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Depends a bit on study and reporting as well as the precise distinction between obesity and overweight. But looking at obesity brackets of BMI >30, studies often find perhaps a 5-8% difference between these countries. It should also be noted that not only obese folks are at risk, there is a steady increase of risk with increasing BMI (though it jumps a bit when we get to BMI >35). Nonetheless, the obesity/overweight levels in UK (~65%) are close enough to the US that they alone would explain observed differences. It is interesting to note that in many countries vaccination rates jump a bit with major events (such as vaccination mandates or new variants), indicating that some holdouts are not fundamentally opposed to vaccination but that they are doing a kind of personal cost/benefit calculation. Some surveys have shown that the ability to go to clubs or similar venues contributed quite a bit to vaccination willingness. Based on anecdotes from students quite a few (even after such a long time in the pandemic) they still assumed that it was not important for them and only decided to get vaccinated because they needed it e.g. for travel or getting on campus. That, somewhat frighteningly, highlights how badly informed the presumed next generation of intellectual elites is.

Absolutely, my wife has used some old headlines as well as some snippets of discussions and articles from the 1918 pandemic in her classes. And only after discussion she revealed from when these articles where from. The fun bit is that many students picked up on the old arguments (e.g. vaccine safety, or the idea of naturally boosting your immune system) while thinking that these are new ideas based on latest science, showing the circular nature on how we are dealing with outbreaks. Yes that's how I feel. Sometimes it goes so fast, I hardly trust my own memories. I now slowly understand why some older folks kept archives of newspapers at home...

Oh gosh, if we had a child we would be done for. It is hard enough to keep the students safe (in the lab) and instead of winding down our COVID-19 work (as funding agencies were suggesting) things are picking up (been writing reports until 4AM and decided to just continue). I hope you all stay healthy!

On top of that, testing has been a bit of a problem in the US. While tests are always underestimating the true spread of SARS-CoV-2, the UK has a better and somewhat more centralized system in place. Especially during the ongoing Omicron surge, many areas in the US are likely disproportionately underreporting cases. I.e. in the US we are likely looking at a far more severe spread. The analysis in the article only looks at hospitalization per population and not relative to cases, and therefore misses on important context.

I think part of it is that we often build narratives for our own personal histories and then also apply them to the past and future. It sometimes feels that we only have a short-lived bubble of reality and anything beyond that is susceptible to distortions of own memories as well as external narratives (I don't think I am expressing myself clearly here, but right now I am too tired to try to formulate it properly). In a way, the amount of information we got nowadays made us remember less, not more, I feel sometimes.

Also, starting in Victorian times in the UK and elsewhere vaccines against e.g. smallpox were mandatory. Fines were implemented due to non-compliance. It was basically the same issue as now. If there was a slippery slope, we would expect progression somewhere. Yet here we are pretending that this new, indicating that no slope is present. We are back at the top of the presumed slide again. Moreover tax burden have gone up and down over the long term, when accounting for inflation. See below a plot of tax burden in Canada, which clearly refutes the always increases parts. While there is discussion to be had regarding impact, we should make sure we keep the facts straight. Moreover, we have over 100 years of precedence of pretty much the same discussion, so it is not like we are in entirely new territory. Rather than a "it's starting" situation we are in a "it's happening again" sort of thing. Perhaps the next pandemic will happen soon enough that we don't forget, but considering all we have seen i am prepared to assume that we will be absolutely surprised again on all levels and rehash all points. I will say that it is unclear whether fines are more effective than e.g. mandates and social media likely has changed the game.

! Moderator Note Please keep all the very similar topics contained to this thread.

I do not disagree, though I do see that a surprising number of students are unwilling or unable to, say, read the syllabus. It is annoying if you spend 10 minutes explaining what they are supposed to do (with slides) and the next question is basically asking how you are supposed to do it without any indication that they listened to what I was just talking about. Bonus points if the answer is actually on the slide that is still on.

I think the discussion is missing another component and I think it is a bit related to how some students thing about assignments. It appears that some think that the purpose of such assignments is to figure out the right answers. However, especially at lower level, the idea is to learn how to think critically and write assays. That does not happen in a vacuum. Rather, you get instructions on the approach (what are sources, which sources are for what purpose, how to do you read sources, how do you distill information) as well as either the specific or at least related topics and then you are expected to first at least try to emulate what you learned. From there you get a critique about what you did well and what not. The latter is then used to improve on your next assignment. Unfortunately folks often think in terms of failure or success and do not try to improve if they don't hit it out of the park on their first try. Copying gives a feeling of success (if one happens to get away with it) and I fear that this what most folks are after (well and grades). I also think that the grading system has become screwed up. In the past you used the whole range so that folks have a range where they can see their improvement. Now the evaluation bands have become so narrow it is almost like a pass/fail system.

I think folks that want to invoke the slippery slope should provide some historic data to substantiate such claims. Too often it just a single data point extrapolation. The whole current situation looks like a repeat of the 1918 pandemic (or measles or smallpox etc.), but in colour.

Well the target would depend on what you are actually taxing (say, unprotected sex). But there would be a lot to unpack here, especially as sodomy laws were actually on the books, but for entirely different reasons. Also, with regard to HIV there are actually protective laws in place and in many countries, where it is required to disclose HIV positivity to potential sexual partners. IOW, there are laws in place targeted at curbing transmissions. I will also say that this discussion is not new. Smallpox vaccinations in the early 20th century was made mandatory in many countries. In the fines for non-compliance went to the supreme court and was upheld. In fact, it is part of a much longer discussion regarding how much a society should compel individuals to minimize risk to themselves and others and it is not an easy either/or situation. But it is also not a simple slippery slope situation, either. Looking back we had have many, many of those regulations, some based on moral considerations, others based on immediate emergencies and so on. Some of those have been eventually removed as society changed their attitudes, others still persist. But what has not happened is that our society has been increasingly constrained by ever-expanding regulations or governmental control. Things have come and gone, depending on the attitudes of a given generation and if anything, the world now appears more complex due to the availability of more information and higher interconnectivity. Finding the right approach appears more difficult than ever, but in part it is because we realized that things we did actually do not work.

