The coronavirus is here to stay – here’s what that means
nature.com
nature.com
Who knows, maybe with all these breakthroughs, someone might cure the common cold.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Infection_in_human...
My understanding of the protein spike mutations is that they consist of a number of deletions - and deletions that have shown up repeatedly in a viral genomics database (convergent evolution across related viruses).
These seem to me to be a number of host (human) specific mutations that are actively selected for when one of the spike sharing viruses jumps to humans.
The fact that these mutations are deletions (are they?) means there's a very real limit to the degree of change
- there are only so many human specific optimisations that can occur, and once they are made it should be significantly more difficult to reverse them.
Once all of the optimisations have been made, the virus's attack vector will be left static, and it will be left without the protein structure that it depended on to infect the species that it jumped from.
The virus won't be completely backed into a corner, but it will be limited to a significantly reduced rate of change - which should make it easier to control.
So how wrong am I?
Name one way in which eradicating the virus is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon...
Here's a good article on viral escape: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/vacci...
there are, or there might be? Is there any evidence that COVID-19 exists in an animal population in any significant density? And, if so, couldn't that population just be quickly culled?
Many different viruses (far more deadly than COVID-19) are known to exist in bats and guano, but they rarely escape into the larger human population. Not to say never, but the cross-over is rare and seems to be reducible with increased education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication
Obviously every disease is different, but since it's only been done twice EVER, I would learn toward the burden of proof being on those to explain why it's realistic, not for those to explain why it's UNrealistic.
I would summarize it as "The world is very big and there are a lot of people and places that got infected" ...
- To treat it as a "third world" issue, as such diseases often are, rather than taking it seriously. Like Sweden health officials believing their cultural superiority alone would protect them.
- Focus on scapegoating China rather than adopt appropriate measures at home, those recommended by the WHO over a year ago and only implemented in places that have now had some successes - China, Vietnam, South Korea, New Zealand...
- Delayed lockdowns that reopen early without any appropriate tracking capabilities. They reopen early to satisfy short-term profit motives and little else: businesses reopening (like Europe for tourist season) and desperate people having few options outside of taking unnecessary jobs that interface with the public - itself a product of not paying people to stay home during a global pandemic.
- The building of a denialist movement that aligns well with corporate-friendly political movements. Different flavors of denialism for different political movements. e.g. anti-maskers doing protests vs. Fauci casting doubt about masks early on, likely to protect PPE supplies for healthcare workers, as strategic stockpiles had been devastated by decades of neoliberalism.
- Zero international consequences for countries that ignore these rules and become large reservoirs of virus.
- Vaccine availability falling along typical colonial lines, benefiting rich white people within and between countries.
- The decision to privatize vaccine production, prioritizing intellectual property over availability. Consequently, long delays in production, national resources going to purchase vaccine rather than directly ramping up production, and an intellectual property regime that treats other countries using information about these vaccines to protect their populations like it's some kind of horrible crime or strategic disadvantage.
The issue here is that the solutions to our collective problem, here, are all at odds with the established economic hegemony. There is a very direct conflict between people staying home and an economic system that depends on forcing people into low-paying jobs rather than waiting out economic downturns (or a pandemic) with a robust safety net. There is a very direct conflict between an international financial system that has been pushing for the prioritization of IP over national interest for decades (it's actually a very recent development that there would be any expectation that, say, India respect the US's IP let alone prioritize it over public health) and collaborative worldwide efforts to eradicate the virus. There is a very direct conflict between (nearly) everyone staying home and an economy largely driven by demand for unnecessary in-person services, something you see every time there's an article on the plight of restaurants and restaurant workers.
The only way out of this is to luck out with vaccine efficacy (though vaccines are on track to be available to all nations on the order of years, not months), additionally luck out with unexpectedly wide and equitable production and distribution (making it months not years), or a dramatic shift away from a profit-dominated regime (people get to protect themselves but the economy must be, at least temporarily, reconfigured to handle lower demand and growth).
Covid has long term effects, not all known at this time. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects....
Are you willing to have 5% of the population end up like me... short of breath, and pretty much unable to do more than 1/2 hour of physical labor per day? I can do grocery shopping, and that's it for me.
