17 ms·

Covid-19: The T Cell Story

141 points by xearl 6y ago

aberoham 6y ago
Highly recommend the companion series of podcasts to TWiV if this article perks your interest: https://www.microbe.tv/immune/ https://www.microbe.tv/immune/
ck2 6y ago
relevant https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0401-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0401-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0424-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0424-9
taeric 6y ago
The amount of frustrations surrounding all of this is mind numbing. I almost expect we will get vaccinations before we get understanding. And I share that call-out in this article that not knowing is not a claim that things aren't working. I just expand it as not a claim that some things have worked. We need more studies that will frustratingly take time.
christkv 6y ago
Kind of shows how little we know about the human immune system. Hopefully this pans out and we won’t see massive new waves. I have an anecdotal example of that this might be something. A friend and his wife got tested before delivering their baby and she was positive for antibodies and he was negative. He might have just beaten the virus before the body even started creating antibodies.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- neuronic 6y ago
  For my master thesis, I wrote a small tool that would take and analyze raw genomic high throughput data of various T-cells (chip-seq + rna-seq of th17 to be precise) and create a regulatory network in Cytoscape. The basis was a paper relating to The Th17 Project [1]. What I learned is that we are sort of in the very beginnings of understanding how immune cells work (together), how their plasticity works in terms of gene expression at any given point in time. For example, environmental circumstances such as cytokine presence can lead to T-cell types "transforming" to other types which have other effects etc. but it's not well understood how this occurs. A very large amount of genes regulate each other, you get a complicated network of up- and downregulations and it's hard to reproduce and understand what needs to be done to generate a certain type of T-cell with certain characteristics and behavior. And then you haven't even tried doing that in-vivo where you could try to push the immune system to express genes such that many T-cells of type X are generated to enhance or fight inflammation. Because then you just disturbed a complex interacting system with zero idea what the total effect is and whether "the network" is resilient enough to not crash and burn somewhere somehow. It's very very complicated with a huge amount of combinatorics involved so Complex Systems Theory helps to build models helps a bit. [1] http://th17.bio.nyu.edu/pages/index.html http://th17.bio.nyu.edu/pages/index.html
codecamper 6y ago
What's the qualifications of the author before I go and invest time to read his/her theories?
- ziga 6y ago
  > Geeky entrepreneur https://www.linkedin.com/in/bert-hubert-b05452/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bert-hubert-b05452/
  - DangerousPie 6y ago
    So... “none”?
    - ahubert 6y ago
      Author here - the article has been read and retweeted by actual world class experts. Given that the article is now nearly two weeks old, I would have heard about any gross inaccuracies in there by now. There is some minor feedback and it needs a few tweaks, but overall it holds up really well.
- hn_check 6y ago
  It's Musk Syndrome -- be successful at something, to whatever degree, so think that a bit of Googling makes you an expert at everything, and that the world needs to hear your take. It's absolutely exhausting, and is easily the weakest element of sites like Hacker News. There is a certain sort of hubris in this industry that just foments this exaggerated sense of relevance to every topic.
  - rpiguy 6y ago
    Nearly as tedious as listening to experts in lab coats make wild projections that were wildly off and basing policy on it. I’m very happy that we get lots of opinions from non-experts.
    - doliveira 6y ago
Animats 6y ago
The author asks some questions which can be answered by gathering some data. This suggests going back and re-testing for antibodies some populations from tightly packed groups - the cruise ship passengers, warship crew, and nursing home residents. The antibody tests are more accurate than they were two months ago. The key here is to find out how many people, definitely exposed to the virus, not only did not show any symptoms, but did not develop antibodies. That group presumably had some form of pre-existing immunity. Is anybody doing something like that?
- Animats 6y ago
  It looks like that's already been done, and there are tightly packed groups where the infection rate was 70-100%, as mentioned above. So, no existing immunity at all, probably. That was the claim in the original article, but the data does not bear it out.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Finding densely connected subgroups in special populations (prisons, cruise ships) with high infection rates doesn't mean that that specifies the equilibrium herd immunity threshold in other populations.
    - guscost 6y ago
      Similarly, the plural of anecdote is not data. You are completely right, and nobody has a good rebuttal.
  - hcknwscommenter 6y ago
