Why Scientists Are Very Worried About the Variant From Brazil (npr.org) 207
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: New coronavirus variants seem to be cropping up everywhere. There's one from the U.K., which is more contagious and already circulating in the United States. There's one from South Africa, which is forcing Moderna and Pfizer to reformulate their COVID-19 vaccines and create "booster" shots, just to make sure the vaccines maintain their efficacies. But for some scientists, the most worrying variant might be the newest one. A variant called P.1, which emerged in early December in Manaus, Brazil, and by mid-January had already caused a massive resurgence in cases across the city of 2 million people. [...] The concern with P.1 is twofold: scientists don't understand why the variant has spread so explosively in Brazil, and the variant carries a particularly dangerous set of mutations.
While the variant from the U.K. took about three months to dominate the outbreak in England, P.1 took only about a month to dominate the outbreak in Manaus. In addition, Manaus had already been hit extremely hard by the virus back in April. One study estimated that the population should have reached herd immunity and the virus shouldn't be able to spread easily in the community. So why would the city see an even bigger surge 10 months later? Could P.1 be evading the antibodies made against the previous version of the virus, making reinfections easier? Could it just be significantly more contagious? Could both be true? "While we don't *know* exactly why this variant has been so apparently successful in Brazil, none of the explanations on the table are good," epidemiologist Bill Hanage, at Harvard University, wrote on Twitter.
Reinfections are a serious concern for several reasons. First off, like the variant from South Africa, P.1 carries a cluster of mutations along the surface of the virus where antibodies -- especially the potent antibodies -- like to bind. "They are kind of the major targets of the immune system," says virologist Penny Moore at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. "So when we see a whole lot of mutations in [those surfaces], it raises the possibility that the mutations might be conferring immune escape." That is, the mutations are helping the virus evade antibodies or escape recognition by them. In essence, the mutations are providing the virus with a type of invisibility cloak. And thus, now we have a game of "cat and mouse," says virologist Ravi Gupta, between the virus and the vaccine. The virus finds ways around the vaccine (and our immune system), says Gupta, and so the manufacturers have to reformulate the vaccines (or else we run the risk of getting infected twice).
While the variant from the U.K. took about three months to dominate the outbreak in England, P.1 took only about a month to dominate the outbreak in Manaus. In addition, Manaus had already been hit extremely hard by the virus back in April. One study estimated that the population should have reached herd immunity and the virus shouldn't be able to spread easily in the community. So why would the city see an even bigger surge 10 months later? Could P.1 be evading the antibodies made against the previous version of the virus, making reinfections easier? Could it just be significantly more contagious? Could both be true? "While we don't *know* exactly why this variant has been so apparently successful in Brazil, none of the explanations on the table are good," epidemiologist Bill Hanage, at Harvard University, wrote on Twitter.
Reinfections are a serious concern for several reasons. First off, like the variant from South Africa, P.1 carries a cluster of mutations along the surface of the virus where antibodies -- especially the potent antibodies -- like to bind. "They are kind of the major targets of the immune system," says virologist Penny Moore at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. "So when we see a whole lot of mutations in [those surfaces], it raises the possibility that the mutations might be conferring immune escape." That is, the mutations are helping the virus evade antibodies or escape recognition by them. In essence, the mutations are providing the virus with a type of invisibility cloak. And thus, now we have a game of "cat and mouse," says virologist Ravi Gupta, between the virus and the vaccine. The virus finds ways around the vaccine (and our immune system), says Gupta, and so the manufacturers have to reformulate the vaccines (or else we run the risk of getting infected twice).
A Trump-ist Liar is President of Brazil (Score:2, Insightful)
Brazil has been cursed by a President who is as short sighted and deceitful as Donald Trump.
Like Trump, Bolsanaro has laid down Brazil's defenses against Covid-19. Like the USA, Brazil is paying a steep price in death and economic ruin for their President's willfully incompetent response to Covid-19.
Re:A Trump-ist Liar is President of Brazil (Score:4, Interesting)
Brazil makes he who shal not be named look comparatively reasonable https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com] This is a massive political failure.
Re:A Trump-ist Liar is President of Brazil (Score:4, Funny)
So they got a screwy Trump variant AND a screwy Covid variant? Oh the shitty luck. Let's hope they don't merge.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Yes but I let someone far better qualified assess the papers:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] "Vitamin D can prevent COVID-19 infection-induced multiple organ damage"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com] "Effect of calcifediol treatment and best available therapy versus best available therapy on intensive care unit admission and mortality among patients hospitalized for COVID-19: A pilot randomized clinical study"
MMR jab gives some immunity, (the mumps part, which lasts 10 years)
https://mbio.asm.org/content/1. [asm.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Are the new strains more damaging/deadly?
