Covid: the shape of things to come

[Ant4d]

Drug companies are going to cash in and they keep developing new vaccine for covid variants. Lucky to have them though.
I would be happy to pay some $$ and stay alive.

 

[ian]

that is something pretty unique to the US, I have always wondered why nobody has looked into the gaps in the system and plugged those.

Because the companies have a lot of lobbying power? There’s so much f’ed up stuff here that survives for the same reason.

 

[MarcelNL]

Because the companies have a lot of lobbying power? There’s so much f’ed up stuff here that survives for the same reason.

perhaps that, and a lot of pretty dumb Dr's trying to make easy money by keeping patients happy (don't ask how I know).
You can lobby what you want making a drug available but then someone with an MD needs to prescribe the stuff to start with.

 

[Grayswandir]

Has anyone heard that the idiots have made a strain of covid with an 80% mortality rate?

Boston University Creates a new Covid strain that has an 80% kill rate

Isn't this what happened the first time around?

 

[ian]

Boston University Creates a new Covid strain that has an 80% kill rate

Yikes! Keep that stuff away from me.

Isn't this what happened the first time around?

Unclear!

 

[Grayswandir]

Yeah, it is unclear. I doubt we'll ever learn what really happened. Knowing that they're making super covid strains for fun worries me. We've got enough troubles in the world already.

 

[MarcelNL]

Yeah, it is unclear. I doubt we'll ever learn what really happened. Knowing that they're making super covid strains for fun worries me. We've got enough troubles in the world already.

Fun?
Since when is science for 'fun'? Try read the paper and you'll see they are exploring to find handles on future strains, there is one guarantee; new strains will appear. Same thing happens with Ebola, Anthrax, smallpox etc

while not very accurate IMO as recently two Ebola vaccines were created fi not for this rare strain;
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/17/world/uganda-ebola-lockdown-intl-hnk/index.htmlhttps://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/clinicians/vaccine/index.html
it's pretty impossible to work on that sort of vaccines without having the pathogen at hand.

 

[Grayswandir]

Fun?
Since when is science for 'fun'? Try read the paper and you'll see they are exploring to find handles on future strains, there is one guarantee; new strains will appear. Same thing happens with Ebola, Anthrax, smallpox etc

while not very accurate IMO as recently two Ebola vaccines were created fi not for this rare strain;
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/17/world/uganda-ebola-lockdown-intl-hnk/index.htmlhttps://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/clinicians/vaccine/index.html
it's pretty impossible to work on that sort of vaccines without having the pathogen at hand.

I knew someone would take offense at that comment. Take a day off. I know exactly what they're doing, the problem is them not doing it very well sometimes, and the strain could escape and kill a bunch of people. I live near Fort Meade, and they've had problems in the past. We don't even know how covid started, but there's a good bit of evidence it escaped from a lab. I know there's opinions that it did not, but no one really knows, and the powers that be have no problem lying to us (for our own good of course!).

 

[MarcelNL]

Has anyone heard that the idiots have made a strain of covid with an 80% mortality rate?

Boston University Creates a new Covid strain that has an 80% kill rate

Isn't this what happened the first time around?

it sure did not sound like you understand what they are doing...of course that sort of research is risky but I do know one thing, the risk of strains escaping from such a controlled environment is far lower than the risk of what is creeping out of the tundra, rainforest etc right now due to global warming.

I vote for doing research in order to have a chance of being prepared when something breaks loose by crossing over into another species than having to scramble to start doing research after finding out the hard way.

 

[Luftmensch]

there's a good bit of evidence it escaped from a lab. I know there's opinions that it did not

Your language usage is interesting. "Evidence" that there is some conspiracy or cover up going on.... And only "opinions" that it is a naturally occuring pathogen.

This is exemplifies the discussion about disinformation.

I guess there is a philosophical question about truth and belief. We won't ever know the 'true' origins of Covid... So believe what you will. You can choose to follow mainstream scientific discourse... or the more exciting world of possibilities that confirm you pre-existing biases.

These fairly prosaic articles [1], [2] or [3] might convince you that the virus likely originated somewhere along a zoonotic chain. Or they might not. If not; ask yourself.... why just covid? There are a lot of awful diseases in the world to choose from.

