COVID-19: Chapter 4 - OPEN FOR BUSINESS

But they haven’t really been proven safe, either. Like, the risk is probably low, but I’d still be unwilling to take it if it could be avoided.

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So no rimming?

Put a mask on it first.

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I wouldn’t be super confident in that.

You can’t pin that one on the so-called DOOM AND GLOOM crowd here. There was a lot of pushback from the DOOM AND GLOOMERS on that one, assuming I count as part of Team D&G.

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Also he did say drawing live to nuclear war, not that it was likely. And in the context of Trump completely failing to deal with the task at hand and trying desperately to find something, anything to cement his position, it’s hyperbolic but his point is understandable.

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meh, wake me up when they hit 11,500 per day with a 43% positive rate

Anything is going to be possible with the economy in smoking ruins, at least 250k dead and nothing resembling normalcy by the election . Nuclear war would not be my prediction but Trump doing something super dumb to deflect from the disaster of his presidency is not only possible I would say it is likely.

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Some people will do anything for attention.

Generally speaking, yes, viruses want their hosts to be up and moving around, going about their normal business, rather than staying in bed because the host is sick. So, the sweet spot for, say the flu, might be a situation where you cough and sneeze more than usual, but not so much that you decide to use a sick day.

The argument Cuse is making is that, because Covid takes a long time for noticable symptoms to develop in someone and it seems like it is highly infectious in this pre symptomatic period, there is less pressure on the virus to mutate into a form where the ultimate symptoms are milder, because it already has a nice long timeframe to find new hosts before the original host gets sick and stops spreading.

[As far as the 1918 flu goes, there’s speculation that WWI might have messed up the normal evolutionary patterns because the people who got the most severe strain were the ones who were taken out of the front lines and transported to new areas while those with a mild strain stayed in the trenches.]

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I hadn’t heard that before about 1918, thanks.

If people weren’t dying, we wouldn’t be taking active measures to slow it down or to create a vaccine, that’s all I’m saying here. We don’t shut down nations for the common cold. From an evolutionary perspective, the normal endemic coronaviruses are much more likely to be around for many, many years. It’s a better long-term business model, that’s what we mean by evolutionary pressure.

You’ll notice that COVID19 isn’t nearly as lethal in bats. It’s subject to the same pressures other viruses are. This virus’ business model is to spread as far as it can in bats.

Look, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be talking this seriously or that we can just wait for this to just naturally become less lethal. I don’t know why you think I’m Mr. Sunshine, I’m mostly just being nitpicky about the science here.

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This Texas governor is the same one who said he’d gladly die to keep the economy running though eh? What changed :thinking:

I think that was the Lt Governor.

My bad. I am formally issuing a retraction.

This reminds me: has anyone happened to been bored enough to watch Bill Maher the last couple of weeks? I’ve been meaning to but haven’t. He’s been whining a LOT about how woefully unfair it is that he has to do his show from his backyard and he can’t do stand up in a comedy club yet what about Sweden and what about airplanes and what about restaurants blah blah blah argh blargh. He’s good friends with DL Hughley and it turns out his onstage collapse a couple weeks ago was (possibly/probably) caused by the rona. I bet he hasn’t even mentioned it, but I’d like to know anyway.

In order for a strain that benefits from this to overtake the more lethal strain, it has to be given circumstances in which to ply its evolutionary advantage. In other words, the strain that benefits from us being open can only take hold if we open up. But we’re not doing that as long as the lethal strain is out there. So how is the less lethal strain going to overtake the more lethal strain?

You can’t explain that, because there’s no reason it will under the current conditions. We would have to know it existed and be able to distinguish between the two, then it would have to occur in a region without the more lethal strain and be allowed to grow and take hold there… Then it would have to jump to another location with the same circumstances.

These. Circumstances. Don’t. Exist.

Even in places where there’s a shutdown, they don’t exist, because it relies on our behavior to make this happen, but if we relax our lockdowns anywhere in the world, the deadly strain will come back and kill us.

So, again, the only current evolutionary pressure on COVID-19 is to become as contagious as possible.

I didn’t ask for sunshine
And I got world war 3.
I’m looking over the wall,
And they’re looking at me.

The IIconics have gone too far.

Yeah I’m not 100% sure. If this was at all common, I think you’d be reading a lot more about it.

Most of the other cases were people that keep testing positive but they think it’s just the same virus lingering in various places, and they don’t think those people are contagious. Could be her.