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

[zeke]

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.

Again your big picture view is way off. This is only one of many biological trade-offs within our bodies that can determine how transmissible/deadly a virus is to us.

We know that it is very rare for a particular virus and variant to hit that sweet spot, and even that sweet spot is usually temporary.

A key thread:

If Omicron is not derived from Delta then there is actually zero reason to think it would be as deadly as Delta.

 

[Preston]

Thinking that evolution has a plan is a bizarre take. Of course it's all rare. That's why only 4 variants in 2 years have become dominant. But predicting which direction the next one takes is not something I've seen any actual expert (i.e. not zeke) attempt. The only mechanism, as Aris states, is if there is a mechanism where you have a trade-off between higher transmissibility and decreased virulence. That's it. And early evidence suggests that MAY not be the case but that's not confirmed either. It could be.

And if omicron is more severe than the wildtype, and 20-30% less severe than Delta, then have fun predicting the next dominant variant if it's a descendent of omicron. Alpha was a descendant of WT and it was almost 2x more severe. Spoiler: you can predict it and you may be right but you're better off going to a casino.

 

[MindzEye]

10,400 new cases on 27% positivity...

So the real number is closer to being multiples of 10,400.

Stay safe (except presto...you can get fucked)

 

[zeke]

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!

I know you're trying to educate me, which is why you're blind to being educated yourself.

There have been countless variants so far - and only 4 have been significant enough even to name. Hell, even those 4 "variants" are actually large groupings of a much bigger number of actual mutations.

Your mistake is thinking that Covid is something completely new and foreign and singular entity that invaded the earth, instead of just the most perfect combination of viral characteristics we've seen in a long time, that popped up amongst trillions of other similar viruses that are in a constant state of mutation.

We know from the history of humanity how hard it is for Viruses to be this severe. It took a very unique combination of characteristics for it to happen. Odds are, the more it mutates, the less likely this unique combination of charactistics holds.

 

[Preston]

I know you're trying to educate me, which is why you're blind to being educated yourself.

There have been countless variants so far - and only 4 have been significant enough even to name. Hell, even those 4 "variants" are actually large groupings of a much bigger number of actual mutations.

Your mistake is thinking that Covid is something completely new and foreign and singular entity that invaded the earth, instead of just the most perfect combination of viral characteristics we've seen in a long time, that popped up amongst trillions of other similar viruses that are in a constant state of mutation.

So each mutation and combination of mutations have features that make it more transmissible, more virulent, more immune evasive, etc. Most do not become transmissible enough to become dominant. Some do. You're calling this rare. I am agreeing but you're obviously missing the point because it has nothing to do with it being rare. If omicron picks up a single mutation from Delta, that could theoretically increase lung infectivity 10-fold. But it could come at the cost of transmissibility and fizzle away.. Or maybe it doesn't and transmissibility increases! Have to remember we are starting at a very low-baseline for lung infectivity so who knows!

Or maybe omicron picks up a mutation or three that DECREASES lung infectivity and that in turn increases transmissibility. So the next dominant variant is even milder!

See what I'm doing here? I'm picking random scenarios because quite literally everything is on the table and predicting what happens next with any confidence is certifiably insane. You're doing it out of HOPE, which I get. You do the same thing with the Leafs and it clouds your judgment. In this case you just really want certainty and you want that certainty to be a good thing. I get that. But you need to embrace the uncertainty and acknowledge the complete randomness of how these things mutate.

Evolution is a bit more complex than "pandemic are rare so therefore it's unlikely to get more severe than 1 of 4 dominant variants that we've already had as dominant." You're better than this.

 

[UWHabs]

COVID as a whole does fall inside a bad range, where it's highly transmissible, doesn't completely incapacitate the host, but also does cause damage. There's a reason why Ebola outbreaks die off after a short time - by the time it's transmissible around, the host is usually either dead or can't move.

COVID is mild enough, and has a long incubation period, that there's tons of people out there who are happily spreading it around without even realizing it.

Now, whether the variants are making the situation better or worse, that's still hard to see, because obviously we have learned a lot. I mean, if you could take what we know now back 2 years, I think things would be different. I mean, things started causing havoc in NA in March, and masking didn't really become commonplace until like June. So it could be that covid-classic or the alpha variants would do much different things vs where we are at now.

 

[zeke]

So each mutation and combination of mutations have features that make it more transmissible, more virulent, more immune evasive, etc. Most do not become transmissible enough to become dominant. Some do. You're calling this rare. I am agreeing but you're obviously missing the point because it has nothing to do with it being rare. If omicron picks up a single mutation from Delta, that could theoretically increase lung infectivity 10-fold. But it could come at the cost of transmissibility and fizzle away.. Or maybe it doesn't and transmissibility increases! Have to remember we are starting at a very low-baseline for lung infectivity so who knows!

