Also "since the situation is in flux and information is still trickling in".
I won't find you the data that doesn't exist yet. But as you can read there is a growing concern and a lot of random observations that number of 30 and 40 year old hospitalized people seems to be on the rise. And cases of hospitalized children are becoming less rare.
https://www.google.com/search?q=younger+people+with+covid&oq...
Wait 6 months and you'll have plenty of data of how much worse current variants are from original one for younger people. Because they definitely are not milder.
> The rest of what you've said in response to my requests for further information and sources is just personal opinion, presented as "reasonable" arguments.
If it sounds reasonable it's only because that's how basic evolution works. And it's not really personal because this opinion on how evolution works is shared among evolutionary biologists and there's really no reason for human viruses to be exception to those general rules.
The one thing you might argue is that by social distancing and masks we are putting evolutionary pressure on the virus to mutate into a form that doesn't give any symptoms, so we let go and spread it happily like we do with the flu or colds. But apparently playing human immune system carefully so that the cytokine storm doesn't kill even a small fraction of hosts is a really hard thing to figure out. It was way easier for the virus to figure out how to transmit between people more easily despite masks and social distancing (or at least our half-assed application of those things).
And even if some mutation of coronavirus creates a milder variant it doesn't mean that old variants will disappear. Before sars we already had 4 mild coronaviruses so we'll have 5. Maybe we already have. Remaining killer variants will still be just as active as today.
You might hope that if you get infected with that new mild variant it will give you immunity to all other variants of sars-cov-2, but it probably won't be true. Because we already have a variant that happily re-infects people that previously caught the original variant.
What's more, exposure to milder variant does not necessarily might boost your immunity against the killer ones. It might even harm it. There is a theory that older people suffer more form covid because they experienced more contact with mild coronaviruses during their lifetime than younger people and their immune system is sort of numbed to them until its too late. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/prior-exposur...
Also even if we had a milder variant of sars-cov-2 that gives blanket immunity to all other you'd still have to figure out how to catch it before any other. And they'll spread exactly the same way.
Vaccines are such milder variant that we control and try to give people before they come in contact with any other. But we have to make every dose of it ourselves.
> An idea not supported by my 10 seconds of research: > https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-bec...
Are you really citing something written right after first wave? How that milder variant is doing now? Compared to, let's say, the British one, or the Brazilian one?
> Yes, I have, but never in the context of "younger examples of the existing infected organism". Even so, and as I've already said, we don't even know if younger people are already being infected with the existing strains, so I can't get myself too worked up about hypothetical possible future variants.
As you wish. I'm worked up, but I still hope that we'll manage to outpace all of this with our vaccines and possibly treatments. But it's still a race with time, and unless we significantly reduce number of infections by any means possible all scenarios are on the table.
> You've also mixed in your personal opinions on supposedly how bad life was before Covid, how little you value small businesses, and how life should be drastically re-modelled so that everyone works and learns remotely. I disagree, but that's ok, it's opinion. I think that remote (learning or working) places people at a huge disadvantage - against those who already have in-person connections, and against institutions that have the sense not to do such a thing.
Again, not that personal. Many people believe that young (non-wealthy) people were getting short end of the stick even before the pandemic. Shared opinions. As probably are yours that young people before pandemic had so many wonderful opportunities that today they are robbed of.
Same with remote working, some people like it, some dislike it. You can look at the research on how is it better and how is it worse. It's not as clear cut case as that forbidding people to go to concerts is bad for people who earn money by organizing concerts.
>>sars-cov-2 is so mild in objective terms >We certainly agree here.
Mild for viruses that kill and cripple some of their hosts at least. There are probably thousands of human viruses that are way milder and and not that many that are more deadly and harmful.
>I won't find you the data that doesn't exist yet.
Right, so not exactly something that you can base much on (yet). I could also make very similar arguments about the AZ vaccine, as a younger person.
Declaring your statements to be "basic evolution" does not make them true.
>How that milder variant is doing now? Compared to, let's say, the British one, or the Brazilian one?
The article was talking about the British one. I am also in the UK, and not dead. Yes, it was written soon after the initial outbreak, because Covid-19 mutated quite quickly. Using some similar fuzzy evidence, it would seem that "long Covid" sufferers are primarily people who caught Covid in March/April 2020.
