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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

#51

Post by Loughla »

m101010 wrote: post #43
herodotus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the laugh. So needed for this crappy year of hell.

for me it helps to know that this pandemic (including all the lockdowns) would be way worse without all of the digital innovations from the last 10-20 years.

Honestly, imagine how much worse the world would be (at least in 1st world countries) if we did not have the tech tools available to us.

I legitimately do not know what would have happened, but I feel like it would be much more violent and much deeper despair.

For all the headaches constant connection has brought, it has also alleviated an unknown number of them as well.

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

#52

Post by chrisco255 »

johnchristopher wrote: post #31
djsumdog wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Didn't pneumonia, influenza (among small pox and others) have terrible consequences on American native Indians ?

I believe small pox was the major one, I've heard among the Incas for example, it wiped out between 60 and 90 percent of the population. The main reason the colonists were able to spread so easily in the two continents is because disease wiped out huge swaths of the native population before many settlers even arrived. It's not like muskets are all that superior to bow and arrow (if at all, due to reload speed). Much of the land was just left vacant and unoccupied, and former cities abandoned.

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

#53

Post by tarruda »

m101010 wrote: post #43
herodotus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the laugh. So needed for this crappy year of hell.

for me it helps to know that this pandemic (including all the lockdowns) would be way worse without all of the digital innovations from the last 10-20 years.

Just hope this over dependency on technology doesn't come to haunt us later: https://youtu.be/hESunUuFrzk

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

#54

Post by ComputerGuru »

jaypeg25 wrote: post #48
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.…

It's already clear that the vaccine, when it gets released, won't be a one time thing and we'll need more in the future to counter the mutations. Unfortunately, just in anecdotally talking to friends about it, it doesn't seem that this is widely known. It will be interesting to see how things play out as more people start to realize this. I suspect a lot of anti-vaxxers will be even more emboldened by it.

I don’t think anything is “clear” - there are even indications that people exposed to the original SARS virus have their immune systems primed to more quickly respond to SARS-CoV-2.

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

#55

Post by a_imho »

Loughla wrote: post #51
m101010 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for me it helps to know that this pandemic (including all the lockdowns) would be way worse without all of the digital innovations from the last 10-20 years.

Honestly, imagine how much worse the world would be (at least in 1st world countries) if we did not have the tech tools available to us. I legitimately do not know what would have happened, but I feel like it would be much more violent and much deeper despair. For all the headaches constant connection has brought, it has also alleviated an unknown number of them as well.

I'm getting old. Last 20 years maybe, but I can't name a technology advancement that happened in the last 10 years that I would really miss. To me it seems like most technology is now done for the sake of doing it and solutions are looking for problems. Not to mention all the dystopian surveillance we have now. Rose tinted glasses and all that, the start of the millennium was a much happier time period imo.

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

#56

Post by estebank »

davidf560 wrote: post #37
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 keep wondering what unintended consequences our nearly-unprecedented efforts on non-pharmaceutical interventions ("lockdown", social distancing, masks, etc.) might end up having on the virus - for example, could all our isolation and distancing be accidentally selecting for strains of the virus that transmit more readily over further distances?

The mitigations are effective in slowing the spread (to varying degrees, due to a multitude of factors), which in turn slow down the rate of mutation. In any case, I would expect the dispersion of the virus to follow a pattern similar to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8

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

#57

Post by zerobits »

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?

You would think – but viruses don't necessarily become less deadly.

The virus wants to maximize transmissibility, and that might require trading off further against the host's health and increasing its death rate.

An example is Myxoma virus. It was intentionally introduced to pest Australian rabbit populations (to cull them) and studied.

After ~30 years of evolution, they found the dominant strain had a 70-95% death rate and left long-lasting lesions. Other strains with higher (~99%) and lower (~50%) death rates weren't as stable & prevalent.

Once a virus is transmitted (enough), what happens to the health of its host is irrelevant.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbio...

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

#58

Post by ulfw »

libertine wrote: post #44
baxtr wrote: post #34

AFAIK this is the variant that formed in northern Italy back in February and is since ruling the world

That's why it's not good to have a new virus going around in among us. That's why the whole response should have been - isolate and eliminate the virus. Not, "hey, lets live with this guy until we can make a vaccine that works"...

The Asian vs. the Euro-American model.

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

#59

Post by atomi »

chrisco255 wrote: post #52
johnchristopher wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Didn't pneumonia, influenza (among small pox and others) have terrible consequences on American native Indians ?

I believe small pox was the major one, I've heard among the Incas for example, it wiped out between 60 and 90 percent of the population. The main reason the colonists were able to spread so easily in the two continents is because disease wiped out huge swaths of the native population before many settlers even arrived. It's not like muskets are all that superior to bow and arrow (if at all, due to reload speed). Much…

And then came Colt's Revolver.

> A Texas Ranger, Captain Samuel Walker, wrote Colt a testimonial that read, in part:"Your pistols...[are] the most perfect weapon in the World... to keep the various warlike tribes of Indians and marauding Mexicans in subjection."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/colt_hi.htm...

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

#60

Post by SilasX »

major505 wrote: post #29

Is a shit thing when a virus got a firmware update in 2020, but not my android phone.

And the virus updates make it more effective but every update makes my iPhone worse. Random freezes if you touch the screen at the wrong time, double-tap to zoom barely working...
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