While it sounds very bad, and it is in fact horrible, just like Ebola, it wouldn't be able to cause a world wide pandemic killing millions of people as people would be much more caucious around it.
Not entirely just like Ebola virus disease, considering it would still be an airborne virus and consequently be even more difficult to contain.
I don't find that the outcomes from the latest 3 years of people being supposedly cautious inspire much confidence in the effectiveness of it, and I don't really see that changing (soon enough) even if the lethality spikes dramatically. Especially if the symptoms in the early phases were to stay relatively inconspicuous in a large fraction of cases.
If I understand this correctly, they do this to show whether the vaccine-escape is controlled by the spike protein (it is), and whether the lethality is from the spike protein (it is not). The fact that it might kill us all doesn't seem to trouble their quest for knowledge...
The paper Title is >Role of spike in the pathogenic and antigenic behavior of SARS-CoV-2 BA.1 Omicron<
>Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells.
In *K18-hACE2 Mice* , while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%.
This indicates that while the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by mutations in S, major determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of S.
The "h" in the name of the mice stands for "humanized" so the fact that they did this experiment in mice is close to irrelevant, the cells being infected are genetically engineered to be the same as ours.
Another completely editorialized submission rising to the front page.
It's funny because a few days ago someone made a thread [1] asking for non-clickbait/non-sensationalist resources and almost all enthusiastically suggested HN.
Ok, but surely you know that HN submitters aren't allowed to use the title field to editorialize, and certainly not on divisive topics. That would turn the entire site into a flamewar farm.
If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Yes, normally that'd be fine. Usually in submissions I only edit a title for length, but in this case:
1. The paper's actual title says so little about the study or why it's worth paying attention to it that I felt it was completely worthless. Given what they say in the abstract they did, do you think the current title is actually appropriate at all? It doesn't even communicate that they were engineering viruses, let alone the 80% fatality rate outcome which is what matters most here.
2. I still do not agree that the title chosen was "editorialized". It neutrally and accurately reflected the outcome of their study, as stated in their own abstract. A headline is supposed to summarize succinctly what the article is about or says - the current headline just doesn't do that.
For anyone else wondering what this is about, the original title was (I think) this:
"Researchers develop Omicron variant with 80% fatality rate"
which is a correct summary of the research, that doesn't contain slant. The current one is "Role of spike in pathogenic and antigenic behavior of SARS-CoV-2 BA.1 Omicron", which appears to be selected to communicate as little as possible about the actual research.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 82.3 ms ] threadAnd, I really hate the "pretend the parent is saying the opposite of what they actually are" rhetorical trick you pulled. It's dirty and dishonest.
I don't find that the outcomes from the latest 3 years of people being supposedly cautious inspire much confidence in the effectiveness of it, and I don't really see that changing (soon enough) even if the lethality spikes dramatically. Especially if the symptoms in the early phases were to stay relatively inconspicuous in a large fraction of cases.
>Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells.
In *K18-hACE2 Mice* , while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%.
This indicates that while the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by mutations in S, major determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of S.
It's funny because a few days ago someone made a thread [1] asking for non-clickbait/non-sensationalist resources and almost all enthusiastically suggested HN.
If only they knew...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33212499
If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
1. The paper's actual title says so little about the study or why it's worth paying attention to it that I felt it was completely worthless. Given what they say in the abstract they did, do you think the current title is actually appropriate at all? It doesn't even communicate that they were engineering viruses, let alone the 80% fatality rate outcome which is what matters most here.
2. I still do not agree that the title chosen was "editorialized". It neutrally and accurately reflected the outcome of their study, as stated in their own abstract. A headline is supposed to summarize succinctly what the article is about or says - the current headline just doesn't do that.
For anyone else wondering what this is about, the original title was (I think) this:
"Researchers develop Omicron variant with 80% fatality rate"
which is a correct summary of the research, that doesn't contain slant. The current one is "Role of spike in pathogenic and antigenic behavior of SARS-CoV-2 BA.1 Omicron", which appears to be selected to communicate as little as possible about the actual research.
Not even, it seems, preservation of their species.