CharonY

Well, that is an entirely different argument. Going back to political preference, outcomes of the presented (and similar studies) suggest that there is not a big chance for Democrats to win over Republicans as their voting preference is not aligned with policies (which could be negotiated) but their identity. I.e. they won't vote for a Dem even if they had conservative policies. Rather it is required that the person identifies as a conservative, which, given the shape of the political parties would probably also require a switch of parties. So effectively it means that Republicans cannot be appeased, whereas Dems could be (in contrast to what has been mentioned before by JC, it is weird that folks assume that only the middle to left is able to do anything). The tricky bit would couch policies that seem to conform with conservative identity (like, say offer universal health care and call it "anti-obama act for health self-determination").

Generally speaking very high humidity tends to make breathing harder again, though I have seen ranges going up to 60%. One should also keep in mind that these values are relative values, which are dependent on temperature. What I am wondering about however is ventilation. Is it possible that the room is very dusty or has other allergens?

That is a very strange reading. What it actually means is that Democratic leaders have a higher need to promote policies that align with their voters, whereas Republicans have no such need. They just need to stick to identity politics (which could include encouraging vitriol to the voters to their left). I am at a loss how you came to that conclusion based on the abstract. I do have the full paper, so if you have specific questions I might be able to address them. One of the basis of the study is that previously it was found that Republicans tend to vote more frequently against their district opinion than Dems, but still remain in office. Fundamentally they found that among Republicans, voters want congruency with their identity, regardless of what they really want (policy-wise). For example, if asked whether they want access to health care (even to public options) they might answer in the affirmative (i.e. align positively with the issue policy-wise). However, being against the Affordable Care Act is congruent with their conservative identity, which seems to take precedence. I.e. if a policy-maker votes against ACA as a Republican (congruent decision with identity) even if their constituency is actually for it (incongruent with policy preference), they won't be penalized. With Democrats the effects lie more on the policy axis. I.e. incongruencies there will be more penalized than incongruency with identity. In other words, we do have an asymmetry in partisan preferences. I.e. for Republicans there is an incentive to follow voter's symbolic preferences, rather than policies. That in turn means that Republicans are more likely and easier to become a solid voting block which is mostly based on identity. That, in turn, explains why folks vote for policies which appear to go against their interests, it is a case where identity politics supersedes policy. Moreover, it also highlights why partisanship is likely not going away, there is much less incentive for Republicans to cross the aisle to get promote policies that may benefit their constituents, if it goes against their identity. It also kind of shows a blueprint for Trumpism, which was full-on identity politics with little to no policy and why especially Republicans may be receptive for it.

With regard to OP, there are several strains of SARS-CoV-2 and one of them (B.1.1.7) seems to spread significantly throughout southern England, which carries around 23 new mutations compared to the original strain. There is evidence that it is more contagious, and potentially more infectious to children than the original. There is currently no evidence that it impacts lethality or vaccine efficacy.

Unlikely. A virus has only limited features that would change their physical properties. Moreover even more complex bacteria do not appear to become resistant to physical disruption in any meaningful way.

I edited my post. to address that. Edit: Ack, accidentally edited the link in your post, too. Edit2: tried to put in the original faulty link so that it does not look as if you misquoted but I lost it. So whatever is weird with the link and quote, it is all on me.

I stumbled across an interesting article on US politics that investigates identity and policy based preferences in Dem and Rep voters, respectively between 2008-2014. The study suggests that Republican voters rally more around identity rather than politics, compared to Democratic voters. Edit: try this one https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592720003746 The reference is Cayton and Dawkins; Perspectives on Politics 1-15. Article is not free, but perhaps there are articles on the paper. Abstract:

I only skimmed the abstract, but with all correlation studies (especially those connected to lifestyle) one has to be careful to identify what the cause are. The authors conclude that radiation is a cause, but the study does not provide that data. Assuming that the data can be replicated (i.e. it is not a spurious correlation, which is common if you analyze enough categories), it is possible that long-term cell phone is associated with a lifestyle that leads to higher infertility. There are also other confounding factors that the authors may or may not have identified. However, despite these issues it does not mean that the reverse is necessarily true. I.e. that cell phone radiation has no impact on fertility. But rather that more specific studies are required to find a causal connection.

