CharonY

I think the critical bit is finding the correct differences, be it sex or gender on its impact on health. There are complicated overlays at the intersection (and gets really complicated when we talk about health in practice, as sexism and racism has a surprisingly high impact there). As I mentioned before, assuming differences without sufficient evidence is as damaging as ignoring real differences. Unfortunately, medical training is only slowly starting to get rid of the bad parts and introducing new good parts (with good an bad refering to the level of available evidence). Edit, I just remembered some seminars that I took years back, there were a lot of examples provided for assumed differences and stereotypes, predominantly in women, that led to worse health outcomes.

A quickish read on the topic that might help to organize ideas https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/

This is not helpful. In many areas of health, but especially in public health there is increasing recognition that we need more fine-grained approaches to address pervasive equity challenges. To do so, one needs data with more resolution, not less. Aggregating information removes the ability to develop targeted counter-strategies. You might as well say that everything is biological so we should address all issues, mental, infectious diseases, aging, and so on just under the banner of biology. Especially, when it comes to mental health, men and women have different types of challenges and barriers and there is a cultural overlay that needs to recognized while trying to deliver care. Ignoring all that really doesn't do anything helpful and can be harmful. One prominent example in a different health area, is the high mortality of black mothers in the USA, something that would not have been noticeably if one collected data while ignoring racial backgrounds. On thing that has to be mentioned is that in the past (and to a lesser degree currently), folks have divided information along lines that were not well established and/or were colored by stereotypes. Certain types of mental health issues were disproportionately attributed to some groups, but without sufficient data to establish that this is actually the case, for example. In other words, we need more data to figure figure out where the lines really are. Which is additional work, for sure. But the benefit for figuring that out is the ability to develop new approaches to deal with challenges rather than trying (and failing) with one-size-fits all attempts.

1. As I mentioned, the premise is a bit flawed. There is really only a negative selection on virulence if it fundamentally inhibits spread. This is not always the case. And in case of mpox, we see that the current strain is ha higher lethality, specifically because the original outbreak was not stamped out. It is also not accurate to assume that more deadly strains have to arrive from elsewhere. The infected population are the reservoirs (plus non-humans, in case of zoonotic diseases) so it does not really matter if a lot of people are infected within or outside of a country. I think you use lockdown as in shutting down borders, rather than confining folks to their homes (the latter would eliminate spread as households would be isolated). 2. I am still not sure what you mean here. I also think you might confuse "infectivity" with "virulence", when you say virulence. A more virulent form, by definition, causes more harm, which can include death. I think you mean to say that if folks are infected with more harmless strains they would also develop immunity, which is generally true and has always been a part of what happened to COVID-19. The issue is at the beginning of COVID-19 and also for mpox is that this form of immunity simply does not exist in the population. And now that a deadlier variant is circulating, hoping for natural immunity will have a higher death toll. This is why vaccination programs are getting more important now. 3. Again, as above the opposite is happening. Mpox is circulating and resulted in a deadlier strain, which clearly refutes your premise. Reduction of virulence (and again, more virulence means more harm) is generally only expected if death rates are high enough to curtail spread. Which basically means that many people have to die before we see more harmless variants see a reproductive benefit. And even that might not happen if a) its virulence is tied to its ability to infect or b) it is able to maximize its success in infections before the host dies (e.g. if it is infectious for long period of time before symptoms become severe). Syphilis is such a bug, which causes a very slow death. The safest way still remain vaccines, which is the equivalent of being infected with a harmless strain, but without (or at least much less) the uncertainty of other sequelae.

Science in itself is a essentially a methodologies that are used to create an understanding of certain phenomena. Any value judgement to be made would need to be contextualized. While not advanced, they clearly have created an understanding on some level of their world and figured out consistent elements and taught them to the next generation. Some animals show similar abilities. One could argue what level of systematic application some form of empiricism have to have in order to call it a science, and I am sure, opinions will differ. Regardless how we want to call it, I am still unsure why folks would need to accept that axiom that science is good by itself. You might believe it, or not. It has no impact on science itself. I should specify: I am not in which context you intend to use term "axiom" (and what point you wanted to make). I presume in an epistemological sense, but a) there are different forms and b) I don't really see how your example fits any of them. The closest is probably a pragmatist approach, but then it would probably more accurate to state that "science works". Rather than trying to shoehorn a judgement into it. But Eise and others will be better in dissecting this kind of argument.

