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Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

This is good news but I'm worried about the mutation already showing up in minks in Denmark. Minks apparently have a near identical respiratory system.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/denmark-plans-kill-15-mil...

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There is no need to be too worried about it right now

https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/05/spread-of-mutated-corona...

A more aggressive take: https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/13240857614493040...

The tweet doesn't mention the claim of antibody resistance, and the article just says that the evidence for it is yet to be announced. The article says that no single mutation is likely to cause resistance but doesn't explain why there would be only a single mutation.

I am yet to be reassured.

Yet another reason to move to a plant-based lifestyle. Covid came from some folks in China using exotic animals for some purpose. Now a new variant seems inevitable from animal populations. Is it worth the burgers and coats?

You're being downvoted for no good reason. Mass farming is what brought us here. This will keep happening, unless we change our behavior.

Wet markets and mass farming are two different beasts

Are they though? Mass farming puts humans into orders of magnitude more contact with animals than wet markets. In the case of covid, a wet market led to the disease. There are plenty of cases — just about the majority of plagues — where a domesticated animal led to disease

In some ways the dangers are different, perhaps more manageable in some cases. For wet markets, it's the unknown from nature. In the case of Domesticated markets, it is more typically an issue either from failures in procedure (i.e. e.coli/listeria/salmonella) or because of over-industrialization (Mad Cow Disease)

Fortunately it sounds very contained. All cases (fewer than 15) were confined to a single location and there haven’t been any more detected since September. So most likely the mutation is now extinct.

Let's see how this comment ages. I give it 50-50

I’m not saying anything with certainty. However, a lot of work has been expended in trying to contain this cluster and currently this is how it looks with the data we currently have.

It's not just this cluster though. If it happens once it could happen again and we may not notice the next until it's too late. So here's hoping the vaccine catches all likely mutations too...

Hence the genociding.

The minkocaust :'(

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