    70% infection Suggests a LOT of pre-existing immunity. Moreover, even if 100% antibody + rates does not rule out a lot of pre-existing immunity. If I am naturally resistant to coronavirus (e.g., COVID patient sneezes in my face and I get a mild fever 10 days later), I'll probably develop antibodies from an exposure and otherwise be fine, I'd call that pretty damn good pre-existing immunity. According to your logic, that would be "no [pre-]existing immunity at all."
- 6y ago
nodamage 6y ago
> And wherever we look, infections level off before 10%-20% of the population is infected. This is somewhat mysterious. This is not really true. Bergamo had a 58% infection rate as of last month: https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_maggio_22/bergamo-test-sierologici-cittadini-583percento-positivo-un-giorno-51-contagi-piu-8f6ac032-9c44-11ea-aab2-c1d41bfb67c5.shtml https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_maggio_22/ber... Several prisons have seen infection rates in the 70-80% range: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/20/838943211/73-of-inmates-at-an-ohio-prison-test-positive-for-coronavirus https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... The USS Theodore Roosevelt had an infection rate of 60%: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6923e4.htm?s_cid=mm6923e4_e&deliveryName=USCDC_921-DM30202 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6923e4.htm?s_cid=mm... A better explanation for the leveling off is simply that social distancing and lockdowns have reduced the spread of the virus.
- MiguelVieira 6y ago
  Also this Washington choir where over 80% of the attendants were infected https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-superspreader-singing.html https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-superspreader-singing.h... This article is just wishful thinking.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    "This phenomenon is called overdispersion, and it means that while on average a patient infects 2 or 3 new people, this average consists of many people infecting nobody, and then some mass spreading events infecting many more."
    - acqq 6y ago
      > then some mass spreading events infecting many more The point is however that it is impossible that the choir selected their members based on the criteria of "members can be only these who will be easily infected with the at the moment still unknown disease." There the existence of the superspreading event to "80% of some random selection" disproves the hypothesis that "on average much less than 80% of the population can be infected at once". That's obviously not true.
lymeeducator 6y ago
T cell responses are interesting. Infectolab (https://www.infectolab-americas.com/ https://www.infectolab-americas.com/) and its originator Armin (Germany) are using T cell responses for tick borne diseases like: Borellia (Lyme), Bartonella and Babesia because antibody testing is difficult for these (broken via CDC specs as most labs won't test key proteins 31, 34 and never indicate which antibodies are present). Bartonella is very hard to test for with antibody and PCR. It really depends on lab specialty. The sars-cov-2 antibody tests are unpredictable in quality, so nearly useless (my dr is 0-50 via Quest and many people had + PCR). In short, our immune context (genetic phenotype) is unique! We need a lot more data from everyone to start making accurate correlations. We do not measure T-cells, cytokines, mast cells, b-cells, HLA (partly how we potentially make antibodies) at any meaningful level to provide much confidence. Many natural/industrial substances suppress our T-cell responses and generally innate immune system (metals, mold toxins, etc), so we also need to start accounting for those. It's a long road we have in front of us. Hopefully the medical system supports patient data ownership and research to improve on our obvious ignorance.
- gonational 6y ago
  Do you have any thoughts on the usage of consumption of Borax to treat Lyme disease (asking because your username)?
  - lymeeducator 6y ago
    Never used it and wouldn't use it. I do not condone long term antibiotics either.
- erentz 6y ago
  Note that Armin Labs are considered quacks by many. For one example [1]. I will leave it to others to do your own research but just wanted to recommend caution about their use. Especially for diagnosis of Lyme, plenty of tragic stories of people getting an Armin positive test while negative on the others and then being encouraged through years of serious antibiotic treatments only to have always been negative all along. [1] https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/documentary-undercover-in-german-lyme-clinics.55493/ https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/documentary-undercov...
tacitusarc 6y ago
This article talks about cell mediated immunity whereby compromised cells are detected via peptides produced, but there's actually another mechanism that's still in the early stages of being understood called merocytophagy where an immune cell can partially "eat" another cell to see if it "tastes" sick.
xmichael0 6y ago
So... Does this mean that we can "self" vaccinate by going maskless and running around the city and in and out of grocery stores every few days? I am mostly joking here, but I am also serious, the post implies that we can develop immunity by getting minor exposures over a period of time. I read the article twice and probably need it twice more to fully understand it, but please enlighten me.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  That's essentially how live-attenuated vaccines work. You'd have the same benefits and drawbacks, but a dosing issue.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  It's essentially what we've done in SF: 1) Allow a million passengers from China to disembark in Calif. 2) Everybody goes to the grocery store twice a week and mingles in a leisurely fashion. For us, it's worked out great. Probably the lowest measured infection and documented mortality rates in the world for an area that doesn't do testing and tracing. Seen any apocalyptic news stories about SF hospitals like NY? Nope, me neither. I'm much more worried about the negative cardiac effects of no exercise than corona deaths.