To me, that's would be the central question, especially if there is a re-infection possibility.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm, the MMR paper [asm.org] is suggestive that there is a link between having been exposed to the MMR strain ... but as far as I know, that only applies to young people who acquired their immunity to mumps from the MMR jab. I don't know about you, but I acquired my (presumed, present) immunity to mumps by catching the disease from one of my sisters in 1969. Whatever circulating titre of antibodies to mumps virus I have,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That is absolutely true - especially in the winter. I only remember to supplement in the winter, but it helps slow down the onset of seasonal affective disorder. It would probably prevent it completely if I remembered consistently or had a higher dosage.
Re: (Score:3)
... which we're not expecting until some time in May. Between now and then, every trip out of the house will be accompanied by a raincoat. Come May, the raincoat may be inside the rucksack instead of on the shoulders.
Hmmm, can I get a shot of your time machine? What we know about the effects on children's health is that in the first year post-infection there are only
Re: (Score:2)
i will bite:
There are also lots of studies that show that stupid people that believe everything they read in the internet and spread that kind of info without any link to prove that info are more likely to get COVID. Also, 87.35537% of internet statistics quotes are totally made up, as no one bothers to do fact checking... even better when combined with possible true but useless info, like 99% of COVID dead pacients had at least 2 eyes!!!
While it is true that many people are either vitamin D insufficient or
Blown out of proporsion (Score:5, Informative)
You are exactly a demonstration of the problem with this kind of bullshit medecine.
MMR jab gives some immunity, (the mumps part, which lasts 10 years)
https://mbio.asm.org/content/1... [asm.org]
- Some paper find some corelation between MMR antibodies titer and lower severity of the disease, in a small sized group (n=50).
- The Internet: OMG: MMR jabs saves you from teh COVID-19 !!!11!oneone
Huh, no. That's not what the paper said. Please read it.
Even they themselves point out that correlation isn't causation:
The paper isn't bad per se.
But it doesn't mean that you should rush to get your MMR vaccine. (though checking if your vaccine are uptodate *is* a good thing in general. Talk to your medical doctor to check what needs updating)
It simply means that some scientist have found a cooccurence of high titer of IgG antibodies in vaccinate people happening together with low severity COVID.
That's interesting, that should be further investigated (Is age a cofounding factor, i.e.: the causality chain could be the other way around compared to their discussion section) (and even some sociological factors: is being an antivaxxer a higher risk of not taking anti COVID measures ?), etc.
At minimum some larger-scale retrospective studies must be done (is it specific to this group of 50 or is it something widely observed?), where you can try to correct for factor (is MMR vaccine still correlate similarly, independent of the age category ?). A cohort follow up study can improve a bit.
At best a large-ish study should be done (do people in the group that got MMR shot have lower COVID-19 symptoms that people who got something else ?)
But just a single paper, no matter how nicely done, doesn't help you draw conclusions.
Most of the other food supplement usually peddled around each pandemic boil down to "people who have big defficiencies of {X} tend to have poor health and get worse disease in general" (and that is known and proven for quite a few vitamins for quite some time, etc.), but the vitamin peddler kind of twist it into "{X} will cure disease !!!11!oneone" which, again, is completely overblown.
- So does trying to avoid vitamin deficiencies sound like a good idea? Yes, avoiding deficiencies is a good idea in general for your health. (Though if you have a balanced diest and a healthy life style, chances are you aren't as deficient as you think. Discuss with your doctor to measure it if in doubt)
- Does it mean that you should start popping vitamin {wahtever} like candy because it's a miracle cure against COVID-19? No. Nope. And actually, for some liposoluble vitamin, this could even be a bad idea as it would lead to excessive accumulation.
DISCLAIMER: Though it's not my specialisation (I am sequencing this fucker [bsse.ethz.ch] as my day job), the above statement are sufficiently simple and part of the basic medical training.
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes correlation is due to causation and sometimes it isn't, you can't just dismiss all cases where there is correlation because of a meme or anti-meme. the science here is good here and the evidence is very supportive of the claim.
Wrong, a single paper if well done does help draw conclusions, what a weird thing to say. This is some stupid get out of jail free card for you.
And the rest of your post is pointless.
Wrong conclusions (Score:4, Informative)
Sometimes correlation is due to causation and sometimes it isn't, you can't just dismiss all cases where there is correlation
But you shouldn't jump to conclusion neither.
When correlation is reported by a retrospective study, the correct reaction is an intrigued raised eyebrown and titillated curiosity, while waiting for more conclusive result.
I don't say the paper should be thrown out. I am saying that at this stage, the only thing that we can conclude is that we need to investigate that in more details.
the science here is good here
I never said this paper was bad.
and the evidence is very supportive of the claim.
