Correct me if I'm wrong (seriously), but isn't a very contagious, but low-severity, variant a good thing? Wider spread, fast immunity, lower deaths, etc. than Delta continuing its march?
Possibly but if it is able to evade the existing vaccination, even if it has a much lower lethality rate, its ability to infect everyone could possibly come out to more deaths and health complications. Narrower slice of a much larger pie.
IIRC, virologist have mentioned that this is the usual progression for new mutations of viruses like COVID-19. High vitality and low mortality. The virus wants to stay alive.
While I generally agree I’d just say we should be careful about anthropomorphizing COVID-19 or any other virus. They don’t have desires. It may be evolutionarily advantageous though to “stay alive” by continuing to propagate and spread.
A desire implies a conscious and at least semi-reasonable actor.
People with desires behave rationally (mostly). If person X doesn't want to be homeless, they probably won't burn their house down. We can depend on that.
COVID is not a rational actor. It might burn its own house down and do a tapdance on the ashes.
Even though being less lethal is evolutionarily advantageous, COVID could absolutely become more lethal in the short term.
Although I agree with your point. And even I personally perceive virus as something more like machine. But your analogy opened another interpretation for me.
Person probably won't burn their house down. But some may argue that people in fact do not have problem to burn whole planet down. Like virus with the whole organism. It may be just matter of focus.
I don't think of people like I do with virus. Just that analogy opened this train of thought for me. Several different interpretations is natural feature of analogies.
> Aren’t our desires just a reflection of evolutionarily advantageous behavior?
I think that’s a great question but it’s not quite there in this context. Think of a virus as being more like a rock. We don’t attribute wants or desires to rocks (though maybe there is some fun and interesting philosophy to uncover here).
The reason to be careful is that you’ll never be able to think like a virus (or a rock) and so when you think that the virus might do X or Y you’re inserting a human bias to the virus that may cause error in judgement. Of course we’re just rambling on the internet but I guess it’s a good rule of thumb or at least something to think about.
The thought had occurred to me that a low-severity virus might, for that very reason, be more contagious. In other words, the fact that it's very contagious might be primarily because it doesn't present severe symptoms, thus the person (and those around them) don't realize it's covid-19. Just a speculation.
"A widely-shared quote from a South African doctor, saying Omicron causes only mild symptoms, is being taken out of context. She was referring to a small group of young, healthy people and warned of severe disease in other groups"
"older people - with co-morbidities such as diabetes" which that exact same population that is at risk with the existing variants... It's the at-risk group which is actually small.
Why do those so called journalists always take out of context quotes like this? It's downright dangerous with an ongoing pandemic. We don't really know the true impact this variant has and it will be a couple of weeks before we can find out more about exactly what this variant is capable of. The biggest issue is whether this variant can escape the current range of vaccines we have or not. A lot depends on this as it will be up to 3 months before vaccines are reformulated and even longer to get it into the arms of those that needs this.
Hopefully this variant has more than enough mutations for a reformulated vaccine to eliminate all possible variants that might evolve in the future.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 43.5 ms ] threadPeople with desires behave rationally (mostly). If person X doesn't want to be homeless, they probably won't burn their house down. We can depend on that.
COVID is not a rational actor. It might burn its own house down and do a tapdance on the ashes.
Even though being less lethal is evolutionarily advantageous, COVID could absolutely become more lethal in the short term.
Person probably won't burn their house down. But some may argue that people in fact do not have problem to burn whole planet down. Like virus with the whole organism. It may be just matter of focus.
I don't think of people like I do with virus. Just that analogy opened this train of thought for me. Several different interpretations is natural feature of analogies.
I think that’s a great question but it’s not quite there in this context. Think of a virus as being more like a rock. We don’t attribute wants or desires to rocks (though maybe there is some fun and interesting philosophy to uncover here).
The reason to be careful is that you’ll never be able to think like a virus (or a rock) and so when you think that the virus might do X or Y you’re inserting a human bias to the virus that may cause error in judgement. Of course we’re just rambling on the internet but I guess it’s a good rule of thumb or at least something to think about.
from https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1464734073897766919
Hopefully this variant has more than enough mutations for a reformulated vaccine to eliminate all possible variants that might evolve in the future.