CharonY

In the current pandemic travel restrictions would likely only had a small impact. Basically once the virus was identified, it was already too late. I.e. detection was severely lagging spread.

I think it is a bit of a false dichotomy to pit quarantine measures vs human rights. There are a couple of good discussions out there and I can link some once I am bit less tired. But fundamentally the argument is that in order to prevent serious harm (and millions of deaths clearly qualify), such measures can be justified, as long as certain limitations are in place (e.g. scientifically justified, time limited, non-discriminatory application, etc.)

Well, there is quite some truth to it, though the issue is that the politicians themselves are in many parts of the world propagating the issue. Moreover, there is political efforts to actively diminishing public health measures, as we have seen in the US for example. Well, they obviously do not see it that way. Many corporations are rather short-sighted when it comes to profits. Or perhaps they actually did the calculation and the current strategy is turning up a bigger profit. Who knows, but clearly public health is not at the forefront of these considerations. I think in the US the CDC is collecting data. The issue here is that each state has a different ways to count and report (and there is some evidence of suppression) so whatever ends up at the CDC can be hard to compare. This ranges from seemingly simple issues as dates, for example. Different dates could be used for regional reports, such as when the patient sample was taken, or when it was actually tested or when it was reported. Then we have different testing rules. In some areas everyone can get tested, others only test symptomatic folks. Some collect vaccination status of patients, others don't. I am not actually sure whether the NHS has similar challenges (did not think to ask that, though there are different data streams. I.e. for example the data set for clinical tests and the one for surveillance with volunteers. I do not think that they can be cross-referenced as participants and patients are anonymized. Canada has similar challenges with the different provincial health systems.

Except of course sometimes the morons are those in power and if they are allowed to throw democracy out of the window they can effectively neuter health responses. That is a fair point and I think that again goes toward the idea of centralized efforts rather than local or even business-led efforts.

Despite some struggles, there are some aspects where UK has deployed good ideas, especially in the surveillance area. Large-scale sequencing of patient samples as well as efforts to detect otherwise unidentified infections are some of the examples, which provides us with much better data than elsewhere. Also thanks for putting in the effort. We had a meeting with folks working on that end with the NHS and they were telling us that folks sometimes do not keep it up because the reporting system (especially in the beginning) was quite annoying to handle.

To summarize (and re-iterate) some general thoughts on this topic: - Surveillance and reporting has to be improved. We need a more pro-active and less reactive approach. This takes money, ongoing commitment and the development of and maintenance of expertise. Some measures, such as travel restrictions are really only helpful if surveillance can keep up. Otherwise measures will happen too late. - Health response and messaging must not be political. It has to follow the best available science. It should be communicated to the public (repeatedly, it seems) that recommendations are bound to change. However, more information sessions should be provided within smaller groups to explain some of the intricacies of the recommendations. More often than not, folks that are properly briefed have a better chance of reaching others in their sphere of influence who are misinformed. - Responses have to the funds for emergency measures, including beefing up ICUs, create isolation wards, beefing up staff etc. This is connected to the general health system which should be tested and improved for these situations. - If disaster hits, make it clear to the public that sacrifices are necessary to ensure safety. Engage and discuss reasons with the public as needed. - Create centralized response systems, which allows coordination on a national, ideally international level. - Assess weaknesses in supply chains and develop strategies to keep it moving if things have to be shut down. - Don't treat infectious diseases which have high potential of spread as a local challenge. Once a pandemic becomes likely, nations have to coordinate. This includes development and distribution of vaccines as well as expertise to localize and isolate infections. - We have to take the threat seriously before it happens. Successful containment responses (such as SARS) were often ridiculed as overblown. Folks have to learn that there is no such thing. Either it is successful, then it looks overblown, or it isn't, which leads to what we have now.

