3 ms·

I find it really saddening that we aren't ramping the spending on these questions and issues. We should spend on the order of 100-200 billion globally to resear

by oezi 5y ago

I find it really saddening that we aren't ramping the spending on these questions and issues. We should spend on the order of 100-200 billion globally to research and fights the pandemic. That would be a drop in the bucket compared to the economic impact of the pandemic.

dragontamer 5y ago
9 mothers can't birth a baby in 1 month. More money only allows us to conduct more parallel research to answer questions in parallel. It doesn't mean that we iterate any faster in the "question -> answer -> think of new question" bottleneck. We've got research on Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, Novavax (and other vaccines) coming in. We got research on corticosteroids (dexamethasone, Prednisone, Methylprednisolone ), IVM, hydroxychloroquine, etc. etc. (even if we have no reason to believe that Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine will work, we'll conduct the research anyway so that some loud people out there can finally shut up about it). There's monoclonal antibodies (REGN10933 and REGN10987), with probably more in the works. Etc. etc. There is research on Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Blood type, etc. etc. So much research, and many of that research is getting replicated over-and-over again, to ensure accuracy. And of course: there's research about _how long does the vaccine last_, which is fundamental to this entire FDA question. There's a myriad of measurements going on, and it seems like the scientists aren't agreeing upon the research yet. -------- That's fine. CDC has one set of research. FDA has another. White House will make a decision. When agencies disagree, we take it up to the higher-levels of discussion to make a decision through other means.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > 9 mothers can't birth a baby in 1 month. This is one of the stupidest stock examples ever invented. The idea is that one of the most parallelizable processes known to mankind, characterized by its rapid growth and perfect scaling, is the paradigmatic example of a process that bottlenecks itself. It takes one woman more than 30 months to have two babies. Two women can do it in 9 months. When someone says "9 mothers can't have a baby in one month", you have to wonder whether the lesson they want you to draw -- that some other process can't be parallelized -- applies to that other process any better than it applies to the process of population growth.
  - heisenbit 5y ago
    The example is excellent since while the dna research can be executed in parallel the trials with humans (and animal trials before) do take real calendar time. And unlike test tubes where breakage is part and parcel of doing stuff breaking human experimental subjects is frowned upon and their involvement is scaled up slowly in stages for ethical reasons.

by oezi 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

9 mothers can't birth a baby in 1 month. More money only allows us to conduct more parallel research to answer questions in parallel. It doesn't mean that we iterate any faster in the "question -> answer -> think of new question" bottleneck. We've got research on Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, Novavax (and other vaccines) coming in. We got research on corticosteroids (dexamethasone, Prednisone, Methylprednisolone ), IVM, hydroxychloroquine, etc. etc. (even if we have no reason to believe that Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine will work, we'll conduct the research anyway so that some loud people out there can finally shut up about it). There's monoclonal antibodies (REGN10933 and REGN10987), with probably more in the works. Etc. etc. There is research on Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Blood type, etc. etc. So much research, and many of that research is getting replicated over-and-over again, to ensure accuracy. And of course: there's research about _how long does the vaccine last_, which is fundamental to this entire FDA question. There's a myriad of measurements going on, and it seems like the scientists aren't agreeing upon the research yet. -------- That's fine. CDC has one set of research. FDA has another. White House will make a decision. When agencies disagree, we take it up to the higher-levels of discussion to make a decision through other means.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> 9 mothers can't birth a baby in 1 month. This is one of the stupidest stock examples ever invented. The idea is that one of the most parallelizable processes known to mankind, characterized by its rapid growth and perfect scaling, is the paradigmatic example of a process that bottlenecks itself. It takes one woman more than 30 months to have two babies. Two women can do it in 9 months. When someone says "9 mothers can't have a baby in one month", you have to wonder whether the lesson they want you to draw -- that some other process can't be parallelized -- applies to that other process any better than it applies to the process of population growth.
- heisenbit 5y ago
  The example is excellent since while the dna research can be executed in parallel the trials with humans (and animal trials before) do take real calendar time. And unlike test tubes where breakage is part and parcel of doing stuff breaking human experimental subjects is frowned upon and their involvement is scaled up slowly in stages for ethical reasons.