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First and foremost SARS-CoV-2 will never go away because it infects animals. Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days

First and foremost SARS-CoV-2 will never go away because it infects animals. Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. So it will never go away and we need to prepare for it. The main goal is to make it survivable, ie. akin to the flu, and not cause hospitals to get overrun like we have seen so many times around the world in the last year.

codeulike 6y ago
Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. Citation needed
- roywiggins 6y ago
  https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated-sars-cov2-denmark/en/ https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated...
- s_dev 6y ago
  The culling of the Mink Farms in Denmark should be evidence enough that it can travel through animals. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/05/pollution-fears-over-mink-buried-after-covid-culling-in-denmark https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/05/pollution-fear... The fact that it already mutated going through a bat or pangolin before going back to humans suggests this is based in sound evidence.
  - seneca 6y ago
    > The culling of the Mink Farms in Denmark should be evidence enough that it can travel through animals. Not that I think you're wrong, but that's circular logic. "Minks were culled because it can travel through animals. Minks being culled is evidence it can travel through animals."
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    Not saying I don't believe it. But a government doing something is not even close to proof.
- nucleardog 6y ago
  Minks have already been a problem leading to Denmark culling 17 million of them alone, with the problem being present in several other countries[0]. The virus is tearing through the farms[1]: > In Denmark, the world’s largest producer of mink pelts, authorities are struggling to control farm outbreaks, despite extensive control measures. In many affected farms, almost all animals have antibodies against the virus. It's mutating and jumping back to people[1]: > Fonager says researchers in Denmark have sequenced viral samples from 40 mink farms and identified some 170 coronavirus variants. He adds that in viral samples from people — representing about one-fifth of the country’s total COVID confirmed cases — they’ve found some 300 people with variants that contain mutations thought to have first emerged in mink. > [...] > One mink-associated mutation has spread more widely in people. The mutation, Y453F, also encodes an amino acid change in the spike protein and has been found in about 300 sequences from people in Denmark, as well as sequences from mink and people in the Netherlands. An experimental study suggests that virus variants with the Y453F mutation partially escaped detection by a commercial monoclonal antibody. Like most things SARS-CoV-2 right now, we don't exactly have a rigorous academic study. Just rumblings. But so far there's some evidence pointing this direction. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/here-s-why-denmark-culled-17-million-minks-now-plans-n1249610 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/here-s-why-denmark-... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03218-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03218-z
- cogman10 6y ago
  https://www.healthline.com/health-news/covid19-is-surging-but-flu-cases-are-down https://www.healthline.com/health-news/covid19-is-surging-bu... All the covid restrictions we've put in place have turned this flu season extremely mild. Meanwhile, we've seen far more COVID cases than flu cases. I don't think it's a great leap to say "COVID is far more infectious than the flu" and it's not a great leap to say "The flu is a very infectious disease". (I say all this knowing that the flu is several types of coronaviruses.)
heavyset_go 6y ago
> Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. So it will never go away and we need to prepare for it. This is also one of the main mechanisms for antibiotic resistance in bacteria that infect humans[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_resistance#Food_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_resistance#Food_...
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Long-term, antibiotic resistance scares me more than covid.
  - ghgdynb1 6y ago
    1: Agreed. 2: One of the problems a lot of people see barring the use of bacteriophage therapy for combating bacterial infection in the clinic is the really fine specificity of most phages to their hosts. The skeptics will suggest that you'd need to essentially design a new phage therapy for each individual infection. With the advances we're seeing in microfluidics, diagnostics, gene sequencing, computational biology, laboratory automation, and the theory of precision medicine, that host specificity can turn from a disadvantage to an advantage. We know there are a lot of human-dwelling bacteria we wouldn't want to knock but can't save from a broad-spectrum treatment. With a personalized phage therapy, this isn't as much of a concern.
  - hdyideudxuedhb 6y ago
    leaky vaccines cause viruses to evolve in ways that mirror how antibiotic abuse causes bacteria to evolve.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    COVID infections can give way to opportunistic bacterial pneumonia infections, which can have a 20% - 37% mortality rate[1]. Many pneumonia-causing strains of bacteria are antibiotic resistant[2], and being on a ventilator raises the risks of developing severe pneumonia[2]. Ventilator-associated pneumonia is more likely to be caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria[2]. [1] https://www.medscape.com/answers/300157-19086/what-are-the-age-related-demographics-and-mortality-rates-of-bacterial-pneumonia https://www.medscape.com/answers/300157-19086/what-are-the-a... [2] https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/resources/top-pneumonia-facts.pdf https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/resource...
dehrmann 6y ago
The other part of this is that it can't be contained, either. Very recently, Auckland had a lockdown because of community spread. It could be from animals, or it could be a handful of 1% events happening, but New Zealand tried really hard to prevent this and wasn't able to. Like that article suggests, it's likely that we'll have to learn to live with it. The interesting, open question right now is how various mitigation measures, everything from quarantines, masks, work from home, lockdowns, vaccines, will impact the evolution of the virus.
hannob 6y ago
Rabies infects animals and it's been eliminated from large parts of the world. Vaccinating animals is sometimes an optoin. Not saying this is comparable, or that SARS-COV2 will be eliminated in a similar way. I think it's currently unclear what will be possible, but in the medium to long-term there are a lot of options to be explored. I wouldn't put elimination in the "impossible" bucket just yet.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  What's the infection rate for rabies? COVID is transmissible via respiratory droplets, while rabies requires direct contact through broken skin or mucus membranes, or eating infected tissues.
mschuster91 6y ago
> The main goal is to make it survivable, ie. akin to the flu, and not cause hospitals to get overrun like we have seen so many times around the world in the last year. There is a secondary main goal, one that the world should have learned after SARS v1, MERS, or the swine flu: get rid of the conditions that infectious agents need to spread. There's a reason that pandemic events have exploded over the last two decades: we have way too many animals and humans in way too shitty conditions. This means, list not exhaustive: - end mass farming of animals in conditions that require feeding them with reserve antibiotics, washing meat with chlorine or washing eggs in order to keep the produce at least somewhat safe to serve. Farm animals of all kind (meat, eggs, milk, fur) need space and quality food (thankfully we got... mostly rid of feeding carcasses after BSE). *Keeping the status quo is only going to serve us yet another pandemic*! - end or massively restrict shipping around animals and animal products across the world to prevent the spread of diseases (like the African Swine Pest/Fever currently making its way across Europe, after wiping out the Chinese pig farms). - generally, reduce the amount of meat in diets. The less animals are farmed for meat, the lower the risk that some bug jumps species. - end mass working of people in conditions that are beneficial to spreading of infections agents: enough space, enough closed off space (=ban "open floor" and "cubicle farm" setups), mandatory sick leave, no exceptions, and a mandatory send-home order for employees showing symptoms of respiratory illness. It's not good if someone is forced to come into the office or a restaurant despite having a cough. Also, unsanitary conditions for worker accomodations should be banned (e.g. no "pack 10 dudes into a 8 m² room" as it's way too common on farms). Also, to reduce stress (and thus, increase immune system strength), work hours / weeks should be drastically cut: 4 or 6 hours a day, and four days a week. - drastically reduce unnecessary traveling across the world. This includes a full ban of cruise ships (who have been often enough in the news as sailing norovirus incubators, not to mention their climate impact), but also incentivizing companies to use videocalls and electronic signatures in favor of flying staff across the oceans just to sign a contract and other similar absurdities. Most of what I've listed should not only be done as pandemic prevention, but also to protect the climate. I know most of it sounds either expensive or "revolt provoking", yet there is no other scientifically viable choice.
- hdyideudxuedhb 6y ago
  You would have been a better health minister than any working for any government.
singularity2001 6y ago
> SARS-CoV-2 will never go away because it infects animals unless we vaccinate animals too?

