10 ms·

Finding an attenuated strain that spreads as easily but is less deadly does sound like our best hope. Such a strain would "crowd out" the deadly strain, effect

by czep 7y ago

Finding an attenuated strain that spreads as easily but is less deadly does sound like our best hope. Such a strain would "crowd out" the deadly strain, effectively blocking it from causing harm. If life was a Star Trek episode, Picard would be saying "Make it so" right about now.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
"Captain's log, stardate 73740.9. The Enterprise has taken on board a distinguished Federation virologist, dr. Daniel Tillett, to help him with his search for a less harmful strain of the virus that's currently ravaging several planets in Federation space. The doctor is confident that such an attenuated strain could be used to swiftly end the ongoing pandemic." I would watch that episode. Hell, I'd watch any new episode; unfortunately, the only proper Star Trek we've had since Enterprise stopped airing is The Orville.
- throwanem 7y ago
  And then it turns out similar to "Ethics", where the virologist's work is questionably founded and potentially quite dangerous, we get a Picard speech about how sacrificing some to save others is wrong, Data and Crusher technobabble up a treatment that doubles as a vaccine, the photogenic kid gets saved at the bottom of the fourth act, Admiral Nechayev and Picard fence a bit, credits. Pretty wild to count Enterprise as "real Trek", but not Discovery. And hey, TNG was seminal and I loved it growing up too, but let's be real, it's showing its age quite badly these days.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > And then it turns out similar to "Ethics" Perhaps, but that's Star Trek. It wasn't always obvious how the episode would end. > Pretty wild to count Enterprise as "real Trek", but not Discovery. Why? TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT, together with movies from TMP to NEM, form a certain coherent whole - both artistically, with themes, styles, pacing, and story-wise with a shared universe. Both Discovery and Picard, as well as JJ's movies, depart from that significantly. The style is different, the pacing is different, the stories and ethics are different (arguably much more shallow). The Orville, though it was meant as a TNG-era Star Trek parody, seems much closer in pacing, style and ethics to that core TNG-era trek than Discovery. > TNG was seminal and I loved it growing up too, but let's be real, it's showing its age quite badly these days How so? Remastered version holds up pretty well today, I'd say.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      I mean, yes, Berman/Braga era Trek has a fairly consistent style both visually and thematically because that's how they wanted it, but to privilege that style as "real" (or "proper", as you have it) requires considerable justification as yet not provided. Even from that era, First Contact not only used a largely horror/action-movie style then unprecedented in Trek, but went far out of its way to cast doubt on the Federation's - and the TNG era's - doctrinaire self-congratulation about its "more evolved" ethical ideal, in the shape not only of Picard's desire to exact vengeance upon the Borg, but also of the lack of self-awareness that blinded him to it very nearly unto catastrophe. Was First Contact therefore less "real"? And if we're going to talk about ethics, we could do a lot worse than to talk about the Picard series's accidental but very real point that Picard's own moral absolutism and blind righteousness is as much of its time, as contingent, as any other ethic, and when taken out of a context where it's able to be effective, it does as much harm as any other, too. The point isn't explicitly made, because Kurtzman and Chabon are a couple of hacks just like Berman and Braga were, but it's easy to draw from the text on the basis of an almost trivial engagement - Picard's quixotism managing to ruin just about everyone it touches, and the writers having to fall back on a Bond-villain plot to try to make him come out looking good, is enough all by itself for that. That's the kind of thing I mean when I talk about TNG showing its age. The remasters look pretty good, sure. But the Trek fandom has ever qualified their shows as especially worthy not for the quality of their visuals, but for that of their ideas. From that perspective, a lot of TNG, and of its era more generally, struggles today.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > but to privilege that style as "real" (or "proper", as you have it) requires considerable justification as yet not provided It's arguably the largest consistent body of work in the entire Star Trek franchise, the one that was the peak of its popularity, the one that fleshed out the universe and is most recognizable. Also somewhat unique compared to other science fiction, which I can't say about post-ENT installations. > Was First Contact therefore less "real"? Nah, I consider it real because - besides mostly staying thematically and stylistically consistent - in terms of storyline, it critiqued the "ethically more evolved" humanity; it shown shades of gray of an otherwise mostly white object, instead of making it black with occasional lighter tones, like post-ENT installments