I canât access the article but generally speaking a system where a doctor can vaccinate his friends and family at will would create corruption and incentives to just oops end up with a punctured vial. If they are qualified they can go the regular route.
Whoâs right between Rasmussen and Frieden, and should we be scared of the covid rate of mutation or not? A lot of commenters seem to be trying to tip-toe around saying theyâre both right - which I assume must mean theyâre both highly esteemed in their fields.
Iâm much less interested in whoâs technically right even if itâs both of them - and more interested in Freidenâs point that the rate of mutation is scary.
Thatâs two separate questions. Frieden is obviously wrong about the rate of mutation, flu is much higher. That doesnât mean we shouldnât be worried though.
Is there a specific comment that is giving you pause? Rasumussen is obviously 100% correct in every possible way that I can think of. Hell flu goes around the world every damn year with a fresh new strain that is so heavily mutated that the prior dominant strain provides little to no protection.
COVID mutates much more slowly than most RNA viruses due to an odd proofreading protein Iâve mentioned here before. Having said that, it will inevitably evolve over time so thereâs reason to be concerned about that.
Basically the raw mutation rate is higher in the flu virus because
Coronavirus has some error correction mechanism
Flu is segmented and can rearrange the segments when two different flu viruses infect the same host. Coronavirus does not do this.
Flu has multiple animal hosts and readily moves between them and humans which increases the chance of rearrangement/recombination events. Coronavirus does not do this with any frequency relative to flu virus.
The above is pretty hard science.
HOWEVER
the net appearance of new dominant strains is the product of inherent mutation rate x the number of infections x some natural selection pressure (simplifying a little bit). So Friedman is claiming that this product is currently higher for Coronavirus which is one of those things that seem obvious but is a bit speculative because we are looking so closely.
Certainly their are more Cv infections and high selection pressure to overcome social distancing and medications.
So yup. Both are right but they are saying different things. Rasmussen is on stronger scientific footing, but Friedmanâs observation is likely more practically relevant.
The cool thing is that if we can take away Cv ability to mass infect we can actually drive down that net term.
A note on natural selectionâovercoming big negatives are much rarer. A little bit more shedding or a little stronger spike binding will occur at a higher frequency than overcoming a single antibody which will occur at a higher frequency than overcoming acquired immunity Of a broad immune system response (natural or vaccine).
The idea that itâs mutating faster because itâs spreading faster isnât supported either, although I donât think we can objectively say itâs wrong.
Regardless, this is a classic internet message board thing where someone says something obviously wrong A, then when they get called out they say A really means B.
Also, based on the evidence that we have, if anything, spreading the dose out farther apart will increase the efficacy (after the second dose). Obviously, you are at a disadvantage between doses with a longer delay. Yes, I realize above is not proven.
The idea that there are more mutants doesnât mean itâs mutating faster. Partly it may be observer effect of actively looking at lots of genomes but I do that itâs probable that lots of infections means either a higher raw number of mutants occur and/or advantageous mutants have more opportunities to become significant fractions of the total population. (Id put my $ on the combo).
Regardless the answer is the same. Make it difficult on the damn thing to find new hosts.
My understanding of these are that they are a few point mutations. Influenza routinely has wholesale gene swapping. The rate of mutation really isnât comparable.
Observer effect is also really important. My understanding is that we rarely sequence stuff like this for other viruses. We type flu often and probably sequence a few, but this sequencing is completely different.