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Omicron is a weird variant. It has evolved to defeat three different therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. Antibodies are like the immune systems classifiers, a f
by opwieurposiu 5y ago
Omicron is a weird variant. It has evolved to defeat three different therapeutic monoclonal antibodies.
Antibodies are like the immune systems classifiers, a function that takes in a object and returns a probability that the object is a specific pathogen. If the antibody binds to the pathogen for a long time, then P_pathogen is high, if it quickly unbinds or does not bind at all, P_pathogen is low. Brownian motion is constantly bumping around all the tiny objects in the warm soup of your body, so each antibody function can be evaluated thousands of times per second.
In ML terms Omicron is like one of those adversarial image attacks that tricks a classifier into thinking a gun is a duck.
The interesting question is, was Omicron trained by nature or by man?
https://bprice.substack.com/p/lab-leak-20 https://bprice.substack.com/p/lab-leak-20
- NicoJuicy 5y agoI'm not looking into conspiracy theories. The situation is what it is. i think it's similar to a inverse adversarial image attack scenario. Since the danger of COVID is the the immune system overreacting. So it's a gun, potentially misidentified as a nuclear bomb and we want 'Stanislav Petrov' as a fix ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_al... ) I'm only interested in the trained & best evolution, while applying transfer learning and without being an agent like in NEAT! :P https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroevolution_of_augmenting_topologies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroevolution_of_augmenting...
- mikem170 5y agoThere's genetic evidence that the Omicron variant evolved in mice: > Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences now report that they have found a pattern of mutations in Omicron that is typical of a virus that has infected mice. > They believe SARS-CoV-2 jumped from a human to a mouse in mid-2020, then back into a human in late 2021. > They say it is unlikely that the intermediate host was a laboratory mouse. [0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-did-omicron-evolve-in-mice https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-did-omicr...
- nodemaker 5y agoYes but why no silent mutations?
- NicoJuicy 5y agoAt least 10 silent mutations? https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/12/08/omicron-the-sum-of-all-fears/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/12/08/omi...
- nodemaker 5y agoHmm so would you say omicron evolved naturally without human intervention?
- NicoJuicy 5y agoI don't see why humans would have done this without taking credit for it. The risk is much lower and what i read, the evolution is normal when it would have evolved through mice. I'm not an expert, but it seemed plausible when I read it. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-did-omicron-evolve-in-mice#Wild-mice-or-lab-mice https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-did-omicr...? I'm not a believer of a man made virus. A coronavirus would have been a bad choice either way because it mutates too easily.
- NicoJuicy 5y agoIt's also what I read, it could be the reason why the omicron variant is less dangerous. It doesn't make sense to do this in a lab setting without taking credit for it ( for making it less dangerous). But this is still not sure ofc. It's just guessing at this point.