Averros’s comment on The English decide to stay in their foxholes (COVID surge despite vaccination):
The main lesson of this quasi-pandemic is that public experts are, by and large, idiots and/or charlatans.
Any actual scientist given the facts as following: quickly mutating kind of viruses, vaccine tech producing very specific immune response and incapable of conferring sterilizing immunity, widespread community transmission will immediately figure out that mass immunization creates strong selective pressure on the virus thus rapidly creating new strains which not only avoid vaccines but also re-infect people who did get the cooties before.
With these givens the correct strategy is to vaccinate only those at risk of severe illness so as to protect them while minimizing generation of new strains.
But, no, the over-educated idiots and vaccine salesmen never think about anything further than immediate results of their actions. It’s like antibiotic overuse take 2 – only faster moving. The EYIs [Educated Yet Idiots] learned nothing from the previous bouts of medically-induced pathogen evolution.
My personal view for most of the past year has been that the best analogy to the typical Church of Shutdown state’s War on COVID-19 is the American side of the Vietnam War. Our best and brightest (e.g., Dr. Fauci, state governors flanked by their public health officials) present charts and statistics showing that, in any given month, the war against coronavirus is being won. The population is assured that just a little more sacrifice will yield massive dividends. Sometimes the Priests of Shutdown will draw on mathematical models from Whiz Kids. Month after month of winning battles leads to… a lost war (e.g., Maskachusetts having 3X the death rate of Florida, adjusted for population over 65, but the population still has faith in Robert S. McNamara (Governor Charlie Baker)).
But I wonder if averros has a better analogy. Circa 1950, the typical layperson thought that we were done with bacterial infection, despite the fact that #Science had already seen evolved resistance in action. See “Penicillin’s Discovery and Antibiotic Resistance: Lessons for the Future?” (Yale J. Biol Med):
2016 marks the 75th anniversary of the first systemic administration of penicillin in humans, and is therefore an occasion to reflect upon the extraordinary impact that penicillin has had on the lives of millions of people since. This perspective presents a historical account of the discovery of the wonder drug, describes the biological nature of penicillin, and considers lessons that can be learned from the golden era of antibiotic research, which took place between the 1940s and 1960s.
More than 150 antibiotics have been found since the discovery of penicillin, and for the majority of antibiotics available, resistance has emerged. Moreover, the recent rise of multi/pan-drug resistant strains has correlated with enhanced morbidity and mortality. Overall, ineffectiveness of the antibiotic treatments to “superbug” infections has resulted in persistence and spread of multi-resistant species [42] across the globe. This represents a serious worldwide threat to public health [41].
In early 1945, Fleming predicted that the high public demand of antibiotics would determine an “era of abuse”; this eventually became a reality [43-45]. No sooner had the miraculous effects of penicillin become apparent to the general public, then the antibiotic started to be overused. This triggered selective pressure for the emergence of penicillin-resistant strains, which over a few years spread across different countries. The discovery of each new generation of antibiotic quickly followed the same trend.
(How long it will be before American K-12ers are taught to celebrate the pioneering efforts of BIPOC American women in developing penicillin and the 1945 Nobel Prize won by Alexa Fleming, Ernestine Chain, and Heather Walter Florey?)
From the Journal of Popular Studies:
Related:
- People who don’t believe in evolution are idiots, but the coronavirus cannot evolve (January 3)
- Folks who vote for a larger Welfare State should also discourage the teaching of evolution?
- Stellar evolution in the #MeToo era
- “As the Delta variant of the coronavirus surges through the U.K., almost half of the country’s recent Covid-19 deaths are of people who have been vaccinated.” (WSJ)
Nothing says “trust the science” more than someone who wants us to believe men can have babies.
And who was forcing nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients while at the same time removing his mother from a nursing home.
Are these new strains more dangerous for younger people than previous ones? Ie on a personal level does it make sense for younger people to get vaccinated too? (It clearly wasn’t a good choose for younger person to get vaccinated against original strains)
As a general rule pathogens evolve towards easier transmission and milder illness. (The reason for that is that strains compete with each other, as they are close enough to cause cross-immunity… so the bug which got there first and spread before host’s immune reaction cleared it out wins – milder illness also means weaker immune reaction).
SARS2 follows this general pattern – available data shows that delta (formerly Indian) variant is less dangeous, and is had CFR of an average flu – though unlike flu it affects young people less and older people more.
The final step of viral evolution is to become actually symbiotic… all the way to being incorporated into host’s genome (as many endogenous retroviruses ended up… one of them provided genetic material necessary for development of placenta).
Basically, it’s new, poorly adapted strains (often of zoonotic origin) which cause severe illness.
I don’t know if Vietnam is such a great analogy. The US lost Vietnam for a lot of reasons mostly of her own making revolving around the will to win, fears that an outright US effort would bring in the Ruskies and Chinese, etc. LBJ’s primary objective was the Great Society and Vietnam was something that interfered with that. The issue in connection with Covid seems to be the government’s encouragement to the American people to believe that that war is winnable — when as a matter of science, as you and others have ably pointed out over the last year, it is not. So maybe the better analogy is to LBJ’s war on poverty — the objective being to end poverty, something that has not occurred in all of human history.
