![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what if it wasn't a mistake, what if they all thought having this group chat leaked would make them all look pretty
and they simply misread the audience
and they simply misread the audience
So, what's up with the similar COVID death rates between Republican and Democratic states in the US, I asked? It seems not to matter what restrictions local governments have imposed on their populations in the US.
"People don't like the government telling them what to do," he replied. Agreeing with my take that people frequently ignored state and local restrictions wherever they were imposed, regardless of who was in charge.
"People got pandemic fatigue, even states that did well at first saw their case numbers explode when people got tired of restrictions."
I do wonder whether it will matter how deadly the next pandemic may be, whether in the US we will refuse to contain it regardless, because "freedom". If it kills 10% of us, 50% of us. If my youngest brother's take will remain the same no matter how deadly the disease, "You can't blame anybody for a disease."
Yes, you can. People can change their behaviors to not spread the disease. Other countries have proven this. We can eliminate certain diseases if we're willing to make the trade-offs required, if we're willing to find and maintain the behaviors that reduce the replication factor below 1.0. There are dozens of diseases that we've virtually eliminated from the US via vaccination campaigns and other public health interventions. Do you know anybody who has suffered from cholera? We don't get vaccinated for cholera in the US, but we still don't catch it, because we've implemented the proper public health interventions.
I'm too public spirited for this country.
"People don't like the government telling them what to do," he replied. Agreeing with my take that people frequently ignored state and local restrictions wherever they were imposed, regardless of who was in charge.
"People got pandemic fatigue, even states that did well at first saw their case numbers explode when people got tired of restrictions."
I do wonder whether it will matter how deadly the next pandemic may be, whether in the US we will refuse to contain it regardless, because "freedom". If it kills 10% of us, 50% of us. If my youngest brother's take will remain the same no matter how deadly the disease, "You can't blame anybody for a disease."
Yes, you can. People can change their behaviors to not spread the disease. Other countries have proven this. We can eliminate certain diseases if we're willing to make the trade-offs required, if we're willing to find and maintain the behaviors that reduce the replication factor below 1.0. There are dozens of diseases that we've virtually eliminated from the US via vaccination campaigns and other public health interventions. Do you know anybody who has suffered from cholera? We don't get vaccinated for cholera in the US, but we still don't catch it, because we've implemented the proper public health interventions.
I'm too public spirited for this country.
He said, "I studied how this stuff works for 10 years and you want me to explain how it works in 5 minutes,"
Yes!
Here was my question: Why do we need a flu vaccine every year, but we only need the measles vaccine once as kids? Doesn't the measles virus mutate as often as the influenza virus?
It took awhile for Public Health Friend to get to my point. Yes, the measles virus mutates as often as any other RNA virus. But he wanted to explain the different survival strategies and host populations of the two viruses. He felt I was using his field's terminology too loosely.
But I'll get to my point. Both measles and influenza are RNA viruses and they both mutate a lot, on average once per new virus particle. But measles is built like a precision missile -- it is super infectious against human cells -- and so each copy of the measles virus either works the same or it doesn't. There's not really any room for mutations to make measles even better, or to change how it looks. It's too precisely-well designed for infecting human cells. Most measles copies don't work, because of mutations, but the minority of true copies are fuckin' powerful weapons.
But with influenza, it's more like spam. Not nearly as infectious, but there are lots of ways for influenza mutations to result in different-looking versions of still-effective influenza.
With influenza, changing its coat every season to avoid last year's antibodies is its well-evolved survival strategy.
With measles, having a super-effective precision infection skill is its well-evolved survival strategy, so it can't change its coat every season or it stops working.
So there are viruses that have a stable set of working copies, that we can easily vaccinate against, and there are viruses that have a potentially endless variety of working copies, that we cannot easily vaccinate against. Influenza and most of the common cold viruses -- some of which are coronaviruses, distant relatives of COVID -- have a potentially endless variety of working copies. COVID may end up being like influenza and most common cold viruses, with potentially endless varieties that can evade last season's antibodies.
-----
So what about HIV, why don't we have a vaccine for HIV, I asked Public Health Friend.