That does not make a lot of sense. Folks would rather say that aspects of science are useful within a given realm and provide the evidence for it. "Good" is a value judgement that only makes sense by adding premises. For instance, you can say that saving lives via medicine is "good". From there you could infer that medical sciences therefore serves a "good" purpose. But there is not reason to simply accept a statement without any evidence.

In most studies we employ methods to automatically prune human sequences (i.e. hits to human database) out of our data set. While interesting, it likely has little impact on farming practices as most farmers do not really like targeted approaches.

Not sure what the relationship between a lockdown and the virulence of a strain might be. Could You elaborate? If you mean that highly mortal diseases tend to get tempered over time, there is an argument for that, but not sure how it would relate to lockdowns. I should also note that this is generally only the case if mortality somehow limits spread. As an example, HIV without treatments had a high mortality rate, but disease onset was slow so it could spread widely. It is not necessarily a matter of mixing populations, but how many folks get infected. It is a bit of a roll of dice whether strains become more or less virulent. The main trend is usually towards higher infection rate (i.e. spread). Higher virulence can sometimes be a side effect, or it can lead to a reduction. For COVID-19, the Delta variant was probably more harmful than the original variant, but Omicron outcompeted it spreading more easily and occupying higher respiratory pathways, which led to lower mortality. Again, not sure how your model works. If everyone is already infected a high rate there would be more immunity among survivors, yes. But obviously we then did not avoid the health burden at all. It is basically like solving hunger by letting enough folks starve so that the available food is sufficient. Edit: upon re-reading, was the idea to explore how spread would work in a confined population? Generally speaking, in a full lockdown, spread would be curbed as infected individuals would not be able to spread the disease (regardless of virulence) outside of the population they are in contact with. Eventually, the disease would be eliminated. The issue is practically lockdowns are only limited there quite a few folks required to get things done.

I don't think that this significantly add to the fairy well-established point that Trump might not be a good person. But I wonder, is there anything to discuss here? Because this thread looks a bit lost in either politics or religion.

The deadlier version of mpox (clade Ib) has been detected in Thailand. It apparently is spreading mainly through heterosexual sex, which is another difference to the 2022 outbreak (caused by Clade IIb). https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czrgpg127zgo https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/20240610-mpoxsituationreport.pdf

You are making random statements and to each of them the specific question would be: a) What does it mean. b) What is this based on? Are you just sharing random thoughts without basis? These two questions are about as specific as could be, as in none of your statements you have attempted to provide details that could highlight what you are talking about. Phi tried to bring some structure into it, and it is clear in your follow-up post that you did not even try to follow the argument.

Define the cellular complex that you call soul. Where is it located and what cell types does it consist of? Provide evidence for that claim, please. Cellular composition does change over time and, most evidently of course during development, but different systems have more or less plasticity. If there was no change, your immune system worthless, for example. Provide evidence for a correlation between IQ and life expectancy, and consider the impact of cofounding factors (e.g. socioeconomic status). Why do you want to rename things randomly? Please read up regarding the functions of the humoral system. Throughout, there no evidence is provided that a soul exists in the first place beyond assertions. Mixing badly understood anatomy in does not make it better. Also, there is zero connection between the title of the thread and its content.

From a dictionary: Assertion: Something declared or stated positively, often with no support or attempt at proof. Explanation: A statement that makes something comprehensible by describing the relevant structure or operation or circumstances etc. Try less former and try more latter. Critical to it, is providing evidence.

I think you misunderstand what a theory is.

A theory is a framework incorporating principles that explain something. A successful theory will be able to make testable predictions, even if the prediction has not happened yet or is still happening. Based on your description, our knowledge is limited by observed events and there is not way to develop from there. This would severely limit our ability to even explain simple systems. In a way, this is the opposite end of claiming to have a theory of everything, which is equally unhelpful.

not helping.