- mr_toad 6y ago
  Innate immunity is more like a built-in mask. It’s pretty much the opposite of building up an immunity.
acqq 6y ago
> Does this mean that if you recently had a Coronavirus that caused a head cold that you have a measure of protection? Apparently, no, as there are no observed differences in the percentages of infected when the people who have children or work with children are compared with those who don't. If the stated assumption were true, those that were more exposed to other coronaviruses (which would be expected among those having or being close to kids) would be as a group less prone to be infected. That was apparently not observed. So the "slowdowns" are just the humans adapting their behavior to reduce their chances of getting infected. When Rt is 1 the growth is linear, as simple as that. Less of such changes in the population behavior, more people are getting infected, faster. Source: translated transcript of the podcast of Christian Drosten. Hint: also, don't believe what most of the media says that "he said" -- I've seen a lot of "editorialized" reporting of what he says, to the point of the end product being completely opposite of what he actually said. It's that bad. One really has to go to the source and read. Unfortunately, it's a lot of work, as the podcasts are long. So the people who don't read the source tend to have completely wrong idea what he actually said -- that's also why I'm not giving the specific link: if one doesn't invest really a lot of energy and find and carefully the sources, one has more chance to acquire completely wrong conclusions as "highlights."
- jacobush 6y ago
  These cold viruses circle the globe too, and just because some children had colds and transferred them to adults, does not mean that they had exactly the strain that could potentially give partial Covid19 immunity. So while I agree with your general advice about sources, I don't find your "apparently" to be apparent at all.
  - acqq 6y ago
    > while I agree with your general advice about sources, I don't find your "apparently" to be apparent at all. "Apparently" was used in the sense "I haven't seen and verified the sources myself" (i.e. the specific scientific material that supports the conclusion of an expert) but at least I took the effort to get the claim about that conclusion from a recognized expert directly." That is, I can't give you the ultimate source that the said expert used for that conclusion, but according to my understanding from reading a transcript of his podcast he concluded that and I have chosen to believe him. Experts spend their whole life to achieve expertise. There are a lot of "preprints" and even fast-approved published scientific papers floating around, which eventually (even extremely fast) are recognized to be flawed by the experts, but only after the false claims are repeated across the media. In such a situation, unless we are the experts ourselves, and unless we have infinite time available, our best bet is to trust the experts who are less prone to present or accept false claims. I consider Christian Drosten one of these. Being curious, I do check some source scientific works myself, I'm just admitting that for that particular claim I haven't checked the sources myself but decided to trust Drosten. I also claim that I at least spent enough energy to read the exact transcript of his talk and avoided to read "journalistic interpretations" -- the expert's statements are very often totally deformed by retelling. If that's not enough for you and you believe that you can catch him in an error, I'd really like to know why you even believe to be able to achieve that. And if you believe that I'm claiming something he hasn't said, you can check the transcripts of his last two podcasts yourself and write here if I made an error, I'll be happy to learn more. At some level every one of us has to trust some experts, the question is just if we can also recognize these who just claim some expertise but are actually promoting false claims. I believe that Ioannidis, for example, is an example of such, and I also see that other experts agree. For "as close to the experts as possible" sources I also recommend everything from https://www.microbe.tv https://www.microbe.tv They also admit that they do make errors sometimes, because they didn't recognize early enough how serious this virus is going to affect everybody. But getting the coverage from the experts directly allows one to remain much saner than when reading media who regularly completely distort what experts actually say. And even when media accurately quote some single paper, media often falsely reflect what the whole body of knowledge actually is, as in xkcd "Significant" comics.
newmana 6y ago
"It took nine days for the number of infections to grow from 6 million to 7 million, and less than eight days to get to the latest million, so the pandemic is not slowing down." https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/the-global-hotspots-where-coronavirus-is-still-killing-thousands/12361280 https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/the-global-...