HIV is a retrovirus, a completely different category of virus -- "retro" meaning backwards, retroviruses work backwards compared to normal viruses, making them difficult for your immune system to fight. And HIV also specifically targets the immune system's cells, so when your T cells come sniffing around for HIV, the HIV infects them before the T cells can do anything about them, and blows them up. It's like HIV always wins the initiative roll against T cells and strikes first with a critical hit.
An RNA virus like COVID invades a cell and uses the cell's machinery to make new virus copies until the cell bursts from all these byproducts, releasing all the virus copies into the body. Retroviruses invade a cell and then copy themselves permanently into the DNA of the cell -- where they either lie dormant for a while, or they continually produce copies of themselves without destroying the host. Instead of bursting their host cells, new copies of HIV "bud" through the cell walls and then go looking for new hosts.
Your immune system cannot fix this embedded HIV DNA inside your cells. Your immune system is not designed to edit your own DNA. When your T cells look at an HIV-infected cell, it looks fine to them, there's no "virus" inside, only some updated DNA inside the cell nucleus. And your antibodies can chase after the new HIV viruses that are floating around in your blood, but they can't get to the embedded DNA inside your cells that keep producing new HIV. So antibodies for HIV cannot get rid of the source of the HIV infection. So a vaccine that produces HIV antibodies doesn't help much. HIV antibodies cannot cure you of, or even protect you from, an HIV infection, so producing HIV antibodies via an HIV vaccine is pointless.
HIV is also a slow burn infection. It can take years to ramp up inside your body. You can have this equilibrium where your HIV antibodies are cleaning up nearly all the HIV viruses that your HIV-infected cells are making, but over time a few of these new HIV viruses slip through the antibody net and infect new cells. Until finally, after years of this game, so many of your cells are making HIV that they overwhelm your antibodies and then wipe out your T cells, leaving you defenseless against secondary infections -- the stage of HIV infection known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
Scientists found other ways to stop HIV, via antiviral drugs. They can block HIV from entering new cells, they can block HIV from creating new slices of HIV DNA, they can block HIV from updating your cell's DNA with slices of HIV DNA, and they can block new HIV copies from budding out of infected cells. They can do everything to stop HIV from infecting and replicating except -- to cure your already-infected cells. There's no drug that can edit the HIV DNA out from the inside of your cells.
BTW, this is how Prep works --> by blocking HIV from entering new cells, and if that fails, blocking HIV from creating new slices of HIV DNA to insert in your cells, and if that fails, blocking HIV from updating your cell's DNA with slices of HIV DNA. But Prep doesn't kill HIV, it just blocks it from working until it dies a natural death. Viruses usually don't live for long inside the human body if they can't infect a cell.
-----
It is possible to design antiviral drugs that block other kinds of viruses. We already have antivirals that block influenza, and plenty of scientists are working on new antivirals that would block COVID. But there's always the danger that viruses will mutate around specific antiviral drugs, that's why for HIV infection you have to take a triple-drug cocktail for the rest of your life, to block HIV from having any chance of replicating inside your body, so that it cannot even mutate.
Fun stuff!
But it is way more complicated than my description. This is the 5-minute version. Go study immunology for 10 years if you want to know how it all really works.
Yes!
Here was my question: Why do we need a flu vaccine every year, but we only need the measles vaccine once as kids? Doesn't the measles virus mutate as often as the influenza virus?
It took awhile for Public Health Friend to get to my point. Yes, the measles virus mutates as often as any other RNA virus. But he wanted to explain the different survival strategies and host populations of the two viruses. He felt I was using his field's terminology too loosely.
But I'll get to my point. Both measles and influenza are RNA viruses and they both mutate a lot, on average once per new virus particle. But measles is built like a precision missile -- it is super infectious against human cells -- and so each copy of the measles virus either works the same or it doesn't. There's not really any room for mutations to make measles even better, or to change how it looks. It's too precisely-well designed for infecting human cells. Most measles copies don't work, because of mutations, but the minority of true copies are fuckin' powerful weapons.
But with influenza, it's more like spam. Not nearly as infectious, but there are lots of ways for influenza mutations to result in different-looking versions of still-effective influenza.
With influenza, changing its coat every season to avoid last year's antibodies is its well-evolved survival strategy.
