All things CoronaVirus

[tech37]

Neil Young to Spotify - "You can have (Joe) Rogan or (Neil) Young. Not both."

That's too bad. Maybe Neil should go on Rogan's program... he might change his mind.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Neil Young to Spotify - "You can have (Joe) Rogan or (Neil) Young. Not both."

That's too bad. Maybe Neil should go on Rogan's program... he might change his mind.

Like you have?

[tech37]

‘I’m over Covid’: Bill Maher says Americans shouldn’t obediently follow all doctors’ advice

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 99677.html

Interesting opinion...

[jhu72]

New variant on the horizon.

[smoova]

New variant on the horizon.

"Imagine a variant so terrible, so insidious that it behaves just like the common cold ... "

[jhu72]

Pfizer develops and begins clinical trials on omicron specific vaccine over a 2 month period. Pretty impressive.

[Bart]

Interesting read from an evolutionary virologist about endemicy.

This quote is just one of many interesting nuggets: "There is a widespread, rosy misconception that viruses evolve over time to become more benign. This is not the case: there is no predestined evolutionary outcome for a virus to become more benign, especially ones, such as SARS-CoV-2, in which most transmission happens before the virus causes severe disease. Consider that Alpha and Delta are more virulent than the strain first found in Wuhan, China. The second wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic was far more deadly than the first."

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x

[MDlaxfan76]

New variant on the horizon.

"Imagine a variant so terrible, so insidious that it behaves just like the common cold ... "

Where is that quote from?

[Bart]

New variant on the horizon.

Find and read the thread by Tom Peacock imbedded in the article.. It is worth the time to find it.

[jhu72]

New variant on the horizon.

Find and read the thread by Tom Peacock imbedded in the article.. It is worth the time to find it.

... the Peacock twitter thread was worth it (researchers talking among themselves).

[MDlaxfan76]

‘I’m over Covid’: Bill Maher says Americans shouldn’t obediently follow all doctors’ advice

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 99677.html

Interesting opinion...

Maher is right...and quite wrong.

Maher is correct that the medical community has traditionally done a quite inadequate job of encouraging and educating people to improve their lifestyles, reducing chronic disease and ultimately early deaths (relative to healthier lifestyles).

Doctors and public health measures have done a decent job of reducing smoking leading to cancer, a so-so job with alcohol and other substance abuse (awful with opioids), but a miserable job with the factors leading to obesity.

More than 2/3 of American adults are overweight or obese. And this drives over 50% of all chronic healthcare spending. Particularly miserable are doctors' understanding of nutrition.

Moreover, we've structured our payment systems such that the healthcare system makes money on throughput of reimbursable procedures, meaning that spending time with patients on long term preventive actions has not made economic sense for the healthcare companies and professionals...that changed markedly with ACA, and we're seeing some improvements...but nowhere near as much as the potential impact deserves.

Fundamentally, we've failed to recognize that sugar (fast burning carbs) is more insidiously addictive than cocaine and yet that nutritionally dense, delicious meals are quite possible without lots of sugar/ fast carbs. It's a challenging problem, but very possible to change one's blood composition within a month of active attention, and maintaining weight loss can be possible without sacrificing pleasure...if we adjust our expectations, body reactions. Most docs however are clueless about this, it wasn't in their medical education. Younger docs tend to be better, but still inadequate.

So, Maher is correct that a much greater point of emphasis throughout the pandemic, which is very likely to become an endemic issue, should be on the benefits of improving one's nutrition particularly, and exercise secondarily (it's extremely difficult to exercise one's way to good health, absent nutritional improvements).

HOWEVER: is he 100% wrong that "medical errors" are the 3rd leading cause of death and thus we should ignore doctors' advice. That contention (3rd highest, 250,000 deaths per year) has been debunked: https://news.yale.edu/2020/01/28/estima ... tudy-shows. ...closer to 10,000.

That doesn't mean that actual hospital errors aren't serious but it should come as no surprise that the study which suggested 250,000 deaths per year that got so much notice was from our good pal Makary. The guy loves being provocative. But he's not a good scientist. Sacrifices rigor for provocation.

It was a fundamentally flawed study...a worthwhile subject for sure, but there's a big difference between preventable (delayable) deaths and "medical errors" which was the claim.

But Maher bought it.
Which is too bad, because the other part of his message is quite reasonable.

But then dismissing vaccines and boosters simply because the approach should have also emphasized improving one's other risk factors to the extent possible does a great disservice to the reality that vaccines and boosting dramatically reduces risk of complications from infection, as well as, to a lesser extent, reduces infection and transmission.

