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0 pointsthenaturalist5y ago0 comments

I suggest you might be seeing things too linearly. Consider all the evolved variants.

By letting it run wild you would a) just accelerate viral evolution and b) eventually and unpredictably find yourself in a situation where the mortality rate might spiral out of control across all kinds of demographics.

You would then do the same thing as now: lockdown measures to curb mortality.

I guess the question of lockdown is not if but when: After many more deaths and mutations which render costly vaccines ineffective or early, vaccinate as much as possible as fast as possible and get done with the virus.

All that being said: Do you have a source for your claim that certain countries triage patients with COVID to end of life care? I’d be genuinely interested in reading up on that.

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christkv5y ago

All viruses either die out or become endemic. They mutate continuously while reproducing in your body because copies are not perfect. Most mutations do nothing. Sars2 is already well adapted to humans and none of the new mutations have significantly changed anything about the virus no matter what the media says so it looks like vaccines will end the pandemic soon.

I think Sweden got accused of letting infected seniors just die. I remember it being a scandal last year.

croes5y ago

HIV anyone? Neither died out, neither endemic. How about ebola?

Define significant change. The UK strain B 1.1.7 is 40% more infectious and 60% deadlier. The South African strain renders the AstraZeneca vaccine nearly useless.

thenaturalistOP5y ago

> All viruses either die out or become endemic.

Well... sure, the million dollar question is though how many die before that happens in the case of Sars2 isn't it? Can't really run a school without teachers or a factory without workers. What's your take away from this obvious fact?

> ...and none of the new mutations have significantly changed anything about the virus no matter what the media says...

That is a bold opinion. I guess the media pretty much does say nothing, but rather conveys scientific results? Several [0, 1, 2] scientific publications and studies done suggest something very different. There also seems to be a NY variant which seems to be markedly less affected by vaccines. [3] Quote Dr. Fauci: "Work done by David Ho has shown that we have to really keep an eye on that for its ability to evade both monoclonal antibody and, to a certain extent, the vaccine-induced antibodies. So it’s something we take very, very seriously."

It sure seems like we're on a good track to pushing COVID towards one of the two outcomes, but to me it seems that the path to reaching said outcomes is not yet as trivial and safe as you make it sound.

[0]: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2021/b117-variant-li...

[1]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/03/03/scie...

[2]: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n597

[3]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...

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