California no longer under lockdown - people freak out

[Silvanus]

The laws of nature are that every living thing wants to propagate itself. You can argue if viruses are techinically 'alive' since it needs a host to reproduce but it contains rna so it counts. A virus that kills it's host quickly isn't very advantageuous so natural selection will always favor less deadly variants of the same virus. It's how they speculate the common cold most likely also originated as a similar coronavirus as covid. Eventually covid will become more infectious but relatively harmless. Ofcourse the question is how long that takes. Probably like half a century. Like with everything nature takes it's time lmao.

That's the simplified theory, sure. But in practice natural selection does not guarantee the removal of (ostensibly) disadvantageous characteristics.

Imagine, for instance, a mutation that increases the internal replication of a virus by many orders of magnitude. The host dies more quickly. But the host also reaches the infectious stage more quickly, and is more strongly infectious whilst at that stage. The lower lifespan of the host has been offset; natural selection can favour that mutation.

On a side-note, the reason that there's debate over whether viruses are living things or not has nothing to do with the fact they require a host organism. After all, plenty of parasites require host organisms-- liver flukes, parasitic fungi, etc-- and are categorically life forms. Viruses, on the other hand, have no metabolism, and have no cells (usually considered an essential component for a living organism). They act solely as errant agents within other living things.

They are subject to natural selection, of course. But natural selection is often misunderstood as some kind of "will" or "goal" existing within the organism to survive. That's not what it is. Lower life-forms such as bacteria or quasi-life-forms like viruses do not have "wills" and "wants", and may well act in ways that are not advantageous to themselves from a macrocosmic perspective, but have just simply not been selected out for various reasons.

 

[stroopwafel]

That's the simplified theory, sure. But in practice natural selection does not guarantee the removal of (ostensibly) disadvantageous characteristics.

Imagine, for instance, a mutation that increases the internal replication of a virus by many orders of magnitude. The host dies more quickly. But the host also reaches the infectious stage more quickly, and is more strongly infectious whilst at that stage. The lower lifespan of the host has been offset; natural selection can favour that mutation.

On a side-note, the reason that there's debate over whether viruses are living things or not has nothing to do with the fact they require a host organism. After all, plenty of parasites require host organisms-- liver flukes, parasitic fungi, etc-- and are categorically life forms. Viruses, on the other hand, have no metabolism, and have no cells (usually considered an essential component for a living organism). They act solely as errant agents within other living things.

They are subject to natural selection, of course. But natural selection is often misunderstood as some kind of "will" or "goal" existing within the organism to survive. That's not what it is. Lower life-forms such as bacteria or quasi-life-forms like viruses do not have "wills" and "wants", and may well act in ways that are not advantageous to themselves from a macrocosmic perspective, but have just simply not been selected out for various reasons.

True, but it's not like viruses, bacteria, fungi are the antithesis to life. They have also been essential to human evolution so much that scientists question which came first; viruses or organisms. Viruses are evolutionary pressures in itself. Both in the development of our immunity and as a means to control the size of the population.But ofcourse this contradicts our more..ehmm enlightened philosophies.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[stroopwafel]

Bacteria and fungi are very much alive though, with clear cellular activity. A virus is a protein shell housing some dna or rna that will be injected into a host once the virus finds somewhere to attach itself. Exactly what a virus is is very much up for debate, because it contains the most basic thing needed for life (a genetic sequence) but fulfills no other criteria for actual life, including some form of basic metabolism.

Thanks for explaining but I knew bacteria and fungi are multicellular compared to just a strand of dna or rna. I meant non-microscopic life but maybe I should have elaborated that.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

ABOUT TEN TIMES AS DEADLY SO FAR, SOUNDS LIKE A FANTASTIC REASON FOR *TEMPORARY* MEASURES THEN.

FUCKING PICK ONE

And why the insistence of using a tortured comparison to car crashes when the flu is RIGHT THERE and kills as many people a year?

I've said several times I'm not against restrictions that make sense. The whole back and forth is over how people can be so scared of covid when they're not scared of other more dangerous things.

