COVID topic vol 2

[nomadscientist]

Exchanging everything that makes life worth living for ~3 months of additional life expectancy in your 80s would be the logical end point of the US healthcare philosophy.

[Ego]

Thoroughly confused.

New data shows B117 has a 35-40% increased transmission rate.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21251159v1

And it now shows increased virulence. I've read estimates up to 30% more deadly.

It is spreading across the US right now.

And yet we are reopening?

Any theories on why?

[7Wannabe5]

Most health care workers have been given vaccine option and people who continue to take reasonable precautions don’t care what happens to people who don’t take reasonable precautions.

Since the South African variant seems to be likely to infect even those who previously were infected with original strain, the haul just got even longer.

[jennypenny]

And yet we are reopening?

Any theories on why?

I think because the new variants show that covid will be around for a long time and vaccines might have a limited effect. 'They' have realized that we need to figure out a way to work through covid since suspended animation is not a long-term solution. I think young people in particular are the most affected/least afflicted and we can't ask them to continue to make such a sacrifice.

[chenda]

Although my understanding is the vaccines will likely still provide adequate herd immunity against the new variants, at least that appears to be the current view.

[white belt]

WHO investigating team leader comments on findings thus far: https://www.reuters.com/article/reuters ... SKBN2A90BW

“The possible path from whatever original animal species all the way through to the Huanan market could have taken a very long and convoluted path involving also movements across borders,” Embarek told a nearly three-hour media briefing.”

“The possibility the virus leaked from a lab - which has been the subject of conspiracy theories - was extremely unlikely and did not require further study, Embarek said.”

So I guess the official narrative is still the zoonotic transmission as origin. I’m a little confused that they are still sticking to the December 2019 outbreak start, when there are confirmed cases of patients in Europe as early as November, covid antibodies detected in lung patients in September, and COVID potentially detected in waste water in Spain as early as June (I think this is still being verified). Perhaps they will revise this as time goes on and I think this team was focused only on Wuhan.

I don’t know the origins of COVID-19, but considering that other SARS coronavirus were spread after escaping virology labs and there just happens to be a lab in Wuhan doing research on Coronaviruses with the largest collection of specimens in the world, I would say that it at least warrants some investigation. Especially after all the CYA of the Lancet letter that was hastily published claiming no conflicts of interest and later was revealed to be organized by Peter Daszak who has a financial interest in the WVI lab.

Edit: Here’s an article in Wired talking about how Peter Daszak and others are involved in both the WHO and Lancet investigations, with neither organization following best practices in regards to conflict of interest: https://www.wired.com/story/if-covid-19 ... ever-know/

[Riggerjack]

@ white belt,

I am sure the WHO will get to the bottom of covid, right after they figure out where Taiwan is...

The WHO is just a political organization that is engaged in political games. When your team of investigators is also financially linked to the area of investigation, the outcome is predetermined. Just the way political games are supposed to be played.

[chenda]

Not that Riggerjack is in anyway cynical about everything

[Ego]

They' have realized that we need to figure out a way to work through covid since suspended animation is not a long-term solution. I think young people in particular are the most affected/least afflicted and we can't ask them to continue to make such a sacrifice.

I hope you are right. It is truly shocking that we allowed this to happen.

One of my concerns from the beginning was that we would miscalibrate the response to Covid and cause a pendulum swing in the other direction the next time we experience a deadlier pandemic threat. It didn't occur to me that the overreaction itself might actually drive Covid to mutate into a deadlier form.

[theanimal]

I found this post very interesting. Some people have taken to making their own vaccine. They are able to source all the materials, with the exception of peptides, on Amazon. Cost is $1000 total but with the materials bought you're able to do about 500 doses.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/niQ3heW ... e#comments

[Bankai]

10-year jail term for lying about travel history introduced in the UK. Former Supreme Court judge:

"Does Mr Hancock really think that non-disclosure of a visit to Portugal is worse than the large number of violent firearms offences or sexual offences involving minors, for which the maximum is seven years?"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56007798

[ducknald_don]

I hope you are right. It is truly shocking that we allowed this to happen.