Or maybe omicron picks up a mutation or three that DECREASES lung infectivity and that in turn increases transmissibility. So the next dominant variant is even milder!

See what I'm doing here? I'm picking random scenarios because quite literally everything is on the table and predicting what happens next with any confidence is certifiably insane. You're doing it out of HOPE, which I get. You do the same thing with the Leafs and it clouds your judgment. In this case you just really want certainty and you want that certainty to be a good thing. I get that. But you need to embrace the uncertainty and acknowledge the complete randomness of how these things mutate.

Evolution is a bit more complex than "pandemic are rare so therefore it's unlikely to get more severe than 1 of 4 dominant variants that we've already had as dominant." You're better than this.

1. I'm not just calling it rare. It is rare. And it has everything to do with being rare. You are starting from a postion where Covid is a unique singular brand new organism, and anything which it mutates into can just as easily be better or worse. The truth is Covid itself, and particular strains of it, is already an evolutionary outlier mutation, and further mutation will more likely become less of an outlier, not more of one.

2. Delta is the most deadly of the variants so far. As per your tweet a couple of posts ago, Omicron is not derived from Delta, therefore there is zero reason to think it will be as deadly as the most deadly of the variants.

 

[Preston]

COVID as a whole does fall inside a bad range, where it's highly transmissible, doesn't completely incapacitate the host, but also does cause damage. There's a reason why Ebola outbreaks die off after a short time - by the time it's transmissible around, the host is usually either dead or can't move.

COVID is mild enough, and has a long incubation period, that there's tons of people out there who are happily spreading it around without even realizing it.

Now, whether the variants are making the situation better or worse, that's still hard to see, because obviously we have learned a lot. I mean, if you could take what we know now back 2 years, I think things would be different. I mean, things started causing havoc in NA in March, and masking didn't really become commonplace until like June. So it could be that covid-classic or the alpha variants would do much different things vs where we are at now.

At the very least it's expediting the process and getting us to endemicity quicker. Endemicity won't necessarily look pretty, but once we have nearly 100% of the population either vaxxed or infected we can pretty confidently say we're there. We mostly all have a lot more armor than we had a year ago, that's for sure.

 

[zeke]

 

[Preston]

1. I'm not just calling it rare. It is rare. And it has everything to do with being rare. You are starting from a postion where Covid is a unique singular brand new organism, and anything which it mutates into can just as easily be better or worse. The truth is Covid itself, and particular strains of it, is already an evolutionary outlier mutation, and further mutation will more likely become less of an outlier, not more of one.

2. Delta is the most deadly of the variants so far. As per your tweet a couple of posts ago, Omicron is not derived from Delta, therefore there is zero reason to think it will be as deadly as the most deadly of the variants.

Last attempt:

1. I know it's rare. I know covid happening was rare. But it's here and it's mutating every day. Omicron is currently picking up mutations that make it more deadly. 99.9% of them will fizzle. It's picking up mutations that make it more mild. 99.9% of them will fizzle.

2. Delta is the most intrinsically deadly variant of the 4 that became dominant. A sample of 4 has 0 predictability on what the next dominant variant's intrinsic virulence will be when there are trillions out there. The true comparison for omicron is the WT version. If all future dominant variants are descendants of omicron and the trade-off on transmissibility comes at the cost of virulence (possible!) then yes, we can theorize that the next VOC will not be significantly more severe. Now if the estimates hold up that Omicron is just 20-30% less intrinsically severe than Delta then we can presume that this isn't the trade-off and all future VOCs do not have a plan on which direction they take. There needs to be a biological scientific reason why we would expect it to take one direction over the other.. Otherwise it's pure randomness. It's evolution.

 

[Preston]

And for the record, a more severe variant will likely appear to be more mild in the future, much like the UKs experience with Delta. We will have tremendous population immunity very shortly.

 

[zeke]

Last attempt:

1. I know it's rare. I know covid happening was rare. But it's here and it's mutating every day. Omicron is currently picking up mutations that make it more deadly. 99.9% of them will fizzle. It's picking up mutations that make it more mild. 99.9% of them will fizzle.

2. Delta is the most intrinsically deadly variant of the 4 that became dominant. A sample of 4 has 0 predictability on what the next dominant variant's intrinsic virulence will be when there are trillions out there. The true comparison for omicron is the WT version. If all future dominant variants are descendants of omicron and the trade-off on transmissibility comes at the cost of virulence (possible!) then yes, we can theorize that the next VOC will not be significantly more severe. Now if the estimates hold up that Omicron is just 20-30% less intrinsically severe than Delta then we can presume that this isn't the trade-off and all future VOCs do not have a plan on which direction they take. There needs to be a biological scientific reason why we would expect it to take one direction over the other.. Otherwise it's pure randomness. It's evolution.