Yes, of the claim stated in the article. This being paraphrased as "there's an interesting correlation that raises questions, please insert credit to continue".
Not the "WE must all gobble down miracle drug!!!!" which is how these type of papers tend to be reported by everybody else.
There's no conclusive evidence saying that MMR vaccine work against COVID-19 in this article.
There's clearly good evidence that "something interesting is happening", but first we must analyse what this interesting thing actually is, and this paper doesn't provide the necessary information to draw conclusion.
(Though it provides evidence to make hypothesis that could be further test by future research).
Wrong, a single paper if well done does help draw conclusions, what a weird thing to say.
The keywords in that sentence are "help" and "if well done".
- "if well done": in this case you need to take into account which question was this paper well done to answer. And it is "good at" pointing that there something going on. It is absolutely not sufficient at all to draw conclusion that MMR has direct causes. This paper is "well done" but not for the purpose of proving that MMR IgG causes decrease of COVID-19 severity.
- "help": a single paper always only helps toward a conclusion. At minimum you'd need at least some attempt at replication (at least another independent paper attempting the same thing). At best a good high quality systematic review (meta analysis).
This is some stupid get out of jail free card for you.
No. There are very clear reasons why you can't use this paper as:
"Proof that MMR jabs protects from COVID-19".
First a proof will require a differently designed study. A randomized controlled trial would definitely bring you close to there.
This paper is not designed to prove causation, it is design to showcase some interesting correlation that absolutely definitely needs futher investigations before we can conclude about causation.
This doesn't make causation impossible - again the causation simply cannot be concluded with the information available ther.
Then as the "a single swallow does not a summer make" metaphor goes, once you have a study designed to observe the causality, you would need at least another replicate, just to confirm that the first one wasn't a random fluke.
Could you please at least attempt to understand how medical research work, pretty please?
Re: (Score:3)
Vitamin-D is extremely important for beating any viral infection, so I don't know what took them so long to realize this. The reason is that "Programmed Cell Death" can not happen without Vitamin-D.
When a cell becomes infected by a virus, that viral mRNA is used to force that cell to produce foreign proteins needed to assemble new virii. The innate immune system within that infected cell will randomly sample the proteins being created, will slice some up, and present fragments of it on the external surface
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Boris Johnson (4th) and Donald Trump (10th), for two of them.
Italy (6th) had the misfortune of being one of the first hit, where it took them by storm, hospitals were overwhelmed, and we didn't know well how to treat it. But I blame Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and others in his government for mishandling the recent wave. The PM handed in his resignation because of his handling of the second wave of COVID-19 and recovery fund
Re: (Score:2)
This is not true, especially if you leave out European countries with very small populations.
The countries with more confirmed cases per 100,000 than the USA:
Andorra
Montenegro
Czechia
San Marino
Luxembourg
Slovenia
All others have fewer.
Who could have predicted (Score:5, Insightful)
Allowing a virus, one of the main examples of microevolution taught in schools, free reign to multiply has negative consequences? Who would have thought some mutations would make things worse? That would be like expecting antibiotic-resistant forms of diseases to grow and spread. Nah, penicillin was just made better back in the old days.
Re:Who could have predicted (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Who could have predicted (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That's called "endemic". It's a part of everyday life now. :(
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I didn't say that. The Flu is endemic, and we manage to live with it. Eventually we will achieve a sort of herd immunity, either by vaccine or by death.
Then, the "hospitality" industry will no doubt take off once again. If you're the type to play the long odds, investing in the industry will eventually be a wise choice, but probably not for a while.
Re: (Score:3)
Given there is a mutation rate in this region of the genome, and increasing n
Re:Who could have predicted (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true, I'm afraid. The probability of a mutation occurring is a function of both time and number of infections. More infections == more mutations.
Re:Who could have predicted (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not *time*. It's the number of times the virus is *copied* that introduces genetic variability. When you flatten the curve, the area under the curve remains the same -- in the end, the same number of people get infected, but fewer people die.
The other thing flattening the curve does is buy you time to get vaccines and treatments developed and deployed.
Re: (Score:2)
The number of replications the virus makes determines how many mutations come about. If fewer people are infected over a given period of time, there is less viral replication happening. If someone gets a less severe viral load, there is less viral replication happening. Any of these measures would have reduced the chance for mutations.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Ha.
Uh, "ha".
And there I was thinking you were impersonating a dangerous fool. Really good joke. Do you run towards police cars carrying an imitation AK-47 with "irony" printed on it in black letters on a black background? You should try it. It's really ironic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I read it in the late 70s. Very informative. It made the years of palaeontology much simpler.
Re: (Score:3)
There are other books by the same author that are relevant. Possibly "The Extended Phenotype".
