1. Yes. This is serious. Mutation is a big red reset button on the pandemic potentially.

2. No. Minks are kept in small cages with a very high density of biomass. This makes it a perfect incubator. Also ferrets have some similarities with humans in the upper respiratory system, making this more of a concern.

Not only that, the conditions of keeping the animals close but not too close even encourages selection for mutations that allow the virus to spread more easily through air.

If I remember correctly, ferrets were held under similiar conditions for "gain for function" experiments [0]. "Gain of function" means here how the virus can develop the ability (function) of spreading through the air when it e.g. initially required direct contact to be transmitted. An animal would be intentionally infected with the disease and a random mutation would allow the virus to jump to a separate cage to infect an animal there.

Pretty horrible and dangerous, imo. Research on this was banned in the US for a few years, see also [0].

Edit: a small bonus comment I just thought about: here is a time lapse of development of resistance to antibiotics on a large petri dish [1]. Observe how they used increasing concentrations of antibiotics to allow stepwise improvement of resistance instead of confronting the bacterium with an unsurmountable effect all at once.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation#By_effect_on_function

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybsSqcB7mE

Banned in the US, but presumably outsourced to wherever else the research funding flowed to?

It was banned but the ban was lifted a few years ago by Trump.

Both links you provided appear to be for the same article, just from two different sources. There is nothing in the article about Fauci "urging" anyone to lift the ban on gain of function research. He did defend the research being done in China and the ban was lifted by NIH in December 2017, though.

Also, calling people who downvoted you "idiots" is not the road towards meaningful discussion.

This is really interesting. I wish they would have gone the other way after. Taken the bacteria from the middle and observed how long it took to lose that anti-bacterial resistance.

I am convinced that bacterial resistance is a trait, but am unconvinced of it's permanence if the utility of maintaining it is removed from the environment.

Yes was banned due to academic outcry, but then lifted by Trump.

“Gain of Function” is often a dog whistle for bioweapons research.

Why else would you actively develop bacteria and virus that spreads more?

So, the reason given is that you have a virus that exists naturally. If we can artificially find a variant that is more lethal and or contagious (those are often the vectors that are selected for) you can then calculate the delta between the DNA of the original and the variation and make some guesses as to the likelihood that this variation will emerge naturally via mutation and then perhaps develop some sort of preventive countermeasures.

Here is a good lecture by a harvard professor on risks of gain of function research:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5fe7KEkwQM

-- Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Experiments in Potentially Pandemic Pathogens

--- The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk's January 2015 Seminar, with Professor Marc Lipsitch (Harvard) and Professor Derek Smith (Cambridge).

A growing trend in experimental virology has been the modification of influenza viruses that are antigenically novel to, and virulent in humans, such that these variant viruses are readily transmissible in mammals, including ferrets which are thought to be the best animal model for influenza infection. Novel, contagious, virulent viruses are potential pandemic pathogens in that their accidental or malevolent release into the human population could cause a pandemic.

Professor Marc Lipsitch (Harvard) describes the purported benefits of such studies, arguing that these are overstated; estimates the magnitude of the risk they create, argues for the superiority of alternative scientific approaches on both safety and scientific grounds, and proposes an ethical framework in which such experiments should be evaluated. The talk also explore recent developments following the pause in funding for this research announced by the United States Government in October, and steps towards the risk-benefit analysis called for by the announcement.

Professor Lipsitch is a professor of epidemiology and the Director of the Centre for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard University. He is one of the founders of the Cambridge Working group, which calls for a “quantitative, objective and credible assessment of the risks, potential benefits, and opportunities for risk mitigation” of gain of function experiments in potentially pandemic pathogen strains.

A response is given by Professor Derek Smith, Professor of Infectious Disease Informatics at Cambridge University. --

Apparently one of the upcoming vaccines in testing was already rendered ineffective by the mutation.

Edit: source for the claim about the vaccine's ineffectiveness against the mutated strains in german TAZ from two weeks ago:

https://taz.de/Coronavirus-bei-Wildtieren/!5720096/

There aren't millions upon millions of ferrets kept at this density though.

They probably meant 'minks', not ferrets, in which case there are 15 to 17 million of them in Denmark.

> Mutation is a big red reset button on the pandemic potentially.

Only on the vaccination / immunity front - the biggest problem was that there initially were no tests or lab capacities for tests, plus a total collapse of PPE stockpiles and supply. That's ... at least decently solved.

Depends on where you are. The US has significantly improved testing (I work for a COVID-19 testing company) but people don't socially isolate or wear their damn masks.

