Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

japantimes.co.jp

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 291 posts

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

#271

Post by dehrmann »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #178
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.)

Viet Nam is not doing fine. I have a lot of contact there, there is an outbreak of “severe pneumonia” for which no one is being tested for COVID despite being pretty obviously COVID. To make matters worse, in addition to not testing anybody with symptoms, the government hospitals have been turning people with these symptoms away so they are going to their family homes to be taken care of. I would take the stories of…

IIRC, North Korea has reported zero cases.

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

#272

Post by dehrmann »

ksaj wrote: post #189
maxerickson wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not a whole lot of evidence that illegal border crossings from Canada are a major driver of the spread in the US. And of course, the same can be said for Mexico (because the main driver of the spread in the US is people not taking simple steps to prevent it). Travel to Canada has been restricted for much of the year (I live in Michigan; there's a warning 4 hours from the border that travel is restricted). But…

> There's not a whole lot of evidence that illegal border crossings from Canada are a major driver of the spread in the US. Ironically it's the other way around, too. Our borders are shut to tourists, but they keep showing up in Canmore and Banff anyway. And now Alberta has a serious problem with Covid spread, and a friend of my sister's just died a couple days ago from it. They have 1/3 the population of Ontario, ye…

To be fair, Alberta is culturally more like Texas than Vancouver.

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

#273

Post by Izkata »

fpgaminer wrote: post #43
laydn wrote: post #32

People appear to be expecting there will be "weaker" variant/strains/mutations of this virus as time goes on. I am not sure why this is the mainstream thought. Shouldn't these viruses get selectively better at fighting human immune systems? And we're throwing 750.000 new hosts to this virus worldwide every day.

IANAV: So, when someone gets visibly sick, they tend to get isolated from other people. That makes it more difficult for the virus to spread. So over time there's a slight advantage to variations of a virus that don't make as many people sick. I'm sure there are other factors, but that's a big one. So most viruses tend to harm the host less over time. We saw the opposite effect during the Spanish Flu. As I recall at…

> My guess is that it's hard to speculate what will happen with COVID-19.

> The asymptomatic nature of COVID-19 gives it a big question mark

Also the mass, un-targeted lockdowns have probably screwed with the selective pressure as well.

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

#274

Post by dehrmann »

matwood wrote: post #111
SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be some very special political reason for keeping borders with UK open, so even Fauci seem to approve it. I wonder what is it?

What I’ve seen discussed is that closing borders only works if it’s done totally and immediately. Otherwise, it just slows response and causes super spreader events like we saw early this year in the US.

The UK also teed-up a super spreader event with its rushed lockdown last week. India did the same thing back in ~April, and it ended up encouraging traveling and dispersed people across the country.

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

#275

Post by dehrmann »

yurlungur wrote: post #192
jsnell wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TWIW has kind of painted themselves into the corner by insisting that anything except biological evidence is irrelevant. The evidence for B.1.1.7 being more transmissive is quite solid, and seems to be getting more so as time goes on. But no matter how strong the statistical data is, it could never be good enough for them. So their policy recommendation ends up as "do nothing at all until there is 100% certain non-ci…

Yeah it really depends on how the numbers match up and how much risks you are willing to take given the degree of confidence in those numbers. By current accounts the vaccines will still work against this variant. So the last thing you want to happen is for the virus to catch the vulnerables in the last moment before they are vaccinated and essentially renders the whole vaccination program ineffective. Of course ther…

> By current accounts the vaccines will still work against this variant

This isn't surprising because the variant hasn't really encountered the vaccines yet, so it's not an adaptation to them.

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

#276

Post by sjg007 »

nradov wrote: post #185
sjg007 wrote: post #152

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 f…

Well OC43 has been around for over a century and never mutated to start killing kids. So why would this be virus do that? Your speculation seems uninformed.

