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>It already did evolve this way and will continue to do so. I'll need a soruce for that, as all reports I've read indicate that Covid has mutated the typical d

by ppf 6y ago

>It already did evolve this way and will continue to do so. I'll need a soruce for that, as all reports I've read indicate that Covid has mutated the typical direction - that is, to be less deadly. >Any novel virus evolves in ways that helps its spread into popularions previously unavailable for infection. And only after it is at risk of wiping populations it infects it evolves milder variants that are careful no to kill too many hosts to quick. Also a source for that, as this is an idea I have never heard of before. I haven't even seen any definitive answer whether younger people are just less affected by Covid, or really do not become infected. The whole "asymptomatic carrier" idea really makes it hard to prove anything. Saying that, how will we stop a virus mutating with a vaccine that is between 60% and 90% effective at preventing symptoms, and with a currently unknown effect on transmission? If we are just delaying the inevitable, then why wait? If it's about the young (which would be quite the reversal, as to date, it's all been about "not killing granny"), then we need to consider the effects of on-going lockdown and destruction of opportunity for young people (which is very real). If I had been told at the start that we would be under effective house arrest until researchers had developed a series of vaccines with the intention of stopping Covid from mutating into hypothetical potentially worse variants, I would have called BS right then. Edit: Also, interesting that you point out that "it became known that Covid mutates rapidly". That's not at all surprising, it's long been known that coronaviruses mutate fairly rapidly. In fact, whenever I pointed out this fact, and that it makes vaccine development difficult and pointless unless we are going for continual vaccination, the "online Covid expert" crowd gave me a lot of flak for it.

