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Update on Omicron

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Re: Update on Omicron

#351

Post by somewhereoutth »

danenania wrote: post #139
somewhereoutth wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true I'm afraid. Of course, if a virus killed you before you had a chance to pass it on then yes - but most viruses (including SARS-CoV-2) kill you slowly enough to have plenty of opportunity to propagate, there is no selection pressure to be less deadly. To my knowledge, we have no evidence that any human virus has evolved to become less virulent (please furnish examples if I'm wrong!). Unfortunately this common…

“To my knowledge, we have no evidence that any human virus has evolved to become less virulent (please furnish examples if I'm wrong!).” Isn’t this what happened with the influenza strain that caused the Spanish Flu pandemic?

My understanding is that in fact we don't know. A likely explanation for its disappearance is that it ran out of susceptible hosts. Specifically, we have no evidence of a successor virus that was both less lethal, and induced immunity to the original.

Re: Update on Omicron

#352

Post by syshum »

ageofwant wrote: post #297
xg15 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely true, but not the whole story unfortunately. While many African countries need more vaccines, South Africa was in the process of throttling shipments because less and less people were getting vaccinated. So the other big challenge is raising acceptance of the vaccines and fighting denialism.

Due to low trust in government after decades of corruption and mismanagement of basically everything who can blame them ? And who stepped into into this void of authority... Facebook, bastion of truth and science and critical thinking. America's inability to curb its own propaganda machines and its capitalism uber alles rhetoric and group-think boomerangs right back. This pandemic has certainly shaken a lot of nuts o…

Ahh yes, lets blame capitalism for all things. You do realize that capitalism created the vaccine in the first place? That with out capitalism you would have no vaccine to complain about people refusing to take?

I really am tried to seeing capitalism blamed on all the worlds problem when it has been capitalism more than anything else that has brought both peace and prosperity to the world

Re: Update on Omicron

#353

Post by cglace »

bhawks wrote: post #322
wallacoloo wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this makes me think that there’s got to be at least some people in power who believe that engineering and releasing a more transmissible but less deadly variant is a prudent way to respond to this pandemic. i wonder how many people are working on this right now.

Yes nothing could possibly go wrong with this strategy. This is an example of one of the reasons why there is growing distrust of experts.

A hypothetical situation is why people don’t trust experts?

Re: Update on Omicron

#354

Post by somewhereoutth »

semerda wrote: post #243
somewhereoutth wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true I'm afraid. Of course, if a virus killed you before you had a chance to pass it on then yes - but most viruses (including SARS-CoV-2) kill you slowly enough to have plenty of opportunity to propagate, there is no selection pressure to be less deadly. To my knowledge, we have no evidence that any human virus has evolved to become less virulent (please furnish examples if I'm wrong!). Unfortunately this common…

Replication-incompetent adenoviral vectors? Lex Fridman had a virologist on his podcast talking about the mutations done to the adenovirus to make it safe for the delivery of the s-protein (used in viral vector J&J + AstraZ vax). Maybe I misunderstood that?

Engineered vs evolved.

For sure you can take a virus and knock out the bad bits - but I believe we have no evidence this has occurred in the wild due to selection pressure.

Re: Update on Omicron

#355

Post by BLKNSLVR »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #283
xg15 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there are Zero Covid strategies that work, see China or New Zealand. The problem is just that those measures are so drastic that many countries would probably not accept them. The goal in western countries is to get to the "endemic phase" of the infection - i.e. "live with the virus". That's all well and good, unfortunately this requires the disease to become significantly less deadly than it still is. We're…

The first and most important step in the New Zealand strategy is “be an island”. You need a lot of draconianism to make up for land borders.

Definitely true, and that's also one of the reasons Australia has had it so mildly on the global scale. South Australia has had, I think, only four deaths, and this unbelievably low number is, I think, one of the benefits of being on the island of Australia, and not being particularly recognised as a tourist destination in the way Sydney and Melbourne and various part of Queensland are.

ie. South Australia has the ocean borders of Australia and the psychological borders of unpopularity. The combination of which has proven incredibly effective.

Re: Update on Omicron

#356

Post by zzzeek »

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…

lockdowns are profoundly politically unpopular - from economics, to convenience, to the enormous burden of closing schools, no politician wants to lock down anything, for any amount of time, without an amazingly good reason, period.

Re: Update on Omicron

#357

Post by mschuster91 »

syshum wrote: post #352
ageofwant wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to low trust in government after decades of corruption and mismanagement of basically everything who can blame them ? And who stepped into into this void of authority... Facebook, bastion of truth and science and critical thinking. America's inability to curb its own propaganda machines and its capitalism uber alles rhetoric and group-think boomerangs right back. This pandemic has certainly shaken a lot of nuts o…

Ahh yes, lets blame capitalism for all things. You do realize that capitalism created the vaccine in the first place? That with out capitalism you would have no vaccine to complain about people refusing to take? I really am tried to seeing capitalism blamed on all the worlds problem when it has been capitalism more than anything else that has brought both peace and prosperity to the world

> That with out capitalism you would have no vaccine to complain about people refusing to take?

Cuba, which is as far away from capitalism as you can get these days, has created five different vaccines. And in any case it wasn't capitalism that created the popular vaccines... the mRNA vaccines build up on decades of public-funded research, the Oxford/AZ vaccine was funded by the university endowment IIRC.

Re: Update on Omicron

#358

Post by digislave »

marchingtomars wrote: post #346

It doesn't have to be someone in government. It could be a group of people acting strategically towards a particular goal, in a series of steps. Those steps would include paying funds for the following: Lobbying governmental officials across all three branches, Strategically networking & "giving gifts" (quid pro quo), Sponsoring scientific studies, Paying journalists to report certain things. For example, Amazon Exec…

It's obviously true that some people try to use Covid to further their political agenda, as many people (including high profile politicians) openly say so.

Nevertheless it seems more likely to me that memes are kind of self organizing, no coordinated effort is necessary. Media of course is simply interested in creating a stir and pushing the most sticky memes (usually fear, hate, chaos...).

Re: Update on Omicron

#359

Post by syshum »

orra wrote: post #145
easytiger wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Delta was simultaneously more infectious and more deadly than the original variant. That's not my understanding

It's well known it's more infectious, and widely suspected to be more deadly. See both https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/why-is-de... and https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-var...

The problem with these studies is the mild symptom cases may never even be reported as cases, I know alot of people that had covid symptoms but never got tested, and would never get tested unless it got to the point where they needed medical care. So if you just had a "pretty bad" flu and sat at home you likely never got tested, and thus would never show up in these studies

Hell I know a couple people that were told by local medical center to not even bother with the test, they just assumed it was covid, was told to self isolate and monitor.

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