CharonY

Before I talk a bit more on the study itself I want to take a step back and talk a bit how risks in medical interventions are generally evaluated. The key element here is monitoring certain clinical endpoints, including efficacy of the drugs but also specific indicators of morbidity, for example. In a more general sense, there are no "no effect" endpoints. If you eat a cheeseburger, for example, I could monitor increases in negative biomarkers in your blood, there could be short term shifts in the gene expression of you gut microbiota and so on. However, that tells us little about the risks. As such it would be better to use endpoints such as heart attack and stroke rates and so on. The big issue with long-term effects is that it becomes very difficult to figure out what the causes for a given hard endpoint are, which is why for example nutritional studies, which often are long-term, often do not have clear outcomes. Trials are looking at such outcomes and from that viewpoint the current the current vaccines are no different from other vaccines or therapeutics. You look at endpoints within a given time frame for a given sample size. The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines all fulfil pretty much the same requirements as you typically do not monitor individuals indefinitely after taking a medication. So as such, we can be fairly certain that the the the mRNA vaccines do not seem to have any acute effects and we know roughly as much about long-term issues as for other medication. So what is new regarding our knowledge about concerns regarding this specific vaccine? One risk that folks were concerned years back is the risk that the LNP could distribute their payload throughout the body and enrich in the liver. If the spike protein is formed there, it could result in local inflammation of the organ and liver damage. However, this does not happen. In fact, the Japanese report indicates why, within a relatively short time frame all the mRNA expression is basically gone. So what about the LNP alone? Again, you get a dose, the lipids move through your body and get metabolized. Typically they accumulate in adipose tissue or liver (which for some reason is not plotted, it is higher there than in ovaries, for example). So does this cause harm? The cited study on direct injection of pure LNP indicate that yes, if given in high concentrations they can cause inflammatory responses. However, this itself is not an indicator for adverse health effects. In fact, the paper argues that these inflammatory responses might be why the current mRNA vaccines are so effective (which was a big worry before, the fact that mRNAs are generally not very immunogenic). I.e. the local inflammation caused by LNPs could have been beneficial for efficacy reasons. We do see lower efficacy in the other vaccines, for example. While the study is helpful to highlight the potential to elicit inflammatory responses from LNPs alone, (and therefore nasal delivery is not a good idea) it does not actually suggest health issues. Again, it is about endpoints and what the study measured is not helpful to provide evidence of harm in humans. First, mice are not a a great model for immune responses in humans (which is a common issue with animal models) and second, they injected a very high amount- 10 ug, IIRC which is a huge amount compared to their body weight relative to the amount found in vaccines and the body weight in humans (we are talking over a thousand fold at least if I got my numbers right). Moreover, as you know you only get two injections, so there is no chance for long-term accumulation (as opposed to many of the chemicals we use in personal care products, for example). Thus, if inflammation caused by LNPs resulted in adverse effects you would expect to see most the effects fairly soon (within days) of injection, as the levels after that will gradually decline (rather than increase). The precise rate is not known as they only monitored for two days, but it won't be years. What we do know and expect are inflammation, which are common with most vaccines (as inflammation is the result of the immune system reacting). Mild myocardial inflammation has also been recorded which could be related to LNPs (or the vaccine in general). But again, the endpoints do not suggest significant adverse health effects. Blood clots do not seem to be different between unvaccinated and Pfizer/Moderna vaccinated folks, but seem elevated in certain population subsets in AstraZeneca vaccines, which is likely to related to the adenovirus used (there have been reports in the past for issues with certain adenovirus-based vaccines, but I am not sure what they were in detail and in any case, they are not related to mRNA-based vaccines such as Pfizer/BioNTech. Meanwhile, there are studies (e.g. https://s3.amazonaws.com/media2.fairhealth.org/whitepaper/asset/A Detailed Study of Patients with Long-Haul COVID--An Analysis of Private Healthcare Claims--A FAIR Health White Paper.pdf) showing that even asymptomatic patients might be at risk of having long COVID symptoms, though it is still about double as high in symptomatic patients. So again, we have a vaccine that might cause issues in some folks, but protects them from much bigger harm. And on top, they also protect those that are too stubborn to protect themselves.

4 pages and 10 years. If anything it shows how persistent stereotypes are.