scotty79 6y ago
> I'll need a soruce for that, as all reports I've read indicate that Covid has mutated the typical direction - that is, to be less deadly. It's literaly 10 seconds to find that information, but here you go. https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2021/04/07/the-cdc-says-this-covid-variant-is-now-the-most-dominant-and-it-hits-younger-people/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2021/04/07/the-cdc-... There's bit less info on the new variant than on original one we had a year of expeirience with but it's comming in. Becomming less deadly is a typical direction viruses evolve but at a time scale of hundreds and thousands of years, not few months. Just think about it. Virus doesn't have an agenda. It's just self replicaing piece of crap. It replicates because it can. And while it replicates it sometimes spawns variants that can replicate better. As long as killing hosts doesnt significantly affect ability to replicate there's no reasons why variant that kills less should be have any advantage over other variants. And sars-cov-2 is so mild in objective terms that it's far from expeiriencing any trouble from killing too much. > Also a source for that, as this is an idea I have never heard of before. You never heard that while viruses evolve they sometimes gain ability to spread to organisms they had trouble infecting before? And then there's more of those viruses so they achieved evolutionary success this way? That's literally what just happened with coronavirus as it evolved ability to spread through sub population of certain primates. > I haven't even seen any definitive answer whether younger people are just less affected by Covid, or really do not become infected. There was research about infection rates in school children (not sickness but infection) and it seems to be significantly lower than among the adults. Not sure how convincing you'll find it. > The whole "asymptomatic carrier" idea really makes it hard to prove anything. Only if you look at symptoms. If you do a test you can learn a lot. > If we are just delaying the inevitable, then why wait? Because it could happend in a year if we throw out hands in the air or in a century if we reduce opportunities for the virus to evolve 100 times. > then we need to consider the effects of on-going lockdown and destruction of opportunity for young people (which is very real). Yes. But we also should see this thing in perspective too. Suddenly we care about young people's opportunities now while we happily exploited them to wait out tables or be stuck in other dead end jobs witout any reasonable chance of devolpment. Unpaid interships. Tuition. Being kept in hostile and mentally destroying school environment just because parents need to be at work. We only started thinking about young people's opportunitues when it inconveniences business. > If I had been told at the start that we would be under effective house arrest until researchers had developed a series of vaccines with the intention of stopping Covid from mutating into hypothetical potentially worse variants, I would have called BS right then There were initially hopes that this virus won't be capable of evolving this fast. Other coronaviruses seem to be fairly stable in conparison to other things like flu. And also nothing is binary. I think it would be better if from the start there was hard 5 year ban on any sort of business activity that involves entertainment for groups of people, like dinig, concerts or whatever and permanent move to remote education and work whenever possible. Small business people wouldn't be kept perpetually in waiting, when can they do a little business again. And education would have a reform that is already decades overdue. But noone was decisive enough to do something like that. Everybody thought that we will be able to go pretty much business as usual with perhaps brief pauses. And we are all hoping that soon world will be same way as before the pandemic as it was so wonderful and perfect back then. Which it won't before our covid vaccine development and distribution outpaces covid evolution (which depends on number of new infectios) and/or some revolutionary drugs are discovered that will make it less of a death/disability risk with proper outpatient treatment.
- ppf 6y ago
  Your source says this: >It's unclear exactly what the age breakdown is when it comes to this variant strain It seems you need to spend more than 10 seconds researching your ideas. The rest of what you've said in response to my requests for further information and sources is just personal opinion, presented as "reasonable" arguments. >Becomming less deadly is a typical direction viruses evolve but at a time scale of hundreds and thousands of years, not few months. An idea not supported by my 10 seconds of research: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-becoming-less-deadly-in-europe-but-we-dont-know-why/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-bec... >There were initially hopes that this virus won't be capable of evolving this fast. I would ask for some sources to back that statement up too, but I don't hold much hope for a reasonable reply. Influenza is a non error-checking RNA virus, coronaviruses are error-checking RNA viruses. The slowest to mutate are DNA viruses. The relative speed of mutation of these types is well understood. >You never heard that while viruses evolve they sometimes gain ability to spread to organisms they had trouble infecting before? Yes, I have, but never in the context of "younger examples of the existing infected organism". Even so, and as I've already said, we don't even know if younger people are already being infected with the existing strains, so I can't get myself too worked up about hypothetical possible future variants. You've also mixed in your personal opinions on supposedly how bad life was before Covid, how little you value small businesses, and how life should be drastically re-modelled so that everyone works and learns remotely. I disagree, but that's ok, it's opinion. I think that remote (learning or working) places people at a huge disadvantage - against those who already have in-person connections, and against institutions that have the sense not to do such a thing. >sars-cov-2 is so mild in objective terms We certainly agree here.
  - scotty79 6y ago
    > >It's unclear exactly what the age breakdown is when it comes to this variant strain > It seems you need to spend more than 10 seconds researching your ideas. Also "since the situation is in flux and information is still trickling in". I won't find you the data that doesn't exist yet. But as you can read there is a growing concern and a lot of random observations that number of 30 and 40 year old hospitalized people seems to be on the rise. And cases of hospitalized children are becoming less rare. https://www.google.com/search?q=younger+people+with+covid&oq=younger+people+with+covid&aqs=chrome..69i57.3375j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=younger+people+with+covid&oq... Wait 6 months and you'll have plenty of data of how much worse current variants are from original one for younger people. Because they definitely are not milder. > The rest of what you've said in response to my requests for further information and sources is just personal opinion, presented as "reasonable" arguments. If it sounds reasonable it's only because that's how basic evolution works. And it's not really personal because this opinion on how evolution works is shared among evolutionary biologists and there's really no reason for human viruses to be exception to those general rules. The one thing you might argue is that by social distancing and masks we are putting evolutionary pressure on the virus to mutate into a form that doesn't give any symptoms, so we let go and spread it happily like we do with the flu or colds. But apparently playing human immune system carefully so that the cytokine storm doesn't kill even a small fraction of hosts is a really hard thing to figure out. It was way easier for the virus to figure out how to transmit between people more easily despite masks and social distancing (or at least our half-assed application of those things). And even if some mutation of coronavirus creates a milder variant it doesn't mean that old variants will disappear. Before sars we already had 4 mild coronaviruses so we'll have 5. Maybe we already have. Remaining killer variants will still be just as active as today. You might hope that if you get infected with that new mild variant it will give you immunity to all other variants of sars-cov-2, but it probably won't be true. Because we already have a variant that happily re-infects people that previously caught the original variant. What's more, exposure to milder variant does not necessarily might boost your immunity against the killer ones. It might even harm it. There is a theory that older people suffer more form covid because they experienced more contact with mild coronaviruses during their lifetime than younger people and their immune system is sort of numbed to them until its too late. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/prior-exposure-to-seasonal-coronaviruses-might-increase-covid19-vulnerability/ https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/prior-exposur... Also even if we had a milder variant of sars-cov-2 that gives blanket immunity to all other you'd still have to figure out how to catch it before any other. And they'll spread exactly the same way. Vaccines are such milder variant that we control and try to give people before they come in contact with any other. But we have to make every dose of it ourselves. > An idea not supported by my 10 seconds of research: > https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-bec https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-bec... Are you really citing something written right after first wave? How that milder variant is doing now? Compared to, let's say, the British one, or the Brazilian one? > Yes, I have, but never in the context of "younger examples of the existing infected organism". Even so, and as I've already said, we don't even know if younger people are already being infected with the existing strains, so I can't get myself too worked up about hypothetical possible future variants. As you wish. I'm worked up, but I still hope that we'll manage to outpace all of this with our vaccines and possibly treatments. But it's still a race with time, and unless we significantly reduce number of infections by any means possible all scenarios are on the table. > You've also mixed in your personal opinions on supposedly how bad life was before Covid, how little you value small businesses, and how life should be drastically re-modelled so that everyone works and learns remotely. I disagree, but that's ok, it's opinion. I think that remote (learning or working) places people at a huge disadvantage - against those who already have in-person connections, and against institutions that have the sense not to do such a thing. Again, not that personal. Many people believe that young (non-wealthy) people were getting short end of the stick even before the pandemic. Shared opinions. As probably are yours that young people before pandemic had so many wonderful opportunities that today they are robbed of. Same with remote working, some people like it, some dislike it. You can look at the research on how is it better and how is it worse. It's not as clear cut case as that forbidding people to go to concerts is bad for people who earn money by organizing concerts. >>sars-cov-2 is so mild in objective terms >We certainly agree here. Mild for viruses that kill and cripple some of their hosts at least. There are probably thousands of human viruses that are way milder and and not that many that are more deadly and harmful.

