4 ms·

Don’t viruses mutate to become less deadly over time? If so, why is there so much concern over mutations? Isn’t that what we want.

by vimy 5y ago

deregulateMed 5y ago
Viruses mutate without thought. Some will be more deadly, others less. Some more contagious, some less. Consider the seemingly randomness of chemistry at the biological level is what determines this. Although less deadly, highly contagious are more likely to spread for longer.
guscost 5y ago
What you are referring to is called the “transmission-virulence tradeoff theory” and while it does not guarantee that this virus will do what you claim, it is remarkable that public health officials and journalists do not mention it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/
- ksaj 5y ago
  They would mention it if they saw it occurring. It's not. You can imagine if they did, the propaganda engine of 2020 would have used the concept to launch lies about how it'll eventually become so mild you really don't need the vaccine. A certain president was stating early on that it would just fade away. It didn't. All the info floating about was already confusing (and even contradictory) to the general population. There is no need to muddy the water with details that aren't applicable at this time, and may never be.
  - guscost 5y ago
    Even if your claim is correct: Hiding this kind of information from the public, and trying to steamroll them with “experts say” proclamations, has backfired spectacularly. Surely you can see that by now.
    - ksaj 5y ago
      You might recall the roller coaster that ensued when they thought it might be possible to reach heard immunity. The moment it became obvious that it wasn't going to happen, mostly due to an incredible lack of cooperation with everyone involved, they stopped talking about it. It was no longer valid, so why talk about it? What backfired is not so much what the experts were saying, but how there was always an 'anti' chugging away at the press and online to make sure nobody knew what was what. We spend way too much time debunking crap info instead of just dealing with the good-at-the-time info provided by the experts. They aren't hiding anything from the public. They just aren't planning on teaching the public absolutely everything about pandemics - just what is needed to be known at any given time. Otherwise you end up with too much information for anyone to even begin to understand what they need to do. Telling people that some viruses eventually weaken has no benefit to anyone. The current virus isn't doing that, and raising hopes that it might is bound to give propagandists more fuel to work with.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      The whole damn last year and a half has been nothing but raw appeals to authority. Critical thinking and healthy skepticism has been met with extreme vitriol.
      - alexanderdmitri 5y ago
        What's your frame of reference for this statement? Mostly I've seen a very mixed bag of opinions, reactions and measures over the past year and a half. I think people are pushed to extremes because there's a heady mixture of: 1. an invisible, unthinking enemy breaking through borders affecting everyone and causing an inflection in basic social etiquette that demands action in very grey and alien moral zones most people have no experience in 2. the internet increasingly dominating the human experience while still being a relatively new, mindfuck global network that (a) undermines basic instincts honed for thousands of years, (b) increases fringe and extreme communities by enabling distributed social networking, and (c) enables surveillance and individual targeting on a scale most preceding dystopian literature couldn't imagine 3. unsolveable, self-perpetuating issues such as racism (as a proxy for culture wars and systemic oppression), conspiracy theories / misinformation (as a means of fracturing and neutering political movements that empowers users and proponents like a heroin-dealer empowers the neighborhood) and wealth inequality (the 'meritocratic' cloak over the otherwise naked aristocracy of capitalist societies) all dominate discourse and news cycles with the apocalyptic 'slow' train of climate change coming into view that we can't avoid because the sheer scale escapes our petty existential crises and sadistic impulses that have driven history and gotten us here (wherever the hell 'here' is) 4. the release of the tiger king documentary
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zarzavat 5y ago
No. Viruses mutate in the face of selective pressure. COVID is becoming more deadly over time because there is a selective pressure towards more transmissibility. More transmissibility can increase the severity of illness if the virus more readily replicates or more easy infects human cells. Viruses only become less deadly if they are so deadly that hosts die before they can pass on the virus. No such pressure exists for COVID as patients are infectious during the incubation period.
- petertodd 5y ago
  > COVID is becoming more deadly over time Citation needed.
  - glial 5y ago
    I suppose it depends on how you calculate it. If the delta variant is equally deadly to previous versions (to an individual), but is more infectious, then more people will die, all else being equal. More people dying --> more deadly, at the population level.
    - petertodd 5y ago
      The OP specifically said: > COVID is becoming more deadly over time because there is a selective pressure towards more transmissibility. More transmissibility can increase the severity of illness if the virus more readily replicates or more easy infects human cells. I read that as talking about infection fatality rate (IFR). I'm not aware of any evidence that covid's IFR is increasing.
      - zarzavat 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Alpha_variant#Virulence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Alpha_variant#Virul... It seems that the Alpha variant is more virulent than the original, but it's hard to measure virulence to a high degree of confidence. IFR is not quite the right thing to measure, we are interested in differences in mortality due to mutation of the virus, but there are many confounding variables in the quality of treatment and populations that get infected to remove. e.g. if a virus stayed exactly static you would expect mortality to decrease over time as better treatments are found.
pezdeath 5y ago
No. Viruses mutate over time and they could become more or less deadly over time. The Spanish Flu mutated into a more deadly virus overtime. https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurge... ^ not a scientific article, simply to prove how bad the viewpoint of "mutate to be less deadly". More reasonable article: https://www.aap.com.au/yes-viruses-can-evolve-to-become-more-deadly/ https://www.aap.com.au/yes-viruses-can-evolve-to-become-more...
- worker767424 5y ago
  There also wasn't a coordinated half-assed effort to stop the Spanish Flu.
heavyset_go 5y ago
The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology addressed this idea here[1], as did The Conversation[2], Scientific American[3], and the AP[4]. tl;dr: you're looking at an average trend that may or may not actually exist. There's no guarantee that it will follow the trend, that it is average, that it won't become worse in some aspects or that the trend even exists. [1] https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/112920/will-the-coronavirus-evolve-to-be-less-deadly https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/112920/will-the-co... [2] https://theconversation.com/will-coronavirus-really-evolve-to-become-less-deadly-153817 https://theconversation.com/will-coronavirus-really-evolve-t... [3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-will-the-coronavirus-evolve/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-will-the-coro... [4] https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-011488089270 https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-011488089270
- spaceiscool 5y ago
  What do you have to say about antibody dependent enhancement?
  - raphlinus 5y ago
    https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/12/antibody-dependent-enhancement-and-the-coronavirus-vaccines https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/12/an...
DanHulton 5y ago
Viruses, like all things, mutate to become more fit to their environment. A lot of viruses mutate to become less deadly because they're killing their hosts too quickly, and the less-deadly versions allow their hosts to live longer, and thus spread better. COVID already spreads very well, what with the ability for it to spread while incubating silently for a couple weeks. A more-deadly version that retains the slow and silent incubation, but then kills mercilessly, would likely still spread just as fine.
minikomi 5y ago
The "part" of the virus targeted by the vaccine is the spike protein which is "The spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2, which plays a key role in the receptor recognition and cell membrane fusion process" [1]. A mutation which alters the shape of the spike protein, rendering it protected against the vaccine will most likely render the virus less virulent. Think of it as a hedged bet. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41401-020-0485-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41401-020-0485-4

