South Africa Study Suggests Omicron Could Displace Delta (reuters.com) 100
Research by South African scientists suggests that Omicron could displace the Delta variant of the coronavirus because infection with the new variant boosts immunity to the older one. From a report: The study only covered a small group of people and has not been peer-reviewed, but it found that people who were infected with Omicron, especially those who were vaccinated, developed enhanced immunity to the Delta variant. The analysis enrolled 33 vaccinated and unvaccinated people who were infected with the Omicron variant in South Africa. While the authors found that neutralisation of Omicron increased 14-fold over 14 days after the enrolment, they also found that there was a 4.4-fold increase in neutralisation of the Delta variant. "The increase in Delta variant neutralization in individuals infected with Omicron may result in decreased ability of Delta to re-infect those individuals," the scientists who conducted the study said.
Already happened in Ireland (Score:4, Interesting)
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If only evolution was real and evolved some sort of system inside of us that deals with foreign particles 24/7.
This is a lame troll. But anyone who ever died from an infection also had an immune system.
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These things are not the same.
The median R value for seasonal influenza is around 1.28
The original strain of Covid 19 has an R0 of 2.79
The Delta variant has an R value of approx 5.09
Omicron is estimated to be the sme or higher than Delta.
If you don't understand how these are different on a global scale then you don't understand enough to make sweeping statements.
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Also this work is being misinterpreted. 4,4x increase in neutralization - at +2 weeks, when nAbs are at their peak - is not a 4,4x increase in protection. The correlate between neutralization and protection is logarithmic [nature.com].
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Evolution is happening with the virus as well. Evolution will encourage the virus to survive and and spread. It the victim stays alive along enough for it to spread to an other, then evolution is served. Our immune system can't fight off any new to the body virus extremely fast, so viruses have evolved to grow and spread in less time than it takes for the body to fight off the new virus.
Now if given a Vaccine where the body is trained to recognize it, and have defenses for it, then it can attack and kill
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but in reality we are trying to keep people safe from you
Then it would appear perspicacious for you to go hide under the bed and stay there until the coast is clear. We do not want to hear a single sound from you whining about "poor you". You are perfectly safe provided that you stay hiding under the bed and do not come out for any reason whatsoever. Go hide and stop your whining.
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That evolution thing...yes it's real, and yes it helped us form an immune system. But that trait was built through the literal bodies of a truly unimaginable number of deaths. This continues to this day. So sure, if you want to try and further shape the human genome by infecting as many people as possible to select for certain immune characteristics, that's one way to go. But then we might as well also stop interventions for cancer, heart disease, and other infectious diseases so that we can use evolutionar
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then I expect to see your naked butt out in the snow trying to wrestle a deer with your bare hands.
No worries, he likely would manage that.
But then he has to skin it with his teeth and either eat the meet raw - wroaw! - or somehow to make a fire. I assume he can not cut the beast up, so he needs a strong stick to roast all of it at once.
Obviously fighting of the wolfs and bears who want a share is peanuts for him, too.
Ha, if I was a girl, that would be my man!
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Delta is 99.4% in my city, with available ICU beds at ~12%. FEMA has already sent the Navy here to help at some of the hospitals that are over capacity.
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Considering that normal ICU occupancy is normally kept (intentionally) at 90% or better, that means they're BELOW normal use.
The only problem we're seeing is that a lot of panicky people test positive and run to the emergency room - where they clog things up for the people who might actually be in danger.
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No the real problem is that the current 100% is not the same as the 100% in the first wave. We've lost quite a few professionals to burnout and "All y'all can go f yourselves!"
So any and all spikes in hospitalization will have a far greater impact percentage-wise than before.
On the plus side, the vaccinated have a MUCH lower hospitalization rate... which is probably why our noses are still above water at the moment.
Let's hope Omicron graces us all with its presence very soon and displaces Delta.
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They are not quitting due to burnout but due to forced vaccination. People actually know their own health situation better than Joe does.
We don't need anti-vaxxers in the health care system, they should be replaced as quickly as possible. Nothing says you don't care about your patients quite so well.
If they don't believe in modern medicine they picked the wrong career. Probably don't wash their hands either.
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What a dumb nonsense comparison. How many flat earthers are geologists or young earthers are anthropoligists? There are some but hey are thoroughly ostracised from the academic consesus and community because it shows a fundamental refusal or incapability to engage with the science of your field.