 

[Luftmensch]

I have absolutely no doubt that Russia, China, USA, etc try to impose their world views and believes on the rest of the world and effect others through economic, informational, cultural, military and other means. There is also no question in my mind that Russia sees the US and NATO as a opponent and would do what it can to distabilize them. I just think you give them too much power and ability in doing so.

Maybe it is naive of me... but I agree.

Clearly there is a cold war of disinformation... The thing is... there is an active market for 'bad' ideas. In fact, I'll go one step further. My instinct is that the most successful disinformation campaigns aren't invented overseas. Savvy foreign actors likely look for local narratives that serve their objectives and amplify them.

Partisan politics, biased media and a lack of trust in institutions are all largely domestic issues. Social media is a catalyst for these problems. While foreign actors can definitely take advantage of these weaknesses, they didnt create them.

 

[Michi]

Remember, "they" can control the weather…

What it all boils down to is lack of education. Unfortunately, the majority of people do not have even a half-decent science background, and even fewer understand the scientific method.

And, forever after, if your uncle got Covid and got well after taking Ivermectin, it must have been the Ivermectin. And if your mate's best friend also got Covid and got well after taking Ivermectin, there must be a conspiracy to keep that drug out of people's hands. Never mind asking why "the deep state" would want to withhold effective medication from the populace.

The plural of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence". Sadly, almost no-one understands that.

 

[Jovidah]

totally agree! I guess we can consider oursleves lucky in discovering the Russians did not do too well internally either...neither with their vaccination numbers nor with executing operations.

While they may not have been as succesfull with their own vaccinations (due to a justified distrust of the Russian government), and their kinetic operations have fallen far short of their own expectations (luckily!), I wouldn't underestimate how succesful their (mis)information operations in the last decade have been. Compared to the cold war the Kremlin-cronies have a far higher electorate than they ever had during the cold war...and they even have 'friendlies' like Orban in power in western institutions.
The measure of success they've had in framing and dictating narrative on the Ukrainian war since 2014 - even in western media - is outright appaling. Even 'respectable' media uncritically followed their narratives of 'Russian-speaking rebels welcoming support from the Russian army', instead of calling it what it really was: a Russian-equipped, Russian-led invasion, that stalled due to lack of local support until they sent their own conventional army into the fray to push the Ukrainians back from the border.
Even respectable media let themselves get played like a fiddle, which allows them to air their WW3/Nuclear scare tactics on a global stage to stave off direct intervention.

Ask yourself... how often have you seen the map from the 2012 UA elections that's used to support the Russian narrative, and how often have you seen the map of the 1991 independence referendum that had both Donetsk and Luhansk oblast voting overwhelmingly for independence from Russia (80-85%). For the record even Crimea voted for independence back then.
There's also a lot of helpful idiots and intelligentsia who have become either willingly or unwillingly become Kremlin mouthpieces...to the point that you can pretty much predict in advance what they're going to say.

Not that I disagree with you guys about conspiracy theories in general or even vaccinations in particular. I just wanted to point out that you sound like conspiracy theoriests yourselves. You can't possibly believe that Russia and China are to blame for all the things you seem to blame them for.

Except that nothing I said above here is controversial in the slightest... it's all quite well-known and familiar to anyone who has a clue about Russia or what's talked about in security circles. This isn't new either... during the Cold War the KGB arguably spent more effort on 'active measures' than on gathering intelligence. There's no reason to assume this stop given the continuity between Soviet and Russian security institutions. The only real difference is that through the internet they've gotten a far bigger reach.
This has pretty obviously been going on for the last few decades... most of Europe just decided to stick its head in the sand and hoped the problem would go away and thought Putin was someone they could control.

Also like I said; they don't necessarily originate everything, but they have a habbit of latching on to things, amplifying, etc. It's really hard to really put a measure on how big their influence is at the end of the day. But their influence on framing and setting narratives in the past decade is pretty obvious and well researched. You can see it in how people perceived the Russian-Ukrainian war since 2014, in how people perceived certain groups and actors within Syria, etc. For example their campaign to cast shade against the white helmetes has been quite succesful.
(Specifically speaking about Russia because that's more my expertise, but every I've seen every indication that China is acting rather similar).