The flu is less deadly than covid so saying how can you be scared of something more deadly than something else is a pretty dumb question. But asking how you can be scared of something less deadly than something you do everyday is a much much more logical question. It won't make any sense to say you're stupid for being scared of covid when you're not scared of shark attacks because shark attacks happen way less, that logic makes no sense whereas going the other way makes sense.

Maybe you shouldn't "just google" it to come to the number; think about how they reached that number. Because if you want to make a like-for-like comparison, then you're going to have to apply the same methodology.

78.5 years old is the average life expectancy in the US. So, if you have the annual chance of dying in a car crash (which is 0.012), then you'll need to extrapolate that over somebody's entire life. You'll need to multiply it by the number of years they're alive to arrive at a figure for the risk of dying in a car crash over their entire life. Do you follow?

0.94 is the chance of dying to Covid in 78 and a half years. Roughly. That's how they reach the "1 in 103" figure.



I already explained the reasoning in detail.

0.13 per 100 people in the US have died from Covid. But that figure covers just one year and one month, which is the period the virus has been at large in the US. So you could say that's the annual chance, not the lifetime risk. Still following? You have to increase it for every year the virus is around. If it's around for another 1 year, then 0.26. If it's around for 78.5 years (and the mortality rate were to remain consistent), then 10.5.



Dude, the article you provided earlier in this thread said it's a risk.

And something doesn't have to be a "super spreader event" to be dangerous. The vast majority of transmission occurs in many smaller spots, not huge one-off events.

I realize how they came to the number, I have no reason to do the maths when someone else already did and I don't think you're arguing that those maths were incorrect anyway.

Covid is gonna be stopped completely really soon, it doesn't have 78.5 years. And, once you get infected once, you're done with it, it has a ceiling to how much it can kill. So whether you get covid now or later, it's still a 0.2% chance of death (divide that by 78.5 if you think it's going to be around that long to get your yearly chance of death, don't multiply). Whereas you can theoretically get in an accident every time you drive, the odds are probably impossibly low of that happening but it could happen.

Which article, the last one I posted was the CNN article and it didn't mention anything about going to stores. Everything is a risk, it's whether it's significant risk to care about. There's still a risk after getting vaccinated but it's so small no one would alter their life because of it. Nothing is 100%. Show me where someone said going to stores is a rather decent/high/significant risk of getting covid. If it was, then why'd the numbers drop after the 1st lockdown when people were still buying groceries?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

OK, it's becoming quite clear that you really don't know very much about viruses.

Viruses mutate at different rates, first of all. Take as an example a family of viruses that mutate at a relatively high rate: influenza. Every year, numerous new strains of influenza evolve and spread, and the medical community attempts to predict which strains will be the greatest threat in the year ahead. So the vaccination changes, often yearly, to address different strains and mutations.

You don't need a vaccination for every strain. Each vaccination will work on 4 or so strains. But they don't work on them all, and usually every year a new vaccine variant is developed to counter different strains which the researchers have identified as greater threats in the following year.



This is bollocks. Countless new strains of viruses have been more dangerous than the ones that came before.

Viruses replicate, endlessly, within an organism. That is their only "goal". They offset the lowered survivability of their current host by becoming more and more infectious to others; it doesn't matter if a host dies when they're spreading it to more than one other person, causing the replication rate to be above 1.

Flu is a very special virus that literally can't make copies of itself if it tried. There's a reason there's only the one flu. What other viruses are like the flu? Why do you think covid is going to be like the flu when it does have error-checking mechanism on its replication when the flu doesn't? When you have the flu, you have thousands (maybe millions) of different versions of it in your own body, covid is not the same. SARS-COV-1 provides immunity to SARS-COV-2. There's literally no basis in fact that every vaccine will work on 4 strains.

Which viruses over time have gotten more dangerous in the population? The mutation that allows for more survivability usually allows for more spread and becomes the dominant strain. That's how it usually works. It why every new strain of covid is theorized to spread easier vs it being more deadly.

I just want to make sure that you realize that viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms don't really have the ability to control their own mutations, right? The very simplified way of explaining how a virus mutates is that it simply picks up DNA/RNA from its surroundings or suffers spontaneous changes to its DNA/RNA and that's a mutation. There's no coherence, intent or ambition behind it, it just happens as a random thing. A virus can definitely mutate to become more deadly or less virulent and it is a fairly common occurrence, all that means is that that particular mutation will be more short lived then their opposites. Being (relatively more) short lived doesn't mean it can't wreak havoc on the people who have the misfortune of being infected with it though.