A health professional who does not believe vaccination is legitimate or effective belies an ignorance of the very field you are engaged in. One who does not see the efficacy of having all medical personal vaccinat
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Wrong. Ones "level of professionalism" has absolutely zero to do with the point I am making. Please show me a capable and respected YEC believeing geologist. I can find you a few but they are people who deliberately ignore actual scientific evidence to try and prove out their unfounded personal beliefs. They usually make a career off providing scientific cover for similar believers. Kent Hovind was in fact a science teacher but to 99% of biologists he is a joke. Robert Malone did work on mRNA in it's
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The personal health decisions of medical staff are none of your business.
Hiring and firing decisions are none of their business either. You have no right to any particular job. Ever. You make your decision, then suck it up and deal with whatever comes from that, snowflake.
Many of the people being tossed out have immunity thru prior infection and are therefore not at any more or less risk to the population as a vaccinated person.
I'm sure many of them think they do. Most places allow them to be regularly tested to prove this belief of theirs. I'd still fire them though, just for their non-caring attitude towards others.
Should all of the young earthers be tossed out too because they don't believe in evolution?
If it is contagious, absolutely. Modern science suggests that level of stupid it is only transmissible through Fa
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If you can't objectively substantiate your opinions you shouldn't expect anyone to listen to what you have to say.
No fucks are given here. Health care employees where I live are either vaccinated, tested three times a week, or looking for other work, as it should be. If I get sick I don't want to be treated by some sketchy anti-vaxer, because it is a demonstrably good proxy for their education and values. Who knows what sorts of other basic medical knowledge they don't believe in?
It shows the person doing the firing has a "non-caring attitude towards others".
What comes around goes around.
"That level of stupid" predates the existence of the Internet.
But was not nearly so transmissible. The internet has increased its R0 exponentially.
Why is that? Can you support this opinion objectively?
As objectively as anyt
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Damn straight... prejudiced and proud of it.
Nothing against any race, creed, color or intelligence level, but the latter is indeed a barrier to many things in life. And unlike the others, necessarily so.
You keep asserting this garbage as if the facts are on your side when they are not.
Feel free to believe your alternate reality is real. It would be funny to watch is it were not also sad.
The risk from a person with previous infection is similar to risk from a person with previous vaccination as is the case for most vaccines. The whole point of a vaccine is to emulate infection without making the person sick. If they are already infected prior infection has long been recognized as comparable to vaccination.
Infection with COVID has never been considered as good as vaccination and studies support this. Omicron changes things even more as it appears neither vaccination nor previous infection are very good protection, but getting another shot is easy.
Re: Already happened in Ireland (Score:2)
reference needed... not that I am saying you are wrong, rather I could believe you. I simply want to know where you heard this 90% figure?
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This study from the National Institute of Health [nih.gov] calls bullshit on you.
Abstract:
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Seriously?
Either you live in a 3rd world country -or- you are rather stupid -or- both.
How the funk would a health care system work if 90% of all beds are always occupied?
Answer: it would collapse instantly if you have a highway accident in fog with 100 cars involved.
Conclusion: your idea is simply completely bollocks.
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What's the normal winter load for ICU beds there? In non-Covid times [beckershos...review.com], ICU occupancy might be "very close to capacity" or "92 percent" (quotes from different hospitals). Other research [researchgate.net] shows strong seasonal and location dependency, plausibly with an upwards trend over time but almost 90% usage being typical in the winter.
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London is mostly Omicron now with if I heard right a million Londoners currently infected! Like WTF, have Londoners not been paying any attention for the last 2 years?
Anyway, the data looks pretty conclusive to me, Delta is going down rapidly, nearly gone, very much being replaced by Omicron rather than being in addition to it. See chart at the time stamp linked https://youtu.be/n5uzrn4e0Wg?t... [youtu.be]
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London is mostly Omicron now with if I heard right a million Londoners currently infected!
Nope. A million Londoners where/are infected in total over the course of Covid.
Why you link a youtube video instead of a research site is beyond me ...
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Because that's where I saw the evidence, if you want to going hunting for a needle in a haystack, go knock yourself out. If you want to dispute the evidence then feel free to spend some time checking out all the the source links to the video. I trust this particular highly qualified medical professional to be able to do the research since it's something he's clearly very good at and the chart linked in the video speaks for itself it sho
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It will die down once white people in the middle age groups realize their death rate from infections [nytimes.com] as a percentage of all deaths has doubled or tripled compared to other groups.
