4 ms·

The deadlier a virus is, the earlier it will trip alarm systems/panic. And as we've all learned in the past few weeks, in outbreaks days matter. The perfect vi

by _acco 7y ago

The deadlier a virus is, the earlier it will trip alarm systems/panic. And as we've all learned in the past few weeks, in outbreaks days matter. The perfect virus is balanced: just deadly enough. It's possible SARS-CoV-2 hits the sweet spot.

frutiger 7y ago
Natural selection is a physical process that is continually exploring the search space for exactly that sweet spot. The fact that it has been over a hundred years (equivalent to hundreds of millions of “lifetimes” for viruses/bacteriae) since the last pandemic of this proportion that affects humans is a clear indication that humans as hosts must not be all that valuable in terms of natural selection.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  No, it's that killing the host isn't a good strategy. There's dozens of viruses that infect us right good and mostly don't kill the infected. They are really hard to get out of circulation, which is 'success' for a virus, it continues to exist. Once we had the knowledge to do so, we destroyed smallpox in short order.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    Adding to this, that's why we see a lot of the really nasty stuff jumping from originally another host species. They evolved to not kill their host, but once they jump over they cause some systemic issue in the new host that they weren't originally 'intended for'. COVID-19, SARS, Ebola, AIDS, etc. all fit in this paradigm.
TheBlight 7y ago
>It's possible SARS-CoV-2 hits the sweet spot. Honestly, all sorts of things are possible at the moment. The truth is we don't have enough good data to really know much of anything. And in the absence of info everyone is free to arbitrarily prognosticate. For a forum that's generally pro-data it's somewhat disappointing to see it here.
- _acco 7y ago
  Just giving voice to the idea that there is a sweet spot. We don't have enough data to know if SARS-CoV-2 hits it. Or enough data to know where that sweet spot even is. (This seems like a very hard thing for epidemiological models to predict.)
hatsunearu 7y ago
It's natural selection all the way up. Anything that's not in that "sweet spot" is naturally selected away and quickly extinguished (MERS, SARS, Ebola, etc). We're basically breeding a bioweapon. Not that there is any other choice though. Food for thought.
- imglorp 7y ago
  Or in this case, selectively breeding.
- thomasz 7y ago
  No, we're causing strong selection bias towards something like the common cold.
dandelany 7y ago
I suspect the “perfect virus” adaptively speaking isn’t deadly at all - burning down a home your future ancestors could live in doesn’t seem like a good strategy.
- cryptonector 7y ago
  There are many perfect viruses in this sense. They're all around us and we hardly take notice, and they've been around. New viruses tend to be more virulent than old ones. And new viruses tend to get less virulent over time -- else they die out. Ebola's incubation, transmission, morbidity, and mortality are such that it burns itself out. The common cold's are such that... it's common. Covid-19's are such that it's causing massive economic damage even if the recoveries are V-shaped. Hopefully covid-19 will get less virulent soon though.
  - rbritton 7y ago
    To play devil’s advocate — a not insubstantial amount of the economic damage is self-induced. We could accept some degree of risk and the associated consequences to reduce that, but we have not for various reasons that are subject to debate. I suspect in hindsight we’ll find we have overreacted due to a lack of good information.
    - jbay808 7y ago
      I also suspect that some of it is just revealing economic malaise that already existed but was hidden, and this served as a Schelling point for it to reveal itself.
      - vanniv 7y ago
        No economy, healthy or otherwise can withstand being intentionally dismantled and the pieces burned to ash. If you order the world to stop production or trade for an indefinite period, poverty and depression is the only possible result, no matter how healthy the production and trade were before being stopped
jefftk 7y ago
Part of why SARS-CoV-2 is so hard to handle is the long incubation period, with many people being asymptomatic carriers and other people having initial symptoms that look a lot like much less rare diseases. Is there a reason to think we couldn't have another disease that worked this way but with detection being even harder?
WhiteSage 7y ago
What about HIV? 10 years "incubation" period and 100% mortality. If it was as contagious as the flu it would have killed almost 100% of the human population. Isn't it a scary thought?. It is not the only virus. Rabies, also has 100% mortality.
- rabryan 7y ago
  How has 100% mortality been shown?
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    From what I've read in the press, if you don't take the drug cocktail regularly, it's 100% mortality. I remember that first newspaper articles on the mystery disease in the early 80's. They were only 1 inch or 2 inches long and talked about mystery cases of Kaposi's Sarcoma at first, then mysterious pneumonia cases. Then a tidal wave of longer articles as it became an epidemic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaposi's_sarcoma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaposi's_sarcoma A former roommate of mine was a nurse in Toronto General's AIDS floor (or wing.) One day she said to me about her work, "All that crackling." The advanced patients' lungs crackle as the ventilator forces their lungs to expand and contract.