[wgdsr]

Interesting read from an evolutionary virologist about endemicy.

This quote is just one of many interesting nuggets: "There is a widespread, rosy misconception that viruses evolve over time to become more benign. This is not the case: there is no predestined evolutionary outcome for a virus to become more benign, especially ones, such as SARS-CoV-2, in which most transmission happens before the virus causes severe disease. Consider that Alpha and Delta are more virulent than the strain first found in Wuhan, China. The second wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic was far more deadly than the first."

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x

i'm going to ask you politely to stop contributing.

[jhu72]

Grandfather turns 6 month old granddaughter blue with ivermectin, upon the advice of a QAnon group. Hospital saved the child after the grandfather relented and agreed to have the child go to the hospital.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Interesting read from an evolutionary virologist about endemicy.

This quote is just one of many interesting nuggets: "There is a widespread, rosy misconception that viruses evolve over time to become more benign. This is not the case: there is no predestined evolutionary outcome for a virus to become more benign, especially ones, such as SARS-CoV-2, in which most transmission happens before the virus causes severe disease. Consider that Alpha and Delta are more virulent than the strain first found in Wuhan, China. The second wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic was far more deadly than the first."

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x

i'm going to ask you politely to stop contributing.

Does he have a British accent? As a tangent, I wonder if the old brit that has suddenly found fame would seem as credible to some folks if he were Chinese with a chinese accent going over the exact same data using a marker and charts? Just occurred to me….

[jhu72]

Interesting read from an evolutionary virologist about endemicy.

This quote is just one of many interesting nuggets: "There is a widespread, rosy misconception that viruses evolve over time to become more benign. This is not the case: there is no predestined evolutionary outcome for a virus to become more benign, especially ones, such as SARS-CoV-2, in which most transmission happens before the virus causes severe disease. Consider that Alpha and Delta are more virulent than the strain first found in Wuhan, China. The second wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic was far more deadly than the first."

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x

i'm going to ask you politely to stop contributing.

Does he have a British accent? As a tangent, I wonder if the old brit that has suddenly found fame would seem as credible to some folks if he were Chinese with a chinese accent going over the exact same data using a marker and charts? Just occurred to me….

... we both know the answer to that question.

[jhu72]

... this Spotify, Rogan, Neil Young dustup appears to be the tip of the iceberg. Doctor's groups are going after Spotify. Spotify will likely end up getting the Facebook / Twitter / Google treatment. Just one more case pointing up the need of tighter regulation of internet content distribution organizations.

[Bart]

Interesting read from an evolutionary virologist about endemicy.

This quote is just one of many interesting nuggets: "There is a widespread, rosy misconception that viruses evolve over time to become more benign. This is not the case: there is no predestined evolutionary outcome for a virus to become more benign, especially ones, such as SARS-CoV-2, in which most transmission happens before the virus causes severe disease. Consider that Alpha and Delta are more virulent than the strain first found in Wuhan, China. The second wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic was far more deadly than the first."

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x

i'm going to ask you politely to stop contributing.

Dammit, you are right. I'll try being better.

I think we should take all the knuckle dragging mouth breathers to the Dune Sea to be cast into the Great Pit of Carkoon, the resting place of the all-powerful sarlacc where in his belly they will find a new definition of pain and suffering as they are slowly digested over a thousand years.

[youthathletics]

It certainly helps that GoF research already took place on this virus, that way they already have all the anticipated outcomes. Omicron was like giving everyone a gun with the safety on and no bullets....yet.

[PizzaSnake]

“ A Boston-area hospital said it will not perform a heart transplant on a patient who refuses to get a Covid-19 vaccination.
DJ Ferguson, 31, was previously prioritized for a heart transplant at Brigham and Women’s hospital, but is no longer eligible as he refuses to get vaccinated, said Ferguson’s family, according to a report by CBS Boston.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... 19-vaccine

[jhu72]

“ A Boston-area hospital said it will not perform a heart transplant on a patient who refuses to get a Covid-19 vaccination.
DJ Ferguson, 31, was previously prioritized for a heart transplant at Brigham and Women’s hospital, but is no longer eligible as he refuses to get vaccinated, said Ferguson’s family, according to a report by CBS Boston.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... 19-vaccine

... totally understandable from a limited resource perspective. Unvaccinated individual runs a greater risk of the heart being wasted.