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Your "ironic comments and dumb jokes" are very easy to mistake for a serious opinion that also happens to be massively incorrect and dangerous to people easily swayed by misinformation. Kind of like an elected official repeating the same lies over and over - when that lie is heard by someone that already thinks the lie is true, it further reinforces the lie.
Best case: stop posting incorrect misinformation as an "ironic comment" - several people thought you were being serious. Worst case: don't pull a Trum
Re: (Score:3)
* sigh * If it had burned through unchecked originally there would be no selection, and no new variant.
Nonsense. Each new infection creates a few billion new opportunities for mutation, and if there are already-immune hosts nearby ready to be re-infected by the selectable new variant, you get new infections and new spread.
I think maybe you need to re-read Dawkins.
Re: (Score:3)
Too simplistic. Time does have something to do with accumulation of mutations. If you mutate in too short a time selection doesn't have the opportunity to eliminate the inferior variants. How this works in a virus, though, isn't straight-forward. And the time scale is (usually) weeks or days rather than years, or even months.
The problem with this analysis is that virus aren't doing meiotic recombination. But any detailed argument would be a LOT longer (and it might not be valid).
Still, the general rule
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, that makes some sense. If there were increased social distancing (how much?) there would be pressure in favor of more durable rather than more infectious, and they MAY compete. E.g. flu is a lot less infectious, but a lot more durable. COVID seems to spread almost entirely via air born transmission. Flu spreads much more readily via surface transmission. And tetanus, e.g., concentrates on durable, and can lie dormant in the soil for years, but it's a lot less infectious.
Re:Who could have predicted (Score:5, Interesting)
That is not how this works. Each infection is an opportunity to roll the dice. The more you infect the more you roll the dice. If we just let it burn through it would have mutated FASTER. Even worse far more people are maimed by this disease than die from it. We don't know if the people with heart damage, lung damage etc will EVER recover.
We should have clamped on strict restrictions at the very beginning and the biggest thing would be stopping long distance travel so stop the airplanes except for actual emergencies.
If we put in place strict restrictions at the beginning and contact tracing we could have stopped this virus worldwide before it went anywhere and it would have cost FAR FAR less than what we have paid for this one. We could have stopped in in a month or two of restrictions in the beginning.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
Details matter here. It's not "each infection" it's each cycle of reporduction. When several cells in the same person get infected in series each one is a new chance for mutation. (Well, each instance of copying within the cells is actually where the chance for mutation happens.)
We tend to look at whole people, but that's not the level the virus experiences. But there are limits here. The instances of the virus that are deep within the infected person will never have a chance to infect someone else. S
Re:Who could have predicted (Score:5, Insightful)
If we had let it burn through the world population unchecked we could have herd immunity before it had a chance to mutate. But at the cost of a shitload of lives. That is, if you believe in "science" and "evolution", which my gut tells me are just the devil trying to trick me into watching CNN.
To play the fun what-if game, if we had just stayed the fuck away from one another for three weeks, it would have burned itself out and we could have gone back to very nearly normal back in April.
Re: (Score:2)
What, do you think mutations happen on some static clock? Mutations are a function of probability, based on reproduction. If you allow it to reproduce unchecked, you get more mutations faster. Mutations that cause the virus to be more resilient against immune systems will naturally succeed in living longer in the host, allowing more time to infect others and spread it's mutations throughout the population faster, because we're allowing unchecked reproduction.
All that would have done is kill more people a
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Viruses are very gene bound. Their impact directly tied to the genes of the targeted host. The explosion in South America likely tied to the human genetic tendency in conjunction with a viral mutation.
People do not respect the real world numbers when it comes to viruses and mutations. They mutate all of the time, there is huge potential, but only a tiny few will be beneficial, and it depends upon the host they are in at the time and their genes.
It's like trillions of dice rolls of billions of dice. All so
Re: (Score:2)
shutdowns did SLOWWW etc the spread creating far more opportunity for mutation guaranteeing a bad one would arise
I'm not sure that's a logic conclusion. It sounds logic, with time as factor, but it isn't - the virus is not a living organism that given time will evolve - it needs a host to evolve and mutate.
Meanin, the mutation rate is proportional to the number of people infected. It likely does not matter if this goes fast or slow, with every person infected there's a certain chance for a mutation.
Now, I'm not saying time is not a factor - it still might be, and your suggestion that if everyone was infected fast, it'
Re: (Score:2)
Some of your other points (social distancing done badly) had validity. But the idea that slowing the spread increases the opportunity for mutations is wrong.
The time the virus mutates is while it's reproducing. Mutations don't matter if they're not spread to new hosts and replicated, no matter how much time passes.
