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It insane how people/media outlets simply ignored what has happened in our past. We had many pandemics. Why should this virus now be radically different? Our i
by shoto_io 5y ago
It insane how people/media outlets simply ignored what has happened in our past.
We had many pandemics. Why should this virus now be radically different? Our immune system would not have survived so long if we kept getting critically sick from virii our system has seen before.
- _Microft 5y agoThere is a huge difference between assuming or believing something and actually knowing it. (I am talking about scientific knowledge that other knowledge can - and hopefully will - be build upon.)
- anoncake 5y agoOnly if you're of the mindset that any risk, no matter how small, is unacceptable. > (I am talking about scientific knowledge that other knowledge can be build upon.) This was added later. When talking purely about scientific knowledge, risk isn't a factor of course. But we have, at times, behaved as if we had no idea if Covid would behave like literally any other coronavirus in existence. Even if we didn't strictly know that Covid had not mutated into something like HIV, it was irrational not to assume it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Pyramus 5y agoLeaving aside that I don't know who is "we" and how "we have acted": A theme of the current pandemic has been that the societies/governments that had faced a coronavirus outbreak in the past, e.g. SARS in Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, have acted a lot more swiftly and decisively relative to most Western nations. It is hard to ignore that this approach has been more successful in terms of fatalities and economic costs (ignoring personal rights and freedoms).
- anoncake 5y agoCan we please not ignore personal rights and freedoms though?
- cm2187 5y agoAlso the number of reinfections was tiny. We have known for 8 months already that it provided lasting protection, nevermind the fear mongering.
- Pyramus 5y agoNo, "we" haven't "known", and I'm not sure oversimplification is a good answer to fear mongering. Yes, expert consensus has been positive from almost day one, based on SARS-Cov-1 and other coronaviruses. Still, what we didn't know (and in some cases still don't): * Is there anti-body dependent enhancement? * Effects on/from variants? * Effects from other coronaviruses? * Role of severity of infection on protection? * Clinical relevance of protection * Epidemiological relevance of protection * Mechanism of protection * Duration of protection etc. BTW in most of Europe, recovered persons are on equal footing with the tested and vaccinated.
- tchalla 5y agoAre you telling us that ALL pandemic viruses are the same and there would be no differences between them? What do you mean by “people/media simply ignoring the past”?
- krona 5y agoAssuming the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 behaves like SARS-CoV-1 might be a sensible working hypothesis?
- protoman3000 5y agoIn hind side you’re always smarter. There are many diseases that have Antibody Dependend Enhancement (ADE), which makes you get much more sick at second infection. For a long time, some would even say still, it was not only unclear whether SARS-Cov-2 has ADE but the clinical history in bad cases pointed towards it.
- shoto_io 5y agoYes sure, this is theoretically possible. But what happens if we use Bayesian reasoning? - We already have 4 other Corona Viruses endemic in the human population - More than 80 percent of confirmed coronavirus cases are not severe (probably because T-Cell induced immunity is working very efficiently) - Reported reinfections are minimal I think these priors alone reduce the probability for ADE drastically. Don't you?
- fsh 5y agoThis is not a random experiment, so statistical methods (Bayesian or other) do not apply. I really wish that this meme of throwing around big words like "Bayesian reasoning" or "Priors" completely out of context will disappear at some point.
- shoto_io 5y agoSorry, if I used it out of context. I was under the impression that virus formation (copying, mutations and all that) was indeed a statistical process. But maybe I am wrong?
- fsh 5y agoStatistical modelling assumes that the observations can in some way be described as random samples drawn from an (unknown) probability distribution. One can then try to estimate properties of that distribution using the observed data. For example, one can assume a gaussian distribution and estimate its mean and width using the mean and standard deviation of the data. Bayesian inference aims to directly extract the underlying probability distribution without assuming a fixed functional form. In any case, one should be extremely skeptical when someone tries to apply such methods to sparse or cherry-picked data. Including SARS-CoV-2, there are only seven coronaviruses that are known to infect humans. This is an extremely small number to do statistics with. Of course one can make educated guesses based on experiences with previous similar viruses (such as SARS-CoV). But using the language of Bayesian inference for this is just cargo cult science in my opinion.
