CharonY

Or you can also look into population density.

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Which is basically the situation as it already is. So much noise that the signal is lost (for many).

I think it has become part of regular media diet at this point. During the height of the pandemic we had a roundtable and a lot of the discussions were based on youtube videos. These videos are basically designed to make you feel that things are plausible or that you have learned something, without really conveying any factual information. And I think that very few folks are equipped to deal with it. I see that increasingly also among college students. It almost seems that folks around GenX and older millenials are a tad more critical, while social media consuming baby boomers and GenYers seem more vulnerable to believe the most outrageous nonsense.

I think the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that reality does not matter much anymore. What is one more person on that heap? In the olden days there may have been a discussion to be had, but at this point one might as well yell at clouds.

Actually studies show a marked difference in the causes of homelessness based on age. Those that became homeless at an older age (suggesting that they had security before), cataclysmic events seem to be most associated with homelessness. In younger folks, enduring household and other systemic issues (abuse, conflict with parents, neglect, being placed out of home etc) are more common. common. https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2009.60.4.465 That is to say, the pattern of elderly homelessness seems to be more heterogenous. I think the question is probably a bit vague, but there are likely studies looking at financial issues and the impact of social security systems in preventing homelessness. Edit: but I think there some level distinction that need to be made. There is evidence that buffer programs, where safety net provide fast financial relief have a big impact on likelihood of homelessness https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0833 However, some elderly have trouble adjusting to significant changes in their life that may not be financial in nature. In these cases, a supportive social environment or e.g. counselling might have a stronger impact to prevent further spiraling.

I would think that it depends a lot on the individual. We moved a lot when I was young, so for a while there was no real sense of a real home. My memory is quite detailed, though, mostly because it was fairly cold. I think studies suggest that elderly folks who become homeless often suffered from some event that makes them spiral into homelessness. I think some of the frequent factors include loss of partner or job.

To me it is interesting to me how different the impact is when you are a kid vs being an adult. Even transient loss of a home as an adult is a huge thing. However, as a kid you might not even question (too much) why you are sleeping temporarily in a garage, for example. I think part of it is because as an adult you see or imagine potential futures ahead (or lack thereof).

I have seen some data and I can probably dig out papers for more detail. But from what I recall issues regarding substance abuse is fairly high, roughly in the 70% range. The most prominent one being alcohol. Mental illness depends a lot on classification, as substance abuse can also be classified as a disorder, for example. But diagnoses like schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and so on are fairly high and most long-term homeless folks suffer from something. Which is not surprising, as such. If not already suffering from these disorders, being homeless is certainly making things worse. But you are of course correct, one should really establish facts (rather than anecdotes) before thinking about doing something that can significantly affect other folks. Especially if the thing is convenient for you but with unclear consequences for others. The mere thought that it does not affect oneself, makes it easier to go way overboard, resulting in unintended atrocities.

Interestingly, there is a fairly large body of literature at this point to figure out effectivenesss of Housing First, specifically for cases of mental illness and addiction. Of course the outcomes are vary widely, as the initiatives are very different in scope and set up. For example, some initiatives have centralized dwellings with access to counselling, others are just dwellings but may have stipulations that forbid use of illicit drugs. These initiatives also cover a wide range of ground, like focusing on transient homeless vs long-term homeless folks. Young vs elderly, etc. A Canadian study on mental illness and drug abuse for example, has shown that HF intervention in conjunction with intervention showed significant reduction of alcohol-related problems compared to interventions alone, but did not reduce illicit drug use, suggesting that other interventions are needed to address those. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2014.10.019 That being said, a follow-up showed that even in folks with substance abuse, overall outcomes improved with HF (just less than folks without). https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13928

I think that is also very true for other natural sciences, even if they are more conceptional rather than mathematical (as in Bio).

I was under the impression that while WIV had a BSL4 fairly recently, they did previously a lot of agricultural and environmental microbiological research, which would be BSL1/2. While I do not know their current organization, I would be surprised if they gave up all those laboratories. Edit: I got curious and checked their website, in addition to the BSL4 facility (from which leaks are highly unlikely) there are two BSL3 facilities (more likely, breaches happened in the UK) and 17 BSL2 facilities. Animal samples would likely be handled in those. So at least from the available information I do not think that we can conclude that the reports specifically refer to leaks from the BSL4 facility. Though admittedly, I have not been following the news very closely, as I do not think that there are a lot insights to be gained from this.

That is a good point and AFAIK neither report (FBI or DoE_ was made public, which makes everything a bit speculative. However, most public health folks I have been talking to focus on accidental leaks from low security breaches (i.e. from collections) and gain of function research was generally not considered one of the high likelihood scenarios. You are mixing up different metrics and I responded specifically to your comment that even now it is not that much more infectious. Taking your latter metric, which refers to the basic reproductive rate of the virus, Omicron is estimated to have an R0 of around 8-10, which makes it almost 10 times as infectious than its original variant. Some of the newer Omicron sub-variants are likely a tad higher, but it is hard to assess at this point as many folks have been vaccinated and/or infected. If you talk about likelihood of getting infected within a household (i.e. household secondary attack rates), you are more looking at metrics reflected by the effective reproductive number, which considers factors that may affect the likelihood of transmission (e.g. isolation, masking, vaccination etc.). In Omicron, the first wave had a huge infection rate, especially in areas which controlled the previous variants but after the first couple of variants, the transmission levelled off a bit (still hat a decently high rate), as transient immunity was gained in the population.

