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Posted

Exactly.  Often it seems humans view themselves as the only living creatures on earth, totally unrelated to the rest.  And yet a number of common illnesses exist across the panoply of species.  

Posted (edited)

Agree with 8 / 10 without qualification.

 

Toronto, Canada

I don't disagree with 3 and 4,  and there are straightforward interpretations of each that are no brainers. However they also can be read as a jumping off point for some nonsense. I don't think they are that important,  which also worries met that their inclusion might be primarily used to trigger that exact nonsense, so I can't just enthusiastically embrace.

 

Edited to add location.

Edited by a2malways
1. add location. 2. Add in "Reason for edit"
Posted (edited)
On 1/4/2022 at 10:04 AM, rawTOP said:

I don't mean to start an argument or anything, but the fact that COVID is deer populations and their strains of COVID match the strains of COVID in the humans near them suggests that even if humans did everything perfectly, we'll never quite get rid of COVID because the deer can infect us the same way we infected them.

I hadn’t heard of that finding, so thanks for sharing. I think the important distinction is getting rid of COVID (as we know it) “as a threat.” To me that means the human population (within borders that are easily and regularly controlled) reaches herd immunity (whether through infection or inoculation). We have essentially gotten rid of certain diseases as a threat to humans in first-world countries, such as polio, measles, diphtheria, bacterial influenza, mumps, rubella, and tetanus, even if we haven’t gotten rid of those diseases entirely.

I know that some of those diseases have higher infection rates than COVID (e.g., measles has a much higher R0), but I don’t know enough about them to know if they are transmissible across species, or if they have existing animal reservoirs. That would certainly be something to compare when evaluating the threat COVID poses. If COVID is entirely unique compared to those diseases—in that it is zoonotic and reverse-zoonotic, that there are existing animal reservoirs, and that it has a high transmission rate—then that might mean herd immunity (and thus eliminating COVID as a threat to humans) is impossible, even with full compliance of preventative measures. I’d be very interested in seeing that sort of comparison. 

Still, I don’t think we’ve tried full compliance with preventative measures. Until complex comparative models with extensive data show that herd immunity for COVID is impossible, I think it might be worth it to try before throwing in the towel.

(At risk of starting a tangential discussion, that’s pretty much my position on gun control in the United States: what we’re all doing isn’t working for the metrics we all care about, so why don’t we all try something different?)

Edited by 11bi11guy
Changed “argument” to “discussion”; this is a reasonable civil discussion, not an argument.
Posted
3 hours ago, 11bi11guy said:

(At risk of starting a tangential discussion, that’s pretty much my position on gun control in the United States: what we’re all doing isn’t working for the metrics we all care about, so why don’t we all try something different?)

You are correct, but I must engage on the 2nd amendment issue - which will appear in the "politics" section - where I think it belongs ???  A little later on then ....

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