-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
Apologies if I jumped to conclusions. Not trying to slam you. But there is so much junk posted in relationship to the coronavirus most of which undermines Public Health in an active Way by either promoting denial, conspiracy theories or other right-wing nonsense. And Notions of a Chinese engineered virus are part of that unending stream of nonsense. Again I apologize if I conflated your post with some of that. People are literally losing their lives because of denial and staggering incompetence at the federal level, and denial and minimization and misunderstanding promulgated by motivated actors who are supporting the sociopathy and incompetence at the top of our government. I don't know about you but I find that alarming.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Andy Cuomo continues to surprise me, in a good way
New York Gov. Cuomo on coronavirus: 'I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart'
New York Gov. Cuomo on coronavirus: 'I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart'
A group of covid-19 survivors have set up a group called Survivor Corps to encourage the donation of plasma to be used for clinical trials and treatment.
One of the founders with a high antibody titer has set up a standing appointment to donate plasma once a week.
Awesome to see people who have suffered from Covid jumping in to help others.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5530491
One of the founders with a high antibody titer has set up a standing appointment to donate plasma once a week.
Awesome to see people who have suffered from Covid jumping in to help others.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5530491
Last edited:
Yes, I think we share the same concerns. I was a little "late to the game here", so brought up some things which had probably been "put to bed" already. Sorry about that. Keep in mind that not everyone has been so actively following this play out to date.
So, I will rephrase was was in my earlier post:
Theories:
#1: "Human engineered"... DEBUNKED. Not true. Made up conspiracy theory.
#2: "Wuhan lab already had this (naturally occurring) virus under study and it accidentally 'escaped' "... ??? Is this disproved ???
#3: "Someone in the lab intentionally released it." ... ??? Probably another made up conspiracy theory ???
#4: "Someone doing lab research got contaminated by the research bats"... ??? Is this disproved ???
I suspect there are many who are thinking "we need to focus on how to deal with what is happening, not what caused it" so don't have a lot of patience for looking back at what happened in 2019... But I think the bread crumbs of truth that could be found on the internet are being removed, and replaced by these wild theories, so our chances of trying to piece it together could be lost.
The above 4 were all based on me seeing web pages discussing each item. They are not necessarily from "credible sources". I can repost those links if any of those items are worth discussing.
I think some people just look at a list like that and just say if one of them is crazy they all must be wrong...
It does seem to me that some entity or entities are trying to bury the truth on this. I don't know why.
I am not yet ready to accept the bats->pangolins->humans all in the food market theory that was apparently put forward as the truth.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I'm not going to go and calculate confidence intervals, but we're at 1 death with 500 sailors infected, and not all the sailors have recovered yet (though another death might be slightly unexpected). So my estimate of 5-15 deaths assuming the entire crew of ~5000 was infected doesn't look too unreasonable, unfortunately. It's a terrible disease.
Last edited:
If you're looking for A Dark Truth to uncover in all this it's that our deforestation and both systemic and accelerating destruction of natural habitats and our lack of regard for other species is what is exposing us to an increasing incidence of viruses that again simply and naturally (without any malignant assistance from Human genetic engineering labs) mutate and are thus capable of jumping from one slightly different mammalian or avian receptor line into our receptors.
That's the real ugly story if you're looking for one behind this and other pandemics that we are increasing the risk for these things by virtue of our systematic disregard for ecology and for Nature in a broader sense. They still probably would happen but there is no question that the frequency of these things goes up as you enter natural habitats and interact with species that you should be leaving well enough alone.
So . . . some of these pandemics represent at least in some sense our contempt for nature coming back to bite us. One of our worse and most grandiose delusions emerging from our technological Powers is that somehow we are more powerful than nature or as the Bible says "God gave us dominion" over other life-forms. Total crap. We have not learned the fundamental lessons of ecology which is about the interdependence between all forms of life. We think somehow that our technology allows us to escape from that foundational 'ground' principle. It does not.
The other issue is frankly less appreciated and that is that RNA viruses are snippets of Proto life that existed long before there was DNA or integrated unicellular organisms and in that sense they're a hangover from an archaic and long-gone era billions of years ago in all probability. In other words RNA preceded DNA, and like everything else, these RNA protolife fragments evolve and mutate so that they can stick around and make copies which of course is the essential business of life.
If you're interested in this you can Google various theoretical biology papers on the origins of life.
Last edited:
Well to go into my thought process that started me asking about those various "origin theories" it includes things like:
> Is it a mistake to collect infected bats for study? The virologists were arguing that we need to capture all the viruses and study them in a lab to understand and fight them. But is that a vector for getting us infected?
(In other words, would we have avoided all this if those bats were left alone in those caves in south China?)
