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Omicron cases are mild so far

businessinsider.com

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Re: Omicron cases are mild so far

#21

Post by CogitoCogito »

newsbinator wrote: post #17
Teever wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there's no particular reason COVID would need to get any more mild than Delta. Can you elaborate?

Viruses evolve to become more mild because very sick or dead hosts are bad spreaders. Covid has a long incubation period before symptom onset (when somebody notices and isolates or becomes bed-bound). So Covid, especially Delta, spreads well for days, whether or not ultimately symptoms are mild or ultimately it causes death. Therefore a mild version of Delta wouldn't necessarily outcompete a non-mild version of Delta…

> Viruses evolve to become more mild because very sick or dead hosts are bad spreaders.

This need not be true. There are many ways a virus could spread more while simultaneously making people sicker and causing more death. For example, a strain evolving to cause people to be contagious and spread for twice as long as now and then killing everyone could very well spread more than it does now.

Re: Omicron cases are mild so far

#22

Post by Hypx_ »

m00x wrote: post #15
VirusNewbie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a vacuum this isn't true: diseases will select to be more transmissible, that can mean less deadly, but not always, think HIV. If the incubation time is long enough before death, then it could not matter. So, you could imagine a nightmare scenario where some disease selects to have a longer incubation time while still transmitting, but then causes more severe disease down the road. However, because we have vaccine…

HIV and coronaviruses are completely different and can't be compared. HIV is clinically a mild virus and doesn't cause any severe symptoms by itself. It is only when HIV becomes AIDS that it is dangerous, but then again, the symptoms are not caused by HIV/AIDS itself, but by the lack of immune cells caused by AIDS. You could have HIV forever and not even notice it if you were in a vacuum as you say :) We can't know h…

That’s not actually true. Many AIDS patients will die of cancer due to a lack of immune system suppressing those common occurring cancers.

Re: Omicron cases are mild so far

#23

Post by murderfs »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #18
murderfs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a vacuum this isn't true: diseases will select to be more transmissible, that can mean less deadly, but not always, think HIV. Is there any evidence of diseases that have selected to be less deadly, aside from by killing all of its especially vulnerable hosts? As far as I can tell, this is naive optimism: the selection pressure for not killing your host is irrelevant if they're only going to be infected for a we…

>Is there any evidence of diseases that have selected to be less deadly.. It sounds like you're asking for specific examples of pandemics that didn't happen because they weren't detrimental enough to endanger people. That category of respiratory viruses is often broadly described as "the common cold."

No, I'm asking for specific examples of deadly viruses that have become less deadly over time. Like, take smallpox as an example. It's probably been endemic in humans for thousands of years: what's happened to its mortality rate? It's still at 30%, and the reason it's so low is due to human adaptation: the native Americans were virtually wiped out by it.

Re: Omicron cases are mild so far

#24

Post by anothernewdude »

Teever wrote: post #16
newsbinator wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be. We've been waiting/hoping for something endemic but mild. But there's no particular reason COVID would need to get any more mild than Delta.

> But there's no particular reason COVID would need to get any more mild than Delta. Can you elaborate?

Diseases don't really need to become mild if they can spread sufficiently fast and aren't killing their host before they can so.

Re: Omicron cases are mild so far

#26

Post by sgtnoodle »

murderfs wrote: post #14
VirusNewbie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a vacuum this isn't true: diseases will select to be more transmissible, that can mean less deadly, but not always, think HIV. If the incubation time is long enough before death, then it could not matter. So, you could imagine a nightmare scenario where some disease selects to have a longer incubation time while still transmitting, but then causes more severe disease down the road. However, because we have vaccine…

> In a vacuum this isn't true: diseases will select to be more transmissible, that can mean less deadly, but not always, think HIV. Is there any evidence of diseases that have selected to be less deadly, aside from by killing all of its especially vulnerable hosts? As far as I can tell, this is naive optimism: the selection pressure for not killing your host is irrelevant if they're only going to be infected for a we…

This article claims that was the case for H1N1, as well as the "common cold".

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/will-covid-19-evolve-be-mo...

Re: Omicron cases are mild so far

#27

Post by nradov »

newsbinator wrote: post #3
mpweiher wrote: post #2

This could be the "endemic version" of COVID that we've been looking for. Particularly if it really is so much more infectious than the other variants and so manages to displace them.

Could be. We've been waiting/hoping for something endemic but mild. But there's no particular reason COVID would need to get any more mild than Delta.

SARS-CoV-2 is already endemic, and causes mild common cold symptoms for the vast majority of youths. This is exactly the same as the other four endemic human coronaviruses. Most of us get infected with those when we're young and the resulting immunity protects us when we're older.

Re: Omicron cases are mild so far

#28

Post by QuarterReptile »

murderfs wrote: post #23
QuarterReptile wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there any evidence of diseases that have selected to be less deadly.. It sounds like you're asking for specific examples of pandemics that didn't happen because they weren't detrimental enough to endanger people. That category of respiratory viruses is often broadly described as "the common cold."

No, I'm asking for specific examples of deadly viruses that have become less deadly over time. Like, take smallpox as an example. It's probably been endemic in humans for thousands of years: what's happened to its mortality rate? It's still at 30%, and the reason it's so low is due to human adaptation: the native Americans were virtually wiped out by it.

> It's probably been endemic in humans

It probably was endemic, as it was declared eradicated in 1979 by an effective vaccination campaign.

More importantly, though, smallpox, as a complex DNA virus, had far fewer viable mutations. That fact, along with an apparent lack of non-human reservoirs, is probably why it could be eradicated.

Re: Omicron cases are mild so far

#29

Post by pfdietz »

Factorium wrote: post #25

Pfizer up 25% MoM: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/PFE:NYSE?window=1M Moderna up 24% in the last 5 days: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/MRNA:NASDAQ?window=5D New variants are great for business!

Pfizer has also announced they can get a new vaccine out for a new strain in 100 days (assuming regulators approve.)

Re: Omicron cases are mild so far

#30

Post by m00x »

Hypx_ wrote: post #22
m00x wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIV and coronaviruses are completely different and can't be compared. HIV is clinically a mild virus and doesn't cause any severe symptoms by itself. It is only when HIV becomes AIDS that it is dangerous, but then again, the symptoms are not caused by HIV/AIDS itself, but by the lack of immune cells caused by AIDS. You could have HIV forever and not even notice it if you were in a vacuum as you say :) We can't know h…

That’s not actually true. Many AIDS patients will die of cancer due to a lack of immune system suppressing those common occurring cancers.

Cancer is an additional disease, and not caused by AIDS itself.

It could happen regardless of external factors, so I guess my "vacuum" analogy wasn't perfect. All I mean is that HIV/AIDS itself doesn't kill you by itself.

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