at the cost of
| financial, psychological, and social harm to themselves.
|
| Forced masking, especially in schools, has definitely had
| a negative impact on the education and development of
| children. This manifests in various ways, including
| communication-related delays and difficulties,
| trust/fear-related issues, immune system deficiencies,
| and so on.
|
| Perhaps you were spared the worst of this based on where
| you happen to live, and luckily didn't have to experience
| the costs of masking yourself.
|
| Others, however, suffered significantly because of
| masking, even if you may not realize it.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > Josh, I recommend that you do even just some basic
| research into this topic. It's quite complex, and I can't
| do it justice here.
|
| I have.
|
| > For example, people with mobility and other issues
| involving their fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, neck,
| and ears can find it quite difficult, or even impossible,
| to put on, to wear, or to remove a mask.
|
| This is minimal and solvable. If someone needs assistance
| putting on a mask, they need assistance with other daily
| activities and so can get that assistance as well.
|
| > Masking can cause problems for those with hearing-
| related issues, as it can make it difficult to hear the
| muffled voices of others, as well as making lip-reading
| impossible.
|
| This is also solvable, with for example clear masks that
| are used in speech therapy contexts.
|
| > Masking can also aggravate respiratory and
| cardiovascular-related medical issues.
|
| This is not true, there's no support for this in the
| literature. While full-face respirators can reduce
| airflow, facemasks like those commonly worn and
| recommended don't decrease airflow or O2 intake
| significantly enough to matter. As a rule of thumb, if
| you cannot breath through a mask either the issue is
| psychosomatic or you should be wearing a plastic face
| mask that provides you supplementary oxygen, because you
| are not sufficiently able to breathe on your own.
|
| > In jurisdictions where accessibility is considered
| important, the forced masking bylaws or legislation
| typically had accessibility-related exemptions, because
| masking does cause severe accessibility problems for many
| people.
|
| Please cite them.
|
| > Among the most egregious were when exempt individuals
| were denied service, reasonable accommodation, and in
| some cases employment.
|
| Please cite them. What is a reasonable exemption from
| mask wearing if a building requires all present to wear
| masks?
|
| > A less-visible aspect to this very real threat of
| harassment was how some people just stopped participating
| in society as much as possible, even at the cost of
| financial, psychological, and social harm to themselves.
|
| Lots of people do this for many reasons, for example the
| large swaths of people who (rightly or wrongly) still
| feel unsafe going out and about because of the dangers of
| Covid and the fact that most areas in society don't mask.
| Personally, I feel those people, even most with
| immunicompromisations, are overstating the risks
| associated with involvement in society. By the same
| token, I think the people you describe are overstating
| the risks of masking. I cannot conclusively say whether
| one faces a greater real issue than the other. What I can
| say is that masks to provide conclusive benefits, so the
| imagined risks of people who fear them are less of an
| issue to me than the imagined risks of people who
| overestimate the dangers of covid and other airborne
| infectious diseases.
|
| > Perhaps you were spared the worst of this based on
| where you happen to live, and luckily didn't have to
| experience the costs of masking yourself.
|
| Given where I live and my social circles, I and those
| around me masked far more aggressively and for far longer
| than the majority of the united states. I'll reiterate
| that there have been few to know _real_ negative impacts
| from these policies.
| delecti wrote:
| > they all went back to either reducing contacts or at
| least wearing condoms.
|
| Also vaccination drives. I'm good friends with a few gay
| guys, and they all rushed to get vaccinated, even despite
| being in committed long term relationships. There was,
| metaphorically speaking, absolutely no fucking around with
| this one.
| _djo_ wrote:
| Great point, and yes that sort of behaviour change and
| awareness was hugely important.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I started wearing a mask pretty early on. The first one was
| a fabric one my mother in law made as it was still at a
| time when PPE for healthcare workers was a bigger priority.
| I kept wearing a mask until the overwhelming majority of
| people around me had long given up. I believed it was the
| right thing to do regardless but I'm not sure I'm as
| optimistic as you regarding their effectiveness.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I've been wearing masks from early on and only recently
| stopped wearing them regularly. Now I only wear them when
| in a crowded situation. I feel how masks were handled was
| completely botched in many ways. There is the
| politicization and communication errors. However, I also
| remain somewhat shocked how we never made any effort to
| address the biggest, obvious issues with masks to make
| them more effective.