[Update] I used to be a machinist, on my feet 8-10 hours per day. I feel like I've lost 10-20 years off my life.
If 5% more of the population goes down each time they get it, you're going to run out of people.. just like Texas ran out of natural gas, when it seemed impossible.
Never underestimate exponentials, and long term effects of novel situations.
80% of the US population is there already...
"From 1999–2000 through 2017–2018, the prevalence of obesity increased from 30.5% to 42.4%, and the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%.
The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008 US dollars; the medical cost for people who have obesity was $1,429 higher than those of normal weight"
Health and nutrition are one of the topics where people don't want to hear the truth or know the solution because it's inconvenient and difficult, even though it's straightforward and doable for a lot of people.
Combine this with the replication crisis, and bias towards only funding and publishing novel results... things are worse.
Combine that with the telomere issues from having lab mice optimized for lowest cost... and the subsequent need to re-test everything... and there isn't much hope left.
When you see a person not doing something and are confused, a good first step to understanding the situation is to map out the steps that would be required. Then, go through and start listing the risks and impediments to executing those steps.
It is a lot easier to see a good idea than to implement it -- especially if you're willing to distrustfully ignore difficulties as "excuses".
It has been disappointing to see how our public health officials have taken a defeatist approach by focusing almost entirely on infection control. While minimizing infections is an important aspect of pandemic management, many people are still going to get infected no matter what. So we should also take steps to reduce their risk of a bad outcome, including reducing excess body fat.
One reason the COVID-19 death rate has been low in Japan despite having a high infection rate and a high proportion of elderly population is that they have very little obesity. I don't support the coercive legal measures they use under the 2008 ”Metabo Law". But strictly from a public health standpoint they have proven effective.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2009-11-10/fat-japan-youre-break...
But living with this coronavirus certainly does not mean that 5% of the population will have long term negative health effects, especially in light of a dozen effective vaccines (and more in the pipeline). We should also consider what we mean when we say "long term" for a disease that has barely been around for a single year.
The US doesn't even have modern healthcare. There's no point of developing new vaccines if we're using the market—you know for sure it's going to go to fewer people than it should. For-profit medical research is fundamentally a death cult.
The bearish hypothesis is vaccines could not be effective against newer variants and the carnage continues, could all airplane travel be banned in this scenario? Could Lockdowns continue in perpetuity? Maybe? I really doubt this scenario as history has never seen a scenario like this, looking at previous epidemics, like the swine flu of 1918 the virus ran its course in a year and half due to immunity after infection. Given we have vaccines being deployed now this should stop the virus in its tracks after more people are being immunized.
There are substantial animal reservoirs, vaccinating the entire planet won't do it, like it did for smallpox.
Is there any reason to believe the 95% who didn't "go down" after the first time have the same 5% risk if they get it again?
Not saying you are wrong or that the article is right. It's just something important to consider. It's also important to remember that even if the 95% face zero risk after they get it once, 5% of the global population is still a lot of people.
Honestly, yes.
SARS-CoV-2 is very similar to HCoV-OC43, another endemic betacoronavirus. There is strong circumstantial evidence that OC43 caused the 1889 pandemic which killed around 0.06% of the world population. Now most of us get infected with OC43 as children and build up a level of immunity which protects us later in life, but it can still kill frail and elderly patients.
According to the ancient legends, our ancestors have eliminated smallpox planet-wide. Too bad their awesome skills are forever lost in history.
I got heart arrhythmia as a bonus, but lowish dose of Concor, a beta-blocker, took care of that. Fortunately, nothing serious on the heart itself.
I also suffer from some muscle twitching, especially at rest. It is getting better, but very slowly. Accidentally, the cardiologist who got me into a heart clinic for my arrhythmia (a friend) suffers from the same twitching problem after his bout of Covid, but in his case, it is a bigger problem, because he actually performs heart surgeries. I was happy to tell him that a certain over-the-counter medication reduced my twiching problem. It helped him as well.
Perhaps there is something that can help you with your shortness of breath. Do not give up the search for possible solutions.
I’ve never been able to get my fitness levels back up to where I was before though, maybe 50%. I’m also still way more tired than I ever was before. It sucks to never really have fully recovered. I feel bad for the long COVID sufferers who sound like they’re in for something similar.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5455195/ [2] https://www.red-dot.org/project/backpod-6994
I'll keep digging, but it looks like some simple exercised might help get me out of this hell. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5455195/
And it plainly is, a bunch of places have done it. Once we have vaccines widely it will be much easier to get rid of.
