For reference, Bob is referring to this, I assume:
This is buried waaaay down:
And that raises an important point, Fuller says. Even though BA.2 seems more contagious and pathogenic than Omicron, it may not wind up causing a more devastating wave of Covid-19 infections.
“One of the caveats that we have to think about as we get new variants that might seem more dangerous is the fact that there’s two sides to the story,” Fuller says.
The virus matters, she says, but as its would-be hosts, so do we.
“Our immune system is evolving as well. And so that’s pushing back on things,” she said.
I’m not sure evolving is the right word there. The human immune system may be evolving but mine is what I was born with and I hope it works ok and keeps working given some occasional heads-up of what might be coming at it.
Your immune cells do actually undergo genetic changes in response to new pathogens. There’s a whole lot of rapid and random genetic shuffling that goes on in the process until something is found that works. And that, to me, sounds pretty darn close to evolution, even if it’s only in certain cells in you. It’s not that bad of an analogy.
Maybe not - but it could be confusing when used at the same time as talking about the virus evolving - two different meanings used in the same sentence potentially.
First of all, it doesn’t sound like it was “an analogy”. In the part that was quoted it says ,“Our immune system is evolving as well.” That sounds like a literal description rather than the analogy (I didn’t read the whole article, so if there was other context that suggests otherwise, I could be wrong here).
Secondly, and more importantly, the immune system has evolved to do exactly what you describe. It has come up with a way to attack pathogens. Calling that mechanism “evolution” is just not accurate. While there is some “genetic shuffling” as you put it, the genome of the host immune cells is the same. If we take some T-cells or B-cells from Wookie pre-COVID and Wookie post-COVID, they will contain the same Wookie genes, although the latter may be able to preferentially express certain ones. So there is no “evolution” that has taken place.
Yes, I realize this is pretty much completely useless nittery.
I prefer the term acclimating vs adapting. Adapting is mostly used for heritable traits. Acclimating is like training at altitude to build up red blood cells.
Our immune cells can do genetic rearrangements. It is not at the germ line level. So I don’t think evolution is a good term because the mental shortcut lay people take leads to some wrong conclusions.
We often give evolution a will. Birds didn’t evolve narrow beaks to reach into holes for insects. It’s just that the birds with narrowing beaks by random chance had better reproductive fitness. Then rinse and repeat.
Certainly an individuals immune system can “learn” to more effectively combat a virus but only if some underlying genetic variant factor allows the individual to proliferate its genes do we as a species evolve (obviously the long battle of humans vs viruses is reflected in the capabilities of the immune system).
I get what your saying but I run into so much colloquial reasoning around the topic I try to stick to the definitions.
And I’m on the other side when talking about cosmetology errr cosmology. My understanding is better than the average person but I’m sure I butcher terms about space stuff all the time.
Even within biology, my true understanding is pretty deep in certain areas and in other areas I have a “useful” understanding but not a complete mechanistic level.
It took 2 days of grandstanding from the far right SPD, but finally a vote took place on the “pandemic law” and it will extend into November.
The “pandemic law” is basically a set of policies that allows for restrictions to be passed in a more efficient, less time-consuming matter. The far-right filibustered the voting for 2 days by ranting incoherently about whatever was on their mind at the time.
Right now, restrictions are almost non-existent. There’s testing for some employees and there are still mask mandates. But beyond that, that’s it. The center-right coalition states that all restrictions will be gone before Easter.
I’m grateful. It was nearly impossible to teach anything given the impractical restrictions imposed in January and the number of students/staff coming down with covid.
The number of positive covid tests among students and staff in the country declined by 40 percent compared to last week. Still think not testing students anymore is a bad idea though.