Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Really, the problem is the lack of leadership from the White House. Then discourse that makes the news is dominated from someone who cannot be trusted to take things seriously. Instead of a clear, national strategy, benchmarks, the ability to track progress and trustworthy communication of how we get through this, we get chaos, misinformation and armed "protesters."

Here in Minnesota, the governor is trying to get out the kinds of communications we need, but even locally it's hard not to get drowned out by the nonsense. Something like 100k jobs are allowed to restart today (hard to say how many actually will), as long as safety measures (health screening, spacing, etc) are followed.

Also, we shouldn't be waiting on testing. That is a fuck of the scale we can't yet comprehend. I don't know if it's bigger than the mistake of doing essentially no health screening of passengers arriving in this country in the middle of an infectious disease outbreak, but they're both pretty bad.

Agreed. Trump’s daily briefings and squabbles with the media and his own team destroy any hope of confidence a reasonable person might have in the administration’s plans.

The framework he put out two weeks ago was needed, and it was helpful. It destroyed the “We must wait until all can be tested” nonsense arguments. But that should have been where he stopped. At that point, it became a state by state issue. Having him hold a conference every day where he stepped all over governors was insanely damaging.

I hate to say this, but his first instinct was right — let Pence handle this. Pence is no genius, but he knows how to say the right thing and not get into a fucking food fight with every reporter.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I’ll watch it. I love cringeworthy shit.

I sincerely can’t recall where I first heard or read that viruses tend to weaken as they age and mutate. I went looking for sources and found articles in which Covid-19 wasn’t the focus, but epidemiologists and doctors stated that they tend to weaken as they age and mutate. The ones I cited weren’t ideal, but they were at least dealing with Covid-19.

But even if I don’t have sufficient proof for that, it’s still sensible to delay acquisition of the virus to ease possible drain on medical facilities, and to wear a mask to avoid getting blasted with a much larger viral load. Anything that decreases the amount ingested is a help.

Here is the story on viruses mutating as I understand it from talking to some extremely bright people* about things I'm not trained to fully understand.

Viruses mutate all the time, but RNA viruses like flu have mutations that survive much more often than retroviruses like AIDs that directly impact DNA. What viruses do - invade cells and replicate - is really pretty extraordinary, so most mutations for any virus are likely to render the mutated form ineffective and those mutations just die, but some mutations still replicate and those survive. For flu, a fair number of mutations survive and that's a big part of how we have annual flu cycles. Hopefully, those that do survive can be treated with the same vaccine - the great fear among flu vaccine specialists is a mutation that renders the virus less treatable with existing vaccines or with vaccines developed with existing methods and approaches, regardless of the "strength" of the mutated virus.

But in other viruses fewer mutations survive. AIDs is an example of a retrovirus, a virus that triggers on to a cell's DNA and not just RNA, and retroviruses in general have many fewer mutations survive at all, so we're treating the same AIDs virus strain now as we were 25 year ago.

But you can't count on mutations to "weaken" a virus; when a mutation occurs, antibodies developed in reaction to early strains or vaccines may still work on the mutation, but not always. If you have a virus that does a ton of damage, it is more likely that a mutation will be less damaging, just because viruses that do a ton of damage are relatively rare, but if you have a virus that doesn't do much damage, there may be a better chance the mutation will do more damage, because if its really weak it may not be able to get much weaker. The strong viruses all come out of somewhere.

The big question though is whether the virus can do an end-run around your immune system and the defenses its built against other viruses, and that matters more than some inherent "strength" of a virus. This is part of why viruses that jump from other animals often do a job on us - we haven't developed any natural defenses over time. When they mutate to attack human cells as well as, for example, pig cells, they have a new host who doesn't fight back. It's also why things like AIDs and Coronavirus, which only show up now and then in human history rather than every year in new forms, are more damaging to us than flu viruses, which form a larger interrelated family that feeds on us regularly. So what's more important than the virus' strength is our own susceptibility. Too many mutations of a relatively novel virus like CvD 19 could be a big problem for us, because we are more susceptible than we would be for a flu virus. Small mutations of things we've already been exposed to are usually less damaging to us because they are controlled by the same antibodies we've already developed, not because the viruses themselves are somehow always "weaker".

