321–330 of 337 posts
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Attacking another user like that will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are, and regardless of how bad any other comment is. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
You're right. That's my fault, sorry about that.
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Best case scenario: A virus that causes only mild symptoms, spreads quickly, and causes immunity against the original (more harmful) variants. Just lift measures and let it do its work...
This would be incredible
There are already reports of (vaccinated) young people getting seriously ill.
Unlike with other viruses, there is little selective pressure towards being less deadly, because illness/death mostly happen after transmission.
And while I'm not a virologist, it doesn't seem far-fetched that "breeds higher viral loads more quickly" would be correlated not only with transmissivity, but also with "kills more".
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"some of you may have to die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make"
We choose to die for/in defense of a lifestyle all the time. We call it war.
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"some of you may have to die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make"
literally yes. in the words of my corrupt and buffoonish prime minister: let the bodies pile high. the wisest thing he ever said, even though he won't admit to it. (and really the piles won't be that high. they'll be of low-to-medium height, consisting mostly of the old and fat.)
People dying is all fine and good until it happens to you or someone you care about.
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Yes. Although variations on the vaccine require less approval than a totally new one. This process takes place every year for flu vaccines.
Never for mRNA vaccines though - will be interesting to see how the administration/FDA handles this
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> However, Dr Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association and a practising GP based in Pretoria, said it was “premature” to make predictions of a health crisis. “It’s all speculation at this stage. It may be it’s highly transmissible, but so far the cases we are seeing are extremely mild,” she said. “Maybe two weeks from now I will have a different opinion, but this is what we are seeing. So are…
"the cases we are seeing are extremely mild" So, like most COVID infections?
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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…
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 (…
I believe this to be a very common misconception. Evolution selects variants that are better at replicating. It does not follow that those are the worse for our health.
Imagine a variant that would effectively be very lethal to us: wouldn't it go extinct if the bearers die or even stay home sick before it can spread?
Successful viruses fly below the radar, I guess.
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We choose to die for/in defense of a lifestyle all the time. We call it war.
“It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”
Omicron? Was not it Nu like few hours ago? I like the longer name better. Our ministry of finance has already made a typo in a Facebook post calling it Mu (like the sound cows make).
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We also don't know what the mortality rate is. Suppose it has 100% vaccine escape but 0% mortality. Would it be "BAD"?
I think a 0% mortality strain displacing delta would be an extremely good outcome. One way pandemics stop is the virus mutating to harmlessness.