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Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#151

Post by harimau777 »

howlgarnish wrote: post #113
starkd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's because it's an island. All the islands are doing better than whole continents. You can't contain it unless you go full bore like the chinese - locking people into their homes.

Sigh, this old canard again. Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore are all doing fine without "locking people into their homes" and they're not islands. (Ok, Singapore technically is an island but it's connected to Malaysia by the world's busiest border crossing; and Thailand's grappling with a new outbreak now but it seems to be improving.)

Is it possible that they are all effectively islands? For example, it appears that Vietnam has miles of jungle between its major cities and neighboring countries. The same cannot be said for the US and Europe.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#152

Post by sjg007 »

Just wait until it mutates and starts killing kids. Kids are currently the last to be vaccinated. I know this is morbid but this does not bode well but there is precedent. Spanish flu first only killed the elderly and then on its return killed young adults and kids disproportionately. Now the Spanish flu was influenza and this is coronavirus but this specific coronavirus should not be underestimated. I’ve said this from the beginning and I hope I’m wrong.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#153

Post by smnrchrds »

hybrid_cluster wrote: post #134
IAmGraydon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccine creates broad protection against the virus’s spike protein structure. If the virus mutated enough to evade this protection, it would have to develop a structure so radically different that it would likely no longer be able to attach to the ACE2 receptor. What is going on right now is mass anxiety. The vaccine is out, so humanity is imagining how things could still go wrong. The easiest thing to imagine is…

People line up every year to get a new flu shot because seasonal influenza keeps mutating the part of its hemagglutinin protein where most neutralizing antibodies bind after exposure to a vaccine that carries the entire hemagglutinin protein (embedded in a weakened/inactivated influenza virus). Sure, spike ain't hemagglutinin and corona ain't no influenza, but let's not pretend there's no precedent at all for protein…

Disclosure: I know nothing about the science of vaccines.

Perhaps the new mRNA technique could lead to better flu vaccines as well.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#154

Post by mancerayder »

It's not too surprising to anyone following the events. Retroactive blood testing of donated blood should the original strain (the phrase original variant sounds like an oxymoron) having reached places like France and NY months earlier than we realized, certainly November if not September of 2018. The magic of the virus is its ability to travel and spread undetected due to asymptomatic carriers.

At least now widespread testing is available and we're able to track new variants in geography and time. Looks like the mutated one mentioned just hit France a couple of days ago.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#155

Post by howlgarnish »

harimau777 wrote: post #151
howlgarnish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, this old canard again. Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore are all doing fine without "locking people into their homes" and they're not islands. (Ok, Singapore technically is an island but it's connected to Malaysia by the world's busiest border crossing; and Thailand's grappling with a new outbreak now but it seems to be improving.)

Is it possible that they are all effectively islands? For example, it appears that Vietnam has miles of jungle between its major cities and neighboring countries. The same cannot be said for the US and Europe.

Those miles of jungle are crisscrossed by roads, trains and ferries, just like US and Europe. Vietnam is a country of nearly 100M people with strong trade and transport links to the world, and over in Thailand, Bangkok is the most popular tourist destination in the world.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#156

Post by howlgarnish »

irq11 wrote: post #150
scarmig wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this argument unconvincing. The UK is an island, and it's doing badly. "But it's highly connected with the rest of the world, so it makes it honorarily a non-island!" Okay, sure. How about South Korea? It isn't an island, and it's doing pretty well. "But it's de facto an island, it's not getting cases from North Korea!" Okay, sure. But by that standard the US is an island: it didn't get its cases from Mexico o…

> How about South Korea? It isn’t an island, and it’s doing pretty well. Cases are at all-time highs, and have pretty much escalated out of control: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020...