I think that is hype. I still do not see a path toward 200 years (above 100 with higher frequency is more realistic). There is an implication that frailty will also be delayed and I think I have seen that there is some evidence that quality of life has been improving for most elderly as a whole and dependency is pushed back a bit (but not uniformly and not everywhere). It depends a lot on lifestyle, though.

There are more folks on this forum who do not live in the US (or do not live there anymore) besides you two and I think their perspective matters, too. I myself have lived in various systems and still see a lack of symmetry in many claims here (and I think it is because I have experienced very different overton windows throughout my life). As such I would say it is not only the Rep vs Dem issue here, but also personal experiences.

While I think this is an interesting point, it is necessary to look at things more fine-grained than that. The reality is of course a mix of effects, some of which we have talked about earlier (e.g. voter suppresssion, status threat of white voters etc.). In that context I think two key questions are important. First, what are the proportion of voters who voted for Trump because they felt unheard, and second, why did they felt so? One issue as brought up earlier and which seems numerically the most predictive factor was status threat by non-whites. Folks felt that their way of living was threatened by immigrants. The swamp is just nebulous enough to include folks that are not doing what they want to see happening (e.g. fewer immigrants, a wall and similar things) as part of the swamp. In that regard Trump actually delivered. And in fact far from being disillusioned, Trump actually got more votes than in 2016. I feel that a part of the whole mess is that certain folks like to see themselves as victims, even while being in power. Issues like status threat arise from such a viewpoint, and I have heard repeatedly that especially white men think that they are not take seriously anymore, just because there is a push to have POC's also being heard. Personally, I find it very hard to navigate these situations for a number of reasons.

Actually no, the mechanism to how they are generated are so vastly different that it has severe impact on their effect and production. In short a RNA vaccine holds the promise of rapid vaccine development. Once you sequenced a virus you could just identify an unique stretch, synthesize it and put it into a lipid shell. An attenuated vaccine requires to cultivate and purify the virus, inactivate them in a way to render them harmless but still retain immunogenicity (which is tricky and takes a long time). Using parts of the virus requires again a genetic step but then you still have to express the protein in vivo or in vitro, purify it and then use the resulting product as a vaccine. Think about it that way, instead of raising a pork and roasting it, or even just cut off pieces of it (which is actually not a a good example, it is more like raising just a leg instead of a whole pork) you just take a picture of a hog, and then use the digitized information to print out something that you can just eat (yes, stupid analogy, but it is that different). All antigen production happen within your body now, instead of requiring to produce them.

Then my info is outdated, I only have heard of two more serious UK cases (but it was a few days back and I have not kept a close eye on it). But as you said, they all recovered. I am not sure about the flu vaccination, especially as not that many have been vaccinated yet. Aside from the mRNA the the ingredients are: Lipids (including ((4-hydroxybutyl)azanediyl)bis(hexane-6,1-diyl)bis(2-hexyldecanoate), 2 [(polyethylene glycol)-2000]-N,N-ditetradecylacetamide, 1,2-Distearoyl-sn-glycero-3- phosphocholine, and cholesterol) And finally some salts and sugars: Potassium chloride Monobasic potassium phosphate Sodium chloride Dibasic sodium phosphate dehydrate Sucrose In addition, the FDA has now released a report one the Moderna vaccine (which is also RNA-based) and is expected to be approved soon under emergency rules.

Worse than that, though. A cult has formed that actually think that the rampant corruption is for unfathomable reason great and justified.

So far there have been two cases of anaphylactoid reactions (i.e. similar display as anaphylaxis, but different mechanism) from which they have recovered. So folks with severe allergies are asked to discuss risks with their healthcare provider.

Yes, outside of vaccines, I was thinking about the fact that folks would promote unproven treatments and deride simple but effective measures. And technically, if we kept or distance for, say two months on a global scale, we would be effectively burning the virus out, too. But again, it is worthwhile to remember that even during the rollout, distancing and protection measures must continue in order to keep deaths down. We do not have sufficient evidence that immunized folks are unable to transmit the disease, for example.

