In anthropomorphic terms, is lethality a tactical feint obscuring an even greater danger?
As of June 29, 2020 over 10 million people are confirmed as infected. Over 500 thousand people have died. The number of infected people likely is many times higher, due to testing having occurred for only a fraction of the population and the ability of the virus to hide in people while they remain asymptomatic.
Suppose 100 million people have been infected. Suppose a virus generation to be about 10 hours. Suppose the number of virions in an infected person is hundreds of millions or even several billion. What is the mutation capacity of a replicating virus inhabiting 100 million environments with each environment having 100s of millions of virus particles?
Viruses replicate. Their use of energy is not diverted by any requirements other than replication. A perfect replicating machine with billions of generations to empirically discover better ways to replicate might get worse than it already is.
I read at least one comment that the idea of mutation to incite fear is harmful, especially in the midst of an epidemic like COVID-19.
The reason to confront the danger that COVID-19 mutability poses is however not a political issue but rather a strategic issue concerned with survival and limiting human deaths. What danger does humanity confront, and how best that danger be confronted? If mutability is an even greater danger than current lethality, what is the strategy? Hence the question is addressed to the issue of identifying what efforts humanity should be making.
Your views?
The risk of mutation is a issue we have to take in account. But the fact that covid19 suffer mutations is not directly related with its lethality. Mutations can happen both ways, they can increase or decrease the virus lethality and so this Is not as simple as it seems. In my point of view, we should not concerning whether the virus is going to mutate or not but simple continue to push our efforts to develop an efficient vaccine and provide it to the largest number of people in the shortest period of time in order to achieve herd immunity as soon as possible, that's the only way to control the pandemic in my view.
Dear Andre
I am not a virologist! From a strategic point of view I think both lethality and mutability need to be monitored. Any mutability which leads to a decrease in lethality will be the cue to concentrate more on lethality mitigation from a pharmacological preventative point of view. Any mutability which leads to an increase in lethality will be the cue to step up mechanical safety measures.
Dear Mark,
I'm also not a virologist. I understand that from a purely health related point of view quarantine is the best solution to protect our risk population. But we as a society cannot endure another quarantine. The economy will not allow us to do that. We need to balance our actions between maintaining the disease spread at a minimum and providing for the economy to regain its strength, otherwise we will not die from the disease but from the cure. Thats the reason why I think at this point herd immunity achieved with a vaccine is our only option regardless of mutations in the virus. Thats of course only if the virus doesn't mutate its structure, in that case I think it will be an endemic disease for years to come just like the flu.
Dear Andre (and other fellow readers)
You raise for me the central problem which this pandemic has manifested - the economy! The economy allowed the transmission of the virus for its animal source to humans. The economy allowed its transmission worldwide. The inability of the economy to withstand the need for isolation to flatten the curve manifested by the frenzy around its shrinkage, together with its role in the spread of the virus, speaks about its poverty. Not only does the world's population need to strategically deal with the virus, but also with the economy which has become its, the Earth's and all the Earth's other species Master instead of its servant. Clearly, this pandemic is multi-layered and therefore our strategies in dealing with the virus need to be multi-layered.
I think we should concern the mutability of cov2 in 2 configuration. 1. The mutability of cov2 to human genome 2. Mutability of cov2 gene its self. First issue I think would be much more dangerous than the second one. If we take cov2 as an integrating virus to the human DNA , it may cause catastrophic long-lasting results and as we have EBV or HPV as influencer of cellular physiological behavior in the body we should wait for its late genetical and phenotypic effects in the body. On the other hand the second issue would be much less dangerous, as cov2 and generally coronaviridae family lacking of any toxic or pathological protein expression ability when entered into the host cells, and even there is no evidence (as far as I know) of Interference and destruction to the host cell protein expression activities, I think it can not produce any other symptomatic syndroms than what it is doing as stimulating of general and local cytokine and interleukin and maybe complement system to produce symptoms. We should not forget that the ARDS caused by cov2 is all about huge immunological local cascade and there is nothing to do with the virus itself. The other generalised symptoms as cough, fever, and... is also should be caused by Interleukin and other cytokines activities as IL-1, IL-6 and TNF-alpha which we commonly have on other viruses as well.
Ofcourse these are just theoretical aspects that should be proven later to be referenced.
And another thing that I forgot to say is that, I think the upcoming mutation of cov2, would be on ACE gene ligand of virus, that it would be positively effect on lesser affinity of this ligand to humen cell membrane ACE protein, which hopefully we will see the lesser enrance rate(chance) and simultaneously eliminating of the virus from the environment. This phenomenon may have several causes:
1- trans-species migration mutation: by environmentally Auto-introduction of virus to other species, the fundamental gene structure can have the mutation toward entrance to other organism.
2- Too many host changes can make changes on ACE ligand as a small changes on its protein structure may effect to lowering the virulence.
3- As viruses are infectious agents than organisms they are simply not following Mendel's dominance theory. They can even eliminate while they have dominancy in their population.
Fortunately it appears that the virus causing COVID-19 is not mutating, at least not easily. This is is good given the very high transmission rate of the virus between people (which is how COVID-19 became a pandemic). The main problem with virus mutation is that treatment and vaccine efforts would need to be redone for a new version. And, the ultimate "solution" to the pandemic is an effective and safe treatment, and the path to so-called "herd immunity" requires a safe and effective vaccine. The flu virus has a higher mutation rate, which is the main reason the flu vaccine has to be reformulated each year and we need new shots each year. In the past, vaccine reformulation efforts for the flu have not been perfect, but, fortunately, the physiological damage done by the flu is not nearly as extensive and deadly as the damage caused by COVID-19.
The virus can change.
Science Advances July 1, 2020 article:
Emergence of SARS-CoV-2 through recombination and strong purifying selection
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb9153
Science magazine July 14, 2020
The pandemic virus is slowly mutating. But is it getting more dangerous?
By Kai Kupferschmidt
doi:10.1126/science.abd8226
The Economist, Jul 3rd 2021 edition
Article title: Coats of many colours. The unvaccinated are at risk as evolution accelerates the covid-19 pandemic Research is unravelling the virus’s deep secrets.
From the article: The variants make vaccination programmes more urgent than ever. But though they may march on through the alphabet for some time to come, there is some reason to hope that they will not get all that much worse as they do so. They may be running out of evolutionary room to manoeuvre.
Science magazine article, Evolving threat, by Kai Kupferschmidt.
Science 20 Aug 2021:Vol. 373, Issue 6557, pp. 844-849 DOI: 10.1126/science.373.6557.844
From the article:
1) SARS-CoV-2 did evolve to better avoid human antibodies. But it has also become a bit more virulent and a lot more infectious, causing more people to fall ill. That has had an enormous influence on the course of the pandemic.
2) Katzourakis adds, the past 20 months are a warning to never underestimate viral evolution. “Many still see Alpha and Delta as being as bad as things are ever going to get,” he says. “It would be wise to consider them as steps on a possible trajectory that may challenge our public health response further.”