1. Covid is not a starting point out of nowhere. It is already itself a very rare outlier mutation. It is already on the extreme of an evolutionary "direction", not a midpoint. And yes we know this because there are trillions of viruses and plenty of coronaviruses to compare to.

2. Each "variant" is actually just a grouping of a much larger number of sub-mutations. And then there are many many more mutations that aren't included under any of the "variant" headings. The sample is very very large at this point.

 

[Wayward DP]

10,400 new cases on 27% positivity...

So the real number is closer to being multiples of 10,400.

Stay safe (except presto...you can get fucked)

or, if you are Ms. Wayward's friends from law school, prepare to hop on a plane for inter-provincial leisure travel

 

[leafman101]

Well from an evolutionary perspective its better for viruses not to kill the hosts, and the ones that make people less sick will thrive in the long run. A virus that is very transmissible and causes the least harm to humans will survive the longest.

It doesn't necessarily mean that virulence and transmissibility are intrinsically related, and its not predictive of the next x number of mutations, but a variant with high transmissibility and low virulence should win out ultimately.

 

[Wayward DP]

1. I'm not just calling it rare. It is rare. And it has everything to do with being rare. You are starting from a postion where Covid is a unique singular brand new organism, and anything which it mutates into can just as easily be better or worse. The truth is Covid itself, and particular strains of it, is already an evolutionary outlier mutation, and further mutation will more likely become less of an outlier, not more of one.

2. Delta is the most deadly of the variants so far. As per your tweet a couple of posts ago, Omicron is not derived from Delta, therefore there is zero reason to think it will be as deadly as the most deadly of the variants.

I'm not sure your analysis considers how the fact that covid already exists in its current form(s) and with its current prevalence. Surely that has to be a factor that impacts where things go from here. I'm not pretending to know how much it does, but am confident it is at least relevant!

 

[Preston]

1. Covid is not a starting point out of nowhere. It is already itself a very rare outlier mutation. It is already on the extreme of an evolutionary "direction", not a midpoint. And yes we know this because there are trillions of viruses and plenty of coronaviruses to compare to.

2. Each "variant" is actually just a grouping of a much larger number of sub-mutations. And then there are many many more mutations that aren't included under any of the "variant" headings. The sample is very very large at this point.

1. This doesn't relate to the concept of evolution being completely random and quite literally impossible predict. If evolutionary biologists can't predict what the next VOC will look like, I don't think we can either.

2. Yes. And many variants out there are intrinsically deadlier than Delta. Huge sample and we're choosing to look at the 4 that became dominant to base our prediction on. The virus will do what the virus does. There is uncertainty. Embrace it. In any event our population immunity will likely blunt the worst outcomes. We are no longer immunonaive and that's way more powerful than shifting virulence.

 

[hockeylover]

10,400 new cases on 27% positivity...

So the real number is closer to being multiples of 10,400.

Stay safe (except presto...you can get fucked)

I'm feeling like if this is a sharp peak and steep drop off like we've seen signs of in other countries, I really don't think it's a big deal to limit my activities this winter. I know people say it's mild with vaccines but I'd just rather not risk this shit again, I still don't think I'm really the same since the first time.

Just over here counting down til beers-on-a-patio season.

 

[Preston]

Well from an evolutionary perspective its better for viruses not to kill the hosts, and the ones that make people less sick will thrive in the long run. A virus that is very transmissible and causes the least harm to humans will survive the longest.

It doesn't necessarily mean that virulence and transmissibility are intrinsically related, and its not predictive of the next x number of mutations, but a variant with high transmissibility and low virulence should win out ultimately.

That's a bit of a myth unfortunately. The incubation period for covid makes this concept moot. A virus can be incredibly deadly and thrive if it relies on presymptomatic spread.

Ebola is an example where your concept works tho because of fast symptom onset.

 

[zeke]

1. This doesn't relate to the concept of evolution being completely random and quite literally impossible predict. If evolutionary biologists can't predict what the next VOC will look like, I don't think we can either.

Evolution's randomness actually supports my argument. Evolution doesn't like outliers. Outliers are rare, and rarely last. Covid is an outlier.

 

[Preston]

Evolution's randomness actually supports my argument. Evolution doesn't like outliers. Outliers are rare, and rarely last. Covid is an outlier.

So are we saying that covid won't exist soon because it's rare? And it will fizzle away? This is a new one.