Yep. Basic Darwinism.

baron_von_awesome said:

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I saw a study showing vaccines can lead to deadlier variants, I will see if I can find it.

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there have been plenty of Drs warning the CDC and FDA about this since day one, they quote the story about how if chickens are not vaccinated these days they will die, there is a case study about the chickens and how they must have the vaccines now to live when in the big chicken farming houses. if this is the case its not gonna get better until people stop the boosters... but as normal, no one really knows and there is enough dis information to keep people confused as what to believe and what should be done?

amercer said:

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eric76 said:

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baron_von_awesome said:

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I saw a study showing vaccines can lead to deadlier variants, I will see if I can find it.

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I've wondered about that possibility

Supposed you have two variants of a disease, A & B, with A by far the more prevalent, but B the more deadly. Remember that evolution is about those members of the group that can out-compete to reproduce and is not about which is more deadly. If you develop a vaccine that is highly effective against A, but not much against B, then reducing the numbers of the A variant could give the more deadly B variant the opportunity to outcompete A and thus become dominant.

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Some problems with this hypothetical: if vaccines against A don't help with B, then the presence of A isn't slowing down the spread of B either. So after surviving A people will still die of B whether a vaccine for A exists or not. The fact the common cold is prevalent and mild doesn't protect you from getting zika virus.

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The zika virus is not a variant of a common cold virus so this is something my suggested scenario didn't cover.

All I was saying is that it might be possible for one variant of a disease to be given an evolutionary advantage over another variant of the same disease by a vaccine that is highly effective over the one, but not the other.

I don't know if that has ever happened, though. It's probably a rather long shot.

Quote:

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There are a number of evolutionary reason that most viruses don't get more virulent. The people that survive (or get vaccinated) do have some resistance to new strains. Also viruses are already really highly evolved. They don't necessarily have the evolutionary room to become more dangerous. Plus killing the host is a disadvantage.

Now it is true that people who claim it as an unshakable scientific proof that viruses always get weaker tend to miss how long that takes. It's probably years to decades, not months.

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Some viruses have been known to get more deadly and researchers think that there are more deadly variants of some viruses.

For example, researchers think that a more deadly version of the Ebola virus appeared in the last outbreak. A quick web search finds this from https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2016/11/studies-say-mutation-made-west-africas-ebola-strain-deadlier

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First, the researchers examined publicly available Ebola genetic sequences to look for mutations. They found that the A82V mutation arose early in the outbreak, in early 2014 as the virus moved from Guinea to Sierra Leone. They then used noninfectious virus material containing the A82V mutation to see how it infected different cells, the international-based group focusing in human and bat cells, while the US investigators did their experiments on cells from humans, non-human primates, and other mammal species.

Both teams found that the mutation enhanced the virus's ability to infect cells only from humans and other primates, which they said suggests that the increased infectivity they saw in human cells could have helped fuel the spread of the virus.

Comparing the findings with how the outbreak unfolded, the US team found that the A82V mutation was associated with a modest increase in mortality.

...

In a commentary in the same issue of Cell, two experts wrote that the studies provide the clearest example so far of Ebola's functional adaptation to human hosts. The authors are Trevor Bedford, PhD, and Harmit Malik, PhD, both with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

"It would appear that both studies have the 'smoking gun' evidence to make the case for molecular adaptation in Ebola leading to increased human virulence," they wrote, adding that "herculean efforts" to sample and sequence the virus during the outbreak make the new findings an example of "catching the virus in the act."

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There is, of course, the influenza virus. In this case, the variants are more likely to have resulted from the process of reassortment rather than of mutations and can, on occasions, such as in the 1918 pandemic, create a virus that is far more deadly than the previous variants. Not only that, but whether by mutation or by reassortment, the virus appears to have been far deadlier in the second and third waves than in the first wave of the 1918 pandemic.

If I remember correctly, another virus to turn more deadly in the recent past is the West Nile Virus. This strikes particularly close to me because it flat out destroyed my oldest brother.

Gordo14 said:

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In the long run viruses tend to become less virulent because it is an evolutionary advantage to not kill your host. In the short run any random mutation could cause more virulence and become dominant, especially if it's combined with more contagiousness.