codeulike 6y ago

Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. Citation needed

roywiggins 6y ago
https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated-sars-cov2-denmark/en/ https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated...
s_dev 6y ago
The culling of the Mink Farms in Denmark should be evidence enough that it can travel through animals. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/05/pollution-fears-over-mink-buried-after-covid-culling-in-denmark https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/05/pollution-fear... The fact that it already mutated going through a bat or pangolin before going back to humans suggests this is based in sound evidence.
- seneca 6y ago
  > The culling of the Mink Farms in Denmark should be evidence enough that it can travel through animals. Not that I think you're wrong, but that's circular logic. "Minks were culled because it can travel through animals. Minks being culled is evidence it can travel through animals."
- rowanG077 6y ago
  Not saying I don't believe it. But a government doing something is not even close to proof.
nucleardog 6y ago
Minks have already been a problem leading to Denmark culling 17 million of them alone, with the problem being present in several other countries[0]. The virus is tearing through the farms[1]: > In Denmark, the world’s largest producer of mink pelts, authorities are struggling to control farm outbreaks, despite extensive control measures. In many affected farms, almost all animals have antibodies against the virus. It's mutating and jumping back to people[1]: > Fonager says researchers in Denmark have sequenced viral samples from 40 mink farms and identified some 170 coronavirus variants. He adds that in viral samples from people — representing about one-fifth of the country’s total COVID confirmed cases — they’ve found some 300 people with variants that contain mutations thought to have first emerged in mink. > [...] > One mink-associated mutation has spread more widely in people. The mutation, Y453F, also encodes an amino acid change in the spike protein and has been found in about 300 sequences from people in Denmark, as well as sequences from mink and people in the Netherlands. An experimental study suggests that virus variants with the Y453F mutation partially escaped detection by a commercial monoclonal antibody. Like most things SARS-CoV-2 right now, we don't exactly have a rigorous academic study. Just rumblings. But so far there's some evidence pointing this direction. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/here-s-why-denmark-culled-17-million-minks-now-plans-n1249610 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/here-s-why-denmark-... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03218-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03218-z
cogman10 6y ago
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/covid19-is-surging-but-flu-cases-are-down https://www.healthline.com/health-news/covid19-is-surging-bu... All the covid restrictions we've put in place have turned this flu season extremely mild. Meanwhile, we've seen far more COVID cases than flu cases. I don't think it's a great leap to say "COVID is far more infectious than the flu" and it's not a great leap to say "The flu is a very infectious disease". (I say all this knowing that the flu is several types of coronaviruses.)

