20 Comments

For a moment I thought you were going to talk about that old Hollywood movie "Fantastic Voyage", where a ship and its crew are miniaturized to explore the human body. Nothing like that yet- probably hence the "Fantastic".

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Yes! today's reality is much more like this:

https://goatfury.substack.com/p/folding-the-future-the-art-and-science

(a conversation I had with someone who knows better)

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"I'm going to enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson."

("Or, depending on the type of virus I am, I'm going to enjoy watching you get a mild fever and a runny nose for a few days. Muahahahahhaahaaa!"

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I have received both a covid booster and a flu shot in the last 2 months, so hopefully any sniffles are very limited at my end. How are the cooties where you are, Dan?

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We didn't get the latest flu shots but had our Covid jabs + boosters (Ironically, I got Omicron days after my booster Covid shot - it was very mild.)

Generally keeping healthy and even our kids tend go get sick less than many of their peers. *Knocks on wood despite not being superstitious, by sheer force of habit*

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I need to knock wood too, but no covid for either of us here at home yet.

Have you had covid besides the most recent one? I'm glad that one wasn't too bad.

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Nope. Both my wife and I ended up having it only once, and only after our third (booster) shot. Both very mild, because it was during the days of Omicron, which was more contagious but also much less dangerous. I was basically back in action after just 2 days or so.

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That's good to hear! Things were pretty scary in 2020, and even on into 2021. I knew people who lost loved ones, although I seem to have dodged those bullets somehow. Alley had five family members die in total, and although she wasn't very close to any of them, the accumulation makes you stop in your tracks for a sec.

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Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that. That must've been rough for her. I can imagine all the Covid denialism and anti-vax sentiment was especially hard for her to hear.

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I think we are talking about curing cancer and other diseases using viruses as below:

https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2023/09/using-viruses-in-cancer-treatment

I always liked the idea. The human body varies greatly, so we must understand unintended consequences and long-term effects and how the body will adapt to these interventions. These kind of interventions sometimes remind me of the idiom:

Won the battle but lost the war

Whether we have solved the root cause or we have just band-aided to extend life for some more time, which leads me to one of my favorite books of all time: Being Mortal

https://www.amazon.com/Being-Mortal-Medicine-What-Matters/dp/1250076226/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=VTO173WRG25O&keywords=being+mortal+atul+gawande+book&qid=1707059994&sprefix=being%2Caps%2C73&sr=8-1

There is a time and place to do all these life-extending interventions, but we just should not apply in all cases. Extending life for a mother with two small kids is different from an 80-year-old person with the same disease and there is an emotional cost that impacts everyone involved, which needs to be accounted for.

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Good point: in addition to using computer viruses (ostensibly bad) to understand biological viruses better, we are also able to use biological viruses (ostensibly bad) to solve some vexing problems.

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I hope the same for me as the author of the below article:

“Why I Hope to Die at 75”

An argument that society and families—and you—will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly

https://www.law.wvu.edu/files/d/1f55427f-0bfc-4159-837f-9d9ca2971c69/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75-the-atlantic.pdf

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