I have absolutely no doubt that Russia, China, USA, etc try to impose their world views and believes on the rest of the world and effect others through economic, informational, cultural, military and other means. There is also no question in my mind that Russia sees the US and NATO as a opponent and would do what it can to distabilize them. I just think you give them too much power and ability in doing so. Russian COVID denial and vaccine opposition was much, much higher than in the US for example

The irony is that Russia in some ways has the same problems controlling the narratives within their own population as western governments do. Distrust of the government is higher in Russia than here, hence they had issues with vaccine adoption.
But it's really hard to overestimate the amount of effort Russia put into destabilization and (mis)information in the west, and the amount of success they've had in the last decade. Like I said, none of this is controversial in the approriate academic / security circles, but for some reason it rarely gets voiced in more mainstream channels. Some politicians have been blatantly obvious Kremlin cronies for at least a decade but they rarely if ever got called out on it.

 

[Jovidah]

I knew someone would take offense at that comment. Take a day off. I know exactly what they're doing, the problem is them not doing it very well sometimes, and the strain could escape and kill a bunch of people. I live near Fort Meade, and they've had problems in the past. We don't even know how covid started, but there's a good bit of evidence it escaped from a lab. I know there's opinions that it did not, but no one really knows, and the powers that be have no problem lying to us (for our own good of course!).

it sure did not sound like you understand what they are doing...of course that sort of research is risky but I do know one thing, the risk of strains escaping from such a controlled environment is far lower than the risk of what is creeping out of the tundra, rainforest etc right now due to global warming.

I vote for doing research in order to have a chance of being prepared when something breaks loose by crossing over into another species than having to scramble to start doing research after finding out the hard way.

Your language usage is interesting. "Evidence" that there is some conspiracy or cover up going on.... And only "opinions" that it is a naturally occuring pathogen.

This is exemplifies the discussion about disinformation.

I guess there is a philosophical question about truth and belief. We won't ever know the 'true' origins of Covid... So believe what you will. You can choose to follow mainstream scientific discourse... or the more exciting world of possibilities that confirm you pre-existing biases.

These fairly prosaic articles [1], [2] or [3] might convince you that the virus likely originated somewhere along a zoonotic chain. Or they might not. If not; ask yourself.... why just covid? There are a lot of awful diseases in the world to choose from.

Actually regarding origins of the virus... Grayswandir isn't entirely off his rocker here. While it's impossible to really give a definitive answer anymore as to its origins, especially when any WHO investigations were the equivalent of visiting a murder scene after you gave the murderer a full year to tamper with the crime scene to hide all the evidence (and they have a huge incentive to do so).... there's enough smoke that you cannot rule out there was a fire.

Just go on pubmed and look at the articles coming out of the Wuhan lab; you can find articles from years before the start of COVID dealing with SARS/AIDS hybrids and all kinds of other funny business not too far off from COVID.... just like you can find concerns about the lab from the US side over their security, specifically over the risk of accidental release. All of this can be found in 'untainted' sources that precede COVID events.

Does that prove anything? No, not definitively, and most likely we'll never know for sure. But to cast off speculations about COVID resulting from an accidental release of a lab project as nothing but conspiracy theory would be foolish.

What I give less credit to is theories about an intentional release / deliberate bioweapon attack. Those just make little sense considering the location, scope, sequence of events, etc.
The entire Chinese response is also more typical of trying to contain an accidental release, but this is again mostly circumstantial. There's a lot of smoke, but simply not enough to say whether there was or wasn't a fire...

 

[MarcelNL]

I agree, we do not know what the origin of SARS-Covid 2019 is, and it hardly matters...it is here to stay and I do prefer science to engage in how to prevent further major impact of it by tinkering with the known strains allowing us to prepare. The chance that something creeps out from under the door of one of those labs is there, knowing how these labs work I'll take that over sitting back doing nothing and allow us to be 'amazed' what pops out on the other end of the fast breeding reactor we have allowed large parts of the world to become.

 

[Grayswandir]

it sure did not sound like you understand what they are doing...of course that sort of research is risky but I do know one thing, the risk of strains escaping from such a controlled environment is far lower than the risk of what is creeping out of the tundra, rainforest etc right now due to global warming.

I vote for doing research in order to have a chance of being prepared when something breaks loose by crossing over into another species than having to scramble to start doing research after finding out the hard way.

Probably because you made an erroneous assumption about a person you don't know. I think a lot people have a false sense of security in regards to how easily a virus could escape from a lab (and they have escaped, many times), even under biosafety level 4 conditions. We're getting too big for our britches, and the same people you seem to be in awe of are the very same people who are destroying the earth, or at least destroying its suitability for sustaining human life.