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Can you provide citations to peer reviewed journal entries reporting research into this?

I think that there are a couple of problems with such claims.

First of all, except in extreme cases, a variant that becomes dominant depends on the ability of that variant to reproduce and spread. Sure, if it kills every host, or nearly every host, then it probably won't be too successful, but there are very few viruses like that. Most mutations are going to be incremental. The difference in mortality between one mutation and it's parents, the change in mortality is unlikely to be much -- the vast majority will almost surely be much the same as before. Whether the variant becomes dominant is most likely going to depend on how easy it can spread, not whether it will be more or less dangerous to the organism.

Sure, if the virus kills the host before it can spread to others, it is going to be pretty limited. Not even rabies does that.

Second, many diseases are zoonotic. Whatever the disease might do in humans is probably relatively independent of what it does in the animal reservoir. It's evolution may be little, if any, affected by whether it is more deadly or less deadly to humans. As long as it remains zoonotic, there is nothing to keep it from being more deadly to humans.

If you have a disease with a mortality of, say, 5%, then I don't see why it would be any more likely for mutations to reduce the mortality to 4% rather than raise it to 6%.

There's a game in your phones app store called plague, Inc. It's a morbid game, but interesting. You start with a very basic virus and get to pick mutations. If you pick mutations that make it more deadly, like for example hemorrhagic fever, the virus basically kills people really quick, and it can't spread to other hosts and other countries because the people die too quick. If a virus becomes more deadly and symptoms more severe people will naturally isolate because they are so damn sick. Like having a bad case of the flu.

An increase in consumption of hosts by 50% is what? A 99.8% survival rate dropping to 99.7% survival rate?

It may be that Covid-19 has/had evolutionary wiggle room to get worse because it so frequently goes unnoticed and/or non-fatal... so a strain could strengthen (thus consuming more of it's victims) and still be on the 'weak' side of the curve (which the game sees as the 'sweet spot' to maximizing death)?

Great game, funny enough China banned it when the pandemic started

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51673293

ramblin_ag02 said:

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More infections and higher viral load means more chances for mutation. Each mutation has a chance to create a dangerous variant. So if vaccination prevents infection and lower viral load, it will stop the emergence of dangerous variants.

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To what degree do infections and viral load need to stop/lower for this to occur?

There are obviously vaccines that have essentially eradicated certain viruses but the you have something like the flu that has had vaccines for quite sometime but is still around and ever changing. Some years it's a mild strain and some years not so mild. Heck some years the strain that shows up is different than anticipated and the vaccine that year becomes somewhat useless.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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Also, vaccination mimicks natural immunity. That's the whole point of vaccination, immunity without infection. So if vaccination against one variant isn't effective against another, then chances are very low that natural immunity would be any better. Whether you get immunity to alpha via infection or vaccine, it's supposed to be pretty much the same. In that case the worse strain was going to rampage whether people were vaccinated or not.

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Normally that may be the case, but in this case the vaccines only generate immunity to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, just one aspect of the virus. Infection generates immunity to the virus as a whole. So if a VoC's variation is of the spike protein specifically then natural immunity would still probably protect against the rest of the virus, where vaccination immunity might not.

I think the problem with flu is animal reservoirs. It can mutate in birds and pigs and then jump back to humans looking very different. I could be wrong about that though

ramblin_ag02 said:

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I think the problem with flu is animal reservoirs. It can mutate in birds and pigs and then jump back to humans looking very different. I could be wrong about that though

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Isn't animal reservoirs an issue with SARS-CoV-2 also?

