What if I said to you that COVID is a variant of common cold, and when it has successfully gone through the population once, it is no longer any more threat to those who experienced it than any other cold?
Yeah, it's missing context.
I'd say you have an idiotic opinion that has been put forward before and repeatedly shot down.
I'd say you're amazingly cavalier when it comes to risking the lives of other people.
Seriously, what do either of you think happened when every other cold virus came into existence. Look at the how prevalent common colds are even when cause by variations of virus that have been around for centuries for people to adapt and develop immunity to them. There are already coronaviruses perpetually present in the human population, causing mild symptoms in people who have probably already encountered them multiple times in their lives. If ever you think a virus is just a common cold, understand that it's just a common cold now, because everyone is constantly exposed to it and our immune systems can handle it from experience. The threat of covid was that it was a virus that older populations with weaker immune systems hadn't interacted with and couldn't fight off that initial exposure. Once you are beyond initial exposure (vaccines count for that) it is now the common cold to you. You may get mild symptoms, it's only a serious threat if you are already dying or otherwise immunocompromised, which is true of all the viruses that make up the common cold. This is the end state, it is not risky nor uncertain, this is how things are, accept it.
If this is based on just your layman opinion, then I would say, shut the fuck up and stop spreading potentially life-ending bullshit shamelessly.
I could try and put together a portfolio of sources on existing coronaviruses and experts predicting the eventual endemic nature of covid19, or I could not bother and wait a year or two and we can see for ourselves. Nobody is basing public policy on my ramblings here, nobody is dying on my word either way, time will prove me right.
Potentially... they gave people a common cold. There's no compelling reason to assume a new zoonotic disease must be highly lethal.
I disagree. Any virus released into a immunologically naive population is always going to be much more dangerous than it is in a well adapted population, especially among the elderly. In elderly people, any infection you're not prepared for should be seen as highly lethal. Which is what covid19 has been.
Your agreement is not required
SARS Cov 2 has also been quite a bit more deadly that other coronaviruses in the non-elderly population too.
www.npr.org
better make sure it infects as many people as possible so it can mutate!
So, mortality is the opposite or the same as fatality?
Firstly, you're confusing two concepts here. Immunity is something an individual gains on exposure to a disease (that doesn't kill them). Adaptation is what a population does via evolutionary processes over a much longer timescale.
Yeah, I mixed that up. They were blase about 90% of the people getting it surviving
More deadly than other coronaviruses where when they initially appeared?
It is entirely unknown how long coronaviruses have been circulating the human population. For all we know, there were historical plagues caused by the things. The first coronavirus to be isolated was in chickens, and was studied because the new strain was killing entire chicken populations. Human coronaviruses were found in common cold studies, so they've very likely been around longer than germ theory, as chances are they didn't suddenly appear in humans causing mild symptoms at exactly the moment in time when scientists were discovering and categorizing viruses.
