5 ms·

> The people coexisting with the thing are representative of a new biological groundstate for humanity. You see them as politically undesirable, but like it or

> The people coexisting with the thing are representative of a new biological groundstate for humanity. You see them as politically undesirable, but like it or not, the damn thing is endemic now. We had something like that in the 1970s too, with leaded gasoline. There is a theory that neurotoxic effects of lead exposure caused similar behaviour changes in large numbers of people, resulting in a US-wide bump in violent crime until the exposed cohort aged out after leaded gas was banned: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur... https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le... Added: re politically undesirable: it seems to me that powerful political and similar figures tend to be extravert types who spend a lot of time around other people think they are somehow immune, so they get infected. So Trump, Musk, Boris Johnson, and (not sure) maybe Biden have all been infected. Musk has always been a bit toxic, but at least he used to know how to make money. Lately he has been mismanaging Twitter and Tesla pretty badly. Could that be from Covid?

salawat 4y ago
That one is drastically different in that you could politically cycle that out. It wasn't self-replicating, with the only contribution needed for perpetuation being humans that breathe to exist. Leaded gas required it to be economically feasible to continue producing/consuming leaded gas. Leaded gas required a human being to make it in the first place, and keep it being made. COVID gives not 2 shakes about profittability. Think of it like measles, but without the antigenic stability to keep vaccines effective in the long term. It's here,and it's here to stay. It ain't just humans that host the thing either. So what are you going to do? Drive all the reservoir species to extinction? Convince everyone to be okay with locking up non-compliant persons with the public health system? Implement it? Then what? I'm sure such an authoritarian cudgel won't be abused ever and will be dismantled as soon as COVID hits smallpox/polio status and stays that way, right? With full dismantling, and invalidation of precedent, reversal of enforcement budgets and teardown of infrastructure without repurposing... Right? If you think I'm just being a codger who doesn't think COVID is more than a flu, you're dead wrong. It is much, much more, and far worse by leagues. Whatever we do to try to "eradicate" it, however, has the potential to completely dismantle the fundamental principles on which a classically liberal government operates. "Public health" is one of about four things in which the best of intentions is basically guaranteed to turn into the highway to hell. Nat Sec, and the Economy, being two more, and with "For the Children" being the last. We're going to have to work through it, and achieve an equilibrium. Anyone who thinks you can or should get an entire population playing to such an extreme singular tune, has a few screws loose. But cheer up. Since I wrote this post, by Murphy's Law, it's basically guaranteed you'll get your wish anyway. God have mercy on us all though. Because Murphy seldom has things play out in a way anybody likes.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm pessimistic too, unless treatments and interventions get a lot better and someone knocks sense into our "leaders". But, interventions during the worst parts of the pendemic really did work. We just don't have the fortitude to keep them in place. I have been wanting to post a rant, though probably not to here. Good ventilation everywhere people gather would be a good start.
  - salawat 4y ago
    >But, interventions during the worst parts of the pendemic really did work. I'm not sure the jury is entirely in on that yet; but I'll be the first to admit it's painstakingly difficult to with any degree of confidence tease apart disparate threads of systemic dysfunction to isolate the COVID contribution. Like the supply chain: did we get into dire straits because of the bullwhip effect + lack of people actually able to make things? Almost certainly. But could that also have been a symptom of over-reliance on centralized industry, which makes a fundamental tradeoff for efficiency of consolidating people + equipment in a single place at the same-time at the expense of fault-tolerance? I won't opine on the strictly medical interventions since that isn't so much my bag, but logistics-wise, COVID demonstrated our industrial architecture has become a house of cards waiting to go up in flames to a pathogenic match. Socially speaking, I'm tempted to say we were as close as I've seen in living memory to completely unprepared for people to get forcibly physically denetworked to a high degree. I'll also be one of the first to admit that besides 9/11, I've never seen American civic life get quite as ugly, quite so fast, and to such a high degree as it did during the pandemic; and I can't isolate the Administration at the time as a contributing factor; but I also can't deny that in spite of the ineptitude at that level, things developed disturbingly fast and not in an ultimately comforting direction either; but rather reinforcing the same disturbances we haven't even reeled back from from the War on Terror era. There has to be a correction. There has to be a hard line we aren't willing to let fear shephard us to cross. If there isn't, I fear for us all.

salawat 4y ago

That one is drastically different in that you could politically cycle that out. It wasn't self-replicating, with the only contribution needed for perpetuation being humans that breathe to exist. Leaded gas required it to be economically feasible to continue producing/consuming leaded gas. Leaded gas required a human being to make it in the first place, and keep it being made. COVID gives not 2 shakes about profittability. Think of it like measles, but without the antigenic stability to keep vaccines effective in the long term. It's here,and it's here to stay. It ain't just humans that host the thing either. So what are you going to do? Drive all the reservoir species to extinction? Convince everyone to be okay with locking up non-compliant persons with the public health system? Implement it? Then what? I'm sure such an authoritarian cudgel won't be abused ever and will be dismantled as soon as COVID hits smallpox/polio status and stays that way, right? With full dismantling, and invalidation of precedent, reversal of enforcement budgets and teardown of infrastructure without repurposing... Right? If you think I'm just being a codger who doesn't think COVID is more than a flu, you're dead wrong. It is much, much more, and far worse by leagues. Whatever we do to try to "eradicate" it, however, has the potential to completely dismantle the fundamental principles on which a classically liberal government operates. "Public health" is one of about four things in which the best of intentions is basically guaranteed to turn into the highway to hell. Nat Sec, and the Economy, being two more, and with "For the Children" being the last. We're going to have to work through it, and achieve an equilibrium. Anyone who thinks you can or should get an entire population playing to such an extreme singular tune, has a few screws loose. But cheer up. Since I wrote this post, by Murphy's Law, it's basically guaranteed you'll get your wish anyway. God have mercy on us all though. Because Murphy seldom has things play out in a way anybody likes.

throwaway81523 4y ago
Yeah, I'm pessimistic too, unless treatments and interventions get a lot better and someone knocks sense into our "leaders". But, interventions during the worst parts of the pendemic really did work. We just don't have the fortitude to keep them in place. I have been wanting to post a rant, though probably not to here. Good ventilation everywhere people gather would be a good start.
- salawat 4y ago
  >But, interventions during the worst parts of the pendemic really did work. I'm not sure the jury is entirely in on that yet; but I'll be the first to admit it's painstakingly difficult to with any degree of confidence tease apart disparate threads of systemic dysfunction to isolate the COVID contribution. Like the supply chain: did we get into dire straits because of the bullwhip effect + lack of people actually able to make things? Almost certainly. But could that also have been a symptom of over-reliance on centralized industry, which makes a fundamental tradeoff for efficiency of consolidating people + equipment in a single place at the same-time at the expense of fault-tolerance? I won't opine on the strictly medical interventions since that isn't so much my bag, but logistics-wise, COVID demonstrated our industrial architecture has become a house of cards waiting to go up in flames to a pathogenic match. Socially speaking, I'm tempted to say we were as close as I've seen in living memory to completely unprepared for people to get forcibly physically denetworked to a high degree. I'll also be one of the first to admit that besides 9/11, I've never seen American civic life get quite as ugly, quite so fast, and to such a high degree as it did during the pandemic; and I can't isolate the Administration at the time as a contributing factor; but I also can't deny that in spite of the ineptitude at that level, things developed disturbingly fast and not in an ultimately comforting direction either; but rather reinforcing the same disturbances we haven't even reeled back from from the War on Terror era. There has to be a correction. There has to be a hard line we aren't willing to let fear shephard us to cross. If there isn't, I fear for us all.