I'm getting really outside my expertise, but usually the most problematic animal reservoirs are domesticated animals. So flu can pass from chickens and ducks to humans or from pigs to humans and back. To my knowledge COVID came from bats and pangolins. Neither of these is domesticated, the amount of animal-human interactions is a lot less

ramblin_ag02 said:

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I'm getting really outside my expertise, but usually the most problematic animal reservoirs are domesticated animals. So flu can pass from chickens and ducks to humans or from pigs to humans and back. To my knowledge COVID came from bats and pangolins. Neither of these is domesticated, the amount of animal-human interactions is a lot less

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ramblin_ag02 said:

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Even if COVID was released or escaped from a lab, which seems likely, the original virus likely came from bats or pangolins. The lab was actively collecting coronaviruses from both of groups of animals for study. There is zero biochemical evidence that these were fully created in a lab and almost no evidence they were modified. So the most updated thought is that COVID is an unmodified, or only lightly modified, rodent coronavirus that got out of a virology lab in Wuhan.

Some of you people are way too bought into conspiracies

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Neither bats nor pangolins are rodents.

Everybody's missing his larger point, which is that the animal reservoir may have to be domesticated animals, as opposed to wild animals or labs, for it to naturally mutate and reinfect humans.

Whether pangolins or a lab, it ain't a domesticated animal like pigs, chickens, or geese.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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Even if COVID was released or escaped from a lab, which seems likely, the original virus likely came from bats or pangolins. The lab was actively collecting coronaviruses from both of groups of animals for study. There is zero biochemical evidence that these were fully created in a lab and almost no evidence they were modified. So the most updated thought is that COVID is an unmodified, or only lightly modified, rodent coronavirus that got out of a virology lab in Wuhan.

Some of you people are way too bought into conspiracies

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You are agreeing with me and then telling me that I'm bought into conspiracies?

OK.

And for the record, you have no idea. Are taking China at their word? OK.

Did we have a Presidential Commission to investiagte the origins of COVID19? Nope.

There are plenty of virologist that say that the furin cleavage site on the spike protein is pretty unlikely to have been produced in nature.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01529-3

But many other coronaviruses have furin cleavage sites, such as coronaviruses that cause colds7. Because viruses containing the site are scattered across the coronavirus family tree, rather than confined to a group of closely related viruses, Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, says the site probably evolved multiple times because it provides an evolutionary advantage. Convergent evolution the process by which organisms that aren't closely related independently evolve similar traits as a result of adapting to similar environments is incredibly common.

Another feature of SARS-CoV-2 that has drawn attention is a combination of nucleotides that underlie a segment of the furin cleavage site: CGG (these encode the amino acid arginine). A Medium article that speculates on a lab origin for SARS-CoV-2 quotes David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate and professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, as saying that viruses don't usually have that particular code for arginine, but humans often do a "smoking gun", hinting that researchers might have tampered with SARS-CoV-2's genome.

Andersen says that Baltimore was incorrect about that detail, however. In SARS-CoV-2, about 3% of the nucleotides encoding arginine are CGG, he says. And he points out that around 5% of those encoding arginine in the virus that caused the original SARS epidemic are CGG, too. In an e-mail to Nature, Baltimore says Andersen could be correct that evolution produced SARS-CoV-2, but adds that "there are other possibilities and they need careful consideration, which is all I meant to be saying".

Is it true that SARS-CoV-2 must have been engineered, because it's perfect for causing a pandemic?
Many scientists say no. Just because the virus spreads among humans doesn't mean it was designed to do so. It also flourishes among mink and infects a host of carnivorous mammals. And it wasn't optimally transmissible among humans for the better part of last year. Rather, new, more efficient variants have evolved around the world. To name one example, the highly transmissible variant of SARS-CoV-2 first reported in India (B.1.617.2, or Delta) has mutations in the nucleotides encoding its furin cleavage site that appear to make the virus better at infecting cells8.

This email also says the genome of SARS-CoV-2 appears “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory”.

Yet, other scientists who raised this same point were shut down and ignored, while journalists investigating it were accused of peddling a debunked conspiracy theory

— Sharri Markson (@SharriMarkson) June 2, 2021

Even still suspicion has basis in forms of changing a scientists opinion by giving him research awards money. Then suddenly he stops studying the potentially engineered aspects and agrees with Fauci publicly about the origins from bat meat or pangolin to human at the time.

I guess you did not read the article.

Here is the paragraph preceding what was posted. That same person does not see it as engineered.

