5 ms·

Question: if the virus completely dissapears in a few months, like other SARS variant, should we vaccinate the world population ?

by bsaul 6y ago

Touche 6y ago
Serious question, how could it disappear? It seems like as long as there are people close enough to infect, it will infect them. There are cases in warm environments. What am I missing?
- joe_maley 6y ago
  >What am I missing? delusion
  - standardUser 6y ago
    Accepting that we know still very little about this pandemic and how it will play out is the only perspective that is not delusional.
    - joe_maley 6y ago
      That was my point: it is delusional to believe that the virus will "completely disappear in a few months". User "Touche" asked what he is missing to be convinced that the virus will disappear: he is missing delusion.
- ianhawes 6y ago
  Previous pandemics (most notably 1918 Spanish flu) have “disappeared” in the sense that they had either exhausted the pool of hosts and had no natural reservoir with which to fall back on or they mutated to become less deadly or less symptomatic.
  - hesk 6y ago
    The Spanish flu strain (H1N1) circulated as the common flu until 1957 when it was replaced by Asian flu in 1957 (H2N2). However, it reappeared briefly as the Russian flu in 1977.
    - dragontamer 6y ago
      And then reappeared as Swine flu in 2009.
  - erfgh 6y ago
    How does mutating eradicate the non-mutated individuals?
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      In the Plauge Inc videogame, you can upgrade your virus globally by unlocking mutations. I think that might be where the popular misconception about mutations instantly weakening the virus on a global scale come from. In real life that can happen, but only in situations where it sits around in the population for years, so that it has had several "go-rounds" to sieve the best genotypes from the worst.
    - jansan 6y ago
      My personal theory is that lethal mutations or the ones that cause severe symptoms get detected and isolated where possible, while the mutations that cause only mild or no symptoms can continue spreading silently without anyone noticing. If both create the same immunity, the non lethal mutations will win. If this theory holds, testing only if a person is showing symptoms would be the right thing to do. Filter the dangerous mutations, let the other ones spread.
    - fspeech 6y ago
      A mutated virus that spreads faster gives immunity to the hosts it infects from the ones that spread slower. The hope is that the more transmissible strain is also less lethal.
  - Touche 6y ago
    Not in a few months.
whatshisface 6y ago
Obviously not, but why would it do that? It's already spread in a way that none of the other SARS variants have, which invalidates that part of the analogy.
- wyuenho 6y ago
  Global natural herd immunity could suppress the disease cases to next to nothing. The problem is there's a very high price to pay before we get there.
  - adventured 6y ago
    It's highly likely a vaccine is the only thing that will work. The virus would need to spread a lot faster globally than it has so far to accomplish that mass herd immunity before the people hit in the first months lose immunity and become susceptible again. At the rate it's going, the virus will still be raging in numerous parts of the world toward the last quarter of the year, just in time for influenza season to start up again in the northern hemisphere. It's the scenario where you persistently have cases in many parts of the world that are able to reinfect locations that have built up herd immunity previously (and then lost that immunity), so the virus just keeps going around the planet and you can't fully get rid of it. Whack-a-mole style. Perhaps very long-lasting travel lock-downs could isolate that risk somewhat, however I'm skeptical about that working effectively as the world is still super connected in terms of supply chains and transiting goods (and the people that move them), mixed with the nature of this virus (specifically how easy it is to spread).
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    The parent said "like other SARS variant," they were not talking about herd immunity. MERS and SARS-1 did not get anywhere near herd immunity, they were simply too slow-spreading to catch on. (I'm not sure if MERS can spread human-to-human at all, and SARS-1 was relatively slow.)
- bsaul 6y ago
  why is the virus already disappearing from all over europe ? If it's because of containment then it will reappear very soon since everybody here is starting to get out again. We don't know why viruses appear and disappear, but they do all the time, every year.
anthonybennis 6y ago
Is there any trend or metric we can monitor for sign of that? Like, average time required in ICU shortening, which may mean virus is weakening?
- kolinko 6y ago
  One thing would be seeing a significant mutation appearing in the wild, and noticing that people with that mitation have less symptoms. For covid, the mutations were minimal, which makes sense - the virus’ construction make it unlikely to mutate (unlike flu).
  - Touche 6y ago
    That wouldn't make the virus disappear though, it would make it less severe. Which is good! Hopefully that happens. That it mutates to the point of being significantly less deadly before a vaccine seems unlikely to me.
missosoup 6y ago
