CharonY

Just a guess, but maybe you cannot drive to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and/or Alaska? The latter being loophole that Canada tries to patch as folks do not want diseased folks from the South. Which, btw., is fricken ironic.

That's fine, the issue is that one has to be very careful with extrapolating things, especially if the basic assumption is flawed. Such as that evolution only happens under certain challenges. The reason for being careful is of course that there are certain folks that weaponize such misunderstandings or flawed premises to create narratives that imply inferiority of certain groups.

Do you mean in direct competition or overall efficiencies when comparing to a large state? What Canada has also done is trying to create a better supply chain for PPEs but also chemicals for required for testing. While Canada tried to help provincial labs and other test labs to get needed stocks (including asking research labs for unused chemicals at the beginning of the pandemic) in the US each state needed to secure their own supply and outbid each other, as well as the feds, which also outbid several states in the process. So even with California's buying power it meant that prices went up and on top, the fact that it is harder to secure a supply chain, it also meant that they needed to stockpile more, and thereby creating more scarcity.

And it should be added that in Canada feds heavily supported provincial responses, e.g. by negotiating and buying PPE in bulk on their behalf. Meanwhile, in the US the feds made the states outbid each other for PPE access and helped private contractors to enrich themselves in the process.

According to an article (in Vanity Fair of all places), the bumbling response in the US was not only sheer incompetence on the top, but also strategic: So far COVID-19 has killed over 155,000 people. In comparison, flu killed an estimated 24-62k throughout the 19/20 season (in addition, of course). And the deaths are trending upwards. Edit: and on top the WH decided not to have the CDC collect and publish COVID-19 data but rather now want to do it themselves. Certainly nothing shady going on here.

Actually, the issue is that he says that he wants to solve the problem.. but he is not qualified to do so. What I prefer is a politician who a) surrounds her/himself with competence and b) has the political acumen to implement the suggestion they receive. Trump currently does neither. And Yang is not selling me on that part, either. If he learns how to navigate politics and at least organizes his ideas so that it becomes clear what he intends to do politically. That being said, it is of course difficult to convey that in a typical primary- there sky high promises are being made and with no track record it is difficult to assess what happens.

Well, the issue is that the anti gun control lobby has opposed safety regulations that would require guns stored safely. Accordingly, accidental gun deaths relative to population size in the USA are about 5 times as high as in countries such as Canada. There is also the weird mindset (mostly in the USA) that you need your gun locked and loaded as quite a few folks think that they need to defend themselves in a moment's notice. This, of course, increase accident risks.

Dopamine receptor levels can decline during exposure to prolonged stress, IIRC, which has been found to be associated with changes in cognitive function and motivation. However, while dopamine is involved in the pleasure pathways, it acts more as a motivator by seemingly linking pleasurable feelings (such as elicited by endorphins) with the motivation to feel them again (I imagine it as a pathway reinforcer, but am not sure how accurate that would be).

Evolution is never a need. It is just something that happens if the genetic composition of a group starts changing. This can be due to random events, but also due to selective pressures (i.e. there is different reproductive success). With regard to human origins, DNA evidence strongly support divergence from a central group originating in Africa. From there we have multiple waves of migration. Also note that skin colour as a whole is only a tiny part of our genetic history, it is mostly historical baggage that emphasizes it so much.

No, it their vitamin D levels are, on average, lower. While this increases risk somewhat, only a small subset actually develop a disease.

I think that is a very "tech" way of thinking and perhaps paradoxically what I did not like him as a candidate. Many folks like him think that that all problems are just like a difficult equation and thinking very hard about it will solve them. Moreover, they think that they are qualified to do so, even if it is way outside of their expertise. A professional politician on the other hand is not an expert except in the political arena (which includes governing and/or lawmaking), which are the important skills (and ideally backed up by experts to figure the right policies out). The issue is that many problems we have is because things are stuck in politics, not because we do not know the solutions. The war on drugs, for example is a massive failure on almost all metrics. Yet there is political unwillingness to move from there. Likewise, the health system and so on.

My gut says Rice with absolutely nothing to back it up. I have zero insights into what the Biden campaign is gunning for or what their strategy is (other than let Trump do the talking). Most likely because I am buried in COVID-19 literature, ugh.

alfa05 has been banned due to continuous spamming and failure to engage with the community after several warnings.

Nope that is not how it would work. For the most part organisms do not know what adaptations are going to work (and even with extensive research it can be difficult to tell). Rather what happens is that the conditions the organisms live in create so-called selective pressures. What it basically means is that certain genetic traits are more likely to reproduce than others. But different pressures can have different strengths. So let's say lack of sunlight is a strong pressure. Also assume that folks with more melanin (i.e. who are darker) produce less vitamin D are are prone to vitamin D deficiency. What fist needs to happen is that there are either already folks with lighter skin in the population or that at some point mutants arise with lighter skin. Let's further assume that this make folks less likely to reproduce so mutants with less melanin may be more successful in reproduction and over many generations the pool will be dominated by them. However, unless the selection is super strong, there is likely always going to be a mix. If a population is relatively homogeneous, more often than not another aspect is important, the so-called bottleneck effect. This is when there is a small starting population where drift can play a large effect, resulting in small population with low genetic diversity. This is one of the reasons why in Africa we have a large genetic variability compared to Europeans. On top of it there are other random effects which have nothing to do with geography. For example if a in a population no mutations for blue eyes occur (which is basically traced to a mutation in a single gene), there will never be blue-eyed folks.