The mutations that become the dominant strains are the ones that have more survivability. I'm guessing if you dig deep into it, you'd see any organism evolves in a way that helps them survive whether it's a virus or humans (it's not like we have control over our changes either). As people moved up north, their skin became lighter to be able to absorb the sun better, it wasn't anything they had control over either.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Flu is a very special virus that literally can't make copies of itself if it tried. There's a reason there's only the one flu. What other viruses are like the flu? Why do you think covid is going to be like the flu when it does have error-checking mechanism on its replication when the flu doesn't? When you have the flu, you have thousands (maybe millions) of different versions of it in your own body, covid is not the same. SARS-COV-1 provides immunity to SARS-COV-2. There's literally no basis in fact that every vaccine will work on 4 strains.

There are literally dozens of kinds of flu, just like there are dozens of strains of various coronaviruses.
*This particular* coronavirus is more lethal than all of the current active strains of flu combined by factor of at least 10

I've said several times I'm not against restrictions that make sense. The whole back and forth is over how people can be so scared of covid when they're not scared of other more dangerous things.

The flu is less deadly than covid so saying how can you be scared of something more deadly than something else is a pretty dumb question. But asking how you can be scared of something less deadly than something you do everyday is a much much more logical question. It won't make any sense to say you're stupid for being scared of covid when you're not scared of shark attacks because shark attacks happen way less, that logic makes no sense whereas going the other way makes sense.

I am more likely to die of covid than in a car crash *last year* or *this year*. By a factor of at least 5. Same with stroke and heart disease and cancer.

But because morons had to play "my freedom is more important than other people's lives, especially the olds" for over a year, I didn't get to hug my grandmas at any of the three funerals I went to this last year because they're old and I work retail.

Go ahead and ask if my mental health was impacted more impacted by that or by not getting nachos at a restaurant. I *might* be fine if I get covid. My parents, aunts, uncles, and surviving grandmas are in the group that has a really good chance of not. Not that you care about the olds, I'm just saying.

 

[Silvanus]

I realize how they came to the number, I have no reason to do the maths when someone else already did and I don't think you're arguing that those maths were incorrect anyway.

Covid is gonna be stopped completely really soon, it doesn't have 78.5 years.

Really? Do you know how many infectious diseases the human species has managed to completely eradicate after concerted effort? Two.

It might be largely destroyed in a year or so. It might not be gone for decades. You know what's certain to make it take longer? Failing to take societal precautions.

On a side-note, it wouldn't need 78.5 years in order to match a lifetime's risk of dying from car crashes. It would only need approximately 7 or 8 years. And that, I'm afraid, is well within the sphere of possibility.

And, once you get infected once, you're done with it, it has a ceiling to how much it can kill. So whether you get covid now or later, it's still a 0.2% chance of death (divide that by 78.5 if you think it's going to be around that long to get your yearly chance of death, don't multiply). Whereas you can theoretically get in an accident every time you drive, the odds are probably impossibly low of that happening but it could happen.

We get an influenza vaccine every year, and every year the virus mutates and we require tweaked vaccines, because the old ones no longer offer the same protection against the newest strains.

To be blunt: you don't know that, and you're speculating with a lot of optimism. Hoping for the best and failing to prepare for the worst is precisely how we got here in the first place.

The mutations that become the dominant strains are the ones that have more survivability. I'm guessing if you dig deep into it, you'd see any organism evolves in a way that helps them survive whether it's a virus or humans (it's not like we have control over our changes either). As people moved up north, their skin became lighter to be able to absorb the sun better, it wasn't anything they had control over either.

This is a surface-level and shallow understanding of natural selection, I'm afraid. Traits do, demonstrably, take hold occasionally that have downsides-- usually if they have upsides that compensate.

With viruses, that's clear to see. A higher replication rate kills the host faster but guarantees a faster spread regardless. They still end up with more copies over the same time period, even with the host dying more quickly.

This doesn't really take an in-depth understanding of the theory: it's clearly observable that countless viruses massively lower the survivability of their hosts.

