3 ms·

I want to argue that the flaw in this is with the ability to find any strain that consistently causes only minor symptoms. If you infect a whole group of people

I want to argue that the flaw in this is with the ability to find any strain that consistently causes only minor symptoms. If you infect a whole group of people with Covid-19 then we would see a distribution of severity from no symptoms to lethal. This broad spectrum is really just it's statistical variance (whatever the underlying distribution really looks like). It is worth comparing this to things like SARS. The distribution of SARS symptoms would be pretty narrow - everyone gets really sick. So the variance for SARS is small compared to Covid-19. The same could be observed for influenza or rhinoviruses. The problem with a "milder" Covid-19 is that it might still have the same massive variance in symtpom severity. It might kill less people, but it would still be morally bankrupt to let it spread. In fact, it might be preferable to not reduce the mean severity, but just decrease the variance so it never gets nasty enough to kill without being immuno-compromised.

buboard 7y ago
This paper argues on the basis of symptoms that there might be a milder strain that has dominated some countries vs others https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.28.20036715v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.28.20036715v...
- dboreham 7y ago
  There may be other explanations such as past use of vaccines for other diseases, that varies country to country.
  - ImaCake 7y ago
    Yes. Or just variations in our immune systems. Immune systems are incredibly complex systems. It is difficult to overstate just how complex and varied they are. And they differ between individuals to an amazing extent. If immunity is important to symptom severity, it may manifest as some weird correlation you might find in a cross-sectional study. Maybe gluten intolerance or a history of acid reflux will be a marker that lets you know what your risk of severe disease are.

buboard 7y ago

This paper argues on the basis of symptoms that there might be a milder strain that has dominated some countries vs others https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.28.20036715v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.28.20036715v...

dboreham 7y ago
There may be other explanations such as past use of vaccines for other diseases, that varies country to country.
- ImaCake 7y ago
  Yes. Or just variations in our immune systems. Immune systems are incredibly complex systems. It is difficult to overstate just how complex and varied they are. And they differ between individuals to an amazing extent. If immunity is important to symptom severity, it may manifest as some weird correlation you might find in a cross-sectional study. Maybe gluten intolerance or a history of acid reflux will be a marker that lets you know what your risk of severe disease are.