The Domestication of SARS-CoV-2 into a Seasonal Infection by Viral Variants | Hacker News Reader

The Domestication of SARS-CoV-2 into a Seasonal Infection by Viral Variants

frontiersin.org

22 pointscempaka61 comments

I wonder what the implications are for COVID in the long term. After catching it the first time, I lost all smell and taste for two months, and I can say my taste has been altered probably forever because of it. Does this mean I could catch it again and get anosmia regularly? What about long COVID?

Just a personal anecdote: I got covid a total of four times (tested for and verified insofar as such tests are reliable) Two of these were post-vaccination with Pfizer. Each time was lighter than the previous occasion. The first time felt like a nasty but short case of the flu, the second one like a moderate cold with very low fever, and the latter two times like minor head colds basically with no fever at all. In my case I only lost my sense of smell and taste the first time, but only for a few days, similar to how the flu can sometimes do as well. Never got so-called long-COVID, which seems to be rather ambiguous as a clinical condition (not arguing it doesn't exist, but there's lots left to investigate and much self-reported diagnosis that I frankly don't trust around many reports of it)

Some people get it differently from others and even now it can hit certain individuals ferociously, but it always was absurd to think that this virus would simply go away, as some people argued. That it should evolve into a milder variant like many other seasonal cold-like viruses made sense given the vast number of people it infected, allowing it to keep evolving dynamically. Some widespread viruses don't do this quite so much of course. Smallpox being an infamous example that never stopped being extremely deadly until it was eradicated, but that doesn't mean it can't reliably happen to other types of viral infections in certain biological categories.

COVID sure was fun, See you guys at the next one!

Probably won't take long until then. These pandemics are so common that 4 million deaths barely registered on the radar and were forgotten by history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957%E2%80%931958_influenza_pa...

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-history-of-the-fo...

People don't like to hear that COVID is airborne, that COVID is not over, and that COVID is NOT a respiratory illness but a vascular illness that causes multisystem organ damage, but this is true, and our governments don't fucking care who dies or becomes permanently disabled as long as people keep contributing to capitalism. So MOST GOVERNMENTS ARE NOW SOURCES OF COVID MISINFORMATION.

People want to live. And they don't want to do the Covid years again. Capitalism is not relevant here.

Exactly, but you sure wouldn't know it in most areas these days. Only in niche corners like r/ZeroCovidCommunity can you find actually useful information about this ongoing public health disaster.

The only sure protection available is wearing a properly fitted N95 respirator in public spaces. Unfortunately this is a tall ask for most people.

> The only sure protection available is wearing a properly fitted N95 respirator in public spaces.

I ... am not 100% about that and can't afford mistakes so I wear a PAPR with a HEPA filter in public spaces and hate the world for forcing me to do so. (It's a Cleanspace Halo.)

Studies confirm that N95s effectively protect the individual from SARS-CoV-2 transmission (contrary to all of the misinformation saying otherwise).

If you can afford something fancier, great. My above comment was to differentiate N95s from surgical/cloth masks as well as vaccines, because these latter methods are not enough to stop transmission, and repeated infections increase the risk of Long COVID / PASC complications.

Studies confirm whatever standpoint you want, other studies disprove the same standpoint [1] for those who want to wave the "studies confirm" stick.

[1] https://www.thebottomline.org.uk/summaries/danmask-19/

A good starting point is using current data. Your study is from 2020 and is an apples-oranges comparison to my original point.

By now the research (as interpreted by experts, not internet randos) have coelesced around the fact that a properly fitted N95 provides the wearer adequate protection against SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

There has been a push to drive false information around this basic topic as one of the many tactics to force the "back to normal" behavior that capital demands. Mass media trying to suggest lesser masks (and/or vaccines) are sufficient, resulting in false "all masks don't work" conclusions, etc.

Exactly what do you think "the world" should do, and for how long, to reduce your exposure to a highly contagious airborne virus which has animal reservoirs and easily mutates to escape all forms of immunity?

https://youtu.be/ltjBT_TuUVA

As for how long? Forever. Y'all got used to seat belts , you can get used to masks. Or, at least until we have ensured clean air ... everywhere. Which won't be any time soon but it is doable.

This seems wildly alarmist to put it mildly. I hope you don't think I'm trying to offend if I say that unless you have unusual and preexisting immunological vulnerabilities what you're describing is an untreated anxiety disorder. In the wide spectrum of things that can kill you or injure you covid-19 is well below accidents, diabetes, heart disease, etc. It's not no risk, but it doesn't warrant 'wear a fully qualified clean room respirator at all times' level of mitigation.

I don't think I've ever seen such a concentration of untreated anxiety disorders in one place as that subreddit before. Those people desperately need help, and to leave the space that's preventing them from healing.

Denialism manifests in many ways, and your comment serves as an example.

It's easy for people to falsely reassure themselves that it's safe to follow capital's "back to normal" messaging, especially since it's instinctively what everybody wants to do and by most counts are doing in 2023.