I'm sure if we had an epidemiologist on the Board they'd want to fix up a lot of this, so take it all with a grain of salt. The bottom line for me is that we still need to know a lot about this virus, and I have people I work with who come out of both the flu vaccine and aids vaccine worlds working on CVD 19 because it is a kind of "in between" case - it is an RNA based virus like the Flu but also has some retrovirus characteristics like AIDS.


* may include a number of Nobel prize winners, which perhaps means I should have a Noble prize.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

His first instinct was right — let Pence handle this. Pence is no genius, but he knows how to say the right thing and not get into a fucking food fight with every reporter.

We needed a technocrat to handle this, not a politician. The politician's right role is to say "what do you need" to the technocrat, and to have a conversation with the American people about why they should give the technocrat what they need.

Because a virus doesn't give a shit what your political ideology is.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Here is the story on viruses mutating as I understand it from talking to some extremely bright people* about things I'm not trained to fully understand.

To be clear, GGG and I have met IRL a few times, but I am NOT the person he mentions here.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

To be clear, GGG and I have met IRL a few times, but I am NOT the person he mentions here.

but you are "Noble"-worthy

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I’ve not read what Epstein said.

I’m only working with what you’ve said: Nothing.

I'm not sure what your problem is. You posted an article. When people do that, it's usually because they think other people should read it. I started to read it. The first paragraph made claims about the virus's mortality rate that are disproved by the numbers of people dying in New York City. That's not a straw man, and it's not sophistry. It's middle-school math.

You piss me when you start bullshitting about how the disease isn't all that deadly and how we need to open back up ("carefully!") to save the economy. My wife goes off to hospital every day to save people's lives who are dying from this disease that is not the like the flu she sees every year. If we open the economy back up and the hospitals get overwhelmed, healthcare workers (among others) will pay the price.

I don't need a lecture from you about the economic costs of what we're going through. Our business is down 95% from a few months ago and we have laid a bunch of people off. I totally get it.

You've said a whole bunch of other things, and it gets hard to figure what point you're making, so I stopped responding to that thread. But if you're calling me an oracle because two months ago I said this was going to be a shitstorm when you were saying it was like the flu, thanks -- I appreciate the props.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

I'm not sure what your problem is. You posted an article. When people do that, it's usually because they think other people should read it. I started to read it. The first paragraph made claims about the virus's mortality rate that are disproved by the numbers of people dying in New York City. That's not a straw man, and it's not sophistry. It's middle-school math.

No. We settled that by me admitting the Stanford study had some inaccuracies and then explaining why the 10X NYC death rate you suggested was possible was actually impossible. We agreed we were both working with somewhat inaccurate information.

Your straw man emerged later, where you lumped me in with Less. I never said I favored ending social distancing, or "letting it rip" as you described Less's approach. I actually disagreed with Less and supported your point about continuing to wear masks.

You piss me when you start bullshitting about how the disease isn't all that deadly and how we need to open back up ("carefully!") to save the economy.

You piss me off when you ignore the economic disaster we're going to see if this thing goes for 45 more days without some incremental reopening.

We have PPP, plus reserves. I could sit back and wait this out from a "nice... I'll get to pick the bones of those who can't survive" perspective, like a lot of assholes I know in P/E and finance generally. I'm arguing against doing so, and I'm arguing because I see a wave of human carnage coming on the economic side.

You ignore that. You refuse to deal with that except for your one decent argument - that opening too soon and seeing a huge spike will do more damage to the economy than we can imagine. I agree we have that risk. That's why I have repeatedly argued for a careful, incremental, and reversible reopening - sticking toes in the water and slowly easing into a new normal where we're all incredibly diligent about hygiene and distancing.

But you don't like that. You want the false argument of "Science v. Business." That's why you refuse to acknowledge that I am not on the same page as Less.

I am seeking to walk a middle ground. Your response, which is slippery, seems to be: We cannot open anything until we have adequate testing. Am I getting that wrong? Please advise. If I'm correct, please read the following:

WE CANNOT AFFORD THAT. YOU WILL SEE WIDESPREAD SOCIAL UNREST AND DISOBEDIENCE OF ORDER - A TRUE UNRAVELING - IF WE WAIT THAT LONG.

