5 ms·

This is one of the serious dangers with the idea of letting the virus run wild to achieve herd immunity: you create a lot of animal reservoirs. Though minks do

by graeme 6y ago

This is one of the serious dangers with the idea of letting the virus run wild to achieve herd immunity: you create a lot of animal reservoirs. Though minks do seek way riskier than average.

abeppu 6y ago
Why are minks riskier than average? Is it because of biological similarity (but then, there are lots of other mammals), or because of the conditions they're kept in? Naively, I might have just expected that cows or pigs or sheep would be the highest risks in aggregate, just because of numbers.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  The respiratory systems of Mustelidae are similar enough to humans that they easily can become a reservoir for human disease or vector for cross-species transmission. We’ve used ferrets in all kinds of respiratory disease research for this reason (particularly flu studies). https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/6/17-2114_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/6/17-2114_article You’re right about livestock more generally though. Avian and swine livestock also pose a huge risk for pandemic disease. But Mustelidae do as well.
- _Microft 6y ago
  I don't know why but it seems that in minks SARS-Cov-2 mutates a lot more frequently than it does in humans. This would mean a lot of new strains that we would not know how to detect or deal with.
  - mercer 6y ago
    Yup. I mean, put humans in fecal-infested close confinement in numbers of 10.000s and see what happens. Big petry dish.
    - _Microft 6y ago
      From what I remember it sounded rather that the virus mutated faster in ferrets, not just because of their environment. I cannot find a source for it, so I might have misunderstood.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  > Why are minks riskier than average? Minks are closely related with Ferrets, one of the "not really rare" but "neither really uncommon" domestic pets. Domesticated ferrets communicate by licking and gently biting humans and other ferrets, and live in the same room as us.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Pigs tend to be a high risk due to both their proximity to humans, and because they’re genetically close enough to use that they’re a disease transmission risk. It’s believed that the 1918 flu pandemic mutated in a pig before hopping back to the first human victim.
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    There's also another factor to consider in interspecies infections. Over-fitting. A virus "trained" on multiple species is targeting biology that is ubiquitous in higher life. The wider range of species a disease can infect, the less likely an individual member of a species is to have genetic variation that leaves it not susceptible to the disease, and the worse an outbreak is likely to be.
Devils-Avocado 6y ago
I would consider it the danger of lockdown. We guarantee that the virus is still festering somewhere on the planet, and that vulnerable populations remain around the world, risking flareups. With zero response - ie. what we do for influenza - we establish herd immunity over a short, sharp period, and the virus immediately falls over. In any case, even if this mink-mutant variant is slightly deadlier, the data from Sweden shows that COVID deaths can be effectively reduced to near-zero from basic herd immunity strategies - Sweden yesterday recorded a single COVID death. So it makes sense to adopt the Swedish approach now, for a variant of the virus we know how to treat.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  >I would consider it the danger of lockdown. You would be objectively wrong? Basic reasoning would tell you that places with less cases have a lower probability of transmitting the disease to animal reservoirs and risking harmful mutations coming back at us. >With zero response - ie. what we do for influenza - we establish herd immunity over a short, sharp period, and the virus immediately falls over. This is also incorrect? We take a number of proactive actions against the flu every year, from vaccination, to other public health and treatment measures, to even more drastic steps like culling livestock populations where more dangerous strains have emerged. >So it makes sense to adopt the Swedish approach now, for a variant of the virus we know how to treat. We don't actually have any idea about the consequences of this mutation, especially in a larger population, so we should do the exact opposite and proceed with extreme caution until its risk profile is understood.
- vecinu 6y ago
  You mention the IFR but what about the long term implications of so many people catching COVID and having reduced lung capacity or long term damage? Can we please address this fact that scares a lot of us? We already know the death rate is low for groups that are not at risk but it seems even healthy people are suffering from "long COVID" with serious long term implications.
  - timr 6y ago
    "what about the long term implications of so many people catching COVID and having reduced lung capacity or long term damage?" There is almost no evidence of either in mild-to-moderate cases of Covid-19 (i.e. the vast majority of cases). People who have been on ventilators, or hospitalized for extended periods due to severe illness are a different story, as ventilators themselves often cause lung damage. The scariest anecdotes that have been widely circulated online have come from ventilated or hospitalized patients with severe illness. Beyond these anecdotes, stories of "long covid" thus far are predominantly based on anecdote and self-reporting of symptoms, and the symptom profiles that you hear are frequently vague and/or unverifiable ("brain fog") and in most cases, not significantly different than you might see with any respiratory virus. For example, here is a report from the CDC that was widely reported as evidence that "35% of covid cases had long-term illness". However, "long-term" here, is defined as "three weeks", and "illness" was defined as a spectrum of mild symptoms that resemble any flu-like illness, such as fatigue, cough and congestion: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930e1.htm Even more specific studies have had serious problems. There have been a few reports of cardiac inflammation and other specific clinical signs in otherwise healthy people. To date, most of these have been debunked for statistical problems. For example, it was widely reported that Division I athletes were found to have heart inflammation after mild Covid-19 infections, which led the Big10 to start screening athletes with MRI before play. Subsequently, so few abnormalities have been found that doctors are now calling for the rule to be rescinded: https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/28/big-ten-covid-protocol-21-days-heart-screening https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/28/big-ten-covid-protocol... https://images.saymedia-content.com/.image/cs_srgb/MTc2NDI1MTI4ODc0MjIyNzY1/hsc200003_annotatedproof.pdf https://images.saymedia-content.com/.image/cs_srgb/MTc2NDI1M... In short, the science of "long-term covid" exceptionally poor, and I caution you that most of what you're reading online is rumor and speculation.