If it did disappear, sure. But it won't. Way too many infected all over the globe now, eradication is impossible without a vaccine. Either it will eventually infect the entire world, or we'll vaccinate against it. Those are the only two options at this point. Even if an entire nation managed to eradicate it via distancing, it would only take a single carrier arriving by any means from another country to initiate a second wave and restart the clock. Edit: I'm not one to engage in meta, but seriously, what the fuck is with the downvotes? Every word of what I said is casually verifiable with a quick google search and is not at all controversial. There is absolutely no way to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 without global immunity due to its exceptionally high R0 combined with the fact that it's already present all over the globe. The only two ways to achieve global immunity is if everyone gets infected and develops immunity, or everyone is vaccinated. Someone who's hitting downvote, please comment and explain.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  Third option: we fight it with drugs and we prevent / reduce hospitalizations, and it becomes a disease like every other.
  - zxexz 6y ago
    Vaccines will help with that, like with the flu.
  - missosoup 6y ago
    No, that's the first option - it will eventually infect the whole world no matter how much you improve outcomes or slow it down. Unmitigated R0 of SARS-CoV-2 is extremely high, we can't keep it contained with spreaders all over the globe creating micro clusters every day. I didn't say it'll kill the whole world, just infect. Many countries have already brought their case rates down to almost 0, and every single one that attempted to resume economic activity saw the case rates spike again, with many now re-introducing distancing measures again. This genie is not going back into the bottle. The first option is actually potentially more viable on a reasonable timeline than vaccination, especially if we manage to find some kind of effective therapeutics which reduce the ICU and mortality rates. There is however a potential issue, which is based on SARS data, immunity in recovered individuals only lasts 1-2 years. So unless there's a concerted effort to eradicate via immunisation, there's a measurable risk that SARS-CoV-2 will become a seasonal repeating wave like Influenza.
zxexz 6y ago
We're well past the stage where the virus may 'disappear'. Look at MERS[0] (which is still around) and SARS[1]. Compare that to COVID-19 [2]. I'd say the case for vaccination is pretty obvious, even if there is a lull in cases. Seasonal COVID outbreaks don't sound fun. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/World_MERS_outbreak.svg/2560px-World_MERS_outbreak.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Wo... [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/2003_Probable_cases_of_SARS_-_Worldwide.svg/2560px-2003_Probable_cases_of_SARS_-_Worldwide.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/20... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Total-cases-covid-19-who.png/2560px-Total-cases-covid-19-who.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/To...
- virusduck 6y ago
  To be clear, MERS-CoV has not had sustained human-to-human transmission as of yet, rather repeated, smaller transmission pockets. Also, dromedary camels carry it and repeatedly introduce it into the human population.
jmull 6y ago
> completely dissapears Seems unlikely. sars-cov-2 has proven to be much more difficult to contain than sars-cov-1. Even if it was contained and was greatly reduced, we'd face a substantial risk of another wave. Supposing we had an effective, safe vaccine with reasonable cost, balancing the risk and cost of vaccinating vs not vaccinating, I'm pretty sure we'd want to vaccinate. The last thing we'd want is another global shutdown in, e.g. 2022. In any case, this would be a wonderful choice to face, since it assumes covid-19 is gone and a safe, effective vaccine with reasonable cost exists.
rsynnott 6y ago
The SARS-1 outbreak lasted about two years. But if it _does_ vanish in a few months (sadly, this doesn't seem plausible), it would probably make sense to produce and stockpile a vaccine, if a viable one is found, but not actually vaccinate unless it reappears.
- jansan 6y ago
  Did it realy last 2 years? This graphic indicates that it lasted only for 4 months, then is was more or less over: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#/media/File:2003_Probable_cases_of_SARS_-_Worldwide.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    There were periodic outbreaks into 2004. Given how much more infectious this disease is, I don't think we'd call it 'over' if outbreaks were still occurring.
adrianmonk 6y ago
Without the testing capacity to know that it actually did disappear, the question seems moot. Maybe in one specific scenario, though. If the vaccine seems to have negative effects, and if the disease seems to have petered out on its own, then we could manufacture enough vaccine, then be ready to give it out if/when another outbreak happens.
travisporter 6y ago
I think if we can safely eradicate it, yes, but it's spreading much faster than the other SARS variant or Ebola. Maybe in a few years? Smallpox was eradicated in 1977, but we hunted it down mercilessly before we stopped vaccinating.