(Yes, it's come to that - you must be compelled to deal with reality by people resorting to all caps.)

My wife goes off to hospital every day to save people's lives who are dying from this disease that is not the like the flu she sees every year. If we open the economy back up and the hospitals get overwhelmed, healthcare workers (among others) will pay the price.

What do you not understand about these words:

Careful
Incremental
Reversible

Medical professionals are the most important resource we have right now. What kind of sane cost/benefit analysis would devalue them?

I don't need a lecture from you about the economic costs of what we're going through. Our business is down 95% from a few months ago and we have laid a bunch of people off. I totally get it.

Oh yes you do. I'm like the guy who guides people over the River Styx. I get the desperate calls. I see the businesses wrecked because one can only work out a loan if there's some revenue, and where there isn't one can only help ease his client into financial collapse.

And I am seriously scared that if we allow people to make medicine the enemy of economics here, I'm going to be insanely busy. And insanely unhappy. I'd rather rescue people than play Charon.

You've said a whole bunch of other things, and it gets hard to figure what point you're making, so I stopped responding to that thread. But if you're calling me an oracle because two months ago I said this was going to be a shitstorm when you were saying it was like the flu, thanks -- I appreciate the props.

I called you an oracle because you and people like Gates are predicting the future with inadequate information. We know that social distancing has flattened the curve, and we know that people have learned the lessons of what they need to do to practice it well. You assume, without any information to support you, that efforts to carefully reopen incorporating social distancing and PPE for HC workers, will fail. You're either an oracle or a man whose powers of rational thought are corrupted by fear.

If we see a spike, we can quickly reverse course or pare the easing of lockdown restrictions. We can walk a middle ground. People like you are offering nothing but, "No! We mustn't!" Thankfully, your views are rejected by the general public and policy makers.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Here is the story on viruses mutating as I understand it from talking to some extremely bright people* about things I'm not trained to fully understand.

Viruses mutate all the time, but RNA viruses like flu have mutations that survive much more often than retroviruses like AIDs that directly impact DNA. What viruses do - invade cells and replicate - is really pretty extraordinary, so most mutations for any virus are likely to render the mutated form ineffective and those mutations just die, but some mutations still replicate and those survive. For flu, a fair number of mutations survive and that's a big part of how we have annual flu cycles. Hopefully, those that do survive can be treated with the same vaccine - the great fear among flu vaccine specialists is a mutation that renders the virus less treatable with existing vaccines or with vaccines developed with existing methods and approaches, regardless of the "strength" of the mutated virus.

But in other viruses fewer mutations survive. AIDs is an example of a retrovirus, a virus that triggers on to a cell's DNA and not just RNA, and retroviruses in general have many fewer mutations survive at all, so we're treating the same AIDs virus strain now as we were 25 year ago.

But you can't count on mutations to "weaken" a virus; when a mutation occurs, antibodies developed in reaction to early strains or vaccines may still work on the mutation, but not always. If you have a virus that does a ton of damage, it is more likely that a mutation will be less damaging, just because viruses that do a ton of damage are relatively rare, but if you have a virus that doesn't do much damage, there may be a better chance the mutation will do more damage, because if its really weak it may not be able to get much weaker. The strong viruses all come out of somewhere.

The big question though is whether the virus can do an end-run around your immune system and the defenses its built against other viruses, and that matters more than some inherent "strength" of a virus. This is part of why viruses that jump from other animals often do a job on us - we haven't developed any natural defenses over time. When they mutate to attack human cells as well as, for example, pig cells, they have a new host who doesn't fight back. It's also why things like AIDs and Coronavirus, which only show up now and then in human history rather than every year in new forms, are more damaging to us than flu viruses, which form a larger interrelated family that feeds on us regularly. So what's more important than the virus' strength is our own susceptibility. Too many mutations of a relatively novel virus like CvD 19 could be a big problem for us, because we are more susceptible than we would be for a flu virus. Small mutations of things we've already been exposed to are usually less damaging to us because they are controlled by the same antibodies we've already developed, not because the viruses themselves are somehow always "weaker".

I'm sure if we had an epidemiologist on the Board they'd want to fix up a lot of this, so take it all with a grain of salt. The bottom line for me is that we still need to know a lot about this virus, and I have people I work with who come out of both the flu vaccine and aids vaccine worlds working on CVD 19 because it is a kind of "in between" case - it is an RNA based virus like the Flu but also has some retrovirus characteristics like AIDS.