by graeme 6y ago

This is one of the serious dangers with the idea of letting the virus run wild to achieve herd immunity: you create a lot of animal reservoirs. Though minks do seek way riskier than average.

abeppu 6y ago

Why are minks riskier than average? Is it because of biological similarity (but then, there are lots of other mammals), or because of the conditions they're kept in? Naively, I might have just expected that cows or pigs or sheep would be the highest risks in aggregate, just because of numbers.

claudeganon 6y ago
The respiratory systems of Mustelidae are similar enough to humans that they easily can become a reservoir for human disease or vector for cross-species transmission. We’ve used ferrets in all kinds of respiratory disease research for this reason (particularly flu studies). https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/6/17-2114_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/6/17-2114_article You’re right about livestock more generally though. Avian and swine livestock also pose a huge risk for pandemic disease. But Mustelidae do as well.
_Microft 6y ago
I don't know why but it seems that in minks SARS-Cov-2 mutates a lot more frequently than it does in humans. This would mean a lot of new strains that we would not know how to detect or deal with.
- mercer 6y ago
  Yup. I mean, put humans in fecal-infested close confinement in numbers of 10.000s and see what happens. Big petry dish.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    From what I remember it sounded rather that the virus mutated faster in ferrets, not just because of their environment. I cannot find a source for it, so I might have misunderstood.
pvaldes 6y ago
> Why are minks riskier than average? Minks are closely related with Ferrets, one of the "not really rare" but "neither really uncommon" domestic pets. Domesticated ferrets communicate by licking and gently biting humans and other ferrets, and live in the same room as us.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Pigs tend to be a high risk due to both their proximity to humans, and because they’re genetically close enough to use that they’re a disease transmission risk. It’s believed that the 1918 flu pandemic mutated in a pig before hopping back to the first human victim.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  There's also another factor to consider in interspecies infections. Over-fitting. A virus "trained" on multiple species is targeting biology that is ubiquitous in higher life. The wider range of species a disease can infect, the less likely an individual member of a species is to have genetic variation that leaves it not susceptible to the disease, and the worse an outbreak is likely to be.

Devils-Avocado 6y ago

I would consider it the danger of lockdown. We guarantee that the virus is still festering somewhere on the planet, and that vulnerable populations remain around the world, risking flareups. With zero response - ie. what we do for influenza - we establish herd immunity over a short, sharp period, and the virus immediately falls over. In any case, even if this mink-mutant variant is slightly deadlier, the data from Sweden shows that COVID deaths can be effectively reduced to near-zero from basic herd immunity strategies - Sweden yesterday recorded a single COVID death. So it makes sense to adopt the Swedish approach now, for a variant of the virus we know how to treat.

claudeganon 6y ago
>I would consider it the danger of lockdown. You would be objectively wrong? Basic reasoning would tell you that places with less cases have a lower probability of transmitting the disease to animal reservoirs and risking harmful mutations coming back at us. >With zero response - ie. what we do for influenza - we establish herd immunity over a short, sharp period, and the virus immediately falls over. This is also incorrect? We take a number of proactive actions against the flu every year, from vaccination, to other public health and treatment measures, to even more drastic steps like culling livestock populations where more dangerous strains have emerged. >So it makes sense to adopt the Swedish approach now, for a variant of the virus we know how to treat. We don't actually have any idea about the consequences of this mutation, especially in a larger population, so we should do the exact opposite and proceed with extreme caution until its risk profile is understood.
vecinu 6y ago
You mention the IFR but what about the long term implications of so many people catching COVID and having reduced lung capacity or long term damage? Can we please address this fact that scares a lot of us? We already know the death rate is low for groups that are not at risk but it seems even healthy people are suffering from "long COVID" with serious long term implications.
- timr 6y ago
  "what about the long term implications of so many people catching COVID and having reduced lung capacity or long term damage?" There is almost no evidence of either in mild-to-moderate cases of Covid-19 (i.e. the vast majority of cases). People who have been on ventilators, or hospitalized for extended periods due to severe illness are a different story, as ventilators themselves often cause lung damage. The scariest anecdotes that have been widely circulated online have come from ventilated or hospitalized patients with severe illness. Beyond these anecdotes, stories of "long covid" thus far are predominantly based on anecdote and self-reporting of symptoms, and the symptom profiles that you hear are frequently vague and/or unverifiable ("brain fog") and in most cases, not significantly different than you might see with any respiratory virus. For example, here is a report from the CDC that was widely reported as evidence that "35% of covid cases had long-term illness". However, "long-term" here, is defined as "three weeks", and "illness" was defined as a spectrum of mild symptoms that resemble any flu-like illness, such as fatigue, cough and congestion: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930e1.htm Even more specific studies have had serious problems. There have been a few reports of cardiac inflammation and other specific clinical signs in otherwise healthy people. To date, most of these have been debunked for statistical problems. For example, it was widely reported that Division I athletes were found to have heart inflammation after mild Covid-19 infections, which led the Big10 to start screening athletes with MRI before play. Subsequently, so few abnormalities have been found that doctors are now calling for the rule to be rescinded: https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/28/big-ten-covid-protocol-21-days-heart-screening https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/28/big-ten-covid-protocol... https://images.saymedia-content.com/.image/cs_srgb/MTc2NDI1MTI4ODc0MjIyNzY1/hsc200003_annotatedproof.pdf https://images.saymedia-content.com/.image/cs_srgb/MTc2NDI1M... In short, the science of "long-term covid" exceptionally poor, and I caution you that most of what you're reading online is rumor and speculation.