Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes to Die
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_ex...
Or, this was the explanation on blogs 10-15 years ago. A very strange time that was.
As we get older, we maintain the ability to sense pathogens in the adaptive immune system, but we fail to launch a suitable response. Studies also show, flu vaccines are a waste of time if the person doesnt have a sufficient amount of B6 in their diet in order for the body to develop an immune system response. In my experience GP's never ask about our diets, they make assumptions and this is dangerous to our health. Now does osteoporosis play its part in a weaken immune system response because the quality of stem cells from the bone marrow is greatly reduced? Not found any studies looking at this angle yet. What about Vitamin D3, the Wellcome Trust in Cambridge announced it had reversed engineered the human genome in Aug 2010, and from the research they found that there were 2776 Vit D Receptors in the human genome, most of which are concentrated around the immune system genes, so how significant is Vit D in immune system responses? How much does Iron in the diet play a part, for example, there is a chemical reaction in the gut which can reduce Ferric iron (State3) into Ferrous iron (State2) before its absorbed, how much does dietary iron and exercise generating hydroxyl radicals play a part in innate immunology? The hydroxyl radical is generally portrayed as a very damaging chemical reaction, yet we do get told to exercise. Likewise what about water only Fasting? When looking at Lysine, its one of only two keto BC amino acids, used to treat cold sores (Herpes) as its been suggested viruses at least the Herpes virus need carbs. Bacteria can die off when there is inadequate nutrition, but they can also go dormant in the body by developing a biofilm. So even though immune cell counts go down when water only fasting, as its no longer having to attack most of the food and drink we consume, does the process of starving of viruses and bacteria make the remaining immune system cells more effective as its only having to concentrated on pathogens in the body.
I'd agree with the article in that immunology is a complex topic, but our lack of high tech scientific instruments limit our knowledge forcing the use of meta data to make conclusions and judgements, and the spooks know all too well that they can get it wrong!
It's good to see a piece that shows how complex the science behind COVID is, in the middle of so many contradictory or over-simplified news.
It's rather unfortunate how politicized the whole issue is. I got banned from reddit for pointing out that without knowing what the r0 was for asymptomatic patients any type of lock down tells you more about the psychology of the person for or against it than about its effectiveness.
I'll wait to see how many millions end up homeless before I say that the lock downs saved lives anywhere where they were implemented.
The economy running smoothly is what keeps revolutions and wars from happening. The last time the wheels fell off as badly as they did over the last three months we had WWII happen within a decade. We are lucky that it is a sharp shock and it is probably recoverable, but the longer we keep this up the slower the recovery will be. And given how popular extremist ideas were even before a 25% unemployment wall it is not something I want to play with.
The people supporting these extreme coronavirus measures have good intentions but don't seem to understand the law of unintended consequences.
The problem isn't the lockdown (the US didn't even have a proper lockdown, compared to European countries), the problem is lack of federal help to compensate the losses.
The US GDP shrinkage in Q2 2020 was three times larger than that of e.g. Germany and France, despite these countries having harder lockdowns. Now those countries are mostly done with Covid, while the US still has over 1000 deaths a day _plus_ the economical costs of Covid.
If they were actually comparable rather than the US having less of a decrease in GDP, the US figure would be four times the European one rather than three due to that annualization.
This sadly doesn't change the main point, though: Most of the hardships of employees and small businesses are specific results of the lack of proper relief in the US, without the US economy having gained an advantage out of this.
1. we lockdown and the economy goes to bad which kills people because of lack of income
2. we don't lockdown and the economy magically stays strong.
There's other possibilities.
3. we don't lockdown, the pandemic kills millions, the economy goes down more than if we had locked down.
4. ??
No. I'm suggesting that acknowledging the cost of lockdowns is something that is not allowed to be discussed in liberal circles.
4: World war 3 caused by the economic collapse and radicalization of the population. You know, like the last time there was mass sustained unemployment.
I've seen many that weight economic collapse heavily in the equasion.
It's tempting to simplify the mental model in terms of casualities but in reality there's a gradient between alive and dead.
People need to realize the chart is not composed of two vertical bars. It's a bell curve instead and covid might be less influential in that curve than we are led to believe relative to the economy.
No I don't go to protests and ralies, I don't leave home unless strictly necessary since I work remotely. But I still understand not everyone is as fortunate and I accept they might have to just go out and work in order for provide to their families.
What this additionally allows for is a) better planning beyond 2020 for companies, and b) much higher willingness in the population to cooperate in the preventive measures like distancing, masks and so on, which helps to explain the stark difference in new cases between both regions.
Also, the U.S. did not conduct a lockdown. By all means, look to the countries that did, and see how many new homeless that created.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-04/covid-recession-mortg...
