3 ms·
I think (hope?) we all agree that awareness of "long-covid" is important. But it's also entirely orthogonal to designations of a pathogen as being "over" or "n
by jMyles 2y ago
I think (hope?) we all agree that awareness of "long-covid" is important. But it's also entirely orthogonal to designations of a pathogen as being "over" or "not over".
Coronaviruses have been with humanity for a very long time, and people have been reporting post-infection syndromes surrounding them - and have been ignored or downplayed - for decades now.
There are five endemic coronaviruses, all of which likely started as an epidemic (two are documented of course) and evolved into what we call a "common cold", with susceptible populations suffering outsized effects.
Now that we've finally (and I think we can say, successfully) achieved endemic equilibrium from covid-19, it's important not to lose compassion for those still suffering (and to perhaps bring awareness online regarding this syndrome going back a long time - some have been suffering for many years).
- tehjoker 2y agoWe have not achieved equilibrium. There is wave after wave, and people are getting increasingly disabled. The virus continues to mutate but we have dropped our defenses. Viruses become "mild" when they kill enough people for natural selection to take effect. That has not happened.
- jMyles 2y agoIs this also your assessment of hku1? How about h3n2?
- at_compile_time 2y agoSelection is acting on viruses as well. A virus that makes you very ill won't spread as well as one that makes you a little ill because there are only so many people you can infect while bedridden, and the trend among dominant strains reflects this.
- jMyles 2y agoSelection acts on viruses far faster than on humans. And this effect is observable to the naked eye at the population level, with multiple powerful examples in living memory. The comment to which you are responding is borderline nonsense in this respect.
- tehjoker 2y agoHow on earth can selection pressure a virus that kills long after it transmits? When increased severity can sometimes improve transmission? This is 1800s transmission-virulence tradeoff hypothesis nonsense.