by ppf 6y ago

scotty79 6y ago

> I'll need a soruce for that, as all reports I've read indicate that Covid has mutated the typical direction - that is, to be less deadly. It's literaly 10 seconds to find that information, but here you go. https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2021/04/07/the-cdc-says-this-covid-variant-is-now-the-most-dominant-and-it-hits-younger-people/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2021/04/07/the-cdc-... There's bit less info on the new variant than on original one we had a year of expeirience with but it's comming in. Becomming less deadly is a typical direction viruses evolve but at a time scale of hundreds and thousands of years, not few months. Just think about it. Virus doesn't have an agenda. It's just self replicaing piece of crap. It replicates because it can. And while it replicates it sometimes spawns variants that can replicate better. As long as killing hosts doesnt significantly affect ability to replicate there's no reasons why variant that kills less should be have any advantage over other variants. And sars-cov-2 is so mild in objective terms that it's far from expeiriencing any trouble from killing too much. > Also a source for that, as this is an idea I have never heard of before. You never heard that while viruses evolve they sometimes gain ability to spread to organisms they had trouble infecting before? And then there's more of those viruses so they achieved evolutionary success this way? That's literally what just happened with coronavirus as it evolved ability to spread through sub population of certain primates. > I haven't even seen any definitive answer whether younger people are just less affected by Covid, or really do not become infected. There was research about infection rates in school children (not sickness but infection) and it seems to be significantly lower than among the adults. Not sure how convincing you'll find it. > The whole "asymptomatic carrier" idea really makes it hard to prove anything. Only if you look at symptoms. If you do a test you can learn a lot. > If we are just delaying the inevitable, then why wait? Because it could happend in a year if we throw out hands in the air or in a century if we reduce opportunities for the virus to evolve 100 times. > then we need to consider the effects of on-going lockdown and destruction of opportunity for young people (which is very real). Yes. But we also should see this thing in perspective too. Suddenly we care about young people's opportunities now while we happily exploited them to wait out tables or be stuck in other dead end jobs witout any reasonable chance of devolpment. Unpaid interships. Tuition. Being kept in hostile and mentally destroying school environment just because parents need to be at work. We only started thinking about young people's opportunitues when it inconveniences business. > If I had been told at the start that we would be under effective house arrest until researchers had developed a series of vaccines with the intention of stopping Covid from mutating into hypothetical potentially worse variants, I would have called BS right then There were initially hopes that this virus won't be capable of evolving this fast. Other coronaviruses seem to be fairly stable in conparison to other things like flu. And also nothing is binary. I think it would be better if from the start there was hard 5 year ban on any sort of business activity that involves entertainment for groups of people, like dinig, concerts or whatever and permanent move to remote education and work whenever possible. Small business people wouldn't be kept perpetually in waiting, when can they do a little business again. And education would have a reform that is already decades overdue. But noone was decisive enough to do something like that. Everybody thought that we will be able to go pretty much business as usual with perhaps brief pauses. And we are all hoping that soon world will be same way as before the pandemic as it was so wonderful and perfect back then. Which it won't before our covid vaccine development and distribution outpaces covid evolution (which depends on number of new infectios) and/or some revolutionary drugs are discovered that will make it less of a death/disability risk with proper outpatient treatment.