 

[Seanchaidh]

I just want to make sure that you realize that viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms don't really have the ability to control their own mutations, right? The very simplified way of explaining how a virus mutates is that it simply picks up DNA/RNA from its surroundings or suffers spontaneous changes to its DNA/RNA and that's a mutation. There's no coherence, intent or ambition behind it, it just happens as a random thing. A virus can definitely mutate to become more deadly or less virulent and it is a fairly common occurrence, all that means is that that particular mutation will be more short lived then their opposites. Being (relatively more) short lived doesn't mean it can't wreak havoc on the people who have the misfortune of being infected with it though.

Do you mean to tell me that epidemics and pandemics aren't actually the result of God playing PLAGUE Inc.?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

There are literally dozens of kinds of flu, just like there are dozens of strains of various coronaviruses.
*This particular* coronavirus is more lethal than all of the current active strains of flu combined by factor of at least 10
I am more likely to die of covid than in a car crash *last year* or *this year*. By a factor of at least 5. Same with stroke and heart disease and cancer.

But because morons had to play "my freedom is more important than other people's lives, especially the olds" for over a year, I didn't get to hug my grandmas at any of the three funerals I went to this last year because they're old and I work retail.

Go ahead and ask if my mental health was impacted more impacted by that or by not getting nachos at a restaurant. I *might* be fine if I get covid. My parents, aunts, uncles, and surviving grandmas are in the group that has a really good chance of not. Not that you care about the olds, I'm just saying.

Why do you people keep comparing the flu and coronavirus, they are so very different as the flu is an extremely unique kind of virus.

Who has said covid is more lethal than the flu by a factor of 10 AT LEAST?

From this, the flu killed 5% of patients from 2017-19 while covid killed 18% of patients. That isn't anywhere near 10x more deadly. CDC says 655,000 die of heart disease every year, that's more than covid.

You can hug people just fine especially outside. The transmissions come from staying in the same place indoors for extended periods of time breathing in all that air that keeps getting accumulated with the virus over time (assuming someone that's infected is there). Like if you walk into a packed restaurant to pick up an order, you're not going to catch it whereas staying there and eating for say an hour, that's rather dangerous.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Really? Do you know how many infectious diseases the human species has managed to completely eradicate after concerted effort? Two.

It might be largely destroyed in a year or so. It might not be gone for decades. You know what's certain to make it take longer? Failing to take societal precautions.

On a side-note, it wouldn't need 78.5 years in order to match a lifetime's risk of dying from car crashes. It would only need approximately 7 or 8 years. And that, I'm afraid, is well within the sphere of possibility.



We get an influenza vaccine every year, and every year the virus mutates and we require tweaked vaccines, because the old ones no longer offer the same protection against the newest strains.

To be blunt: you don't know that, and you're speculating with a lot of optimism. Hoping for the best and failing to prepare for the worst is precisely how we got here in the first place.



This is a surface-level and shallow understanding of natural selection, I'm afraid. Traits do, demonstrably, take hold occasionally that have downsides-- usually if they have upsides that compensate.

With viruses, that's clear to see. A higher replication rate kills the host faster but guarantees a faster spread regardless. They still end up with more copies over the same time period, even with the host dying more quickly.

This doesn't really take an in-depth understanding of the theory: it's clearly observable that countless viruses massively lower the survivability of their hosts.

According to the CDC, there's at least 14 of them that we've gotten rid of. When have I ever argued against precautions (as long as they make sense)? Again, the virus has a 0.2% fatality rate, that's the most it can kill. The reason 450,000 in the US have died is because it's infected ~half the population in less than a year, it's a NEW virus that nobody has ever got before. It's literally impossible for it to kill 450,000 every year. If it's with us for 20 years, you have a 0.2% chance of dying when you get infected whether it's now or in say 15 years. It's not a 0.2% literally every year. You need to DIVIDE, not MULTIPLY. You don't become immune to car crashes after the 1st one.

