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Comment by hamaluik | Hacker News Reader

Generally, yes. But also we’re a bit unlucky that it isn’t very deadly: SARS was way deadlier To start with but as a result spread several orders of magnitude less (both naturally and because humans had a stronger reaction to “shut it down at all costs“).

The H1N1 virus from the 1918 pandemic grew less deadly over time, and essentially evolved into a seasonal flu that is still affecting people around the world today. Personally, I expect COVID19 to go the same way.

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The h1n1 is a bit of a strange case though because it jumps species boundary very often and mutates very quickly. COVID-19 appears to evolve much, much slower. Based on my limited understanding of virology, I think this means it's unlikely to become a seasonal problem unless the general populations immune system does not retain immunity to the same strain for a significant period of time.

We already know CoV2 rarely causes any symptoms in children. I wonder if there was a time in prehistory where common Rhinoviruses and Coronaviruses wiped out larger populations of elderly.

Even if our immune system memory doesn't last very long for these types of viruses, wouldn't young people getting exposed to it now likely reduce its impact long term?

It also seems like >95% of people who die from this are over 55 years old. When you get into your 70s~80s, aren't common colds one of the things that result in natural deaths, due to an aging immune system allowing pneumonia to set in where it wouldn't in a younger person?

Yes that probably happened several times in human history. There are four other endemic coronaviruses. Most people catch them as children and build up some immunity, so even if they're reinfected later the symptoms are usually less severe. But they can be deadly to immunocompromised patients.

There is some strong circumstantial evidence that the 1889 "Russian flu" pandemic wasn't caused by influenza at all but rather by the emergence of HCoV-OC43. It killed about a million people worldwide.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/

> We already know CoV2 rarely causes any symptoms in children. I wonder if there was a time in prehistory where common Rhinoviruses and Coronaviruses wiped out larger populations of elderly.

Didn't pneumonia, influenza (among small pox and others) have terrible consequences on American native Indians ?

I believe small pox was the major one, I've heard among the Incas for example, it wiped out between 60 and 90 percent of the population. The main reason the colonists were able to spread so easily in the two continents is because disease wiped out huge swaths of the native population before many settlers even arrived. It's not like muskets are all that superior to bow and arrow (if at all, due to reload speed). Much of the land was just left vacant and unoccupied, and former cities abandoned.

And then came Colt's Revolver.

> A Texas Ranger, Captain Samuel Walker, wrote Colt a testimonial that read, in part:"Your pistols...[are] the most perfect weapon in the World... to keep the various warlike tribes of Indians and marauding Mexicans in subjection."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/colt_hi.htm...

The 20th century decolonization wars showed that natives can adapt to modern weaponry fairly well.

But you need the numbers to pull this off. Sioux are not numerous enough to threaten American dominance of their territory. If they were as numerous as, say, Punjabis, that would be a different story.

Punjabis acquitted themselves fairly well in 1849.

It's already clear that the vaccine, when it gets released, won't be a one time thing and we'll need more in the future to counter the mutations. Unfortunately, just in anecdotally talking to friends about it, it doesn't seem that this is widely known. It will be interesting to see how things play out as more people start to realize this. I suspect a lot of anti-vaxxers will be even more emboldened by it.

I don’t think anything is “clear” - there are even indications that people exposed to the original SARS virus have their immune systems primed to more quickly respond to SARS-CoV-2.

I do not think mutations are the main problem, just the fading of immune system memory.

But it does seem very likely the vaccine will not be a one time shot and you’re good forever.

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