The issue is that nowadays there is big pressure on faculty to pass students to keep retainment high. If I applied the same criteria I did even a decade ago more than half the class would fail and that would create a lot of headaches. In the olden days when I was a student we typically had only about 20% of a given glass getting the degree (the rest would drop out or change their degree; in Germany there is a teaching track, for example). This would not be possible in the North American system. However, there are reasons for that. A big one is that feds and provincial/states have slashed support for universities. Thus, they are creating an environment where universities are supposed to run more like companies rather than educational institutes. This creates an incentive to basically have as many students as possible in their respective bracket. Failing students means losing money, so there is a conflict between faculty and administration over the balance between graduation rate and student quality. If you teach introductory classes most remains rather static. And while you can switch it up topic-wise in the 300 and upper classes, the pace in which you can introduce new stuff is mostly limited by the ability of students to absorb the info. I can almost guarantee that one of the most common questions in class nowadays is "is it going to be part of the exam". Especially during the online switch I found teaching more challenging than ever before. I think teaching can be intellectually rewarding, but I found it often not to be the case. There is a lot I could talk about student interactions, but I think the nature of it has changed over the years and I suppose we are not that well aligned anymore. With regard to work-life balance, in natural sciences you have the added workload of running a lab (or equivalent). Which means you are basically running a mini-company, where you have to have a steady influx of funding in order to pay for experiments, graduate students, postdocs and technicians. This is not only highly competitive, but also takes a lot of time. This is on top of the teaching and administrative (committee) work that you also have to do. During semesters with teaching (depending on the load) there is rarely any time to do "proper" research or grant writing, so time is very squeezed. It may be different in liberal arts disciplines where grad students often are not paid and therefore research funding is less of a constraint. Again, depends on the university (teaching colleges pay substantially less than 100k, for example, but then you could some of the courses with a MSc only). Research has a lot of what you would call procedural aspects to it. Especially as a prof you do not get to do the fun bits, your role is more coordinating and directing (and getting money in, and selling the research). I also think you are selling company work a bit short. It depends a lot on the role you have, the vast majority of the folks I started off doing a PhD ended up in companies and most have relatively diverse jobs to fulfil. It can be sales and directing new products, others develop new formulations for medication or vaccines, prototyping new products and so on. In all cases post-PhD level jobs tend to be more about coordination and management of projects and people, networking and doing the right pitches to the right people. Single-minded repetitive work is rather rare. Even folks that work in highly regulated jobs, such as quality control or product management tend to have more managerial duties. I.e. supervising the team that does the actual work. The only exception I can think of a industrial postdocs, which, for the most part (from what I have heard) are not a good place to be in. That all being said, there is a big variation of jobs out there and I suggest that you read up on experiences and reports regarding jobs of the various fields. From the OP it appears to me that you mostly have drawn your view about these jobs from a handful of individuals but the jobs in related fields are quite diverse and reading about these different experiences is likely to give you a more three-dimensional view regarding how the day-to-day actually looks like.

A pre-print from the UK https://khub.net/documents/135939561/430986542/Effectiveness+of+COVID-19+vaccines+against+Omicron+variant+of+concern.pdf/f423c9f4-91cb-0274-c8c5-70e8fad50074 suggests that the effectiveness of vaccines against symptomatic disease caused by omicron is further lowered compared to delta. For the AstraZeneca vaccine there was no protection after 15 weeks and for two-dose BioNTech vaccine the effectiveness to around 34-37% after 15 weeks. After booster the effectiveness increased to 75.5%. However, the case numbers were fairly low and they could not ascertain protection against severe disease outcomes.

I beg to differ. Or at least often it does not appear that way, especially with administration trying to pass everyone with a pulse. Other than that only in teaching universities, community colleges and similar institutions you do majority teaching (and often a ton of administrative work). Typically, the salary in these institutions is lower. In other universities in order to obtain tenure you have develop and maintain a successful research program, which basically means you need to be successful in getting external funding. These positions also require a PhD and more often than not also requires you to severely restrict your private life (i.e. having family time or getting enough sleep) at least until you get tenure. By then you are so screwed up, you just continue like that. Making a million a year is not possible by salary alone, most that are at least in striking range of that that level of income either run a successful business (e.g. consulting, medical practice, company) on the side. Salaries around 100k are realistic, but for instructors or community college teachers it is significantly lower. Teaching has also become decidedly less fun as especially during financially demanding times there is often a huge pressure on grades. And it is not a lot of fun if students are not interested in the topic, but are laser-focused on selecting courses that gives them the best grades with the least effort.

Or don't drink and drive. Too many still frame public health as personal risk mitigation and do not consider their impact on others.