Luftmensch,

Are you really so naive it think the world isn't filled with conspiracy? Crack open a history book, they're filled with conspiracies of every kind. Why are some people so arrogant to think that somehow conspiracies no longer exist? I'm not talking about Elvis sightings or little gray aliens by any means. Disinformation and misinformation flows in both directions. Ask yourself who, historically speaking, has told more big lies, the people or the governments we allegedly create?

Controlling the weather is a misnomer Michi, but we can certainly manipulate it, and with a degree of control must people never imagined was possible. You can still find the information, despite the Internet becoming more Orwellian by the day. I don't take Ivermectin, but I do know the media purposely misrepresented it and made it sound "conspiratorial". Maybe that's the disinformation Luftmensch was talking about, I don't really know.

Meanwhile, all those vaccines they developed at the speed of light, with little oversight and no testing, based on new vaccine technology (mRNA). It doesn't work and has lead to more then a handful of deaths so far. Now they're pushing it hard on infants and young children. The vaccines had no effect in slowing down the transmission of covid, something they told us it did, and a fact they like to skip over as quickly as possible when people start asking questions.

Thinking critically, especially in this day and age, well, it's more important now then at any other point in history. Questioning "authority" should never be anathema, especially where it matters most, in the halls of academia, in government, and in the media. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's been happening, and it's gone mainstream. If you're not a lemming, you're a "conspiracy theorist". I find it all more then a little bit disconcerting. If you start asking questions, you're immediately lumped together with characters like Alex Jones.

By the way, I love science, but it's simply a way to study and understand the world around us, a very simple method that when used correctly, can be very valuable and lead to amazing discoveries and new technologies. Why would anyone be against the seeking out of knowledge and furthering our understanding of the reality we currently find ourselves living in? It's not a sacred cow though, and shouldn't be treated as such. Imagine if the wrong people had a stranglehold on "science" and the only opinions that mattered was their own? Peer reviewed research would become meaningless, at least to a certain degree, depending on the field of study.

 

[Grayswandir]

I agree, we do not know what the origin of SARS-Covid 2019 is, and it hardly matters...it is here to stay and I do prefer science to engage in how to prevent further major impact of it by tinkering with the known strains allowing us to prepare. The chance that something creeps out from under the door of one of those labs is there, knowing how these labs work I'll take that over sitting back doing nothing and allow us to be 'amazed' what pops out on the other end of the fast breeding reactor we have allowed large parts of the world to become.

It matters.

 

[Jovidah]

Maybe it is naive of me... but I agree.

Clearly there is a cold war of disinformation... The thing is... there is an active market for 'bad' ideas. In fact, I'll go one step further. My instinct is that the most successful disinformation campaigns aren't invented overseas. Savvy foreign actors likely look for local narratives that serve their objectives and amplify them.

Partisan politics, biased media and a lack of trust in institutions are all largely domestic issues. Social media is a catalyst for these problems. While foreign actors can definitely take advantage of these weaknesses, they didnt create them.

The problem with social media is that it's rather trivial to fill it with fake accounts... you could see this playing out in real-time on twitter in both the lead-up and follow-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's like a chorus all singing to the same note and the same conductor... all coming out with very predictable narritives. First it was 'lets not escalate! NATO intervention would mean world war 3!', then it was 'save lives because arming Ukraine will only cost more lives in the long run', and then came the predictable 'we must stop the killing we need a ceasefire / peaceful solution now' when it became obvious that Russia's invasion stalled, they lost the momentum and wanted to solidify their gains by freezing the conflict.

I do agree that they don't originate everything. They're pretty opportunistic at just running with everything. That's also when they're at their best since it's less blatantly obvious who's behind it. On Ukraine you could see the veneer coming off a lot of their info-ops because they were forced to improvise as things weren't going according to plan.

Similarly, in the past you can imagine that some politicians chose to throw their lot in with Russia because they figured 'what's the harm'... ironically even after the 2014 invasions they were still somehow seen as a 'respectable partner', because apparently invading and annexing your neighbours territory isn't that big of a deal if you do it rather efficiently...
I can imagine at least some of them would have made different choices had they known back then what happened in february 2022.

