Share your experience, tips, advice, questions…
As it seems most communities world-wide are going into voluntary or enforced quarantine that involves staying at home and avoiding physical contact as much as possible, I thought we could have a thread where we could try a bit of mutual support by cheering each other up over the next few days, weeks, months… Who knows?
I don’t know: suggestions on films to watch, books to read, gardening tips, exercise ideas
Usual rules apply plus a guideline. Let’s be kind and supportive to each other.
Corneel has already highlighted the goofiness of phoodoo’s conviction that “… the occasional fitness benefit of every mutation will be exactly balanced by a disadvantage in another trait?”
There’s another misconception buried in here, I reckon.
When phoodoo writes
I do not think that the repeated use of “you” is a linguistic shortcut. I believe that phoodoo is envisioning artificial selection by an animal or plant breeder. And a large part of phoodoo’s problem is that he cannot imagine (phoodoo) selecting for a multitude of traits simultaneously.
Simply put, phoodoo, natural selection is smarter than you.
Roughly speaking, that’s what has happened. Except that it is no longer considered to be a bacterium. Instead, it goes by the name “homo sapiens”.
That’s seeming more and more ironic.
I already explained why this is an even more ridiculous just so story for evolution. To actually believe that at the same time natural selection is selecting for the light sensitive eye spot, which early on your side says will provide just a tiny fraction of a benefit, but over time this we have an affect on the population, we then are expected to believe that a tiny increase in say the reproductive success of a slightly better lung capacity, or a slightly improved fingernail is happening also. A little tiny fraction of reproductive difference, and yet BOTH are being selecting, over a population which DOESN’T have that advantage! Then add 6000 other traits being selected as well (none of them contradicting!).
Oh my God, you all have zero amount of skepticism.
Do you all believe in trade-offs or don’t you? I thought trade-offs is why bacteria can’t become too good. But trade-offs don’t seem to bother the just so stories too much.
We have been trying to teach you simple critical thinking, but we can’t help it you refuse to listen in class Jock.
phoodoo,
Not so much trade-offs but the more general ‘constraints’. Not all modifications are possible, and not all possible modifications are adaptive.
A) Do you believe that genomes are infinitely malleable?
B) Do you believe that genomes are not malleable at all?
C) Is there perhaps some ground between those extremes?
Pick one. Teach us, O Critical Thinker!
Well, they exist.
And you would be wrong about that. There are physical limits, too. Ever wonder why there aren’t insects the size of hippos?
And we’ve been trying to teach you about trade-offs, but you seem to run away every time. Here’s an example from four years ago. Plus ça change…
ETA: ninja’d by Allan.
Isn’t it strange, how…
“You would be wrong, because there are others reasons too. ” And you understand English right? You know what wrong means?
Investigator- Did you shot the victim in the head with a gun?
Suspect- No you are wrong, I also stabbed him.
And you are going to try to teach something? When you don’t even understand what wrong means?
Now I see why you continually just link to old discussions, as if you won some argument-because you don’t understand the old discussions. Like the discussion about how the wind turbines were examples of evolution-even though in the model, the fitness function of what makes a good wind turbine is already programmed into the simulation. So it was actually an example of intelligent design, using a computer, and your side uses it as an example of evolution. But since you can’t seem to understand subtle differences of meaning, you just figure link it, and that helps your case.
Same thing you did with the M&M thread, where you needed 1 million generations to get fixation but you didn’t get that either. Same thing you did with the relativity thread where you started claiming that every kind of round and elliptical and dome shaped can be one shape in one thought experiment, and then from another observers perspective the shape is a bow-tie and other such nonsense, as if to defend the idea that a train can be both inside a cave and not inside a cave depending on one’s perspective-so that there no longer exists any reality at all-you know like crashing. But if there is no ultimate reality then the train doesn’t exist at all, and neither does the cave, and neither does crashing.
And then somewhere along the way, you pretend you are a teacher- a teacher who doesn’t know what the fuck they are talking about.
You don’t have the faintest idea what physical limitations exist that prevent a bacteria from being able to consume carbon life forms and wipe all other life off the planet. Not a fucking clue. Just utter nonsense.
You also don’t have a fucking clue about what limitations prevent insects from being the size of hippos. In fact, tomorrow we could find a fossil of a giant insect the size of a hippo, and you would say, well so what, its not a problem for evolution!
So don’t give me your crap about teaching anything. You don’t even know what the word wrong means. The only thing you are teaching is your own little fantasies.
Allan Miller,
What justification do you have for the notion that in order for a bacteria to be capable of consuming all other life on the planet, its genome has to be infinitely malleable? You don’t, so the rest of your point is meaningless.
In fact you don’t even have evidence that it would need to be extremely malleable in order to do so. The only evidence you have that bacteria can’t do this, is that they haven’t. You have no idea why. Jock has no idea why. So when you say its not a mystery for evolution to explain, by saying it couldn’t happen, you are just making that up. You don’t know that. I expect Jock to just make stuff up. Less so from you.
It needs to be relatively free of constraint. For example, it is not a trivial matter to evolve a protein that can digest cellulose or lignin. Not all can do it. Some eat the ones that can.