Actually the most likely scenario are neutral mutations. In most species there is a large space where mutations happen, but nothing changes on the physiological level. In viruses and other condensed genomes mutations are more likely to have an effect. But due to the high production rates many deleterious mutations are not observed as they do not get transmitted or even out of host cells in the first place (e.g. if the particle is not fully formed). Those that have been monitored so far are, again, mostly neutral, though the latest research indicate a potential new mutation that could be more effective in transmission (though not validated yet). While this often happens, it is over a longer time. What basically happens is that if a less harmful strain emerges in parallel with a deadlier one, over time there is a certain likelihood that the deadlier version spreads slower (as its host keeps dying). After a certain while, the less harmful one may become dominant. However, especially in this case it may take much longer, as the death rate is not terribly high and especially among folks that are very good at spreading (i.e. younger folks) the symptoms are relatively mild. There is evidence that there are long-term damages to the lung, even among those that recover, but that is unlikely to be detrimental to its spread. Wait what? First time I have seen that. Is there an article about that that you could share? Edit: Looks like one of those viral social media thingies. I.e. more rumors than anything https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/people-collapsing-coronavirus/ Those things add confusion to the current situation which is not really ideal.

There a few typical routes folks take. One is publishing results in a journal (if not done already) but that is usually not enough, new methods are published almost hourly and it is difficult to stand out. Therefore companies often link up with research groups to test them under field conditions (so to speak) and have them endorse it. Ultimately, what you want is that they then use your products for their regular research and reference them in their papers. Smaller trade shows are a good way to get into contact with those groups (especially if you got someone with people as well as technical skills to go there) but larger ones are usually dominated by the heavy hitters. Visiting labs is often as good, if not better to build contacts. The first part should be validated with a critical sample. With eluent do you mean particles or the purified protein itself? Because a lower concentration can be problematic for some applications.

We are still in the same, so from that perspective nothing has changed. There were already a number of mutated strains out there, with most of the mutations being silent or most likely neutral. The article indicates a new functional mutation in the spike protein, which had fewer non-silent mutations than other sites (IIRC) as it is such a crucial element to establish infections. I.e. the risk really is that there may be a change in the transmission, though it is still a bit early to tell. At this stage changes in frequency can also simply down to chance (e.g. how fast an outbreak was recognized and stopped). But not to worry, we will get a new pandemic with something new soon enough, especially if we continue to fail to improve our response.

For large scale production I think industrial standards are limiting. Switching over a process is costly, and especially in pharma you need to recertify any change to the process. As a whole I suspect it would only be interesting if the cost savings would be massive while retaining all the other requirements. For smaller scale application, I think it depends a lot on the individual researcher. If they have established routine protocols and all their product is already cloned, chances are that they might not be very interested in switching. Doubly so if at least part of their work requires re-validation/certification of their work. For others, it may be more flexible but an important question then is (aside from the tag) the quality and work indeed comparable to established methods (often claims of purity/quality are inflated or best case scenarios). Are there downstream issues considerations due to buffer or particles being used? Also how much would one save per sample? New methods are in principle always welcome, but some folks (me included) tend to be a bit more conservative with regard to jumping on a new product. Over the years too many have been around promising great benefits which fail to materialize when used and at some point one sticks to something that works alright. Our time budget for trying out new things can be a bit limited.

Very strong "I got a black friend"-vibe.

It is also important to note that all extant species have experienced exactly the same time of evolution. Obviously with large variations in life span. I.e. the length of evolutionary time is not related to expected lifespan.

Generally speaking the CDC would be a good place to start- there have been some indications that the administration might have hampered their ability to communicate data freely. Youtube is probably the worst place as you can find conspiracy theories side by side with folks who may or may not know what they are talking about. "Serious" Newspapers such as New York Times have good articles and I would focus on long articles where they do some explanatory work. But perhaps others have better suggestions- I tend to get my info from primary literature, but that may a bit difficult or even confusing for laypersons.

I think you should divorce yourself from the idea that a disease goes a certain course. A disease is a harmful condition that is caused by some sort of agent. So you can infected by an agent e.g. bacterium or virus but depending on what happens, the disease may not manifest itself in you. How do we classify a disease? By monitoring symptoms. So if someone is infected (i.e. tested positive for presence of an infectious agent) but shows no symptoms, the person is asymptomatic or potentially pre-symptomatic. The latter just means that a person is positive for the agent, negative for symptoms at time of testing but may develop symptoms later (i.e. we only know in retrospect whether the person was truly asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic). However, obviously symptoms alone won't allow you to classify the infectious agent you have, as many may share similar symptoms. So if you have a cough and other symptoms that are associated with COVID-19, you should be tested. But there is no way to be sure what you have otherwise. In addition, as others have mentioned, being sick does not automatically mean immunity. Regarding face masks, the reason originally predominantly sick people were asked to wear masks was because masks reduce droplet generation and makes it less likely that others get sick. However, there is increasing evidence that asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic folks may also spread the disease at which point it becomes prudent to wear a mask even if you do not have symptoms. A big issue in the US is that they have politicized health. The severity of COVID-19 is now not judged based on data (as in most other countries) but based on party lines, which is just utterly ridiculous. In order to get info you will need to listen to medical experts. I will say that knowledge is changing for another simple reason. Since the outbreak there has been an unprecedented boost in research so we learn things at a very fast pace, which also means that some things we assumed to be true earlier may be changed rather quickly. Normally a consensus forms slowly over years of research. Now it is happening in weeks or even days and it is obvious that not all assumptions will be proven true.

Ken123456 has been banned for abusive behaviour and continued soapboxing.

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