The one true preventive technology is solid state ultraviolet emitter technology – physical inactivation of the pathogens regardless of mutation. Sadly there are very few companies in US pursuing this. The public has been brainwashed into thinking UV is extremely dangerous while in reality continuous exposure of 3mJ/day of C-band light for 20 years straight gives something like 0,3% chance of skin cancer. 3mJ is sufficient to kill 99.9% of SARS-2 on surfaces, and a small fraction of that dose can kill SARS-2 in the air. I am actually disgusted by the lack of investment into hard science specifically physical electronics in the US overall – the private sector or VC community has pretty much given up on such higher risk long ROI type of endeavors and surrendered to the Chinese. There are >20 UVC LED companies in China making crystals for this and 200+ more working on applications. In the adjacent field there are 64 Chinese companies making wide bandgap SiC receiving $20B in startup funding in the last year or two. Laugh all you can on this whole-society approach but this type of numbers and broad participation will sneak up on you and eventually win in both performance and total production capability. The little bit of UV market in US is still dominated by mercury lamps. Unless US cuts itself off from China otherwise the government better show some true courage and leadership and lead public investments into hard science startups. Enough rant for the day
As a child I was repeatedly, from year to year, subjected to UV radiation to cure chronic sore throat and sinuses, in the doctor office, at least weekly. It never helped and I hated it. Who cares about solid state UV emitter – UV lamp works too. But would not UV accelerate coronavirus mutation rate? Thing that helped me was spending a summer month at see shore / beach storing up vitamin on D and inhaling salty sea water while diving and swimming and hiking in the mountains. Cold season of years when I could not do that – gargling helped. Starting as imaginative kid who believed in science I learned to take medical advice with a grain of salt. Best methods known to man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZR3VZXod4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2imvp7XmYc
To @Anonymous: UV on throat is a wrong remedy as the UVC light has much less penetration on cell layers than either UVB or UVA. Shining UVC light on surface cells will have little effect in eliminating pathogens inside your body or in your bloodstream. UVC causes quantum level changes on specific RNA/DNA sites, breaks specific bonds leading to dimer lesions that prevents replication. While broadband UV is an extrinsic mutagen, there is zero evidence of generational enhancement against UVC in correctly conducted experiments because UVC acts like a switch. There are naturally evolved different UVC resistance in pathogens but that is not due to evolutionary pressure from UVC itself. This is where solid state UVC emitters are superior – they can produce single or narrow spectrum light while mercury lamps can not. The old mercury lamps cause light-assisted repairs from diverse wavelengths. Your answer precisely illustrates the dire need for market education, and most private investors has no patience for such things, and therefore the need for public funding to help such long term efforts. The golden age of US scientific advance was in the 1950s as a result of significant government participation, under the guidance of openminded, impartial, in many cases scientifically-trained administrators. Something to think about on this 245th Bday of the good old USA
Previous comment: “most private investors has no patience for such things, and therefore the need for public funding to help such long term efforts. The golden age of US scientific advance was in the 1950s as a result of significant government participation, under the guidance of openminded, impartial, in many cases scientifically-trained administrators. ” Private investors would jump at such an opportunity as witnessed by IPO market. If a company works with idea that has 20% chance of success it will have venture capital financing, only one of the avenues for financing. Life Sciences public financing is already huge. Golden age of American inventions and industrial development was in mid to late 19th – early 20th century. Big part of 1950 scientific advances were due to war in Europe and refugees from Hitler an later from war-destroyed Europe. Back in the day I recall old college administrators of colleges with many Nobel Prize winners wring that “prior to to 1930th refugees we did not really head physics department” There were the people transplanted from rich but hierarchic scientific tradition into fertile ground of American entrepreneurship, this situation is next to impossible to repeat. We were all be better of now if those folks took patents on their inventions, lot’s of of what we call now “Big Tech” could prevented and better organized. Regarding open-minded impartial administrators: they are one off unicorns, product of old scientific hierarchy, ascetic culture, tunnel concentration on science and technology forgetting own rights and wishes and schools for gifted children that our government now confirms are r-aaa-cist. I listened to one of current NASA administrators answering why NASA can not do what it used to do and the answer was that NASA no longer that one administrator that were in charge back than. With all current events of the past decade we are moving at ever – increasing speed from ability to have good administrators, not towards it.
I kind of lean in @Jack’s direction on this, but also this worldwide panic is an internet-and-media fueled example of how much our society has changed since the 1960’s. I was just in my car listening to the “60’s on 6” and they’re counting down the top 600 songs of the 1960s ranked by their listeners on Sirius satellite radio. #11 (IIRC) was Neil Diamond’s: “Sweet Caroline” – an homage (or more aptly an allusion) to Caroline Kennedy:
“Hands, touching hands
Reaching out, touching me, touching you”
Everybody was touching everybody else in the ’60s, there was no Internet or smartphones to keep everyone on the edge of their panic seat all day long with alerts and news flashes and press releases and podcasts and text messages, and I just don’t think social distancing would have worked, and the panic could never have taken hold as it did in the here and now world of the future.
I mentioned this to the night manager at the local McDonalds I had just ordered from and he laughed and said: “Yeah, you’re right, that was a great song.” And I said: “We’ve become a vastly enfeebled and soulless people despite all this technological crap.” And he laughed again (through his mask, which he is still required to wear) and nodded, “I think you’re right.”
@Alex Nice to hear that song. Though, according to the internet, Neil Diamond said the song was for his wife and he couldn’t find a good rhyme for Marcia, so he used the name Caroline. Nothing to do with Kennedy other than suggesting a rhyming, three syllable name.
@Mitch: One of the DJs (digital jockeys?) on Sirius Satellite last night kept the (mistaken) myth alive!