A lot of mistakes are made copying the genome. From the virus' point of view, some of them are neutral, a
Re: (Score:2)
One thing I remember about SARS-COV-2 reporting is that the virus has a strong gene-checking mechanism upon replication that was thought to suppress mutations. I wonder if that's why there's only 3-4 spreading notorious mutations? Would there maybe have been many more? Or does that mechanism not edit out this type of mutation?
I wish we could get some information tying that earlier understanding to these new variants.
If there is more than one variant (Score:2)
"Corona virus doesn't mutate that often" (Score:5, Interesting)
Now this one in Brazil may be re-infecting people who had the original strain last year... Presumably, it also has some resistance to the vaccines being deployed (both target the spike protein that's mutating).
About that spike protein. I recall very early on, prior to the initial outbreak in the US, there was a mutation that increased transmissibility. Most of the initial Wuhan infections were of the original-original strain, the current "standard" strain evolved during the initial European outbreak and was dominant globally from there on out.
I've been hearing that "coronavirus doesn't mutate often", "the mutations really aren't that bad", but now that's seeming to be wrong. Now it's starting to look like we're going back to square 1, or even worse. If you can catch it twice, that doubles your risk of death, even if the new strain isn't actually any more deadly. But the latest information is the UK variant may be 30% more deadly.
Unless the vaccines we have now have some kind of efficacy against the new strains, things could get very ugly, very fast. I wonder what Americans would be more willing to accept: A China-style lockdown with soldiers patrolling to make sure you don't leave the house... Or a Covid-21 with two or three times the body count?
Honestly, given the pace these new variants are showing, we should start with a total ban on international travel. Ground all the planes, like in the days after 9/11, but for as many months as we need to. Go into an actual war posture to make sure no new variants can get in from the outside. Implement strict lockdowns and contact tracing, the kind that people will absolutely hate, with the threat of arrest backing it up, to take care of the domestic situation. Then again it's probably too late now.
One thing's for sure though. If we don't get a virus with a 30% or 80% death rate mutating out of Covid, it'll come from somewhere else in the future. There needs to be a plan, and the willingness to use it when the time comes. And Ted Kaczinsky was right about one thing, having a shitton of planes flying everywhere all the time isn't good. We should do something about that. A targeted carbon tax on air travel would work wonders, but so could just a basic limit on the number of air miles anyone can travel in a year.
Re: "Corona virus doesn't mutate that often" (Score:2, Insightful)
Every action has a cost and a consequence. Often unforeseen and much high priced than the thing you're trying to stop.
Lock down the planet and people start dying of other things such as starvation, cold, heat, dirty water, mental illness rises, homelessness increases which magnifies all bad things, other illnesses rates will go up as people avoid or can't get to hospitals and the longer and wider spread a lockdown is the harder it is to get our logistics based transport heavy global economy rolling again.
S
Re: (Score:2)
Just imagine if it was 3 weeks early last year. How much easier and simpler that would have been than what we did end up with?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, there was a shitton of misguided efforts at the beginning of the pandemic. Once the gravity of the situation was recognized those efforts stopped. But we still are dealing with other misguided efforts that did not go away, f'rinstance "there are no proofs that masks offer protection".
Re: "Corona virus doesn't mutate that often" (Score:4, Interesting)
That travel plan was xenophobic in that it mostly put the target on Chinese nationals. Despite Americans coming home from China and virus that had spread all over the world coming in from every other country. It should have been universal to not seem racist.
Re: (Score:2)
Accidental deaths are way down - especially vehicular due to so many fewer commuters on the road. You can't look at the total number in isolation, since the virus is taking over other preventable deaths.
Re:"Corona virus doesn't mutate that often" (Score:5, Insightful)
Mutation rates are relative. Considering the population infected, mutating not too often is still too much.
There's also the question of wildlife reservoirs, we know mink get it bad, what other animal populations does it exist in?
While stopping all international travel would be great, the world is likely too interconnected as well as, at least in the west, travel is considered a right, which makes it that much harder to completely stop. Really enforcing quarantine for travelers would be a good start though.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you simply listened to people who were full of shit and used pathetic low values for "herd immunity."
They said, "Well maybe that's enough for herd immunity?" And others said, look, it's not even halfway there. And then another wave comes, and you get confused, and make up new stuff to explain it, instead of just realizing this proves that the low values for herd immunity are bullshit, as the experts said.
Re: "Corona virus doesn't mutate that often" (Score:2)
This shows once again how bad globalism actually is.
Frequent international travels with planes made a serious issue such as a pandemic spread not in months or years (giving nations and medicine time to prepare) but literally days or even hours.
Renouncing to proper country borders (such as in EU) made it much much easier for deadly diseases to spread from community to community and now we are realizing that we must return to strictly enforced borders and nationalism to save ourselves.