* may include a number of Nobel prize winners, which perhaps means I should have a Noble prize.

I see no reason to take that with a grain of salt. This actually confirms your point that it can strengthen:

"In an email to Newsweek, study author Chao Jiang, from Zhejiang University, said that that without the first SARS-CoV-2 strain to sequence, it is hard to determine how these mutations may have changed the virus' ability to affect humans: "We can only say that these mutations probably can make the virus both stronger and weaker, depending on which one you are looking at," he said."

https://www.newsweek.com/sars-cov-2-...-china-1499503

I lumped Covid in with flu to reach a conclusion that was wrong.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

We needed a technocrat to handle this, not a politician. The politician's right role is to say "what do you need" to the technocrat, and to have a conversation with the American people about why they should give the technocrat what they need.

Because a virus doesn't give a shit what your political ideology is.

That'd be ideal, but as I'm playing with a handful of really bad cards, the best I could offer was Pence. He at least sounds sane when he speaks and tries to be inclusive and unifying.

Maybe this jars us out of polarization? Perhaps by having to travel a moderate, middle road somewhat together, at great common risk, people stop politicizing everything?

My wife and I have been part of a group of people discussing this stuff. The crowd of of about 500 friends is widely varied (Randian nuts to AOC style progressives). Almost everyone is polite in the back and forth and recognizes that we need a sensible plan. No one has dared to get political.

Gives me some hope an angry moderate insurgency can compel the people in charge to act like fucking adults.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

No. We settled that by me admitting the Stanford study had some inaccuracies and then explaining why the 10X NYC death rate you suggested was possible was actually impossible. We agreed we were both working with somewhat inaccurate information.

I missed the part where anything was settled.

Your straw man emerged later, where you lumped me in with Less. I never said I favored ending social distancing, or "letting it rip" as you described Less's approach. I actually disagreed with Less and supported your point about continuing to wear masks.

Dude, it is for sure hard to understand what you are saying from post to post, and if I misunderstood you, it certainly wasn't out of any effort to create a straw man.

You piss me off when you ignore the economic disaster we're going to see if this thing goes for 45 more days without some incremental reopening.

We have PPP, plus reserves. I could sit back and wait this out from a "nice... I'll get to pick the bones of those who can't survive" perspective, like a lot of assholes I know in P/E and finance generally. I'm arguing against doing so, and I'm arguing because I see a wave of human carnage coming on the economic side.

You ignore that. You refuse to deal with that except for your one decent argument - that opening too soon and seeing a huge spike will do more damage to the economy than we can imagine. I agree we have that risk. That's why I have repeatedly argued for a careful, incremental, and reversible reopening - sticking toes in the water and slowly easing into a new normal where we're all incredibly diligent about hygiene and distancing.

I'm ignoring something? Did you read my last post. Here's part of what I said, in all caps since you like those:

I DON'T NEED A LECTURE FROM YOU ABOUT THE ECONOMIC COSTS OF WHAT WE'RE GOING THROUGH. OUR BUSINESS IS DOWN 95% FROM A FEW MONTHS AGO AND WE HAVE LAID A BUNCH OF PEOPLE OFF. I TOTALLY GET IT.

Tell me another time that I am refusing to deal with the economic costs of all fo this and I will tell you go to fuck yourself. I am dealing with it every fucking day. There are businesses that are more impacted that mine, but not many.

I am seeking to walk a middle ground. Your response, which is slippery, seems to be: We cannot open anything until we have adequate testing. Am I getting that wrong? Please advise. If I'm correct, please read the following:

WE CANNOT AFFORD THAT. YOU WILL SEE WIDESPREAD SOCIAL UNREST AND DISOBEDIENCE OF ORDER - A TRUE UNRAVELING - IF WE WAIT THAT LONG.

(Yes, it's come to that - you must be compelled to deal with reality by people resorting to all caps.)

