Ray1987

Ray1987 t1_iss0mje wrote

Reply to Boston University researchers claim to have developed new, more lethal COVID strain in lab - Researchers at Boston University added a spike protein from the Omicron variant with the original Wuhan strain, which has an 80% kill rate (in certain mice) by izumi3682

80% mortality rate. So I'm guessing the 20% that were left over probably weren't doing too great either.

If something like this got out you would still have a large portion of the population saying they know they will be the 1 in 5 that are okay. Not contemplating the being okay in that scenario probably at least means being on oxygen the rest of your life and permanently feeling like you're almost a hundred years old and probably the functional equivalent.

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Ray1987 t1_iqxbca4 wrote

Reply to comment by userbrn1 in Cambridge cancer breakthrough may prompt rethink of metastasis by Shelfrock77

I read the title at first and wanted to be cynical because every article I see about cancer claims to be a breakthrough when a lot of them are dead end and we just don't hear about them after more experiments show they're crap, only worked in mice and rats, or they run out of funding and can't continue that direction of experimentation for treatment.

But they have done a lot for cancer treatments, in my life time at least. Hearing people say they beat their cancer is way more common today than it was 20 years ago. From the available data from 2001 to 2017 cancer death rates in the US dropped 1.8% a year for men (so about 30%) 1.4 per year for women (so about 24%)

Even with the rates of cancer going up over all because of people living longer and also probably environmental factors with the older generations like leaded gasoline, the prevalence of cigarette smoking, ect., and probably other unconfirmed things causing cancer like microplastics getting into the environment. So even with that increase of cancer the fact that we've decreased the deaths by about a quarter is pretty amazing!

The news isn't going to advertise that much though because most people are not good with percentages and instead of the general public hearing we've cured and or treated 24 to 30% of cancer all the public is going to hear is 70 to 75% of people die from cancer. Even if they could explain it clearly for the majority of people they're not going to do that because it would be a feel-good story and they need you afraid to keep watching.

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