4 ms·

For the self-described "skeptics," 2 hour travel to anywhere on Earth means that everyone gets to have a donor organ shipped to them within the viability window

For the self-described "skeptics," 2 hour travel to anywhere on Earth means that everyone gets to have a donor organ shipped to them within the viability window. If we could go from SF to Tokyo in 2 hours, it would permanently change geopolitics. Imagine commuting between Shenzhen and SF. One foot in each of the two most innovative cities on Earth. The smaller our world becomes, the more peaceful it becomes.

bryanrasmussen 1y ago
>The smaller our world becomes, the more peaceful it becomes. and the quicker disease can spread.
- areoform 1y ago
  > and the quicker disease can spread. People who haven't been on HN for a while tend to think HN keeps getting worse etc. and that's rarely the case, but I do think something has changed in the site's core audience. HN has attracted its share of luddites. People who aren't interested in building a better future. But are very interested in tearing it down. When did HN become a place where dreams of a better future were met with proclamations of disease?
  - Avicebron 1y ago
    > When did HN become a place where dreams of a better future were met with proclamations of disease? As there as been a general broadening of discussion as to exactly what "a better future" means and I suppose more specifically to whom.
  - supportengineer 1y ago
    March 2020, approximately
  - tom_ 1y ago
    You can make the case for whatever case you are trying to make, without pushing back on this quite specific extremely correct point. When people meet. disease spreads. If it doesn't spread when they breathe on one another, it will spread when they touch. If it doesn't spread when they touch, it will spread when they fuck. If it doesn't spread when they fuck - phew, crikey, this disease is useless indeed, and natural selection will see it off quickly. Meanwhile our protagonists now have flu, norovirus and crabs.
  - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
    if you'll look at my profile you will discover that evidently it happened 5 years before you joined.
- jMyles 1y ago
  It's unlikely that the general speed of spread of a pathogen will cause an increase in adverse outcomes from that pathogen. It's equally possible (though woefully underexamined) that the hastened immunity stemming from more rapid spread will cause a decrease in adverse outcomes. What causes an increase in adverse outcomes, at least for fast-moving pandemics such as respiratory pandemics, is spread between risk tiers. For example, in the case of a pathogen with a significant age-dependent morbidity/mortality rate, one of the most dire threats is spread within multigenerational households. Providing resources, opportunities, and guidance to facilitate spread within the low-risk tier while briefly isolating that cohort from the high-risk tier is likely to produce better outcomes. Stated more tersely: the human proclivity to travel and share immune information with peers is a strength, not a weakness.
  - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
    >Stated more tersely: the human proclivity to travel and share immune information with peers is a strength, not a weakness. hmm, ok, since your profile says you study epidemiology sometimes I guess that's a totally reasonable take I hadn't considered. I was of course going off the stuff that was going around during Covid's height when people would refer to theories that faster and increased international travel would lead to more pandemics, and that Covid worked as predicted by that theory.
    - jMyles 1y ago
      > since your profile says you study epidemiology To be clear: this is totally a hobby for me, although I have made friendly/collaborative inroads with many of the top minds in the field through correspondence going back about 15 years. During the covid19 pandemic, I found myself sitting-in on roundtables and discussions where I was often the only non-MD/MPH on the call. > I was of course going off the stuff that was going around during Covid's height when people would refer to theories that faster and increased international travel would lead to more pandemics This has been a topic of scholarly debate and discussion for sometime before covid19; it is a frequent concern regarding several types of pandemic, but especially respiratory pandemics and even more especially hemorrhagic fevers. Food-borne, fomite-borne, and sexually transmitted diseases less so. I think it's fair to say that arboviruses remain an unknown in this regard. In the case of respiratory pandemics, as best I can tell, the science is very much settling to the conclusion that acute spread through low-risk tiers - which of course is bolstered by international travel - offers some protection against the kinds of pandemics we saw from the emergence of now-endemic H3N2, or the 1918 influenza pandemic, or the 1890's "Russian Flu", which I believe (and I believe most scientists who have studied this believe) was likely the emergence of now-endemic hcov-OC43. My hope is that one of the key lessons of covid19 is that we need to utilize the population who quickly gain immunity as relief pitchers for the high-risk tier. For example, by the time we closed libraries and schools, there were already millions (perhaps 10 million or more) young and healthy people who had gained immunity from infection without even realizing it. These are the people that can run the libraries and cafeterias and shelters, and perform as substitute teachers and childcare providers, so that we're not turning our nation's poorest children to the streets. A similar phenomenon occurs on college campuses - in the case of pathogens like coronaviruses where college-age people typically seem to be quite low risk, it makes sense to leave residence halls and similar infrastructure in place, to allow this cohort the option of quickly gaining immunity to be available to assist the higher-risk tiers in isolating. Of course this needs to be done with caution and empiricism - the 1918 pandemic reminds us that the age/risk correlation is sometimes inverted, and this can be very confounding to an orderly public health response. Perhaps most importantly, any plan which delays spread in the low-risk tier, by definition, requires the high-risk tier to isolate commensurate with that delay, and this is a dire situation. Most poor people (who are disproportionately high-risk) simply don't have the means to survive prolonged isolation. Much better is to facilitate spread stratified by risk - ideally a complete spread through the low-risk tier in short order, so that this cohort can safely assist high-risk communities during their isolation. This basic principle enjoyed what seemed like consensus prior to covid19, and became total hot lava. Hopefully we have returned to sanity and won't make this mistake again.
ThinkBeat 1y ago
yeah, but in reality it would mean the rich and powerful can get a donar organ from anywhere in the world. Probably from somewhere whre organs can be cheaply obtained, one way or another and then rushed to the private hospital where Bill Gates is waiting.
justinclift 1y ago
> The smaller our world becomes, the more peaceful it becomes. Is there strong evidence that's true?

