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No one worth listening to is claiming that there will be a COVID-style pandemic. The concern here is the very high mortality rate. Granted the transmission rate

by biorach 26d ago

No one worth listening to is claiming that there will be a COVID-style pandemic. The concern here is the very high mortality rate. Granted the transmission rate is low, but in countries where facilities and health-care workers are scarce this disease is still capable of being a real problem.

glenstein 26d ago
Well they did just say it was in reply to a dead comment, so I suspect that was one person entertaining the possibility of widespread transmission, and there's already at least one more comment here if not two (depending how you interpret them) entertaining the possibility of mutation that leads to easier transmission. Maybe the "worth listening to" caveat is intending to dismiss those, but I certainly don't think it's the case that nobody is suggesting it or that it's not worth pushing back against.
gucci-on-fleek 26d ago
> No one worth listening to is claiming that there will be a COVID-style pandemic. When I first posted this, all 4 top-level comments were dead, and half of them suggested that this Ebola outbreak would be similar to COVID-19. I agree that they're probably not worth listening to, but I still think that it's worth refuting them, since the media is generally not doing a great job explaining how Ebola is different from COVID-19. > The concern here is the very high mortality rate. Oh yeah, I definitely agree that this is concerning, but concerning in the sense that something absolutely horrible is happening in the world, and not in the sense that I could wake up tomorrow sick with Ebola (like some other comments were implying).
- paimapi 25d ago
  this is more of a curiosity and not pushback but are there mechanistic reasons why viral mutations are subjected to tradeoffs in terms of lethality vs infectiousness? is it that the more lethal it is, the earlier it is that people become symptomatic (and thus are far more likely to isolate and/or be immobile)?
  - MarkusQ 25d ago
    The faster you kill your host, the less time you have to infect new hosts. Sure, you can loot the host to make a lot of new viruses, but when the host dies, they die too. Ideally, a virus "wants" to make the host live a long, gregarious life, touring the world and kissing babies. But that takes energy away from making more viral payload, so yeah, it's a tradeoff.
    - im3w1l 25d ago
      I don't think it's really a tradeoff and rather that Ebola is simply bad at its job. Why? Because it's primarily a bat virus (and it's basically asymptomatic in bats) that ended up where it doesn't belong and wreaks havoc because it hasn't learned to play nice.
      - MarkusQ 25d ago
        In bats, it reproduces more slowly, doesn't kill the hosts, and thus the hosts live to spread it. This is exactly the tradeoff I described.
    - robocat 25d ago
      > energy That is almost irrelevant. Our immune systems, and environments are mostly security-by-obscurity. Viruses randomly mutate to find vulnerabilities. Their biggest issue is finding solutions using a genetic optimisation algorithm. Their biggest strength is that it is a massively parallel search. Think of 10^x monkeys bashing at all points in their reproduction (maybe 10^18 for peak covid in human hosts).
      - MarkusQ 24d ago
        Viruses don't reproduce by mutation, they reproduce by getting the host to manufacture more copies of the virus, which takes resources (which ultimately come down to energy) away from the host. The "monkeys" aren't trying huge numbers of variations, they are making huge numbers of identical copies with very rare (and usually non-functional) variations when they fail to copy exactly.
Gerard22Aug 25d ago
"No one worth listening to is claiming that there will be a COVID-style pandemic." That means exactly that. The war(s) were not enough and run out of steam. We need the next thing.

by biorach 26d ago

glenstein 26d ago

Well they did just say it was in reply to a dead comment, so I suspect that was one person entertaining the possibility of widespread transmission, and there's already at least one more comment here if not two (depending how you interpret them) entertaining the possibility of mutation that leads to easier transmission. Maybe the "worth listening to" caveat is intending to dismiss those, but I certainly don't think it's the case that nobody is suggesting it or that it's not worth pushing back against.

gucci-on-fleek 26d ago

> No one worth listening to is claiming that there will be a COVID-style pandemic. When I first posted this, all 4 top-level comments were dead, and half of them suggested that this Ebola outbreak would be similar to COVID-19. I agree that they're probably not worth listening to, but I still think that it's worth refuting them, since the media is generally not doing a great job explaining how Ebola is different from COVID-19. > The concern here is the very high mortality rate. Oh yeah, I definitely agree that this is concerning, but concerning in the sense that something absolutely horrible is happening in the world, and not in the sense that I could wake up tomorrow sick with Ebola (like some other comments were implying).

paimapi 25d ago
this is more of a curiosity and not pushback but are there mechanistic reasons why viral mutations are subjected to tradeoffs in terms of lethality vs infectiousness? is it that the more lethal it is, the earlier it is that people become symptomatic (and thus are far more likely to isolate and/or be immobile)?
- MarkusQ 25d ago
  The faster you kill your host, the less time you have to infect new hosts. Sure, you can loot the host to make a lot of new viruses, but when the host dies, they die too. Ideally, a virus "wants" to make the host live a long, gregarious life, touring the world and kissing babies. But that takes energy away from making more viral payload, so yeah, it's a tradeoff.
  - im3w1l 25d ago
    I don't think it's really a tradeoff and rather that Ebola is simply bad at its job. Why? Because it's primarily a bat virus (and it's basically asymptomatic in bats) that ended up where it doesn't belong and wreaks havoc because it hasn't learned to play nice.
    - MarkusQ 25d ago
      In bats, it reproduces more slowly, doesn't kill the hosts, and thus the hosts live to spread it. This is exactly the tradeoff I described.
  - robocat 25d ago
    > energy That is almost irrelevant. Our immune systems, and environments are mostly security-by-obscurity. Viruses randomly mutate to find vulnerabilities. Their biggest issue is finding solutions using a genetic optimisation algorithm. Their biggest strength is that it is a massively parallel search. Think of 10^x monkeys bashing at all points in their reproduction (maybe 10^18 for peak covid in human hosts).
    - MarkusQ 24d ago
      Viruses don't reproduce by mutation, they reproduce by getting the host to manufacture more copies of the virus, which takes resources (which ultimately come down to energy) away from the host. The "monkeys" aren't trying huge numbers of variations, they are making huge numbers of identical copies with very rare (and usually non-functional) variations when they fail to copy exactly.

Gerard22Aug 25d ago

"No one worth listening to is claiming that there will be a COVID-style pandemic." That means exactly that. The war(s) were not enough and run out of steam. We need the next thing.