We had issues in the election yesterday of poll workers not wearing masks. People just don't get it, and this behavior clearly isn't "fixed" as the winter surge is well under way.

A question: Why aren't we running randomized survey testing to determine the extent of infections?

Who would pay for it? Or do the work, or collate it, or publish the results? Portions of the federal government are actively hostile to fact-based public health work. The rest of it seems to be either defunded or demotivated, as opportunity allows.

Slovakia just tested their whole adult population with antigene tests: https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/03/slovakia-attempts-to-tes...

Yes, it's just a couple milion people & antigen tests are not 100% precize, but it demonstrates something like this can be done.

UK gov is, I was asked to participate (I declined). They even pay you quite a bit of money for the trouble.

Denmark is. Besides very easy and rapid access to free testing for everyone who suspects they might be infected, the government has also sent out requests to random people to get tested.

We are, sort of, when big cities test sewage.

Here in Berlin it's very difficult to get a test, even if you have symptoms. It becomes an issue because even teachers can't get regular tests.

https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/coronavirus#coronavirus-te...

The same story has been in the Dutch news. Apparently the virus has crossed three times between human and mink. His tone is satirical but the facts check out: https://youtu.be/LOT9BTMVRUI

For context: this is basically the Dutch John Oliver, so not necessarily "the news" but arguably more reliable in terms of information.

"Coronavirus has been detected at 207 Danish mink farms, Frederiksen said."

1 or 2? Probably no big deal. 10 or 20? Worrying. 207? Yeah, the new strain is probably everywhere, or will be shortly.

Not all of those will be the new strain. The regular strain seems to be capable of infecting minks on its own, where it wreaks havoc on the tightly packed population. The problem is that this adds an entirely different evolutionary pressure that can result in a markedly different virus, which in the worst case can jump back to humans.

This is that worst case.

Most viruses breed in “reservoir” populations, then cross species with unpredictable effect.

This is why we had a “bird flu” or “pig flu”, and so on.

Coronaviruses cross between mammals all the time, mutate, and create new strains. This is why there is no cold vaccine (and why the flu vaccine changes each year, and is usually only 60-80% effective).

So, to answer your questions: (1) It is not any more worrisome than the news we had back in March. (2) It certainly has already and will continue to mutate in other animals. Should we be concerned? I guess. I made peace with this inevitable outcome months ago.

I feel sorry for the minks. I hope they don’t start testing other types of mammals and then decide to pursue wholesale eradication of local ecosystems and livestock.

Doing that is clearly a non-starter (the food chain would collapse). However, it is necessary-but-not-sufficient to prevent new coronavirus strains from popping up.

> the food chain would collapse

It's necessary for the world to realize breeding livestock like we do now is unsustainable. Either we go vegan, lab meat or hybrid agriculture. But the current industry is the dead end.

Livestock breeding isn't inherently unsustainable. E.g. you can have closed-off poultry or pork farms with greenhouse-fed animals, all powered by wind or solar, with sewage processing to ensure there's no external pollution. This isn't sci-fi, it exists today in e.g. the denser parts of western Europe.

Yes it's costlier than beef from the developing world raised on cut-down rainforest land, but growing lab is a lot more expensive.

You can argue that it's inefficient, sure, but so is a vegan eating an avacado instead of white rice. Things can be relatively inefficient and still be sustainable.

growing lab meat is expensive because it requires an economy of scale.

I wasn’t talking about an agricultural collapse. I mean the natural food chain will collapse.

If you kill all the mammals, then the birds of prey will go extinct, and stuff the mammals eat will overrun what’s left.

If you don’t, then the mammals will keep spreading all sorts of pandemics.

For example, if you live in Silicon Valley, start feeding the squirrels in the woods near you. Eventually, they’ll give you the Bubonic Plague.

The plague is not a big deal these days, thanks to antibiotics, but this is an entire hemisphere away from where it hit, and hundreds of years later.

It wouldn’t surprise me if you could already catch covid from a squirrel if you tried hard enough.

Apparently people catch it from bats fairly regularly, and on average, they don’t get nearly as close to humans as an average rodent would.

> If you kill all the mammals, then the birds of prey will go extinct

Birds of prey eat a lot more than just mammals, e.g. fish, reptiles, other birds etc. So no, if there magically weren't any mammals tomorrow most species of birds of prey would survive.

> This is why we had a “bird flu” or “pig flu”, and so on.

Delightful news, a case of H1N2 (swine flu) was reported in Canada today... 2020 ain't done yet

Great. For what it’s worth, the 2009 pandemic strain of H1N1 was spreading around the bay area in 2018, and it didn’t even make news.

I can’t remember if H1N2 is better or worse than it.