Also, Spanish Flu happened during WWI. Soldiers w/ the worst flu strands and super sick/dying were pulled out of the trenches and back to civilization, spreading it far and wide.
Soldiers w/ the weak flu strands and relatively healthy were left in the trenches to get mowed down by machine guns.
Pretty much the exact opposite of the normal selection process.
I mean they already did that so we knew.
That’s true. I never even thought about that. Although I think that flu also demolished places that weren’t fighting the war, so maybe that’s not the explanation.
Right - same as a meteor - the odds are stacked against - so say 999 out of 1000 mutations make the virus weaker. But it only has to happen once.
Just like animal mutations - the vast majority do not help the species survive. But every now and then they give it an advantage.
Are you starting to see anything about a ridiculously high false rate positive for some of the testing? Up to possibly 80%? I came across this looking for the info on Australia doing random population testing, (which I can’t seem to find so you are probably correct that I’m mistaken), but I can’t find any sourcing I trust. Wondering if you’ve seen anything like that?
Only SF close to NYC - and that’s a very small area/pop compared to NYC.
Also NYC is colder right now and in the past month. Might make a difference.
I’ve seen that Chinese abstract floating around (this one) but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. PCR tests should have very low false positives. I have a lot of questions not answered by the abstract. I’m very skeptical for the moment.
Thanks. That must be the study they were referring to. They said it was a Chinese study but they did not actually reference it. It would be good news if that study is bunk.
The shear numbers are huge. Remember the driving evolutionary force for attenuation ( weakening mortality) is that dead hosts don’t spread the virus. This thing is already high on the list of infectivity. The lethality character is more or less random as a by product of which cells it hijacks to reproduce and spread. Something about the character of those lung and blood cells is different in some people and/or the impact is much more severe due to underlying conditions.
A lot colds are also highly contagious and don’t do much more than hijack cells in your nasal membranes in order to get you to spew virus. Makes you feel shitty for a few days until your immune system gets the upper hand.
The point is that a small fraction of cases are so severe to make the host essentially non infective. Heck we as a society even take those that get very sick infective on the exact people we rely on. Drs and nurses. There is no strong evolutionary pressure until this thing runs out of hosts via herd immunity and vaccination. Basically it’s a perfect killer of a few million worldwide. Then maybe it will weaken. Also a random chance it gets nastier (broader fatality range).
Long term it will very likely attenuate. But I don’t think on a time scale that matters.
Heck social isolation could put pressure to select for a variant that has a longer infective period.
Thanks! I will probably post more now that I have crossed the sign-up threshold…
A little perspective from a personal side:
On our own initiative, we have been self isolating from Mar 12th (Thu). We are doing only 1 grocery trip per week, and only 1 person leaves the house (me). Luckily delivery services here are cheap and easy to access, so most other items are obtained that way.
I took the daughter out from school that day, after writing the school that they should consider moving to distance education immediately (it’s a private school, so they can pretty much do whatever they want). Some schools and universities at that point have already done this or were planning to very soon. But not my daughter’s school, they felt that they need to show a brave face or whatever. I wrote several other parents who didn’t know what to do, but I convinced them over the weekend that having 600+ kids attend an enclosed structure is not tenable. They agreed to take their kids out starting Monday. I guess I didn’t need to, because on Sunday afternoon, the city government (along with many other regional governments) decided to shut down all schools for two weeks.
We, like many here, live in 3 generational family houses. My parents (69-70) live with us, as does an even older aunt. All have comorbidities (diabetes, hypertension). Combined with the dreadful medical care quality and capacity here, I have to consider the very real possibility that statistically one or more of us will get it, and not all of us will have a good outcome.
Long before either president said anything about it, I have bought some HCQ/Z-pack, and also some CQ for good measure. Yes, I know about the side-effects and the qt interval prolongation. I will obviously consult with an MD if the situation arises.
Self-medication here is quite common, and everything other than opioids you can buy without prescription. I expect at some point, individuals may even buy the antigen test kits. I am also considering buying an oxygen concentrator, but this is a bit on the expensive side ($600-800), and I’m not fully convinced that this won’t be an overreaction.
This may seem bizarre to folks in the US, but this is what you have to do when you live in a country where the government seems to only exist to make your life difficult and themselves richer.
We’re learning how that goes.
Most forum members are starting to get a grasp on what a kleptocracy is in America.
As a side note, it’s nice to continue to get reports from countries all over the world regarding how they’re coping with coronavirus
You guys turned me into more of a weirdo. I started bleaching the common doorknobs for my building.
Is that what they are calling it these days.
So. I posted a while back about allowing some of our highest risk people to work from home. (I work in a call centre for an essential service)
Now more and more people are coming about with health reasons that they should also work from home. We are going to have to say no to some of them, and it won’t be taken well.
AreWeTheBaddies?
Common doorknobs are a lost cause; I’ve been finding creative ways to open doors without using the tips of my fingers. A lot of the time you can use the crook of your pinky finger to open a door. Apparently my mother has been doing this for decades.
jeez Nearly everything is essential according to that list.
Yeah but they also think this thing is just like the flu, low risk, overblown, etc. Sure, they got a little scared for a week or so, but once daddy tells them to go back outside they’ll think it’s no big deal and they’ll puff out their chests with false bravado to own the libs. A few weeks later some might regret it… Or they might think they have a bad case of the flu, right up until it’s too late.