3 ms·

From what I've read, the possibility is higher than some other random virus popping up at this moment in time. That's all I'm saying. That could be on par with

From what I've read, the possibility is higher than some other random virus popping up at this moment in time. That's all I'm saying. That could be on par with the jet engine example, but if so, then all the people saying we need to learn from Covid and adjust our immunology strategies are worrying about low possibility items also. Anyways, I'll defer to you on this, I'm definitely not an expert, and you were willing to post sources and I'm not gonna try to dredge up the information I'm basing these comments on. Plus I haven't had the time to digest the sources. So add one more chink in my wall of being back to "normalcy" :P

lamontcg 5y ago
> From what I've read, the possibility is higher than some other random virus popping up at this moment in time. I've read literally nothing credible that suggests that immune escape will ever be complete. There are people who are "concerned" or "worried" about it or will argue that "we can't say" But they're basically the same people who were arguing that the vacccines that we were producing that produced strong neutralizing titers might not work. Or that vaccinated people might transmit the virus just as strongly as unvaccinated superspreaders, even though they have reduced symptoms and lower viral loads and we know that the household attack rate of fully asymptomatic disease is lower by nearly an order of magnitude. The "well, we haven't proven it can't, so we have to assume the coronavirus could assemble and detonate a nuclear warhead in an American city" people have been solidly fucking wrong for the past 12 months. They had a brief glimpse of correctness at the start of it all when people thought it would go away relatively quietly like SARS-1 + MERS. But those people were probably all the ones looking at the early ~20% case fatality rate and assuming that 20% of the coworkers were going to die. And it isn't happening, and the messaging is horrible, and there's a cost to worrying about the literal worst case imaginable. It doesn't make you smart to consider literally all the possibilities, it gets in the way.
- manwe150 5y ago
  Someone get this guy a snickers bar.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Your logic seems fairly sound as far as the future trajectory of covid-19, if history is a guide. What I've been wondering and I'd put to you is, do you think the T-cell response to the mRNA vaccines / infection will also confer immunity or decrease the severity of MERS? Or other more distantly related wild coronaviruses?
  - Vecr 5y ago
    MERS is not a Sarbecovirus, it's a Merbecovirus, so not the same subgenus. They are not similar enough for much to happen, if anything at all.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      Could you explain? Are the spike proteins around MERS too different... and what about the coronaviruses that cause the common cold. Could we expect any cross immunity to those.

lamontcg 5y ago

> From what I've read, the possibility is higher than some other random virus popping up at this moment in time. I've read literally nothing credible that suggests that immune escape will ever be complete. There are people who are "concerned" or "worried" about it or will argue that "we can't say" But they're basically the same people who were arguing that the vacccines that we were producing that produced strong neutralizing titers might not work. Or that vaccinated people might transmit the virus just as strongly as unvaccinated superspreaders, even though they have reduced symptoms and lower viral loads and we know that the household attack rate of fully asymptomatic disease is lower by nearly an order of magnitude. The "well, we haven't proven it can't, so we have to assume the coronavirus could assemble and detonate a nuclear warhead in an American city" people have been solidly fucking wrong for the past 12 months. They had a brief glimpse of correctness at the start of it all when people thought it would go away relatively quietly like SARS-1 + MERS. But those people were probably all the ones looking at the early ~20% case fatality rate and assuming that 20% of the coworkers were going to die. And it isn't happening, and the messaging is horrible, and there's a cost to worrying about the literal worst case imaginable. It doesn't make you smart to consider literally all the possibilities, it gets in the way.

manwe150 5y ago
Someone get this guy a snickers bar.
noduerme 5y ago
Your logic seems fairly sound as far as the future trajectory of covid-19, if history is a guide. What I've been wondering and I'd put to you is, do you think the T-cell response to the mRNA vaccines / infection will also confer immunity or decrease the severity of MERS? Or other more distantly related wild coronaviruses?
- Vecr 5y ago
  MERS is not a Sarbecovirus, it's a Merbecovirus, so not the same subgenus. They are not similar enough for much to happen, if anything at all.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Could you explain? Are the spike proteins around MERS too different... and what about the coronaviruses that cause the common cold. Could we expect any cross immunity to those.