And you are throwing statistics out there without bothering to make an argument. Being in mortgage stress certainly isn't the same as being homeless now or in the future.
https://www.savings.com.au/home-loans/1-1-million-households...
Had people actually observed the restrictions, the Victorian economy would be fully open, like New Zealand is now.
You do realize that it's exactly the opposite right?
If asymptomatic r0 is high a quarantine without a lock down is pointless. If it's low no lock down is required and a quarantine is enough?
But you really don’t seem particularly interested in facts.
On the other hand, if the Federal government has properly laid out the optimal pro economy-first course of action, or close enough to it, then how is it that we are not implementing it, at least in parts of the country? The US has 50 states, many which are dominated by conservatives who like the President, are not broadly in favor of lockdowns. Why haven't those states insisted upon going full steam ahead with economy first, and proving the efficacy of that choice? Why do even conservative, business-friendly, Trump-loyal states keep backtracking and implementing partial lockdowns if they are such a ruinously counterproductive idea?
My own opinion is that the Feds have failed at every level, leaving the states with no choice but to flounder through this pandemic with only bad options. Had we taken comprehensive nationwide steps to stop the spread of the virus, especially at the early stages, shutdowns may have been unnecessary or greatly lessened in severity. And had we taken more wholehearted steps to mitigate the economic effects of the shutdowns, we would be in a much healthier position overall to ride out temporary drops of economic activity without the irreversible effects we are currently facing. But I'm curious as to what you think the best economy- and lifesaving strategy would've been.
Why not just look at other countries, see which have had the best outcomes, and copy them?
Because if the R0 value for asymptomatic cases is high enough you will need 2 week quarantine for all travelers and fortress boarders until the virus is eradicated everywhere.
Something New Zealand is currently doing after implementing the most draconian nation wide lock-down.
Do you support a barb wire wall around both the Canadian and Mexican border with lethal force counter measures if anyone tries to pass and forced isolation of all travelers?
How convenient of you to ignore all the weeks prior to "the past several" as in: significantly higher mortality rates than any of its neighbours.
And the end result? Worst recession since WWII.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
How about "Sweden has the largest recession since WWII. The largest single quarter drop in the directly comparable time series. The drop (8.6%) is barely above EU average (11.9%), and the economy is expected to drop another 4-10% by October. They achieved this incredible economic feat by sacrificing 10 to 15 times the number of people compared to neighbours."
If needed for public health reasons, and is short/mid-term, why not?
And you're mistaken if you think your comment has no political connotation.
Do we? Do you have a study?
But I don't think you want to be convinced. Like you said, it has become politicized.
> Comprehensive studies on transmission from asymptomatic individuals are difficult to conduct, but the available evidence from contact tracing reported by Member States suggests that asymptomatically-infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms.
> The available data, to date, on onward infection from cases without symptoms comes from a limited number of studies with small samples that are subject to possible recall bias and for which fomite transmission cannot be ruled out.
Go looking for evidence on the internet I suspect anything can be supported. I stopped trying to keep up with the evidence a few months ago; but certainly as of May I was infuriated by how little actual knowledge seemed to be disseminating about how, in detail, this thing spreads.
There is a lot of 'common sense' out there that appears to be unsupported by attempts to gather and work to evidence. I havn't seen anything so far to suggest that asymptotic transmission is the problem. My theory is that people are ignoring quarantines if they have mild symptoms - but again, no evidence.
You got banned from reddit. As in the whole site? For merely pointing this out? I see a lot of users stake out similar positions all the time without ramification. Perhaps you were banned from a subreddit, or perhaps this isn't the full story.
> without knowing what the r0 was for asymptomatic patients any type of lock down tells you more about the psychology of the person for or against it than about its effectiveness.
Aaah, the old "I don't know 100% that this blotch on your face is a melanoma because I'm not an oncologist, therefore don't do anything about it" line of thinking. A few points:
1. We have a good history of containing pandemics, using simple processes and practices. We begin by following these.
2. We have a good handle on how to reduce and control the outbreak of COVID-19. This has demonstrated that total eradication of the disease is possible within certain populations (i.e. island populations, areas with strong border controls). This has also demonstrated that flattening the curve only works if you do not ease up on the curve-flattening practices (i.e. Japan, Korea, Singapore, Australia).
3. The impact on areas of high infection is not linear - due to the effectiveness of medical intervention when such intervention is not overwhelmed, flattening the curve significantly reduces overall deaths and allows for control of the disease even after it has reached relatively high saturation within the population.
4. Conversely, when medical capability is overwhelmed or absent, the death rate climbs significantly. (The US, UK and Iran demonstrate this). This is the "bulldozer mortuary" and "death panel triage" point in the pandemic.