As Swansont mentioned, there already mechanisms in place that restrict certain liberties (e.g. freedom of movement) in place. It is just that the local and/or federal governments are unwilling to implement them.

To some degree that is being done, but it takes a while to verify omicron cases as most cases need to be verified via sequencing, which has a significant delay (frequently around a week) before the data comes out. Edit: I should add that some producers of rapid tests have come out and said that their product will detect omicron, but I have not seen independent studies or results so far.

We had a briefing recently suggesting that lateral flow tests are likely not compromised, however as of last week I have not seen any larger scale data (the presented report was only on a handful of positive patients). I should add, that part of the careful optimism in that regard is because omicron only has few mutations in the nucleocapsid gene. Two seem to be specific to omicron (PI3L and Del31/33), so there is some effort to check out whether those could alter the results, whereas the two other commonly observed mutations were already found in alpha, for example.

In my earlier post I also forgot to add a biggie: - worldwide collaboration: Some countries cannot enact measures because of their limited resources. It is critical that richer countries help out as otherwise we would create reservoirs of a given infectious disease. Stamping it out is in all our interest. Related to that, vaccines and treatments must be made affordable to everyone. Again, if only the rich countries defend themselves and let the disease rage elsewhere we have little chance to stop a pandemic. In fact, if anything this pandemic has demonstrated that an egoistic approach is ultimately harmful to us all (I would very much to have at least that as a take-home message, but I have little confidence that it will be one).

As I said before, it is one viable model. Having even the majority working using one model, does not invalidate others. And obviously specifically researching the spectrum of sex is a specialized research area and will have fewer folks work on it then more general research where folks might prefer to work on simplified divisions. The latter is problematic, however, as it turns out that risks conditions are better traced by e.g. monitoring the levels and changes of e.g. sex hormones, rather than looking at other markers of sex (e.g. chromosomes). That being said, there are at least 3k articles dating back to the 50s looking at the range of intersex we can find. And as you know, in science we often have slightly different models in order to address different questions.

