masukuma wrote:murchr wrote:Latest:
Virus mutating to a more dangerous form
Children contacting the virus are getting symptoms that look like the Kawasaki disease. (cordial vascular collapse) Where the heart is attacked.
This is the stupidity with Herd Immunity -
Herd Immunity assumes no long term effects of the current strains and also fails to understand the fact that the longer a virus stays in our midst... the more the likelihood it will mutate. People are always getting flu vaccines every year because it mutates so much and the strains from this year are substantially different from what people experienced last year. the antibodies from last year are not effective against newly spun out strains. The longer Covid stays in humans and is replicating - the more likely that the mutations spin out something that nullifies the effects of Herd Immunity (acquired by sacrificing a substantial number of people). The ONLY WAY IS TO CRUSH THIS THING.
The current strains seem to spare the young and strong... who tells you that the newly spun out mutations will spare them? it's a ridiculous proposition.
There has been much debate about why COVID-19 outbreaks in Italy and New York have so quickly overwhelmed health systems, while early outbreaks in places like San Francisco and Washington state proved more readily managed, at least initially. Was it something about those communities and their response, or had the virus somehow changed? or could it be both? Well it has been discovered that there is a mutation called the D614G on the Covid virus that has made it more... infectious. Everyone now knows the depiction of Covid - a roundish ball with spikes off it. Those spikes are what allow the virus to bind to and infect cells. The mutation had the effect of markedly increasing the number of functional spikes on the viral surface (upto 5 times more than the common virus) and the by-product of that is it is becoming more infectious. in March it appeared in 25% of the Samples - not... it's in 70%. it's still unknown whether this mutation is deadlier or just more infectious.
From my end, once you discover a mutation - you are a bit late since it means it must have moved around quite a bit before it gets to the patient from whom you collected samples from. What mutations are lurking around us? especially in a free-fall society that choses not to social distance or even test?
On the bright side infectiousness and mortality are not always correlated - for a virus to be infectious it must be able to stay longer in a host and let the host move around and spread it (so it does not kill the host quickly) - think of HIV for example. Deadly diseases like Ebola were not that infectious because they compromised the host really fast.
All Mushrooms are edible! Some Mushroom are only edible ONCE!