141 points by xearl 6y ago

Highly recommend the companion series of podcasts to TWiV if this article perks your interest: https://www.microbe.tv/immune/ https://www.microbe.tv/immune/

ck2 6y ago

relevant https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0401-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0401-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0424-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0424-9

taeric 6y ago

The amount of frustrations surrounding all of this is mind numbing. I almost expect we will get vaccinations before we get understanding. And I share that call-out in this article that not knowing is not a claim that things aren't working. I just expand it as not a claim that some things have worked. We need more studies that will frustratingly take time.

christkv 6y ago

Kind of shows how little we know about the human immune system. Hopefully this pans out and we won’t see massive new waves. I have an anecdotal example of that this might be something. A friend and his wife got tested before delivering their baby and she was positive for antibodies and he was negative. He might have just beaten the virus before the body even started creating antibodies.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
neuronic 6y ago
For my master thesis, I wrote a small tool that would take and analyze raw genomic high throughput data of various T-cells (chip-seq + rna-seq of th17 to be precise) and create a regulatory network in Cytoscape. The basis was a paper relating to The Th17 Project [1]. What I learned is that we are sort of in the very beginnings of understanding how immune cells work (together), how their plasticity works in terms of gene expression at any given point in time. For example, environmental circumstances such as cytokine presence can lead to T-cell types "transforming" to other types which have other effects etc. but it's not well understood how this occurs. A very large amount of genes regulate each other, you get a complicated network of up- and downregulations and it's hard to reproduce and understand what needs to be done to generate a certain type of T-cell with certain characteristics and behavior. And then you haven't even tried doing that in-vivo where you could try to push the immune system to express genes such that many T-cells of type X are generated to enhance or fight inflammation. Because then you just disturbed a complex interacting system with zero idea what the total effect is and whether "the network" is resilient enough to not crash and burn somewhere somehow. It's very very complicated with a huge amount of combinatorics involved so Complex Systems Theory helps to build models helps a bit. [1] http://th17.bio.nyu.edu/pages/index.html http://th17.bio.nyu.edu/pages/index.html

codecamper 6y ago

What's the qualifications of the author before I go and invest time to read his/her theories?

ziga 6y ago
> Geeky entrepreneur https://www.linkedin.com/in/bert-hubert-b05452/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bert-hubert-b05452/
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  So... “none”?
  - ahubert 6y ago
    Author here - the article has been read and retweeted by actual world class experts. Given that the article is now nearly two weeks old, I would have heard about any gross inaccuracies in there by now. There is some minor feedback and it needs a few tweaks, but overall it holds up really well.
hn_check 6y ago
It's Musk Syndrome -- be successful at something, to whatever degree, so think that a bit of Googling makes you an expert at everything, and that the world needs to hear your take. It's absolutely exhausting, and is easily the weakest element of sites like Hacker News. There is a certain sort of hubris in this industry that just foments this exaggerated sense of relevance to every topic.
- rpiguy 6y ago
  Nearly as tedious as listening to experts in lab coats make wild projections that were wildly off and basing policy on it. I’m very happy that we get lots of opinions from non-experts.
  - doliveira 6y ago

Animats 6y ago

The author asks some questions which can be answered by gathering some data. This suggests going back and re-testing for antibodies some populations from tightly packed groups - the cruise ship passengers, warship crew, and nursing home residents. The antibody tests are more accurate than they were two months ago. The key here is to find out how many people, definitely exposed to the virus, not only did not show any symptoms, but did not develop antibodies. That group presumably had some form of pre-existing immunity. Is anybody doing something like that?

Animats 6y ago
It looks like that's already been done, and there are tightly packed groups where the infection rate was 70-100%, as mentioned above. So, no existing immunity at all, probably. That was the claim in the original article, but the data does not bear it out.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Finding densely connected subgroups in special populations (prisons, cruise ships) with high infection rates doesn't mean that that specifies the equilibrium herd immunity threshold in other populations.
  - guscost 6y ago
    Similarly, the plural of anecdote is not data. You are completely right, and nobody has a good rebuttal.
- hcknwscommenter 6y ago
  70% infection Suggests a LOT of pre-existing immunity. Moreover, even if 100% antibody + rates does not rule out a lot of pre-existing immunity. If I am naturally resistant to coronavirus (e.g., COVID patient sneezes in my face and I get a mild fever 10 days later), I'll probably develop antibodies from an exposure and otherwise be fine, I'd call that pretty damn good pre-existing immunity. According to your logic, that would be "no [pre-]existing immunity at all."
6y ago

