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Could it be the case that the least symptomatic variants of the virus will be the winning ones in the long run? I suspect that variants that do the most damage

Could it be the case that the least symptomatic variants of the virus will be the winning ones in the long run? I suspect that variants that do the most damage will be the ones quarantined and the ones that do least amount of harm (least symptoms) will spread faster. If so, will this virus just domesticate itself (or rather domesticated by humans filtering out those more deadly versions)? By domesticate I mean that it lives with us just like the common cold without causing a 10% dip in the stock market.

emiliobumachar 7y ago
The common cold definitely destroys vast amounts of wealth day after day, we just don't see a dip because it's regular and predictable, that is, already priced in stock prices. As to the question, yes, that can well happen. Note that we could also argue that the common cold virus has domesticated us. We're its cattle.
rolph 7y ago
i wish i could say yes, but i cant. in the short term, if a virus can replicate itself and pass on to another host , that will in turn transmit the virus,,, that means a success. if debilitating symptoms occur after transmission occurs then those symptoms dont influence selection, this is what happens with asymptomatic incubation and infectious states. this type of virus uses RNA to carry its code, and a property of RNA is that it is much more error prone than DNA so accidental variations in the code occur quite frequently. A lot of these variants fizzle out but some of them will chance across an advantageous change in the code. so we see a virus that passes through populations and shifts its codeing by being error prone. this can result in dynamic swings between dominance of strains over time, and lead to innovations such as high communicability, or asymptomatic transmission.
Symmetry 7y ago
That's normal. Diseases act as parasites on their hosts and its not in the best interest of a parasite to kill its host, or at least not quickly. That's what tends to make zoonotic diseases so dangerous, they've calibrated themselves to exist in an equilibrium with a host animal population but when they transfer to humans that balance is out of whack and they either are immediately wiped out by the immune system or they tend to overdo it and kill the host. COVID-19 seems to have "gotten lucky" in that it found itself with, from its perspective, a thankfully low lethality allowing it to spread widely. This can apply to bacteria even more than viruses, see https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accident-than-assassination https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accid... EDIT: I should say, though, that you shouldn't expect that to happen quickly. The selective pressure for COVID-19 to become less lethal is far less than it was for, say, MERS.

emiliobumachar 7y ago

The common cold definitely destroys vast amounts of wealth day after day, we just don't see a dip because it's regular and predictable, that is, already priced in stock prices. As to the question, yes, that can well happen. Note that we could also argue that the common cold virus has domesticated us. We're its cattle.

rolph 7y ago

i wish i could say yes, but i cant. in the short term, if a virus can replicate itself and pass on to another host , that will in turn transmit the virus,,, that means a success. if debilitating symptoms occur after transmission occurs then those symptoms dont influence selection, this is what happens with asymptomatic incubation and infectious states. this type of virus uses RNA to carry its code, and a property of RNA is that it is much more error prone than DNA so accidental variations in the code occur quite frequently. A lot of these variants fizzle out but some of them will chance across an advantageous change in the code. so we see a virus that passes through populations and shifts its codeing by being error prone. this can result in dynamic swings between dominance of strains over time, and lead to innovations such as high communicability, or asymptomatic transmission.

Symmetry 7y ago

That's normal. Diseases act as parasites on their hosts and its not in the best interest of a parasite to kill its host, or at least not quickly. That's what tends to make zoonotic diseases so dangerous, they've calibrated themselves to exist in an equilibrium with a host animal population but when they transfer to humans that balance is out of whack and they either are immediately wiped out by the immune system or they tend to overdo it and kill the host. COVID-19 seems to have "gotten lucky" in that it found itself with, from its perspective, a thankfully low lethality allowing it to spread widely. This can apply to bacteria even more than viruses, see https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accident-than-assassination https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accid... EDIT: I should say, though, that you shouldn't expect that to happen quickly. The selective pressure for COVID-19 to become less lethal is far less than it was for, say, MERS.