Hacker News Reader

drocer88on The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate (2015)

"Shi’s answers were coordinated with public information staffers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, of which WIV is part, and it took her 2 months to prepare them. Evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research says he suspects Shi’s answers were “carefully vetted” by the Chinese government."

drocer88on The Global Implications of “Re-education” Technologies in Northwest China

Who funds these guys? The principals appear to be mostly from southwest Asia: https://cgpolicy.org/experts/our-people/

drocer88on We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

Most families deal with cancer at some time. Few are unaffected. Maybe we need focus on the hard part of fixing things. We can acknowledge emotions, get moderation of opinions and celebrate empathy but we need measurable results.

U.S. Society is delivering on these.

drocer88on We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

U.S. cancer treatment is the best in the world. The greatest research, innovation and results[1] happen in America. These are products of American Society. American Society is actually pretty good at fighting this disease.

We devote huge resources to preventing, diagnosing and treating and have made great progress. The CAR T-Cell innovations are very promising and American research is making it work.

Families often face tragedy but U.S. Medicine is leading the world in this fight.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cancer-su... .

drocer88on Recovered patients show damage in heart after Covid-19

Linked to in the article, but may be paywalled : https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/...

Key Points: Question What are the cardiovascular effects in unselected patients with recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)?

Findings: In this cohort study including 100 patients recently recovered from COVID-19 identified from a COVID-19 test center, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging revealed cardiac involvement in 78 patients (78%) and ongoing myocardial inflammation in 60 patients (60%), which was independent of preexisting conditions, severity and overall course of the acute illness, and the time from the original diagnosis.

drocer88on Iroquois Nationals, barred from World Games, gave gift of lacrosse to the world

World Games? Never heard of this. Olympic qualifying requirements?

The real Lacrosse world championship is World Lacrosse Championship ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Lacrosse_Championship#20... ) where Iroquois punch above their weight.

drocer88on Goldman warns on inflation threat to dollar as reserve currency

I think Congress and the Administration are more to blame for fiscal problems.

drocer88on Effect of bromhexine on clinical outcomes and mortality in Covid-19 [pdf]

If you were wondering, Bromhexine is an expectorant/mucolytic agent. Bromhexine is not available in the United States. ( source : https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/bromhexine )

drocer88on With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

"The point here is that sub $40 oil is becoming the new norm"

Crude is currently $41.74 as of 1:10PM EDT.

drocer88on Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

Is this the original controversial article : https://quillette.com/2020/06/30/on-behalf-of-environmentali... which was reproduced in Daily Wire???

Is there a link to copy of what got censored by facebook?

It would be good to have access to original material being discussed.

drocer88on Hospitals are suddenly short of young doctors because of visa ban

Employers are complaining about a "labor shortage"? Just raise wages. That will send the proper signal to labor to train for the job. This is the same for any other product or service in the economy.

drocer88on The Khmer Rouge: Genocide in the Name of Utopia (2016)

Do you have any evidence that the U.S. directly supported the Taliban or al-Qaeda?

drocer88on The Khmer Rouge: Genocide in the Name of Utopia (2016)

Your link says "Allegations". What is proven? Not much. The article suggests the U.S. was not too keen on Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia and when they did actively support a group it was the non communist groups. China and Thailand actively supported the Khmer Rouge.

drocer88on You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

Rather than an integer number of lines of code, how about using a boolean : "it works" or "it does not work"? or "Does it meet the spec" or "it does not meet the spec"? Even a mediocre manager should able to test that one out.

Code is often improved by removing code.

drocer88on China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

The "Lancet Surveys" were very controversial : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_cas.... Numerous critics doubt the results.

drocer88on The major genetic risk factor for severe Covid-19 is inherited from Neandertals

Try this : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/SNP/snp_ref.cgi?do_not...

This breaks down the population frequencies. Of note: the HAPMAP AA frequencies: Gujarati Indians in Houston Texas : 38% , African ancestry in Southwest USA: 4%. It is absent in Chinese, Japanese and sub-saharan Africans.

drocer88on The major genetic risk factor for severe Covid-19 is inherited from Neandertals

Other factors may be obesity ( https://www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvl... ) , diabetes ( https://www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvl...) and Vitamin D deficiency ( http://www.cooperinstitute.org/2019/09/24/african-americans-... ).

drocer88on The major genetic risk factor for severe Covid-19 is inherited from Neandertals

Svante Pääbo , one of the preprint authors, is the head of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_P%C3%A4%C3%A4bo . He is known for his work in assembling the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes.