nodamage 6y ago

> And wherever we look, infections level off before 10%-20% of the population is infected. This is somewhat mysterious. This is not really true. Bergamo had a 58% infection rate as of last month: https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_maggio_22/bergamo-test-sierologici-cittadini-583percento-positivo-un-giorno-51-contagi-piu-8f6ac032-9c44-11ea-aab2-c1d41bfb67c5.shtml https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_maggio_22/ber... Several prisons have seen infection rates in the 70-80% range: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/20/838943211/73-of-inmates-at-an-ohio-prison-test-positive-for-coronavirus https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... The USS Theodore Roosevelt had an infection rate of 60%: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6923e4.htm?s_cid=mm6923e4_e&deliveryName=USCDC_921-DM30202 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6923e4.htm?s_cid=mm... A better explanation for the leveling off is simply that social distancing and lockdowns have reduced the spread of the virus.

MiguelVieira 6y ago
Also this Washington choir where over 80% of the attendants were infected https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-superspreader-singing.html https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-superspreader-singing.h... This article is just wishful thinking.
- mlyle 6y ago
  "This phenomenon is called overdispersion, and it means that while on average a patient infects 2 or 3 new people, this average consists of many people infecting nobody, and then some mass spreading events infecting many more."
  - acqq 6y ago
    > then some mass spreading events infecting many more The point is however that it is impossible that the choir selected their members based on the criteria of "members can be only these who will be easily infected with the at the moment still unknown disease." There the existence of the superspreading event to "80% of some random selection" disproves the hypothesis that "on average much less than 80% of the population can be infected at once". That's obviously not true.

lymeeducator 6y ago

T cell responses are interesting. Infectolab (https://www.infectolab-americas.com/ https://www.infectolab-americas.com/) and its originator Armin (Germany) are using T cell responses for tick borne diseases like: Borellia (Lyme), Bartonella and Babesia because antibody testing is difficult for these (broken via CDC specs as most labs won't test key proteins 31, 34 and never indicate which antibodies are present). Bartonella is very hard to test for with antibody and PCR. It really depends on lab specialty. The sars-cov-2 antibody tests are unpredictable in quality, so nearly useless (my dr is 0-50 via Quest and many people had + PCR). In short, our immune context (genetic phenotype) is unique! We need a lot more data from everyone to start making accurate correlations. We do not measure T-cells, cytokines, mast cells, b-cells, HLA (partly how we potentially make antibodies) at any meaningful level to provide much confidence. Many natural/industrial substances suppress our T-cell responses and generally innate immune system (metals, mold toxins, etc), so we also need to start accounting for those. It's a long road we have in front of us. Hopefully the medical system supports patient data ownership and research to improve on our obvious ignorance.

gonational 6y ago
Do you have any thoughts on the usage of consumption of Borax to treat Lyme disease (asking because your username)?
- lymeeducator 6y ago
  Never used it and wouldn't use it. I do not condone long term antibiotics either.
erentz 6y ago
Note that Armin Labs are considered quacks by many. For one example [1]. I will leave it to others to do your own research but just wanted to recommend caution about their use. Especially for diagnosis of Lyme, plenty of tragic stories of people getting an Armin positive test while negative on the others and then being encouraged through years of serious antibiotic treatments only to have always been negative all along. [1] https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/documentary-undercover-in-german-lyme-clinics.55493/ https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/documentary-undercov...

tacitusarc 6y ago

This article talks about cell mediated immunity whereby compromised cells are detected via peptides produced, but there's actually another mechanism that's still in the early stages of being understood called merocytophagy where an immune cell can partially "eat" another cell to see if it "tastes" sick.

xmichael0 6y ago

So... Does this mean that we can "self" vaccinate by going maskless and running around the city and in and out of grocery stores every few days? I am mostly joking here, but I am also serious, the post implies that we can develop immunity by getting minor exposures over a period of time. I read the article twice and probably need it twice more to fully understand it, but please enlighten me.

