5 ms·

From 'tiger to wildcat': Coronavirus could die out without vaccine

16 points by mrfusion 6y ago

CydeWeys 6y ago
Lotta wishful thinking here. I hope it's true, but until there's actual evidence of it we can't act as if it is.
- jgalt212 6y ago
  It's not totally crazy, and the limited data on human coronaviruses has shown there is a tendency for them to mutate into less potent forms. https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other-coronaviruses-tell-us-about-sars-cov-2-20200429/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other-coronaviruses-...
  - tcbawo 6y ago
    It's already been demonstrated that the Covid-19 has mutated into becoming more easily transmissible. Perhaps there may be some scientific basis or physiological connection between being more transmissible and being less potent? Perhaps a stronger initial shock fires up the immune system to create a stronger herd immunity. This seems to have happened before, but may not happen with Covid-19. It would be wishful thinking to rely on it for setting policy. EDIT: This was making the rounds a week or so ago https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus-mutation-genetics-spike.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus-mutat...
    - gus_massa 6y ago
      > It's already been demonstrated that the Covid-19 has mutated into becoming more easily transmissible. Do you have a link for that? I remember some speculation about this, but they did't have a solid case.
nchase 6y ago
Article headline is misleading, the article itself provides more context and is less sensationalized. I believe that this is happening in NZ and per the article, Italy. But in other places (USA and Brazil come to mind) it’s a whole different story. Seems dangerous to suggest it could just die out, while cases are on the rise.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  Yeah, it assumes having a competent government that actually believes in science.
  - imchillyb 6y ago
    It also assumes, contrary to gathered data, that immunity lasts more than 3 months. There are now several studies that point to a short-lived immunity after fighting off this virus. So far, the community of virologists and immunologists are warning that there will be a 2nd wave, possibly a 3rd and 4th wave as well, of this virus. The reasons are manifold and not at-all to do with governmental response. No matter a government's response this is a novel virus, hey whaddoyaknow that's even what we're calling it, and it acts in manners that other viruses do not. Human bodies react to this virus differently than they do to other viruses. To claim that governments are to blame is being disingenuous at best, and an outright lie at the worst.
    - maverick2007 6y ago
      In case anyone reading this is like me and hadn't heard the 3 month immunity window news, here's an Ars article that does a pretty good job summarizing what it is and what it means: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/immunity-to-covid-19-may-wane-just-2-3-months-after-infection-study-suggests/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/immunity-to-covid-19...
      - lambdadmitry 6y ago
        Trouble is the article misses a very important point: that's just antibody (B-cell mediated) immunity. There is also T-cell immunity, which is harder to quantify so it doesn't get much attention, but we can be quite sure that it plays important role because many people who recovered from COVID don't develop effective neutralising antibodies at all. To recover from a disease like this you have to develop an effective immune response, so if it's not antibodies, it has to be T-cell immunity. Moreover, even for antibody immunity it's not the whole story, because it's normal and expected for antibody count to decline with time — we have memory cells that ensure rapid production of the relevant antibody when the same antigene is presented. It's basically the case of paying attention to something we can measure just because we can measure it.
kingkawn 6y ago
Even places that have successfully controlled the coronavirus internally remain vulnerable to new resurgences imported from abroad. It all started in a single market
- imchillyb 6y ago
  And according to recently published data, immunity may not even last 6 months after fighting off the virus. If immunity lasts no longer than a half-year, then there will be multiple new resurgences; it's a given.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Immunity is substantially more complicated than it's usually summarized as in the popular press - it's not binary and can't be fully measured through the amount of antibodies in blood samples. As far as I know, health authorities are still comfortable working under the assumption that substantial immune protection will persist for a year or two.
  - kingkawn 6y ago
    The breathless reports that antibodies fade out are absurd. All antibody production fades, but immune memory cells persist and if the infection is reintroduced the B cells will rapidly trigger an immune reaction. The way that antibody fade out is being portrayed as a loss of immunity is profoundly ignorant of the immune system. You would not want your body to be producing full scale antibody responses to every pathogen you’ve ever encountered as it is energetically intensive and would harm the ability of the body to react to new threats
fabbari 6y ago
"...probably due to a genetic mutation in the virus which has not yet been demonstrated scientifically." -- you can stop reading once you get here. It's not that hard to find out if there was a mutation in the virus, you sequence it and compare it. If you didn't find any differences it means we probably got better at handling COVID19 - IE: earlier hospitalization, better care - rather than a weaker virus.
- Amorymeltzer 6y ago
  I agree that you can stop reading, but not with your rationale. >It's not that hard to find out if there was a mutation in the virus, you sequence it and compare it. There are lots of problems with this assumption. Sequencing is pretty quick, it's not instantaneous or free. More to the point, sequencing a single virus from a single individual who survived doesn't necessarily tell you anything about that virus. You would need to sequence many viruses from many patients, and compare patient outcomes (while controlling for other factors) with sequence data. That is neither quick nor easy. Viruses can mutate quickly. From what I've read, SARS CoV2 doesn't appear to have a high mutation rate compared to other viruses more in the zeitgeist, but it's definitely much higher than, say, the typical mammal. That not only means that sequencing is harder, but it also means there will be multiple strains to compare. There isn't one virus: there are currently thousands (https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global) of genomes publicly available, so there's a lot to look at. Finally, the point the individual being quoted was making is that, after all that work, the best you're likely to come up with is "there are a handful of sequence changes that correlate to better outcomes." You haven't proved it ("demonstrated scientifically"). The reason you can stop reading here is that this is one person speculating, seemingly based off of anecdotal data. They have some authority and it's implied they are looking at a lot of data, but there are no hard stats or facts.
bronzeage 6y ago
I think the emotional pressure to latch onto optimistic / pessimistic news is too hard to make correct, objective conclusions about this virus. If it isn't backed by data, I'm afraid anecdotal evidence is too biased by the human behind them.
MilnerRoute 6y ago
Don't know if this matters, but Wikipedia classes this as a "hard right" newspaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph#Islamic_Extremism_and_Scout_Groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph#Islamic_Ex... I guess I have a worry that this is part of some larger editorial stance that tries to minimize the seriousness of the pandemic by cherry-picking the research that gets reported.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

