271–280 of 337 posts
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Sorry, misplaced decimal point… World covid deaths = 5.7 million World population = 7.9 billion Death toll = 0.07%, rounded up
Not everyone in the world has had COVID, so you’re using the wrong denominator.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-ind...
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Also known as B.1.1.529 Variant21K appears to have arisen in November 2021, possibly in South Africa. Early sequences are predominantly from South Africa, though also detected in Botswana and Hong Kong. 21K is primarily of concern due to the large number of mutations it has in the Spike gene. Many of these variants are in the receptor binding domain and N-terminal domain, and thus may play key roles in ACE2 binding a…
"This literally reads like post apocalyptic fan fiction." That's a huge part of the pandemic, people are not used to being exposed to that kind of language, so their imagination runs wild.
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It speaks to the more serious problem with vaccine hesitancy - the more virions (individual virus 'particles') that exist, the greater the chance of a mutation that finds a way around our defenses. It's just basic evolution. The variants arise randomly and proliferate with the current major strains. The infected population adapts to reduce the transmission of the most virulent/contagious strains. Selective pressure (…
On the other hand the vaccines could be causing more stress on the virus as they generally aren't very good. I'm saying this as someone who had the virus then the vaccine.
And at this point I believe we can’t even be sure on the long term side effects. E.g. a Danish paper stated that in theory the spike protein used in the vaccine could increase chance of developing cancer, though as of yet this wasn’t observed yet in animal tests.
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>This literally reads like post apocalyptic fan fiction. I find it incredibly fascinating how fast this virus can mutate in order to throw curveballs around our natural and engineered defenses and become more efficient at killing us. How is this even possible in such a short amount of time? I thought evolution takes tens of thousands of years. It's not like viruses have giant brains with massive IQs to come up with a…
> and become more efficient at killing us. This is not actually a "goal" of the virus, since dead people cannot move and therefore spread much less of the virus. They seek to become more infectious so they can spread more, and in this process sometimes they also accidentally kill the host.
Numerous viruses throughout history have not become less virulent even over the course of thousands of years.
Interesting choice to pick "Omicron" instead of "Nu," which news outlets had been expecting them to use. Perhaps this allows them to avoid having to use "Xi" as the name of a Covid variant, which would have been...inconvenient for the WHO.
Have you heard about the nu variant? No, what’s it called? The nu variant Yeah, does it have a name? It’s nu Yeah I know it’s new but what do they call it? What does who call it? That’s what I’m asking you! What does WHO call it?
Twitter thread from a vaccine developer: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1464222680731820043.html A lot of speculation still, but it's not all bad so far.
His argument is fallacious. He's saying that since there all other variants we're susceptible to the vaccine, it's unlikely that this one is. ...and goes on to list the high number of different markers the vaccines target. Unfortunately, vaccines largely target the spike proteins, and sequencing of omicron is demonstrating that every single protein marker on the spike is changed. Vaccines will likely have a very smal…
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On the other hand the vaccines could be causing more stress on the virus as they generally aren't very good. I'm saying this as someone who had the virus then the vaccine.
Not to mention the vaccines are still experimental (released under Emergence Use Authorization) and might actually have much more side effects as originally thought. And at this point I believe we can’t even be sure on the long term side effects. E.g. a Danish paper stated that in theory the spike protein used in the vaccine could increase chance of developing cancer, though as of yet this wasn’t observed yet in anim…
I'm not saying short-term, high-intensity FDA et al. EUA is ironclad, but it's a helluva lot more stringent and reviewed than what the EPA approves (or fails to ban) due to "economic considerations."
So, if we're in the worrying mindset, prioritization seems important.
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That doesn't mean any of these NPI's work, are ethical, or are worth their immense cost to society. It is entirely possible to "take this serious" but feel that society is causing itself far more harm with all these measures than it would have by doing absolutely nothing at all. None of these thing were in any playbook prior to march of 2020. And here we are almost a month from 2022 still working from this unwritten,…
> None of these thing were in any playbook prior to march of 2020. Which things do you think are wild new tactics for trying to contain a pandemic? Social distancing? Lockdowns? Wearing masks in public? Because if you think any of those are untested wacky "nobody's ever tried anything like this before!" approaches, you need to spend a few more minutes with your favorite search engine.
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No. If every single “protein marker” on the spike protein was changed, there wouldn’t be a heck of a lot of chance for the virus to attach to a cell. There still needs to be basic compatibility with the cell and the spike to get inside.
> there wouldn’t be a heck of a lot of chance for the virus to attach to a cell. but there isn't just a single shape that could be used to attach to a cell. Another shape could be compatible, but is not targeted by the vaccine of today. I'm guessing that this makes the virus a different virus - but isn't that what mutations are? they are slowly causing the virus to change and at some point, it becomes a different vir…
But that’s not how the type of evolution in a single virus works[0]. Within a single organism/virus, the evolution is more like finding a local minima. There certainly could be a more effective design with a different shape. But it is very difficult to break out of a local minima through mutation and natural selection. You still have to maintain the function of a protein while simultaneously mutating it. So, breaking out of a local minima is really difficult. As you said, evolution is a slow process, so you wouldn’t expect to see dramatic changes in a shape and keep the same function.
[0] I’ve deliberately left out things like horizontal gene transfer, transposons, and gene duplication, all of which can involve hyper mutation or gain of function without being under selective pressure.
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Compassionate people should have a problem with being enslaved, mentally and physically, by a disease that, according to your stats has killed 0.06% of the world population - albeit, it's debatable how many people died as a direct result of it.
I know 5 people personally that have died of this virus, forgive me if I take offense at your hand waving of it