Hacker News Reader

Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

There is nothing that can help us "end" the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak. A highly infectious respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs can't be eradicated or even really contained. At this point it's just one more of several endemic human coronaviruses and will always be around in some variants, much like HCoV-OC43.

View on HN

I think you misread what I said. I said "could help us" which just implies it's a distant possibility. I am aware that it's an extremely low probability event, but not an impossible one, for example in 200 years they might find a universal beta coronavirus vaccine based on a general stem and not on a variant specific spike.

More information in this case is better outcomes regardless. We can't just accept the current state of affairs and do nothing if there are still avenues of improvement that don't involve pretending like COVID is a mild disease or forcing quarantines whenever some worse variants shows up.

Whether it will jump back from deer or dogs (two animals aside from minks who i remember testing positive for sars-cov-2) back to humans is a huge if (hasn't happened so far as far as I remember, or if it did, it couldn't have been more than ballpark ~5 cases), but I don't disagree that it might happen once more, since I'm not a lab leak guy.

> There is nothing that can help us "end" the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak.

We could massively mitigate its effects to the point we could actually live with the virus without risking the often debilitating effects it can have.

On a societal/systemic level: HEPA air filters in hospitals, care homes, public transport, schools, churches, generally any indoors place where large amounts of people gather would not just drastically cut down on transmission of pathogens of all kind, but also make the lives of people suffering from allergies so much easier. We put a lot of care into regulating our food, water, even our clothing to be free of pathogens and contaminants - but the air we breathe daily is barely regulated at all!

On an individual level, we could wash our goddamn hands more often (I'd be really interested in, but probably also really disgusted by a study on soap and towel consumption in large office buildings before, during and after the pandemic), wear masks in public transport, and stay the fuck home when sick - although I realize that this is all but impossible in the US with there not being a federal law that allows people to stay home when sick with anything without risking of getting fired. Here in Germany, it's no big deal.

Instead, our politicians seem to have completely given up any idea of dealing with covid.

It seems clear at this point that Covid (the latest variants in the wild, at any rate) does not cause "often debilitating effects", and so any mitigation must have its costs, which are very high for any easily-transmissible respiratory illness, weighed against its benefits, which are pretty low.

Remember: "there are no solutions, only tradeoffs." Otherwise, we should just plug everyone into VR pods a la The Matrix and be done with disease once and for all.

> It seems clear at this point that Covid (the latest variants in the wild, at any rate) does not cause "often debilitating effects"

Depending on the study, you have up to 45% of people experiencing covid symptoms (aka Long Covid) almost four months past infection, and around 10% that experience symptoms 18 months past infection [1].

The amount of people so massively impacted by Long Covid that they can't work any more or have to significantly reduce their labor hours is so large that it's been theorized to be a significant contributor to current labor shortages [2]. So yes, it does classify as "often" IMHO.

> and so any mitigation must have its costs, which are very high for any easily-transmissible respiratory illness, weighed against its benefits, which are pretty low.

Just the 2023/24 covid+rsv+influenza wave is suspected to have cost the German economy alone 36 billion euros in lost income and sick day payments [3].

We need pathogen mitigation concepts, the sooner the better.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43661-w

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-long-covid-worsening-t...

[3] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/ifw-grippewelle-koennte-die-d...

> It seems clear at this point that Covid (the latest variants in the wild, at any rate) does not cause "often debilitating effects"

“Patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present increased risk for ischemic cardiovascular complications up to 1 year after infection.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-023-00336-5

“Approximately 1 in 5 individuals exhibited cognitive impairment 12 or more weeks following COVID-19 diagnosis.“

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915912...

How does this compare to other viral infections?

And neither of those sound debilitating by the way.

If it isn't different, that's a stronger arguement that the tradeoffs are worthwhile.

From the second link:

> COVID-19 is associated with clinically significant symptoms despite resolution of the acute infection (i.e., post-COVID-19 syndrome). Fatigue and cognitive impairment are amongst the most common and debilitating symptoms of post-COVID-19 syndrome.

That's comparing to no infection and doesn't answer their question.

Your comment doesn’t make any sense because how would the absence of an infection ever arrive at a debilitating outcome and thus be a point of comparison? The parent claimed COVID doesn’t cause debilitating outcomes. I provided evidence it does, including specific use of the exact term by medical researchers. When they couldn’t refute that, they made an ambiguous appeal to other infections to distract from being wrong, trying to shift attention from their original, unsupported claim to a new claim (COVID is the same as other viruses), and demanding that I provide evidence contrary to that. But that’s separate from the truth or falsity of the original claim, and thus irrelevant.

> Your comment doesn’t make any sense because how would the absence of an infection ever arrive at a debilitating outcome and thus be a point of comparison?

Base rate in the population in general, which would be a mix of various infections and not. For the no-infection part: those particular ones, for example, could be caused by aging.

> When they couldn’t refute that, they made an ambiguous appeal to other infections to distract from being wrong

Those were two different people.

This is controlled for by the NOS ranking of the studies in the meta analysis, but since you didn’t actually read it and are arguing from your priors, I guess you wouldn’t have observed that.

Yeah, I responded to what you quoted, which isn't comparing to other viruses. Which is why I said it doesn't answer their question.

And as I said, the comparison to other viruses is irrelevant and does not pertain to the original claim.

Of course it's not. "Flu causes exactly the same symptoms" is a radically different scenario than "flu doesn't cause any of these symptoms", which is different again than "Covid causes 20% more symptoms than flu". As far as i know, it's mostly likely that last one(?) But I'm not really sure, which is why I asked.

Regardless, it's important to put these figures in context.

This context is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of whether COVID often results in debilitating outcomes (the original claim), which I provided evidence it does and you have provided nothing to refute. Many viruses often result in debilitating outcomes, but that has no bearing on whether COVID does as well.

i think applying software engineering logic to diseases is fallacious. anyway, the reason you can say that is because there is basically no one left who doesn't have some sort of immunity against the virus. no immunologically naive people means better outcomes.

An interesting point from a family member who works in residential / commercial HVAC - there's enough of an improvement from installing high efficiency air filters that they can pay for themselves in increased student attendance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com