5 ms·

Without debating the whole article, I found this one excerpt to be somewhat indicative of his writing more broadly: "Unfortunately, I turned out to be right. T

Without debating the whole article, I found this one excerpt to be somewhat indicative of his writing more broadly: "Unfortunately, I turned out to be right. The short explanation is that the viruses that tend to win do so because they reproduce faster. Such a virus will grow faster inside a person, and will make that person more infectious, faster. It will also kill that person faster." This is a fairly vague statement with broad implications (and a pinch of hubris) supported with insufficient evidence. I appreciate that he is trying to simplify a complex issue into lay-mens terms but I worry that writing like this only adds fodder to the anti-science movement because it is full of quasi-truths.

effie 5y ago
Indeed. The very distinct feature of initial SARS-COV-2 was that people had extremely large viral load, yet little symptoms (when compared to other regular viruses). Even if the virus evolves towards larger viral load, this does not mean that it will be more lethal.
tomp 5y ago
This is also in contrast to what I learned about illnesses - basically that the more “evolutionary successful” ones are the ones that are less dangerous, and kill the victim slower - think HIV or herpes. Which, even logically, makes sense - it turns out that a mildly infectious alive person walking around is a better reproduction vector for the virus than a highly infectious dead person.
timr 5y ago
> The short explanation is that the viruses that tend to win do so because they reproduce faster. Such a virus will grow faster inside a person, and will make that person more infectious, faster. It will also kill that person faster. There is not a single part of this sentence that is actually true: 1) the Delta variant does not "reproduce faster", except perhaps in the broad sense that it (may) be more successful in a population than other strains. 2) the variant does not "grow faster inside a person". This is nonsense. 3) "will make that person more infectious, faster." Also nonsense. There's no evidence of this, nor any bioplausibility for the statement. There's limited evidence that viral loads are higher, but that isn't the same thing. 4) "it will also kill a person faster". There's no evidence of this, either. This paragraph is exactly what's wrong with Pueyo, in a nutshell: he takes a tenable fact ("Delta is more fit in the population") and twists it in ways that sound plausible and scary to laymen, but that are absolutely not supported by science or evidence.
passivate 5y ago
I think there is a base level of knowledge and a higher level of hunch/intuition type thinking that can lead someone to make leaps and lead them to discover something that others might not. I don't think this is that, but I feel its an important part of what makes us progress in science.

effie 5y ago

Indeed. The very distinct feature of initial SARS-COV-2 was that people had extremely large viral load, yet little symptoms (when compared to other regular viruses). Even if the virus evolves towards larger viral load, this does not mean that it will be more lethal.

tomp 5y ago

This is also in contrast to what I learned about illnesses - basically that the more “evolutionary successful” ones are the ones that are less dangerous, and kill the victim slower - think HIV or herpes. Which, even logically, makes sense - it turns out that a mildly infectious alive person walking around is a better reproduction vector for the virus than a highly infectious dead person.

timr 5y ago

> The short explanation is that the viruses that tend to win do so because they reproduce faster. Such a virus will grow faster inside a person, and will make that person more infectious, faster. It will also kill that person faster. There is not a single part of this sentence that is actually true: 1) the Delta variant does not "reproduce faster", except perhaps in the broad sense that it (may) be more successful in a population than other strains. 2) the variant does not "grow faster inside a person". This is nonsense. 3) "will make that person more infectious, faster." Also nonsense. There's no evidence of this, nor any bioplausibility for the statement. There's limited evidence that viral loads are higher, but that isn't the same thing. 4) "it will also kill a person faster". There's no evidence of this, either. This paragraph is exactly what's wrong with Pueyo, in a nutshell: he takes a tenable fact ("Delta is more fit in the population") and twists it in ways that sound plausible and scary to laymen, but that are absolutely not supported by science or evidence.

passivate 5y ago

I think there is a base level of knowledge and a higher level of hunch/intuition type thinking that can lead someone to make leaps and lead them to discover something that others might not. I don't think this is that, but I feel its an important part of what makes us progress in science.