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Sure JC, but maybe Phi is on to something... Some purposes, or objectives, may be more important than monetary rewards. In the case of war, freedom from oppression is the reward. In the case of exercise, good health is the reward. In the case of raising your kids, strong familial bonds are the reward. That's what I like about this forum, we all have blinders to some degree, but other members can help you see where you may not have looked previously.

In my previous job I had two years of low stress followed by one year of extremely high stress. Job didn't change but outside factors did. Things could change drastically for you in short order. All it takes is a new boss, a change in the marketplace, a restructuring or a merger.

I think the whole infection process is sufficiently complicated so that there is not clear answer. At the onset of infection your body ups its response. At this time some pathogens may have a harder time to get in, while others may use the inflammatory cascade to their advantage. Malaria, for example was actually used as a treatment of neurosyphilis in order to induce fevers. Then, as String mentioned, there are interactions between pathogens. With respect to respiratory infections, folks have detected frequently co-infections with multiple respiratory viruses, but their effect on disease outcome are unclear. Conversely viral and bacterial co-infection seem to be more commonly related to the development of pneumonia and other severe illnesses. This is why COVID-19 infections are often treated with antibiotics. And of course in severe stages of illnesses the immune system can be weakened to such a level that opportunistic infections can happen with a higher likelihood. So in other words, precise answers are unlikely to be forthcoming, especially not with a disease whose pathophysiology is not fully explored yet. Edit: Quite unrelated to that, but I think it is a bit worrisome that the US seems to be fumbling the response a bit. There was time to prepare and normally the CDC is quite on top of things.

High blood pressure is a risk factor for several bad things. It can be caused by many things (disease, lifestyle, genetics). It is aggressively treated because it is one of the most easily modifiable risk factors for a range of bad outcomes. If you are ever getting aggressive chest pain please call an ambulance.

To use myself as an example - yes I could probably make more money in the private sector, even in my field. I know people who have worked in the private sector who have then gone on to work for the government for less money. There are lots of other motivations, including the challenge of the job, the people you work with, physical location of the job, how you are treated at work, (and for where I work) a desire to serve your country and also the pride of being part a world-leading organization. Some people will do work they don't particularly like because they get paid a crap-ton of money, but it would be a mistake to think that everyone would.

Epitopes are small structural elements in a good sized protein such as amylase you are likely to find a couple. Often epitopes are not larger than 5-15 AA in length so there is no need for elaborate quartenary structures. Even for insulin, which only has 50ish amino acids there are at least three different monoclonal antibodies. But crowding effects can be worse on smaller molecules. Partially it can be alleviated by using truncated antibodies (which is normally done).

My left hand went numb twice. A tumor putting pressure on just the right place will do that. I can't believe anyone would want to do it on purpose just to play a game. Really, if your goal is a really cool game do it the old fashioned way make it a really good game. That way the only thing that goes numb is your mind and your behind cause you can't quite sitting around playing the game.

For one thing you keep insisting on 'motion' through the spatial and temporal dimensions. If you take relativity seriously, there is no space, and there is no time; only space-time, as the two cannot be separated. The argument is that you can neither move through time, nor move through space, but you are at ALL locations you occupy in space-time. In a simplified case, as you used, where we consider only two dimensions, displacement horizontally and duration vertically, you exist as a line through space-time. Vertical if you are standing still, with a slope if you undergo a displacement. And if your axis are marked in seconds and kilometers, the slope of this line can never be less than 1/300000. IOW you CANNOT move only in space. In this example, 'now' is a point on the line, and differs for every observer; that point, 'now' is what each of us perceives to be moving, through space-time. I can't really explain the 4dimensional equivalent, but you exist as a volume, 'extruded' through a fourth orthogonal time dimension, and your 'now' is a hypersurface or 'foliation' of the space-time manifold, and again, none are common to differing observers. You are trying to understand 'motion' through time, and inventing all these complexities, much like the 'add-ons' to the Ptolemaic System in its later years before Copernicus replaced it, to try and explain things which are not even required. Take Occam's razor and cut away everything that isn't needed.

There is some 'pride in your work' effect going on, Phi, but I don't think it is the only one, or even the overriding one. The engineers who worked on what became the SR-71 Blackbird, at Lockheed's 'Skunk Works' in Burbank, were certainly an elite group of engineers led by 'Kelly' Johnson. And they were paid very well compared to the 'grunt' engineers who worked for the main facility ( in Palmdale, I believe ). They worked 100 hr work weeks, and solved problems in the late 50s which are insurmountable for most countries ( even today ). None of them held any patents, but a lot of them eventually moved into senior positions in the company. Ben Rich, a bright young engineer, who worked for Johnson, went on to head the Skunk Works after Johnson, and under his direction the 'stealth' concept was developed. Over 40 yrs later, Lockheed-Martin ( and Northrop-Grumman ) still have the best stealth knowhow in the world. If a public institution could have done the same, I'm sure NACA ( until 1958 ), and later, NASA, would have. Of course you could throw the Manhattan Project, in Los Alamos, right back at me. But I would counter that people do strange things in times of war, and they give for society/nation as opposed to petty personal benefit.

Don't most private companies hold the patents their employees "innovate" for them? I think in most cases, the innovator is motivated more by making the C suite and the shareholders rich. Iirc, the guy who invented Teflon for the DuPonts worked for them for 40 years. He got promotions and such, but his discovery made others rich.

I used to know.

The world is a messy place. In the entire world you would be hard pressed to find two people who agree on all issues. What is worth killing a person for you might be unknown or totally fair to me. The acceptance of protests changes with time, who is in charge, and which way the wind is blowing. Something that is critical today may be a minor annoyance tomorrow, simply because something more critical now has our attention. We will try to set levels of acceptability for protests, and those levels will change over time. From my perspective I don't get bothered by much. I accept that I will like some things and not like others; that I will be inconvenienced on occasion; that people will disagree with me; and that I may not like the final outcome. Debating generalities may be useful but it is not very practical. All you can really do is decide how you and like minded individuals will react to different situations.