I think to some degree the points are valid, but may also somewhat overplay the uniqueness of humans. While we often describe a given species to behave in a monolithic way, many folks interacting a lot with higher animals report a huge range of behavioural differences. Of course there is more behavioural modulation (learning/training) going on in humans but I would almost make the reverse argument, that we simplify animal behaviour too much.

As I and other have said, the premise is clearly wrong. There is a huge disparity between rich and poor Muslim countries as there are between Christian countries. Trying to find a singular explanation for someone that does not exist in the presented form is a fool's errand.

Yes, if you ignore age-related issues, there are no age-related issues. There is also a range of increased risk (in terms of morbidity and mortality) for the mothers starting around age 35.

That is a) not true and b) is moving the goal post. But overall acknowledging that there are more factors is what my basic comment alluded to. Wealth of a country is not based on singular factors, but depends on many aspects. Including access (but also sovereignty over resources). The simplified narratives as used in the original OP do not do the complexity of the region. This was mostly true in Germany until rather suddenly it wasn't, for example. And again, your comments are also factually wrong, considering that the country you outlined have lower health indicators than many Arabic speaking countries. Edit: Crossposted with other with similar comments.

I think folks in the first page of this thread have already highlighted that this not true. In terms of GDP per capita some of the richest countries in the world are Arab countries.

I am really sorry for being that pedantic, but I would like to point out that "three" in German is "drei". It is one of the weird differences between English and German and a bit of a pet peeve of mine (same with "stein" vs "stien"). I can live with the umlaut thingy but the the other thing just scratches at my soul (which basically means I spent too much time in Germany).

Yes, that is the overall point, the nationalist (-right) groups used the Dolchstosslegende and the Treaty of Versailles as a means to bolster nationalist agenda, even if there were plans and means to address the economic strains (starting with the Dawes plan). It is the danger of taking one narrative and try to make everything fit that box. So to summarize the points again: - the Dolchstosslegende was a conspiracy theory created by the Oberste Heeresleitung to excuse their military failures and at the same time blame social democrats, moderates as well as Jews. While the loss of WWI precipitated it, it was clearly used as a propaganda tool - while reparations were a burden, economic and foreign policy successes have significantly stabilized the economic situation and promised easing of reparations. - many areas of industry saw massive growth between 1924 and 1929, the situation was fundamentally different than in the post-war years - however, there economic success and benefits were distributed uneven and especially agriculture was suffering. The Kaiserreich had a strong hierarchical structure, however some of these structure were breaking up with e.g. the working class trying to assert their rights which resulted in gains from the KPD, for example. - as mentioned, between 1924-1929 even with reparations and the Dolchstosslegende, the society had a stable phase. The KPD was focusing on parliamentary work rather than incitement, the NDSDAP and other radicals were not influential anymore. - on the other hand another factor was challenging political stability: the lack of democratic and parliamentary experience. The democracy was always under stress and parliamentary coalitions were constantly shifting and repeatedly minority cabinets were formed. This created a bit of a chaotic situation which shows the vulnerable underbelly of the Republic. - in 1928 the SPD had a big win and it seemed that the right-wing nationalist were diminished. Subsequently the nationalist right unleashed their mentioned Anti-Young campaign which had a lasting impact on society. The interesting bit from that time is that prior to the campaign, the German population as a whole was not too worried about reparations because of the years of economic successes. While the campaign ultimately failed, it elevated the weak NSDAP to a mainstream party again. - if we talk about external influence, because of the situation mentioned above, at that point the financial crisis of 1929 and resulting mass loss of employment probably had a much higher impact than either loss of WWI or reparations per se - at that point the parliament mostly stopped working resulting using presidential ruling instead (not sure how that is translated properly) What I am trying with this wild collection of thoughts is that as a whole, internal happenings are likely more critical than the overarching narrative of external pressures leading the the fall of the Weimar Republic. Considering the overall tendencies, without the economic crisis of 1929, the Republic had a good shot at stabilizing. If DNVP and other right-wing nationalists did not decide to use the DNVP as a bulwark to weaken the communists, they may never have gotten that popular. If the Dolchstosslegend was not fabricated, something else might have been. Again, I think the fairly common narrative of Reparations -> Struggles in Weimar Republic -> WWII is omitting far more compelling (but complex) happenings within the society and actually does not line up the actual happenings within the Republic.

