California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous

Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by gremlinsinc on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:07AM (#26247742)

This virus just keeps on giving... more virulent (11 times higher chance of death than normal strain and higher icu rates), more transmissible.

It's like Hollywood writers are writing our timeline now for dramatic effect.

Maybe they need to upgrade it from covid-19 to covid-2021.

At which point does a variant get a new version number?

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Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by gnicholas on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:35AM (#26247908)

It's possible that it is just more transmissible, not more virulent:

> Chiu also cautioned that this increased risk of death may not be a sign that the variant is inherently more lethal. Rather, it might simply be a reflection that its greater transmissibility caused hospitals to become so overwhelmed and healthcare resources to be stretched so thin that more deaths were the result — especially in Southern California.

from https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-02-23/california-...

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Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by cblconfederate on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:22AM (#26247829)

If it is truly a strain and not a variant, it should get a new name

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Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by gremlinsinc on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:35AM (#26247906)

guess I'm just tired of the same name, maybe we just call it covid.. and strike the 19... since everything is a derivative/mutation and not wholly the same full strain, but I'm not a virologist by any measure.

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Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by pbourke on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @04:16AM (#26248135)

Covid-19 is the disease. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus.

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Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by cblconfederate on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:37AM (#26247924)

at some point scientists have to settle with the fact that it is now endemic. We don't call the flu 'flu-2021'

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Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by Reason077 on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @04:03AM (#26248076)

We do assign identifiers with the year of emergence to flu strains.

For example, the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic virus is called H1N1-pdm-09 (or just H1N1/09) in literature.

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Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by sep_field on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:50AM (#26247999)

we probably should though. The flu is different every year. Which is why we need new flu shots every year. Giving it a new name would help the public understand.

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Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by DiabloD3 on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:56AM (#26248036)

That's bad thinking: the public doesn't want to understand. The public is what on HN would be called a "bad manager", and says crazy shit like "don't bring me problems, bring me solutions!"

Curing the Flu is a solution. The public wants this, not a flu shot, no matter how impossible the task is. A flu shot every year is just band-aiding the problem, and redelivering said problem every year.

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Re:California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous by Reason077 on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @04:12AM (#26248119)

Well, maybe a cure would be if we were able to vaccinate everyone simultaneously and wipe out all the circulating virus. Perhaps this is becoming more realistic with the advent of mRNA vaccines and the promise of “vaccine printers”?

But, we’d also need to rout out all the reservoirs of flu virus in agriculture and nature that have the potential to jump species back to humans. That’s a lot of ducks, chickens, pigs, whales, horses, seals, etc to vaccinate or cull.

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