I know that bacteria cannot just do anything biochemically from whatever point their genome is currently at, which latitude they would need in order to to be able to consume multiple food sources and live in all environments.
Just pick one. You’ve rejected A, and I’d agree. That leaves B or C.
Even Fox News can’t believe it.
I hope Mung and others will come on here to denounce the US as a totalitarian dictatorship which is trying to suppress information and hide the truth about coronavirus.
Going from enhances/diminishes to “increasing/decreasing in frequency”? Oookay? That’s one hocus-pocus. “Must add up to 100%” is the second hocus-pocus. Please do not explain. It’s plenty entertaining already.
I’m sure you’re pointing to the end of the rainbow with pot-of-gold and leprechauns. But feeling lazy, I’ll let you go there and bring that gold back here, with leprechauns and what not. Use the hocus-pocus force young jedi.
Pathetic. Let’s go check on that topic. Yep, you still abandoned like a real “winner”.
I know, I know. Is it “evolution” the cause of all this? What do I win?
phoodoo,
While the federal government, along with many state and local governments, is trending dangerously toward authoritarian tendencies, I’m not sure it’s fair to call it a totalitarian dictatorship.
phoodoo,
Oh god, we have two people not understanding regression to the mean instead of just one. Things are getting cramped in here.
Nonlin.org,
It’s honestly quite troubling that you find “must add up to 100%” to be hocus-pocus. Let me explain to you in as simple of an example as I can: There are 10 apples. You have 4. This is 40% of the apples. The remaining amount of apples must add up to 100% of the total amount of apples, so there must be 6 apples remaining.
Honestly, are you in middle school?
If the frequency of one variant is 60%, it is a simple matter to show that the frequency of alternative variants must be 40%. If the first goes up, the other quantity must inevitably decrease.
Don’t be silly, there is no link between evolution and genetics. I’m wondering what you’re calling this phenomenon that isn’t evolution whereby a genetic change in a pathogen enhances its ability to spread.
It’s heartening to see him gain a fan. And no surprise to see who it is.
Allan Miller,
I don’t see gpuccio being referenced anymore, so there has to be someone who doesn’t understand evolution or math that ID proponents can barnacle onto.
Is it to do with the cube-square law?
I see they are calling it the square-cube law now.
DNA_Jock,
Not quite hippo-sized, but still humongous.
Alan Fox,
Yes, it is as a result of that. Basically, the issue is the respiratory system of the insect. They possess several long, extremely branched air tubes called “treacheae.” These are believed to individually feed oxygen to every cell within the body of the insect, and these generally only have a very few holes called “spiracles” to let air in. In essence, the trachea is a significantly less efficient system of air delivery than a mouth and lungs. As an insect gets larger, a proportionally larger amount of its body is devoted to tracheal space. This essentially limits the size of an insect based on oxygen composition; you will find those insects (and spiders of the suborder Araneomorphae) living at high altitudes to be quite small, relative to their lower-living brethren.
keiths,
It may be large, but it pales in comparison to Meganeura!
Thank you for the trip down memory lane phoodoo. The Special Relativity debacle remains my favorite.
Well, a griffinfly with a two-foot wingspan would not be a problem for evolution. In fact ‘we’ understand why they are no longer around pretty well. Something the size of a hippo would be a problem for our understanding of biology.
Just because you, phoodoo, are ignorant, does not mean that others are similarly ignorant.
keiths,
And the mighty six-winged Palaeodictyoptera!
Aaargh! Ninja’d!
Oxygen levels were higher in the days of big insects.
The arrival of birds on the scene also mattered.
I was careful to pick a hippo…
Schizophora,
I recall the huge insects around in the carboniferous would have needed higher oxygen levels than today.
Alan Fox,
ETA double-ninja’d
Ah, here’s a possible new data point. Iceland has a small population and has been able to test enough people randomly to suggest the level of asymptomatic infection.
If true, 50% is a bit alarming.
https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/iceland-testing-covid-19-0523/
keiths,
That’s just a really tiny kid.
Crap, I was just about to post something about the giant insects of the Carboniferous! More ninjas than you can shake a stick at.
Alan Fox,
50% would be brilliant news, actually.
Oh great! I was thinking it would allow the virus to spread more easily before being detected. Please correct my error!
Well, that’s possibly true, but it also means that herd immunity can be achieved with far fewer deaths (than we might have thought). What’s concerning – and puzzling – is the significant number of healthy youngsters dying. But I guess that might be reporting bias. Once you get to a million with a reason for test, there will be a few instances of rare complication, and the Guardian will be sure to let us know.
🙂
The bad news: efforts to flatten the curve will all be too little too late (except for South Korea…), since Missouri going “we’ve only had 300 test positive, let’s see how this plays out” is a recipe for disaster. (Yes, I know they’re past 1,800 already…)
The good news: the total number of deaths and the time to reach herd immunity will both be cut in half.
My hope: deCode are perfectly placed in Iceland to determine which alleles correlate with a good prognosis, and then genotyping patients may help allocate resources and guide treatment decisions.
