3 ms·

I like your comment, but not this part: > The thing is, COVID-19 is not endemic yet and, even once it is, will likely retain the capability of mutating into a

by baxtr 5y ago

I like your comment, but not this part: > The thing is, COVID-19 is not endemic yet and, even once it is, will likely retain the capability of mutating into a strain that causes a new deadly pandemic. I don't think that's possible, since I am not aware of a precedent. Meaning: the other 4 endemic coronaviruses which also started as pandemic and now are harmless cold viruses never caused a new deathly pandemic in a mutated form.

criticaltinker 5y ago
Documents from scientists in the UK government articulate in great detail that it is a "realistic" possibility that the virus mutates to be deadlier and/or more transmissive [1]. One key difference between this coronavirus and the other endemic 4 is that mass vaccination strategies were never used. Analogous to antibiotic resistance, vaccine resistance is a realistic consequence if vaccines are used indiscriminately [2][3][4][5]. So that is one way we may be setting a new precedent here. If you take a look at what happened with Marek's disease virus in chickens, it's not pretty - none of us wants a world where it is literally impossible to survive without vaccination, because multiple generations of vaccines were undermined by viral evolution. [1] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evolution-of-sars-cov-2-26-july-2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti... [2] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ [3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016.2562 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016... [4] The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26302775/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26302775/ [5] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1002198 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...
- boc 5y ago
  Then why did the "worst" variant so far come from a place (India) with extremely low vaccination rates at the time? It's a numbers game. With chickens there are billions of chickens created and destroyed annually, and almost all of them are vaccinated in utero, so it makes sense that we'd see the disease get selectively deadlier. With Covid if you knock down the disease rate to something that's basically a few cases per month via vaccinations, you won't have enough chances for mutations to occur.
rattray 5y ago
None of the others were an engineered chimera virus, which this may have been. What you say is reassuring to me, but this could be different.

by baxtr 5y ago

criticaltinker 5y ago

Documents from scientists in the UK government articulate in great detail that it is a "realistic" possibility that the virus mutates to be deadlier and/or more transmissive [1]. One key difference between this coronavirus and the other endemic 4 is that mass vaccination strategies were never used. Analogous to antibiotic resistance, vaccine resistance is a realistic consequence if vaccines are used indiscriminately [2][3][4][5]. So that is one way we may be setting a new precedent here. If you take a look at what happened with Marek's disease virus in chickens, it's not pretty - none of us wants a world where it is literally impossible to survive without vaccination, because multiple generations of vaccines were undermined by viral evolution. [1] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evolution-of-sars-cov-2-26-july-2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti... [2] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ [3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016.2562 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016... [4] The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26302775/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26302775/ [5] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1002198 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...

boc 5y ago
Then why did the "worst" variant so far come from a place (India) with extremely low vaccination rates at the time? It's a numbers game. With chickens there are billions of chickens created and destroyed annually, and almost all of them are vaccinated in utero, so it makes sense that we'd see the disease get selectively deadlier. With Covid if you knock down the disease rate to something that's basically a few cases per month via vaccinations, you won't have enough chances for mutations to occur.

rattray 5y ago

None of the others were an engineered chimera virus, which this may have been. What you say is reassuring to me, but this could be different.