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It wouldn’t be surprising for nCoV to evolve now since it has so many opportunities. For example, a strain which breaks the viral proofreading mechanism would d

It wouldn’t be surprising for nCoV to evolve now since it has so many opportunities. For example, a strain which breaks the viral proofreading mechanism would dramatically increase the diversity of new strains. That would be bad because a more diverse Coronavirus would become a moving target for therapies, and thus, an endemic disease, exponentially more lethal than flu. Just imagine the economic impact if this became an annual event. We’d have to get much better at treatment and distancing We designed a gene therapy for Covid19 but have yet to find a great manufacturing partner; if anyone knows someone who can do cGMP manufacturing of AAV, please let me know via email at bion at bitpharma dot com

bagacrap 7y ago
what does "exponentially more lethal" mean here? The lethality is not yet known, but whatever it is, it's a multiplicative factor compared to flu. I don't think there would be much economic impact if this were annual. The overarching impact would be a reduced lifespan in developed countries (by a small number!). We wouldn't shut down everything every year.
- bionhoward 7y ago
  What I mean is, nCoV is already shown to be exponentially more lethal than flu. If it becomes an annual event, that’s a major uptick in selection pressure
koheripbal 7y ago
The more complex an organism, the more a proof-reading mechanism is required. Enveloped Coronaviruses are complex enough that a break of the proof-reading mechanism will almost certainly also be fatal to the virus. That is why you're much more likely to see mutations in smaller simpler viruses like Rhinovirus - and why vaccination efforts are futile. ...but you are correct that this is a statistics question - at what number of infected humans, does the odds of a meaningful mutation occur? 10^6 humans? 10^9 humans? 10^12 humans? We don't really know.

bagacrap 7y ago

what does "exponentially more lethal" mean here? The lethality is not yet known, but whatever it is, it's a multiplicative factor compared to flu. I don't think there would be much economic impact if this were annual. The overarching impact would be a reduced lifespan in developed countries (by a small number!). We wouldn't shut down everything every year.

bionhoward 7y ago
What I mean is, nCoV is already shown to be exponentially more lethal than flu. If it becomes an annual event, that’s a major uptick in selection pressure

koheripbal 7y ago

The more complex an organism, the more a proof-reading mechanism is required. Enveloped Coronaviruses are complex enough that a break of the proof-reading mechanism will almost certainly also be fatal to the virus. That is why you're much more likely to see mutations in smaller simpler viruses like Rhinovirus - and why vaccination efforts are futile. ...but you are correct that this is a statistics question - at what number of infected humans, does the odds of a meaningful mutation occur? 10^6 humans? 10^9 humans? 10^12 humans? We don't really know.