Eh, the Omicron variant has a very high transmission rate, which is why its presence is ubiquitious now.

Both values indicate different things. The 98% similarity is, IIRC based on comparing coding regions (genes) only, while the 2%, if accurate, likely refers to differences in the overall DNA sequences. Historically for prokaryotes we used 70% DNA-DNA hybridization similarity as a cut-off to define species. But again, the species concept is overall a very muddled one as is often applied differently, depending on the research question. What is this similarity based on. Total genome sequence, marker genes the percentage of shared genes, or...?

Yes, that is what the lab leak is all about. And John has mentioned the discrepancy between precautions between a BSL2 lab and wet market condition. While I consider a natural spillover more likely I will add two general points that might be in favour of lab spillage (I am going to ignore specific events as those are hard to link to a spillage in a meaningful way, IMO). First, BSL2 conditions assume that pathogens either are do not jump to humans (which is typically true for bat pathogens) or are not known to cause severe diseases and are not airborne (e.g. certain food-borne pathogens). So while security measures are vastly superior, they are not specifically geared to prevent airborne diseases with close to 100% certainty. Often, work is also conducted by graduate students with sometimes quite significant differences in quality of work. In fact there are reports where infections or spillages (e.g. improper disposal) have occurred in BSL2 labs (and much rarer also from BSL3 labs and even BSL4 labs) throughout the world, including UK and US that I am aware of. Assuming that the Wuhan lab did not have vastly superior protocols and controls in place, it is at least possible that something might have happened. That second is that the lab collected viruses, IIRC, so there is presumably a collection of a higher variety of viruses that you would find in the wet market. So as a whole (and compared to the artificial generation of the virus) it has at least a non-zero chance of happening. But again, I think most of the circumstantial evidence still point toward environmental spillage. If I speculate a bit more, I would actually assume that the early known clusters might happened significantly after the initial jump. The reason is based on the delay we had in detecting early SARS-CoV-2 infections through the world and where retrospective analyses of blood and wastewater points of longer circulation than previously suspected. Considering the initial fairly low rate of transmission (and uneven severity), I would think that it would be very hard to ever figure out when the first spillage occurred (especially it first circulated among young, healthy folks).

Of the virus. E.g. via accidental infection during work.

None of the groups are considering lab developed viruses as a realistic option. It is about accidental leaks.

I am not sure that during this pandemic (or any of the previous pandemics for that matter) lessons were really learned. We just keep on failing the class.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/who-deeply-frustrated-by-lack-of-us-transparency-on-covid-origin-data/ Even if such an assessment was weightier, the DOE's lean toward the lab leak hypothesis is still a minority view within the US intelligence community. Of nine intelligence community entities that have reviewed SARS-CoV-2 origin data, only two—the DOE and the FBI—have tilted toward a lab leak. Five favor the hypothesis of a natural "spillover" event from wild animals (four agencies and the National Intelligence Council), while the remaining two entities say there is not enough data to sway opinions toward either hypothesis.

Yes of course, but though I think getting certain things right with local nuances requires a lot of effort (but then it depends on how deep you want to go the authentic route). But I think that is a separate discussion to (happily) geek out on.

I think, that they do not assign probability, it is more likely an assessment of whether natural or wet market exposure is more likely or lab leak. The low confidence indicates that the evidence level for the decision is low.

As I am sure you know BSL2 is more enhanced than a regular 101 (which generally are BSL1). And most animal viruses work (that are not known to infect humans) are handled at BSL2 containment levels. FBI and DoE both are swinging towards lab leak as the probable source with low to moderate confidence (indicating lack of evidence), whereas four other agencies swing toward natural exposure (also low confidence) and three further which are undecided. So basically we do not know. I am not too surprised that FBI and DoE are thinking more in terms of lab-leak as they are more in tune with specifically these types of risk.

It depends on where you are, I think. Some restaurants have to have their ingredients delivered by specialized importers. While things are a bit easier specific seafood and certain vegetables can be rather tricky to get in high quality. Then there are of course specialized items soy sauces from specific brewers which you might not find in regular grocery stores and so on. There is also the topic of authenticity which often boils down to local family traditions (hence the cultural aspects) which sometimes is not well captured based on recipes you find. Also, certain dishes take a really long time to prepare and/or require specialized equipment. Not a knock on your wife, but contrary to what I stated earlier, when we go away from general cooking and are talking about specialties, there is often a skill gap due to preparing and optimizing dishes over years.

I think what folks have not realized is that our knowledge in functional genomics has turned the entire nurture vs nature debate on its head. In the past, there was often a kind of genetics first assumption, in which certain traits conditions etc. where often assumed to be genetic. If for example a certain ethnic group showed something different, genetics was a plausible explanation. This was also a reason why GWAS were eagerly anticipated and were hoped to reveal the basis for many diseases, conditions and traits. This has fizzled out somewhat, and our improved understanding of functional genetics (and its dynamics) played a big role in explaining why that is the case. Realistically and increasingly folks would actually provide more stringent evidence of a genetic basis (after all, we finally can do that) before claiming a strong genetic basis. At minimum, the basic assumption should realistically be both, with a bit more bias on the nurture side, when it comes to dynamic behaviour.