16 points by mrfusion 6y ago

CydeWeys 6y ago

Lotta wishful thinking here. I hope it's true, but until there's actual evidence of it we can't act as if it is.

jgalt212 6y ago
It's not totally crazy, and the limited data on human coronaviruses has shown there is a tendency for them to mutate into less potent forms. https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other-coronaviruses-tell-us-about-sars-cov-2-20200429/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other-coronaviruses-...
- tcbawo 6y ago
  It's already been demonstrated that the Covid-19 has mutated into becoming more easily transmissible. Perhaps there may be some scientific basis or physiological connection between being more transmissible and being less potent? Perhaps a stronger initial shock fires up the immune system to create a stronger herd immunity. This seems to have happened before, but may not happen with Covid-19. It would be wishful thinking to rely on it for setting policy. EDIT: This was making the rounds a week or so ago https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus-mutation-genetics-spike.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus-mutat...
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    > It's already been demonstrated that the Covid-19 has mutated into becoming more easily transmissible. Do you have a link for that? I remember some speculation about this, but they did't have a solid case.

nchase 6y ago

Article headline is misleading, the article itself provides more context and is less sensationalized. I believe that this is happening in NZ and per the article, Italy. But in other places (USA and Brazil come to mind) it’s a whole different story. Seems dangerous to suggest it could just die out, while cases are on the rise.

