Research-Pharmaceutical Inc.-healthcare providers, one big circle jerk.
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And how do figure that this out then? Researchers funded by grants maybe? Or should we just rely on opinions and GPs to take the odd note here and there.
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Well, back in the day, that’s exactly what would have happened. Doctors used to talk to each other, and the grapevine would eventually deliver some sort of consensus that something funny was going on that needed looking at. This would be reported back to some official at the department of health, and perhaps a couple of people would be assigned to co-ordinate treatment options and come up with some formal criteria for diagnosis. Yes, some researchers might be dragooned if it turned out to be something intractible, or to elucidate the cause, but generally speaking medicine forges ahead in a rather ad-hoc fashion, eg., by saying to the patient “try this pill and see if it does any good”. If someone finds out something useful then it tends to propagate back, or around.
Doctors still do this sort of thing, but they found out in short order that reporting something back to the government that contradicted official policy was likely to get themselves fired. So they stopped doing that.
You don’t need thousands of people all looking at the same thing. Or if you have thousands of people looking at it, you would expect them to at least have decided by now what it is that they’re looking at.
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That’s part of the process, but the obvious magnitude and complexity of the problem requires significant research which is going to cost money.
If governments were to sit idly by and only do things the way you suggest and it turns out we have a major heath crisis further down the line, the same people on here moaning about research spending would be the first to complain about the governments and health officials not doing enough - and I’m sure shoehorn a few conspiracy theories for good measure.
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OMG, if only they would just sit idly by instead of trying to fix things that they don’t know how to fix; then, perhaps, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.
Doctors know what they’re doing (or at least, when they don’t know what they’re doing, they still know more than politicians do). If they were just left alone to do their jobs they’d figure this out. I really don’t know why people think COVID is somehow so unique that only the skills of people with degrees in History and English Literature can save us. The tragedy is that those same people with History degrees didn’t use the skills that they actually have to prevent History repeating itself (…as farce).
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Meh, politicians sign the checks, scientists decide how funding is deployed.
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Academics do what vested interests tell them to do, and often produce the results that they’re told to produce (see Dr Andrew Hill for an example). IIRC there was a letter in the BMJ bemoaning this fact a couple of months back.
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Aaaand we’re off into la la land again. Sorry, but I’m gonna leave you too it.
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Are you seriously suggesting that you know more about the research environment than people who work in it? The people who wrote that article are liars? That Andrew Hill is not a real person?
I dunno, perhaps in your own field it’s all pure and untainted, but back in ‘la la land’ (aka the real world), research agendas are set by those who hand out the cash. It’s been like that for at least the last 20 years. And realistically it couldn’t be otherwise - we don’t really want (as you suggest) scientists just holding out their begging bowl for cash and spending it on whatever they like. This is not something that arrived with covid.
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Apparently EBV puts you at an increase risk for long COVID.
It’s only two weeks since I had the dreaded plague, but I feel fantastic. I’ve lost 2kgs and look ripped. In fact, all my friends who have caught it have also lost weight. Hopefully the weight loss stays long.
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Did your dick get any bigger?
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I see a golden business opportunity here.
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That’s the gain of function I could imagine the Chinese adding.
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Should I change your username to BiggerusDickus?
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I dunno, it’s a bit of a mouthful.
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That would be the point of having a BiggerusDickus.
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BigassDickus bucked the trend:
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He’s BiggusDickus, not BiggusBallus 
It doesn’t. All water weight probably.