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How many ways I hate your comment? let me count the ways. 1. Somebody comes with a potentially awesome idea, you have a gut feeling it's risky, and start looki

How many ways I hate your comment? let me count the ways. 1. Somebody comes with a potentially awesome idea, you have a gut feeling it's risky, and start looking for confirmations of your gut feeling. Way to #hit on somebody else's initiative. 2. "The virus" (we all know we aren't talking about tuberculosis here) is airborne, which means it'll float around. If there are shadows it's not "over", it what scenario it would even mean anything for shadows to be game over? An instantaneous flash once? 3. An alternative is not an argument. Hepa filters work, and I completely agree that we should be using them a lot more but: 3.1 We aren't using them a lot more, so for some reason they don't fix the problem, so alternate solutions are very welcome 3.2 There's room for more than one took in a toolkit, for reasons too obvious to get into. ---------------- Now why am I taking the time to write a comment 5x the length of yours? Because you're merely doing in a somewhat more obvious and inexperienced way what society has been doing for... at least a couple dozen years. Anything new is risky, we should carefully study side effects and only when it's clear there aren't any we're allowed to move forward. This is especially true for medical tech, but it's part of a larger disease that's in the same constellation with NIMBY, regulatory capture and taxi medallions being worth a million. Covid made it obvious that a lot of emperors didn't wear clothes. We could have had mRNA vaccines quite a bit earlier - and I'm sure the companies involved would have been perfectly happy to make money from them. But no, there had to be a pandemic for regulatory agencies to even consider approving such new tech. We could have had WFH ten years ago, the tech was here. It took barely weeks for IT departments and worflows to adapt. But no, managers had to negotiate in the strictest terms for even one day a week of WFH, because it's Something That Is Not Done. And you have a gut feeling that it's risky tech, and I get triggered.

cowsandmilk 5y ago
> there had to be a pandemic for regulatory agencies to even consider approving such new tech. That’s nonsense. There were no regulatory agencies blocking mRNA vaccines. There has been a path towards their approval for a long time. And products such as EndeavorRx, a therapy delivered as a video game, show that FDA is willing to create paths for novel types of therapies in recent years.
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  > There has been a path towards their approval for a long time. QED
zarzavat 5y ago
Between the forever chemicals, microplastics and air pollution we already have quite enough "good ideas" trying to kill us. The burden of proof for any potentially hazardous new invention is on the inventor to prove that it is safe. People who are dismissive of new ideas based on safety grounds don't need to provide reasoning or evidence or even a coherent argument, they provide a useful function nonetheless by adding friction, forcing inventors to prove that their invention is safe beyond doubt. Since this idea proposes using ionizing radiation around people, a strong dose of scepticism is warranted.
bratwurst3000 5y ago
Dude first I didnt want to trigger you and I apreciate your comment. But isnt saying its a gut feeling somehow communicating it is understood that this isnt the standpoint of a scientist? Thats mostly common sense. So why go into ragemod on sth I did state as something not to take seriously? But you made a long comment so I will take the time to engage with you. 1. a potential awesome idea it isnt. Uvc is very strong and every layman should now that it can kill bacteria and viruses … it can even split chemical bonds. And a it should be known that it creates ozon and could cause cancer. But this is a question of the intensity. And also as the ozon layer filters uvc we dont have much contact. But it is safe to asume that if UVA and UVB are causing cancer so should UVC … the next lvl of higher energy is X-ray and gamma and beta. Funny stuff 2. a scenario where to people are talking to each other and the uv cant radiate between them. 3 I did propose the hepa filter because the problem is the following. You have a rate of virus getting in the air and a rate it is killed by uv light and a rate of it is absorbed by the hepa filter. So imho a room were air can circulate easily there should be a possibility of getting to the rate that the air in the room is changed sufficent quickly to not get anough virus to make people ill. UV light is a good choice and allready used in hospitals and cheap. But when nobody is there. But i still dont think its a good idea to throw high energy radiation onto people just to be safe. 3.1 they are expensiv and getting to a solution is not what this society is made for 3.2 i totaly agree with you and every option should be validated. But do I have the right to an opinion? I dont want to disrupt the discussion about potentialy helping ideas. But when someone stats a doubt it would be nice to answer polite and engaging on the doubt. And I understand you have a history that made you get triggered but dude … I am not part of that history. Wish you the best Edit: ar last i want to state that the succes of a medicine to finish phase three is like 1-5% … so good that we have those mechanics to prevent harm to society… but this is a old discusion
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  Yeah, should have made it more clear that it's not personal. But look at the other comments. Look at what zarzavat is saying below. "The burden is on the inventor" - and since he mentions microplastics, I'm allowed to assume he's talking about high levels of certainty and second order effects. This has never been true in the whole human history. Ever. This itself, this "being certain every innovation is 100% harmless" is a huge departure from how things have been done, and in itself has a huge risk. I'm not talking about not having shiny new cool stuff, or not having a colony on Mars. I'm talking about apples and apples - about this kind of meta-strategies just plain costing more lives than they save. Google "FDA delenda est", for smarter people than me saying that FDA was way too conservative in the pandemic. Somebody said below that I'm mistaken about regulatory agencies delaying mRNA before the pandemic. We could of course try and get into the gritty details about what they delayed and why, but just consider one thing: Moderna had their covid vaccine ready in a matter of WEEKS. And it's the same vaccine we're using now. I don't know without googling when Pfizer had their first version, but I imagine it's around the same timeframe. Does this sound like immature technology? When two companies immediately come up with a vaccine when really needed? What is more likely, that it somehow happened right now for god knows what reason, or that they were both ready to use mRNA but couldn't? And people keep dying around us. Of Covid, of cancer, of dozen of diseases, not to mention plain old age. This is not about micro-plastics - it's lives vs lives. We have (all around the world) a much more conservative system than we need.