But the recommendations of that subreddit are in line with the most recent scientific consensus among epidemiologists and other relevant subfields. Blindly write these findings off as "anxiety disorders" at your own peril.

The whole multisystem-organ-damaged world is conspiring against you.

I came to that realization this fall, as everyone started getting sick again. I played mine off as just a cold as well, but we all know it was COVID. It was always inevitable that this would become endemic. It just sucks being the generation that had to build the immunity.

> but we all know it was COVID

Did you test? I had a bad cold several weeks back and after 3 tests it's clear that it wasn't COVID.

>Did you test? I had a bad cold several weeks back and after 3 tests it's clear that it wasn't COVID.

I did not, but multiple family members did. Not much point anymore unless you're high risk. We've all got it, and no one's going back to wearing masks again.

Funny you say this, because where I work, we wear masks if we've had contact with someone with COVID and after coming back to work after being gone with COVID. Unless you're talking about masking all day everyday.

Yeah, wife and I just had covid and we broke out the masks for a few days. We'll probably do the same if we get the flu. I figure we've got 20 neighbors on our floor and maybe 10 are likely to get flu/covid in the next 12 months, so I'd be directly responsible if I got the 11th one sick in the elevator. That said, it wasn't that inconvenient since we're wfh, so I can see why people do different math.

I hear you, but it's maybe worth knowing if you end up with any post viral stuff even if that's kind of rare.

It seems that the at-home tests became less and less reliable for newer variants. I've had family and friends take tests repeatedly to finally get a positive one or never get a positive at home test, but then get a (PSCR?) test at the hospital that was positive.

No idea if tests were updated or variants changed again. There also was a variant were sampling from the throat was the way to go. It's a mess and clear information seems harder to come by than it should.

The one time I had covid about a year ago the tests all showed positive withing about 30 seconds, and continued to do so for about 9 days even though I never had more than some congestion and a light cough. YMMV I guess?

My colleagues have had this experience recently as well. Consistently negative on rapids, but then positive on PCRs.

It may have been the flu but it repeated false negative covid tests are possible.

Most governments expected so from the beginning, and their strategy was all along to ride out the virulent variants and to meanwhile somehow prevent their health systems and economies from collapsing. And were called out for being too cynical about it. Zero Covid was a pipe dream all along, and only certain island countries had ever any hope of maintaining it.

The idea that we were ‘flattening the curve’ was extremely heavily publicized in most countries.

“Flattening the curve” has nothing to do with Zero COVID. The latter was used to describe authoritarian Chinese policy and the former is what countries in the west encouraged to prevent their hospital systems from getting overwhelmed before vaccination was widely available.

Yup, while the average person probably overestimated the possibility that the (then future) vaccines could eradicate covid, the messaging was pretty clear from day one that practically everyone was going to get it and that the goal of lockdowns was to stop a healthcare collapse.

It's interesting to me how much revisionism seems to happen with covid specifically. Did people misunderstand it at the time or has the perception changed after the fact?

receipts: https://www.google.com/search?q=flatten+the+curve&tbs=cdr%3A...

In the U.S., the initial promise was that it would be done to provide time to shore up capacity in the healthcare system ("15 Days to Slow the Spread" as the mailers that were sent out described). And then no capacity was added and the bait-and-switch of "lockdown until vaccine" was rolled in states where it was politically viable. And then even after the vaccines were available to everyone, the completely ridiculous idea took root that "the pandemic was still ongoing because of the unvaccinated," which required everyone to keep masking and absurd rules like children eating physically separated lunches outside, as long as there was some nonzero number of new infections.

Basically through much of 2021 a great deal of public health policy was still predicated on the idea that it was possible and essential to prevent as many people as possible from ever having an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. Only Omicron's complete immune escape put an end to it.

>And then no capacity was added

That's because capacity in the West was never lacking.

Italian and New York hospitals were overwhelmed because a) both places put sick elderly into old age homes. (42% of US COVID19 deaths in 2020 occurred in old age homes!) b) Like elsewhere early on, doctors put everyone serious onto ventilators in a mistaken belief that they should treat patients like they do ARDS cases based on blood oxygen levels. This damaged healthy lung sacs and caused long-term dependence on mechanical respiration that doctors found almost impossible to wean patients from, and other side effects like deep vein thrombosis; Nick Cordero is an example. (This article from April 2020 <https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...> was completely vindicated in retrospect.) Neither happened after the first few months.

And no, none of those field hospitals built in parking lots and stadiums everywhere were used, either. In Wales, for example, Millennium Stadium was converted into a temporary field hospital with 300 beds and capacity to expand to 2000 beds. It was such a big deal that a public contest was held to name it Dragon's Heart Hospital <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Heart_Hospital>. However, said hospital never had more than 46 patients at one time, and was closed in six weeks for lack of use!