bryanrasmussen 1y ago

>The smaller our world becomes, the more peaceful it becomes. and the quicker disease can spread.

areoform 1y ago
> and the quicker disease can spread. People who haven't been on HN for a while tend to think HN keeps getting worse etc. and that's rarely the case, but I do think something has changed in the site's core audience. HN has attracted its share of luddites. People who aren't interested in building a better future. But are very interested in tearing it down. When did HN become a place where dreams of a better future were met with proclamations of disease?
- Avicebron 1y ago
  > When did HN become a place where dreams of a better future were met with proclamations of disease? As there as been a general broadening of discussion as to exactly what "a better future" means and I suppose more specifically to whom.
- supportengineer 1y ago
  March 2020, approximately
- tom_ 1y ago
  You can make the case for whatever case you are trying to make, without pushing back on this quite specific extremely correct point. When people meet. disease spreads. If it doesn't spread when they breathe on one another, it will spread when they touch. If it doesn't spread when they touch, it will spread when they fuck. If it doesn't spread when they fuck - phew, crikey, this disease is useless indeed, and natural selection will see it off quickly. Meanwhile our protagonists now have flu, norovirus and crabs.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  if you'll look at my profile you will discover that evidently it happened 5 years before you joined.
jMyles 1y ago
It's unlikely that the general speed of spread of a pathogen will cause an increase in adverse outcomes from that pathogen. It's equally possible (though woefully underexamined) that the hastened immunity stemming from more rapid spread will cause a decrease in adverse outcomes. What causes an increase in adverse outcomes, at least for fast-moving pandemics such as respiratory pandemics, is spread between risk tiers. For example, in the case of a pathogen with a significant age-dependent morbidity/mortality rate, one of the most dire threats is spread within multigenerational households. Providing resources, opportunities, and guidance to facilitate spread within the low-risk tier while briefly isolating that cohort from the high-risk tier is likely to produce better outcomes. Stated more tersely: the human proclivity to travel and share immune information with peers is a strength, not a weakness.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  >Stated more tersely: the human proclivity to travel and share immune information with peers is a strength, not a weakness. hmm, ok, since your profile says you study epidemiology sometimes I guess that's a totally reasonable take I hadn't considered. I was of course going off the stuff that was going around during Covid's height when people would refer to theories that faster and increased international travel would lead to more pandemics, and that Covid worked as predicted by that theory.
  - jMyles 1y ago
    > since your profile says you study epidemiology To be clear: this is totally a hobby for me, although I have made friendly/collaborative inroads with many of the top minds in the field through correspondence going back about 15 years. During the covid19 pandemic, I found myself sitting-in on roundtables and discussions where I was often the only non-MD/MPH on the call. > I was of course going off the stuff that was going around during Covid's height when people would refer to theories that faster and increased international travel would lead to more pandemics This has been a topic of scholarly debate and discussion for sometime before covid19; it is a frequent concern regarding several types of pandemic, but especially respiratory pandemics and even more especially hemorrhagic fevers. Food-borne, fomite-borne, and sexually transmitted diseases less so. I think it's fair to say that arboviruses remain an unknown in this regard. In the case of respiratory pandemics, as best I can tell, the science is very much settling to the conclusion that acute spread through low-risk tiers - which of course is bolstered by international travel - offers some protection against the kinds of pandemics we saw from the emergence of now-endemic H3N2, or the 1918 influenza pandemic, or the 1890's "Russian Flu", which I believe (and I believe most scientists who have studied this believe) was likely the emergence of now-endemic hcov-OC43. My hope is that one of the key lessons of covid19 is that we need to utilize the population who quickly gain immunity as relief pitchers for the high-risk tier. For example, by the time we closed libraries and schools, there were already millions (perhaps 10 million or more) young and healthy people who had gained immunity from infection without even realizing it. These are the people that can run the libraries and cafeterias and shelters, and perform as substitute teachers and childcare providers, so that we're not turning our nation's poorest children to the streets. A similar phenomenon occurs on college campuses - in the case of pathogens like coronaviruses where college-age people typically seem to be quite low risk, it makes sense to leave residence halls and similar infrastructure in place, to allow this cohort the option of quickly gaining immunity to be available to assist the higher-risk tiers in isolating. Of course this needs to be done with caution and empiricism - the 1918 pandemic reminds us that the age/risk correlation is sometimes inverted, and this can be very confounding to an orderly public health response. Perhaps most importantly, any plan which delays spread in the low-risk tier, by definition, requires the high-risk tier to isolate commensurate with that delay, and this is a dire situation. Most poor people (who are disproportionately high-risk) simply don't have the means to survive prolonged isolation. Much better is to facilitate spread stratified by risk - ideally a complete spread through the low-risk tier in short order, so that this cohort can safely assist high-risk communities during their isolation. This basic principle enjoyed what seemed like consensus prior to covid19, and became total hot lava. Hopefully we have returned to sanity and won't make this mistake again.

ThinkBeat 1y ago

yeah, but in reality it would mean the rich and powerful can get a donar organ from anywhere in the world. Probably from somewhere whre organs can be cheaply obtained, one way or another and then rushed to the private hospital where Bill Gates is waiting.

justinclift 1y ago

> The smaller our world becomes, the more peaceful it becomes. Is there strong evidence that's true?