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OT: Coronavirus Resources - and other things to not worry about

Preston said:
But now we're making assumptions on the peak virulence of covid. Why does Delta have to be the "truly deadly one?"
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You're right it doesn't have to be - but it has been the most deadly one we've seen in at least 100 years so again, odds are that new variants aren't as bad.
 
Unless you mean coronavirus... Well SARS-CoV-1 was far more deadly than Delta. And so was MERS!

Covid is clearly a different beast and it would be just as shocking for it to turn into those diseases as it would be if it turned into a common cold. Incredibly unlikely. But yeah, Delta isn't even close to the most deadly we've seen.
 
Not the worst. Covid-19 is luckily incredibly mild. relatively speaking, compared to some other coronavirus scares we've had in the past 20 years. In the case of the others, the increase in virulence was met with faster symptom onset, which meant public health measures/quarantining worked way better and we were able to stifle the spread of the disease. Lucky!
 
Moreover - remember that only variants of significance are ever given an actual name. In reality, reality virus is constantly mutating.
 
Yup. Some evidence that some others that never really took off were more virulent than Delta, but lacked the transmissibility to compete. There are billions of possibilities. Predicting which direction it takes is not gonna go well.
 
Preston said:
Not the worst. Covid-19 is luckily incredibly mild. relatively speaking, compared to some other coronavirus scares we've had in the past 20 years. In the case of the others, the increase in virulence was met with faster symptom onset, which meant public health measures/quarantining worked way better and we were able to stifle the spread of the disease. Lucky!
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Yes yes sure. So its the most ideal combination of transmissability and deadliness we've seen in at least a century. Again, the majority of variants are less ideal.
 
Classic mistake of thinking that evolution has a plan. I wish that were the case! Things would be so much easier and we could all have scorching hot takes on predictions.
 
It's nothing to do with evolution.

It's to do with understanding how many trillions of viruses and trillions variants of each of those viruses actually exist.
 
You just outlined it beautifully and you haven't figured it out yet. I am trying to educate you! There are trillions of variants out there yet we're predicting the peak virulence because one of 4 variants that became dominant was more severe than the other 3. We're using a sample of 4 to predict something with trillions of variations/combination possibilities. This is insane.
 
You don't seem to realize that we already have clear evidence from Covid itself that most of the variants are less severe - even amongst only the small group of variants that were determined to be of significance - let alone the larger group of all variants.

This doesn't even begin to deal with the fact that Covid itself is only a particular variant of a family of viruses.

Your big-picture view is just fundamentally incorrect.
 
Preston said:
But now we're making assumptions on the peak virulence of covid. Why does Delta have to be the "truly deadly one?" The flu varies significantly year to year with severity. Zika, hep B, myxoma, etc. These all took years to evolve to increased virulence and many folks likely "called the top" well before virulence peaked.

I mean I would hope Delta is peak virulence but what evidence is there? If omicron is only 20-30% less virulent because it doesn't thrive in your lungs last past variants, there is clearly a lot of room for that lung bit to change in the evolutionary chain. I hope it doesn't and I hope that increased transmission depends on it being a primarily upper respiratory virus. But that's just a theory based on hope; predicting evolution is hard.
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The only mechanism that can possibly predict future evolution and dominant variant is if this bit holds true. If increased transmissibility DEPENDS on this trade-off then that's a different story.

A key thread:

 
zeke said:
You don't seem to realize that we already have clear evidence from Covid itself that most of the variants are less severe - even amongst only the small group of variants that were determined to be of significance - let alone the larger group of all variants.

Your big-picture view is just fundamentally incorrect.
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Less transmissible. We do NOT have any evidence on severity. That is a lie.
 
Preston said:
Less transmissible. We do NOT have any evidence on severity. That is a lie.
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We are always talking about the combination of transmissibility and deadliness when we talk about the "severity" of a virus.

And it requires an exceptionally rare combination of the two to create a worldwide pandemic.
 
zeke said:
We are always talking about the combination of transmissibility and deadliness when we talk about the "severity" of a virus.

And it requires an exceptionally rare combination of the two to create a worldwide pandemic.
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Okay so once again, we're talking about a sample of 4. Since one of the 4 dominant variants were more severe than the other that must mean it's at or close to peak severity? Despite the trillions of mutations that happen on a daily basis?

Listen. I know you think highly of yourself but LISTEN. I am trying to educate you!
 
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