> >It's unclear exactly what the age breakdown is when it comes to this variant strain
> It seems you need to spend more than 10 seconds researching your ideas.
Also "since the situation is in flux and information is still trickling in".
I won't find you the data that doesn't exist yet. But as you can read there is a growing concern and a lot of random observations that number of 30 and 40 year old hospitalized people seems to be on the rise. And cases of hospitalized children are becoming less rare.
https://www.google.com/search?q=younger+people+with+covid&oq...
Wait 6 months and you'll have plenty of data of how much worse current variants are from original one for younger people. Because they definitely are not milder.
> The rest of what you've said in response to my requests for further information and sources is just personal opinion, presented as "reasonable" arguments.
If it sounds reasonable it's only because that's how basic evolution works. And it's not really personal because this opinion on how evolution works is shared among evolutionary biologists and there's really no reason for human viruses to be exception to those general rules.
The one thing you might argue is that by social distancing and masks we are putting evolutionary pressure on the virus to mutate into a form that doesn't give any symptoms, so we let go and spread it happily like we do with the flu or colds. But apparently playing human immune system carefully so that the cytokine storm doesn't kill even a small fraction of hosts is a really hard thing to figure out. It was way easier for the virus to figure out how to transmit between people more easily despite masks and social distancing (or at least our half-assed application of those things).
And even if some mutation of coronavirus creates a milder variant it doesn't mean that old variants will disappear. Before sars we already had 4 mild coronaviruses so we'll have 5. Maybe we already have. Remaining killer variants will still be just as active as today.
You might hope that if you get infected with that new mild variant it will give you immunity to all other variants of sars-cov-2, but it probably won't be true. Because we already have a variant that happily re-infects people that previously caught the original variant.
What's more, exposure to milder variant does not necessarily might boost your immunity against the killer ones. It might even harm it. There is a theory that older people suffer more form covid because they experienced more contact with mild coronaviruses during their lifetime than younger people and their immune system is sort of numbed to them until its too late. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/prior-exposur...
Also even if we had a milder variant of sars-cov-2 that gives blanket immunity to all other you'd still have to figure out how to catch it before any other. And they'll spread exactly the same way.
Vaccines are such milder variant that we control and try to give people before they come in contact with any other. But we have to make every dose of it ourselves.
> An idea not supported by my 10 seconds of research:
> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-bec...
Are you really citing something written right after first wave? How that milder variant is doing now? Compared to, let's say, the British one, or the Brazilian one?
> Yes, I have, but never in the context of "younger examples of the existing infected organism". Even so, and as I've already said, we don't even know if younger people are already being infected with the existing strains, so I can't get myself too worked up about hypothetical possible future variants.
As you wish. I'm worked up, but I still hope that we'll manage to outpace all of this with our vaccines and possibly treatments. But it's still a race with time, and unless we significantly reduce number of infections by any means possible all scenarios are on the table.
> You've also mixed in your personal opinions on supposedly how bad life was before Covid, how little you value small businesses, and how life should be drastically re-modelled so that everyone works and learns remotely. I disagree, but that's ok, it's opinion. I think that remote (learning or working) places people at a huge disadvantage - against those who already have in-person connections, and against institutions that have the sense not to do such a thing.
Again, not that personal. Many people believe that young (non-wealthy) people were getting short end of the stick even before the pandemic. Shared opinions. As probably are yours that young people before pandemic had so many wonderful opportunities that today they are robbed of.
Same with remote working, some people like it, some dislike it. You can look at the research on how is it better and how is it worse. It's not as clear cut case as that forbidding people to go to concerts is bad for people who earn money by organizing concerts.
>>sars-cov-2 is so mild in objective terms
>We certainly agree here.
Mild for viruses that kill and cripple some of their hosts at least. There are probably thousands of human viruses that are way milder and and not that many that are more deadly and harmful.