Coronavirus - worldwide breaking news, discussion, stats, updates and more

[Teaboy]

That’s a welcome bit of good news.

My gf has just told me that she’s going to get waxed and has an appointment at 5pm today. Her usual beautician is closed as would be expected, so - she thought for a while that a house near us was operating as a beautician - lots of ladies pulling up onto their drive coming and going, so she popped along and was proved correct. The house is pretty big and has a mammoth garden room on the back I expect that is being used for treatments.

Not sure what to make of it tbh, are they using PPE etc? But I reckon there’s quite a big underground coronavirus economy underway across the country.

Well, aren't new cases plateauing in the north maybe creeping up? Might have something to do with it.

 

[Doodler]

Killing the host also isn't an optimal evolutionary strategy, which gives some hope in its future evolution.

Why isn't it optimal? Some pathogens get more virulent, some get less, some stay the same.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Why isn't it optimal? Some pathogens get more virulent, some get less, some stay the same.

It's hard to propagate when you've been cremated.

 

[Doodler]

From SARS-COV-2's point of view it doesn't really need to change much as its spreading very nicely as it is. Which does give some hope for a vaccine tbh.

I don't know how easy it is or not to develop a vaccine, a lot of the development time seems to be for reasons of caution and safety. Maybe in a time of crisis things might be sped up to accept a vaccine that inadvertently kills something like 1 in 100,000 patients rather than 1 in a million. I wouldn't really bet on Covid-19 changing in one direction or another, but it seems unrealistic for it not to change somehow. It's still early days.

 

[Doodler]

It's hard to propagate when you've been cremated.

So why isn't immortality the norm for organisms?

 

[Anju]

Link doesn't work.

This does - The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala's rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19

Thanks

 

[2hats]

So why isn't immortality the norm for organisms?

Shorter generational timespans favour genetic diversity (turnover) per unit time and thus confer evolutionary adaptational advantage.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So why isn't immortality the norm for organisms?

You misunderstand the aim here. Firstly it is only an apparent 'aim'. As I said, it can only be read backwards. But selection pressure specifically produces death, in fact. Without death, there can be no evolution, no life. So the 'aim' that isn't really an aim is for the species to reproduce. Those mutations that spread more readily will come to dominate and pass on their characteristics.

That said, viruses don't exactly die. They are single-united (not even cells), so they are effectively immortal so long as they keep reproducing. But each new generation will be slightly different from the last. That's evolution!

Single-celled organisms like bacteria are effectively immortal, mind you. It's only us complex organisms that need to grow from a single cell into a bigger thing at each generation that have bodies that die. And as Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, life on Earth is, and always has been, 'mostly bacteria'.

 

[Saul Goodman]

So why isn't immortality the norm for organisms?

We're working on it.

 

[JimW]

I'm going to achieve immortality if it kills me.

 

[maomao]

How does that work if every business does it (or some variation on the "only admit X persons inside at a time" rule)? Don't the queues start to run into each other after a while?

Six weeks ago the queues outside the banks were so long here the high street was basically filled with people queueing for different banks two metres apart and yes they did all seem to be running into each other. It was the most 'apocalypse' moment for me so far.

 

[quimcunx]

Is it surprising the most social distant country in the world did well. I wonder how strict their quarantine at the airport is now?

Kerala has also done well. Maybe doing well isn't about being socially distant.

 

[Doodler]

Shorter generational timespans favour genetic diversity (turnover) per unit time and thus confer evolutionary adaptational advantage.

Maybe I'm wrong (I am on most things) but would guess that the issue of viral lethality is not unlike that of senescence and death in organisms. If a trait promotes reproductive success in youth, any negative effects it has later in life are offset by that same reproductive success.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

To frogwoman: it's not a great prospect but I would have thought it's possible. I mean, more possible than the virus mutating to make its carriers incredibly charismatic so everyone else wants to shake their hand.

I personally wouldn't mind a dose of the CHARISMAVID-20

 

[Doodler]

We're working on it.

The super rich will get it first. But will they be open about it or will they try to conceal the fact, and if so how? There's only so long people can say 'Branson doesn't seem to be getting any older, it's weird' before the penny will drop.

 

[Doodler]

I personally wouldn't mind a dose of the CHARISMAVID-20

Wait till the STD variant comes along!

 

[IC3D]

Kerala has also done well. Maybe doing well isn't about being socially distant.

New Zealand 18 people per km sq
Kerala 860 people per km sq

Just looked it up.
Makes the story of the health minister and communists of Kerala all the more remarkable.

 

[miss direct]

How does that work if every business does it (or some variation on the "only admit X persons inside at a time" rule)? Don't the queues start to run into each other after a while?

I'm lucky because I live in an area which isn't particularly crowded, apart from in the summer when people come to go to the beach (currently closed, and it's Ramadan anyway which affects things.) I don't know what would happen in a busier area. Actually, I do. I've seen scenes from other parts of Istanbul with crowds of people pushing each other.

 

[IC3D]

Wait till the STD variant comes along!