But then, it's not as if this is the same group telling everyone they'll never get vaccianted or wear a mask.
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80%+ Of cases here are now Omicron.
That's something different.
The fact that 80%+ cases are Omicron doesn't mean that Omicron has displaced or is displacing Delta. It means that Omicron has outstripped Delta, that it's propagating faster. But it's possible that having Omicron doesn't prevent you from getting Delta (we already know that having had Delta and other prior strains doesn't do much to protect you from Omicron). In the worst case, it could be that neither provides any immunity from the other, which would mean that the experience i
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80%+ Of cases here are now Omicron.
That's something different.
The fact that 80%+ cases are Omicron doesn't mean that Omicron has displaced or is displacing Delta. It means that Omicron has outstripped Delta, that it's propagating faster. But it's possible that having Omicron doesn't prevent you from getting Delta (we already know that having had Delta and other prior strains doesn't do much to protect you from Omicron)
uhm, it's exactly about getting omicron is decreasing risk of getting re-infected with delta
While the authors found that neutralisation of Omicron increased 14-fold over 14 days after the enrolment, they also found that there was a 4.4-fold increase in neutralisation of the Delta variant. "The increase in Delta variant neutralization in individuals infected with Omicron may result in decreased ability of Delta to re-infect those individuals,"
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80%+ Of cases here are now Omicron.
That's something different.
The fact that 80%+ cases are Omicron doesn't mean that Omicron has displaced or is displacing Delta. It means that Omicron has outstripped Delta, that it's propagating faster. But it's possible that having Omicron doesn't prevent you from getting Delta (we already know that having had Delta and other prior strains doesn't do much to protect you from Omicron)
uhm, it's exactly about getting omicron is decreasing risk of getting re-infected with delta
Yes, that's what the article is about. But 80+% of cases in Ireland being Omicron doesn't mean that getting infected with Omicron reduces the risk of getting infected with Delta. Delta cases could still be continuing just as they were, completely unaffected, but Omicron cases are simply growing faster.
Putting some numbers on this might help. Let's suppose that before the arrival of Omicron, they had a steady 100 cases per day of Delta. After the arrival of Omicron, cases shoot up to 500 per day, and gen
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Where?
In most countries it is not even 1%.
Germany has only a few confirmed Omicron cases ATM.
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Is this a conspiracy theory of yours? We need MORE conspiracy theories and variants of, there's not enough.
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What exactly is a "conspiracy"? All "conspiracies" from the last year are now facts.
One, the so-called "vaccines" did nothing to stop infection and transmission, despite third, fourth and soon regular "jabs" (also a "conspiracy theory" just last summer).
Practically all "developed" countries now require PCR tests from everyone (also a "conspiracy theory"), without regard to vaccination status (also a "conspiracy theory") and it seems likely this ain't changing soon (also a "conspiracy theory"). A spectacular
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Congratulations: worst post ever on /. ...
No worries, you get topped at the bing of next new year
Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yep... evolution invented a communicable vaccine.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
Vaccines do not 'lose effectiveness'. The vaccine is gone from your body after a couple of weeks. What loses effectiveness is your immune system. What makes people think that your immune system won't lose effectiveness after an infection by omicron?
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Smallpox didn't "just go away." Guinea worm didn't "just go away." Polio didn't "just go away." Measles didn't "just go away" in the Americas. No virus (or other disease) has EVER "just gone away" without being exterminated by a major campaign of vaccination and containment.
And most other diseases don't come with a substantial risk of doing irreversible damage to every organ in your body every time they infect you, either.
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We already know that it's a much, much milder variant. In the places that have a big increase in Omicron cases, the serious illness and death rates are dropping like rocks.
It's been common, for long enough, to know that it's incredibly mild - about half of the people who "had Omicron" didn't even know they were sick.
Use this as a gauge for who you can trust. The people who are still selling panic porn over this are the ones you can safely ignore from here on out. No, there's no need to "wait for more data,"
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That study is a great example of "how not to do it."
Their two criteria were "tested positive with confirmed Omicron variant" and "any record of attendance at a hospital due to illness for up to two weeks after the test."
Which, with the COVID panic running like it has over the last couple of years, means "a lot of people tested positive, went to the hospital, and went home when the doctors noticed they weren't that sick."
In this case, by "virulent," someone is using the alternate definition, "highly contagio
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Germany just bought tens of millions of Omicron specific boosters, I don't see the point of taking a non-specific booster at this point, WHO are right, give the spare vaccines to countries that need them.