by _acco 7y ago

frutiger 7y ago

Natural selection is a physical process that is continually exploring the search space for exactly that sweet spot. The fact that it has been over a hundred years (equivalent to hundreds of millions of “lifetimes” for viruses/bacteriae) since the last pandemic of this proportion that affects humans is a clear indication that humans as hosts must not be all that valuable in terms of natural selection.

maxerickson 7y ago
No, it's that killing the host isn't a good strategy. There's dozens of viruses that infect us right good and mostly don't kill the infected. They are really hard to get out of circulation, which is 'success' for a virus, it continues to exist. Once we had the knowledge to do so, we destroyed smallpox in short order.
- monocasa 7y ago
  Adding to this, that's why we see a lot of the really nasty stuff jumping from originally another host species. They evolved to not kill their host, but once they jump over they cause some systemic issue in the new host that they weren't originally 'intended for'. COVID-19, SARS, Ebola, AIDS, etc. all fit in this paradigm.

TheBlight 7y ago

>It's possible SARS-CoV-2 hits the sweet spot. Honestly, all sorts of things are possible at the moment. The truth is we don't have enough good data to really know much of anything. And in the absence of info everyone is free to arbitrarily prognosticate. For a forum that's generally pro-data it's somewhat disappointing to see it here.

_acco 7y ago
Just giving voice to the idea that there is a sweet spot. We don't have enough data to know if SARS-CoV-2 hits it. Or enough data to know where that sweet spot even is. (This seems like a very hard thing for epidemiological models to predict.)

hatsunearu 7y ago

It's natural selection all the way up. Anything that's not in that "sweet spot" is naturally selected away and quickly extinguished (MERS, SARS, Ebola, etc). We're basically breeding a bioweapon. Not that there is any other choice though. Food for thought.

imglorp 7y ago
Or in this case, selectively breeding.
thomasz 7y ago
No, we're causing strong selection bias towards something like the common cold.

dandelany 7y ago

I suspect the “perfect virus” adaptively speaking isn’t deadly at all - burning down a home your future ancestors could live in doesn’t seem like a good strategy.

cryptonector 7y ago
There are many perfect viruses in this sense. They're all around us and we hardly take notice, and they've been around. New viruses tend to be more virulent than old ones. And new viruses tend to get less virulent over time -- else they die out. Ebola's incubation, transmission, morbidity, and mortality are such that it burns itself out. The common cold's are such that... it's common. Covid-19's are such that it's causing massive economic damage even if the recoveries are V-shaped. Hopefully covid-19 will get less virulent soon though.
- rbritton 7y ago
  To play devil’s advocate — a not insubstantial amount of the economic damage is self-induced. We could accept some degree of risk and the associated consequences to reduce that, but we have not for various reasons that are subject to debate. I suspect in hindsight we’ll find we have overreacted due to a lack of good information.
  - jbay808 7y ago
    I also suspect that some of it is just revealing economic malaise that already existed but was hidden, and this served as a Schelling point for it to reveal itself.
    - vanniv 7y ago
      No economy, healthy or otherwise can withstand being intentionally dismantled and the pieces burned to ash. If you order the world to stop production or trade for an indefinite period, poverty and depression is the only possible result, no matter how healthy the production and trade were before being stopped

jefftk 7y ago

Part of why SARS-CoV-2 is so hard to handle is the long incubation period, with many people being asymptomatic carriers and other people having initial symptoms that look a lot like much less rare diseases. Is there a reason to think we couldn't have another disease that worked this way but with detection being even harder?

WhiteSage 7y ago

What about HIV? 10 years "incubation" period and 100% mortality. If it was as contagious as the flu it would have killed almost 100% of the human population. Isn't it a scary thought?. It is not the only virus. Rabies, also has 100% mortality.

rabryan 7y ago
How has 100% mortality been shown?
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  From what I've read in the press, if you don't take the drug cocktail regularly, it's 100% mortality. I remember that first newspaper articles on the mystery disease in the early 80's. They were only 1 inch or 2 inches long and talked about mystery cases of Kaposi's Sarcoma at first, then mysterious pneumonia cases. Then a tidal wave of longer articles as it became an epidemic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaposi's_sarcoma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaposi's_sarcoma A former roommate of mine was a nurse in Toronto General's AIDS floor (or wing.) One day she said to me about her work, "All that crackling." The advanced patients' lungs crackle as the ventilator forces their lungs to expand and contract.