Again, why are you comparing covid to the flu? Why would you compare any virus to the flu? The flu is an extremely unique virus. It's like comparing every 6th round quarterback pick to Tom Brady and expecting them to be the next GOAT. I'm not hoping for the best, I'm expecting the virus to be like the vast majority of other viruses. Most viruses you get once and you're immune for quite a long time. Most viruses don't mutate at nearly the rate of the flu. All the information we do have is pointing very strongly in that direction. SARS-COV-1 is a very similar virus, so similar that in confers immunity to SARS-COV-2, and it also has long-lasting immunity of 17 years and counting. Why are you comparing covid to the flu and not SARS? Are you gonna expect to the next version of Windows to be linux-based like MacOS? Sure, it could happen but what's the chances of that?

A faster replicating virus creates more of itself faster but it probably wouldn't become the dominant strain in the wild because it won't end up infecting as many hosts as other strains. Thus, in the long run, it's creating less copies of itself than a strain that mutates to be more infectious.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Why do you people keep comparing the flu and coronavirus, they are so very different as the flu is an extremely unique kind of virus.

Who has said covid is more lethal than the flu by a factor of 10 AT LEAST?

From this, the flu killed 5% of patients from 2017-19 while covid killed 18% of patients. That isn't anywhere near 10x more deadly. CDC says 655,000 die of heart disease every year, that's more than covid.

You can hug people just fine especially outside. The transmissions come from staying in the same place indoors for extended periods of time breathing in all that air that keeps getting accumulated with the virus over time (assuming someone that's infected is there). Like if you walk into a packed restaurant to pick up an order, you're not going to catch it whereas staying there and eating for say an hour, that's rather dangerous.

I mean, flu (and related pneumonia) killed between 24,000 and 62,000 people in the '19-'20 season and Covid's killed at least 450,000 thus far, and we know that number's undercounted, so...basic math?

There's 4 major kinds of flu and over 100 different varieties that can and have caused epidemics, so that's a *much* better comparison than fucking car crashes. As a bonus, once you get a flu, it *also* turns into a long lasting immunity to the same style of flu!*

And *heart disease*? If you cut out "high risk groups" for heart disease like you do for covid, covid is *much* deadlier year by year. If you want a comparison to matter, you have to compare like to like.

Churches are enclosed spaces. Mass takes time. We got lucky as is.

 

[Silvanus]

According to the CDC, there's at least 14 of them that we've gotten rid of.

That's not what that article says. We have clearly not eradicated influenza, tetanus, or hepatitis A or B.

When have I ever argued against precautions (as long as they make sense)? Again, the virus has a 0.2% fatality rate, that's the most it can kill. The reason 450,000 in the US have died is because it's infected ~half the population in less than a year, it's a NEW virus that nobody has ever got before. It's literally impossible for it to kill 450,000 every year. If it's with us for 20 years, you have a 0.2% chance of dying when you get infected whether it's now or in say 15 years. It's not a 0.2% literally every year. You need to DIVIDE, not MULTIPLY. You don't become immune to car crashes after the 1st one.

Firstly, you keep repeating that we become "immune" after one infection. That's not true. We develop antibodies, of course; that doesn't mean you cannot get it again.

Secondly, where are you actually getting this "0.2%" you keep quoting? 450,000 people in the USA have died, which comes to about 1.7% of all known cases. Of course, there'll be unknown cases who survive, so the mortality rate is very likely to be lower than 1.7%. But where on earth are you getting 0.2% from?

Again, why are you comparing covid to the flu? Why would you compare any virus to the flu? The flu is an extremely unique virus. It's like comparing every 6th round quarterback pick to Tom Brady and expecting them to be the next GOAT. I'm not hoping for the best, I'm expecting the virus to be like the vast majority of other viruses. Most viruses you get once and you're immune for quite a long time. Most viruses don't mutate at nearly the rate of the flu. All the information we do have is pointing very strongly in that direction. SARS-COV-1 is a very similar virus, so similar that in confers immunity to SARS-COV-2, and it also has long-lasting immunity of 17 years and counting. Why are you comparing covid to the flu and not SARS? Are you gonna expect to the next version of Windows to be linux-based like MacOS? Sure, it could happen but what's the chances of that?

I'm not comparing the virus to the flu. But the flu demonstrates that a vaccine doesn't necessarily just end the threat.

You don't know whether the vaccine will work against all mutated strains. You don't know that it'll convey decades of protection. You don't know any of this, because it's all novel; you're speculating.

