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Its worth noting that its hard to tell whether a virus became more deadly or whether the most at risk died early.

tehlike 2y ago
You can normalize by age groups, that's still possible. And either way, outcome is the same. Virus is not killing as much as it did.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > You can normalize by age groups Does that work? If genetically predisposed to dying from something, if it gets most of those predisposed they can’t get it again.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  > Virus is not killing as much as it did. Even that really is impossible to say. Our methods and frequency of testing for CoV-2 infections, both before and after death, have changed dramatically. Previously we were telling everyone to get tested when they feel sick at all, and considering anyone who dies after testing positive to be a Covid death. Now we rarely test and only considering it a Covid death when its as obvious a death from any other cold. We simply can't compare the numbers at all, at best we could say we have drastically reduced how often we mark Covid as the cause of a death. Noe the excess deaths data has absolutely reverted to pre-pandemic levels, but again we were horrible about collecting unbiased data. Excess deaths actually seem to line up better with the vaccine rollout than with the initial viral outbreak. That could be completely coincidental and a sign that the virus was more deadly in its second year, but again we didn't collect the right data and don't know because during the rollout no one was willing to (or allowed to) consider that the vaccines could be killing people, leaving us with a gap in data that would have been really handy to now be able to definitively show that it was a more deadly virus killing people rather than the vaccine itself.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    In 2020 those in power in the media and government told us that left unchecked, the virus would overwhelm hospitals and cause even more people to die, and to some extent that did happen. The pandemic is over because if you go to the hospital now, on a random day, there are empty beds, and there isn't a COVID ward. There doesn't have to be careful testing and whatnot to know that the pandemic is over. You can just look around. It's either over or so minor that calling it a pandemic seems to be a misuse of the word.
  - kamilner 2y ago
    > Excess deaths actually seem to line up better with the vaccine rollout than with the initial viral outbreak. This seems to be a bizarre statement. I can't speak to other countries, but at least in England the widespread rollout of vaccines (just beginning in January 2021) only started at the end of the final major spike in excess deaths. It's simply not possible for excess deaths to line up better with vaccine rollout than with the initial outbreak, because both major spikes in excess deaths were before mass vaccination rollout. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-within-england-post-pandemic-method/excess-mortality-within-england-2023-data-statistical-commentary https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-wi...
madaxe_again 2y ago
That’s kinda the same thing. All nature is a balance, and as the rock shapes the river, the river shapes the rock.
- saudi_9868 2y ago
  [flagged]
Gibbon1 2y ago
I think the answer is called reversion to the mean. As in a bunch of factors go into how nasty a virus is based on which and how it infects cells and how it manages to suppress the immune system, etc. Particular substrains can be more or less nasty but will tend to evolve towards some normalized mean nasty.
- UncleSlacky 2y ago
  Except in the case of Covid the host is contagious before symptoms develop, so there is no evolutionary pressure on it to be less deadly (i.e. give itself more time to spread by not killing the host).
  - btilly 2y ago
    No, not an exception. It is common for people to become contagious before symptoms. But contagiousness is not a binary on/off switch. As your virus load increases, you get others sick more easily. And the result is that most people continue to become more contagious as they develop symptoms. But there is also a second factor. We have multiple layers of immune defenses. COVID is very good at getting past our initial defenses and getting us sick. Over and over again. But if you've had it once, you have the ability to ramp up against it quickly in a way that limits how sick you can get from it. So if you've ever had it, it is now much less deadly for you. (Unless you become immunocompromised.)
  - Gibbon1 2y ago
    Evolutionary pressure doesn't factor into this. Imagine the virus doing a random walk over a bell curve of virulence. On average an outlier is going to mutate into a not outlier. SARS-1 was an outlier, very deadly. SARS-2 s probably not an outlier. That said I think a virus can evolve to the point where it's arguably a different virus in which case the median virulence can change.

You can normalize by age groups, that's still possible. And either way, outcome is the same. Virus is not killing as much as it did.

lostlogin 2y ago
> You can normalize by age groups Does that work? If genetically predisposed to dying from something, if it gets most of those predisposed they can’t get it again.
_heimdall 2y ago
> Virus is not killing as much as it did. Even that really is impossible to say. Our methods and frequency of testing for CoV-2 infections, both before and after death, have changed dramatically. Previously we were telling everyone to get tested when they feel sick at all, and considering anyone who dies after testing positive to be a Covid death. Now we rarely test and only considering it a Covid death when its as obvious a death from any other cold. We simply can't compare the numbers at all, at best we could say we have drastically reduced how often we mark Covid as the cause of a death. Noe the excess deaths data has absolutely reverted to pre-pandemic levels, but again we were horrible about collecting unbiased data. Excess deaths actually seem to line up better with the vaccine rollout than with the initial viral outbreak. That could be completely coincidental and a sign that the virus was more deadly in its second year, but again we didn't collect the right data and don't know because during the rollout no one was willing to (or allowed to) consider that the vaccines could be killing people, leaving us with a gap in data that would have been really handy to now be able to definitively show that it was a more deadly virus killing people rather than the vaccine itself.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  In 2020 those in power in the media and government told us that left unchecked, the virus would overwhelm hospitals and cause even more people to die, and to some extent that did happen. The pandemic is over because if you go to the hospital now, on a random day, there are empty beds, and there isn't a COVID ward. There doesn't have to be careful testing and whatnot to know that the pandemic is over. You can just look around. It's either over or so minor that calling it a pandemic seems to be a misuse of the word.
- kamilner 2y ago
  > Excess deaths actually seem to line up better with the vaccine rollout than with the initial viral outbreak. This seems to be a bizarre statement. I can't speak to other countries, but at least in England the widespread rollout of vaccines (just beginning in January 2021) only started at the end of the final major spike in excess deaths. It's simply not possible for excess deaths to line up better with vaccine rollout than with the initial outbreak, because both major spikes in excess deaths were before mass vaccination rollout. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-within-england-post-pandemic-method/excess-mortality-within-england-2023-data-statistical-commentary https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-wi...

madaxe_again 2y ago

That’s kinda the same thing. All nature is a balance, and as the rock shapes the river, the river shapes the rock.

saudi_9868 2y ago
[flagged]

Gibbon1 2y ago

I think the answer is called reversion to the mean. As in a bunch of factors go into how nasty a virus is based on which and how it infects cells and how it manages to suppress the immune system, etc. Particular substrains can be more or less nasty but will tend to evolve towards some normalized mean nasty.

UncleSlacky 2y ago
Except in the case of Covid the host is contagious before symptoms develop, so there is no evolutionary pressure on it to be less deadly (i.e. give itself more time to spread by not killing the host).
- btilly 2y ago
  No, not an exception. It is common for people to become contagious before symptoms. But contagiousness is not a binary on/off switch. As your virus load increases, you get others sick more easily. And the result is that most people continue to become more contagious as they develop symptoms. But there is also a second factor. We have multiple layers of immune defenses. COVID is very good at getting past our initial defenses and getting us sick. Over and over again. But if you've had it once, you have the ability to ramp up against it quickly in a way that limits how sick you can get from it. So if you've ever had it, it is now much less deadly for you. (Unless you become immunocompromised.)
- Gibbon1 2y ago
  Evolutionary pressure doesn't factor into this. Imagine the virus doing a random walk over a bell curve of virulence. On average an outlier is going to mutate into a not outlier. SARS-1 was an outlier, very deadly. SARS-2 s probably not an outlier. That said I think a virus can evolve to the point where it's arguably a different virus in which case the median virulence can change.