There's speculation that an ancestor strain to OC43 was in fact the cause of the 1898 pandemicinstead of influenza.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_coronavirus_OC43

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

#277

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

randomsearch wrote: post #17
trebligdivad wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[edited to add newer doc] The UK NERVTAG had other measures of transmissability that got them to the conclusion it did have higher transmissability; https://khub.net/documents/135939561/338928724/SARS-CoV-2+va... and have a newer one where they're more confident: https://app.box.com/s/3lkcbxepqixkg4mv640dpvvg978ixjtf/file/...

Worth noting that you can’t test a hypothesis from the data you used to formulate it. I haven’t seen any work on this variant that doesn’t fall into that trap.

I would really, really hope that they are using a good cross-validation strategy (as they'll definitely need it).

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

#278

Post by dehrmann »

Izkata wrote: post #273
fpgaminer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAV: So, when someone gets visibly sick, they tend to get isolated from other people. That makes it more difficult for the virus to spread. So over time there's a slight advantage to variations of a virus that don't make as many people sick. I'm sure there are other factors, but that's a big one. So most viruses tend to harm the host less over time. We saw the opposite effect during the Spanish Flu. As I recall at…

> My guess is that it's hard to speculate what will happen with COVID-19. > The asymptomatic nature of COVID-19 gives it a big question mark Also the mass, un-targeted lockdowns have probably screwed with the selective pressure as well.

I still expect masks to become less effective over time because of their widespread use.

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

#279

Post by rolph »

yread wrote: post #219
rolph wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, and this is also not a surpise, this is part of the character of this virus, the sequence is unstable due to size and due to RNA instability.

What are you talking about? Sequence is unstable due to size? Coronavirus has proofreading mechanism that corrects most mutations due to errors, the estimate for mutation speed before this variant emerged was 2 mutations per month so this variant has ~10 months of evolution in them but probably evolved much faster for some reason. This is very much a surprise

This is what i am typing about.

The error rate is in terms of the number of nucleotides addended to the polymerizing RNA during replication the mutation rate is primarily a result of RNA replication, _not_ time. this means more replication events leads to more "errors", this also means longer sequence has a higher rate of error than a shorter sequence. at a length of ~29k bp the coronavirus sequence is very error prone, so error prone that this is approaching the upper limit of stability.

it seems you are mistaking DNA proofreading for an RNA proofreading mechanism, which happens to be negative selection upon nonfunctional mutant/variant. there is no recognized enzymatic [rdRNApol] error correction associated with the coronavirus.

"the RNA polymerases of RNA viruses are the kings of errors – these enzymes screw up as often as one time for every 1,000 – 100,000 nucleotides polymerized. This high rate of mutation comes from the lack of proofreading ability in RNA polymerases. These enzymes make mistakes, but they can’t correct them. Therefore the mutations remain in the newly synthesized RNA." [0]

none of these error prone generated mutations are surprising, they are to be expected espescially when the virus is given opportunity to replicate at a high cyle rate. this is very much not a surprise, if you are aware of the properties of +ssRNA virus.

[0] https://www.virology.ws/2009/05/10/the-error-prone-ways-of-r...

you may find this interesting[1] however this is primarily post polymerization [RNA readout] modification mechanism not error correction.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/103/13/5108

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

#280

Post by hnlmorg »

kinghtown wrote: post #260
hnlmorg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taiwanese people aren’t obedient. You should see how they drive. ... > They wear masks without flaking out about it as slavery or being against their will or whatever nonsense you guys are on about back home in the west. The 2nd part is what the GP was talking about with regards to 'obedience'. In some western countries like the US and UK, even the simple request for individuals to wear a mask is seen by some as an…

Nah, Taiwanese people view the masks as protection against germs and pollution. I understand the context of suggesting they are obedient but I still disagree with that. Chalking it up to obedience in a way takes agency from them- they choose to wear masks because they know that they work and the government is enforcing their use as well. They don’t wear them because they are merely told to. It’s plain to everyone her…

The point I was making is that many Americans and English folk intentionally don't wear masks because the government told them to.

I'm not suggesting that Taiwanese people blindly do as their told but rather that some of the US and UK population intentionally do the opposite to what they're told simply as an act of defiance....sorry "freedom".

Post reply on HN