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Update on Omicron

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Re: Update on Omicron

#81

Post by cheese_van »

wirrbel wrote: post #24
daveguy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations? I think I've heard that too, but if you've read something recently that would help me separate a study from a rumor.

The argument one frequently reads/hears on this is, that a virus has no evolutionary advantage to kill its host and if the virus becomes fitter in terms of infecting new hosts, they can neglect functions in their genome that lead to deadliness. A respiratory virus may have an evolutionary advantage if it doesn't hit the organism so hard that the host stays home and isolates. Mild symptoms may increase the likelihood…

Host availability is likely the greatest pressure I would think. Then severity or its lack, given our numbers, would be less a driver of genetic change than would random mutations.

Re: Update on Omicron

#82

Post by deltaonefour »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #39
ajmurmann wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say "excuse for another lockdown"? Are you implying that someone in government has alterior motives to desire a lockdown?

I think the ulterior motive is ass-covering. If you don't order a lockdown and it was needed then lots of people die, this is very bad. If you do order a lockdown and it wasn't needed then you can say that you were just being safe. And it's hard to even tell when a lockdown wasn't needed because the very act of doing it changes the result and leads to less cases. The lockdown was successful! It's always easy to say "…

Such a one sided view. Let me tell you the truth of the matter.

Government is made out of multitudes of personalities and conflicting interests. There are those that care, there are those that don't care, there are scientists, there are people who are knowledgeable of the proper action and there are those who are emotional and everything in between exists as well.

It is a hodge podge of motives. Classifying government action in a singular light as if it was one ulterior ass covering agenda is a lie people tell themselves when they need something to blame.

Re: Update on Omicron

#83

Post by nicoburns »

aortega wrote: post #52
ajmurmann wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say "excuse for another lockdown"? Are you implying that someone in government has alterior motives to desire a lockdown?

>Are you implying that someone in government has alterior motives to desire a lockdown? They have obvious ulterior motives. Political motives, or ass-covering. If they don't do a lockdown they will be utterly attacked by the opposition for 'not being proactive enough' no matter if there is only one more death. I believe this is the principal motive, health being a distant second. Remember, governments act first to ge…

So… the government is acting in what they perceive the population overall wants. That motive doesn’t sound very ulterior to me.

Re: Update on Omicron

#84

Post by [deleted] »

deltaonefour wrote: post #65
ajmurmann wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say "excuse for another lockdown"? Are you implying that someone in government has alterior motives to desire a lockdown?

He knows. He just needs to make up an alternate reality to justify his own darkness. On some level many of us simply don't give a shit about the fact that the virus can slaughter millions. We just don't think it will affect us and we don't want to be locked down. It's like a heroin addict. He knows the reality of his addiction but he needs to make up a reality to justify shoving one more injection into his veins, jus…

[deleted]

Re: Update on Omicron

#85

Post by mbg721 »

justincormack wrote: post #73
glandium wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people realized that "Nu variant" sounded like "New variant"

And Xi sounds like the Chinese leader.

More "looks like", in transliteration; John Q. Budweiser has no reason to try to pronounce it, and why should he? This was purely a butt-smooching move from the Western media.

Re: Update on Omicron

#86

Post by [deleted] »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #64
loceng wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, tradeoffs forced to select towards survival.

wow, suddenly I feel like the film "Venom" was trying to teach me this, it's no good for the virus if it keeps killing its hosts, really its mutating itself while searching for a host that can coexist with it (as I understand it, much of our DNA is incorporated from viruses, but I don't understand it very well :)

[deleted]

Re: Update on Omicron

#87

Post by danenania »

marwatk wrote: post #68
swader999 wrote: post #6

In general, respiratory viruses tend to get less severe over time. With this mass vaccination approach it may not turn out that way by some accounts I've read.

Isn't Delta vs Alpha a pretty convincing counter argument? It was more transmissible, more severe and better at avoiding acquired immunity.

Are we certain Delta was/is more severe? Since it’s more contagious, might it also be producing a lot more mild/asymptomatic cases that don’t get reported? Severity seems like a difficult thing to measure reliably if you can’t be sure about the denominator.

Re: Update on Omicron

#88

Post by adolph »

The WHO statement seems to have a more sanguine viewpoint than the Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) which defines "Variant of Concern" as associated with one of the below:

Increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology; OR

Increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation; OR

Decrease in effectiveness of public health and social measures or available diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics.

https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-varian...

This variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning. Preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant, as compared to other VOCs. The number of cases of this variant appears to be increasing in almost all provinces in South Africa. Current SARS-CoV-2 PCR diagnostics continue to detect this variant. Several labs have indicated that for one widely used PCR test, one of the three target genes is not detected (called S gene dropout or S gene target failure) and this test can therefore be used as marker for this variant, pending sequencing confirmation. Using this approach, this variant has been detected at faster rates than previous surges in infection, suggesting that this variant may have a growth advantage.

https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-o...

Re: Update on Omicron

#89

Post by h0l0cube »

red_trumpet wrote: post #48
oezi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is the other way around, there is no pressure to maintain a high severity as long as the virus can spread thus leading to mutations that lose the severe traits.

Surely such mutations can and will happen. But will they become dominant, if they do not provide any advantage?

Perhaps if it requires less energy to replicate and/or it invokes a weaker immune response?

Re: Update on Omicron

#90

Post by PeterisP »

loceng wrote: post #49
adolph wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect this to be the case since decreased severity is associated with higher virus reproduction. The main question becomes second order effects.

Yup, tradeoffs forced to select towards survival.

For people, the difference between 2% and 0.2% mortality is huge, but for the virus (and the evolutionary pressures on it), the difference between 98% and 99.8% chance of continuing to spread is insignificant; any minor changes in the rate of spread far outweigh that. The evolutionary pressure towards survival of the host matter only for diseases with very high lethality.
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