[brewmaster15]

We may well have a philosophical or religious difference (depending on how you see such categories). I see humans as a part of the natural world, their character and activities are natural for them, and, as a manifestation of the Universe as a whole, "doing what comes naturally". Other people see humanity as separate from "creation", and that appears to be your perspective.

But unless you think humans have caused the viral outbreak, I suggest that the use of intelligent responses to the problem is a function of natural selection. We have evolved to do such things because of our responses to problems, and those whose responses are successful live to reproduce. We, as a natural part of the natural world, are now shaping our own evolution, at least in part.

So you figure that people dying from a virus and thus not contributing theirs to the gene pool has no effect on the surviving population? Seems to me that the existence of those who are fit to survive and reproduce by reason of their genetic characteristics represents an adaptation of the species to the natural world that includes the new and different viral strain. Or perhaps our "big brains" sprang fully formed from the mind of Zeus, as in Botticelli's "Birth of Venus"?

I'd prefer you not draw conclusions about what I believe simply because I disagreed with your labeling this as natural selection and My reply had nothing to do with philosophy or religion.."Natural Selection" does not describe whats going on with the virus. To say it is really isn't what happening. We may agree to disagree on this but certain biological terms have certain meanings and I felt the need to point this out.


Natural Selection.
An isolated town of 100 residents gets infected by Covid 19 , half the the town dies, the half that live do so because they had some weird mutation of the endothelial cells in the lungs that causes them to make less mucous.. which happens to help keep the lungs from gunking up with muscous. No medications, no ventolators. Those half that survive, reproduce and pass on that gene mutation to their kids.. That may help them survive if they encounter a similar problem.



Not Natural Selection
An isolated town of 100 residents gets infected by Covid 19, a government or hospital official decides who gets to go on ventolators, who gets medications ,and what kind.. who can afford treatment and what kind. At the end of the outbreak, There is no gene here that the population now can pass on that will help them. That is why Natural Selection is not occurring during this out break.

Over simplified example, but this illustrates why I do not think Natural selection is going on. There may very well be individuals that have genes that help them survive here and if they meet people that have those genes and reproduce, they may very well pass on the genes.. but the moment we put people on ventolators, give them medications that help them survive, its not "natural selection" . Its not a bad thing that we do this, but you can't chalk it up to Natural Selection.


al

[photoptimist]

not defending any particular politician

but remember

they are human too

and all humans err

and humans have motives behind what they choose to do

Quite true.

And yet some humans err and err and err and err -- they keep making the same mistakes (ignoring and even vilifying the experts) over and over again.

[Parallax]

they keep making the same mistakes

I'm not sure that, in this context, there is such a thing as "same mistakes".
The first mistake may indeed be a mistake. Any repeat of the same response may be considered deliberate.

[timb64]

Quite true.

And yet some humans err and err and err and err -- they keep making the same mistakes (ignoring and even vilifying the experts) over and over again.

I think in the end natural selection takes care of those

[aslyfox]

I'm not sure that, in this context, there is such a thing as "same mistakes".
The first mistake may indeed be a mistake. Any repeat of the same response may be considered deliberate.

my dad taught us that you didn't make mistakes you had " learning experiences " and you were not dumb enough to repeat them

- I remember as a child camping at a small lake when my dad borrowed a canoe with a small outboard motor mounted on the side

someone came running up the hill yelling to my mom " John's in the water, John's in the water "

Mom - " what he is doing "

person - " yelling "

Mom - " are there other boats near him "

person " yes "

mom carried on with what she was doing

Dad comes walking up the hill, dripping wet and starts to try to dry out his wallet

Mom " what happened "

Dad " I tried to start the motor and went into the water "

Mom - " once "

Dad - " three times "

true story

[Riggomatic]

An aap report has a lab testing a drug called Ivermectin that has killed the virus in 48 hours and severely retarded it in 24.Tests continue for human dosage.

Also,Fujifilm have developed a test that will show results in 2 hours instead of the 4-6 of present tests.Apparently available April 15th,dont know where?

Is that the one that is delivered in a patch form?

The patch has the vaccine attached to little sugar 'needles' that desolve in the skin.

Read an article on that this afternoon, but can't find it now.

[aslyfox]

Is that the one that is delivered in a patch form?

The patch has the vaccine attached to little sugar 'needles' that desolve in the skin.

Read an article on that this afternoon, but can't find it now.

could this be it ?

UPMC and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Scientists Announce Potential Vaccine
Scientists at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have announced a potential vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic.

When tested in mice, the vaccine produces antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 at quantities thought to be enough to neutralize the virus.

The vaccine is delivered through a fingertip-sized skin patch. The research team calls this vaccine PittCoVacc, short for Pittsburgh Coronavirus Vaccine.

A paper on the vaccine appeared April 2 in EBioMedicine, which is published by The Lancet. It is the first study on a potential COVID-19 vaccine to be published after a critique from fellow scientists at outside institutions . . . .

PittCoVacc - Potential COVID-19 Vaccine | UPMC

also found this:

POssible coronavirus drug identified by Australian scientists
MONASH UNIVERSITY

Australian Scientists have shown that an anti-parasitic drug already available around the world can kill the virus within 48 hours.
Scientists from Monash University in Melbourne showed that a single dose of the drug, Ivermectin, could stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus growing in cell culture - effectively eradicating all genetic material of the virus within 48 hours.
The next steps are to determine the correct human dosage - ensuring the doses shown to effectively treat the virus in the test tube are safe levels for humans.
The use of Ivermectin to combat COVID-19 depends on pre-clinical testing and clinical trials, with funding urgently required to progress the work.
Ivermectin is an FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug that has also been shown to be effective in vitro against a broad range of viruses including HIV, Dengue, Influenza and Zika virus.
The findings of the study were published today in Antiviral Research.. . .