Big cities are making di
Re: (Score:2)
If you should barely be leaving your house to shut this virus down, international borders aren't even the most relevant. International travel is just the extreme end of the same spectrum.
Re: (Score:2)
Presumably, it also has some resistance to the vaccines being deployed
Why do you presume that?
Re: (Score:3)
I've been hearing that "coronavirus doesn't mutate often", "the mutations really aren't that bad", but now that's seeming to be wrong. Now it's starting to look like we're going back to square 1, or even worse.
And all of that is still correct. Coronavirus doesn't mutate that often. For a virus which has spread as much as it has it has an incredibly low mutation rate. Of all the mutations none have taken us even remotely back to square 1.
Please just let the experts do their thing and stop armchair bioengineering.
Re: (Score:3)
"I wonder what Americans would be more willing to accept: A China-style lockdown with soldiers patrolling to make sure you don't leave the house... Or a Covid-21 with two or three times the body count?"
Body count. For good or bad, most Americans don't want a government of martial law/dictatorship. Unless, perhaps, if it's an existential threat. Then we'll declare war on it, for good (see WWII) or bad (see War on Drugs).
And it still devolves to opinions (aka politics). Some saw drugs as an existential threat
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't mutate that often, and most mutations are not of much concern. But when 100 million people get infected, you get a low *rate* multiplied by an astronomical number of trials, which equals a risk worth worrying about if you don't contain the virus.
If this happened just 20 years ago, we'd have been screwed. In fact, if this happened just five years ago, we'd have been screwed. But *this* pandemic came at a kind of tipping point for molecular biology. These mRNA vaccines are the first *modular* vac
Re: (Score:2)
I've been hearing that "coronavirus doesn't mutate often",
And it hasn't really changed. There's just a LOT more infections and a lot more viral replication occurring, which increases the number of mutations over time but not the probability.
Re:"Corona virus doesn't mutate that often" (Score:5, Insightful)
You could do 100% lockdowns for months--but as soon as they open up R_0 will go above 1.0. Exponential growth is slow at first but becomes scary very quickly.
There are many counterexamples, starting with China. And for those who want to argue economics... China is the only large economy to have grown in 2020. I'm not a fan of China for many, many reasons, but they have shown us how to handle a pandemic effectively. So has Taiwan. New Zealand. South Korea. Australia. etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Exponential growth is very scary, particularly when it is slow. That's why the press (at least, the science press) was paying attention to this virus in the last week of January last year.
When the growth rate is slow, most people don't realise there is a problem. Any fool (well, all but the most foolish) can see the problem when you're getting 4 years worth of "total war" deaths in one year, the difficulty is seeing the problem at 1/64 of t
Why natural herd immunity was a stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Several numbskull leaders in the USA, Brazil, UK, etc. thought just let everyone get infected quickly and try to achieve natural herd immunity. Experts like Fauci and others said this is a very bad idea. One of the reasons why this is a bad idea is that for every infection there is a roll of the dice for a mutation. So many infections lead to lots of novel mutations that could be more infectious, more deadly, or able to re-infect previously infected individuals.
Re: (Score:2)
One thing is sure: when you tell the entire population to stay the fuck home, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that any kind of herd immunity will ever be achieved - since there's no herd to begin with. I have no idea how anybody thought this would ever be reached in Manaus or elsewhere...
Re:Why natural herd immunity was a stupid idea (Score:5, Informative)
One thing is sure: when you tell the entire population to stay the fuck home, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that any kind of herd immunity will ever be achieved - since there's no herd to begin with.
Sure there is. They're just at home or otherwise reducing contact, so the spread is slowed.
Herd immunity is created by permanently reducing the density of susceptible individuals to below that needed to maintain the virus' spread. You can do that in several ways. The big ones are:
- Individuals get the virus and develop immunity. This has the downside that the virus has more generations to change and bypass the immunity.
- Individuals get the virus and DIE. This has the same downside for the virus having more generations to develop workarounds to attack the others that developed immunity or weren't susceptible to the existing strains. It also has the downside that you have to kill off MOST of the individuals to get the density of susceptible individuals down to where the virus doesn't spread - and the virus can work around THAT by changing to spread better.
- Individuals can be made non-susceptible by immunization. BINGO! Herd immunity WITHOUT most of those opportunities for mutation and most of those dead bodies.
The "stay the f*ck home" bit ALWAYS WAS to slow the virus down and keep most of the herd members alive until immunizations can be developed and deployed.
Re: (Score:2)
The "stay the f*ck home" bit ALWAYS WAS to slow the virus down and keep most of the herd members alive until immunizations can be developed and deployed.
Well, it was also about keeping our healthcare systems from being overwhelmed like it seems has happened in Brazil. If I need oxygen, I'll get it without having someone lining up for 12 hours and paying a large amount of money. Also the people needing healthcare for other reasons.
