Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the novel coronavirus has evolved

graphics.reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 137 posts

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#41

Post by twic »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #37
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…

Nature has a decent article on this: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6 Apparently we have little idea whether D614G is more infectious but that is hard to believe given that it has so thoroughly outcompeted other strains.

Hard to believe, but true - because it didn't outcompete other alleles, it was just in the right place at the right time, as has been carefully documented:

https://twitter.com/ballouxfrancois/status/13316691180015370...

Still, assuming that massive success is due to competitive advantage rather than random chance is extremely on-brand for HN.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#42

Post by usrusr »

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…

As long as the epidemic doesn't run close to saturation (and given the multiple effective vaccines it likely won't, ever), NPI-induced relative spread advantages of one strain over another don't make a difference unless they are also absolute advantages compared to non-NPI-scenario. And given the strength of pre- and asymptomatic spread of this particular virus, it's almost immune to selective pressure for weaker symptoms anyways (scarcity of PCR and deep connect tracing can cause some pressure).

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#43

Post by gcanyon »

jstanley wrote: post #16
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…

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

Not an evolutionary biologist, but I think it's better to think of it as potentially killing off an earlier, less virulent strain.

Putting it in concrete terms, if you have two versions of the virus, X which for each infected person tends to infect 1.8 others, and Y which tends to infect 2.8 others, then after ten days there might be more people infected with Y than X, but X would still be around.

Now if everyone takes precautions, maybe those rates are cut in half. Now X only infects 0.9 people per infected person, and thus dies out, while Y is still infecting 1.4 people per infected person, and thus is still spreading, just slower.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#44

Post by blackrock »

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…

Interesting premise. But why doesn’t anyone look at the bigger elephant in the room?

Sometime in April 2019, reports of a mysterious illness started surfacing. They thought it was related to vaping products. [1]

Then in July 2019, a respiratory illness hit a retirement home in Virginia, and killed a bunch of old people. [2]

Then the Wuhan military games was in mid October 2019.

Then China reported of an unknown pneumonia in early December. They thought it came from a seafood market, which was proven incorrect.

The western world harassed them and accused them of eating bats, and transmitting the disease, which is also proven to be incorrect.

China then back-traced the earliest case to mid November. Which happens to coincide a few weeks after the Wuhan military games. Just the right amount of time for the virus to incubate and wreck havoc.

New evidence is suggesting that the virus was in Italy before it was in China. [3]

But the interesting thing, is that when they took MRI scans of the vaping outbreak patients, they saw white orbs in the picture in their lungs. Coincidentally, Covid-19 victims also had these white orbs in their lungs.

The whole origin of this virus was always very mysterious. Something just never seemed right about it.

The vaping thing just came and disappeared. Nobody really knows what caused it, just a few random theories about contaminated cartridges. But here’s the strange thing. Those vaping pens, are all made in China. And are sold all over the world. People in China uses those vaping pens everywhere, but there were no reports of a mysterious illness from it in China. Only in the United States and a few in Canada. Not even Europe reported any issues.

Why was it reported only in the United States? Then soon after, all the other pieces began to fall into place, one after the other.

To get down to the true origin of this virus, then they need to check those vaping people. Check them for the Covid-19 antibodies.

Then check the nursing home people from Virginia, for those that survived, for Covid-19 antibodies.

Then check the people that went to the Wuhan military games for Covid-19 antibodies.

Or not. And just conveniently blame China for being the origin of the virus, just because they were the first ones to detect it, and report it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/11/us/virginia-retirement-commun...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#45

Post by nindalf »

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…

Imagine if half the comments in a thread were "thanks" or "this!"

It would make the discussion worse, even if it makes individuals happier.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#46

Post by graderjs »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #38

What does everyone think of the idea that there is an 80/20 rule in play for Coronavirus? Specifically, 80% of the infections come from 20% of the infected. I’ve heard some hearsay about it, but nothing conclusive; I was hoping someone knew either way.

I don't know either way about your question, but aren't these sort of power law dynamics common in everything? I don't think it would be surprising if that was the case with this "pandemic" nor would it make this virus special. Just like 90% of the content is created by 10% of the people in social media, or something like that.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#47

Post by pm90 »

divbzero wrote: post #31
akkawwakka wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks for that Nature news feature, it summarized the research on SARS-CoV-2 mutations quite well. We’ll have to watch for signs of selection pressure as more and more of us get vaccinated to recognize the spike protein. Hopefully SARS-CoV2 mutates too slowly to escape the vaccines, or can only escape with sharply reduced infectivity and virulence.

It’s mentioned in the nature article:

> Studies of common-cold coronaviruses, sampled across multiple seasons, have identified some signs of evolution in response to immunity. But the pace of change is slow, says Volker Thiel, an RNA virologist at the Institute of Virology and Immunology in Bern. “These strains remain constant, more or less.”

So there seems to be a pretty good chance that this won’t really be an issue.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#48

Post by pm90 »

WanderPanda wrote: post #32
akkawwakka wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yay, then lets see how the spike protein evolves after mass vaccination. In my understanding the vaccination targets exactly that protein so there should be plenty of selective pressure in case mass vaccination takes place

That seems to be an incorrect understanding. Selective pressure is only one of the factors influencing how frequently the virus has mutations. Self correction mechanics in the RNAs replication seem to have a much more stronger effect, since they “correct” the mutations. The article specifically mentions that the timeline for significant mutations is likely in the order of a few years.

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#49

Post by LeCow »

divbzero wrote: post #27
Izkata wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To which it will become more contagious more quickly...

Re: How the novel coronavirus has evolved

#50

Post by hutzlibu »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #38

What does everyone think of the idea that there is an 80/20 rule in play for Coronavirus? Specifically, 80% of the infections come from 20% of the infected. I’ve heard some hearsay about it, but nothing conclusive; I was hoping someone knew either way.

Since some people are very mobile and others are not, it is possible. But what would be the point of further discussing it?
Post reply on HN