A couple of thoughts regarding OP: 1) No-COVID policies seem to work, looking at New Zealand or China, for a time at least. In order to stamp out alone (i.e. without waiting for vaccine) international coordinated efforts would be necessary, which could be trick, which relates to point 3. Fundamentally we always needs some movement to keep the supply chain moving. It would be necessary to prioritize essential functions (e.g. deploying regular tests) and lock down non-essential functions. A bit issue is the time delay from rise of new disease, the first verification of the nature of the disease and the development of a clinical assay. Until that is done, spread could already be underway. Europe was warned eventually of SARS-COV-2 but until they clinically verified cases, it was already spreading for a while. 2) I don't disagree, a bit issue is that many governments were afraid to do the wrong thing and basically did nothing for an extended time period. Countries that had better outcomes had a task force for infectious diseases in place and gave them tools and funds to actually do something. In others, leadership (speak: politicians) coordinated efforts and often diluted down recommendations by health specialists. Some countries did that and could avoid lockdowns by employing aggressive contact tracing policies. However, most Western countries ultimately failed to do so. They lacked resources and basically after a few contact points the system broke down. 3) It would require a total shutdown of travel for basically every country, not only those with reported outbreaks. This is related to the fact that we have an incomplete view of spread, especially in the early phases of a pandemic. If only affected countries are banned, then still ongoing traffic from other countries can still go on. We again observed that with this pandemic, where e.g. most travel-related cases in the US came from Europe. We also see it with the rapid spread of omicron. By the time it was identified, it already traveled around the world. And this is already with tools in place. I.e. an entirely new outbreak could have spread further and wider already. This makes it a bit difficult to assess whether travel bans for extended periods are really effective. That being said, banning non-essential travel in conjunction with mandatory isolation, contact tracing and testing seems to work well to stop further travel-related spread. 4) While it could be effective, it is obviously not feasible in a democracy. That being said, there is quite a lot of ground to cover between human rights abuse and compelling folks to take certain measures, including fines and other sanctions. Even before China locked down there was tons of information in press. I have no idea how that would be considered keeping it secret. Rather there was complacency in the public as e.g. SARS only caused relatively few deaths and folks assumed it would follow a similar trajectory. A couple of realizations happened later, such as the ability to spread in pre-symptomatic folks, which was a game-changer for epidemiologists but the urgency following that was barely heard by the public. OTOH if scientists were more panicky from the get-go, folks might have dismissed it, too, so a bit of a lose-lose situation. The issue that my colleagues in the health authorities have is that if they are free to communicate the political leaders often water down their messages so that their response seem more effective than they are. If they are allowed to speak freely, they have repeatedly e.g. sent the message of overflowing ICUs, overworked staff and other critical issues. These then promptly get ignored by the local government, who try to spin it positively somehow or at some point even muzzle health officials. In other words, a health task force must be freed from political shackles to be effective. We have seen worldwide how politicking has critically affected health responses (probably nowhere as obvious as in Brazil or the USA). But then much of the stupid spreads from social media. Even among our students taking infectious disease classes we have quite a few who are misinformed because of some stupid video they saw on youtube. This form of propaganda has proved to be deadly. One of the things that has not been mentioned yet is better monitoring: we need to get a better view of new diseases and their spread. Clinical tests will only provide information after the fact. If you have one positive, you likely already have more that you did not see. We have developed or revived a number of tools (e.g. wastewater monitoring, metagenomics) but to maintain such programs costs money and effort. Usually they are shut down after a few years at most. In addition, there is the question whether our current surveillance system (based on reporting to health authorities) is really sufficient. As mentioned before, there was some warning time in the early phases of the pandemic, yet most countries struggled to identify and report outbreaks in time. While China has deservedly received criticism for its failure to report and/or suppress evidence of a new disease, I am not entirely certain whether the reporting structures in other places would be enough to capture and report COVID-19 faster. Preparedness. We need persons and mechanisms in place to implement pandemic measures but also maintain the ability to do so over years. If a committee is formed to select persons once the pandemic hits it is arguably too late. Countries that have done well had implemented such a task force based on SARS and have kept those groups going until this one hit. And for the most part it paid off. Long-term vision. There must be a long-term commitment to these plans. No one can say where the next disease will come from nor when. If we always plan to the next fiscal period or election, we risk being caught unawares again and again. Communication has been mentioned before, but there are a few things that I want to add to which I have no real answers. A big issue is that the public wants simple messages (mask on or mask off) and feel that they understand what is going on, but do not really want to deal with the details. I.e. why mask policies change. The issue is therefore that if new findings come up or the situation changes, folks get discontent because the initial message clashes with the new ones, even if it makes perfect sense from a medical perspective. For example many struggle with the term "fully vaccinated" as most assume total immunity against infections and never have to deal with the virus again. Explaining the intricacies of boosters and waning of immune responses and so on, helps to some degree (I think we reached the majority of a given audience, especially when we can address their questions directly), but then there is always a group that uses their lack of understanding as evidence of something... sinister perhaps? I am therefore not entirely sure where the balance of dumbing down and still being accurate should be.