Even in NYC, which really did see overloaded hospitals briefly in March-April 2020, USNS Comfort treated a total of 179 patients. USNS Mercy treated a total of 77 patients in LA.

> Zero Covid was a pipe dream all along

More recently, "Zero COVID" has come to mean something completely different from the original notion of "strict lockdowns" -

https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/11jvg19...

It's an individual choice that people can make to put their health above the demands of capital and other pressures.

"Just colds" are viruses too. Many of them coronaviruses. COVID is becoming just one of them.

Inevitable is too strong a word. I'll give you highly likely, but we stopped SARS-CoV-1, it was possible to stop SARS-CoV-2.

SARS-CoV-1 had different transmission characteristics. It was most infectious when patients were sick. Since SARS-CoV-2 is transmissible already during the incubation period, its spread is much more difficult to control.

I wonder if such a virus domestication could be somehow done in-vitro.

Probably would only make sense at the very beginning of a (new) pandemic.

Even if it were possible, it wouldn't control the ones circulating in the wild.

The idea would be that the "domesticated" variant is more infectious so it would outcompete the wild ones.

>The idea would be that the "domesticated" variant is more infectious so it would outcompete the wild ones.

This is precisely what the gain-of-function research that was happening in Wuhan tried to do. Whether that was a good idea or not is now questionable.

Actually, gain of function research that's been criticized has been criticized mainly for increasing virulence. The post you're responding to here is asking about in vitro research to decrease virulence.

```if ... virus domestication could be somehow done in-vitro``` This is basically the definition of a vaccine, except that the vaccine has 0 infectiousness and near 0 virulence, rather than high infectiousness and near 0 virulence

> and near 0 virulence

Covid vaccine does not have near 0 side-effects.

I suppose if you could make it more infectious AND less serious AND have similar proteins so as to elicit antibodies that are also effective against the wild one, that would be a very interesting an possibly much more cost-effective way to "vaccinate" everyone.

That's a very big if though, and it might be dangerous research to pursue with our current level of scientific knowledge about these things (you could create a 2nd simultaneous pandemic if you don't succeed at the "less serious" part). But maybe at some point in the future it might make sense.

All of this has been done for a long time. There are numerous such attenuated vaccines that consist of an artificially bred non-virulent version of the illness, for example the oral vaccine against Polio.

Yes, there is a risk that these attenuated agents cause epidemics by themselves, thus vaccination campaigns employing them require close monitoring. Actually, most remaining cases of Polio originate from such attenuated vaccines, while "wild" Polio is nearing extinction.

This is a very common approach and is called an attenuated vaccine[0]. The oral Polio vaccine is such an agent. But it only works if the virus can't out-evolve the vaccine, the immunity is long-lasting, and if the risk of spontaneous mutations becoming virulent again is low.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine

What does it mean, “more infectious and less virulent?” Does that mean less dangerous if you catch it?

> We observed a decrease in COVID-19 disease severity surrogates after the arrival of the Delta variant, coinciding with significantly smaller plaque sizes.

The sentence before leads to the claim. Surrogate is the key word here since it’s really hard to directly quantify.

More infectious: easier to spread & catch Less virulent: less harmful when caught

Yes, although it's still by definition not a good idea to catch a disease. If it hits you too hard, you stay home, get quarantined, or put into a hospital. But it has to cause at least some reaction in the host, else there wouldn't be any coughing and sneezing to begin with.

HSV-1 (cold sores) might be the ultimate example of success, it manages to spread essentially invisibly.

On average, yes. This is also the tendency for most diseases, too evolve into a form less destructive to their habitat so it's easier for them to get to new places to infect. Given that this is biology I will note there are surely counter examples and variations on how fast this trend takes place.

Strains that infect more hosts outcompete other strains. People are protected themselves from further infection by being less active / more careful. Sure, if they also killed all hosts, they might themselves die, but it's more about infectiousness than lessening virulence, isn't it? Some infectious strains may be more virulent, some not.

Can they evolve to evade the tests? So many people relied on testing for this disease. More than most others, that it must have created some small selection pressure.

As long as such evasion is of benefit for its proliferation. If the ones that evade tests and the ones that don't evade transmit at the same rate, it would be irrelevant.

It’s largely a myth that viruses follow this evolutionary path and no such pressure really exists for COVID. It doesn’t kill enough of the population for this to exist and even when it does kill people, it can spread for weeks or months before they die.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19/do-bad-viruses-al...

There is some pressure in this direction for respiratory illnesses. It's easiest to spread an illness when it's present in the upper airways (and thus easiest to cough/sneeze out), but the illness does more damage to the lungs when it's deep in the tissues. If it were an exclusive choice, evolutionary pressure would tend to push the former, more transmissible route.

The literature at least tentatively reports that Covid variants tend to make this shift (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10024278/), which partially explains why the variants were more transmissible than Covid!Classic.

Indeed, it seems like wishful thinking.

There is no article yet, it hasn't been posted.

Is the full study accessible here?

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