With measles, having a super-effective precision infection skill is its well-evolved survival strategy, so it can't change its coat every season or it stops working.
So there are viruses that have a stable set of working copies, that we can easily vaccinate against, and there are viruses that have a potentially endless variety of working copies, that we cannot easily vaccinate against. Influenza and most of the common cold viruses -- some of which are coronaviruses, distant relatives of COVID -- have a potentially endless variety of working copies. COVID may end up being like influenza and most common cold viruses, with potentially endless varieties that can evade last season's antibodies.
-----
So what about HIV, why don't we have a vaccine for HIV, I asked Public Health Friend.
HIV is a retrovirus, a completely different category of virus -- "retro" meaning backwards, retroviruses work backwards compared to normal viruses, making them difficult for your immune system to fight. And HIV also specifically targets the immune system's cells, so when your T cells come sniffing around for HIV, the HIV infects them before the T cells can do anything about them, and blows them up. It's like HIV always wins the initiative roll against T cells and strikes first with a critical hit.
An RNA virus like COVID invades a cell and uses the cell's machinery to make new virus copies until the cell bursts from all these byproducts, releasing all the virus copies into the body. Retroviruses invade a cell and then copy themselves permanently into the DNA of the cell -- where they either lie dormant for a while, or they continually produce copies of themselves without destroying the host. Instead of bursting their host cells, new copies of HIV "bud" through the cell walls and then go looking for new hosts.
Your immune system cannot fix this embedded HIV DNA inside your cells. Your immune system is not designed to edit your own DNA. When your T cells look at an HIV-infected cell, it looks fine to them, there's no "virus" inside, only some updated DNA inside the cell nucleus. And your antibodies can chase after the new HIV viruses that are floating around in your blood, but they can't get to the embedded DNA inside your cells that keep producing new HIV. So antibodies for HIV cannot get rid of the source of the HIV infection. So a vaccine that produces HIV antibodies doesn't help much. HIV antibodies cannot cure you of, or even protect you from, an HIV infection, so producing HIV antibodies via an HIV vaccine is pointless.
HIV is also a slow burn infection. It can take years to ramp up inside your body. You can have this equilibrium where your HIV antibodies are cleaning up nearly all the HIV viruses that your HIV-infected cells are making, but over time a few of these new HIV viruses slip through the antibody net and infect new cells. Until finally, after years of this game, so many of your cells are making HIV that they overwhelm your antibodies and then wipe out your T cells, leaving you defenseless against secondary infections -- the stage of HIV infection known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
Scientists found other ways to stop HIV, via antiviral drugs. They can block HIV from entering new cells, they can block HIV from creating new slices of HIV DNA, they can block HIV from updating your cell's DNA with slices of HIV DNA, and they can block new HIV copies from budding out of infected cells. They can do everything to stop HIV from infecting and replicating except -- to cure your already-infected cells. There's no drug that can edit the HIV DNA out from the inside of your cells.
BTW, this is how Prep works --> by blocking HIV from entering new cells, and if that fails, blocking HIV from creating new slices of HIV DNA to insert in your cells, and if that fails, blocking HIV from updating your cell's DNA with slices of HIV DNA. But Prep doesn't kill HIV, it just blocks it from working until it dies a natural death. Viruses usually don't live for long inside the human body if they can't infect a cell.
-----
It is possible to design antiviral drugs that block other kinds of viruses. We already have antivirals that block influenza, and plenty of scientists are working on new antivirals that would block COVID. But there's always the danger that viruses will mutate around specific antiviral drugs, that's why for HIV infection you have to take a triple-drug cocktail for the rest of your life, to block HIV from having any chance of replicating inside your body, so that it cannot even mutate.
Fun stuff!
But it is way more complicated than my description. This is the 5-minute version. Go study immunology for 10 years if you want to know how it all really works.
government employees
19 August 2020 05:23Huh, there's about 20 million full-time-equivalent government employees in the US. That's about one of seven jobs in the US. I didn't realize it was that many. About 4 million federal, including both civilian and military; about 16 million state and local.
