Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can imagine that a single nucleotide polymorphism doesn't care about what seems natural.
No, but its effect on the virus population kind of does.
Are you saying that a virus population has a conscience or morality ?
SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
61–70 of 103 posts
Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But that's the odd thing, isn't the procedure of the "asian model", which was used in NZ, on the "text manuals" of dealing with viruses?
Specially after a first wave, we know how the virus behaved, how we behaved with the virus, and what cost it had (not only deaths, but the stress on health systems that gradually lose the ability to cope with infections, and evolve to the colapse of general health services, other than covid-19). Basically, the virus infection fatality rate might not be as high as we thought, but it ends up collapsing health services, so more deaths direct and indirect are accounted for.
They were hammering us to live in the new normal, what kind of message is that for a population living in a pandemic?
Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Where has the virus been eliminated successfully in Asia by that model? New Zealand may be the only real success story, and it's a very tiny population island.
India has seen a likely tens of millions of cases.
Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines have all seen bad outbreaks now.
Nepal is currently being buried in cases.
Case numbers are booming in Malaysia at present.
Japan has never managed to eliminate it and continues to see persistent cases, despite their relative success. The same with Singapore.
Did you mean to say that a few countries in Asia have managed to limit the virus, while the rest of Asia has entirely failed at doing so?
Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There's a spike in Xinjiang, right now (but a blip by Western standards). It's _really_ hard to eliminate it. New Zealand is still seeing the odd case here and there.
Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Asian vs. the Euro-American model.
Where has the virus been eliminated successfully in Asia by that model? New Zealand may be the only real success story, and it's a very tiny population island. India has seen a likely tens of millions of cases. Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines have all seen bad outbreaks now. Nepal is currently being buried in cases. Case numbers are booming in Malaysia at present. Japan has never managed to eliminate it and…
The example cases from Asia are: Vietnam, Taiwan, China, Thailand.
Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
#66This is what worries me a little about widespread mask use. It will start selecting strains that spread more through aerosols, touch, or are easier to contract.
Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Asian vs. the Euro-American model.
There's a spike in Xinjiang, right now (but a blip by Western standards). It's _really_ hard to eliminate it. New Zealand is still seeing the odd case here and there.
But that could be related to international travelling, or simply community transmission of asymptomatic cases, and China protocol might be to test everyone from that city and apply localized quarantines.
I doubt they will let it go much further than Xinjiang.
Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
#68Something 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…
It basically needs to be extremely contagious without symptoms that stop the spread - like killing the host.
Which in part this virus has, asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic are as contagious as symptomatic. If it's enough to spread, doesn't matter much if the host dies after a few days or not.
Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look for counter examples. Have we seen this in HIV? Smallpox? It's a plausibility. It's far from a guarantee. And the opposite, /could/ happen, too. The virus could mutate to have a longer incubation period, or be more deadly, or both.
I have seen a statemen somewhere tha for viruses it goes "transimissability, mortality, stealthiness: pick two". Not sure how true it is, but looks plausible.
At least for natural viruses. Engineered ones could be extremely terrifying.
Re: SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
The 20th century decolonization wars showed that natives can adapt to modern weaponry fairly well.
But you need the numbers to pull this off. Sioux are not numerous enough to threaten American dominance of their territory. If they were as numerous as, say, Punjabis, that would be a different story.