 

[Jovidah]

I agree, we do not know what the origin of SARS-Covid 2019 is, and it hardly matters...it is here to stay and I do prefer science to engage in how to prevent further major impact of it by tinkering with the known strains allowing us to prepare. The chance that something creeps out from under the door of one of those labs is there, knowing how these labs work I'll take that over sitting back doing nothing and allow us to be 'amazed' what pops out on the other end of the fast breeding reactor we have allowed large parts of the world to become.

Yeah I think it's a rather fruitless affair to debate the origins because there's a very high chance we're simply never able to call it one way or the other (barring some very unlikely sequence of events leading to a democratization of China and opening of all their archives). In the end it's just 'something we have to deal with'.

As to using it as an argument in bio-research security discussions... I'm honestly don't consider myself informed enough to say a lot about it. But just like with Chernobyl I'm wary of extrapolating this one incident to an entire industry. As I mentioned Wuhan was already considered a point of concern when it came to security before the COVID events.

 

[MarcelNL]

Probably because you made an erroneous assumption about a person you don't know. I think a lot people have a false sense of security in regards to how easily a virus could escape from a lab (and they have escaped, many times), even under biosafety level 4 conditions. We're getting too big for our britches, and the same people you seem to be in awe of are the very same people who are destroying the earth, or at least destroying its suitability for sustaining human life.

Luftmensch,

Are you really so naive it think the world isn't filled with conspiracy? Crack open a history book, they're filled with conspiracies of every kind. Why are some people so arrogant to think that somehow conspiracies no longer exist? I'm not talking about Elvis sightings or little gray aliens by any means. Disinformation and misinformation flows in both directions. Ask yourself who, historically speaking, has told more big lies, the people or the governments we allegedly create?

Controlling the weather is a misnomer Michi, but we can certainly manipulate it, and with a degree of control must people never imagined was possible. You can still find the information, despite the Internet becoming more Orwellian by the day. I don't take Ivermectin, but I do know the media purposely misrepresented it and made it sound "conspiratorial". Maybe that's the disinformation Luftmensch was talking about, I don't really know.

Meanwhile, all those vaccines they developed at the speed of light, with little oversight and no testing, based on new vaccine technology (mRNA). It doesn't work and has lead to more then a handful of deaths so far. Now they're pushing it hard on infants and young children. The vaccines had no effect in slowing down the transmission of covid, something they told us it did, and a fact they like to skip over as quickly as possible when people start asking questions.

Thinking critically, especially in this day and age, well, it's more important now then at any other point in history. Questioning "authority" should never be anathema, especially where it matters most, in the halls of academia, in government, and in the media. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's been happening, and it's gone mainstream. If you're not a lemming, you're a "conspiracy theorist". I find it all more then a little bit disconcerting. If you start asking questions, you're immediately lumped together with characters like Alex Jones.

By the way, I love science, but it's simply a way to study and understand the world around us, a very simple method that when used correctly, can be very valuable and lead to amazing discoveries and new technologies. Why would anyone be against the seeking out of knowledge and furthering our understanding of the reality we currently find ourselves living in? It's not a sacred cow though, and shouldn't be treated as such. Imagine if the wrong people had a stranglehold on "science" and the only opinions that mattered was their own? Peer reviewed research would become meaningless, at least to a certain degree, depending on the field of study.

too many conspiracy commonplaces, exaggerations and probably a few straw men in one message, I opt out

 

[ian]

I feel like there are a lot of absolutist views being put forward here.

I mean, yes it matters where covid came from, which is why people spent a lot of time trying to find out. It's not the most important thing to figure out by any means, but it does matter. And maybe we won't ever be able to resolve this, which is ok, but some of the opinions above seem to use this as a reason why it doesn't matter, which doesn't make sense.

And isn't there a legitimate cost/benefit discussion about gain of function research in the scientific community? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not like this is the only way to protect against future strains. Dismissing someone's qualms about it as ignorant and misguided seems nearly as extreme as calling for an immediate end to such research. Noone's really an expert here, as far as I know. I personally am inclined to let the research go forward, because of my general pro-science attitude, but I'm also aware that this inclination is not based on any sort of rigorous cost/benefit analysis, so is basically worthless.

 

[user 16756]

I feel like there are a lot of absolutist views being put forward here.

