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Comment by qbasic_forever | Hacker News Reader

Whatever toy gain of function research someone is doing in a lab vastly pales in comparison to the enormous gain of function 'experiment' we are right now performing worldwide with the continued high transmission rate of COVID-19.

Look at what variants like Omicron BA.5 and BA.4 have evolved into, they are quite possibly the most infectious and dangerous air spread pathogens known to man. These didn't come from a lab, we cooked them up by dropping all mitigations and pretending the pandemic was over instead of quashing this virus for good.

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Source please? Everything I've read about latest Omicrons suggests that they are more transmissible, more likely to evade immunity, and substantially _less_ severe in terms of hospitalization and deaths. By and large, this is what you'd expect to happen at the end of a pandemic, regardless of our response.

You admit it yourself, I will quote you:

"they are more transmissible, more likely to evade immunity"

Intrinsic severity of the virus doesn't change the fact it is the most transmissible virus we have ever seen in the world.

Even if it is intrinsically less severe than previous variants, because we are allowing it to spread to EVERYONE in the world we are seeing a much worse impact. Did you miss that in the US alone we've had over 160k deaths from COVID-19 just in the last 6 months of this year? No other virus has had this level of death in the same timeframe.

> the most transmissible virus we have ever seen in the world

It's not. Measles, for example, is more transmissible.

> No other virus has had this level of death in the same timeframe.

Not true. Spanish Flu, for example, killed more both in raw numbers and proportionally in a similar time frame.

Here's a helpful infographic: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadli...

With, not from. That distinction is still barely ever made.

> quashing this virus for good.

This is impossible. You'd kill the host together with the virus.

We can eradicate viruses. Polio and small pox as an example

Ok, how do you plan to eradicate Covid? I mean, a polio vaccine is one shot and you're set for life, pretty much. It's incomparable.

China has eradicated omicron. Shanghai had _zero_ cases of omicron reported on June 24th. A couple months ago they were seeing 25k+ cases a day. This is a city of 25 million people, the third largest and most dense city in the world. And yet somehow with a collective attitude and government support they beat back the virus and have fully reopened and returned to normal.

Contrast this with the United States where we have so far had over _one million deaths_ from COVID-19. In the same timespan China has seen just a few thousand deaths.

If China can do it, why can't the US?

> we cooked them up

When you say “we”, who do you mean exactly? How did they cook them?

Can you explain why you believe the pandemic is not over?

> When you say “we”, who do you mean exactly? How did they cook them?

The entire population of the western world. Every time COVID-19 infects a person and replicates it has the chance to mutate or introduce errors. If those errors in replication increase the fitness of the virus it will evolve to become a more powerful variant (i.e. gain of function). By continuing to allow hundreds of thousands of new cases and infections to occur daily we are increasing the chance of variants evolving. The _only_ way to stop variants is to stop transmission, period.

> Can you explain why you believe the pandemic is not over?

We are still averaging over 100k new cases a day in the US. And that's with almost all of the population using rapid tests that aren't counted in that measurement.

Ah yes, is this the old "let's lock down the planet forever" solution?

The only alternative to this experiment is China's currently policy. There isn't much of a middle ground because anything short of aggressive testing, lockdowns, and quarantine won't be enough to stop the spread.

No, we literally just need to mandate N95 masks in public settings and get the effective R value down near 1 again. Contact tracing and government support for paid sick leave, etc. would control it even further. At no point do harsh lockdowns have to happen.

> No, we literally just need to mandate N95 masks in public settings and get the effective R value down near 1 again.

But as soon as people take off masks, it starts spreading again. It's also getting less politically viable when ~70% of Americans have had covid (the CDC estimated 60% in late April).

> It's also getting less politically viable when ~70% of Americans have had covid (the CDC estimated 60% in late April)

This means nothing. The virus reinfects people with existing immunity. For example Senator Wicker from MS is on his _third_ infection: https://www.magnoliastatelive.com/2022/06/13/senator-roger-w... Two of those infections have been in the last four months alone!

We have to use NPIs like masking to stop the virus from spreading in order to stop new variants from evolving. There is no herd immunity. There is no natural immunity.

> He said in February that he is fully vaccinated against the virus.

It's looking more and more likely that this is why most people are getting reinfected. Last month OAS made the news, just not by name: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/328102

> Vaccines against the coronavirus may impair the body’s ability to produce a key type of antibody, thus potentially limiting the immune system’s defenses against mutated strains of the virus, a new study suggests.

> The study draws upon data collected during Moderna’s randomized control trial for its mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, from July 2020 through March 2021.

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