heavyset_go 6y ago

> Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. So it will never go away and we need to prepare for it. This is also one of the main mechanisms for antibiotic resistance in bacteria that infect humans[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_resistance#Food_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_resistance#Food_...

dehrmann 6y ago
Long-term, antibiotic resistance scares me more than covid.
- ghgdynb1 6y ago
  1: Agreed. 2: One of the problems a lot of people see barring the use of bacteriophage therapy for combating bacterial infection in the clinic is the really fine specificity of most phages to their hosts. The skeptics will suggest that you'd need to essentially design a new phage therapy for each individual infection. With the advances we're seeing in microfluidics, diagnostics, gene sequencing, computational biology, laboratory automation, and the theory of precision medicine, that host specificity can turn from a disadvantage to an advantage. We know there are a lot of human-dwelling bacteria we wouldn't want to knock but can't save from a broad-spectrum treatment. With a personalized phage therapy, this isn't as much of a concern.
- hdyideudxuedhb 6y ago
  leaky vaccines cause viruses to evolve in ways that mirror how antibiotic abuse causes bacteria to evolve.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  COVID infections can give way to opportunistic bacterial pneumonia infections, which can have a 20% - 37% mortality rate[1]. Many pneumonia-causing strains of bacteria are antibiotic resistant[2], and being on a ventilator raises the risks of developing severe pneumonia[2]. Ventilator-associated pneumonia is more likely to be caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria[2]. [1] https://www.medscape.com/answers/300157-19086/what-are-the-age-related-demographics-and-mortality-rates-of-bacterial-pneumonia https://www.medscape.com/answers/300157-19086/what-are-the-a... [2] https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/resources/top-pneumonia-facts.pdf https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/resource...

dehrmann 6y ago

The other part of this is that it can't be contained, either. Very recently, Auckland had a lockdown because of community spread. It could be from animals, or it could be a handful of 1% events happening, but New Zealand tried really hard to prevent this and wasn't able to. Like that article suggests, it's likely that we'll have to learn to live with it. The interesting, open question right now is how various mitigation measures, everything from quarantines, masks, work from home, lockdowns, vaccines, will impact the evolution of the virus.

hannob 6y ago

Rabies infects animals and it's been eliminated from large parts of the world. Vaccinating animals is sometimes an optoin. Not saying this is comparable, or that SARS-COV2 will be eliminated in a similar way. I think it's currently unclear what will be possible, but in the medium to long-term there are a lot of options to be explored. I wouldn't put elimination in the "impossible" bucket just yet.

heavyset_go 6y ago
What's the infection rate for rabies? COVID is transmissible via respiratory droplets, while rabies requires direct contact through broken skin or mucus membranes, or eating infected tissues.

mschuster91 6y ago

> The main goal is to make it survivable, ie. akin to the flu, and not cause hospitals to get overrun like we have seen so many times around the world in the last year. There is a secondary main goal, one that the world should have learned after SARS v1, MERS, or the swine flu: get rid of the conditions that infectious agents need to spread. There's a reason that pandemic events have exploded over the last two decades: we have way too many animals and humans in way too shitty conditions. This means, list not exhaustive: - end mass farming of animals in conditions that require feeding them with reserve antibiotics, washing meat with chlorine or washing eggs in order to keep the produce at least somewhat safe to serve. Farm animals of all kind (meat, eggs, milk, fur) need space and quality food (thankfully we got... mostly rid of feeding carcasses after BSE). *Keeping the status quo is only going to serve us yet another pandemic*! - end or massively restrict shipping around animals and animal products across the world to prevent the spread of diseases (like the African Swine Pest/Fever currently making its way across Europe, after wiping out the Chinese pig farms). - generally, reduce the amount of meat in diets. The less animals are farmed for meat, the lower the risk that some bug jumps species. - end mass working of people in conditions that are beneficial to spreading of infections agents: enough space, enough closed off space (=ban "open floor" and "cubicle farm" setups), mandatory sick leave, no exceptions, and a mandatory send-home order for employees showing symptoms of respiratory illness. It's not good if someone is forced to come into the office or a restaurant despite having a cough. Also, unsanitary conditions for worker accomodations should be banned (e.g. no "pack 10 dudes into a 8 m² room" as it's way too common on farms). Also, to reduce stress (and thus, increase immune system strength), work hours / weeks should be drastically cut: 4 or 6 hours a day, and four days a week. - drastically reduce unnecessary traveling across the world. This includes a full ban of cruise ships (who have been often enough in the news as sailing norovirus incubators, not to mention their climate impact), but also incentivizing companies to use videocalls and electronic signatures in favor of flying staff across the oceans just to sign a contract and other similar absurdities. Most of what I've listed should not only be done as pandemic prevention, but also to protect the climate. I know most of it sounds either expensive or "revolt provoking", yet there is no other scientifically viable choice.

hdyideudxuedhb 6y ago
You would have been a better health minister than any working for any government.

singularity2001 6y ago

> SARS-CoV-2 will never go away because it infects animals unless we vaccinate animals too?