Most likely the question focuses on how changes on the DNA level affect the amino acid chain (i.e, focus on translation), rather how amino acid substitutions can cause phenotypes. The reason is that the latter is rather complex and cannot be elucidated without detailed analyses. Specifically, you would need to know what the function each stretch of the AA chain has (look up protein domains to get an idea) and then, you would need to know how a particular substitution could affect the structure and function of a given domain. That latter part is not something you can figure out just by looking.

One point that I forgot to mention- mpox was one of the critical test cases for effective global infection control in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The reason is that the symptoms are fairly visible and diagnostic, infection rates appear to be relatively low (though there is some uncertainty regarding pre-symptomatic transmission), and there was heightened public health vigilance. While certain efforts (e.g. wastewater monitoring) has been stepped up, the fact that it it wasn't contained, clearly shows ongoing weaknesses. Also the fact that folks still do not understand that we are literally all in this together, whether we like it or not. Edit to add: The big issue is that the level of complacency among public health, politics and to some degree the public (that is somewhat understandable, folks would rather ignore issues and focus on day-to-day). The obvious issue is that being reactive means that we won't do anything before we have to, which in many cases(infectious diseases, climate change) means that the challenge has become so big that it is not easily solvable anymore. So then folks can claim that there is nothing we can do in the first place. It is disappointing that even having worldwide lockdowns is not not enough to create enough will to do think proactively. It also seems to me that folks in public health are a bit burned out by that. Yes indeed. If folks were able to, it would be much better to think in terms of health burden, rather than just deaths.

Respiratory diseases are the biggest fear, but I would also point out that creeping health burden, especially if preventable should not be downplayed. I mean, I do understand why they would do that, as the public generally has a mostly binary response to public health threats: headless panic and indifference. Panicking at this point would likely be net detrimental. But OTOH it does allow for spread that could eventually lead into panic again. Even diseases with very low or non-existent casual transmission, such as AIDS and in recent times increasingly multi-resistant STIs, can spread across the world with tremendous cumulative health burden.

As mentioned in other threads, biofuels mostly have a net detrimental impact on the environment. Until other forms of energy are becoming scarce, they are not really filling a critical gap. I am not sure what the current status is, but electrical planes are a thing and I believe hydrogen-powered aircrafts exist as prototypes. Not sure how far they are from commercial planes though.

Which especially interesting because we could see that happening in real-time just a few years ago WHEN WE WERE LOCKED UP IN OUR ROOMS/LABS. (Deep breaths). AAAAARGH. I guess the true lesson we learned was.. wait what was the lesson again?

Maybe, there are studies suggesting that protection might last decades, but there is always a risk that it drops with time (and in elderly). Because that is exactly how diseases work, of course. I heard similar arguments regarding COVID-19 that it is only risky for the very old and frail and "the fatties". Misinformation and misunderstanding go hand in hand there.

To some degree and depending species. But more commonly are incremental but stochastic increases e.g. due to duplications of repetitive regions. Polyploidy is another mechanism, though in that case genes are also duplicated. Others are related mechanisms of chromosomal structures that can lead to duplication of larger chunks.

There are multiple things here. Do you mean within or between species? But generally speaking there is no trend in evolution with regard to genome size. Rather, it depends a lot on the species and how they deal with additional genomic baggage. Many bacteria have a somewhat efficient genome size, as cell replication is slower with a larger one and any additional material would need to offset that cost. Eukaryotes tend to be somewhat less restricted and there is no correlation between genome size and e.g. overall complexity and there is often an excess of non-coding DNA. The fact that closely related eukaryotic species typically have very similar number of genes (i.e. coding DNA) but vastly different genome sizes is also referred to as the c-value paradox. Humans are around a modest 3.1 Gbp, which and in most mammals the variation is not huge. Yet, among animals, the largest genome size belongs to a bone fish with 130 Gbp. And in a fern a genome size of 160 Gbp was found. In amoeba size variation have been huge, ranging from 23-ish Mbp to many Gbp (though it could be a bit overestimated, as the size estimates were not done by sequencing in many cases). But in short, no we do not expect any specific evolutionary trends in genome size. Gene numbers, on the other hand, are under more constraints.

Oh no, that is how it always starts. Soon enough you won't be able to distinguish "real" American cheese from an Anster and you will have to plant an American flag everywhere you stay for more than 3 days, lest you forget where you are. Worst, you might not get offended anymore being called "English". Get out, I tell ya.