I think that is a false equivalency. Neither of these conditions are contagious. Edit: Also, alcohol is already severely taxed in Canada, so is tobacco. Assuming these measures are ideology-based, it would indicate that they are historically ingrained. Likewise, I presume, measures like fines for not wearing seatbelts and drunk driving. The latter are perhaps a better comparison as those also increase of risks surrounding the individual.

I suppose we can just state that neither is conducive to learning or critical thinking and then move on.

It seems to me that dimreepr might conflate plagiarism (passing someone's thoughts as one's own) with parroting.

It's great that it wasn't more severe. Looking at the current spread we are somewhat lucky that it only arrived after vaccines were available and more expertise in treating patients have been developed. If the first or second wave happened at that speed, the outcome would have disastrous, even if severity was lower on the individual level.

Well, to be honest part of it is the procedure involved in fully failing students. It is a rather drawn out process, students are now much more likely to appeal even without grounds and you have document a lot things, which I frankly do not have the time for. On top Dean's is overloaded due to the spike during online teaching so there is a bit of pressure to get things over as fast as possible. Also, we are not allowed to block students (or at least heavily discouraged from doing so). Our Admin unfortunately has given in to the "students are clients" attitude and, to my disappointment, it is seeping through. Students are in for the certificate and those with genuine interest seem to be getting fewer and fewer each year. But then, I do not see myself as a gatekeeper of competence (except for my research group). If that is what students, administration and politics think how educations is supposed to be I do not have the energy to fight them.

Absolutely. Or rather, I think that the idea flip-flops depending on how you approach it. Obviously the connection is well-recognized, otherwise we would not use so many psychoactive drugs for treatment. And we have long known that our psychological sensations are integrated in the brain. Yet, we do not fully understand the connections and it is often simpler to talk about the one or the other. Placebos are one of the fascinating areas where both heavily overlap.

That is very likely to be true. In our own analyses we found that within ~2.5 weeks of showing up it has pretty much replaced Delta. So there are a few things related to that. First, yes ACE2 receptors are docking sites of the virus and in Omicron one piece of the puzzle seems to be that the spike protein-ACE2 receptor interaction is much tighter than with earlier variants. However, the upper respiratory tract has also high levels of ACE2 receptors (as well as other organs) and the upper respiratory tract is known to be an entry point also for earlier variants (the often reported loss of smell is one of consequences). The question then becomes why it does not spread or colonize the lungs that efficiently. There are are several lines of investigation underway to look at that. In vitro studies suggested (Zhang et al., cannot recall the journal of the top of my head) found that two additional serine proteases promote the entry of SARS-CoV-2 (TMPRSS2 and 4). Conversely, Omicron seems not to use that pathway to enter, instead using a TMPRSS2-independent endosomal fusion pathway (i.e. a different way to enter after docking). These proteases are abundant in the lung, but much less so in the upper respiratory tract which would at least explain much higher efficiency in colonizing the upper respiratory tract. That being said, this data alone does not entirely explain why they seem to colonize lungs somewhat less efficiently yet.

There are a lot of medical microbiology textbooks specifically for nursing students.

If you just copy, you don't understand.

In that case I may have misunderstood or misremembered what I heard in the presentation from the NHS staff. They were talking about the implementation and the issues they had and the original system was apparently quite annoying even to NHS staff. Upon re-reading I should not have stated "often", I started the sentence thinking of the broader population, in which (at least when we had the briefing, which is a while back) the uptake was spotty, but then switched half-way through to the NHS staff part, which apparently had a lot of complaints (e.g. the need to put in all your information every time at the beginning). So my apologies for that. But it is great that things are seemingly eve more streamlined now. I wished we would follow suit.

I think what annoys me most is the that volume of cheating has increased while the effort into cheating has declined. I am used to a certain rate among pre-professionals, but unfortunately especially during the pandemic the biology majors has have engaged quite a bit in it. We had online exams and often it is quite obvious (e.g. clearly copy/pasted answers from one of the notorious answer websites). I cut down points and move on, but the lack of effort is just disappointing. At least it tells you which folks you should not try to recruit for grad school.

Yes, that is an issue for direct comparisons in many areas. Testing regimen have changed and while e.g. Canada has started using more rapid tests, the reporting mechanisms are very inconsistent to non-existent in the various provinces. In the UK there is a more centralized way, but uptake has been spotty and in a recent meeting the folks who record the data mentioned that even health professionals often do not submit the data as they felt that it was pointless. They have started engaging people more which improved data submission but obviously different time periods will have different accuracy. That as a whole introduces uncertainty in the analyses of the data sets. That being said, the UK still has one of the best reporting and testing systems, especially compared to North America and many parts of Europe (we often use UK data to figure out oddities elsewhere, if we can).

I would say it is both. Plagiarism is an ethical issue, but engaging in it also inhibits learning.

I think it is also a mindset issue. Folks focus on giving right answers to a question for points in the most efficient way, but without engaging intellectually. Often they copy wrong answers as they have not even thought about the problem properly. Likely only some words were googled.