Yes, potentially. The big issue is that there is often a disconnect between the biological effect size of genetic factors and how folks (including medical professionals and scientists) interpret the data. It has been hammered into our brain that genetic effects are huge, whereas in truth most of our knowledge now indicates that things are way more subtle, and/or way overshadowed by non-genetic factors. In fact, this pandemic has shown us that social efforts (including simple things such as washing hands and keeping distance) are far more effective in reducing death than putting hopes into miracle cures, which I feel is a somewhat related mindset.

The way your immune system memorizes an antigen happens on several levels and elements like strength and frequency of exposure play a role. However, there are also certain genetic factors (i.e. what types of antibodies you are actually producing) that might play a role as well as your overall status when being infected and/or receiving the vaccine. In other words, there is nothing fundamental in the mechanism of vaccination vs disease exposure that would allow a priori assumptions about length of protection other than empirical evidence. I.e. vaccines are applied under controlled conditions and based on trial (and further observation after release) we can provide rough answers about how long it will protect (and since the COVID-19 vaccine is so fresh, the maximum time we know anything about is the length of the trials at max). Exposure to a disease is undefined, however. You do not know the dose you have been exposed to or for how long or even when and how many times. So unless the disease is known to elicit a very strong memory effect (again, something we don't know enough about COVID-19) we cannot do any predictions. You have to remember, for most diseases and vaccinations we have decades of data. Here, we have less than a year's worth. Actually it is part of a new generation of vaccines which so far were not terribly effective. Instead of having an inactivated (or attenuated) virus, the BioNTech (as well as the Moderna) system uses just a bit of the genetic material (bits of mRNA coding for the spike protein of the virus). The idea is to introduce this RNA into our cells, they will produce and present the antigen for our immune system to recognize (i.e. it is a bit of a shortcut to for a process that is termed antigen processing and presentation). The big issue is that RNA is very unstable and is often degraded before delivered to our cells and therefore immunogenicity was very low. This is why folks think that the efficacy of the current mRNA vaccine is astounding.

The paper I had in mind was from Gietel-Basten et al. published in Plos one (2019). I think you should be able to find it by googling the name and journal. It is open access, but let me know if you have trouble getting it. I should add that there other papers trying to assess the potential environmental impact of the policy but I think most are making rather rough assumptions and have been criticized for that. This does not mean that there is no other lit around, I just did not come across it, which should not be very surprising as these is way outside my area of expertise.

First, I want to preface that often it is often problematic to assess policies on a single dimension. However, I cam across a paper a while ago, indicating that overall the population growth pattern in China might have not been that affected in composite. I should add that there is not a singular policy in China, but there were several approaches. The first in the early 70s encouraged later marriage and fewer children, which had almost immediate impact on fertility, and then the one-child policy enacted at the end of the 70s. The study that I have in mind argued that the latter had little impact on fertility and that overall the trajectory would have been very similar even without that particular (i.e. one-child) policy. If interested, let me know and I can try to dig out the reference.

Yes a number of facilities with -80C freezers (including universities) are preparing to receive and store shipments.

To be fair, some did a much better jobs than others, so if with the right message and mechanisms in place it is at least possible to adjust behaviour. We have learned a lot of lessons what does not work (e.g. just appealing to self-responsibility).

Hopefully folks realize that they still need to socially distance after getting the vaccine. Even if they do not get seriously sick anymore, they might still transmit the virus.

It is well known by now that COVID-19 in the USA has disproportionately affected Black persons and Hispanics (with deaths about triple the rate compared to white folks). As usual there are speculations regarding e.g. genetic factors but also socioeconomic disparities. A recent study looked at the reasons and found that the neighbourhood socialeconomic status seems to be the crucial factor. This further highlights how pervasive inequality endangers public health as well as highlights how addressing these inequalities could benefit it. It is also a cautionary tale to immediately assume a genetic basis when one finds ethnic/racial disparities in studies (something that only relatively recently has been embraced more by the scientific community).

Saiyan300Warrior has been banned (again) by demonstrating that he was not willing to change his ways.