Question: if the virus completely dissapears in a few months, like other SARS variant, should we vaccinate the world population ?

by bsaul 6y ago

Question: if the virus completely dissapears in a few months, like other SARS variant, should we vaccinate the world population ?

Touche 6y ago

Serious question, how could it disappear? It seems like as long as there are people close enough to infect, it will infect them. There are cases in warm environments. What am I missing?

joe_maley 6y ago
>What am I missing? delusion
- standardUser 6y ago
  Accepting that we know still very little about this pandemic and how it will play out is the only perspective that is not delusional.
  - joe_maley 6y ago
    That was my point: it is delusional to believe that the virus will "completely disappear in a few months". User "Touche" asked what he is missing to be convinced that the virus will disappear: he is missing delusion.
ianhawes 6y ago
Previous pandemics (most notably 1918 Spanish flu) have “disappeared” in the sense that they had either exhausted the pool of hosts and had no natural reservoir with which to fall back on or they mutated to become less deadly or less symptomatic.
- hesk 6y ago
  The Spanish flu strain (H1N1) circulated as the common flu until 1957 when it was replaced by Asian flu in 1957 (H2N2). However, it reappeared briefly as the Russian flu in 1977.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    And then reappeared as Swine flu in 2009.
- erfgh 6y ago
  How does mutating eradicate the non-mutated individuals?
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    In the Plauge Inc videogame, you can upgrade your virus globally by unlocking mutations. I think that might be where the popular misconception about mutations instantly weakening the virus on a global scale come from. In real life that can happen, but only in situations where it sits around in the population for years, so that it has had several "go-rounds" to sieve the best genotypes from the worst.
  - jansan 6y ago
    My personal theory is that lethal mutations or the ones that cause severe symptoms get detected and isolated where possible, while the mutations that cause only mild or no symptoms can continue spreading silently without anyone noticing. If both create the same immunity, the non lethal mutations will win. If this theory holds, testing only if a person is showing symptoms would be the right thing to do. Filter the dangerous mutations, let the other ones spread.
  - fspeech 6y ago
    A mutated virus that spreads faster gives immunity to the hosts it infects from the ones that spread slower. The hope is that the more transmissible strain is also less lethal.
- Touche 6y ago
  Not in a few months.

whatshisface 6y ago

Obviously not, but why would it do that? It's already spread in a way that none of the other SARS variants have, which invalidates that part of the analogy.

wyuenho 6y ago
Global natural herd immunity could suppress the disease cases to next to nothing. The problem is there's a very high price to pay before we get there.
- adventured 6y ago
  It's highly likely a vaccine is the only thing that will work. The virus would need to spread a lot faster globally than it has so far to accomplish that mass herd immunity before the people hit in the first months lose immunity and become susceptible again. At the rate it's going, the virus will still be raging in numerous parts of the world toward the last quarter of the year, just in time for influenza season to start up again in the northern hemisphere. It's the scenario where you persistently have cases in many parts of the world that are able to reinfect locations that have built up herd immunity previously (and then lost that immunity), so the virus just keeps going around the planet and you can't fully get rid of it. Whack-a-mole style. Perhaps very long-lasting travel lock-downs could isolate that risk somewhat, however I'm skeptical about that working effectively as the world is still super connected in terms of supply chains and transiting goods (and the people that move them), mixed with the nature of this virus (specifically how easy it is to spread).
- whatshisface 6y ago
  The parent said "like other SARS variant," they were not talking about herd immunity. MERS and SARS-1 did not get anywhere near herd immunity, they were simply too slow-spreading to catch on. (I'm not sure if MERS can spread human-to-human at all, and SARS-1 was relatively slow.)
bsaul 6y ago
why is the virus already disappearing from all over europe ? If it's because of containment then it will reappear very soon since everybody here is starting to get out again. We don't know why viruses appear and disappear, but they do all the time, every year.

anthonybennis 6y ago

Is there any trend or metric we can monitor for sign of that? Like, average time required in ICU shortening, which may mean virus is weakening?

kolinko 6y ago
One thing would be seeing a significant mutation appearing in the wild, and noticing that people with that mitation have less symptoms. For covid, the mutations were minimal, which makes sense - the virus’ construction make it unlikely to mutate (unlike flu).
- Touche 6y ago
  That wouldn't make the virus disappear though, it would make it less severe. Which is good! Hopefully that happens. That it mutates to the point of being significantly less deadly before a vaccine seems unlikely to me.