5. The economic impact is not solely driven by lockdown. The US has limited lockdown, and they are being impacted severely because of lack of demand (people don't want goods at the price of their health). The government people seem to think the only driver of impact is Supply-side (i.e. shut down shops and the economy dies), and have completely underestimated people's willingness to sacrifice their health for the economy.
6. The biggest questions we don't know are the long term impacts of the virus on sufferers and the potential range of this impact does not extend into the positive. It appears to cause long-term damage to the cardiovascular system, and potentially the brain and other organs as well. We are seeing upswings in strokes, heart disease, and general mortality in sufferers and those who have recovered. To top it off, the potential lower end of this range appears extremely negative - with drastically lowered life expectancy in older patients and the potential for things such as a rise in dementia and significant cv illness as those who have recovered grow older.
With all of this answers that we have, and identifying the questions yet to answer, the path is very fucking clear. Countries which do something appear to end up much better off. Those who do not, fare far worse. Pointing to an economic impact now, as people are doing with Sweden, is only part of the answer and is an indication of the best picture of Swedish public health - there is nothing which will improve and the picture will only grow worse as time passes. Whereas for NZ, Australia, etc, they have borne or are bearing the impact, and will have a healthier, fitter and less traumatised population to revive demand again when things improve.
There is no point pretending that strict lockdown lasting weeks has no effect on public mental health. You will not get healthier, fitter and less traumatised population that way.
And here, despite the healtcare system not being overwhelmed by COVID patients, it was very difficult to get access to a doctor: exactly because of the lockdown measures. I will not a bit be surprised to see that the excess mortality for 2020 will be higher, but higher because of the cardiovacular, cancer, etc. patients, not because of COVID (81 death so far).
So yes, checking out whether the cure does more damage is very important.
This is highlighted on the Wikipedia page, for example:
> R_{0} is not a biological constant for a pathogen as it is also affected by other factors such as environmental conditions and the behaviour of the infected population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number
We don't need to know the R0 to know that COVID-19 causes abnormal impacts on society like increased hospitalizations and deaths; those abnormal impacts are how we discovered the disease in the first place. Those are the reason that affected societies are changing how they work temporarily to mitigate the impact of the disease.
Parts of the code have evolved to code for two entirely different functional segments depending on the direction they are read in, while others have randomly duplicated and taken on entirely new functions over time. Energy has become the specialisation of a type of bacteria that at some point somehow avoided death after being eaten by a cell and instead founded its family of somewhat strange but super-efficient metabolisers.
So yeah, it's complex.
"We are all just a somewhat interesting random arrangement of photons"
Regardless, it still is incorrect to say we are simply an arrangement of photons. The matter making up our body is composed of atoms, which are composed of electrons, quarks, and gluons (fundamental particles in the standard model).
Maybe we're both luminous beings and this crude matter.
What this article does it takes that small fraction of exceptions and makes it sound like it's the rule.
Think of medicine and side effects. It's the same idea. This article is extremely sensational fear-mongering reporting and people eat the stuff up.
Any good book reco's for the layman?
No book recommendations off the top of my head, but I’ll post back if something comes up.
But we've locked ourselves out of timely human testing. We are protective of subjects to the point that even a global pandemic can't overcome long deadly delays in testing vaccines.
So what's the alternative, Dr. Mengele? One simple word that Mengele didn't bother with: consent.
We should create a category of fully informed, fully consenting adults that are willing to subject themselves to human experimentation, even before lengthy animal testing. Give them sufficient education, training and evaluation to determine that they consent by strict criteria. Test them on their knowledge, let them decide over months. And then let the scientists administrate the test substance or placebo. With conditions monitored by a research oversight committee.
Even if it were a risky and painful process that didn't make a subject any richer, I predict that there would be hundreds of sincere volunteers. Both fools and heroes.
We should let them. It could defer large numbers of deaths.
There are extremely well enumerated principles in immunology. There's always exceptions in any sort of molecular biology and this article makes them sound like they are the rule or the standard.
Covid is extremely tame compared to other pathogenic viruses.
You want a scary virus, look at ebola which destroys epithelial cells and has 90% fatality rate , look at HIV which integrates into your genome.
The article implies that Covid is special in some regard in how it attacks the body. It's a standard virus. Every virus on the planet has people that are susceptible to it and it kills them. Every virus on the planet can cause you damage via immune system over response. That's how influenza kills and its way better at it.
The entire human physiology and biology in general is crazy with exceptions to every rule and millions of years of evolution makes it hard for us to understand why.
All of biology is crazy and unintuitive from the tree of life down to proteomics. But to say it so unpredictable is just false.