Maybe I just don't understand what you specifically have in mind other than saying the word "carefully" over and over again -- and I think the problem is that you haven't actually said it anywhere, but if that's wrong feel free to just link to the post so I can do a mea culpa -- but I think you are being histrionic about "WIDESPREAD SOCIAL UNREST AND DISOBEDIENCE OF ORDER - A TRUE UNRAVELING." It's not my joke, but Anne Frank spent two years locked in an attic -- so far we've all spent less than six weeks staying home with Netflix, and less in most parts of the country. People can endure an awful lot more if they need to. If our political leaders tell them they don't have to, it will be different. If it gets ugly, that'll be politics, not human nature.

What do you not understand about these words:

Careful
Incremental
Reversible

Medical professionals are the most important resource we have right now. What kind of sane cost/benefit analysis would devalue them?

I'm all for all of those things. No one isn't. When I say careful, what I have in mind is, not doing much of anything that would increase R when we don't have the capability to test people to figure out who has it, and to isolate the people who test positive and warn people they came in contact with. If you don't have that, the disease will spread more and the economy won't come back. It's very well and good to tell people that you are in favor of being careful, but if you say that and then you tell people to do things that get more of them sick, that's not careful, is it?

Oh yes you do. I'm like the guy who guides people over the River Styx. I get the desperate calls. I see the businesses wrecked because one can only work out a loan if there's some revenue, and where there isn't one can only help ease his client into financial collapse.

And I am seriously scared that if we allow people to make medicine the enemy of economics here, I'm going to be insanely busy. And insanely unhappy. I'd rather rescue people than play Charon.

Get over yourself.

I called you an oracle because you and people like Gates are predicting the future with inadequate information.

Whereas you are, what?, predicting the future with adequate information? Being "careful" but within inadequate information?

We know that social distancing has flattened the curve, and we know that people have learned the lessons of what they need to do to practice it well. You assume, without any information to support you, that efforts to carefully reopen incorporating social distancing and PPE for HC workers, will fail.

I really can't tell what I said that made you think this. Feel free to quote me if you like. My wife's hospital is opening up to do some elective surgeries and I think they're doing it in the right way.

But if ("if") this site is right, even with all that we have done, the disease is still spreading in four-fifths of the country. Like Icky said, shouldn't we get R well below 1 before we starting loosening things up?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Ebolavirus is not a form of coronavirus. We haven't developed any vaccine for a coronavirus.

There is some indication though that BCG, the vaccine used for TB in much of the less developed world, has an impact on susceptibility to coronavirus suggesting that vaccines can be done. I know of a couple companies working on vaccines that aren't in the eye of the press, and they have some pretty smart people who think it is doable.

This is the drug/vaccine tracker that I've been keeping an eye on.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

This is the drug/vaccine tracker that I've been keeping an eye on.

Useful. I know of a couple not on there, like I was looking today at a clinical trial using Fingolimod, an MS drug that is an immunosuppresent, to assist COVID-19 patients on ventilators. But my bet is that there are biotech companies and academic labs all over the country looking at what they have and whether there is some way or aspect it can deal with CVD 19, especially given that it presents so many different ways. All that pre-phase 1 stuff and repurposing of existing therapies we'll never fully capture.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

But if ("if") this site is right, even with all that we have done, the disease is still spreading in four-fifths of the country. Like Icky said, shouldn't we get R well below 1 before we starting loosening things up?

4/5ths? Looks like a few states. Below 1 means not growing. And weird, the states I thought would be exploding, like TN, are below 1.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

4/5ths? Looks like a few states. Below 1 means not growing. And weird, the states I thought would be exploding, like TN, are below 1.

Holy smokes, I hit "refresh" and the site went from showing ~ten green states to showing ~forty. It now says: "4/26 model update: new Rt graphs reflect corrections for the amount of testing done over time in any given state. An increase or decrease in testing should not affect accuracy of Rt values in the future. This correction has significantly improved Rt values in most states."

I hope things are that much better, but that's pretty huge change in the model....

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Holy smokes, I hit "refresh" and the site went from showing ~ten green states to showing ~forty. It now says: "4/26 model update: new Rt graphs reflect corrections for the amount of testing done over time in any given state. An increase or decrease in testing should not affect accuracy of Rt values in the future. This correction has significantly improved Rt values in most states."

I hope things are that much better, but that's pretty huge change in the model....

Mi is #1 and we have open liquor stores!!!!