Yet by 1924 the Weimar Republic made a staggering recovery effectively ending hyperinflation in record time. By 1928 the stabilization of the Republic was also reflected politically with the extremist parties only getting a small fraction of the votes (communists around 10, Nazis less than 3). By 1929 the standing of the Republic improved to a degree that the Young plan initiated relief and the end of the occupation of the Rhineland. I.e. there is not a direct line from the post-war woes to the rise of the NSDAP and WWII, unless one cuts out close of a decade of development. Aside from the looming stock market crash, much of the destabilization of the Weimar Republic actually came from the inside, with the nationalist DNVP opposing the economically successful government and seizing on an anti-Young plan movement to bolster nationalist and populist tendencies. Hugenberg, the head of the DNVP was an industrialist and had one of the most widely read newspaper at the time and used it to fan the flames and also bolstered Hitler's (and the NSDAP's) reputation among the working class, to gain broader support.

This sounds a bit like the Dunning-Kruger effect. I am not entirely sure what OP in this split is really about, however it occurred to me that using a framework like Bloom's taxonomy could help guide the discussion a bit, assuming it is not all hippopotamuses all the way down. In the this system, knowledge is the lowest cognitive effort and is based on memorization of information. The next step up is comprehension, which includes the ability to restate information and so on. In this framework, it could mean that folks with the lowest level of understanding are also more likely to dismiss contradicting information as they have not reached the higher levels of learning, which would allow them to contextualize and evaluate new information. If you allow a small rant from my side, I think the rise of youtube level education is a great example of low-level learning. Many that I have seen are created with entertainment in mind and giving viewer the impression of having learned something, but often they are vacuous strings of facts and factoids without any of the hallmark of higher understanding (and I think it is at least part of the reason why the recent generations of students feel that they know more than they really do).

Also, it is quite disingenuous to equate the probably strongest hyperbole of one member of a party to a the long-standing attack on science and scientists of a major party. This includes denial of evolution and the insistence to elevate creationism to an alternative explanation, dismantling, marginalizing and dismantling institutions responsible for evidence-based protection of public health which directly resulted in a massive number of preventable deaths in the US (in fact, there was only one party which decided to play "identity politics" with simple health measures...). The GOP decided at some point go over the cliff completely, McCain, in a bid for presidency had highlighted the importance of reacting to client change and now the party has decided that instead, that is a hoax. And consistent with this belief, obvious scientists are frauds. Heck, the whole right-wing ecosystem has untied in claiming that climate science is a fraud, and directly attack scientists like Mann. If you have a whole community ranging from voters, media to lawmakers being united in the belief that science is a scam and not to be trusted, I think it is fair to say that one is not like the other. And if the only means of equating these things is by pointing out an individual vs the history of a whole ideology, it does not seem that a good faith discussion is to be had. I may have mentioned it before, but politicians in general are typically not allies of scientists. However, while currently the left tends to ignore inconvenient findings (or in this case, overstating findings), it is the right that has gone on the attack on facts. And it is not a new thing. It is not specific to the US (anymore), the recent rise of right-wing populism through much of Europe has intensified attacks on the perceived "elites" and have put ideology before science.

So I feel weird keeping asking that, but remember the virus outbreak and how the party in charge of dealing with it kept pretending it was harmless? I mean, come on, it is not an niche event and it is frigging still ongoing.

This is part of an interesting and ongoing discussion among historians. A position that was developed directly post WWII is basically grounded in a similar reasoning provided here. If an invasion was necessary, the losses would have been huge. Thus the loss of civilian lives would have been acceptable. Since then another school of thought has been formed which basically takes overtures from the Japanese into account. For example, in secret Japan's leader were trying to mediate peace via the Soviet Union. But these overtures where dashed when the Soviets invaded Manchuria and Korea. The Japanese Supreme War Council itself was split, i.e. while to the outside an all out war until self-destruction was propagated to the masses, what is known from internal deliberations were basically at a stalemate. The issue was not so much whether to surrender, but under which condition they would accept it. This included for example the preservation of the status of the Emperor but also who would be responsible for demobilization and so on. However, that would have been unacceptable to allies. As a whole it is of course pure speculation whether the stalemate could have been broken say with only one bomb, or even without goes into the realm of speculation, of course. But it is rather clear that the bombs have helped the faction which was in favour of peace anyway. But I think the fact that in the background Japanese leadership was trying to figure out a way to surrender shows that the situation was more complex than the stereotype of fanatically death wish may make it seem (which, to be fair, was part of their propaganda system instilled into their troops). As such, answers to these questions are also complex and, at least without contemporary documents highlighting the thought processes of the involved leadership, very difficult or impossible to answer with certainty.