Any country that succeeds in getting rid of it locally can have reciprocal travel arrangements with other countries or require proof of vaccination for entry. This is already common in many countries as a travel or visa requirement so it’s not outlandish to imagine countries with no virus locally may add vaccination as a requirement.
The virus is seasonal too. So once you have a good chunk of the population immune it should be feasible to eliminate it in summer via testing and contact tracing.
Global elimination would be much harder, but it’s not crazy to imagine there being a growing group of countries that stay covid free and maintain it via travel restrictions on those places that have large outbreaks. Due to possible future pandemics countries will probably have more viral border control anyway.
This doesn’t necessarily entail a massive reduction in travel; so for clarity that’s not what I’m advocating above.
It continues on in humans without immunity who may not show symptoms and in animal reservoirs (minks, ferrets etc seems to be the case for COVID).
Unless we inoculate children as well as adults we are unlikely to hit herd immunity (based on the values thrown around of needing 85-95% coverage for an 80% efficacy vaccine)
I'm not saying that this virus isn't dangerous or easy to eradicate btw. I'm only taking note that a lot of the information/articles floating around is propaganda with some agenda.
Which is disheartening, precisely because of the nature of this virus.
The Scottish government has been particularly reliant on advice from Devi Sridhar at the University of Edinburgh, who wants a "zero-COVID" approach and says that allowing life to get back to normal within a country is worth Australian-style draconian border closings and quarantine obligations, even if they might last years.
[0] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/scotland-hotel-quarantine...
What is the Zero Covid Strategy?
It means eliminating the spread of infection between people in the UK and putting in place measures to prevent or quickly staunch any further imported cases. Today that means four key steps:
- A full UK-wide lockdown until new cases in the community have been reduced close to zero
- An effective find, test, trace, isolate and support (FTTIS) system, run locally in the public sector, to quickly squash any further outbreaks
- Covid screening, and where necessary quarantine, at all ports of entry to the UK
- Guarantee the livelihood of everyone who loses money because of the pandemic
The UK is an island and absolutely could have gone zero covid. I don’t think any island that aimed at it failed.
But the UK had other goals and explicitly decided not to seek zero covid. Since Scotland had no interal border with England, zero covid wasn’t possible.
If Scotland wants to implement a zero-covid policy while England doesn't, they'll need to limit all cross-border traffic to a trickle, with supervised quarantine for everyone who does cross the border, and they'll need to treat a large area behind the border as a buffer zone where a single case outside quarantine immediately results in a lockdown.
Not impossible, but unlikely to be popular before it's successfully implemented.
It might be. Scotland doesn't seem to have authority to prevent freedom of movement within the UK. In several countries, things like mask laws and business closures have been struck down by courts because it was found that the state doesn't actually have the authority to impose that.
Do you truly believe that the millions of workers in food service, hospitality, etc are a "tiny minority"?
It will be interesting to see how long that policy holds when hospitalizations become minimal and deaths become incredibly rare. At a certain point, the borders will be closed to prevent the potential spread of the 10th or 20th most dangerous pathogen in a world full of pathogens.
Odds are, the licensing issues aren't at all to blame for the supply and distribution problems.
other endemic diseases we've got largely under control are neatly enumerated by the list of childhood vaccinations, for example https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc.... It's not like measles is "gone", after all.
> for adults recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection, a positive SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR result without new symptoms during the 90 days after illness onset more likely represents persistent shedding of viral RNA than reinfection
It does NOT mean that you are suddenly susceptible after 90 days - just that after 90 days, you are less likely to be actively shedding the previous infection so the tests are useful again
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/duration-isola...
This sentence doesn't mean anything.
Maybe the big difference is that living adults didn't catch covid-19 as kids, because it is new. Since kids are growing up in a world with covid-19 they will catch it like any other covid-cold, priming their immune system so it never sends them to the hospital should they catch it again.
Maybe this also explains why the common cold kills people sometimes. These unlucky people never caught that specific coronavirus as children, but rather when they were older and more vulnerable.