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I don't believe there is a Omicron specific booster, just the same Covid-19 vaccine, which still works...just not quite as well.
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just the same Covid-19 vaccine, which still works...just not quite as well
This is incorrect. The vaccine works exactly the same today and tomorrow as it did yesterday. It is like software. Without "pissing about making changes" then as it worked yesterday, so shall it work today and tomorrow, for all values of today.
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just the same Covid-19 vaccine, which still works...just not quite as well
This is incorrect. The vaccine works exactly the same today and tomorrow as it did yesterday. It is like software. Without "pissing about making changes" then as it worked yesterday, so shall it work today and tomorrow, for all values of today.
But in this case, the third party APIs have changed. Hence the vaccine/software does not work as well as it used to.
Re: Awesome! (Score:2)
What you believe is random shit you saw on YouTube or Tilztok. Welcome to the modern age. What is scientifically indisputable is a different matter.
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Germany have ordered 80 million doses.
https://www.india.com/news/wor... [india.com]
https://www.citizen.co.za/news... [citizen.co.za] .. Ah, it's an 'advance' order, so yes a vaccine in the making. Thing is infecting so fast that it may be too late by the time an Omicron specific vaccine arrives.
The Data Suggest Otherwise (Score:2)
I don't see the point of taking a non-specific booster at this point
The data show that a booster is effective [bmj.com] against Omicron. It increases the level of antibodies you have significantly and while not all of them work against Omicron enough do to significantly decrease your chance of getting sick and, at least in people 60+, also reduce the chance of severe illness.
By the time an Omicron booster is available in ~March 2022 you will almost certainly have already been exposed to Omicron given the rate of spread so a regular booster is the best option at the moment. Howeve
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It says after 2 AZ shots, a Moderna shot will cause my anti-body levels to be 32 times higher which does sound impressive, but IDK what the NHS would be giving me... A search says they are giving Moderna or Pfizer. Some of the reasons for getting vaccinated have not materialised such as the vaccine has clearly not resulted in herd immunity. If shots start to become annual like flu then I'm not interested unless a more dangerous variant appears, I have been paying enough attention to be able to strengthen my
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Some of the reasons for getting vaccinated have not materialised such as the vaccine has clearly not resulted in herd immunity.
And how should the vaccine provide or induce "herd immunity" when a huge deal of the herd is not vaccinated? What is next? You believe in magic?
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It was initially stated that if 3 quarters of the population had immunity then we'd effectively have herd immunity, many places have higher vaccination and infection totals than that and it's turned out to be completely false, the vaccines efficacy drops fast. And now with the new variant the same vaccines do not appear to stop the spread of covid at all. I got vaccinated in order to stop the spread of COVID, that no longer works, the majority of vaccinated people will still be infectious with Omicron and l
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It was initially stated that if 3 quarters of the population had immunity then we'd effectively have herd immunity,
No idea where that was state.
Fact is:
a) we have not 3 quarters, that would be 75% of the population vaccinated/immune
b) the virus has mutated meanwhile because of a)
News guy: "what percent of people need to have contracted the virus" [to get herd immunity]
UK Chief Scientific Advisor: "Probably about 60% or so"
That was a wild guess.
And because of that wild guess people though: "oh, no need to ge
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The viruses which cause the common cold do not attack every organ in your entire body. The viruses which cause the common cold do not leave any fraction of their victims debilitated for months at a time (and a smaller fractions debilitated for 1.5 years now and counting with no sign of relief).
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The covid monstrosity may become less horrible but it will never be "just a cold."
Clearly, you are not aware of history. When Europeans first discovered the Americas they brought with them (amongst other diseases) the common cold and this was deadly to the native populations because they had no natural immunity. Even today the common cold can be, in rare cases, deadly. When I was a school kid we had a girl at our school die of the "common cold" because it infected her heart.
What stops the common cold from being as deadly as Covid is that our immune systems know how to deal with it. C
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I'm a healthy young man in excellent shape with a relatively fresh booster shot. My worry about the acute disease adds up to roughly "fuck I can't work out for a week." What worries me is the thought of waking up later unable to think or
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There's no such thing as "long cold" or "long flu."
The best thinking on long-covid seems to be that this is some sort of complex immune response. Long-covid victims have no detectable virus anywhere in them. The exact cause of long-covid has yet to be established but if it is an immune response error then again that would be consistent with why the vaccine seems to protect against it since it lets the immune system gain experience with the new virus before encountering it in the wild.