These are great points, though I would add to 2) that I do not think that the Trump administration is an anomaly per se. Rather I think it is almost the next logical development, considering the unholy alliance of anti-science agendas that have been effectively collected under the GOP tent. We have got the religious anti-evolution movement, the industrial-backed anti-global warming movement and so on. Some anti-science movements which were either diffuse or had left leaning roots (e.g. the pseudo-eco anti-vax elements) have been fully embraced and integrated into a right-wing movement which basically has declared science and associated elements as enemies. Strategically it is of course a tactic to avoid accountability but has become a mentality. 3) is spot on, it does not seem to me that the parties in the US have actually any real cohesive philosophy. It is basically an identity of sorts that folks associate themselves with with massive internal inconsistencies.

Found the link https://www.wsj.com/graphics/kwc/ It seems that some of the embedded items are defunct, unfortunately.

Yes, probably. I have been going through quite a few student theses recently and my brain just blanks out things that do not make sense for self-preservation, I think.

... have you been around for 2020? You know, the whole respiratory virus thing? The reason why sweatpants are the new business casual?

The WSJ also had an interactive website where you could explore parts of the old Kowloon Walled City. I am not sure how much of it still worked. I always wondered how interesting that must be for street photography.

Just to add to the issue of variants. Even if vaccines are effective against the new variants, there is the issue that by now it is pretty clear that they have a higher transmissibility. B.1.1.7 has effectively replaced the wildtype and has up to 90% higher transmissibility. Based on preliminary studies B1.617.2 seems to be even higher (and in places is starting to replace B.1.1.7). The reason why that is relevant is that a higher level of immunity within a population is required to deal with a higher transmissibility. A value to indicate the ability to spread is based on the basic reproduction number (R0) which is the average number of folks infected by a given infected person within a susceptible community. The effective reproduction number (Re) is then dependent on the susceptibility (s) of the population, taking e.g. immunity due to vaccination and other measures into account. I.e. Re= s*R0. In order for the disease to vanish, the effective reproduction number needs to go below 1. As the immunity in a population is given by 1-s we can then look for 1-s > 1-1/R0 to estimate how much immunity we need for that to happen. Originally the R0 for the wildtype SARS-CoV-2 was estimated to be around 2.5, which would require only 60% immunity in the population to stop. However estimates with larger data sets (and with the unknown impact of undetected spread) have put R0 quite a bit higher (3.6 and up), which would require over 72% immunity to achieve herd immunity, with estimates as high as 84% Now if we increase R0 even higher for B.1.1.7 and B.1.617.2 we are approaching required immunity levels of 90%, which is basically impossible to achieve just by immunization.

Well, one does not even need to look at what he said. He held rallies in the thick of the pandemic. https://siepr.stanford.edu/research/publications/effects-large-group-meetings-spread-covid-19-case-trump-rallies