missosoup 6y ago

If it did disappear, sure. But it won't. Way too many infected all over the globe now, eradication is impossible without a vaccine. Either it will eventually infect the entire world, or we'll vaccinate against it. Those are the only two options at this point. Even if an entire nation managed to eradicate it via distancing, it would only take a single carrier arriving by any means from another country to initiate a second wave and restart the clock. Edit: I'm not one to engage in meta, but seriously, what the fuck is with the downvotes? Every word of what I said is casually verifiable with a quick google search and is not at all controversial. There is absolutely no way to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 without global immunity due to its exceptionally high R0 combined with the fact that it's already present all over the globe. The only two ways to achieve global immunity is if everyone gets infected and develops immunity, or everyone is vaccinated. Someone who's hitting downvote, please comment and explain.

lbeltrame 6y ago
Third option: we fight it with drugs and we prevent / reduce hospitalizations, and it becomes a disease like every other.
- zxexz 6y ago
  Vaccines will help with that, like with the flu.
- missosoup 6y ago
  No, that's the first option - it will eventually infect the whole world no matter how much you improve outcomes or slow it down. Unmitigated R0 of SARS-CoV-2 is extremely high, we can't keep it contained with spreaders all over the globe creating micro clusters every day. I didn't say it'll kill the whole world, just infect. Many countries have already brought their case rates down to almost 0, and every single one that attempted to resume economic activity saw the case rates spike again, with many now re-introducing distancing measures again. This genie is not going back into the bottle. The first option is actually potentially more viable on a reasonable timeline than vaccination, especially if we manage to find some kind of effective therapeutics which reduce the ICU and mortality rates. There is however a potential issue, which is based on SARS data, immunity in recovered individuals only lasts 1-2 years. So unless there's a concerted effort to eradicate via immunisation, there's a measurable risk that SARS-CoV-2 will become a seasonal repeating wave like Influenza.

zxexz 6y ago

We're well past the stage where the virus may 'disappear'. Look at MERS[0] (which is still around) and SARS[1]. Compare that to COVID-19 [2]. I'd say the case for vaccination is pretty obvious, even if there is a lull in cases. Seasonal COVID outbreaks don't sound fun. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/World_MERS_outbreak.svg/2560px-World_MERS_outbreak.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Wo... [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/2003_Probable_cases_of_SARS_-_Worldwide.svg/2560px-2003_Probable_cases_of_SARS_-_Worldwide.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/20... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Total-cases-covid-19-who.png/2560px-Total-cases-covid-19-who.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/To...

virusduck 6y ago
To be clear, MERS-CoV has not had sustained human-to-human transmission as of yet, rather repeated, smaller transmission pockets. Also, dromedary camels carry it and repeatedly introduce it into the human population.

jmull 6y ago

> completely dissapears Seems unlikely. sars-cov-2 has proven to be much more difficult to contain than sars-cov-1. Even if it was contained and was greatly reduced, we'd face a substantial risk of another wave. Supposing we had an effective, safe vaccine with reasonable cost, balancing the risk and cost of vaccinating vs not vaccinating, I'm pretty sure we'd want to vaccinate. The last thing we'd want is another global shutdown in, e.g. 2022. In any case, this would be a wonderful choice to face, since it assumes covid-19 is gone and a safe, effective vaccine with reasonable cost exists.

rsynnott 6y ago

The SARS-1 outbreak lasted about two years. But if it _does_ vanish in a few months (sadly, this doesn't seem plausible), it would probably make sense to produce and stockpile a vaccine, if a viable one is found, but not actually vaccinate unless it reappears.

jansan 6y ago
Did it realy last 2 years? This graphic indicates that it lasted only for 4 months, then is was more or less over: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#/media/File:2003_Probable_cases_of_SARS_-_Worldwide.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
- rsynnott 6y ago
  There were periodic outbreaks into 2004. Given how much more infectious this disease is, I don't think we'd call it 'over' if outbreaks were still occurring.

adrianmonk 6y ago

Without the testing capacity to know that it actually did disappear, the question seems moot. Maybe in one specific scenario, though. If the vaccine seems to have negative effects, and if the disease seems to have petered out on its own, then we could manufacture enough vaccine, then be ready to give it out if/when another outbreak happens.

travisporter 6y ago

I think if we can safely eradicate it, yes, but it's spreading much faster than the other SARS variant or Ebola. Maybe in a few years? Smallpox was eradicated in 1977, but we hunted it down mercilessly before we stopped vaccinating.