Don’t viruses mutate to become less deadly over time? If so, why is there so much concern over mutations? Isn’t that what we want.

by vimy 5y ago

Don’t viruses mutate to become less deadly over time? If so, why is there so much concern over mutations? Isn’t that what we want.

deregulateMed 5y ago

Viruses mutate without thought. Some will be more deadly, others less. Some more contagious, some less. Consider the seemingly randomness of chemistry at the biological level is what determines this. Although less deadly, highly contagious are more likely to spread for longer.

guscost 5y ago

What you are referring to is called the “transmission-virulence tradeoff theory” and while it does not guarantee that this virus will do what you claim, it is remarkable that public health officials and journalists do not mention it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/

ksaj 5y ago
They would mention it if they saw it occurring. It's not. You can imagine if they did, the propaganda engine of 2020 would have used the concept to launch lies about how it'll eventually become so mild you really don't need the vaccine. A certain president was stating early on that it would just fade away. It didn't. All the info floating about was already confusing (and even contradictory) to the general population. There is no need to muddy the water with details that aren't applicable at this time, and may never be.
- guscost 5y ago
  Even if your claim is correct: Hiding this kind of information from the public, and trying to steamroll them with “experts say” proclamations, has backfired spectacularly. Surely you can see that by now.
  - ksaj 5y ago
    You might recall the roller coaster that ensued when they thought it might be possible to reach heard immunity. The moment it became obvious that it wasn't going to happen, mostly due to an incredible lack of cooperation with everyone involved, they stopped talking about it. It was no longer valid, so why talk about it? What backfired is not so much what the experts were saying, but how there was always an 'anti' chugging away at the press and online to make sure nobody knew what was what. We spend way too much time debunking crap info instead of just dealing with the good-at-the-time info provided by the experts. They aren't hiding anything from the public. They just aren't planning on teaching the public absolutely everything about pandemics - just what is needed to be known at any given time. Otherwise you end up with too much information for anyone to even begin to understand what they need to do. Telling people that some viruses eventually weaken has no benefit to anyone. The current virus isn't doing that, and raising hopes that it might is bound to give propagandists more fuel to work with.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    The whole damn last year and a half has been nothing but raw appeals to authority. Critical thinking and healthy skepticism has been met with extreme vitriol.
    - alexanderdmitri 5y ago
      What's your frame of reference for this statement? Mostly I've seen a very mixed bag of opinions, reactions and measures over the past year and a half. I think people are pushed to extremes because there's a heady mixture of: 1. an invisible, unthinking enemy breaking through borders affecting everyone and causing an inflection in basic social etiquette that demands action in very grey and alien moral zones most people have no experience in 2. the internet increasingly dominating the human experience while still being a relatively new, mindfuck global network that (a) undermines basic instincts honed for thousands of years, (b) increases fringe and extreme communities by enabling distributed social networking, and (c) enables surveillance and individual targeting on a scale most preceding dystopian literature couldn't imagine 3. unsolveable, self-perpetuating issues such as racism (as a proxy for culture wars and systemic oppression), conspiracy theories / misinformation (as a means of fracturing and neutering political movements that empowers users and proponents like a heroin-dealer empowers the neighborhood) and wealth inequality (the 'meritocratic' cloak over the otherwise naked aristocracy of capitalist societies) all dominate discourse and news cycles with the apocalyptic 'slow' train of climate change coming into view that we can't avoid because the sheer scale escapes our petty existential crises and sadistic impulses that have driven history and gotten us here (wherever the hell 'here' is) 4. the release of the tiger king documentary

