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Is it possible that Covid has already evolved to be less virulent? Many a new (to humans) disease has started off unusually deadly, only to evolve to keep its

by klipt 6y ago

Is it possible that Covid has already evolved to be less virulent? Many a new (to humans) disease has started off unusually deadly, only to evolve to keep its host alive longer to help further its spread.

redis_mlc 6y ago
Possible? Anything is possible. But the current guesses are that the most vulnerable people already died, and less usage of ventilators or more steroids have better outcomes. My personal guess is that our testing methods still don't work reliably most of the time, since the Santa Clara dashboard has extremely low positives (2.86%) considering we had direct flights from Wuhan (and Shanghai) for 2 months after the first hospitalization, and indirect flights after that until even more recently. I mean, come on - one of the most contagious diseases, but only 3% positive?
zaroth 6y ago
I doubt it? I think changing demographics of the people being infected is a more obvious culprit. Hundreds of thousands of young adults (20-30) went out in very large groups over the last month. At the same time we've finally gotten better at actually protecting the elderly. This is the result; https://img.apmcdn.org/6b486323329122674a9b5fbfdcf2e51f9ad83f8d/uncropped/8e1875-20200626-covid-cases-age.png https://img.apmcdn.org/6b486323329122674a9b5fbfdcf2e51f9ad83... The younger demographic happens to be vanishingly unlikely to die, and highly unlikely to even be hospitalized, from a case of SARS-CoV-2.
rsynnott 6y ago
Not very plausible in the time period. It's more likely that we're not seeing a spike in deaths from the US spike in cases because it hasn't been long enough yet; the spike of deaths will be along in a week or so. Deaths within days of detection are fairly unusual. Also, the average age of cases has generally fallen (presumably older people are being more careful than younger people) and younger people are less likely to die.

by klipt 6y ago

redis_mlc 6y ago

Possible? Anything is possible. But the current guesses are that the most vulnerable people already died, and less usage of ventilators or more steroids have better outcomes. My personal guess is that our testing methods still don't work reliably most of the time, since the Santa Clara dashboard has extremely low positives (2.86%) considering we had direct flights from Wuhan (and Shanghai) for 2 months after the first hospitalization, and indirect flights after that until even more recently. I mean, come on - one of the most contagious diseases, but only 3% positive?

zaroth 6y ago

I doubt it? I think changing demographics of the people being infected is a more obvious culprit. Hundreds of thousands of young adults (20-30) went out in very large groups over the last month. At the same time we've finally gotten better at actually protecting the elderly. This is the result; https://img.apmcdn.org/6b486323329122674a9b5fbfdcf2e51f9ad83f8d/uncropped/8e1875-20200626-covid-cases-age.png https://img.apmcdn.org/6b486323329122674a9b5fbfdcf2e51f9ad83... The younger demographic happens to be vanishingly unlikely to die, and highly unlikely to even be hospitalized, from a case of SARS-CoV-2.

rsynnott 6y ago

Not very plausible in the time period. It's more likely that we're not seeing a spike in deaths from the US spike in cases because it hasn't been long enough yet; the spike of deaths will be along in a week or so. Deaths within days of detection are fairly unusual. Also, the average age of cases has generally fallen (presumably older people are being more careful than younger people) and younger people are less likely to die.