COVID topic vol 2

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jennypenny
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by jennypenny »

Ego wrote:
Tue Feb 09, 2021 8:44 am
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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 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/
Last edited by white belt on Tue Feb 09, 2021 11:00 am, edited 4 times in total.

Riggerjack
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by chenda »

Not that Riggerjack is in anyway cynical about everything :lol:

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Ego
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Ego »

jennypenny wrote:
Tue Feb 09, 2021 10:06 am
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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 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

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Bankai
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by ducknald_don »

Ego wrote:
Tue Feb 09, 2021 12:28 pm
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_
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by UK-with-kids »

theanimal wrote:
Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:22 pm
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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by trfie »

UK-with-kids wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 1:59 am
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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 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.

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Ego
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Green Pimble »

Ego wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 6:22 pm
@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).
Ego wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 6:22 pm
...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
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 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.

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jennypenny
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by jennypenny »

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

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Ego
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Ego »

Green Pimble wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 3:40 am
I think a more conventional understanding is that our bodies' inflammatory response is what makes us feel sick.
Well, sure. I oversimplified. I think we are saying the same thing.
Green Pimble wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 3:40 am
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.
This from last October
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 7920318649
...the virus hasn't needed to evolve in order to be successful. Not yet, anyway. This is what makes some virologists nervous as we move into the next phase of the pandemic.

As a rule, evolutionary adaptation happens due to “selection pressure”, which is when an organism's environment changes to favour certain variants over others.

Right now, SARS-CoV-2 is under very weak selection pressure. There are still plenty of humans to infect who have no “immune memory” to fight the virus; there are very few drugs to evade; and there is no vaccine. But as these benign conditions become harsher for the virus, selection pressure will ramp up and we can expect to see it evolve in response, perhaps in ways that make it even more dangerous.
And this from early February in Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586- ... c-42375251
On 3 February, researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) released an analysis1 of some of those data, which suggests that the risk of dying is around 35% higher for people who are confirmed to be infected with the new variant.

and

The team found that B.1.1.7 is more deadly than previous variants for all age groups, genders and ethnicities. “This provides strong evidence that there indeed exists increased mortality from the new strain,” says Henrik Salje, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge, UK.
ETA, a few weeks ago I read a paper that explained why the conventional wisdom holds that viruses mutate to become less deadly. In it the authors argued that the viruses we encounter are either stopped right away or they run wild and never encounter significant selection pressure. So, they are either stopped before evolving or they spread so well that they don't need to evolve increased virulence.

Our half-measure response to Covid may have given the virus just the right amount of selection pressure.
Last edited by Ego on Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Qazwer
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Qazwer »

@Ego I am having trouble with the math in my head. My limited understanding: The virus only ‘cares’ about the number of times it can replicate. A more deadly version gives it less chance to do so. It could happen and often does that the change with making it reproduce more just happens to also make it deadlier though although not related or optimal in terms of the virus.
Basically I am asking if you have more information or the reference on that article you mention you came across a couple of weeks ago. I really would like to read it.

trfie
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by trfie »

A dead virus does not mutate. So it is a societal underreaction that has resulted in the new strains (one of which is much more transmissible with the same mortality rate). If covid-19 was eradicated by May 2020 like it should have been, all these recent strains would not exist.

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