There's also been learning how to treat it better. Catch the virus now, your odds of survival are much better as the health professionals have learned.
Re: (Score:3)
All that assumes there aren't a handful of 'Typhoid Marys' sitting at home with no symptoms and able to spread the infection for years. Sooner or later those people will merge back into society and start infecting others.
No, it takes that into account. As the bulk of the population becomes immune (mainly through immunization) the disease progression changes from "community spread" to isolated islands where contagion can be traced and the sufferers isoated and treated. Any long-term carriers can be identi
"Herd immunity" fails us again... (Score:4)
I've gotten pretty skeptical whenever I hear the term "herd immunity". Very early in the epidemic there where various theories that there was a huge amount of asyptomatic spread going on raising hopes that we might have secretly gotten most of the way there without realising it. Asymptomatic carrying exists, but its much less common than originally hoped. It'd show up in the form of huge amounts of unknown-origin infections in epidemiological studies that just didn't happen in real life, and *nobody* would have had success containing it , which we know isnt true because multiple countries have.
This was bolstered by some poorly conducted Antibody studies that seemed to be just searching for generic coronaviruses, of which there just happened to be a fairly virulent but unrelated coronavirus common cold going around . I think you can work out whats going on here (Theres another interesting side effect, Coronavirus antibodies are somewhat cross reactive. Its POSSIBLE buy not really studied, that coronavirus colds might confer a weak immunity to covid and vice versa, possibly explaining why some populations had surprising resistance.
The truth is, to get to herd immunity you need this gnarly asshole of a virus to chainsaw its way through 70% of the population. We know for instance that just under 10% of the US population has now had the virus. This lead to currently around 430,000 deaths. Multiply that by six then perhaps double it to account for most ofthat happening with no medical assistance available due to drastically overflowing hospitals and you'll get abot 6-7 million dead. I'm not convinced losing 2-3% of the population is a sane goal.
And it might not work anyway because the more infected the more mutations and the higher the risk one of those mutants figures out how to reinfect everyone and its back on the treadmill to knocking off another 2-3% of the population ad-infinitum until this fucking virus has taken a serious chunk out of the world population. Hey, might be a winner for the environment, but what a miserable way to live.
Which brings us back to vaccines! Vaccines can solve this, BUT it absolutely has to be done as rapidly and as comprehensively as possible. 2 million vaccines a day in the US was one expert projection for how to get this thing under control by *the end of the year*. I'd suggest much faster. War footing, nationalize industries if necessary. Get this fucking thing solved fast so we can all go back to our big dumb lives.
Re: (Score:2)
You keep using that word... (Score:5, Informative)
"Herd immunity" is a concept used in epidemiology. It does not mean that you can let a disease run its course until all (or enough) had it and thus the herd is immune. Herd immunity is practically never achieved through natural progression of an epidemic. If the only way you can become immune is by becoming infected, immunization depends on the presence of the disease. The spread tapers off as more become immune, so the remaining infected never run out of people to infect and the disease persists. The herd never becomes immune.
Herd immunity is achieved through vaccination. You give immunity to people without making them carriers of the disease. If enough people become immune without adding to the spreading of the disease, herd immunity is achieved, because the few carriers are unlikely to meet someone to whom they can communicate the disease. Unlike people who become immune through infection, the vaccinated do not contribute to the spreading of the disease.
The important aspect of the herd immunity concept is that the herd can become immune without every individual becoming immune. The reason this is important is that not everybody can be immunized. Babies can't be vaccinated before a certain age. Several illnesses preclude vaccination and some treatments for other illnesses make vaccination ineffective. That's what herd immunity means: Making the herd immune without making every individual immune. It does not mean Corona party and let the weak die.
Variants (Score:2)
Alas, when you have a global economy, if you shut down the meatspace circulation, you damage the global economy.
And even with a mandated shutdown, the elite will continue to meatspace circulate.
Go to nextstrain... (Score:2)
Go to nextstrain, they've got nice visualizations of the lineages of the virus, put together from sequences submitted from all over the world.
Spotting the "new" variants in it, is not easy. They're not obviously more mutated. If you can spot selective pressure going on in the data, distinct from genetic drift, you need to show me because I can't.
Now, it may of course be that the variants are important because they happened to have mutations in just the right places (spike protein, presumably), and that they
Re: (Score:2)
If you get the vaccine - you *must* wear a mask!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Vaccinated people will get infected, but the immune system will fight it off so they will have mild or no symptoms.
Some vaccinated people will have mutated virus that has evolved to evade the body' new defense. It is absolutely critical that the mutated virus immune to the vaccines are stopped by a mask.
We are now entering the most dangerous phase of the pandemic. Please spread the word!
