6 ms·

Interesting... the common cold and the flu also tend to mutate to be resistant to past immunity. I wonder if we’re on a the cusp of finally finding cures for th

Interesting... the common cold and the flu also tend to mutate to be resistant to past immunity. I wonder if we’re on a the cusp of finally finding cures for these types of rapidly mutating viruses.

beamatronic 6y ago
Or you could just wear a mask and social distance and not congregate indoors with random strangers for long periods of time
- kirykl 6y ago
  eternal 2020
- binaryblitz 6y ago
  For your entire life? IDK about you but I'm ok with getting a common cold or the flu once every few years to live a normal life.
  - mikeymz 6y ago
    Every few years? My experience is more like every 6 weeks in the winter. Even with lock down I have caught the second cold of the season. I am guessing you don't have kids
    - NeutronStar 6y ago
      So you go and get vaccinated, don't force everyone to wear a mask forever and live in perpetual lockdown.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  These are necessarily temporary measures. Life cannot go on forever with these restrictions in place. Either medical science will find a way to limit the danger or people will adapt to their new, more dangerous world. I am not an anti-masker, but asking for permanent social distancing is not realistic.
  - dionian 6y ago
    I think voluntary mask wearing becoming a new norm is fine with me
    - xeromal 6y ago
      Are you speaking for literally every human?
      - pickledish 6y ago
        Well, they said "fine with me", so... no?
        xeromal 6y ago
        The idea of making every one wear a mask as the new social norm is "fine with them".
        robrenaud 6y ago
        The great grand parent post said voluntary. In the new future, I might just start wearing masks on the subway in winter by the default. The cost is very low and the benefit is moderate.
    - x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
      Masks are a major hindrance to communication. 1) People's voices become muffled 2) I can not read their lips 3) Emotional-facial cues are much harder to pick up on. This cannot be a permanent state of affairs.
      - soperj 6y ago
        It can, and already is in much of asia. When ever you're sick, you wear a mask.
    - user5565567 6y ago
- TheAnswerMan 6y ago
  Sure, reducing transmission rate makes you less likely to be exposed in the first place. But it's not an alternative solution to a cure. Corona's have been with mankind since before history. They never go away and its a matter of time before you are exposed to one of the coronas again.
- ravenstine 6y ago
  While those are certainly measures to take, they're a non answer. We need to return to some amount of noalcy, and none of those measures are up to snuff. Literally everyone where I live wears a mask and distances, yet cases are sky high. Somehow my grandfather caught the virus despite his assisted living home despite them being so locked down that we haven't been able to see him in person besides through a glass window. Masks and distancing just spread the deaths out over time, but they aren't a solution. Believe it or not, some of us don't like social distancing and mandatory masks in perpetuity. If we had spent more money on developing these kinds of vaccines years ago, we might not be in the situation we are in now. If you like being isolated then be my guest, but don't be on a high horse about "just" wearing masks, and so forth at this point. We all get it. Yet people continue to get sick and die.
  - jasonlaramburu 6y ago
    >We all get it. Yet people continue to get sick and die. Is that because the interventions (masking, social distancing) are de facto ineffective, or because a critical mass of people simply ignores them?
    - ravenstine 6y ago
      I don't think we really know for sure. My guess is that it's both, but that even if masks/distancing were 100% effective on their own, it's not practical to expect enough people to take them seriously enough. This isn't an engineering problem, but a human one. This is why I take issue with those here who just blame everyone not participating for why the virus has spread. By the law of averages, you will never get everyone to comply. You need virtually everyone to comply for the virus to be stopped, and all it takes is a small number of people to allow a virus to spread, which keeps happening when you keep enough healthy people from even beginning to build an immunity. These social measures are stop gaps, and anyone suggesting "or we can just social distance" as if that's an alternative to vaccines needs to get a clue. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the numbers before and after lockdowns and other restrictions are put in place to realize that they aren't impactful enough to be considered a solution.
lhorie 6y ago
I mean, if flu vaccines are any indication, what is more likely is we never cure it, but we end up with yearly covid shots to gain immunity to each year's strain(s)
- bluGill 6y ago
  The flu mutates a lot faster than COVID. There is still hope we can vaccinate against it and be done. This depends on speed of getting the vaccines out, and preventing it from jumping to something else and then getting a foothold there where mutations can jump back. We will know in a couple years how successful we are.
akiselev 6y ago
The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season. Developing a vaccine for a new strain of the flu is pretty mechanical at this point but each seasonal flu vaccine is really a combination of three different strains that World Health Organization scientists predict will be the dominant strains causing the most damage (it gets reevaluated twice a year). The way that most people take the vaccine (a live but weakened version of the virus) it's impractical, even dangerous, to give them all of the strains at once so an educated guess of three strains is our chosen sweet spot. The common cold is an even more extreme version of that process but we haven't figured out an economic way of developing rapid vaccine candidates for rhino/coronavirus strains like we have for the flu. Moderna's RNA method might be a game changer here but it'll take a while for their method to be approved as a platform instead of a single drug candidate.
- bluGill 6y ago
  >The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season. This doesn't make sense. Of course we cannot predict what mutation will happen. Are you trying to say we don't know which mutation take off? Even then the issue that we don't know what future mutation might take off is a problem. > each seasonal flu vaccine is really a combination of three different strains This year it was 4 different strains. > it's impractical, even dangerous, to give them all of the strains at once I've never heard this before. Can you provide a citation so I can verify it? >The common cold is an even more extreme version of that process There are a lot of different viruses for the common cold. There have been vaccines for them, but the odds of catching any one strain are so low that a vaccine against one isn't really significant.
nradov 6y ago
The common cold isn't just one virus. Many different viruses cause cold symptoms, including several coronaviruses. In particular HCoV-OC43 is quite similar to SARS-CoV-2. If you're exposed to one of those common cold viruses then it generally won't give you immunity to any of the others.

