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SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

biorxiv.org

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Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

#21

Post by nocovidlockdown »

2f3f23f32 wrote: post #13
cephaslr wrote: post #8

Something I have been wondering about, wouldn't a virus naturally evolve to be less deadly and more contagious over time? I.e. virus's tend to achieve a steady state like the cold and flu in the long run. If you are too deadly it hinders spread so I would expect Covid to get less deadly and more contagious over time, which kind of fits the data?

The COVID-19 mortality rates are dropping all the time and are at 0.2% now (barely higher than normal flu). I see no reason to prevent the virus from spreading now because it is not dangerous anymore.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/28/europe/coronavirus-death-...

By August, mortality rate is dropped to as low as 0.5% in the UK.

-> Each day the virus becomes less deadly.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

#22

Post by nocovidlockdown »

2f3f23f32 wrote: post #13
cephaslr wrote: post #8

Something I have been wondering about, wouldn't a virus naturally evolve to be less deadly and more contagious over time? I.e. virus's tend to achieve a steady state like the cold and flu in the long run. If you are too deadly it hinders spread so I would expect Covid to get less deadly and more contagious over time, which kind of fits the data?

The COVID-19 mortality rates are dropping all the time and are at 0.2% now (barely higher than normal flu). I see no reason to prevent the virus from spreading now because it is not dangerous anymore.

Yes, lets downvote the comment because it doesn't fit your personal opinion, even if it is confirmed by statistics.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

#23

Post by [deleted] »

oh_sigh wrote: post #12
anticensor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should still be BY-SA. Ancillary and auxiliary sources are key to scientific criticism.

What form of criticisms are possible with BY-SA that aren't with BY-CC? Criticism would usually come in the form of new papers which merely reference the previous one.

[deleted]

Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

#24

Post by remote_phone »

omginternets wrote: post #3

One thing isn't clear to me, for lack of background knowledge: have there been several strains since the beginning of the pandemic, or is this study based on evidence of mutation in the wild? It sounds like the former, but since it wasn't explicitly addressed in the abstract, I thought I'd ask.

There have been variants but none so dissimilar that they are considered a new strain. The terminology is very precise here but the media have been mixing it up, causing confusion.

https://medium.com/swlh/variants-lineages-and-strains-of-cor...

Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

#25

Post by throwaway2245 »

cephaslr wrote: post #8

Something I have been wondering about, wouldn't a virus naturally evolve to be less deadly and more contagious over time? I.e. virus's tend to achieve a steady state like the cold and flu in the long run. If you are too deadly it hinders spread so I would expect Covid to get less deadly and more contagious over time, which kind of fits the data?

Conventional wisdom often claims that virus evolve to become less fatal - but I don't think that matches the historical record.

There's evidence for influenza virus existing thousands of years before 1918. As such, it seems to have evolved into a much more deadly strain at that point.

Reproducing more efficiently is a win for natural selection and will normally result in a dominant strain: whether that strain is more deadly or not is going to be random.

We might optimistically anticipate some regression to the mean fatality rate (where the mean is close to 0).

Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

#26

Post by djsumdog »

packetlost wrote: post #16
hamaluik wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, yes. But also we’re a bit unlucky that it isn’t very deadly: SARS was way deadlier To start with but as a result spread several orders of magnitude less (both naturally and because humans had a stronger reaction to “shut it down at all costs“). The H1N1 virus from the 1918 pandemic grew less deadly over time, and essentially evolved into a seasonal flu that is still affecting people around the world today.…

The h1n1 is a bit of a strange case though because it jumps species boundary very often and mutates very quickly. COVID-19 appears to evolve much, much slower. Based on my limited understanding of virology, I think this means it's unlikely to become a seasonal problem unless the general populations immune system does not retain immunity to the same strain for a significant period of time.

We already know CoV2 rarely causes any symptoms in children. I wonder if there was a time in prehistory where common Rhinoviruses and Coronaviruses wiped out larger populations of elderly.

Even if our immune system memory doesn't last very long for these types of viruses, wouldn't young people getting exposed to it now likely reduce its impact long term?

It also seems like >95% of people who die from this are over 55 years old. When you get into your 70s~80s, aren't common colds one of the things that result in natural deaths, due to an aging immune system allowing pneumonia to set in where it wouldn't in a younger person?

Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

#27

Post by Raidion »

omginternets wrote: post #3

One thing isn't clear to me, for lack of background knowledge: have there been several strains since the beginning of the pandemic, or is this study based on evidence of mutation in the wild? It sounds like the former, but since it wasn't explicitly addressed in the abstract, I thought I'd ask.

This is not my area of expertise, but I think I can help answer the question. Everything mutates a lot, so there is a lot of genetic variability. These are usually pretty minor, but really help with tracing, as you can correlate "family trees" of mutations. The big one early in the pandemic was you could see the difference in the genome between the China/West Coast USA and Europe/East Coast USA infections.

I'm not sure of the strict scholastic definition of a strain, but I think they're derived from branches of that family tree. Most of those branches behave pretty similarly as they have mutations that aren't really impactful, but some of those behave differently, and those are the "strains/variants" we're talking about.

On an interesting note on how genetics are used to target therapies, what researchers can do is look at all the different mutations and they can find parts of the genome that change a lot, and parts that change very little. The parts that change very little are often critical for the function of the virus. Mutations to those still happen, but because of the critical nature of the part that mutated, the virus isn't able to reproduce as effectively and so doesn't show up as often. Researchers can use those as targets for treatments, as disrupting those can impact the effectiveness of the virus.

If I got any of that wrong (or I'm using the wrong vocabulary), I'd love to hear from someone with an actual background in this stuff.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

#28

Post by feanaro »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #25
cephaslr wrote: post #8

Something I have been wondering about, wouldn't a virus naturally evolve to be less deadly and more contagious over time? I.e. virus's tend to achieve a steady state like the cold and flu in the long run. If you are too deadly it hinders spread so I would expect Covid to get less deadly and more contagious over time, which kind of fits the data?

Conventional wisdom often claims that virus evolve to become less fatal - but I don't think that matches the historical record. There's evidence for influenza virus existing thousands of years before 1918. As such, it seems to have evolved into a much more deadly strain at that point. Reproducing more efficiently is a win for natural selection and will normally result in a dominant strain: whether that strain is more…

> Reproducing more efficiently is a win for natural selection and will normally result in a dominant strain: whether that strain is more deadly or not is going to be random.

The conventional wisdom is such because a virus that is swiftly fatal and/or has more dramatic health consequences would have less chance to propagate to other hosts. For instance, because the original host will be unable to move or will look threatening to others so they will know not to reside close to them. This should make it less than random.

Unless of course some unforeseen factor makes this reasoning untrue.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility

#30

Post by backtoyoujim »

cephaslr wrote: post #8

Something I have been wondering about, wouldn't a virus naturally evolve to be less deadly and more contagious over time? I.e. virus's tend to achieve a steady state like the cold and flu in the long run. If you are too deadly it hinders spread so I would expect Covid to get less deadly and more contagious over time, which kind of fits the data?

I can imagine that a single nucleotide polymorphism doesn't care about what seems natural.
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