All-time high being around 1000 cases per day in a country of 50M, and they haven't given up yet -- they've successfully beaten back two previous waves.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#157

Post by incrudible »

rualca wrote: post #81
mns wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the preprint ( https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/reports/uk-novel-vari... ) from the UK has this: >Third, we modelled increased susceptibility among children (aged 0-19) by assuming they could be as susceptible as adults (aged 20+) to infection by VOC 202012/01 given exposure. Basically they applied their own model on a lot of noise and data and assumed certain things. It's wild were we are at this point a…

You're showing a fundamental misconception and outright ignorance of what research papers are, and more importantly what science is. For example, you're somehow assuming that academic papers about to be subjected to peer review are somehow milestones which write in stone the truth instead of what they actually are and always have been: a way to share data, observations, theories, hypothesis, and even assumptions on r…

> You're showing a fundamental misconception and outright ignorance of what research papers are, and more importantly what science is. For example, you're somehow assuming that academic papers about to be subjected to peer review are somehow milestones which write in stone the truth instead of what they actually are and always have been: a way to share data, observations, theories, hypothesis, and even assumptions on research topics.

This is an ivory tower view on what research papers should be, not what they actually are. I'll quote you the paper in question:

"Our estimates suggest that control measures of a similar stringency to the national lockdown implemented in England in November 2020 are unlikely to reduce the effective reproduction number R t to less than 1, unless primary schools, secondary schools,and universities are also closed. We project that large resurgences of the virus are likely to occur following easing of control measures."

This is de-facto a lockdown propaganda tool. The doomsday predictions based on naive models have greatly affected public policy, while more moderate assessments have been swept under the rug. The most dramatic piece of research tends to win over the public, even if it's junk science.

That's not to say that this paper is junk science, but if it was, it wouldn't matter to the outcome, because the default right now is to be overly cautious and portray dissenting views as reckless.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#158

Post by rolph »

fallingfrog wrote: post #123
rolph wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1] is a repeated concern, that has roots in early virology e.g myxomatosis and rabbits overpopulating australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxomatosis the coronavirus breaks past this dynamic as there is disjunction between transmission and onset of symptoms. thus morbidity is not a selective pressure upon transmisibility of the coronavirus.

Do you know this for a fact or is that just a plausible idea you came up with? It sounds plausible enough but it also sounds plausible that if symptoms were delayed even more or failed to show up at all it might be transmissible for longer, meaning that that there would still be selective pressure towards less virulent strains.

this is fact, this is evolution. when reproduction occurs this is success, this is fitness to reproduce. if a host is killed, or inconveinienced enough to lay ill and not contact others, that is a selective factor that favours reduction of morbidity. in the case of coronavirus reproduction and transmission occurs before morbidity occurs in the index host. there is no selective pressure to become less virulent. there is selective pressure to change host, to evade recognition by the immune system.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#159

Post by rolph »

nabla9 wrote: post #117
rolph wrote: post #2

Mutation is simply a loaded term for variation, nothing horrible or shocking is happening. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25538675 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation

This is incorrect. Mutation and variation are different concepts. Mutations affect the single organisms. Variations happens between individuals, groups or populations of an organism.

you dont seem to understand either concept. mutation is passed from individuals by vertical or horizontal transmission. variation of a gene [alleles] are mutations, mutations are the index variation. mutation is a change in the gene sequence, this is variation, this has created a mutant, also known as a variant.

mutation is also a term loaded with connotations due to popular depictions.

sexual reproduction is the mechanism of verticall transmission of variation of genetic sequence through a population. genetic drift is also a mechanism of variation of a population.

the long and short of it is that mutation and variation, are tied together, they are the same thing.

you also seem to have overlooked the abuse of the term mutation, by the original article title, the use of mutation is slicker, than the use of error prone generated variant.

the use of the term strain is also erroneous in this context.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#160

Post by jliptzin »

klondike_ wrote: post #144
DebtDeflation wrote: post #84

Has there ever been any genomic sequencing done to pinpoint what made SARS and especially MERS so much more deadly than SARS-CoV-2?

The lethality of a virus is inversely proportional to its transmissibility. In other words, a virus won't spread very far if it kills its host.

I don’t really understand why this is a “rule.” Say there’s two viruses and it takes both 3 weeks to run their course. They are both equally contagious during the 3 weeks, however the first virus results in death for 50% of those infected (50% recover after 3 weeks and are no longer contagious), and in the second the death rate is only 1% (99% recover after 3 weeks). Is such a virus not possible to exist?
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