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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

#51

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

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…

> But COVID-19 also has a _very_ large incidence of asymptomatic transmission

Does it? Meta-analysis concluding secondary attack rate in households from asymptomatic transmission around 0.7%.

> Household secondary attack rates were increased from symptomatic index cases (18.0%; 95% CI, 14.2%-22.1%) than from asymptomatic index cases (0.7%; 95% CI, 0%-4.9%)

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

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

#52

Post by yread »

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

Note that here we're not talking about a single mutation but 17 non-synonymous (they change the protein) mutations with 3-4 with known effects on the interactions of the resulting proteins

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

#53

Post by itsthefnlacctdn »

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…

IIRC the vaccine does nothing to curtail the spread of the virus, just eases symptoms once infected.

I don't know when people started substituting with taking a vaccine = immune to covid/spreading.

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

#54

Post by bonzini »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #26
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…

There is some other point I heard recently on Twitter - the appearance of new variants with increasingly faster speed of spread (BTW, if anyone remembers, there was a mutation in Australia, which had shorter incubation - 8 HOURS), may quite soon cause rise of true strains, and, it might potentially lead to the ADE, when suboptimal vaccines will make disease much worth instead of easing it.

> 8 hours

That seems weird, to be kind. Source?

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

#55

Post by bredren »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #29
ALittleLight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel we (US) should absolutely be closing the border to the UK, Japan, Italy and whoever else has the new strain/variant. Why would we wait on this when the evidence suggests the new version is more infectious?

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?

Any new precedent for completely closing borders between developed nations for any reason is bad. Because it creates a “we did this before.”

Even if the scale or details of circumstance are different—such as Clinton’s pardoning of his brother in minimizing Trump’s choices.

Another reason is exceptions cause outrage. And there may be many instances of diplomatic or other government travel that needs to happen or happen in the slipstream of limited public travel.

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

#56

Post by bjornsing »

jsnell wrote: post #44
m-ee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence are you saying is “quite solid”. So far everything has just a been inferred from the epidemiology and the error bars are extremely wide. I wouldn’t call that solid at all.

So, when the news broke a week ago, I was wearing my skeptic hat just like for the handful of previous announcements about "new strains". And some initial reading suggested that there was nothing to worry about. But the one data point that was so eye-popping that I thought it had to be a misprint was that 60% of the cases in London were for the new variant. It wasn't a misprint, and it wasn't isolated to London. That…

Agree 100%. I can’t see any alternative hypothesis that explains the UK sequencing data. Here’s a good graph from a seemingly reliable source: https://twitter.com/mugecevik/status/1341094871822680067?s=2...

What could explain that data other than increased transmissibility...?

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

#57

Post by IAmGraydon »

Threeve303 wrote: post #46

What happens if the world gets into a situation where the virus mutates rapidly and we find the vaccines becoming less effective? We assume the drug companies will be able to adapt the vaccine quickly to the new variants. If this happens then it creates a few problems.. One problem is having to continuously distribute a new vaccine to people indefinitely. Another problem is only certain countries are capable of manuf…

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 a version of the virus that doesn’t respond to antibodies. Luckily, they imagine this because they don’t understand how the vaccine works. It’s fantasy, and it is highly unlikely that any of this would play out.

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

#58

Post by bjornsing »

m-ee wrote: post #42
SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you consider a solid evidence?

Some actual lab work? I’m not a biologist so I can’t give you specific assays. The TWiV team might, I’ll submit a question. If you look at the data behind the NERVTAG report it’s extremely noisy, and is circumstantial. Nothing in there directly measures the viruses ability to spread.

The UK is a giant lab right now and the results of the experiment are in: https://twitter.com/mugecevik/status/1341094871822680067?s=2...

What could explain that data other than increased transmissibility?

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

#59

Post by bob33212 »

Threeve303 wrote: post #46

What happens if the world gets into a situation where the virus mutates rapidly and we find the vaccines becoming less effective? We assume the drug companies will be able to adapt the vaccine quickly to the new variants. If this happens then it creates a few problems.. One problem is having to continuously distribute a new vaccine to people indefinitely. Another problem is only certain countries are capable of manuf…

Mutations that spread quicker are also less deadly.

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

#60

Post by jpster »

sigil wrote: post #7

As discussed on TWiV yesterday, B.1.1.7 isn't a "strain," which has demonstrably different biological properties, but is still considered a "variant." https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-697/ Any biological differences are theorized solely from the genome at this point. In the episode, Racaniello is at pains to point out that genomic differences alone don't imply biological differences in say transmission, and things li…

I’m a big fan of TWiV podcast (This Week in Virology) and I understand Racaniello’s point of view. However, this thread and other info I’ve read lead me to believe that this is an important new development.

https://twitter.com/billhanage/status/1341857733633581063?s=...

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