Your argument was that basically that because many species are promiscuous, one selected one (humans) must therefore also be promiscuous. This is not a logical conclusion, as you said yourself that there are apparently differences in promiscuity in nature ("most" does not equal "all"). In other words, you would first have to figure out why certain species are more or less promiscuous in order to establish whether it likely (or not) applies to humans. If nature was based on majority rule, we all would still be bacteria and just reproduce asexually. Likewise, you cannot dismiss whether our society makes promiscuity more or less likely, as you have not established conditions that are associated with promiscuity that we could discuss. I am going make an analogous argument to yours to demonstrate why your original argument does not hold water: Most animals are arthropods (well above 80%). Therefore animals are evolutionary primed to live like insects. What we can discuss, which is somewhat outside biology is about human society and how that influences partner structure. But again, doing sweeping positive correlations and then somehow invoke evolution is just bad science (and which is why evolutionary psychology as a discipline is in deep trouble). But even using somewhat shaky arguments in that area, it is very weird that you focus on female promiscuity. Assuming big fitness arguments (and again, research has shown that it is actually far more complex than these simple narratives), in most mammals, including humans, males benefit more from being promiscuous than females. The reason is fairly intuitive, because a) in most species females invest more into the offspring and b) extra-pair copulation for the female does not automatically result in more offspring as for males. Now, this view has been challenged to various degrees, mostly using insect models, again highlighting my above argument, if you will. In observational studies In birds, reproductive success seem to increase for both, male and female partners in a number of partners. However, the advantage for males is still more obvious than females (and the latter is trickier to study). If we focus on humans, there is of course the issue of social norms- in many societies it is more permissive for men to be promiscuous than women. As such, it is not surprising that most surveys indicate higher promiscuity in men, but this again is challenged with changing gender roles. So again, another societal, rather than evolutionary factor. I suspect that what you tried to say that serial monogamy is in polygyny (succession of female partners, as the reverse does not make sense) but why not polyandry? This is not to say that the area of research is not fascinating, but I think the way you start off is far too narrow and biased toward a certain narrative that it actually runs counter to existing research. To kick off such a discussion with a focus on human species you may want to look at a few accessible papers such as Schacht and Kramer (Front. Ecol. Evol. 2019) for a general review. The paper does actually discuss (and refutes) some of the common popsci narratives.

Link to survey does not seem to work. In nature you can find every single strategy in partner search. Using the majority argument to try to apply it to a specific species is silly, of course. Every species has their particular constraint and is more or less likely to have a specific reproductive strategy. Note that in humans many potential constraints are changed due to e.g. availability of reproductive control, but also things like easy availability of food or water (for most) and other technological and social elements. Finally, few things are that hardwired to begin with. We have learned to live in a highly artificial environment. None of us are hardwired to move faster than running speed, yet we can drive cars, for example.

I think that actually kind of illustrates how the public misunderstands how population risks are estimated. Sure, individually speaking a mask could be beneficial, so is a hazmat suit, so is hand washing and so on. So for public health recommendations the actual question is not whether these measure fundamentally work, but whether in public setting they can reduce overall transmission. The gold standard here are trials, where you have got groups of folks asked to e.g. either wear masks and wash hands, only wash hands and then calculate the overall reduction compared to a control group. As mentioned, this data was mixed and the outcome was sometimes not significantly significant, or had moderate reduction. The largest effects of facemasks where seen in clinical settings (e.g. workers cleaning rooms of infected people), which suggests that focused mask wearing in high-risk environments. Moreover, around that time, only few known cases existed in USA and Canada, and I suspect that officials at that time point were thinking that the pandemic will play out like SARS-1. I.e. few cluster cases that will be tracked rather quickly with a concentration of cases in hospitals. So if you identify folks quickly and make them wear masks (and have everyone interacting with them do the same) would be an effective way of PPE use. Remember that health officials where ridiculed for overhyping SARS (as well as H1N1) so that could also have coloured the response. It was only after that that we understood the differences in SARS-CoV-2 (in my potentially faulty memory) it seems that really the outbreak in Europe has made folks wonder over in NA that things may not go as well.

Perhaps just a minor point, but these articles are not science papers, they are part of the news section. If someone found valid scientific evidence for an accidental release (whatever it may look like), it will for sure be published in a highly ranked journal as it is clearly a hot topic. I doubt this argument is in good faith, but for those interested I will say that a) epidemiological studies in the past on respiratory diseases such as influenza had mixed results and were generally much lower than e.g. hand sanitizing; b) significantly better effects were seen when symptomatic patients wore masks and c) effectiveness was also sometimes quite low because many folks in theses studies did not wear the masks consistently or correctly. In addition to this, there were other factors that came into play at the time masks were not recommended: a) the assumed infection numbers were still low (which might have been an underestimate base on what we know now) b) folks did not know that pre-symptomatic spread was likely significant, c) supply chain issue limited access even for health care professionals. So in total the risk assessment at that point was pointing toward the fact that mask wearing was likely not helpful. The calculation shifted once it became clear that a) large scale contact tracing failed, b) even folks without symptoms could spread, making it much more important that everyone masks up. In other words, the messaging was based on risk assessment using available info and changed once new information came up. The other example that you provided is acting on virtually no information and then keep denying reality even as bodies piled up. No one looking at facts would see equivalency there.