When you think about the government, you probably only think about President Trump, but there's 20 million of us. Two million soldiers, one million police, three million teachers, etc. I guess we 20 million are the Deep State, LOL. That's a lot of people to keep a conspiracy against the President secret. The bus drivers, school cafeteria workers, DMV clerks, road maintenance crews, park service folks, fire fighters, social workers, judges, prison guards, insurance regulators, museum staff, public health professionals, agriculture scientists, economists, Social Security administrators, revenue agents, district attorneys, traffic engineers,
Yeah, we're all in cahoots ;-)
When you think about the government, you probably only think about President Trump, but there's 20 million of us. Two million soldiers, one million police, three million teachers, etc. I guess we 20 million are the Deep State, LOL. That's a lot of people to keep a conspiracy against the President secret. The bus drivers, school cafeteria workers, DMV clerks, road maintenance crews, park service folks, fire fighters, social workers, judges, prison guards, insurance regulators, museum staff, public health professionals, agriculture scientists, economists, Social Security administrators, revenue agents, district attorneys, traffic engineers,
Yeah, we're all in cahoots ;-)
The national average annual wage of a police officer is $67,600, according to the BLS, a little over $15,000 more than average annual salary for all occupations, $51,960.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2020/04/23/police-officer-salary-state
It's only a bit more than the average high school teacher salary of $61,660, although most teachers get summers off.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/high-school-teachers.htm
These are public service jobs that place you in the middle class in the US, you won't get rich doing them. Teachers don't decide what is taught in school, police don't decide what the laws are. They have some discretion in how they do their jobs, but they have supervisors and rules to follow. They are often represented by labor unions, which I think is a good thing, even though there's some criticism of police labor unions on the Left these days. Lots of criticism of police in general on the Left these days, some even say they want to Abolish the Police -- which would throw about a million middle-class men and women out of their jobs, through no fault of their own.
Although I also work for the government, I'm a supervising attorney, so I'm paid significantly more than these other public servants. So are many of my friends, I tend to have friends who make more than the average wage in the US; most of the people who I'm keeping track of during quarantine make more than police officers or teachers, although many of my friends and family are teachers.
Strange that I have several friends and family who are teachers, but none who are police officers. It's as though police officers come from a different world. I simply don't know any of them. I did have a friend who was studying criminal justice and interned with a police force, I remember helping him with some of his assignments, because I'm a lawyer, stuff like preparing affidavits in support of search warrants. But he ended up finding much more lucrative employment in private sector security operations.
Something to consider -- a lot of your public servants could make a lot more money working in the private sector. Ideally, the Left would make common cause with public servants, such as police officers and soldiers. At least these public servants aren't working directly for the capitalists, they aren't motivated by profit, and many of them are willing to lay down their lives in sacrifice for what they believe is the common good.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2020/04/23/police-officer-salary-state
It's only a bit more than the average high school teacher salary of $61,660, although most teachers get summers off.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/high-school-teachers.htm
These are public service jobs that place you in the middle class in the US, you won't get rich doing them. Teachers don't decide what is taught in school, police don't decide what the laws are. They have some discretion in how they do their jobs, but they have supervisors and rules to follow. They are often represented by labor unions, which I think is a good thing, even though there's some criticism of police labor unions on the Left these days. Lots of criticism of police in general on the Left these days, some even say they want to Abolish the Police -- which would throw about a million middle-class men and women out of their jobs, through no fault of their own.
Although I also work for the government, I'm a supervising attorney, so I'm paid significantly more than these other public servants. So are many of my friends, I tend to have friends who make more than the average wage in the US; most of the people who I'm keeping track of during quarantine make more than police officers or teachers, although many of my friends and family are teachers.
Strange that I have several friends and family who are teachers, but none who are police officers. It's as though police officers come from a different world. I simply don't know any of them. I did have a friend who was studying criminal justice and interned with a police force, I remember helping him with some of his assignments, because I'm a lawyer, stuff like preparing affidavits in support of search warrants. But he ended up finding much more lucrative employment in private sector security operations.
Something to consider -- a lot of your public servants could make a lot more money working in the private sector. Ideally, the Left would make common cause with public servants, such as police officers and soldiers. At least these public servants aren't working directly for the capitalists, they aren't motivated by profit, and many of them are willing to lay down their lives in sacrifice for what they believe is the common good.