A faster replicating virus creates more of itself faster but it probably wouldn't become the dominant strain in the wild because it won't end up infecting as many hosts as other strains. Thus, in the long run, it's creating less copies of itself than a strain that mutates to be more infectious.

Why do you think that so many exceptionally dominant viruses in the wild, then, do have exceptionally fast replication? It's plainly observable that viruses kill their hosts, sometimes very quickly, and that the viruses continue to propagate just fine.

 

[Avnger]

Why do you think that so many exceptionally dominant viruses in the wild, then, do have exceptionally fast replication? It's plainly observable that viruses kill their hosts, sometimes very quickly, and that the viruses continue to propagate just fine.

I'll give a quick shoutout here to Ebola. It's death rate has reached as high as 90% in some outbreaks, and it can kill in as little as 6 days after symptom onset. The first outbreak was recorded in 1976 and the latest one was this past November.

Ebola - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I mean, flu (and related pneumonia) killed between 24,000 and 62,000 people in the '19-'20 season and Covid's killed at least 450,000 thus far, and we know that number's undercounted, so...basic math?

There's 4 major kinds of flu and over 100 different varieties that can and have caused epidemics, so that's a *much* better comparison than fucking car crashes. As a bonus, once you get a flu, it *also* turns into a long lasting immunity to the same style of flu!*

And *heart disease*? If you cut out "high risk groups" for heart disease like you do for covid, covid is *much* deadlier year by year. If you want a comparison to matter, you have to compare like to like.

Churches are enclosed spaces. Mass takes time. We got lucky as is.

Covid's fatality rate is not 10 times higher than the flu, it's not even close. The flu doesn't kill that many every year because it's not a new virus and there's a vaccine for it. That doesn't make covid 10 times more deadly.

My statement has always been if Thing_A (covid) is less deadly than Thing_B (driving) and you do Thing_B daily, then why are you scared of Thing_A? In that statement Thing_B cannot be the flu because it's less deadly than covid. That's why I'm using driving and not flu because driving makes sense in that question and the flu doesn't make sense. Another Thing_B could be drinking pop daily, that's far more dangerous than covid and many people do that.

When having I been cutting out high risk groups? Covid's median infection fatality rate for EVERYONE is 0.2%.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

That's not what that article says. We have clearly not eradicated influenza, tetanus, or hepatitis A or B.



Firstly, you keep repeating that we become "immune" after one infection. That's not true. We develop antibodies, of course; that doesn't mean you cannot get it again.

Secondly, where are you actually getting this "0.2%" you keep quoting? 450,000 people in the USA have died, which comes to about 1.7% of all known cases. Of course, there'll be unknown cases who survive, so the mortality rate is very likely to be lower than 1.7%. But where on earth are you getting 0.2% from?



I'm not comparing the virus to the flu. But the flu demonstrates that a vaccine doesn't necessarily just end the threat.

You don't know whether the vaccine will work against all mutated strains. You don't know that it'll convey decades of protection. You don't know any of this, because it's all novel; you're speculating.



Why do you think that so many exceptionally dominant viruses in the wild, then, do have exceptionally fast replication? It's plainly observable that viruses kill their hosts, sometimes very quickly, and that the viruses continue to propagate just fine.

Ok, the flu isn't eradicated by how is tetanus not basically when there's only like 30 reported cases in the US every year? We've eradicated far more than just 2 things. We don't eradicate the diseases from the planet, we just make it so they don't affect us anymore basically.

Where does it say you're not immune to covid after one infection? SARS-COV-1 is immunity for at least 17 years. And you don't need antibodies to be currently present in your system to be immune to the disease. I very much doubt you have measles antibodies in your body currently and you ain't going to get measles if you catch it. Currently present antibodies is only one form of defense from something. I'm getting the 0.2% fatality rate from the WHO.

The flu is a very unique virus, why are you applying what you'd expect general viral behavior to a very unique kind of virus? Chances are rather high that it'll the vaccine will work against all the strains. Applying prior knowledge of viruses to new viruses will give a good baseline of what to expect. You can also look at the closest known virus to it like SARS-COV-1. Why would you think the flu would be a better comparison than SARS-COV-1?

