Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
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Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
#2Mutation is simply a loaded term for variation, nothing horrible or shocking is happening.
Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
#3There are two important things to temper how worried you should be:
1. Many times there is an inverse relationship between ease of transmission, and severity of symptoms. There is a good chance that this new more transmissible mutant is likely to make people less sick.
2. So far all the available evidence seems to indicate that the vaccines will be effects against this strain as well.
Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
#4There are two important things to temper how worried you should be: 1. Many times there is an inverse relationship between ease of transmission, and severity of symptoms. There is a good chance that this new more transmissible mutant is likely to make people less sick. 2. So far all the available evidence seems to indicate that the vaccines will be effects against this strain as well.
You shouldn't speculate about 1. especially as this is a virus that is new. It didn't have wave after wave where the "deadly" strains would lose out in evolution.
Death rate in London and Kent didn't seem very different to other affected areas which would imply that the virus has same severity of symptoms but it is easier to transmit/contract.
Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
#5There are two important things to temper how worried you should be: 1. Many times there is an inverse relationship between ease of transmission, and severity of symptoms. There is a good chance that this new more transmissible mutant is likely to make people less sick. 2. So far all the available evidence seems to indicate that the vaccines will be effects against this strain as well.
[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.
Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
#6> The people who tested positive with the new strain, which is said to spread more easily and was blamed for a recent spike in infections in the U.K., returned to Japan this month — two at Tokyo's Haneda airport and and three at Kansai International Airport in Osaka.
This is talking about the SARS-CoV-2 VOC 202012/01 variant [0], aka B.1.1.7., aka carrying the N501Y mutation.
No news here, other than confirmed spread to Japan.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/scientific-br...
Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
#7As 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 like founder effects might also explain the variant's prevalance. We simply don't know yet.
There's a neat cautionary example at 35:10 which I'll try to summarize here. Polio was endemic, with low incidence, for thousands of years. Around 1900 it went from endemic to epidemic. Why? Did it suddenly mutate into a deadlier or more transmissable strain? While we don't have polio sequences from before and after 1900 to compare, we do know that rapid improvements in sanitation delayed exposure to the polio virus. Babies were now encountering the virus after maternal antibodies to it had waned! And it turns out this adequately explains the spike in polio a century ago.
Goes to show how complex the dynamics of these systems can be!
Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
#8There are two important things to temper how worried you should be: 1. Many times there is an inverse relationship between ease of transmission, and severity of symptoms. There is a good chance that this new more transmissible mutant is likely to make people less sick. 2. So far all the available evidence seems to indicate that the vaccines will be effects against this strain as well.
You shouldn't speculate about 1. especially as this is a virus that is new. It didn't have wave after wave where the "deadly" strains would lose out in evolution. Death rate in London and Kent didn't seem very different to other affected areas which would imply that the virus has same severity of symptoms but it is easier to transmit/contract.
It’s not remotely clear that this strain is easier to transmit. It’s entirely hypothesis and speculation.
We have seen strains quickly accelerate because of founder effect several times in 2020, and particular strains dominate in particular regions. The experimental studies that are needed to confirm a claim of evolutionary advantage have not been done, and the observational evidence is weak.
Those who would panic about this should be just as circumspect in their their claims as those who would dismiss it.
Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
#9Mutation 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
Not horrible or shocking, but concerning. Mutation is expected but the more strains there are the more likely one turns out to be unaffected by the vaccine and we find ourselves back at square one.
Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
#10There are two important things to temper how worried you should be: 1. Many times there is an inverse relationship between ease of transmission, and severity of symptoms. There is a good chance that this new more transmissible mutant is likely to make people less sick. 2. So far all the available evidence seems to indicate that the vaccines will be effects against this strain as well.
Isn't this what happened with the 1918 flu? It mutated to be less deadly add became the seasonal flu.