5 ms·

Just curious, how did you find Covid "exciting"? Making lots of money on the bear market?

appplication 3y ago
Perhaps poorly worded, I meant since before. During Covid I lost a lot of zest for life, felt like I went to sleep in my 20s and woke up an old man.
- tnecniv 3y ago
  I identify with that. It didn’t help that around the end of Covid I went through a terrible break up and all my grad school friends finished their degrees and moved while I was still working on mine. It felt like I went to the bathroom at a party and came back to an empty room and I had to stay and clean up. I knew I’d be done in a year or two, so it felt weird to try and find a new social group when I was on short time, but boy was the end of my PhD a slog in part due to feeling disconnected socially.
  - cooper_ganglia 3y ago
    I can relate to both comments. Covid really sapped the life out of me. Some relationships broke down during isolation, I lost friends, my fiancée left, I felt stuck in a job that I hated... The research into LLMs and diffusion models started to wake me up, but this superconductor research has, for some reason, really awoken something in me. I feel excited about the future– my future!– for the first time in a while. My zest for life is back in full force, I feel like myself again, and I've been very excitedly telling everyone I know!
    - appplication 3y ago
      That’s a tough run. Even if it’s a silly reason, any excuse to be whimsically excited about life is a good one.
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      You need to continue down this path and find something meaningful to you that you had a hand in making directly, not merely by association. It is related to the power process described in paragraphs 33-37 on https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Hang in there, that's how life is, sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down but there will almost always be something interesting waiting for you in the future that makes you forget the miserable time that came before.
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  I felt the same, but I also feel like it was the perfect (least bad) time in my life for it to happen. I can't imagine being in the middle of High School or University during Covid - those kids got the absolute worst end of the deal. I was also recently single, and counted my days feeling grateful I was not living with my ex when the pandemic hit.
TuringTourist 3y ago
Once in a lifetime events tend to be "Exciting" to people, watching history unfold so to speak. The excitement comes from the awareness of this fact, and the fact that it might never be seen again.
- aqme28 3y ago
  "May you live in interesting times."
groby_b 3y ago
Emotionally, it was horrible. Societally, it was depressing to see that we'll never be able to tackle any true large problems, we can't even agree on wearing a piece of paper to protect fellow humans. But scientifically? Yeah, I'll go with "exciting". The field seemed to move at a tremendous speed, or at least that's how it looked to me as an outsider. Sequencing within less than a week, extremely rapid movement on the mRNA front (and really, the whole vaccination field - 200 candidates in 9 months), revamped understanding of aerosol transmission, leaps in rapid modelling, tremendous progress in terms of test development, growth in international collaboration, progress in the (public) understanding of chronic diseases, scaling up of wastewater monitoring, ... Definitely exciting.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >But scientifically? Yeah, I'll go with "exciting". The field seemed to move at a tremendous speed, or at least that's how it looked to me as an outsider. The practical science may have been exciting. Unfortunately "The Science" has been forever tainted thanks to secrets, tight-lips, mis-direction and "just trust us". I think Covid was a net-negative for science.
  - groby_b 3y ago
    You're referring to politics. The science was pretty clear the entire time.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Science served us well enough that we're all still commenting here. It's the prevention paradox all over again, if science had not done its work you'd be in a much better position to appreciate the difference that it - and healthcare - made but then you might not have made it at all... science definitely did not let us down. Who did let us down: the people that were making things worse from day #1 by stirring the pot against science.
    - ifyoubuildit 3y ago
      > Who did let us down: the people that were making things worse from day #1 by stirring the pot against science. What is the solution to this? The framing seems way too simplistic to ever be useful. It makes it seem as though there was just the Good side that had all the answers all along, and the Bad side who just needed to do what the Good side said. In reality, it all came down to "who do you trust to both have your best interests at heart and to also be competent enough to achieve those best interests". Turns out those aren't easy questions, and that people are naturally going to arrive at different answers for all sorts of reasons, and I think very few of them look like "boo science".
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
IshKebab 3y ago
When lockdown first happened it was exciting. Nothing like that has happened in most people's lifetimes. Of course it for tedious very quickly, but I remember going to the park and people being told not to sit on benches by police on horseback. How is that not crazy and sort of exciting?
pjc50 3y ago
mRNA vaccines are a huge discovery, not quite as powerful as room temperature superconductors but still up there in terms of impact on humanity. And encountered a very different kind of skepticism while ultimately turning out to be not only real but widely deployed with great speed.
- pests 3y ago
  Haven't mRNA vaccines been in development for over a decade though?
  - jlokier 3y ago
    LK-99 has been in development for longer, 24 years, if you believe a quote copied in many current articles and below. You may have heard before, "it takes years of work to become an overnight success..." > Lee & Kim had been working on the material on and off since Kim was in graduate school in 1999 (LK-99 geddit?). Lee never makes tenure and is still stuck as an adjunct professor 19 years later. Kim goes off to work in battery materials for a decade plus. 2018 - they get funding from industry for another go at it.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Assuming it's all true what I like about their story is that they've basically been doing a guided brute force of candidates rather than to just sit around and theorize they got their hands dirty in a way that really impresses me.
jdiff 3y ago
He didn't say "since COVID" but "since before COVID." COVID isn't the exciting event, it's an arbitrary landmark.
- vesinisa 3y ago
  OP edited their wording after my inquiry to add the word "before". Although I am sorry for the misunderstanding, it seems to have generated some interesting conversation.