do. It's the same defense I'd give DS9. It's still the same utopian world, the same beacon of hope - just not a perfect utopia. (Also: throughout TNG/DS9 and the movies, the Federation did feel like an actual character in the movies. ENT was leading up to it, and it portrayed humanity growing up towards the TNG-era utopia. This aspect seems completely missing from Discovery/Picard; both the Federation and Starfleet seem to exist there just to have a flag and an icon to slap on things.) Unlike JJ movies, I'm not considering DIS and Picard as completely bad. I've noticed and appreciated the point about Picard brought up in his eponymous series, as much as I appreciated the concerns of Klingons in DIS - their point about Federation being a cultural threat to them would fit perfectly fit TNG-era Trek, and add further depth to their race. And I tried to be fair to both DIS and Picard, to watch them without biasing myself against them - but they really don't fit the whole in my eyes. They stand out as something totally different in almost every way. > But the Trek fandom has ever qualified their shows as especially worthy not for the quality of their visuals, but for that of their ideas. From that perspective, a lot of TNG, and of its era more generally, struggles today. I've been rewatching TNG (and DS9) quite recently, and the way I feel, it's the concerns that aged, not the ideas. I.e. TNG (and DS9) cover themes that were the concern of society of the 80s and 90s, which seem less relevant today, but I don't feel like the way of thinking of the characters has aged badly.
  - carapace 7y ago
    I saw a few clips of ST:Discovery and nearly had an apoplexy. When the ship spins (rolls) on its longitudinal axis and disappears (using the "spore drive"...) I pretty much lost my mind for a moment. Then it reappears with a flash that illuminates the nebula in the background. There are no clouds in space. Nebulas are big, really big. It would be light-years away. But the ship's photo-backwash lights it up like a flash bulb! I know Star Trek isn't hard sci-fi, but that's pathetic. And the "spore drive"!? Who thought that up? (I know about mycorrhiza and all that, I'm not ignorant) The universe is pervaded by invisible intangible cosmic fungus? That somehow enables FTL teleportation? And keeps people alive in limbo after they die? That might be Lovecraft but it's not Roddenberry. And they named the "astromycologist" character after the real guy!? (Paul Stamets) Did they ask him? That's just so weird. To me it feels like it's made to mock Star Trek fans. Watching it (just for about ~4 minutes) made me feel like the network and producers are just mocking me. (And not in a good way. I love Galaxy Quest, because it's obviously made with love and, yes, respect for the show(s) it mocks. When Sigourney Weaver loses it and starts ranting about how it's a dumb episode, nobody would design a space ship with giant crushers and fire spouts... Yeah, it's awesome!) Discovery is more cartoonish than the actual cartoon. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series ) I gotta agree that The Orville carries the torch forward far far better than these new Star Trek shows & movies.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      So...you're upset to see space opera played straight in your space opera? Have you forgotten entirely about S1 of TNG, or just chosen to ignore it? DS9 is "not Roddenberry", too, what with its most universally acclaimed episode being about Sisko deliberately subverting his own principles and those of the Federation to suborn all manner of criminality, not excluding several murders, in order to deceive a neutral party into entering the war as a Federation ally. Is DS9 awful, too? To be honest, I don't get the mockery angle at all. I mean, you're talking about a show whose first season not only has antimilitarism as a major through-line in the way Lorca's story plays out, but concludes with a war being ended by a couple of people having a conversation about why more fighting sucks for everyone, and implementing a clever technobabble-driven plan to bring about peace. There's a lot I don't love about Discovery - most of its second season, for a start - but come on, what could possibly be more Star Trek than that?
jonplackett 7y ago
Could a strain like this be created with genetic modification? If you just need to delete a bit of it that doesn't sound too difficult. But I know nothing about this subject, so that's probably why...
- tazjin 7y ago
  We don't know exactly what each bit does, so we don't know what to delete.
  - LyndsySimon 7y ago
    IIRC, it’s only about 30Kb of information, and the vast majority of that is shared with similar viruses in the same family. Assuming there’s a reliable way to remove segments of the genome (I’m not a biologist, so I’m not sure if that’s practical), it doesn’t appear to be an impossible problem to solve.
maxerickson 7y ago
Just take a trip through time and stop it that way, if you could. (I'm not even talking about the inconsistency between traveling faster than light and not moving backwards in time, I'm talking about repeated in-universe demonstrations of time travel mastery) Of course, the writer's tortured "ethics" might require that everyone has to keep the last couple months of awful memories.