cowsandmilk 5y ago

> there had to be a pandemic for regulatory agencies to even consider approving such new tech. That’s nonsense. There were no regulatory agencies blocking mRNA vaccines. There has been a path towards their approval for a long time. And products such as EndeavorRx, a therapy delivered as a video game, show that FDA is willing to create paths for novel types of therapies in recent years.

radu_floricica 5y ago
> There has been a path towards their approval for a long time. QED

zarzavat 5y ago

Between the forever chemicals, microplastics and air pollution we already have quite enough "good ideas" trying to kill us. The burden of proof for any potentially hazardous new invention is on the inventor to prove that it is safe. People who are dismissive of new ideas based on safety grounds don't need to provide reasoning or evidence or even a coherent argument, they provide a useful function nonetheless by adding friction, forcing inventors to prove that their invention is safe beyond doubt. Since this idea proposes using ionizing radiation around people, a strong dose of scepticism is warranted.

bratwurst3000 5y ago

Dude first I didnt want to trigger you and I apreciate your comment. But isnt saying its a gut feeling somehow communicating it is understood that this isnt the standpoint of a scientist? Thats mostly common sense. So why go into ragemod on sth I did state as something not to take seriously? But you made a long comment so I will take the time to engage with you. 1. a potential awesome idea it isnt. Uvc is very strong and every layman should now that it can kill bacteria and viruses … it can even split chemical bonds. And a it should be known that it creates ozon and could cause cancer. But this is a question of the intensity. And also as the ozon layer filters uvc we dont have much contact. But it is safe to asume that if UVA and UVB are causing cancer so should UVC … the next lvl of higher energy is X-ray and gamma and beta. Funny stuff 2. a scenario where to people are talking to each other and the uv cant radiate between them. 3 I did propose the hepa filter because the problem is the following. You have a rate of virus getting in the air and a rate it is killed by uv light and a rate of it is absorbed by the hepa filter. So imho a room were air can circulate easily there should be a possibility of getting to the rate that the air in the room is changed sufficent quickly to not get anough virus to make people ill. UV light is a good choice and allready used in hospitals and cheap. But when nobody is there. But i still dont think its a good idea to throw high energy radiation onto people just to be safe. 3.1 they are expensiv and getting to a solution is not what this society is made for 3.2 i totaly agree with you and every option should be validated. But do I have the right to an opinion? I dont want to disrupt the discussion about potentialy helping ideas. But when someone stats a doubt it would be nice to answer polite and engaging on the doubt. And I understand you have a history that made you get triggered but dude … I am not part of that history. Wish you the best Edit: ar last i want to state that the succes of a medicine to finish phase three is like 1-5% … so good that we have those mechanics to prevent harm to society… but this is a old discusion

radu_floricica 5y ago
Yeah, should have made it more clear that it's not personal. But look at the other comments. Look at what zarzavat is saying below. "The burden is on the inventor" - and since he mentions microplastics, I'm allowed to assume he's talking about high levels of certainty and second order effects. This has never been true in the whole human history. Ever. This itself, this "being certain every innovation is 100% harmless" is a huge departure from how things have been done, and in itself has a huge risk. I'm not talking about not having shiny new cool stuff, or not having a colony on Mars. I'm talking about apples and apples - about this kind of meta-strategies just plain costing more lives than they save. Google "FDA delenda est", for smarter people than me saying that FDA was way too conservative in the pandemic. Somebody said below that I'm mistaken about regulatory agencies delaying mRNA before the pandemic. We could of course try and get into the gritty details about what they delayed and why, but just consider one thing: Moderna had their covid vaccine ready in a matter of WEEKS. And it's the same vaccine we're using now. I don't know without googling when Pfizer had their first version, but I imagine it's around the same timeframe. Does this sound like immature technology? When two companies immediately come up with a vaccine when really needed? What is more likely, that it somehow happened right now for god knows what reason, or that they were both ready to use mRNA but couldn't? And people keep dying around us. Of Covid, of cancer, of dozen of diseases, not to mention plain old age. This is not about micro-plastics - it's lives vs lives. We have (all around the world) a much more conservative system than we need.