Coronavirus detected in semen of recovering COVID-19 patients | PET

The novel coronavirus can persist in the semen of men who are recovering following infection, according to a new study...

www.bionews.org.uk

 

[Doodler]

You misunderstand the aim here. Firstly it is only an apparent 'aim'. As I said, it can only be read backwards. But selection pressure specifically produces death, in fact. Without death, there can be no evolution, no life. So the 'aim' that isn't really an aim is for the species to reproduce. Those mutations that spread more readily will come to dominate and pass on their characteristics.

That said, viruses don't exactly die. They are single-united (not even cells), so they are effectively immortal so long as they keep reproducing. But each new generation will be slightly different from the last. That's evolution!

Single-celled organisms like bacteria are effectively immortal, mind you. It's only us complex organisms that need to grow from a single cell into a bigger thing at each generation that have bodies that die. And as Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, life on Earth is, and always has been, 'mostly bacteria'.

Imagine a virus that evolves to suppress the host's immune system. This is bad news for the host - it becomes vulnerable to all kinds of secondary infections. But so long as this made the virus more infectious, why wouldn't the trait of immunosuppression be selected for?

 

[2hats]

Wait till the STD variant comes along!

Meanwhile researchers spot SARS-CoV-2 RNA in COVID-19 patients' semen, raising the possibility (though perhaps a slim one) of sexual transmission (cf ebola, zika). Though transmission via the respiratory route during sex is almost certainly more likely anyway.

Reuters | Breaking International News & Views

Find latest news from every corner of the globe at Reuters.com, your online source for breaking international news coverage.

uk.reuters.com

DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.8292

 

[quimcunx]

New Zealand 18 people per km sq
Kerala 860 people per km sq

Just looked it up.
Makes the story of the health minister and communists of Kerala all the more remarkable.

Nothing we couldn't have done here if we had the will.

 

[Petcha]

Nothing we couldn't have done here if we had the will.

Stories like NZ and Kerala put right into focus how badly managed this has all been. I admit I was personally resistant to locking down and closing the airports, thinking it was all a bit heavy handed but by god I was wrong. I don't profess to be a scientific expert though as the idiots they roll out to the press conferences every day do. If I fucked up anything like this badly at my job I'd be sacked and my reputation in the industry completely destroyed. And yet they keep coming out. Every day. With lies and obfuscation.

Their five 'tests' have not been met. So why am I looking out at the window at a busy street?

 

[Petcha]

I also assume the leaders of those two places actually showed up to crucial meetings at the outset to develop an effective plan instead of having their trotters up at their country estates

 

[teuchter]

It's certainly impressive what Kerala has managed but you can't ignore various significant differences between Kerala and the UK.

The population is about 35 million (about half the UK population).
It looks like they receive about 1 million international arrivals a year.

Compare that with just Heathrow airport, which sees about 75 million international arrivals a year.

If the UK had stopped international arrivals at around the same point as Kerala had done, who knows how many cases would already have been here - might have been 100x the number that Kerala then managed to get on top of.

 

[Ahlan]

Well, seen as you asked. From looking at basic its stats it seems that in Germany 4.5% of those who tested positive sadly died. In Russia it is currently less than 1%. So yes, I do find Russia's a bit strange, it could be an outlier.

As for my view of Russian healthcare, well I've actually visited a couple of Russian hospitals (getting friends patched up) and both times they were very decent if quite expensive (could have been private hospitals, we just go where we're told). My point being that I don't think they are that much better than anyone else's to justify that low death to positive test ratio and in a country where opposition politicians and jounos have a habit of getting themselves killed I'm a bit sceptical.*


*usual and becoming tiresome caveat of acknowledging that every country is cooking the books to a degree.

Russia has 196K active cases compared to Germany's 15k, so those stats could well level out.
Russia's low stats seem to correlate with other eastern european and batlic states, compared to the high numbers seen across westen european countries.
Germany (and Austria) appear to 'blend' the two clusters by averaging east and west out.

Maybe corona just doesn't get on very well with a pickled gurkin and vodka diet?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Imagine a virus that evolves to suppress the host's immune system. This is bad news for the host - it becomes vulnerable to all kinds of secondary infections. But so long as this made the virus more infectious, why wouldn't the trait of immunosuppression be selected for?

Selection pressures don't operate in isolation, which is why it is impossible to predict how evolution will go - we just don't have enough information to say. In this case, sure you make the host more vulnerable to infection, but there is a cost, which is making the host more likely to die, or in the case of humans, realise they're sick and self-isolate, or something else that I haven't thought of.

Human lockdown policies are in and of themselves an evolutionary selection pressure for this virus, which reproduces at such a rate that its evolution can be charted over the course of months or even weeks.

 

[frogwoman]

Racaniello's article seemed to suggest that a lot of the mutations were just mutations seen in individual patients (and that the virus particles in the same patient could also differ)

 

[frogwoman]

In terms of lockdown wouldn't that select for longer incubation periods?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

In terms of lockdown wouldn't that select for longer incubation periods?

Yep might do. It's bound to be a selection pressure, and possibly a strong one. But it might lead to a 'smash and grab' pressure to get done quickly before you're found out. Hard to guess which directions it will push in. Evolution is cleverer than us.