I mean, yes it matters where covid came from, which is why people spent a lot of time trying to find out. It's not the most important thing to figure out by any means, but it does matter. And maybe we won't ever be able to resolve this, which is ok, but some of the opinions above seem to use this as a reason why it doesn't matter, which doesn't make sense.

And isn't there a legitimate cost/benefit discussion about gain of function research in the scientific community? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not like this is the only way to protect against future strains. Dismissing someone's qualms about it as ignorant and misguided seems nearly as extreme as calling for an immediate end to such research. Noone's really an expert here, as far as I know. I personally am inclined to let the research go forward, because of my general pro-science attitude, but I'm also aware that this inclination is not based on any sort of rigorous cost/benefit analysis, so is basically worthless.

tbh I would LOVE a cost benefit analysis of continued covid research versus either another highway lane expansion that has never and will never ameliorate traffic congestion or the marginal benefit of having one more aircraft carrier.

 

[sansho]

tbh I would LOVE a cost benefit analysis of continued covid research versus either another highway lane expansion that has never and will never ameliorate traffic congestion or the marginal benefit of having one more aircraft carrier.

for entertainment purposes, sure. but that's not the kind of analysis that's important.

those proposals are apples-to-oranges in the sense that GoF research has essentially unlimited risk. excluding 'butterfly effect' assessments, there's a practical limit on the harm a highway lane or a boat can create, and it's pretty low.

i'm not opposed to GoF research. just saying.

 

[MarcelNL]

cost benefit...? in cost, human life saved, quality of life, or all of those?

cost benefit of science is what IMHO is one of the reasons for scientific fraud and publication pressure, some portion of science just needs to happen without the expectation that something comes out, allow it to stumble across something new and important. The illusion of control drove pharma away from labs doing a mix of basic and targeted research and got them into 'high throughput screening' that went out of fashion fast when it did not pay off...that became molecular level HTS and gene HTS, we'll see how those fare in future years.

 

[SirCutAlot]

gettin cool here!

 

[ian]

cost benefit of science is what IMHO is one of the reasons for scientific fraud and publication pressure, some portion of science just needs to happen without the expectation that something comes out, allow it to stumble across something new and important. The illusion of control drove pharma away from labs doing a mix of basic and targeted research and got them into 'high throughput screening' that went out of fashion fast when it did not pay off...that became molecular level HTS and gene HTS, we'll see how those fare in future years.

This paragraph only makes sense if the cost is low, like if there’s limited danger and you’re just arguing about funding. As the recipient of multiple government grants for research that’s practically useless, I support the idea that we should fund a wide variety of projects.

But this argument doesn’t make any sense if you try to apply it absolutely. It’s obvious that you don’t want to run experiments that endanger human civilization, so if you make a choice to support gain of function research it’s because you think that the benefits outweigh the risks, which is a cost benefit analysis. If your view is that all possible experiments are good, that’s obviously wrong and doesn’t contribute to the conversation.

 

[MarcelNL]

Oh I definitely think there are experiments that are not good and should probably not be performed, yet at the same time I also do not think that the cost (monetary) of an experiment should be a primary decisive factor beyond the practical implications cost typically has...there is only so much to go around. Triage, or rather deciding who gets how much is a different can of worms. We're probably more concerned about RISK benefit for some experiments.

 

[user 16756]

for entertainment purposes, sure. but that's not the kind of analysis that's important.

those proposals are apples-to-oranges in the sense that GoF research has essentially unlimited risk. excluding 'butterfly effect' assessments, there's a practical limit on the harm a highway lane or a boat can create, and it's pretty low.

i'm not opposed to GoF research. just saying.

have you seen before/photos of Boston or Austin and the huge expansions? Plus these projects are all grift city.

Anyway my whole point is if someone is going to nickel and dime vaccine research I want an honest accounting of the stuff we do that has literal zero positive impact. The number of aircraft carriers we have is so great that an additional one does nothing except line some pockets.

 

[ian]

Ok, maybe everyone’s just getting confused because we’re using cost in two different ways. In this discussion, I’m using a larger definition of cost, where “killing everyone” is a big cost. Others maybe want to call this risk, not cost, which is fine. If you want to replace cost/benefit with risk/benefit everywhere above, please do.

 

[sansho]

In this discussion, I’m using a larger definition of cost, where “killing everyone” is a big cost.

sure. that and financial risk which is also huge. idk what has bigger financial consequences than a pandemic.. i guess climate change or a world war...