How the novel coronavirus has evolved • Hacker News Board

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#21

Post by oefrha » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 8:59 AM UTC

nmfisher wrote: post #2

And I was downvoted on HN for merely asking the question whether coronavirus could mutate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24035686

In case there's further whining about this comment being downvoted: I didn't downvote due to hivemind mentality or agreement/disagreement about the original, I downvoted because whining about downvotes makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Additionally, it takes a single, random HN user with 500 karma to put a comment into "downvoted" state. It takes three or four to be "heavily downvoted" (which doesn’t apply to your original comment). Just not a very meaningful thing to draw conclusions from.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#22

Post by akkawwakka » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 9:06 AM UTC

melling wrote: post #9

“If the virus changes substantially, particularly the spike proteins, then it might escape a vaccine. We want to slow transmission globally to slow the clock,” Is this why some are saying we might need a booster shot in a few years?

To correct the quoted assertion...

There is little selection pressure on the virus for the spike proteins to evolve and change. SARS-CoV-2 infects human cells just fine using its current spike protein. [1]

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#23

Post by Kiro » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 9:10 AM UTC

kolinko wrote: post #10

googlryas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That is by design. You should upvote/dovnvote good/bad ways of expression, and if you disagree with something then argue why you do.

It's OK to downvote on disagreement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#24

Post by abhinav22 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 9:12 AM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #20

abhinav22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stuff I get downvoted for boggles my mind (e.g. get downvoted for saying thank you this was a good post). They should rename HN to HM, HiveMind.

A comment that just says "thank you this was a good post" is basically an up-vote in the form of a comment; it doesn't add any substance to the conversation. That would be a polite response in another context, but on HN the goal of the guidelines as I understand them is to keep the signal to noise ratio high - basically to increase the density of useful information and insightful argument in comments. In order to do…

Thank you for the note, I suspected as much but I do appreciate your elaboration on the topic.

I don’t agree with the approach (I would say for submissions that don’t have as many upvotes that somebody who took the time to write a thank you note reflects they actually read the article and it was worth the effort to write a note (which takes more effort than an upvote). This can be a important signal for others. It also I think is a nice feedback to the author, I always want to try and encourage people — when I receive positive feedback, it makes my day).

In some ways it’s a reflection of how the community (at large, not any individual in particular) views itself — to be such stringent guardians of information density, when in fact a large portion of the comments are relatively useless and misinformed (usually the most knowledgeable people speak less as they are busy actually working in their field, although they pop up from time to time).

However, when in Rome, do as the romans do.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#25

Post by bostik » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 9:32 AM UTC

Towards the end of the article is a particularly good nugget of information.

> Since then, there have been documented reports of individuals being reinfected with different versions of the virus.

Yes, reinfections have been extremely rare so far. But if the immunity really is strain-specific, the warnings about Covid becoming endemic in the global population should now carry a lot more weight. The virus will mutate. In a likely scenario, previous immunisations are likely to be less useful, and we all need annual shots against the newly emerging strains.

On the upside, if Covid strains become just another aspect of the flu jab, then we at least already have an existing infrastructure to manage it in the future. Production capacity of vaccines will take some time to ramp up, though. Maybe now would be a good time to invest in drug manufacturing and logistics?

Planet Money did an episode on Covid vaccine logistics and one data point stuck with me. The global production of vaccines is between 3.5B and 5B doses a year. That's for ALL vaccines, across the entire spectrum of diseases and treatments. Adding another 12B to 16B doses on top of that is going to require a lot of new infrastructure, from production facilities to all the materials needed in the logistics chain.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#26

Post by chimprich » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #19

jstanley wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on why a lockdown would select for a more virulent strain?

I'm mainly basing it on the graphs provided: The cases don't spike until after the "G" strain is present, no matter how long the "L" and "S" strains were present beforehand. Actually I think I should have said "infective" rather than "virulent" there; basically lockdowns select for versions of the virus that can spread despite the lockdowns. It only looks more virulent because of the larger number of total infections…

It's worth bearing in mind that the graphs in the article are quite distorted. Testing was not widely available until months into the pandemic, making the early spikes look much smaller than they were.

Later strains may indeed turn out to be more infectious, but I don't think we have the evidence for that yet.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#27

Post by divbzero » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 9:58 AM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #19

jstanley wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on why a lockdown would select for a more virulent strain?

I'm mainly basing it on the graphs provided: The cases don't spike until after the "G" strain is present, no matter how long the "L" and "S" strains were present beforehand. Actually I think I should have said "infective" rather than "virulent" there; basically lockdowns select for versions of the virus that can spread despite the lockdowns. It only looks more virulent because of the larger number of total infections…

Based on the graphs alone it’s also possible that more infective strains lead to spikes which lead to lockdowns.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#28

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#29

Post by DJBunnies » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:12 AM UTC

abhinav22 wrote: post #24

tempestn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A comment that just says "thank you this was a good post" is basically an up-vote in the form of a comment; it doesn't add any substance to the conversation. That would be a polite response in another context, but on HN the goal of the guidelines as I understand them is to keep the signal to noise ratio high - basically to increase the density of useful information and insightful argument in comments. In order to do…

Thank you for the note, I suspected as much but I do appreciate your elaboration on the topic. I don’t agree with the approach (I would say for submissions that don’t have as many upvotes that somebody who took the time to write a thank you note reflects they actually read the article and it was worth the effort to write a note (which takes more effort than an upvote). This can be a important signal for others. It al…

Hn is fickle/edits titles, which is editorializing. Just the way it is.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#30

Post by acqq » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #12

So it's finally okay to say there's multiple strains with different infectiousness and (possibly) severity? Back in February-ish (I forget exactly when), we had confirmed community spread in Washington (West-coast state in the US), with the belief that it had been spreading for weeks and no one noticed, because of how few cases there were, and no bump in hospitalizations. This was likely the Wuhan strain, which likew…

No, according to the majority of experts, there's still no sound basis for claiming that the strains have different infectiousness and there's even less evidence for different severity.

The only thing known is that we can decode the genome across the world and that the virus, as it spreads, slowly gets some small changes which could be followed.

There's no sign that anything people did (especially "lockdowns") up to now had any evolutionary effect on the virus. Coronaviruses mutate much slower than a lot of viruses. The majority of experts believe that what we observe (these still minimal changes) could be attributed to the "founder effect."