Perhaps poorly worded, I meant since before. During Covid I lost a lot of zest for life, felt like I went to sleep in my 20s and woke up an old man.

tnecniv 3y ago
I identify with that. It didn’t help that around the end of Covid I went through a terrible break up and all my grad school friends finished their degrees and moved while I was still working on mine. It felt like I went to the bathroom at a party and came back to an empty room and I had to stay and clean up. I knew I’d be done in a year or two, so it felt weird to try and find a new social group when I was on short time, but boy was the end of my PhD a slog in part due to feeling disconnected socially.
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago
  I can relate to both comments. Covid really sapped the life out of me. Some relationships broke down during isolation, I lost friends, my fiancée left, I felt stuck in a job that I hated... The research into LLMs and diffusion models started to wake me up, but this superconductor research has, for some reason, really awoken something in me. I feel excited about the future– my future!– for the first time in a while. My zest for life is back in full force, I feel like myself again, and I've been very excitedly telling everyone I know!
  - appplication 3y ago
    That’s a tough run. Even if it’s a silly reason, any excuse to be whimsically excited about life is a good one.
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    You need to continue down this path and find something meaningful to you that you had a hand in making directly, not merely by association. It is related to the power process described in paragraphs 33-37 on https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Hang in there, that's how life is, sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down but there will almost always be something interesting waiting for you in the future that makes you forget the miserable time that came before.
TechBro8615 3y ago
I felt the same, but I also feel like it was the perfect (least bad) time in my life for it to happen. I can't imagine being in the middle of High School or University during Covid - those kids got the absolute worst end of the deal. I was also recently single, and counted my days feeling grateful I was not living with my ex when the pandemic hit.

TuringTourist 3y ago

Once in a lifetime events tend to be "Exciting" to people, watching history unfold so to speak. The excitement comes from the awareness of this fact, and the fact that it might never be seen again.

aqme28 3y ago
"May you live in interesting times."

groby_b 3y ago

Emotionally, it was horrible. Societally, it was depressing to see that we'll never be able to tackle any true large problems, we can't even agree on wearing a piece of paper to protect fellow humans. But scientifically? Yeah, I'll go with "exciting". The field seemed to move at a tremendous speed, or at least that's how it looked to me as an outsider. Sequencing within less than a week, extremely rapid movement on the mRNA front (and really, the whole vaccination field - 200 candidates in 9 months), revamped understanding of aerosol transmission, leaps in rapid modelling, tremendous progress in terms of test development, growth in international collaboration, progress in the (public) understanding of chronic diseases, scaling up of wastewater monitoring, ... Definitely exciting.

itsoktocry 3y ago
>But scientifically? Yeah, I'll go with "exciting". The field seemed to move at a tremendous speed, or at least that's how it looked to me as an outsider. The practical science may have been exciting. Unfortunately "The Science" has been forever tainted thanks to secrets, tight-lips, mis-direction and "just trust us". I think Covid was a net-negative for science.
- groby_b 3y ago
  You're referring to politics. The science was pretty clear the entire time.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Science served us well enough that we're all still commenting here. It's the prevention paradox all over again, if science had not done its work you'd be in a much better position to appreciate the difference that it - and healthcare - made but then you might not have made it at all... science definitely did not let us down. Who did let us down: the people that were making things worse from day #1 by stirring the pot against science.
  - ifyoubuildit 3y ago
    > Who did let us down: the people that were making things worse from day #1 by stirring the pot against science. What is the solution to this? The framing seems way too simplistic to ever be useful. It makes it seem as though there was just the Good side that had all the answers all along, and the Bad side who just needed to do what the Good side said. In reality, it all came down to "who do you trust to both have your best interests at heart and to also be competent enough to achieve those best interests". Turns out those aren't easy questions, and that people are naturally going to arrive at different answers for all sorts of reasons, and I think very few of them look like "boo science".

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

IshKebab 3y ago

When lockdown first happened it was exciting. Nothing like that has happened in most people's lifetimes. Of course it for tedious very quickly, but I remember going to the park and people being told not to sit on benches by police on horseback. How is that not crazy and sort of exciting?

pjc50 3y ago

mRNA vaccines are a huge discovery, not quite as powerful as room temperature superconductors but still up there in terms of impact on humanity. And encountered a very different kind of skepticism while ultimately turning out to be not only real but widely deployed with great speed.

pests 3y ago
Haven't mRNA vaccines been in development for over a decade though?
- jlokier 3y ago
  LK-99 has been in development for longer, 24 years, if you believe a quote copied in many current articles and below. You may have heard before, "it takes years of work to become an overnight success..." > Lee & Kim had been working on the material on and off since Kim was in graduate school in 1999 (LK-99 geddit?). Lee never makes tenure and is still stuck as an adjunct professor 19 years later. Kim goes off to work in battery materials for a decade plus. 2018 - they get funding from industry for another go at it.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Assuming it's all true what I like about their story is that they've basically been doing a guided brute force of candidates rather than to just sit around and theorize they got their hands dirty in a way that really impresses me.

jdiff 3y ago

He didn't say "since COVID" but "since before COVID." COVID isn't the exciting event, it's an arbitrary landmark.

vesinisa 3y ago
OP edited their wording after my inquiry to add the word "before". Although I am sorry for the misunderstanding, it seems to have generated some interesting conversation.