dehrmann 6y ago
That's essentially how live-attenuated vaccines work. You'd have the same benefits and drawbacks, but a dosing issue.
redis_mlc 6y ago
It's essentially what we've done in SF: 1) Allow a million passengers from China to disembark in Calif. 2) Everybody goes to the grocery store twice a week and mingles in a leisurely fashion. For us, it's worked out great. Probably the lowest measured infection and documented mortality rates in the world for an area that doesn't do testing and tracing. Seen any apocalyptic news stories about SF hospitals like NY? Nope, me neither. I'm much more worried about the negative cardiac effects of no exercise than corona deaths.
mr_toad 6y ago
Innate immunity is more like a built-in mask. It’s pretty much the opposite of building up an immunity.

acqq 6y ago

> Does this mean that if you recently had a Coronavirus that caused a head cold that you have a measure of protection? Apparently, no, as there are no observed differences in the percentages of infected when the people who have children or work with children are compared with those who don't. If the stated assumption were true, those that were more exposed to other coronaviruses (which would be expected among those having or being close to kids) would be as a group less prone to be infected. That was apparently not observed. So the "slowdowns" are just the humans adapting their behavior to reduce their chances of getting infected. When Rt is 1 the growth is linear, as simple as that. Less of such changes in the population behavior, more people are getting infected, faster. Source: translated transcript of the podcast of Christian Drosten. Hint: also, don't believe what most of the media says that "he said" -- I've seen a lot of "editorialized" reporting of what he says, to the point of the end product being completely opposite of what he actually said. It's that bad. One really has to go to the source and read. Unfortunately, it's a lot of work, as the podcasts are long. So the people who don't read the source tend to have completely wrong idea what he actually said -- that's also why I'm not giving the specific link: if one doesn't invest really a lot of energy and find and carefully the sources, one has more chance to acquire completely wrong conclusions as "highlights."

jacobush 6y ago
These cold viruses circle the globe too, and just because some children had colds and transferred them to adults, does not mean that they had exactly the strain that could potentially give partial Covid19 immunity. So while I agree with your general advice about sources, I don't find your "apparently" to be apparent at all.
- acqq 6y ago
  > while I agree with your general advice about sources, I don't find your "apparently" to be apparent at all. "Apparently" was used in the sense "I haven't seen and verified the sources myself" (i.e. the specific scientific material that supports the conclusion of an expert) but at least I took the effort to get the claim about that conclusion from a recognized expert directly." That is, I can't give you the ultimate source that the said expert used for that conclusion, but according to my understanding from reading a transcript of his podcast he concluded that and I have chosen to believe him. Experts spend their whole life to achieve expertise. There are a lot of "preprints" and even fast-approved published scientific papers floating around, which eventually (even extremely fast) are recognized to be flawed by the experts, but only after the false claims are repeated across the media. In such a situation, unless we are the experts ourselves, and unless we have infinite time available, our best bet is to trust the experts who are less prone to present or accept false claims. I consider Christian Drosten one of these. Being curious, I do check some source scientific works myself, I'm just admitting that for that particular claim I haven't checked the sources myself but decided to trust Drosten. I also claim that I at least spent enough energy to read the exact transcript of his talk and avoided to read "journalistic interpretations" -- the expert's statements are very often totally deformed by retelling. If that's not enough for you and you believe that you can catch him in an error, I'd really like to know why you even believe to be able to achieve that. And if you believe that I'm claiming something he hasn't said, you can check the transcripts of his last two podcasts yourself and write here if I made an error, I'll be happy to learn more. At some level every one of us has to trust some experts, the question is just if we can also recognize these who just claim some expertise but are actually promoting false claims. I believe that Ioannidis, for example, is an example of such, and I also see that other experts agree. For "as close to the experts as possible" sources I also recommend everything from https://www.microbe.tv https://www.microbe.tv They also admit that they do make errors sometimes, because they didn't recognize early enough how serious this virus is going to affect everybody. But getting the coverage from the experts directly allows one to remain much saner than when reading media who regularly completely distort what experts actually say. And even when media accurately quote some single paper, media often falsely reflect what the whole body of knowledge actually is, as in xkcd "Significant" comics.

newmana 6y ago

"It took nine days for the number of infections to grow from 6 million to 7 million, and less than eight days to get to the latest million, so the pandemic is not slowing down." https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/the-global-hotspots-where-coronavirus-is-still-killing-thousands/12361280 https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/the-global-...