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[ChairmanPoo]

Edit: nvm. I wantrd to do something a bit lighthearted but its not in me.

Can we even beat this thing I wonder?

[wierd]

It will burn out eventually.

assuming the labs dont shut down, vaccine is about 1 year away.

There is light at the end of the tunnel that is not (another) oncoming train.

[ZBridges]

Is this a strain that we will see again and again, like the seasonal flu?

[wierd]

Maybe. Since it has gotten global spread, the virus will find local reservoir populations, and continue to mutate.  Since it was zoonotic in origin, it stands to reason it will find zoonotic reservoir populations.

[Yoink]

Normally we'd use guns, but these seem to be of the Asuran variety. And we all know how those went down.

Sorry, but what does Asuran mean in this context?   

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Results may vary, but it seems likely. We don't...fully understand why the flu does what it does. There are several factors which appear to be contributing to its seasonality, but it stays remarkably on-time even when some of those factors aren't around.

Time will tell whether covid can stay circulating in the human population post-herd immunity, if we do indeed get to a herd immunity situation, and how well the mutation rate keeps pace with vaccines and other treatments. Regardless, I think it will probably continue to exist through bats, pangolins, and any other zoonotic jumps it may have made.

The nearly-certain thing is that future outbreaks will be possible, but the rhythm and severity of those outbreaks aren't clear yet. Worst-case scenario does involve the human lifespan getting functionally capped at 70, though. Best-case, these antiviral treatments prove widely effective and we develop a stable vaccine barrier. Until the genes shift their data, as they always do, and SARS-3 emerges...

[mko]

I am really, really scared about China producing SARS-CoV-3, combining current infection spread & SARS-Cov-1 death rate.

In other words - the same as we have now but with 5 or 10 times more deaths.

SARS had case fatality rate of 11% and apparently left many people with severe long term (many lifelong) major injuries.

And not stopping bat/pangolin/whatever eating in China makes it nearly certain. Yes, they recently made some attempts to limit wildlife eating. They also did it after SARS-CoV-1 but restrictions were soon lifted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome

[Reelya]

But there are reasons that very lethal viruses don't spread as much. It's a trade-off. Covid-19 is deadlier in balance because it's so mild in some people, therefore you get more silent carriers. The 11% SARS didn't spread far precisely due to its lethality: it made it easier to notice cases. Note that MERS killed about 1 in 3 and infected only 2500 people, SARS was around 10% and infected 8000. This particular one kills around 1%, but that counter-intuitively is why it's so deadly.

[Inarius]

I live in France, in a region which was not contamined heavily. It's been 14 days of quarantine now, and as expected, the new hospitalisations are dropping heavily, divided by 2 in two days.
Early quarantine works !


I agree with Reelya : if the epidemy was deadlier a lot of things would have change.
And on top of them : earlier detection and measures from China.
And secondly people wouldn't break quarantine as easily as now with a 10 or 20% death rate !
In the end, less casualty.

Look at the flu, it's quite benign but still kills many people every year.

[mko]

But there are reasons that very lethal viruses don't spread as much. It's a trade-off. Covid-19 is deadlier in balance because it's so mild in some people, therefore you get more silent carriers. The 11% SARS didn't spread far precisely due to its lethality: it made it easier to notice cases. Note that MERS killed about 1 in 3 and infected only 2500 people, SARS was around 10% and infected 8000. This particular one kills around 1%, but that counter-intuitively is why it's so deadly.

That is why I worry about long asymptomatic period. HIV was noticed in 1981, while first known case was in 1966 in Sweden. And we know that originated earlier, elsewhere. Mostly thanks to ridiculously long asymptomatic period, despite very limited transmission.

New SARS version with high lethality and longer asymptomatic period, with ability to infect during at least part of asymptomatic period? That would be a catastrophe.

And secondly people wouldn't break quarantine as easily as now with a 10 or 20% death rate !

I am quite pessimistic here - yes, less would break but still not all.

[Reelya]

Trump just openly implied NYC hospitals are involved in an organized face mask stealing racket, probably to explain-away shortages. It's not the administration's fault you can't get facemasks it's those evil doctors: "it's worse than hoarding ... they're going out the back door"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/trump-says-keeping-us-covid-19-deaths-to-100000-would-be-a-very-good-job

The most likely explanation of the baffling outburst is that Trump's been humiliated by having to backtrack on his plans to re-open the economy by Easter, so instead of having people focus on that, he's concocted this fake "doctors stealing all the facemasks" conspiracy theory for us to focus on instead.

[coalboat]

I am really, really scared about China producing SARS-CoV-3, combining current infection spread & SARS-Cov-1 death rate.

In other words - the same as we have now but with 5 or 10 times more deaths.

SARS had case fatality rate of 11% and apparently left many people with severe long term (many lifelong) major injuries.

And not stopping bat/pangolin/whatever eating in China makes it nearly certain. Yes, they recently made some attempts to limit wildlife eating. They also did it after SARS-CoV-1 but restrictions were soon lifted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome

Despite the reputation, eating wild animal is not common in China and the animals are mostly imported, while in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America, wild animal is the main source of meat for many local communities. Whether pangolin is eaten in China or not, the virus will find a human host sooner or later.

However this virus has a relatively low lethality, unlike ebola, which rarely leaves Africa because the patient cannot live long enough to travel far. Before global outbreak, for many developed countries it's either a Chinese version of ebola - deadly but rarely reaching the developed world, or a flu - because it's hard to believe a serious pandemic can really happen in modern society.

If people had taken more seriously about what is happening in countries outside EU and NA, they would have mobilized earlier to fight the pandemic. Admittedly in these countries there's usually a lack of freedom of press, but when people pay attention, more information will make their way through the censorship.

[Greiger]

That eating wild animals bit confuses me a bit.  Doesn't that kind of thing happen literally everywhere? 

When I was a kid in rural Pennsylvania my dad would go out into the woods for a day or so with his buddies and come back with deer, rabbits, and squirrels.  Sometimes even some kind of bird.  We ate that perfectly fine, and then there's pasture raised cattle that my grandparents had on their farm.  While my grandparents had dairy cattle, I imagine the ones bred for meat are allowed to wander off unsupervised in pastures and forests just as theirs were.  On top of that people fish up wild fish crab and lobster all the time.

While I'm not disbelieving the whole eating wild animals give risk of that stuff, I'm not understanding what the difference is. People eat wild critters all the time, what causes it to be a problem elsewhere but not in the U.S.?

[Ziusudra]

It's so much not the eating wild animals, it's the wet markets with many live wild animals and people all swapping micro-organisms.

[mko]

No idea why SARS-Cov-1 and SARS-Cov-2 both appeared in China. Maybe Coronaviruses are especially likely to jump? Maybe China has unusually large population of people eating wild animal? Unusually large population of eating wild infected animals? Just plain bad luck? Especially likely to sabotage early part when virus was easy to squash, focusing on coverup rather than containing spread of illenss? Markets with wild animals in cities are much worse than rare hunters?

https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/fl1aec/from_my_college_microbiology_textbook_c2009_no/

"the animal reservoir and live animal markets in China are still present allowing animal-to-human transfer to once again happen" - excerpt about coronaviruses from a textbook.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When I was a kid in rural Pennsylvania my dad would go out into the woods for a day or so with his buddies and come back with deer, rabbits, and squirrels.  Sometimes even some kind of bird.  (...) People eat wild critters all the time, what causes it to be a problem elsewhere but not in the U.S.?

How many people do to this in USA? How many do it in China?