There is not necessarily a need for one. I.e. if we only want to discuss reproduction, we certainly can ignore infertile groups for the most part. This is one of the various cases where a binary classification is useful and as routinely done. However, I interpreted the OP as broader, as in: "does sex only exist in a binary classification system". As a biologist the almost automatic answer is "no" as basically every classification scheme we have is just a simplification in which almost always cases are found which do not fit these schemes (there are many things that are taught as being universal, except when they aren't, such as e.g. species, or the genetic code). Whether we need to use or address those elements in our scheme depends highly on what we use the classification for. If, for example we solely look at reproduction as a particular trait, then of course we would not need to consider infertile variants. If, on the other hand the question is can we cover the whole human variety that exist just using two sexes, well, in this thread no one managed to create a definition that would have not at least some group falling outside of it, which by definition does not cover the whole variety that exists. To provide an alternative approach to visualize but also categorize sex, which biologically exists in a continuum, in a more concise way some developmental biologists in the 50s tried to create a model of sexual development in humans. Fundamentally the idea is to look at the various steps starting from the karyotype to the full development of sexual organs and organize them into layers. So for example the karyotype would be considered the first element or layer which would be the genetic basis for the following development. The second layer is then when embryonic endocrine organs are formed that make hormones that push development more toward a male or female direction. Then in interaction with those, the next step would be the formation of internal reproductive organs then shaping external sexual organs etc. (I am sure that I missed some finer points but you get the idea). However, the folks who developed this model where especially interested in what they called intersex- i.e. those where either one or multiple of these layers where not clearly in the one or the other extreme. The karyotype could be fully male for example, but much of the internal and external organs would look female (so you could classify layer one as entirely male, but layers two is a bit indetermined resulting in the following layers looking female, for example). Each of the layers is non-binary as individuals would fall somewhere between the two extremes. A person that we would consider archetypical male would therefore fall mostly on the male side at each of these layers, a female on the opposite. However, persons that do not consistently are in or the either end (or perhaps are somewhere in the middle in some of those layers) could be considered intersex or at least on the extreme end of one of the genders (e.g. someone with a micropenis but otherwise fitting in the male categories in the other layers otherwise). So that is an example of an alternative model of sex, which tries to capture the complexity of sex and was developed in order to understand the concept of intersex. And before someone accuses science of following some current political agendas, this model was developed sometime in the 50s which, to my knowledge, is not generally considered to be overrun by SWJs. But at the same time, the folks stopped short of developing a new classification scheme, it was more a descriptive model to a broader range of human sexual elements which would not be possible if we just ignored the presence of those falling outside an exclusive binary scheme. These thoughts have been polished over the years and the mechanisms in each of these layers have been more tightly connected to complex signaling networks which are not simply on or off (i.e. binary) but you can imagine various parts of the network pushing into one, whereas other elements pull in another direction (for each element, i.e. gonadal development, sex organ development etc.) and as such at each step you have a range of possible outcomes (which also depends on external factors, such as exposure to xenoestrogens). But that being said, it is a model used in a particular context, but is likely to unwieldy if one is really not interested in the finer developmental differences between individuals.

This view is not based on politics, but the fact that nature is more complicated than our ability to cover it using a simple system. Both for common as well as scientific usage we can use a range of definitions, which have been explored to death and there is nothing wrong with either a karyotype or reproductive function per se. But since biology is always fuzzy at the edges, there simply won't be something perfect we ca use. Even if we create a better category, chances are that it won't align well with common usage and may remain an academic exercise.

It is how we define evolution. Evolution happens at the population level and essentially is just the change of a gene pool over time. Based on these definitions and individual cannot evolve. I.e. evolution is not another term for "change". Moreover, metamorphosis or similar mechanisms do not change the genetics of an organism. We would describe that as developmental changes and not evolution. Individuals can accumulate mutations in various parts of their body over time, of course, but that is more related to aging or related processes. I will also add that while OP was relatively close to science fiction, I think further speculation regarding an immortal society would be much better suited for a speculations thread rather than in the evolution section.

Assuming that folks become immortal and that there are reductions in offspring, in principle the gene pool would remain (mostly) static. Basically there are not generational changes as there are no generations.

Well, considering that this thread in the biology section I feel obliged to state that devolving is not a thing in biology. Evolution essentially means change (of the gene pool) and there is not direction attached to it.

If we assume that the policy of strategic ambiguity ultimately failed and we enter an open conflict I am fairly sure that the US will have to intervene. There is rare bipartisan support for the defense of Taiwan (be it due to ongoing commitments, stance against China and it expansive ambitions, protection of other allies in the pacific and so on). There are calls to end strategic ambiguity, but in favour of a more open commitment to defend Taiwan. And again, much of it is fueled by the view of China as the more important strategic threat (compared to Russia). As a whole, I see more elements in play that favour an intervention in a China-Tawan conflict as between Ukraine and Russia. In addition the stability in Taiwan also makes it difficult to justify a Russia-style takeover.

Just for clarification, should we assume a military intervention and discuss the likely US response or does the discussion include the likelihood of military actions in the first place?

I have read mixed reports in terms of efficiency of such filters, and I was not actually aware that they were widespread. From a report last year I was under the impression that worldwide only four such plants existed worldwide (Norway, Japan and two in the Netherlands). These carbon capture system, which effective (I believe Norway reported up to 90% capture) is more complex and expensive than simply adding a filter.

That may be true, but at some point there must be some kind of power takeover. Either boots on the ground or some politicians moving in replacing the existing ruling class. I can see how the conflict plays out on that level, but I have a hard time imagining the takeover procedure. Because I think that will eventually trigger US responses (or not).