- conradfr 5y agoHow many pandemics originated from a virus potentially created in a lab? This virus has in all cases defied a lot of previous assumptions and humbled many healthcare professionals.
- gregoriol 5y agoA year ago we didn't know how "bad" that new virus was; now we don't know how bad any new variant can be. There have been many pandemics, and many people have died; we try to prevent many people from dying. Some pandemics have not much "survive" or end: Ebola, HIV, ... so we better double-check any new one before being ok with it.
- quaintdev 5y ago> so we better double-check any new one before being ok with it. This. No government or institution should downplay seriousness of pandemic even if virus is not as deadly as Ebola.
- anoncake 5y agoNor should it upplay it.
- quaintdev 5y agoNo. Because you have no idea how that same virus is going to mutate when billions of people are going to get infected. The seriousness of pandemic plays major role in containing it.
- anoncake 5y agoNot having an idea how a virus is going to mutate means you have no evidence that it is going to mutate in a problematic way.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- loup-vaillant 5y agoIn the case of Covid-19, I'd say we tend to downplay it by default: we're not much afraid of it because of its low mortality rate, so we could (and did) easily overlook it's extremely high infection rate. As a result of how easily it spreads, Covid-19 likely caused many more deaths than many otherwise much scarier diseases, including Ebola.
- chaostheory 5y agoIn COVID-19's case, there's a reasonable chance that it's a synthetic product of gain of function research.
- zero_deg_kevin 5y agoIs there any primary source evidence of this or is this reporters reporting things reported by other reporters? The former would be incredibly compelling, the latter would lead me to question the reporter’s motives.
- chaostheory 5y agoThe US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology gain of function research on coronaviruses. https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741 https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan... There's evidence that it's synthetic https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748 https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug... https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html Most of the researchers who are strongly denying the possibility of COVID-19 being synthesized in a lab have conflicting interests. Namely, they are associated with organizations that have directly collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of virology.
- sascha_sl 5y agoPopulation density and mobility has never been this high. Living space for species carrying diseases has never been this constricted. The plague was a very severe pandemic, but it was never global at one single point in time in the way COVID was in 2020; it slowly burned itself along the silk road.
- shoto_io 5y agoThis is a very fair point. But don't you think that this is affecting speed of transmission but not the fundamentals of the disease?
- sascha_sl 5y agoMore transmissions mean more chances at mutations. This isn't just true for humans, but also the animal carriers of pathogens who now live closer together. Mobility is also a factor in transmission. MERS was fatal enough to burn itself out, but in a less mobile world it would've burned out even faster.
- thewarrior 5y agoLet me give you a counter example. A friend of mine is only 25 years old and fit (resting heart rate below 70). They got infected with Covid twice within 2 months. They tested positive on a PCR test. The second infection was significantly worse and they are constantly out of breath and struggling with pneumonia. Do not underestimate this disease. Especially the new Indian variant. Having antibodies is not necessarily the same as being protected. Especially in the light of variants and the fact that antibodies can wane over time.
- skocznymroczny 5y agoPCR tests are not a reliable method to determine infection. Is it possible that your friend had a pneumonia and it just shows on the test?
- hef19898 5y agoWhy wouldn't PCR tests be a reliable test for infection?
- skocznymroczny 5y agoGoogle "PCR false positive" "PCR false negative" for some sources. Also, there's the whole cycle issue, by changing the number of cycles, you can switch between a pandemic and endemic situation almost at will.
- TechBro8615 5y agoYou really think people would do that? Just go on TV and exaggerate and lie like that?!
- canadianfella 5y ago>virii Viruses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_in_-us https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_...