Do you mean that lockdowns will be useless?
dazz,
No, I was exaggerating slightly for dramatic effect. Sorry about that. I mean that lockdowns will, almost certainly, be implemented later than they should be. The other side of the fact that the case fatality rate (and the “case ventilator rate”) is perhaps two-fold lower than many thought, is the fact that this virus is significantly more infectious than originally thought.
Lockdowns still have a valuable effect in flattening the curve. OTOH, ‘stay home if you feel sick’ (the standard anti-flu measure) will be quite useless.
DNA_Jock,
Oh, no worries, thanks for explaining.
I’m struggling with al this stuff TBH. I would have thought that a 50% asymptomatic rate in not too high, but what do I know.
No actually you have no idea why. But your ignorance is your problem and nobody else’s.
After the fact observation bullshit.
BTW, when you say an insect the size of a hippo would falsify evolution, whose perspective are you talking about? Because size and shape don’t actually exist, it all depends on the observer.
phoodoo,
Mating your argument with Bill Cole’s, we have a strange, impossible beast. If natural selection were true (you insist) a genome could arise that could change advantageously in any conceivable direction, unopposed by changes in any other, or by other circumstantial limitations. But Bill will tell you that genomes can barely change at all, because of the vast sea of disadvantage surrounding each protein sequence.
The Truth***, of course, lies between these absurd extremes. It’s C.
***Capitalised by auto correct, not me, but I rather like it so left as is.
Looking at Worldometer for Spain, I’d say there is reason to be optimistic that the situation is improving.
I’m struggling to get 100% behind their extreme implementations (fortunately I have no public health role, so me being wrong would have few real world consequences!). We’re conducting a bit of a social and epidemiological experiment.
I think people in general are treating the virus as if it were magic, rather than physical substance. This is driving the increasingly strident ‘stay home’ message being reinforced by internet warriors (who think that inserting ‘the fuck’ between the words will somehow assist compliance).
Transmission is by droplet, then aerosol, then surface. You need a threshold load to get ill, and the amount by which the threshold is exceeded has some bearing on the severity of the illness. This is why medics are getting it disproportionately; it’s not just casual exposure to the asymptomatic, but serial exposure to people coughing, sneezing and undergoing nebulising treatment, as well as simply breathing. It gets in the circulating air, and drops onto surfaces.
If we all impractically stayed indoors immediately, and avoided all external contact, the disease would fizzle out. But in the meantime, in any household with more than one member, there would be substantial cross infection due to rebreathing air and droplet contamination of surface. In apartment blocks, depending on design, there would be further cross infection through ventilation and repeat-touch, exactly as happens with cruise ships.
If, on the other hand, the asymptomatic were allowed out but strictly observed distancing and handwash/face touch protocols, the disease would again fizzle out, but with a reduction in overall infection compared to the model that beats us back indoors with sticks. The virus survives less well in the open, and its concentration in air and on surface is reduced by greater dispersal. Plus, exercise and sunshine are net benefits, reducing deaths from many causes.
Of course, as I’m impatiently told by the people calling me a fuckwit for expressing these doubts, the rules are for the ‘stupids’. But that can be tackled by better public education (I’d love to see a few more informative cartoons and a few fewer talking heads). And if the net effect of rules-for-stupids is more deaths and substantial economic harm, I remain to be convinced it’s the right approach.
(Sorry, long response to simple query!).
I guess the problem with asymptomatic infection is that though double the number of infected means a lower percentage mortality, you still get the same number of deaths. Also, unless lockdowns are rigorous, the virus will spread much more rapidly as “if you are sick, isolate” advice is ineffective if you don’t feel sick.
I don’t think that’s the case!
It has to be combined with distancing. But also, to the extent that asymptomatic people are spreaders, they are potentially spreading a milder version – even if the same strain, given that infection severity depends on viral load, people simply breathing, rather than coughing and sneezing, are theoretically ‘microdosing’ – doing their bit for herd immunity. This is, I stress, ‘only a theory’!
I meant 1000 is 1% of 100,000 and 0.5% of 200,000. If the disease is half as fatal but twice as many are infected, number of deaths is the same.
I spotted that use of “potential”. 😉
Yes, but it takes half as many deaths before the disease has run its course.
Just heard that someone I know in a nearby village who is herself very ill lost her husband to it last night. ☹ Best keep my theories to myself for now! Every data point on an epidemiologist’s graph is a life, and I doubt most people are in the market for anything but simplistic solutions.
An app has been launched which is attempting to track spread and symptoms in the UK. I believe a US version is about to be launched. It’s had 2 million downloads. There are inevitable biases – symptomatic people, and the younger demographic, are probably over-represented. But it is starting to gain some insights. One is that it supports the increasing anecdotal evidence that loss of taste/smell (anosmia) correlates significantly. In fact, this would be worth adding to those symptoms to be watched for when making decisions (to the extent that we are still allowed to). This anosmia seems unrelated to nasal congestion, unlike that often experienced with the common cold (suggesting that that anosmia itself may be unrelated to the associated catarrh).
Doesn’t that only apply assuming current measures won’t work and everyone has to catch it? You’re probably right.