Also, while delta does attack receptors primarily in the longs the evi
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Germany is buying plain vanilla Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for boosters. I think the story where you read that there were omicron specific boosters being purchased may be garbled. You need a booster of *existing* vaccines for those vaccines to be maximally effective against omicron. It's far too early for anyone to have an approved omicron-specific vaccine.
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Yeah, the news was misleading, I checked, Germany have pre-ordered 80 million Omicron doses but they aren't available yet.
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There's a reason that there were three global (and several more regional) massive waves of infections driven by variants that were able t
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Now everyone can get immunized by Omicron and we can put all this behind us like SARS/Swineflu/Birdflu/etc. It's been been going on way too long.
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Well (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Well (Score:2)
People keep arguing against evolution seeking this outcome. The inevitable outcome seems to be something like seasonal flu but perhaps 2x the morality... It's likely unavoidable NOW... if it ever was. Like Jurassic Park says, Nature finds a way...not the capital letter. Also even Karl Marx talked about natural population checks... that's what we are faced with. We could quote countless one-liners from.movies that are virtually prophetic about the times we live in. Despite my love for most all people, we qui
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something like seasonal flu but perhaps 2x the morality...
I've seen threads on twitter blaming the vaccines for infidelity. Perhaps these effects cancel out.
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Spanish flu (Score:2)
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This was predicted - due to knowledge of viruses (Score:2)
The goal of a virus is to survive, spread, and replicate and so it tends to evolve toward being more infectious and less deadly.
That's, hopefully, the exact pattern we are seeing with Omicron - a variant that infects the upper airways and seems to rarely target the lungs and one, which does seem to have symptoms akin to the common cold. The onset is rapid, but so is the recovery - and so is the infection rate.
Exactly how a virus "knows" to evolve in this manner, is beyond my comprehension - perhaps someone
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Exactly how a virus "knows" to evolve in this manner, is beyond my comprehension - perhaps someone with a great deal of knowledge could explain.
I wouldn't claim to be a person with a great deal of knowledge, but I believe the essential point is that COVID has relied on binding affinity to the ACE2 receptor which is present in lung epithelial cells to spread effectively. These receptors are also present in intestinal, fat, and heart tissue, which relates to COVIDs overall deadliness (and how both COVID and vaccines can induce myocarditis).
Delta had a higher binding affinity for this receptor, which is how it was able out outcompete the ancestral str
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Each viral replication is an opportunity for a mistake (i.e. mutation) to happen. Most of those mutations are not beneficial. In fact, most will make the pathogen fail to function. Many will be fairly neutral; either giving a negligible advantage or disadvantage. In this case, "advantage" means "better adapted to find opportunities for replication, within this host organism and others". There is no advantage to higher lethality. We often view it as an "us vs the virus" with our deaths being considered losse
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The goal of a virus is to survive, spread, and replicate and so it tends to evolve toward being more infectious and less deadly.
This story is nice and simple. I think it is totally wrong. Some kind of simple view coming mostly from computer scientists and other tech people. I think we should try to find counter examples in the current set of old infectious diseases among human or animals before spreading this story. Or ask some kind of competent people, it should exist. Though, it is good hopium.
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and so it tends to evolve toward being more infectious and less deadly.
This is plain wrong. It may evolve to be less deadly but it may not. Take the bubonic plague, which repeatedly decimated (in the true sense of the world... death rates were often >10%) populations. It is still very deadly (according to wikipedia between 2010 and 2015, there were 3,248 documented cases, which resulted in 584 deaths), we just have figured out how to stop it from spreading through the population like it used to. Many other once-common diseases also remained deadly before modern medicine man
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The goal of a virus is ...
A virus has no goal.
Exactly how a virus "knows" to evolve in this manner, is beyond my comprehension
The virus knows nothing.
Its mutation is purely random, based on what is around it (aka particles from other viruses) or already in his genome (aka copy errors, random flips).
could displace delta? Many places it already has (Score:2)
To use a car analogy, since we're on slashdot... it's like saying a car could get to its destination if it has travelled 90% of the way already
_Why_ is this 'news' permitted to be published? (Score:2)
What part of " ...only covered a small group of people and has not been peer-reviewed..." wasn't understood?
This is for all intents and purposes misinformation. It was rushed to the public for every reason _except_ useful health information.
To accept this as 'news' is to accept that there is no need for fact-checking.