Of particular note in this paper, the genetic variants in the genomic locus discussed are found in 30% of South Asian populations: India and Bangladesh. The highest frequency occurs in Bangladesh, where more than half the population (63%) carries at least one copy of the Neandertal risk variant and 13% is homozygous for the variant. The risk variant is 8% frequency in Europe.

The hg19 location of Genetic variants in LD (r2>0.99) with rs11385942 in Eurasian populations can be viewed here at the UCSC genome browser: https://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?db=hg19&position=ch...

The genome wide association study that points out this area of the genome is here : https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2020283 . At this "locus 3p21.31, the association signal spanned the genes SLC6A20, LZTFL1, CCR9, FYCO1, CXCR6 and XCR1."

Three of the genes, XCR1 CXCR6 CCR9, are involved with chemokine receptor activity and G-protein coupled chemoattractant receptor activity.

drocer88on MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

What next? Tibetan flags? Uighur flags? Palestinian flags? Basque flags? Chechen flags? Israeli flags? South vietnamese flags? Taiwan flags? Dominion of Newfoundland flags? Black nationalist flags?

Who's the judge?

drocer88on Chronic treatment with hydroxychloroquine and SARS-CoV-2 infection

Articles like this don't need the "flagged" treatment.

HCQ studies need serious review and discussion.

The theory has always been that HCQ increases Zinc in the cell which blocks viral replication ,might have a small effect and might help with early infection.

Research like this does not need the heated politics.

We need good clinical trials and reproduced studies.

drocer88on Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

20th Century Dystopian novels are now operations manuals.

drocer88on USPS sells nearly $20B worth of money orders a year

Some people in the U.S. don't have bank accounts and may need to pay a bill.

drocer88on The CDC lost control of the coronavirus pandemic, then the agency disappeared

Presumably it is the spike in U.S. deaths on 26 June. The text in the mouseover does say that states added probable deaths on that date.

drocer88on The CDC lost control of the coronavirus pandemic, then the agency disappeared

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v...

"This study provides the first in vivo evidence that zinc sulfate in combination with hydroxychloroquine may play a role in therapeutic management for COVID-19."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030698772...

"we hypothesize that CQ/HCQ plus zinc supplementation may be more effective in reducing COVID-19 morbidity and mortality than CQ or HCQ in monotherapy."

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mujeeb_Shittu4/publicat... roquine-against-SARS-CoV-2-may-require-Zinc-additives-A-better-synergy-for-future-COVID-19-clinical-trials.pdf

"We seek to draw the attention of the scientific community to the possibility of drastically reducing the effects of the vi-rus on the affected patients and improving clinical tri-als outcome through the synergistic action of zinc and chloroquine"

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rishad_Ahmed2/publicati...

"Thirdly, hydroxychloroquine acts as an ionophoric agent for Zinc ions and thus increases the influx of Zinc ions into the cytoplasm of host target cells regardless whether the host target cells are infected or not [10]. Zinc ions adhere to the RNA dependent RNA polymerase enzyme of the virus and stops COVID-19 polymerization intracellularly."

We do need follow up and repeated clinical trials.

drocer88on Virgin Australia administrators agree to sell airline to Bain Capital

Manchester United just paid a dividend. Looks like they're going to make the cut for UEFA next year. Man U is doing okay. Other Premier League teams have much scarier ownership stories.

drocer88on Virgin Australia administrators agree to sell airline to Bain Capital

This is a straight up political hit piece published in August 2012 a few months before the Presidential elections when Romney was a major party nominee.

"And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who’d be honored to tell Oliver Twist there’s no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race."

The rhetoric and the journalism are hard to separate in this article.

drocer88on Mounting clues suggest the coronavirus might trigger diabetes

From https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/39/5/629/5060447

"Obesity, once rare in type 1 diabetes (T1D), is now an increasingly frequent problem (3–5). Accumulating evidence on the prevalence and consequences of obesity in T1D shows very clearly that this comorbidity is both underappreciated and poorly understood." .... " The considerable obesity burden in youth with T1D was confirmed, also in the T1DX, where the prevalence of obesity (BMI ≥95th percentile) was 13.5% in adolescents (mean age 15.4 years), with higher prevalences in those of black/African American descent (17.9%) and Hispanic/Latino descent (15.9%) between the years of 2010 and 2012."

drocer88on Republicans Push Bill Requiring Tech Companies Give Encrypted Data

Here is the actual bill for those who want to read it: https://epic.org/crypto/OLL20597.pdf

drocer88on Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

It could also be feel good PR to deflect attention on their supply chain: both the political and environmental concerns people might have it they looked too close.

drocer88on nCino S-1

Ralph Abernathy and Walter Mondale supported Ceasar Chavez's marches to fight against illegal immigration. Ronald Reagan had no problems with using such strikebreakers