Coronaviruses mutate less than Influenza (Score:2)
A few points:
- RNA viruses have a very high error rate, increasing mutations. However, Coronaviruses have in their genome a protein called RdRp (an error checking mechanism that corrects errors). This allows Coronaviruses to have a very large genome of 30k bases, by reducing the inherent mutation rate.
- Other Human Coronaviruses that cause ~ 15% or so of the common cold have been shown to induce neutralizing immunity for up to 8 years, decreasing somewhat year over year. A research paper did detailed tests
Research Paper on Brazil Variants (Score:2)
Here is a research paper [thelancet.com] on the variants circulating in Brazil, including the P.1 variant.
If the observations in the paper hold up, then this is very troubling indeed ...
Re: (Score:2)
Denial much? You want to talk about the flat earth too?
Re: (Score:2)
Who is trying to evoke fear into you so they get more publicity/money.
Yes of course this logic makes perfects sense so long as we ignore the hundreds of thousands of dead and the tens of millions of sick.
Re: Don't fear the virus fear the media (Score:2)
Who is trying to evoke fear into you so they get more publicity/money. If only that were the truth. That it's done for money. I haven't purchased any products out of fear since the run on toilet paper almost 12 months ago. The fear is all about and only about control.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Don't fear the virus fear the media (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:ALL viruses trend to infect more, less deadly (Score:4, Informative)
We're regularly having over 4000 people a day die of COVID-19 in the US. This is "not worrying" to you? Really?
Re:ALL viruses trend to infect more, less deadly (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't read any reports that the new COVID mutations are less deadly; the results so far suggest that at least the UK variant is about as deadly as the variant that was previously dominant in Europe, while being more contageous.
Perhaps the selective pressure to become less deadly is only significant for viruses with a high death rate. COVID has a low death rate, but with millions of people being able to catch it, that's still a lot of deaths in absolute terms.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:ALL viruses trend to infect more, less deadly (Score:4, Informative)
Not all viruses mutate to become less deadly, think smallpox and some mutate to become more deadly first, like the Spanish flu, which killed old people in the first wave, and a lot of young healthy people in the 2nd wave before mutating into the background.
Re:ALL viruses trend to infect more, less deadly (Score:5, Insightful)
as a virus mutates over time, it infects more people but also becomes less deadly.
Statistically speaking, yes. That doesn't mean you can't get a mutation that becomes more deadly every once in a while.
Re: (Score:2)
Statically speaking, chance of globally life-ending space rock hitting our planet is not something to worry about.
That doesn't mean you can't get a space rock that is life ending every once in a while.
What you are doing here is the worst kind of black propaganda. You're knowingly abusing the fact that our brain is poorly adapted to comprehend what very low chance of something very bad happening is and how to process it. Which is likely made even worse by the fact that I'm yet to meet a black propagandist wh
Re:ALL viruses trend to infect more, less deadly (Score:4, Informative)
This virus kills after it has been cleared by the immune system. That means that there is no evolutionary pressure that would result in it becoming less deadly.
Re: (Score:3)
It's all relative. For a RNA virus, it is a bit slower, but still quicker then a DNA virus. It has taken a year for these mutations to appear in a large population.
Re:surprise lead foot? (Score:4, Informative)
It's a lot slower than influenza. Influenza has a special DNA structure that allows it to mutate very quickly.
Re: (Score:2)
????
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the time, the genome of a virus is folded up inside it's coat of "envelope" proteins. Where there is a "hairpin" fold in the strand of DNA (or RNA - same argument, different detailed chemistry) there is an increased chance of the genome being disrupted by contact with the "envelope". (There are actually a lot of levels of folding within genomes - but folding more tightly means u
Re: (Score:2)
What I also read is that the spike protein is highly conserved, since mutations of it tend to make the virus particle unable to infect.
Re:Strange comparison (Score:4, Informative)
Not really: even comparing it with UK, Brazil never underwent a European-style lockdown, and even where the rules were stricter (Sao Paulo) they were not really comparable to what we had in Europe. In Manaus the rules were quite loose, and became looser when the local state governor (Brazil is a federal republic, whose president and governors have more or less the same powers as in the US) backed down after the usual backlash from local economic entities.
Add to that: sanitary conditions in Brazil, especially in that part of the country, are not really what we're used to (90% of the population of Amazonas is not served by a sewer system); a free and high-level but chronically underfunded healthcare system; the particular geographic condition of Manaus that makes access and rapid response more difficult (the city of Manaus is basically an "island" in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, reachable only by air, water, and a single access road that goes towards Venezuela); an incompetent and negationist governor; a sprinkle of corruption (the very same state governor is under investigation for an over-budgeted purchase of pulmonary ventilators).