wroehl

Comment Threads

• JohnS commented on Covid on Mars
  Charlie Stross @ 1260: This is one of those "nobody talks about" issues. What do you do with 70 year olds who can't live on Earth due to acclimation to Mars gravity. When the state pension was first introduced in the UK in 1908 it was a means-tested benefit available to over-70s. As mean life expectancy at adulthood was in the 60s back then, very few people actually claimed it, and those who did didn't live on it for very long. On the other hand, there was no argument over whether or not they needed it: poor healthcare and less...
• JohnS commented on Covid on Mars
  Pigeon @ 1259: Carousel! I'm guessing this is not a reference to the 1945 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II Broadway musical?...
• Robert Prior commented on Covid on Mars
  Logan's Run The film isn't bad, the books are better....
• JohnS commented on Covid on Mars
  wroehl @ 1264: "In 1935, when FDR signed the Social Security Act which set the retirement age at 65, average life expectancy was 60.7 years (that's why they chose 65, because most working people wouldn't live long enough to collect)." That's not how life expectancy works, exactly. Lower values of life expectancy are associated with mortality at both ends of the age distribution. So high levels of child mortality pull the expected value downwards. Once a person survives childhood their life expectancy is now more than the average for the population because they did not die at childbirth, or at...
• LAvery commented on Covid on Mars
  Interesting article about how SARS-Cov2 variants were observed to arise in a persistent infection in an immunocompromised patient. This is not about "long Covid". In typical long Covid, an acute SARS-Cov2 infection ends fairly quickly, but produces damage that has long-term consequences, causing chronic disease. Rather, in this immunocompromised patient an active SARS-Cov2 infection persisted for five months (then he died). He remained infectious throughout that time. What's remarkable about this case is that the doctors took samples throughout the course of the disease. And they saw the virus evolve in real time. This patient suggests the problematic variants we're...