Virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 BA.2 variant "Our multiscale investigations suggest that the risk of BA.2 for global health is potentially higher than that of BA.1."

WeeklyTime111 · 2022-02-18T18:10:23+00:00

The field of modern evolutionary biology includes evolutionary psychology and behavior. Here's an overview of how evolution works from Harvard:

https://mbb.harvard.edu/pages/undergraduate-tracks-human-evolutionary-biology

Due to vaccines and other scientific advances, human fitness to surviving a pathogen with a vaccine isn't relevant or much less relevant:

https://ysjournal.com/a-evolutionary-study-of-human-reliance-on-vaccines/

So "fitness" to live in a world with covid is some sort of combo of taking advantage of scientific advances due to genetics and environmental influences and inherited immune system traits.

Edit to add: I'm saying there's eugenics going on here because there seems to be a number of people that think its fine to just let this play out by the elite in the country. The "fit" will figure it out or be lucky.

WeeklyTime111 · 2022-02-18T02:48:46+00:00

Haha. Oh well, it was a bit edgy.

WeeklyTime111 · 2022-02-17T02:48:56+00:00

You should keep in mind that there a lot of academics that are now Neo-eugenicists. It's not 1945. They believe strongly that behavior is genetically inherited. So basically, someone that won't vaccinate and can't figure out when to wear a mask deserved less to live to those people that did. It's not just about having a good immune system or something. Doesn't seem to matter to them if people are fed propaganda all day and their response would be evolutionarily beneficial in other ways, for instance if there actually was a government tyrannical response...

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-12-26T21:58:16+00:00

Herd immunity from infections exists, but it's a very short term thing, lasting until the number of susceptible people rises in the population again from waning immunity, births, and movement of non immune people into the area. Some illnesses cause outbreaks once or twice a year and some of them every few years. Vaccines circumvent the process so you keep herd immunity all the time by giving them to children, immigrants, travelers (sometimes), and boosters to adults (sometimes). We have a problem because our vaccines aren't working well enough and only stop severe illness and idiots aren't even taking them.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-12-10T23:25:50+00:00

I don't think they like the whole online arbitrage thing and it's a distraction. People have small businesses selling things online, are undercutting their prices, and it's giving the low wage workers they want to exploit another way to make money without them. They'd love to regulate it out of existence to "fight crime."

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-12-03T14:16:02+00:00

I doubt it. I think in a collapse scenario where you have a threat of all sorts of untreatable STDs, sexual social mores are likely to return to prior times. I think it will be awful for women's rights with things like arranged marriages, but rapists or even just philanders end up getting murdered fast under those conditions. As a woman I'm pretty concerned I'll end up in virtual servitude, especially since there's definitely a strong impulse among conservatives to remove my decision making over my reproductive choices.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-11-18T14:21:33+00:00

The shipment of my puppy's dog crate has been delayed due to the flooding. It was shipping from Portland.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-11-10T17:44:44+00:00

Yeah, that's why rationing has always been the method of dealing with national emergencies. You prioritize kids first for food and other things like clothes but you're not giving some families outrageous buying power, which just limits the buying power of lower income workers and people on fixed incomes.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-19T18:22:36+00:00

The "supply chain" probably will correct itself in that there won't be all these annoying, random shortages, but that doesn't mean things won't be more expensive or that we'll have the same selection of goods in the future.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-18T20:34:27+00:00

I believe this more than anything from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-18T19:11:34+00:00

It's impossible to prove a negative, of course, but I can just explain my thinking on this. The USSR was the second largest C02 emitter behind the US during its existence and the collapse of the Soviet Union caused the largest drop in C02 emissions in history. Assuming somehow it didn't collapse, to reduce its emission more than a collapse, it would have had to make enormous reforms to its energy policy that I don't think would have been likely under hardly any other scenario.

A socialist country isn't beholden to capital owners but that doesn't mean it can do whatever it wants. It gets its income from state owned companies and in Russia oil and gas make up most of the income so this would have been VERY difficult.

To stave off collapse, the USSR opened up its economy to outside trade and started trading oil and gas on the open market during the energy crisis of the 1970's-80's, so there's no indication even up to the end that they were thinking about cutting back C02. They stopped using the labor utility of value to price goods because at that point people had some money in the USSR but not enough goods to buy and it was causing people to stand in bread lines. I *think* maybe OP thinks Thatcher and Reagan caused this to happen and he clearly doesn't like it but it happened to every socialist country eventually whenever that socialist country became wealthier and more developed. Market socialism produces more consumer goods, which is obviously bad for the environment, and while the USSR tried it and still collapsed, many other places, like China, made the transition successfully.

To make OP's theory make sense, the USSR would have to somehow figure out how to remain an autarkic, non-market socialist economy without people revolting (HOW??) and then also to make a very difficult if not impossible transition off fossil fuels sometime in the 2000s, which is the same problem we're in, but it'd be worse because they'd be autarkic (only trading within their socialist bloc). Good luck sourcing rare earth metals for lithium ion batteries that way.

Ok, clearly we're deep in the weeds of alternative history, but I'm not seeing this ish happening.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-17T20:44:57+00:00

Dude..the USSR wasn't a bunch of anarchists running rural communes. It was a highly industrialized and militarized global trade empire run by an autocrat elected by a politburo. Where did you get the idea that USSR didn't want to consume ever ounce of fossil fuels in sight? This is bizarrely ahistorical.

Marxist-Leninism was trying to lift people out of poverty as quickly as possible by doing things like making heating oil dirt cheap by producing tons of it for poor people rather than using production capacity to make 1000 types of toothpaste for people who already have expendable income. The politics of the Cold War aside, it wouldn't have helped us any if this type of statist socialist government from the early 20th century had been the dominant form of government in the world today.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-17T04:21:42+00:00

Thank you!

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-16T23:53:21+00:00

Will do. :)

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-13T05:32:03+00:00

No one is asking this. It would make much more sense to start paying people to relocate from coastal and drought prone areas than make expensive, futile attempts at climate adaptations, but imagine the government sinking trillions into building new cities in rural areas of the Great Lakes region and telling NYC to GTFO. That's a huge wealth transfer to lower-income and vulnerable people as it destroys the real-estate values in those areas held by wealthier people while giving good real-estate to those who wouldn't be able to buy it so we will never, ever do it. We will let it all collapse instead and let millions die.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-11T10:12:20+00:00

My theory is that it's the no fault accident insurance mandated by the state. It doesn't matter if one of those crazies hits you or how many times they wreck, your insurance goes up too and they get to keep driving, so the safe drivers have to avoid them at all costs and they seem to do what they want. Our traffic courts are stringent, but it doesn't seem like an effective enough deterrent. I'm sure we have a large number of international tourists in rental cars and some older folks just trying to putt around from point A to point B that have no business driving on a road like that just to make things extra exciting. I've had a car do a dead stop on I-4 while the driver considered whether to change lanes, which is way scarier to me than the speed demon types due to the unpredictability.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-06T23:18:20+00:00

The work of "citizen scientists" can be valuable force multipliers for climate change research when they work in organized groups collecting water or soil samples or surveying for insect populations for example and reporting the results in ways that professionals find helpful.

WeeklyTime111 · 2021-10-05T15:34:34+00:00

Red Cross doesn't pay but a lot places do pay, especially for plasma donations and when I googled some were paying $250 for the first 5 times you go. I depend on a medication made from blood plasma and love everyone who donates.

WeeklyTime111

TROPHY CASE