by czep 7y ago

TeMPOraL 7y ago

"Captain's log, stardate 73740.9. The Enterprise has taken on board a distinguished Federation virologist, dr. Daniel Tillett, to help him with his search for a less harmful strain of the virus that's currently ravaging several planets in Federation space. The doctor is confident that such an attenuated strain could be used to swiftly end the ongoing pandemic." I would watch that episode. Hell, I'd watch any new episode; unfortunately, the only proper Star Trek we've had since Enterprise stopped airing is The Orville.

throwanem 7y ago
And then it turns out similar to "Ethics", where the virologist's work is questionably founded and potentially quite dangerous, we get a Picard speech about how sacrificing some to save others is wrong, Data and Crusher technobabble up a treatment that doubles as a vaccine, the photogenic kid gets saved at the bottom of the fourth act, Admiral Nechayev and Picard fence a bit, credits. Pretty wild to count Enterprise as "real Trek", but not Discovery. And hey, TNG was seminal and I loved it growing up too, but let's be real, it's showing its age quite badly these days.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > And then it turns out similar to "Ethics" Perhaps, but that's Star Trek. It wasn't always obvious how the episode would end. > Pretty wild to count Enterprise as "real Trek", but not Discovery. Why? TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT, together with movies from TMP to NEM, form a certain coherent whole - both artistically, with themes, styles, pacing, and story-wise with a shared universe. Both Discovery and Picard, as well as JJ's movies, depart from that significantly. The style is different, the pacing is different, the stories and ethics are different (arguably much more shallow). The Orville, though it was meant as a TNG-era Star Trek parody, seems much closer in pacing, style and ethics to that core TNG-era trek than Discovery. > TNG was seminal and I loved it growing up too, but let's be real, it's showing its age quite badly these days How so? Remastered version holds up pretty well today, I'd say.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    I mean, yes, Berman/Braga era Trek has a fairly consistent style both visually and thematically because that's how they wanted it, but to privilege that style as "real" (or "proper", as you have it) requires considerable justification as yet not provided. Even from that era, First Contact not only used a largely horror/action-movie style then unprecedented in Trek, but went far out of its way to cast doubt on the Federation's - and the TNG era's - doctrinaire self-congratulation about its "more evolved" ethical ideal, in the shape not only of Picard's desire to exact vengeance upon the Borg, but also of the lack of self-awareness that blinded him to it very nearly unto catastrophe. Was First Contact therefore less "real"? And if we're going to talk about ethics, we could do a lot worse than to talk about the Picard series's accidental but very real point that Picard's own moral absolutism and blind righteousness is as much of its time, as contingent, as any other ethic, and when taken out of a context where it's able to be effective, it does as much harm as any other, too. The point isn't explicitly made, because Kurtzman and Chabon are a couple of hacks just like Berman and Braga were, but it's easy to draw from the text on the basis of an almost trivial engagement - Picard's quixotism managing to ruin just about everyone it touches, and the writers having to fall back on a Bond-villain plot to try to make him come out looking good, is enough all by itself for that. That's the kind of thing I mean when I talk about TNG showing its age. The remasters look pretty good, sure. But the Trek fandom has ever qualified their shows as especially worthy not for the quality of their visuals, but for that of their ideas. From that perspective, a lot of TNG, and of its era more generally, struggles today.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > but to privilege that style as "real" (or "proper", as you have it) requires considerable justification as yet not provided It's arguably the largest consistent body of work in the entire Star Trek franchise, the one that was the peak of its popularity, the one that fleshed out the universe and is most recognizable. Also somewhat unique compared to other science fiction, which I can't say about post-ENT installations. > Was First Contact therefore less "real"? Nah, I consider it real because - besides mostly staying thematically and stylistically consistent - in terms of storyline, it critiqued the "ethically more evolved" humanity; it shown shades of gray of an otherwise mostly white object, instead of making it black with occasional lighter tones, like post-ENT installments do. It's the same defense I'd give DS9. It's still the same utopian world, the same beacon of hope - just not a perfect utopia. (Also: throughout TNG/DS9 and the movies, the Federation did feel like an actual character in the movies. ENT