I was just saying the a strain that replicates faster vs a strain that's more infectious, that the more infectious strain will become the dominant strain in the wild. And there's a reason why covid has spread faster than ebola. Something more mild will usually spread more than something more deadly.

 

[Agema]

I'm getting the 0.2% fatality rate from the WHO.

It's important to contextualise that claim: this is not any sort of official statement from the WHO, it's just a research paper published through the WHO's in-house journal and has no more particular standing than any other research paper of its sort. Also, the paper states a median of 0.27%, which rounds to 0.3%.

The lead researcher in question has a track record of much lower estimates than most of his peers. If we took a wider view of the literature from multiple research groups, we'd be looking at average estimates significantly higher, 0.6-0.7%.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

It's important to contextualise that claim: this is not any sort of official statement from the WHO, it's just a research paper published through the WHO's in-house journal and has no more particular standing than any other research paper of its sort. Also, the paper states a median of 0.27%, which rounds to 0.3%.

The lead researcher in question has a track record of much lower estimates than most of his peers. If we took a wider view of the literature from multiple research groups, we'd be looking at average estimates significantly higher, 0.6-0.7%.

It was corrected to 0.23%. It is a meta-analysis from several different studies across different countries, how wide a view do you want? And it was peer reviewed for any data miscalculations obviously. Feel free to link to a wider peer reviewed study than that.

Here's the IFR estimates for just England back in August putting the IFR there at 0.30% using data from Medical Research Council (MRC) Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge and 0.49% using data from Office for National Statistics. And, England's IFR being high than average would make sense considering Western wealthy nations have a higher population of elderly compared to the world at large.

 

[Silvanus]

Ok, the flu isn't eradicated by how is tetanus not basically when there's only like 30 reported cases in the US every year? We've eradicated far more than just 2 things. We don't eradicate the diseases from the planet, we just make it so they don't affect us anymore basically.

That's not "eradication", is it? Tetanus still exists. We still have to take precautions to avoid it. That's why the rate is low.

Two viral diseases have actually been eradicated. Smallpox and rinderpest.

Where does it say you're not immune to covid after one infection? SARS-COV-1 is immunity for at least 17 years. And you don't need antibodies to be currently present in your system to be immune to the disease. I very much doubt you have measles antibodies in your body currently and you ain't going to get measles if you catch it. Currently present antibodies is only one form of defense from something. I'm getting the 0.2% fatality rate from the WHO.

Well, people have caught it after already having it. We have observed cases. That's really kind of the end of that discussion. It factually happens.

[[Cont. below]]

 

[Silvanus]

[[Cont. from above; Escapist wouldn't let me post it as one post for some reason]]

That W.H.O. meta-study (which is not representing an official line on the matter from the WHO) is drawing it's conclusion from a median across 61 studies, firstly; some of which had dramatically high seroprevalence (53%?), which is going to draw the median down; and some of which aren't peer-reviewed. Plus, if you credit the data in that meta-analysis, then you also have to credit the individual studies contained within it-- including the fact that depending on location, it can be as high as 1.6%.

The flu is a very unique virus, why are you applying what you'd expect general viral behavior to a very unique kind of virus? Chances are rather high that it'll the vaccine will work against all the strains. Applying prior knowledge of viruses to new viruses will give a good baseline of what to expect. You can also look at the closest known virus to it like SARS-COV-1. Why would you think the flu would be a better comparison than SARS-COV-1?

I don't think that. I didn't make that comparison, as I've already said. But if you want to prepare, you don't base your assumptions on best-case-scenarios.

I was just saying the a strain that replicates faster vs a strain that's more infectious, that the more infectious strain will become the dominant strain in the wild. And there's a reason why covid has spread faster than ebola. Something more mild will usually spread more than something more deadly.

But it's not a trade-off or competition between greater replication and more infectiousness. One often leads to the other; they're not competing traits.

Ebola is still goddamn widespread. It (and a thousand other viruses) already demonstrate that especially deadly viruses can, and do, continue to propagate without losing their deadliness. It's an observable, demonstrable truth. Hell, the mortality rate of rinderpest was approaching 100% in some populations, and it still spread like wildfire.