
From 'tiger to wildcat': Coronavirus could die out without vaccine - mrfusion
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12341572&
======
fabbari
"...probably due to a genetic mutation in the virus which has not yet been
demonstrated scientifically." \-- you can stop reading once you get here. It's
not that hard to find out if there was a mutation in the virus, you sequence
it and compare it. If you didn't find any differences it means we probably got
better at handling COVID19 - IE: earlier hospitalization, better care - rather
than a weaker virus.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
I agree that you can stop reading, but not with your rationale.

>It's not that hard to find out if there was a mutation in the virus, you
sequence it and compare it.

There are lots of problems with this assumption. Sequencing is pretty quick,
it's not instantaneous or free. More to the point, sequencing a single virus
from a single individual who survived doesn't necessarily tell you anything
about that virus. You would need to sequence many viruses from many patients,
and compare patient outcomes (while controlling for other factors) with
sequence data. That is neither quick nor easy.

Viruses can mutate quickly. From what I've read, SARS CoV2 doesn't appear to
have a high mutation rate compared to other viruses more in the zeitgeist, but
it's definitely much higher than, say, the typical mammal. That not only means
that sequencing is harder, but it also means there will be multiple strains to
compare. There isn't one virus: there are currently thousands
([https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global](https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global)) of
genomes publicly available, so there's a lot to look at.

Finally, the point the individual being quoted was making is that, after all
that work, the best you're likely to come up with is "there are a handful of
sequence changes that correlate to better outcomes." You haven't proved it
("demonstrated scientifically").

The reason you can stop reading here is that this is one person speculating,
seemingly based off of anecdotal data. They have some authority and it's
implied they are looking at a lot of data, but there are no hard stats or
facts.

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nchase
Article headline is misleading, the article itself provides more context and
is less sensationalized.

I believe that this is happening in NZ and per the article, Italy.

But in other places (USA and Brazil come to mind) it’s a whole different
story. Seems dangerous to suggest it could just die out, while cases are on
the rise.

~~~
hanniabu
Yeah, it assumes having a competent government that actually believes in
science.

~~~
ddelt
Living in the US, every day I wish I'd suddenly wake up to a government which
places a greater degree of importance on science and the protection and
benevolence of the greatest amount of human lives, both in the US and in the
rest of the world. But right now, seems like science will continue to take a
backseat to US corporate economic interests.

~~~
thecreamedcorn
Science is so muddled and confusing. I'm sure even the top doctors and
biologists don't agree on how to handle the virus because one study says you x
is more effective than y but another says the opposite. In addition most
"science" is funded by done large corporations or by people with ulterior
motives. Science is not the word of God; it's a craft that is extremely prone
to error, and I personally don't want my gov placing any more value on it than
it is right now.

~~~
zentiggr
The real world is muddled and confusing... science in its proper form observes
that world, attempts to find the underlying facts and make our understanding
of the muddled confusion clearer.

It takes a lot of observing, thinking, and testing to arrive at a decent
picture of what wasn't known before.

> Science is not the word of God

No, and that's a good thing. Scientific progress depends on revising knowledge
as more facts accumulate and point in different directions. Until there's
enough information to illuminate things well, there are a lot of questions,
missteps, etc.

I would want the government, private institutions, and every individual to
lean MORE on actual science than they ever have, and to understand its
benefits AND limitations, because that is how the world learns and improves.

~~~
thecreamedcorn
I think when you take a look at the interaction between science and government
throughout history you will largely find “science” has mislead humanity at
most steps along the way. Thats not to say it is never useful, just that it is
a form of information that should be used by our society with extreme caution.

But fundamentally I disgree with your opinion that the real world is muddled
and confusing. With issues like pandemics science is more nessisary because it
is a specific and specialzed issue not many people understand well, yet it is
directly impacting most of our lives.

But if you look at the Amish people for example, you can live your entire life
knowing almost nothing about science live a have a happy, healthy and
meaningful existence. Generalizing that example more we can see that
successful flourishing human civilizations have existed for all of our history
and all of the probably had less than a percent of the scientific knowledge we
have today, yet we are suffering from mostly tge same issues: suicide, racism,
sadness, disfunctional governments, power struggles, etc.

You say that science is illuminating but I fail to see where science has truly
made any part of the human expience more enlightened.

~~~
zentiggr
I would say as a first point of enlightenment, medicine. Many afflictions have
been eliminated or mitigated.

> But fundamentally I disgree with your opinion that the real world is muddled
> and confusing.

I was illuminating the difference between the world around us being its
complicated, partially unexplored self, and the GP saying that science is
muddled and confusing, which it is, but to a lesser degree than the world it
is developing from.

> you will largely find “science” has mislead humanity at most steps along the
> way

Your use of quotes there is the tell... many have purported to "know"
"scientific" facts when their beliefs were nothing but beliefs. And most/many
have been cast aside as our level of knowledge has progressed. And that is the
true progress of science - learning more about the world and changing from
guesses about reality to knowledge about reality.

People will always have their agendas and limitations, but the process of
learning and understanding always surpasses each individuals' limitations and
gives us better understanding. Even if it is "one funeral at a time".

------
kingkawn
Even places that have successfully controlled the coronavirus internally
remain vulnerable to new resurgences imported from abroad. It all started in a
single market

~~~
imchillyb
And according to recently published data, immunity may not even last 6 months
after fighting off the virus.

If immunity lasts no longer than a half-year, then there will be multiple new
resurgences; it's a given.

~~~
kingkawn
The breathless reports that antibodies fade out are absurd. All antibody
production fades, but immune memory cells persist and if the infection is
reintroduced the B cells will rapidly trigger an immune reaction. The way that
antibody fade out is being portrayed as a loss of immunity is profoundly
ignorant of the immune system. You would not want your body to be producing
full scale antibody responses to every pathogen you’ve ever encountered as it
is energetically intensive and would harm the ability of the body to react to
new threats

------
CydeWeys
Lotta wishful thinking here. I hope it's true, but until there's actual
evidence of it we can't act as if it is.

~~~
jgalt212
It's not totally crazy, and the limited data on human coronaviruses has shown
there is a tendency for them to mutate into less potent forms.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other-
coronaviruses-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other-
coronaviruses-tell-us-about-sars-cov-2-20200429/)

~~~
tcbawo
It's already been demonstrated that the Covid-19 has mutated into becoming
more easily transmissible. Perhaps there may be some scientific basis or
physiological connection between being more transmissible and being less
potent? Perhaps a stronger initial shock fires up the immune system to create
a stronger herd immunity. This seems to have happened before, but may not
happen with Covid-19. It would be wishful thinking to rely on it for setting
policy.

EDIT: This was making the rounds a week or so ago
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus-
mutat...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus-mutation-
genetics-spike.html)

~~~
gus_massa
> _It 's already been demonstrated that the Covid-19 has mutated into becoming
> more easily transmissible._

Do you have a link for that? I remember some speculation about this, but they
did't have a solid case.

------
bronzeage
I think the emotional pressure to latch onto optimistic / pessimistic news is
too hard to make correct, objective conclusions about this virus. If it isn't
backed by data, I'm afraid anecdotal evidence is too biased by the human
behind them.

------
MilnerRoute
Don't know if this matters, but Wikipedia classes this as a "hard right"
newspaper.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph#Islamic_Ex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph#Islamic_Extremism_and_Scout_Groups)

I guess I have a worry that this is part of some larger editorial stance that
tries to minimize the seriousness of the pandemic by cherry-picking the
research that gets reported.