was leading up to it, and it portrayed humanity growing up towards the TNG-era utopia. This aspect seems completely missing from Discovery/Picard; both the Federation and Starfleet seem to exist there just to have a flag and an icon to slap on things.) Unlike JJ movies, I'm not considering DIS and Picard as completely bad. I've noticed and appreciated the point about Picard brought up in his eponymous series, as much as I appreciated the concerns of Klingons in DIS - their point about Federation being a cultural threat to them would fit perfectly fit TNG-era Trek, and add further depth to their race. And I tried to be fair to both DIS and Picard, to watch them without biasing myself against them - but they really don't fit the whole in my eyes. They stand out as something totally different in almost every way. > But the Trek fandom has ever qualified their shows as especially worthy not for the quality of their visuals, but for that of their ideas. From that perspective, a lot of TNG, and of its era more generally, struggles today. I've been rewatching TNG (and DS9) quite recently, and the way I feel, it's the concerns that aged, not the ideas. I.e. TNG (and DS9) cover themes that were the concern of society of the 80s and 90s, which seem less relevant today, but I don't feel like the way of thinking of the characters has aged badly.
- carapace 7y ago
  I saw a few clips of ST:Discovery and nearly had an apoplexy. When the ship spins (rolls) on its longitudinal axis and disappears (using the "spore drive"...) I pretty much lost my mind for a moment. Then it reappears with a flash that illuminates the nebula in the background. There are no clouds in space. Nebulas are big, really big. It would be light-years away. But the ship's photo-backwash lights it up like a flash bulb! I know Star Trek isn't hard sci-fi, but that's pathetic. And the "spore drive"!? Who thought that up? (I know about mycorrhiza and all that, I'm not ignorant) The universe is pervaded by invisible intangible cosmic fungus? That somehow enables FTL teleportation? And keeps people alive in limbo after they die? That might be Lovecraft but it's not Roddenberry. And they named the "astromycologist" character after the real guy!? (Paul Stamets) Did they ask him? That's just so weird. To me it feels like it's made to mock Star Trek fans. Watching it (just for about ~4 minutes) made me feel like the network and producers are just mocking me. (And not in a good way. I love Galaxy Quest, because it's obviously made with love and, yes, respect for the show(s) it mocks. When Sigourney Weaver loses it and starts ranting about how it's a dumb episode, nobody would design a space ship with giant crushers and fire spouts... Yeah, it's awesome!) Discovery is more cartoonish than the actual cartoon. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series ) I gotta agree that The Orville carries the torch forward far far better than these new Star Trek shows & movies.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    So...you're upset to see space opera played straight in your space opera? Have you forgotten entirely about S1 of TNG, or just chosen to ignore it? DS9 is "not Roddenberry", too, what with its most universally acclaimed episode being about Sisko deliberately subverting his own principles and those of the Federation to suborn all manner of criminality, not excluding several murders, in order to deceive a neutral party into entering the war as a Federation ally. Is DS9 awful, too? To be honest, I don't get the mockery angle at all. I mean, you're talking about a show whose first season not only has antimilitarism as a major through-line in the way Lorca's story plays out, but concludes with a war being ended by a couple of people having a conversation about why more fighting sucks for everyone, and implementing a clever technobabble-driven plan to bring about peace. There's a lot I don't love about Discovery - most of its second season, for a start - but come on, what could possibly be more Star Trek than that?

jonplackett 7y ago

Could a strain like this be created with genetic modification? If you just need to delete a bit of it that doesn't sound too difficult. But I know nothing about this subject, so that's probably why...

tazjin 7y ago
We don't know exactly what each bit does, so we don't know what to delete.
- LyndsySimon 7y ago
  IIRC, it’s only about 30Kb of information, and the vast majority of that is shared with similar viruses in the same family. Assuming there’s a reliable way to remove segments of the genome (I’m not a biologist, so I’m not sure if that’s practical), it doesn’t appear to be an impossible problem to solve.

maxerickson 7y ago

Just take a trip through time and stop it that way, if you could. (I'm not even talking about the inconsistency between traveling faster than light and not moving backwards in time, I'm talking about repeated in-universe demonstrations of time travel mastery) Of course, the writer's tortured "ethics" might require that everyone has to keep the last couple months of awful memories.