Born 1976, studied chemistry, later PhD in molecular biology. Mother of the two girls.
What are the opinions now,with omicron being out there in some countries, and coming to others ? Our kids are 6 and 4 years old. The 6 year old had her second dose only yesterday, because our country was slow in allowing vaccination. The younger one is unvaccinated because there is no aproved vaccine for her.
I am very suspicious about statement that I cannot avoid getting omicron, unless I take extreme measures. Why ? Because I have heard the same about delta and it was false.
I have a friend in Germany, she teaches at school, where rapid antigen testing 3 times a week prevented the school transmissions. They know it, because if a child is flagged as a contact, they test them daily, so they have this feedback.
I pulled away my children (3 yo and 6 yo) from school and kindergarten and they did not get delta. The delta peak in our town did happen already. The kids also did not go indoors apart from our home and the granparents. Are these extreme measures ? In some sense yes, because it put a great strain on a relationship with my partner, I can feel he is dissapointed in me in a last few days. But from what I was told before about the terrible delta, I thought this might be insufficient ! We do not mask at the corridor in our block of flats, which contains 8 other families. Children can play outdoors with other kids. My partner did go shopping masked by FFP2, I went to work masked by FFP2 in the corridors.
My experience is, that preventative measures work. But if you believe, there is no point trying to avoid infection, you will get infected.
EDIT: Ouch, I was wrong. Apparently, there are many single nucleotide polymorphism, that come up in GWAS and which are NOT in protein coding regions. Non-protein-coding SNPs actually constitute 90 percent of stuff found in GWAS !!!
The other part of my argument still stands. There are other variations in DNA apart from single nucleotide polymorphisms, like repeats. And they would not show up in GWAS.
Previous text:
At a bioinformatic summer school, there was a talk, that humans and apes chimpanzees have very similar genes. And many scientists believe, that the most important difference between humans and chimps does not lie in the sequences of protein coding genes. Rather, it is suspected, that the regulatory regions are the thing that matter most. It may be more important how much of certain proteins is produced rather than what exactly those proteins look like. This "how much" question is regulated by other proteins, but also by weird things like how far away some genes are distanced from each other by non-coding DNA areas, how are the non coding DNA areas spatially folded. Some regulation is achieved by repeats, too.
So, duh, I am not surprised, that GWAS sees less genetic effects than twin studies. (RETRACTED PART The GWAS is focusing on protein coding genes almost exclusively.) It is focusing on minuscule point differences - single nucleotide polymorphisms ! It covers just a part of what matters in DNA variability.
Years ago, I have seen this book review on Bryan Kaplan's Selfish reasons to have more kids (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nzsHQzsvwLw6g4pyE/review-selfish-reasons-to-have-more-kids)
It argues, based on adoption and twin studies, that it is difficult to proove effect of parenting on almost anything. Among the rare exceptions listed, it is mentioned, that parents have "A small effect on educational attainment, but no effect on grades in school or on income". So to me, it was weird, that the book The Genetic Lottery focuses so much on one rare parameter, the educational attainment, that can actually be affected by adoptive parents. Why not study the grades or income instead ?
Thanks. I am not ashamed about correcting myself. Rather, the time that passed, since I know about the mistake and did not manage to correct it :-( .
If the method were used, e.g. in a food control lab, it could mean health problems to people, who have an intolerance to the food compound, our analyte. Because it would tell them, it is not there and the food is safe.
Fortunately, to my best knowledge, the method is not in use.
New separate article is certainly better than nothing.
Erratum or retraction are, for my conscience, better than a new separate article.
I wonder if there are other ways people deal with this.
I am in Duolingo learning French, and the one thing I am trying to keep is the "streak", i.e. the long uninterrupted chain of attendance days.
In fact, I am allowed to skip a day or two, if I pay by gems I earned before. (I also regularly earn more gems by constantly renewing the bet, that my streak will not be interrupted, which has a circular self reinforcing effect.)
I basically ignore the incentives other than the "streak", and it works well for me. I am at unit 21 after a year and most people I know did not get this far in any duolingo language.
Edit: The creators of Duolingo are apparently learning on the go, how to gamify the learning best. Since I started, the layout has changed at least twice. But, to my satisfaction, the "streak" thing is still there.