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

zarzavat 5y ago

No. Viruses mutate in the face of selective pressure. COVID is becoming more deadly over time because there is a selective pressure towards more transmissibility. More transmissibility can increase the severity of illness if the virus more readily replicates or more easy infects human cells. Viruses only become less deadly if they are so deadly that hosts die before they can pass on the virus. No such pressure exists for COVID as patients are infectious during the incubation period.

petertodd 5y ago
> COVID is becoming more deadly over time Citation needed.
- glial 5y ago
  I suppose it depends on how you calculate it. If the delta variant is equally deadly to previous versions (to an individual), but is more infectious, then more people will die, all else being equal. More people dying --> more deadly, at the population level.
  - petertodd 5y ago
    The OP specifically said: > COVID is becoming more deadly over time because there is a selective pressure towards more transmissibility. More transmissibility can increase the severity of illness if the virus more readily replicates or more easy infects human cells. I read that as talking about infection fatality rate (IFR). I'm not aware of any evidence that covid's IFR is increasing.
    - zarzavat 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Alpha_variant#Virulence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Alpha_variant#Virul... It seems that the Alpha variant is more virulent than the original, but it's hard to measure virulence to a high degree of confidence. IFR is not quite the right thing to measure, we are interested in differences in mortality due to mutation of the virus, but there are many confounding variables in the quality of treatment and populations that get infected to remove. e.g. if a virus stayed exactly static you would expect mortality to decrease over time as better treatments are found.

pezdeath 5y ago

No. Viruses mutate over time and they could become more or less deadly over time. The Spanish Flu mutated into a more deadly virus overtime. https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurge... ^ not a scientific article, simply to prove how bad the viewpoint of "mutate to be less deadly". More reasonable article: https://www.aap.com.au/yes-viruses-can-evolve-to-become-more-deadly/ https://www.aap.com.au/yes-viruses-can-evolve-to-become-more...

worker767424 5y ago
There also wasn't a coordinated half-assed effort to stop the Spanish Flu.

heavyset_go 5y ago

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology addressed this idea here[1], as did The Conversation[2], Scientific American[3], and the AP[4]. tl;dr: you're looking at an average trend that may or may not actually exist. There's no guarantee that it will follow the trend, that it is average, that it won't become worse in some aspects or that the trend even exists. [1] https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/112920/will-the-coronavirus-evolve-to-be-less-deadly https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/112920/will-the-co... [2] https://theconversation.com/will-coronavirus-really-evolve-to-become-less-deadly-153817 https://theconversation.com/will-coronavirus-really-evolve-t... [3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-will-the-coronavirus-evolve/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-will-the-coro... [4] https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-011488089270 https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-011488089270

spaceiscool 5y ago
What do you have to say about antibody dependent enhancement?
- raphlinus 5y ago
  https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/12/antibody-dependent-enhancement-and-the-coronavirus-vaccines https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/12/an...

DanHulton 5y ago

Viruses, like all things, mutate to become more fit to their environment. A lot of viruses mutate to become less deadly because they're killing their hosts too quickly, and the less-deadly versions allow their hosts to live longer, and thus spread better. COVID already spreads very well, what with the ability for it to spread while incubating silently for a couple weeks. A more-deadly version that retains the slow and silent incubation, but then kills mercilessly, would likely still spread just as fine.

minikomi 5y ago

The "part" of the virus targeted by the vaccine is the spike protein which is "The spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2, which plays a key role in the receptor recognition and cell membrane fusion process" [1]. A mutation which alters the shape of the spike protein, rendering it protected against the vaccine will most likely render the virus less virulent. Think of it as a hedged bet. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41401-020-0485-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41401-020-0485-4