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@Leeroy Jenkins , you had posted about a local uptick in COVID cases in your orbit. Have all or most of those people's COVID cases run their course by now? Know anyone that was bad off from a recent case of COVID?
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I thought this was interesting. We've heard about deer catching and spreading COVID amongst themselves. We've also known that humans and deer can spread it to each other, cross-species. What's weird, though, is cross-species spread without contact -- people not around deer catching deer-incubated sequences (at least if I'm reading the article correctly).
Deer spread COVID to humans multiple times, new research suggests
Researchers also found humans have likely spread the virus to deer at least hundreds of times.
From the article:Several of these viruses appear to still be mutating and spreading between deer, including the Alpha, Gamma, and Delta variants of concern that drove an increase in deaths earlier in the pandemic, long after these lineages were subsumed by the wave of Omicron variants that continue to dominate nationwide.Eighteen of the samples had no "genetically close human SARS-CoV-2 sequences within the same state" reported, foiling efforts to track down a precursor variant in humans."Overall, this study demonstrated that frequent introductions of new human viruses into free-ranging white-tailed deer continued to occur, and that SARS-CoV-2 VOCs were capable of persisting in white-tailed deer even after those variants became rare in the human population," the study's authors wrote.Three had mutations that match a distinctive pattern of first spilling over from a human to deer, and then later another so-called "spillback" from deer back into humans. Two of these spillback variants were in North Carolina and one was in Massachusetts.An investigation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was able to track down three people who were infected by a variant with this hallmark deer mutation, as well as a handful of zoo lions who were also infected by the same strain. None of the humans said they had close contact with either deer or the zoo.
Urine or feces on your garden veggies? Maybe the deer ate some of those veggies?
1) Deer hunting
www.nature.com
yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com
Maybe, but let's be honest here:
This should be disqualifying. The fact that this person was unable to separate the messenger from the message, and the fact that she fell for the effort to conflate "lab accident" with "OMG secret bioweapon" illustrates a lack of critical thinking that should cause us to greatly de-value this person's opinion in the future. Lots of people were like this during the pandemic, including way too many people in policy-making positions.
FOH she dismissed a theory because of Trump
I think the main reason Dr. Jetelina dismissed the theory is because top scientists told us these were conspiracy theories. These top scientists authored and received lightening fast peer review of "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2". Who are you going to trust in this situation?
Stop with this nonsense. She literally said the reason she dismissed this theory was due to trump.
In 2020, this was a good excuse for why the typical man on the street or the typical internet user might "believe the science." Most people think that scientists are wise, immune to corruption, and focused with laser-like intensity on empirical truth. But those of us who work around scientists or who are scientists know that isn't the case. Scientists are just as corrupt, venal, tribal, beholden to professional ambitions, etc. as the next guy. When something like covid-19 comes along threatening to dry up the spigot of sweet sweet NIH money, it's to be expected that these people are going to circle the wagons and lie.
Any practicing epidemiologist should have known that "scientists" are not a priestly class of lawful good truth-tellers. She should have understood the professional incentives to circle the wagons. The fact that she didn't tells me that she's not a very good observer of humankind and doesn't have very good critical thinking skills. All the technical training in the world can't compensate for that.
IK is clearly smarter than she is. It's amazing she can even do what she does since she doesn't have very good critical thinking skills.
We're not there yet. (Link 2) China's obfuscation abilities are second to none.
You're setting up a false dichotomy between "Trump said X so I didn't buy into X" vs. "Trump said X so I should accept X uncritically." Both of those are more or less equally stupid. What I'm saying is that intelligent people will ask themselves whether there is any good evidence for or against X, and make up their minds based on that evidence, as opposed to whatever Trump happened to be thinking.
This, but unironically. I have no training in epidemiology whatsoever, but I was able to get this right and she got it wrong, and it wasn't just luck. I've been explaining for years why I thought "lab accident" was a reasonable hypothesis that should have been taken seriously. She admits dismissed it because of stupid tribal allegiances. She and I are not the same. If I had studied epidemiology instead of economics, I'd be a better epidemiologist than this person.
I lose track of what Elon lets non-members read ... but right now, people without Twitter accounts can only read Jamie Metzl's lead thread -- nothing below that.
I can't say for sure if it's 100%, but there is a lot of overlap between the Twitter thread I linked to and the "shorter article" that you highlighted.
I agree, and I'm not rolling my eyes at all. As recently as 10 years or so ago, this would be the story of a lifetime. We "know" (or, "it is highly likely that") virology researchers accidentally caused a global pandemic, killing millions of people and severely disrupting society for a year and change. They lied about it. The guy in charge of the NIH, who probably funded the research that caused the pandemic, also lied to both the public and Congress about it. While this was going on, the government conspired with social media companies to stop this story from spreading. That last part, the part about the government conspiring with the media to censor a story that had a high likelihood of being true, is known with certainty. The rest is much more probable than not. Under normal circumstances, the NYT, WashPo, CNN, etc. would be fighting to unearth the truth here. But of course, they were active participants in the whole government-coordinated censorship thing. So I don't think we should be holding our breath.
Tough. Do better next time.
Could say the same thing about you in this thread.
It was. You're reading it correctly. The pandemic and all of its assorted side-plots collectively had what people sometimes refer to as a "black pill" effect on me. I feel like I have a better mental model of the world now, even if I don't like what I learned. I'd rather just stick to covid in this thread, but I will say that if I had a time machine, I would go back and be a little kinder and more sympathetic to people who expressed more skepticism of policy-makers two decades ago than I did at the time. In particular, I used to employ a heuristic that said "People won't publicly lie about things today if they know that their lies will be exposed tomorrow." We've had a few strong counter-examples now that should cause people to remove that heuristic from their firmware.
At this point, only when visiting a medical facility that still requires it. Never anymore for retail or groceries. No public transportation, so there's no crowded subway, bus, or train to worry about. Haven't needed a mask at the movies or during the once-in-a-while public events. Our first indoor concert in years will be in October, and we won't be masking then unless something changes really suddenly.
Asians
The lab leak theory I have subscribed to from the beginning is that an employee was selling test animals at the wet market. I believe it was Ham who posted an article with that theory early on. Ham's posts are gone here and the web appears scrubbed of any articles mentioning test animals being sold at the wet market.