I checked again and it doesn't seem so. It's about mutation D614G which was the mutation that caused first wave of the pandemic globally in the spring 2020 and probably beginning of second wave in the autumn before it was overshadowed by British variant B.1.1.7
It was milder and more easily transmissible than the original virus variant that was detected in China and that's what the article you cited is about.
B.1.1.7 appears to be both more easily transmissible and more deadly than D614G.
Because the situation is constantly changing you can't postpone reasoning and decisions till solid data is available. If you did that you'd always be wrong because you'd reason and operate on solid data that is stale.
You need to take into account the preliminary data and adjust your reasoning and decisions as more data comes in.
> I could also make very similar arguments about the AZ vaccine, as a younger person.
How would that look?
> Declaring your statements to be "basic evolution" does not make them true.
Content of the statements does. Check them with your favorite evolutionary biologist or virologist.
> The article was talking about the British one.
So the data from last August seem to be imprecise because more recent data shows that British variant is certainly not less deadly than the original one.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/10/health/coronavirus-varian...
> Using some similar fuzzy evidence, it would seem that "long Covid" sufferers are primarily people who caught Covid in March/April 2020.
That would be great if British variant at least didn't give people long covid. My country is in the peak of third wave, the first one caused overwhelmingly by British variant so it's a bit too soon to tell.
>How would that look?
You really can't see the parallel? "There's data coming in that suggests the AZ vaccine is deadly to a small but significant population, so while we wait for more data, we're going to halt its use".
>Content of the statements does. Check them with your favorite evolutionary biologist or virologist.
The onus is on the person making the statements to back them up. What you've said on the subject sounds very reasonable, but I can't find anywhere else.
As for your linked article on the British variant B117:
"Dr. Julian Tang, honorary associate professor and clinical virologist at the University of Leicester, said in a statement that he is "still not yet very convinced by these results" from the study."
Because they can't yet control for winter conditions affecting health.
But there's no data like that. And even preliminary observations estimate danger of causing clotting by AZ at less that is caused by air travel.
> What you've said on the subject sounds very reasonable, but I can't find anywhere else.
I'm sorry to hear that. Could you list exactly which statements I made that tou feel lack scientific backing and I'll try to do my best to find scientific or educational materials on the subject to back them up.
> "Dr. Julian Tang, honorary associate professor and clinical virologist at the University of Leicester, said in a statement that he is "still not yet very convinced by these results" from the study."
I agree that the evidence is not yet as strong that the effect can't be attributed totally to other factors.
It's just strong enough for some people and for some it is not. Only time will tell.
However economic damage from lockdowns doesn't seem to be any more clear cut case when you compare economic impact of pandemic on countries that didn't do a lockdown like Sweden with the countries that did.
He's been wrong the whole time, and leaders that have behaved in the way he is endorsing (i.e. most of them) is the cause of the dire straights most of the world has found themselves in.
You can validate his wrongness very easily based on past statements, his statements here will be proven wrong in short order as well, but their wrongness is already obvious to anyone with an interest and access to Ontario ICU data.
>It's unclear exactly what the age breakdown is when it comes to this variant strain
It seems you need to spend more than 10 seconds researching your ideas.
The rest of what you've said in response to my requests for further information and sources is just personal opinion, presented as "reasonable" arguments.
>Becomming less deadly is a typical direction viruses evolve but at a time scale of hundreds and thousands of years, not few months.
An idea not supported by my 10 seconds of research:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-bec...
>There were initially hopes that this virus won't be capable of evolving this fast.
I would ask for some sources to back that statement up too, but I don't hold much hope for a reasonable reply. Influenza is a non error-checking RNA virus, coronaviruses are error-checking RNA viruses. The slowest to mutate are DNA viruses. The relative speed of mutation of these types is well understood.
>You never heard that while viruses evolve they sometimes gain ability to spread to organisms they had trouble infecting before?
Yes, I have, but never in the context of "younger examples of the existing infected organism". Even so, and as I've already said, we don't even know if younger people are already being infected with the existing strains, so I can't get myself too worked up about hypothetical possible future variants.
You've also mixed in your personal opinions on supposedly how bad life was before Covid, how little you value small businesses, and how life should be drastically re-modelled so that everyone works and learns remotely. I disagree, but that's ok, it's opinion. I think that remote (learning or working) places people at a huge disadvantage - against those who already have in-person connections, and against institutions that have the sense not to do such a thing.
>sars-cov-2 is so mild in objective terms
We certainly agree here.