Does the virus have features that suggest it was created in a lab?
Several researchers have looked into whether features of SARS-CoV-2 signal that it was bioengineered. One of the first teams to do so, led by Kristian Andersen, a virologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, determined that this was "improbable" for a few reasons, including a lack of signatures of genetic manipulation6. Since then, others have asked whether the virus's furin cleavage site a feature that helps it to enter cells is evidence of engineering, because SARS-CoV-2 has these sites but its closest relatives don't. The furin cleavage site is important because it's in the virus's spike protein, and cleavage of the protein at that site is necessary for the virus to infect cells.

eric76 said:

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According to a posting today on the ProMED mailing list, those with one of the VOCs (Variants of Concern) of covid saw a 51% greater chance of death!

From the posting:

Quote:

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COVID-19 variants of concern (VOCs), especially the delta (B1617.2) variant, are more virulent than the wild type, according to an Ontario-based study published in CMAJ [Canadian Medical Association Journal] yesterday [4 Oct 2021] (https://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2021/10/04/cmaj.211248). The cohort included 212 326 cases of non-VOCs (22.4%) and VOCs with the N501Y mutation (76.7%), such as alpha (B117), beta (B1351), gamma (P1), and delta.

The researchers found that those infected with VOCs had a 52% increased risk of hospitalization (95% confidence interval [CI], 42%-63%), 89% increased risk of intensive care unit (ICU) admission (CI, 67%-117%), and a 51% increased risk of death (CI, 30%-78%). The delta variant, although only 2.8% of the sample size, was associated with a 108% increased risk of infection (CI, 78%-140%), a 235% increased risk of ICU admission (CI, 160%-331%), and a 133% higher risk of death (CI, 54%-231%). Data also indicated that those infected by VOCs were significantly younger and less likely to have comorbidities than those infected with the wild-type virus.

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And regarding vaccinations:

Quote:

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Both Patrick and the researchers highlight the usefulness of the COVID-19 vaccines, with the researchers adding, "The effects reported here represent a substantial degree of protection against death conferred by vaccines (about 80%-90%), even when they fail to prevent infection. Such direct protective effects may help reduce the health impacts of ongoing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Ontario, even if herd immunity proves elusive, given the high reproduction numbers of VOCs."

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There is an idea frequently seen here that mutations of a virus necessarily becomes less dangerous. I have never understood where this notion comes from except, perhaps, wishful thinking. It seems clear that delta is more dangerous, not only in terms of being more aggressive in infecting people, but from the report here, certainly seems to be more dangerous to you once you have it.

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If viruses did not generally become weaker with mutation, human beings and other mammals would not exist. The idea that viruses become stronger over time is easily disprovable by the fact that humans and other animals that are constantly attacked by viruses survived millions of years with no vaccines or medicine.

You are asking for papers and studies showing that viruses weaken over time. Where are your papers and studies showing that they tend to get stronger? The one you posted in this thread ain't it.

DCAggie13y said:

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eric76 said:

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According to a posting today on the ProMED mailing list, those with one of the VOCs (Variants of Concern) of covid saw a 51% greater chance of death!

From the posting:

Quote:

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COVID-19 variants of concern (VOCs), especially the delta (B1617.2) variant, are more virulent than the wild type, according to an Ontario-based study published in CMAJ [Canadian Medical Association Journal] yesterday [4 Oct 2021] (https://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2021/10/04/cmaj.211248). The cohort included 212 326 cases of non-VOCs (22.4%) and VOCs with the N501Y mutation (76.7%), such as alpha (B117), beta (B1351), gamma (P1), and delta.

The researchers found that those infected with VOCs had a 52% increased risk of hospitalization (95% confidence interval [CI], 42%-63%), 89% increased risk of intensive care unit (ICU) admission (CI, 67%-117%), and a 51% increased risk of death (CI, 30%-78%). The delta variant, although only 2.8% of the sample size, was associated with a 108% increased risk of infection (CI, 78%-140%), a 235% increased risk of ICU admission (CI, 160%-331%), and a 133% higher risk of death (CI, 54%-231%). Data also indicated that those infected by VOCs were significantly younger and less likely to have comorbidities than those infected with the wild-type virus.