> Are the virus research labs as safe as they claim? Many of the web postings I saw suggest that the labs could be the source of the virus, so maybe we should rethink their safety and reconsider if they are such a good idea.
> Are these labs able to come up with ways to fight these things? COVID-19 is related to SARS... Have the labs come up with a way to treat and vaccinate against original SARs?
> Should we consider trying to exterminate these disease ridden bats instead of collecting them and studying them?
This is all in the name of trying to understand how this happened, and trying to prevent it from happening again in the future.
Or is nature going to just keep doing this to us over and over, and we have no way to stop it?
> Is it a mistake to collect infected bats for study? The virologists were arguing that we need to capture all the viruses and study them in a lab to understand and fight them. But is that a vector for getting us infected?
(In other words, would we have avoided all this if those bats were left alone in those caves in south China?)
> Are the virus research labs as safe as they claim? Many of the web postings I saw suggest that the labs could be the source of the virus, so maybe we should rethink their safety and reconsider if they are such a good idea.
> Are these labs able to come up with ways to fight these things? COVID-19 is related to SARS... Have the labs come up with a way to treat and vaccinate against original SARs?
> Should we consider trying to exterminate these disease ridden bats instead of collecting them and studying them?
This is all in the name of trying to understand how this happened, and trying to prevent it from happening again in the future.
Or is nature going to just keep doing this to us over and over, and we have no way to stop it?
Also, reasons why some sort of "cover up" could happen if some sort of lab mistake/accident was behind this current pandemic:
> Governments don't want to be blamed for causing harm with the funding they put into their labs, which are a source of national pride.
> Academics spend a lifetime trying to work for the greater good to prove that their research is valuable to mankind. A terrible accident could nullify all that.
> Politicians around the world are trying to point fingers away from themselves.
We could also debate if some sort of "media anarchists" are just spreading dis-information on all topics because they like to see people lose faith in what is "news" and stop looking to the media to tell us anything.
> Governments don't want to be blamed for causing harm with the funding they put into their labs, which are a source of national pride.
> Academics spend a lifetime trying to work for the greater good to prove that their research is valuable to mankind. A terrible accident could nullify all that.
> Politicians around the world are trying to point fingers away from themselves.
We could also debate if some sort of "media anarchists" are just spreading dis-information on all topics because they like to see people lose faith in what is "news" and stop looking to the media to tell us anything.
dqd88
Member
I don't know. It depends on how you define herd.
I'll try to go easy on you but I have to confess that your questions in a sense recapitulate the problems that I'm talking about. What makes you believe that exterminating an enormous number of asymptomatic carrier animals living out their lives in their natural habitat is something that we are ethically entitled to do? There's every reason to believe that most carriers for these viruses that mutate and jump into humans are often times but not always completely asymptomatic. Or does that not express the very arrogance that I've been talkin about namely that we believe we are somehow exempt from concern for other life forms because we believe in some kind of grandiose way that we have been given dominion over them?
As for your other questions I'll let the virologists here answer them.
Well, I have to say that my thoughts about what is the right thing to do are not very evolved.
At heart, I like to think of myself as an environmentalist, and I do believe in a "leave nature alone" philosophy, but humanity is at ongoing risk of more problems related to "overpopulation", and perhaps we are past the point of going back to trying to live in harmony with nature, and we are forced to take scientifically calculated extreme actions out of needs for self preservation.
From what I have read, these particular bat populations are a threat to us. We have extincted many species, some were viewed as threats, some as food, some as sport, some due to us being careless. Those are not coming back. Maybe we should consider if getting rid of these particular types of bats would be beneficial to mankind...? Or maybe this is a natural control in place to keep our population in check? I don't know. I don't have any answers. I am just pondering things from my own perspective.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
I defined the herd as the population of NYC.
Is there some other "natural" mechanism that you're thinking of?
dqd88
Member
I haven't heard "herd" defined as 100% of the population. It gets thrown around loosely but I haven't heard 100%. You don't need 100% to gain benefit.
Or, it might make it far worse. Cane toads were imported into Australia because it was thought they would solve a problem. Turned out it didn't do anything to solve the problem and created a much larger problem. Human arrogance (including the idea that we can have unlimited population growth) is a big issue.
There is a difference between herd, and herd immunity. The herd is always 100%. Herd immunity happens when enough of the herd is immune to protect the remainder.
one med student has said that the ventilator situation at a hospital in upstate ny where she is currently working, is that the techs that know how to properly set up the ventilator type they are using, are in shortage. that leaves inexperienced people managing 6-7 ventilators at a time, which may or may not be configured properly for each patients case. i have no other details than that. and again, just face value. doesn’t seem like a malpractice issue, just unfortunate that the volume of cases leaves facilities unprepared with not only equipment, but experience
Similar threads