ppf 6y ago
Your source says this: >It's unclear exactly what the age breakdown is when it comes to this variant strain It seems you need to spend more than 10 seconds researching your ideas. The rest of what you've said in response to my requests for further information and sources is just personal opinion, presented as "reasonable" arguments. >Becomming less deadly is a typical direction viruses evolve but at a time scale of hundreds and thousands of years, not few months. An idea not supported by my 10 seconds of research: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-becoming-less-deadly-in-europe-but-we-dont-know-why/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-bec... >There were initially hopes that this virus won't be capable of evolving this fast. I would ask for some sources to back that statement up too, but I don't hold much hope for a reasonable reply. Influenza is a non error-checking RNA virus, coronaviruses are error-checking RNA viruses. The slowest to mutate are DNA viruses. The relative speed of mutation of these types is well understood. >You never heard that while viruses evolve they sometimes gain ability to spread to organisms they had trouble infecting before? Yes, I have, but never in the context of "younger examples of the existing infected organism". Even so, and as I've already said, we don't even know if younger people are already being infected with the existing strains, so I can't get myself too worked up about hypothetical possible future variants. You've also mixed in your personal opinions on supposedly how bad life was before Covid, how little you value small businesses, and how life should be drastically re-modelled so that everyone works and learns remotely. I disagree, but that's ok, it's opinion. I think that remote (learning or working) places people at a huge disadvantage - against those who already have in-person connections, and against institutions that have the sense not to do such a thing. >sars-cov-2 is so mild in objective terms We certainly agree here.
- scotty79 6y ago
  > >It's unclear exactly what the age breakdown is when it comes to this variant strain > It seems you need to spend more than 10 seconds researching your ideas. Also "since the situation is in flux and information is still trickling in". I won't find you the data that doesn't exist yet. But as you can read there is a growing concern and a lot of random observations that number of 30 and 40 year old hospitalized people seems to be on the rise. And cases of hospitalized children are becoming less rare. https://www.google.com/search?q=younger+people+with+covid&oq=younger+people+with+covid&aqs=chrome..69i57.3375j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=younger+people+with+covid&oq... Wait 6 months and you'll have plenty of data of how much worse current variants are from original one for younger people. Because they definitely are not milder. > The rest of what you've said in response to my requests for further information and sources is just personal opinion, presented as "reasonable" arguments. If it sounds reasonable it's only because that's how basic evolution works. And it's not really personal because this opinion on how evolution works is shared among evolutionary biologists and there's really no reason for human viruses to be exception to those general rules. The one thing you might argue is that by social distancing and masks we are putting evolutionary pressure on the virus to mutate into a form that doesn't give any symptoms, so we let go and spread it happily like we do with the flu or colds. But apparently playing human immune system carefully so that the cytokine storm doesn't kill even a small fraction of hosts is a really hard thing to figure out. It was way easier for the virus to figure out how to transmit between people more easily despite masks and social distancing (or at least our half-assed application of those things). And even if some mutation of coronavirus creates a milder variant it doesn't mean that old variants will disappear. Before sars we already had 4 mild coronaviruses so we'll have 5. Maybe we already have. Remaining killer variants will still be just as active as today. You might hope that if you get infected with that new mild variant it will give you immunity to all other variants of sars-cov-2, but it probably won't be true. Because we already have a variant that happily re-infects people that previously caught the original variant. What's more, exposure to milder variant does not necessarily might boost your immunity against the killer ones. It might even harm it. There is a theory that older people suffer more form covid because they experienced more contact with mild coronaviruses during their lifetime than younger people and their immune system is sort of numbed to them until its too late. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/prior-exposure-to-seasonal-coronaviruses-might-increase-covid19-vulnerability/ https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/prior-exposur... Also even if we had a milder variant of sars-cov-2 that gives blanket immunity to all other you'd still have to figure out how to catch it before any other. And they'll spread exactly the same way. Vaccines are such milder variant that we control and try to give people before they come in contact with any other. But we have to make every dose of it ourselves. > An idea not supported by my 10 seconds of research: > https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-bec https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-bec... Are you really citing something written right after first wave? How that milder variant is doing now? Compared to, let's say, the British one, or the Brazilian one? > Yes, I have, but never in the context of "younger examples of the existing infected organism". Even so, and as I've already said, we don't even know if younger people are already being infected with the existing strains, so I can't get myself too worked up about hypothetical possible future variants. As you wish. I'm worked up, but I still hope that we'll manage to outpace all of this with our vaccines and possibly treatments. But it's still a race with time, and unless we significantly reduce number of infections by any means possible all scenarios are on the table. > You've also mixed in your personal opinions on supposedly how bad life was before Covid, how little you value small businesses, and how life should be drastically re-modelled so that everyone works and learns remotely. I disagree, but that's ok, it's opinion. I think that remote (learning or working) places people at a huge disadvantage - against those who already have in-person connections, and against institutions that have the sense not to do such a thing. Again, not that personal. Many people believe that young (non-wealthy) people were getting short end of the stick even before the pandemic. Shared opinions. As probably are yours that young people before pandemic had so many wonderful opportunities that today they are robbed of. Same with remote working, some people like it, some dislike it. You can look at the research on how is it better and how is it worse. It's not as clear cut case as that forbidding people to go to concerts is bad for people who earn money by organizing concerts. >>sars-cov-2 is so mild in objective terms >We certainly agree here. Mild for viruses that kill and cripple some of their hosts at least. There are probably thousands of human viruses that are way milder and and not that many that are more deadly and harmful.