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And regarding vaccinations:

Quote:

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Both Patrick and the researchers highlight the usefulness of the COVID-19 vaccines, with the researchers adding, "The effects reported here represent a substantial degree of protection against death conferred by vaccines (about 80%-90%), even when they fail to prevent infection. Such direct protective effects may help reduce the health impacts of ongoing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Ontario, even if herd immunity proves elusive, given the high reproduction numbers of VOCs."

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There is an idea frequently seen here that mutations of a virus necessarily becomes less dangerous. I have never understood where this notion comes from except, perhaps, wishful thinking. It seems clear that delta is more dangerous, not only in terms of being more aggressive in infecting people, but from the report here, certainly seems to be more dangerous to you once you have it.

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If viruses did not generally become weaker with mutation, human beings and other mammals would not exist. The idea that viruses become stronger over time is easily disprovable by the fact that humans and other animals that are constantly attacked by viruses survived millions of years with no vaccines or medicine.

You are asking for papers and studies showing that viruses weaken over time. Where are your papers and studies showing that they tend to get stronger? The one you posted in this thread ain't it.

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Black birds becoming more prevalent in smoggy, industrial era England was driven by the species adapting to the selective pressure via natural selection, not the other way around..

100's to 1000's of years ago people that were genetically predisposed to dying from (take your pick of pathogen) tended not to pass their genes along.

Don't bet on it becoming less lethal anytime soon.

DCAggie13y said:

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eric76 said:

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According to a posting today on the ProMED mailing list, those with one of the VOCs (Variants of Concern) of covid saw a 51% greater chance of death!

From the posting:

Quote:

---

COVID-19 variants of concern (VOCs), especially the delta (B1617.2) variant, are more virulent than the wild type, according to an Ontario-based study published in CMAJ [Canadian Medical Association Journal] yesterday [4 Oct 2021] (https://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2021/10/04/cmaj.211248). The cohort included 212 326 cases of non-VOCs (22.4%) and VOCs with the N501Y mutation (76.7%), such as alpha (B117), beta (B1351), gamma (P1), and delta.

The researchers found that those infected with VOCs had a 52% increased risk of hospitalization (95% confidence interval [CI], 42%-63%), 89% increased risk of intensive care unit (ICU) admission (CI, 67%-117%), and a 51% increased risk of death (CI, 30%-78%). The delta variant, although only 2.8% of the sample size, was associated with a 108% increased risk of infection (CI, 78%-140%), a 235% increased risk of ICU admission (CI, 160%-331%), and a 133% higher risk of death (CI, 54%-231%). Data also indicated that those infected by VOCs were significantly younger and less likely to have comorbidities than those infected with the wild-type virus.

---

And regarding vaccinations:

Quote:

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Both Patrick and the researchers highlight the usefulness of the COVID-19 vaccines, with the researchers adding, "The effects reported here represent a substantial degree of protection against death conferred by vaccines (about 80%-90%), even when they fail to prevent infection. Such direct protective effects may help reduce the health impacts of ongoing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Ontario, even if herd immunity proves elusive, given the high reproduction numbers of VOCs."

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There is an idea frequently seen here that mutations of a virus necessarily becomes less dangerous. I have never understood where this notion comes from except, perhaps, wishful thinking. It seems clear that delta is more dangerous, not only in terms of being more aggressive in infecting people, but from the report here, certainly seems to be more dangerous to you once you have it.

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If viruses did not generally become weaker with mutation, human beings and other mammals would not exist. The idea that viruses become stronger over time is easily disprovable by the fact that humans and other animals that are constantly attacked by viruses survived millions of years with no vaccines or medicine.

You are asking for papers and studies showing that viruses weaken over time. Where are your papers and studies showing that they tend to get stronger? The one you posted in this thread ain't it.

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That may or may not be applicable to the most dangerous of viruses, but it hardly applies to most viruses.

For example, if a virus that causes a disease with 3% mortality were to mutate to one causing a disease with 5% mortality, there would probably be little, if any, difference between passing them on.

Nobody is claiming that a disease that mutates to get more lethal is going to keep mutating to get more and more lethal.