hanniabu 6y ago
Yeah, it assumes having a competent government that actually believes in science.
- imchillyb 6y ago
  It also assumes, contrary to gathered data, that immunity lasts more than 3 months. There are now several studies that point to a short-lived immunity after fighting off this virus. So far, the community of virologists and immunologists are warning that there will be a 2nd wave, possibly a 3rd and 4th wave as well, of this virus. The reasons are manifold and not at-all to do with governmental response. No matter a government's response this is a novel virus, hey whaddoyaknow that's even what we're calling it, and it acts in manners that other viruses do not. Human bodies react to this virus differently than they do to other viruses. To claim that governments are to blame is being disingenuous at best, and an outright lie at the worst.
  - maverick2007 6y ago
    In case anyone reading this is like me and hadn't heard the 3 month immunity window news, here's an Ars article that does a pretty good job summarizing what it is and what it means: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/immunity-to-covid-19-may-wane-just-2-3-months-after-infection-study-suggests/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/immunity-to-covid-19...
    - lambdadmitry 6y ago
      Trouble is the article misses a very important point: that's just antibody (B-cell mediated) immunity. There is also T-cell immunity, which is harder to quantify so it doesn't get much attention, but we can be quite sure that it plays important role because many people who recovered from COVID don't develop effective neutralising antibodies at all. To recover from a disease like this you have to develop an effective immune response, so if it's not antibodies, it has to be T-cell immunity. Moreover, even for antibody immunity it's not the whole story, because it's normal and expected for antibody count to decline with time — we have memory cells that ensure rapid production of the relevant antibody when the same antigene is presented. It's basically the case of paying attention to something we can measure just because we can measure it.

kingkawn 6y ago

Even places that have successfully controlled the coronavirus internally remain vulnerable to new resurgences imported from abroad. It all started in a single market

imchillyb 6y ago
And according to recently published data, immunity may not even last 6 months after fighting off the virus. If immunity lasts no longer than a half-year, then there will be multiple new resurgences; it's a given.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Immunity is substantially more complicated than it's usually summarized as in the popular press - it's not binary and can't be fully measured through the amount of antibodies in blood samples. As far as I know, health authorities are still comfortable working under the assumption that substantial immune protection will persist for a year or two.
- kingkawn 6y ago
  The breathless reports that antibodies fade out are absurd. All antibody production fades, but immune memory cells persist and if the infection is reintroduced the B cells will rapidly trigger an immune reaction. The way that antibody fade out is being portrayed as a loss of immunity is profoundly ignorant of the immune system. You would not want your body to be producing full scale antibody responses to every pathogen you’ve ever encountered as it is energetically intensive and would harm the ability of the body to react to new threats

fabbari 6y ago

"...probably due to a genetic mutation in the virus which has not yet been demonstrated scientifically." -- you can stop reading once you get here. It's not that hard to find out if there was a mutation in the virus, you sequence it and compare it. If you didn't find any differences it means we probably got better at handling COVID19 - IE: earlier hospitalization, better care - rather than a weaker virus.

Amorymeltzer 6y ago
I agree that you can stop reading, but not with your rationale. >It's not that hard to find out if there was a mutation in the virus, you sequence it and compare it. There are lots of problems with this assumption. Sequencing is pretty quick, it's not instantaneous or free. More to the point, sequencing a single virus from a single individual who survived doesn't necessarily tell you anything about that virus. You would need to sequence many viruses from many patients, and compare patient outcomes (while controlling for other factors) with sequence data. That is neither quick nor easy. Viruses can mutate quickly. From what I've read, SARS CoV2 doesn't appear to have a high mutation rate compared to other viruses more in the zeitgeist, but it's definitely much higher than, say, the typical mammal. That not only means that sequencing is harder, but it also means there will be multiple strains to compare. There isn't one virus: there are currently thousands (https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global) of genomes publicly available, so there's a lot to look at. Finally, the point the individual being quoted was making is that, after all that work, the best you're likely to come up with is "there are a handful of sequence changes that correlate to better outcomes." You haven't proved it ("demonstrated scientifically"). The reason you can stop reading here is that this is one person speculating, seemingly based off of anecdotal data. They have some authority and it's implied they are looking at a lot of data, but there are no hard stats or facts.

bronzeage 6y ago

I think the emotional pressure to latch onto optimistic / pessimistic news is too hard to make correct, objective conclusions about this virus. If it isn't backed by data, I'm afraid anecdotal evidence is too biased by the human behind them.

MilnerRoute 6y ago

Don't know if this matters, but Wikipedia classes this as a "hard right" newspaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph#Islamic_Extremism_and_Scout_Groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph#Islamic_Ex... I guess I have a worry that this is part of some larger editorial stance that tries to minimize the seriousness of the pandemic by cherry-picking the research that gets reported.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]