|
| I saw so many studies that showed that a properly fitted
| mask makes a massive difference in how protective it is
| compared to other mask types. Where can I get a mask
| fitted? Never even saw anything about fitting masks other
| than "it makes a huge difference and we do this for
| nurses".
|
| Clearly much of the air goes around the mask. Sure a
| little metal piece at the bridge of the nose makes this a
| little better, but why did nobody seem to work on a
| proper solution for this? How about a mask with a rubber
| seal that goes around it?
|
| This kind of stuff could have saved thousands of lives,
| yet we seem to not even have tried.
|
| I think the fatality of COVID was just right to create a
| societal mess. Fatal enough to kill tons of people. But
| not fatal enough to get everyone on the same page that
| some sacrifices need to be made to rein it in. At the
| same time some people also had practically no symptoms,
| creating more opportunity for disagreement.
| IX-103 wrote:
| I still wear a mask when I go out. I'll probably stop
| eventually -- probably next summer when it gets hot
| again.
|
| But I definitely agree that mask for should have been a
| big push. I'm not sure that sealing the gaps around the
| nose is that much of an issue from a transmissibility
| perspective, but it can make a significant difference in
| terms of comfort for those wearing glasses. And masks
| that are not comfortable don't get worn.
| jrussino wrote:
| >How about a mask with a rubber seal that goes around it
|
| I wore one of these: https://envomask.com/
|
| They're relatively heavy compared to paper & fabric masks
| (not to mention expensive), but the gel seal made it
| quite comfortable and it was the only thing I found that
| I could wear all day without ever fogging up my glasses.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Thank you! These are exactly like what I wanted.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Think back to early 2020. A lot of the serious
| deaths/damage were not due to covid per se, but due to
| (1) covid being so novel we didn't know how to treat it
| very well, eg using ventilators in cases that could have
| just used O2 tanks (2) covid spreading so fast that it
| was effectively a denial of service attack against the
| local hospitals.
|
| Both of these factors were improvable even by small
| measures that don't prevent infection but just reduce the
| severity or probability, slowing down ("flattening the
| curve") the pandemic and postponing more of the cases
| till later when there was more capacity as well as better
| treatment knowledge.
|
| As someone who suffered a lot in 2021 due to an illness
| that was totally unrelated to covid, but that was only so
| bad because of insufficient medical care available due to
| the pandemic (literally, some simple better care and
| tests earlier on would have definitely caught and
| resolved it, but getting care during the pandemic was a
| shitshow), I take this aspect quite seriously. I think
| covid was best understood as a crisis for the medical
| system than for individuals (relatively speaking)
|
| EDIT: fwiw I'm not even disagreeing with you on anything
| (yes, on HN, I know), just riffing :)
| VancouverMan wrote:
| The medical community as a whole, in numerous nations,
| dropped the ball quite badly over the last three years.
|
| It was obvious by mid-2020 that this situation was
| severely overblown, and that pretty much every reaction
| was far more harmful than beneficial.
|
| Unjustifiable and baseless paranoia caused severe
| inefficiencies within medical systems that are
| inefficient even at the best of times.
|
| A particularly unfortunate aspect was how the wider
| medical community itself, including regulatory bodies,
| immediately and ruthlessly shut down any of the
| questioning and feedback from physicians, scientists, and
| even some politicians that would have brought light to
| the harmful policies much sooner.
|
| Instead, we had to wait two years in some places for
| common sense to even begin to return. It should never
| have been like that to begin with.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I'm glad the community was able to find a solution, and
| luckily monkey pox was not inherently deadly, but they did
| not comply with some efforts to mitigate the disease,
| particularly contact tracing
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-all-but-
| give...
| _jal wrote:
| Contact tracing in the Covid context has worked horribly
| everywhere in the US, as far as I know, outside of more
| or less defined communities where penalties could attach.
| And even there is mostly failed when they didn't.
|
| Did I miss an instance where it worked well enough to be
| worth the effort?