POssible coronavirus drug identified by Australian scientists | EurekAlert! Science News

---

Last edited by aslyfox; 04-03-2020 at 04:58 PM.

[dstar]

well here in the US

we won't have to pay taxes on April 15

[ but we will have to pay them ]

Good luck with trust IRS or government
They said one day this another day 180 degree opposite

---------- Post added 04-03-20 at 06:13 PM ----------

Can you wear a mask inside a bank?

https://www.fdic.gov/coronavirus/faq-fi.pdf

now yes but no gun

[Serkevan]

Why do you suppose people live to be different ages before they kick off? Or why people might have sense enough to choose variations in their environments? As to your latter point, I do know a little about the genetic characteristics of the immune system, since I happen to have the genetic characteristic that causes autoimmune disorders. You can read up on all this stuff on a website run by NIH called "pubmed.com" - journal articles from leading medical publications.

Why do you suppose the best predictor of life expectancy is socioeconomic level? Or why it has been proven time and again that life choices have little to no base in genetics and all to do with upbringing and education?

I have more than one degree that deals in biotechnology with splashes in genetic engineering. There are several medical doctors in the family - my own mother teaches healthcare statistics¹ among other subjects. My girlfriend's entire PhD thesis deals with DNA chemistry. I am literally paid to read articles from leading scientific journals. I'm not the only one who supremely eye-rolled while reading your "survival of the fittest" post.

Also, the 1918 flu appeared at a time where a lot of people were malnourished, in the middle of a war and a bunch of other factors. Really not comparable - the 2009 flu from exactly the same strain still caused a lot of problems, when clearly we all should have been immune

¹:genetics are largely irrelevant for most infectious diseases, they tend to play a role in chronic conditions and degenerative diseases, and even then it's more of a "heightened chances" than a certainty.


---------- Post added 04-03-20 at 05:27 PM ----------

could this be it ?


PittCoVacc - Potential COVID-19 Vaccine | UPMC

also found this:



POssible coronavirus drug identified by Australian scientists | EurekAlert! Science News

A Spanish research group in collaboration with the Karolinska institute (in Sweden) also reported that they used a synthetic ACE-2 receptor to "trick" the virus into binding itself. They tested it in lab-grown "minikidneys" from human stem cells, they will move it into clinical trials ASAP. It's late and I only have a source in Spanish on hand, but the paper is in pre-proof at Cell (one of the world's leading publications, it's top-tier for these things).
There is certainly hope for a cure, although I (or let's be honest, no one) wouldn't be able to say which particular mechanism the "best" one will follow.

[RobA_Oz]

I'm not sure that, in this context, there is such a thing as "same mistakes".
The first mistake may indeed be a mistake. Any repeat of the same response may be considered deliberate.

I interpreted that as meaning “humans as a group tend to make the same mistakes”, because my observation is that many people (sometimes even people who should know better) think they know better, think they can rely on outdated, incorrect or incomplete knowledge or simply don’t think at all.

[Digitalis]

There is certainly hope for a cure, although I (or let's be honest, no one) wouldn't be able to say which particular mechanism the "best" one will follow

Perhaps with so many approaches being tried a combination therapy could be discovered, like that which HAART uses with HIV* which just may be the approach to use.


* Highly Active Anti Retroviral Therapy - Uses a combination of agents to eliminate the chances of the virus mutating its way around any singular medication. Though HAART isn't a cure for HIV, it reduces the viral load and thus the risk of transmission to essentially zero.

[Unregistered User 8]

Perhaps with so many approaches being tried a combination approach could be discovered, like that which HAART uses with HIV* which just may be the approach to use.

^^^Yes^^^

Hopefully a " treatment " is found soon, as a " cure/vaccine " is a long way off.

[photoptimist]

¹:genetics are largely irrelevant for most infectious diseases, they tend to play a role in chronic conditions and degenerative diseases, and even then it's more of a "heightened chances" than a certainty.

Are you sure?

Cystic fibrosis gene protects against tuberculosis | New Scientist

Genetic cause for HIV resistance linked to plague or smallpox

The Role of Host Genetics in Susceptibility to Influenza: A*Systematic Review

It's hard to believe that all humans are perfectly uniform in the various polypeptides that pathogens use to infect us. And it's even less likely that all humans are perfectly uniform in the various metabolic, immunological, and homeostatic systems that modulate the consequences of a particular type of infection.

[Digitalis]

Are you sure?

To be fair he only said "...most infectious diseases..". It isn't like saying having webbed feet gives you any advantage at swimming, or having blue eyes gives you permanent darkvision.

Serkevan: fight fair, the Human Genome is a complete mess of sequences. Most of which is a katamari of things belonging to other cellular organisms like fluff that our progenitors have picked up like Velcro in the clothes-dryer. We can tell where most of it came from, but to this day we can only guess if parts of it serve any beneficial function.

[Racer X 69]

Why is that unfortunate, other than the fact they aren't being utilized? I have to think there may be people out there who need intensive care for reasons other than being infected. I'm pretty sure that people are still having heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia unrelated to the virus, etc. I'd even be willing to bet that there are at least 80 of them occupying ICU beds that could be freed up if only there was someplace else to treat them. Someplace like, oh, I don't know, maybe a hospital ship?

It occurs to me that there could be a very reasonable explanation for this. I allow for the possibility that the situation is not as dire (yet) as we are being told and the ships were positioned far enough in advance to be of maximum benefit. If that's the case, if measures were taken in time, I'm as impressed as I am surprised.

Debating with yourself Jim?