beamatronic 6y ago

Or you could just wear a mask and social distance and not congregate indoors with random strangers for long periods of time

kirykl 6y ago
eternal 2020
binaryblitz 6y ago
For your entire life? IDK about you but I'm ok with getting a common cold or the flu once every few years to live a normal life.
- mikeymz 6y ago
  Every few years? My experience is more like every 6 weeks in the winter. Even with lock down I have caught the second cold of the season. I am guessing you don't have kids
  - NeutronStar 6y ago
    So you go and get vaccinated, don't force everyone to wear a mask forever and live in perpetual lockdown.
dougmwne 6y ago
These are necessarily temporary measures. Life cannot go on forever with these restrictions in place. Either medical science will find a way to limit the danger or people will adapt to their new, more dangerous world. I am not an anti-masker, but asking for permanent social distancing is not realistic.
- dionian 6y ago
  I think voluntary mask wearing becoming a new norm is fine with me
  - xeromal 6y ago
    Are you speaking for literally every human?
    - pickledish 6y ago
      Well, they said "fine with me", so... no?
      - xeromal 6y ago
        The idea of making every one wear a mask as the new social norm is "fine with them".
        robrenaud 6y ago
        The great grand parent post said voluntary. In the new future, I might just start wearing masks on the subway in winter by the default. The cost is very low and the benefit is moderate.
  - x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
    Masks are a major hindrance to communication. 1) People's voices become muffled 2) I can not read their lips 3) Emotional-facial cues are much harder to pick up on. This cannot be a permanent state of affairs.
    - soperj 6y ago
      It can, and already is in much of asia. When ever you're sick, you wear a mask.
  - user5565567 6y ago
TheAnswerMan 6y ago
Sure, reducing transmission rate makes you less likely to be exposed in the first place. But it's not an alternative solution to a cure. Corona's have been with mankind since before history. They never go away and its a matter of time before you are exposed to one of the coronas again.
ravenstine 6y ago
While those are certainly measures to take, they're a non answer. We need to return to some amount of noalcy, and none of those measures are up to snuff. Literally everyone where I live wears a mask and distances, yet cases are sky high. Somehow my grandfather caught the virus despite his assisted living home despite them being so locked down that we haven't been able to see him in person besides through a glass window. Masks and distancing just spread the deaths out over time, but they aren't a solution. Believe it or not, some of us don't like social distancing and mandatory masks in perpetuity. If we had spent more money on developing these kinds of vaccines years ago, we might not be in the situation we are in now. If you like being isolated then be my guest, but don't be on a high horse about "just" wearing masks, and so forth at this point. We all get it. Yet people continue to get sick and die.
- jasonlaramburu 6y ago
  >We all get it. Yet people continue to get sick and die. Is that because the interventions (masking, social distancing) are de facto ineffective, or because a critical mass of people simply ignores them?
  - ravenstine 6y ago
    I don't think we really know for sure. My guess is that it's both, but that even if masks/distancing were 100% effective on their own, it's not practical to expect enough people to take them seriously enough. This isn't an engineering problem, but a human one. This is why I take issue with those here who just blame everyone not participating for why the virus has spread. By the law of averages, you will never get everyone to comply. You need virtually everyone to comply for the virus to be stopped, and all it takes is a small number of people to allow a virus to spread, which keeps happening when you keep enough healthy people from even beginning to build an immunity. These social measures are stop gaps, and anyone suggesting "or we can just social distance" as if that's an alternative to vaccines needs to get a clue. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the numbers before and after lockdowns and other restrictions are put in place to realize that they aren't impactful enough to be considered a solution.

lhorie 6y ago

I mean, if flu vaccines are any indication, what is more likely is we never cure it, but we end up with yearly covid shots to gain immunity to each year's strain(s)

bluGill 6y ago
The flu mutates a lot faster than COVID. There is still hope we can vaccinate against it and be done. This depends on speed of getting the vaccines out, and preventing it from jumping to something else and then getting a foothold there where mutations can jump back. We will know in a couple years how successful we are.

akiselev 6y ago

The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season. Developing a vaccine for a new strain of the flu is pretty mechanical at this point but each seasonal flu vaccine is really a combination of three different strains that World Health Organization scientists predict will be the dominant strains causing the most damage (it gets reevaluated twice a year). The way that most people take the vaccine (a live but weakened version of the virus) it's impractical, even dangerous, to give them all of the strains at once so an educated guess of three strains is our chosen sweet spot. The common cold is an even more extreme version of that process but we haven't figured out an economic way of developing rapid vaccine candidates for rhino/coronavirus strains like we have for the flu. Moderna's RNA method might be a game changer here but it'll take a while for their method to be approved as a platform instead of a single drug candidate.

bluGill 6y ago
>The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season. This doesn't make sense. Of course we cannot predict what mutation will happen. Are you trying to say we don't know which mutation take off? Even then the issue that we don't know what future mutation might take off is a problem. > each seasonal flu vaccine is really a combination of three different strains This year it was 4 different strains. > it's impractical, even dangerous, to give them all of the strains at once I've never heard this before. Can you provide a citation so I can verify it? >The common cold is an even more extreme version of that process There are a lot of different viruses for the common cold. There have been vaccines for them, but the odds of catching any one strain are so low that a vaccine against one isn't really significant.

nradov 6y ago

The common cold isn't just one virus. Many different viruses cause cold symptoms, including several coronaviruses. In particular HCoV-OC43 is quite similar to SARS-CoV-2. If you're exposed to one of those common cold viruses then it generally won't give you immunity to any of the others.