One of my concerns from the beginning was that we would miscalibrate the response to Covid and cause a pendulum swing in the other direction the next time we experience a deadlier pandemic threat. It didn't occur to me that the overreaction itself might actually drive Covid to mutate into a deadlier form.

Actually I think the West under reacted. That's why it's been such a problem for us. Life looks pretty normal in NZ or Taiwan yet we were told they were over reacting at the start of all this.

[J_]

I follow the figures about covid hospitalisations, numbers of new covid infections and covid deaths in UK (62 million people).
They all decrease last weeks. Mutations included. Percentage of people vaccinated: almost 20%.

A (very) hopeful sign? (Not that I think we can get rid of covid in the foreseable future, but more that we can untighten the social "apartheid" in coming mohths.)

[UK-with-kids]

I found this post very interesting. Some people have taken to making their own vaccine. They are able to source all the materials, with the exception of peptides, on Amazon. Cost is $1000 total but with the materials bought you're able to do about 500 doses.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/niQ3heW ... e#comments

This is the most ERE post on the whole of this thread(!)

I discussed this with somebody I know who knows a lot about antibodies from both higher education and career, and they said this is quite plausible. The problem, as mentioned in the article, is that you wouldn't know whether or not it had worked - you would only know if it hadn't worked and you got Covid, which defeats the object.

[trfie]

This is the most ERE post on the whole of this thread(!)

I discussed this with somebody I know who knows a lot about antibodies from both higher education and career, and they said this is quite plausible. The problem, as mentioned in the article, is that you wouldn't know whether or not it had worked - you would only know if it hadn't worked and you got Covid, which defeats the object.

What's really need is clinical trials to test this vaccine. It's possible to have an immune response without the antibody test returning positive, because antibodies may only be generated to a detectable level when a pt who is vaccinated contracts covid?

[enigmaT120]

Ego wrote:

It didn't occur to me that the overreaction itself might actually drive Covid to mutate into a deadlier form.

I can understand how natural selection could lead to the success of mutations that allow it to infect new people more easily. In fact that would happen without any social distancing. But natural selection normally leads to less deadly forms of a virus, as that way the people it infects feel fine and continue around spreading it to others. If I die, the virus dies too. And if I were really sick, I would die alone like so many have.

[Ego]

@enigma, the way I understand it, viruses expropriate resources from the cell to reproduce and spread. This stealing of resources is what makes us feel sick. The more resources they commandeer the sicker we become.

When there are few barriers to spreading, less cellular resources are needed for the virus to achieve its goal. In that case nature selects for the variant that does the least amount of damage to the host while still allowing spread. Asymptomatic.

When there are more barriers to spreading, the virus has to work harder to spread and uses more cellular resources to achieve its goal. When the virus steals more cellular resources it makes us sicker. Higher barriers cause nature to select for more resource heavy variants, those able to overcome the barriers.

In other words, social seclusion selects virulent viral variants.

[Green Pimble]

@enigma, the way I understand it, viruses expropriate resources from the cell to reproduce and spread. This stealing of resources is what makes us feel sick. The more resources they commandeer the sicker we become.

I think a more conventional understanding is that our bodies' inflammatory response is what makes us feel sick. A cough can be due to inflammatory mediators in lung tissue; fevers are an immune response to viral infection, etc. Compare with asymptomatic HIV: high viral load, but no/low immune response, and patients feel normal (until they have a co-infection with something else).

...In other words, social seclusion selects virulent viral variants.

I feel an argument could be made the other way: if certain symptoms cause someone to be isolated from others (via self isolation or govt. policy), you could say the selection pressure on a virus is to become less dangerous/less symptomatic, so the virus may spread and not end up in an isolated host.
I don't know if COVID-19 and its variants tend one way or the other, but I would be cautious in linking social isolation to more virulent strains.

[ducknald_don]

I'm not sure it makes much sense to me. If you restrict the virus from transmitting then you will get less mutation than if you give it free reign. Every transmission is an opportunity for mutation so more transmission means more mutation.

[jennypenny]

I'm pretty sure there are two different types of virtual mutation in play (shift and drift) that have different characteristics.