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The reason I understand why there hasn't been a 'Universal vaccine' for common cold is because there are more than 200 strains of Rhinovirus causing it. My wor
by Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
The reason I understand why there hasn't been a 'Universal vaccine' for common cold is because there are more than 200 strains of Rhinovirus causing it.
My worry is, COVID-19 causing SARS-CoV2 shouldn't become another Rhinovirus due to mutations from the large spread. There was a paper form China telling there has already been at-least one mutation in Wuhan; but the accuracy of that research is disputed due to small sample size.
Edit: Mixed Flu with common cold, corrected.
- im3w1l 7y agoYou have some misunderstandings here. Flu and common cold are two different things. Flu is caused by Influenza viruses. Common cold is caused by a grab bag of viruses, some - but not all, of which are rhinoviruses. There are in fact already coronaviruses that cause common cold.
- Abishek_Muthian 7y agoThanks, I mixed Flu with Common cold. I've corrected it.
- Taniwha 7y agoYes, it's a coronavirus that has learned not to kill its host - probably when it first crossed over to humans a lot of people died (at a time when people didn't move around much) but evolutionary pressure changed it to survive better by not letting its hosts carry it further
- im3w1l 7y agoThere are 4 of them actually. HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-NL63 and HCoV-229E.
- mkagenius 7y ago> but the accuracy of that research is disputed due to small sample size if we can't detect mutation, can we really tell other coronavirus from SARS-CoV2?
- adrianN 7y agoThe PCR test we're using was specifically designed to distinguish the new Corona virus from the garden variety.
- est31 7y agoThere is already a large amount of mutations of SARS-Cov-2: https://nextstrain.org/ncov https://nextstrain.org/ncov Most of them are irrelevant noise but some likely alter behaviour. The influenza virus is more inviting to evolution due to having multiple nucleoproteins. If multiple strains of influenza manage to infect the same cell, the virions produced will contain a mixture of the nucleoproteins. The process is called reassortment. Corona on the other hand has only one conneted RNA strand. This is only what I gathered from the internet, not an expert on this.
- Abishek_Muthian 7y agoThank you for that resource.
- mettamage 7y agoI'd like hear an expert speaking on evolution and how that might effect immunity and the behavior of the virus. So far I've only read [1] that wrote about Nextstrain. While he clearly did his homework with a group of people, you can read in the comments that experts think his conclusions about the mutating genome are a bit too strong. Too strong as in: it could be the case but you can't state that it is the case. [1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56 https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...
- kiba 7y agoIIRC, viruses constantly mutates. Just that most of the mutation are irrelevant to us.