|
| Add in the fact that the gay community has reasons to be
| less than thrilled with medical disclosure of this sort
| and I'm not the least bit surprised.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| The CDC is still recommending contact tracing (for
| Covid), so I imagine they have data to back up its
| employment.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Or they simply don't want to relinquish whatever funding
| they may have been allocated for contact tracing, or may
| receive in the future.
|
| Don't trust government agencies to tell you what they
| need, they'll always ask for a Moon mission.
| xienze wrote:
| > Contact tracing in the Covid context has worked
| horribly everywhere in the US
|
| Well yeah, it's hard to recall the dozens or hundreds of
| people you may have interacted with over the course of
| days or weeks. It is however much easier to contract
| trace sexual partners, unless of course you're engaging
| in repeated anonymous sexual encounters...
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| > we gays know how bad diseases can get, and fuck it my
| dating life even after 2 years of pandemic is not as
| important as is my life
|
| That's a nice sentiment I guess. Meanwhile my gay friend
| didn't stop "socialization" during the pandemic except
| first few early months. According to him he must've had
| COVID at least 4 times by now. If you add natural immunity,
| vaccine and asymptotic transmission he was getting exposed
| to COVID pretty much all the time.
|
| This is nothing against gay community. This is against
| idolozation of certain communities and demonization of
| certain other communities to fit certain political
| narrative. Reality is more complex and nuance.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Meanwhile my gay friend didn 't stop "socialization"
| during the pandemic except first few early months._
|
| Assuming he is a young man, then caution for the first
| few months meant he was cautious until mortality
| statistics revealed that the risk to himself, and
| presumably his partners, was minimal.
| thrwawy4privcy wrote:
| As a bisexual man I think the LGBT community is getting far
| too little credit for how they reacted to this. Men getting
| vaccinated essentially saved the world from more spread at
| a very critical time.
|
| It wasn't just personal responsibility and willingness to
| get vaccinated and reduce number of partners. Gay men
| shouted from the rooftops at public health authorities to
| get them to step up testing, treatment, and vaccination
| campaigns very early, when many doctors were ignorant,
| unable or unwilling to take it seriously.
| hanselot wrote:
| unixfg wrote:
| The hardest hit community was downright enthusiastic about the
| MPV vaccine. That makes a HUGE difference.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| The gay community?
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| They still have not identified the reservoir host (probably a
| fruit bat). African traditions of caring for a sick person and
| then bathing the dead is not helping either.
| alexk307 wrote:
| You're telling me Ebola-cases.com is not a reputable news source?
| /s
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Comprehensive accessible review here:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4495366/
|
| The virus apparently just wrecks the immune system right off the
| bat, allowing it to rampage throughout the body unchecked. Hence
| immune-system-support therapies are being worked on:
|
| > "EBOV is able to evade innate and adaptive (both humoral and
| cellular) responses by encoding for multiple viral proteins that
| inhibit both type-I IFNs synthesis and response, by masking viral
| epitopes by glycosylation processes, by deregulating inflammatory
| response, by preventing DC maturation, thus resulting in a
| catastrophic failure of innate and adaptive immunity. Thus host
| factors have a key role for viral replication and release, and
| may represent good targets for therapeutic strategies."
|
| The for-profit pharmaceutical system isn't that interested in
| this, as not many people or governments in Africa have the funds
| to pay for research, production, and what is it now, a guaranteed
| 15%+ profit margin?
| Blahah wrote:
| "right off the bat" is unfortunately apt for ebola!
| [deleted]
| nlitsme wrote:
| just looking at the graph: why do they expect this to be linear?
|
| Their graph has two lines: (month 0 == december)
|
| - totalcases = 180*month+300
|
| - totaldeaths = 83*month+84
|
| Recent experience with covid shows that usually epidemics
| initially grow exponentially.
| Closi wrote:
| You are right - the government analysis looks like garbage
| IMHO.
|
| The slide shows that they are actually just forecasting (month
| * 200) cases which is obviously not the way you should do this.
| The slide also has a bar chart with a line between the bars,
| which is a stats-bad-smell too (at least shows that whoever
| pulled this together doesn't understand how to display data).
|
| I know this is a developing nation that won't have the same
| level of availability of statisticians and epidemiologists, but
| it's worrying how basic this is.
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