Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
No, they are limited by biology.
Not what random means. I mean, do you think fair tosses of a fair coin are non-random because the outcomes are limited to 2?
Random was used in the context of the effects of the mutation, not what each gene is doing.
OK, not what mutation means, then. You mean *selected* mutation.
Yet that's the context in which it was used, and the context in which I was replying.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
No, they are limited by biology.
Not what random means. I mean, do you think fair tosses of a fair coin are non-random because the outcomes are limited to 2?
They are deterministic, depending on force, air pressure etc etc, things we can't measure so we call them "random". From that standpoint practically nothing is "random" unless the word simply means "we don't know or can't compute how it happens".
I know this won't endear me to OGH, but the LDs are, and have been since Clegg, diabolical rubbish. You'd be an idiot to vote for them, but the fact that many still do so illustrates their opportunity. It must set a record for open goals.
I'm not sure any party gets into government by being 'not another'.
I had another thought recently (they come occaisionally) Should Labour get very close to a majority, but need SNP support I'm pretty sure that the Tories would choose to bail them out rather than see the break-up of the Union.
Now that does sound like a coalition of chaos. Starmer driving with Johnson navigating.
Er, er right is the way to a bright future for Britain, er, erm no left, er er. We've er, missed the er, er junction. Alas!
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
So what are the odds on England being the only host nation to have in fans/lots of fans for their Six Nations matches?
I'd have thought that's very unlikely given it starts in February. By that stage, the Omicron wave should have passed through, or at least the situation will be clearer - I suspect the likelihood is that means other home nations will have relaxed restrictions, although it could alternatively mean England has tightened them.
That’s a good piece, and a fair summary of the last few years of media screwups - but he’s no Charlie Brooker or Andrew Shulz at end-of-the-year videos, or even John Oliver or Bill Maher who do the same every week.
I am a fan of Triggernomety, but it would have been better if he’d finished the video, with its clickbait title, by saying that vaccines are still good, so go and get them!
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
I assume your car's engine is randomly mutating leading to significant variations in its reliability?
Wow an anti-vaxxer casting doubt on vaccine efficacy. Not much better than those idiots at the school gates.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
No, they are limited by biology.
Not what random means. I mean, do you think fair tosses of a fair coin are non-random because the outcomes are limited to 2?
They are deterministic, depending on force, air pressure etc etc, things we can't measure so we call them "random". From that standpoint practically nothing is "random" unless the word simply means "we don't know or can't compute how it happens".
That's untrue. Quantum effects are thought to be genuinely random rather than immeasurably complex. Stochastic processes ramp up tiny random fluctuations to macroscopic unpredictability (see The Butterfly Effect).
I am personally much more concerned about inflation than I am of the latest COVID variant that will be along at some point.
I'm looking forward to inflation, it means interest rates are going higher, and as a saver, we savers have had it bad for over a decade.
Interest rates will only go higher if the Bank of England and market allow it to. There are plenty of places in the world where cash savings don't earn enough interest to fully reflect inflation.
That’s a good piece, and a fair summary of the last few years of media screwups - but he’s no Charlie Brooker or Andrew Shulz at end-of-the-year videos, or even John Oliver or Bill Maher who do the same every week.
I am a fan of Triggernomety, but it would have been better if he’d finished the video, with its clickbait title, by saying that vaccines are still good, so go and get them!
I don't believe he or his co-host are vaccinated....I have heard them several times saying they want to go to the US, but it doesn't appear they can because of vaccine mandates.
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
I assume your car's engine is randomly mutating leading to significant variations in its reliability?
Wow an anti-vaxxer casting doubt on vaccine efficacy. Not much better than those idiots at the school gates.
What are you on about? I was pointing out that the engine in a car has a well known reliability as it's not changing like a virus. The reason the vaccines are less effective and the booster shot is requires is because of mutations to the virus.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
Unless the new variant has a sufficiently different immunological profile, you are simply wrong.
If two variants co-exist with the same or very similar immunological profiles, the out-compete point is key. Why do you think we've had successive waves of variants, rather than all of them co-existing? When there have been multiple variants co-existing in large numbers (alpha, gamma, beta), it was because they were geographically separate. Each region had its own dominant variant.
But that is my point. We have had a delta wave followed by an omicron wave. Omicron has not outcompeted delta in any sense that I can see.
It's spreading faster, conveying immunity to delta, and the percentage of omicron cases have increased to the point that delta will become extinct. How is that not outcompeting?
I am personally much more concerned about inflation than I am of the latest COVID variant that will be along at some point.
I'm looking forward to inflation, it means interest rates are going higher, and as a saver, we savers have had it bad for over a decade.
With respect, that’s rather naive. I think it’s more likely a pound in a savings account will continue to lose purchasing power, however high inflation gets.
I'm not sure this out-compete terminology is accurate, viruses co-exist all the time.
I understood mutations to be totally random
Outcompete is absolutely correct, Omicron has outcompeted Delta the same as Delta did for Alpha and Beta.
Mutations are random, but those which are successful will follow an evolutionary pathway because of pre-existing immunity forcing them down a certain route. A mutation to Omicron that pushes back to look exactly like Delta will be unable to infect anyone because we've all got very good immunity to Delta, for example.
So the evolutionary pressure is to evade immunity, but to do that it will come at a cost of virulence, Omicron is a big step towards that already.
Evolution is a mechanism of survival of the fittest, it's true for animals, bacteria, viruses and other living or near living organisms (viruses aren't "alive" in the same way bacteria are). That creates a pathway based on what the best growth conditions are, for COVID the best growth conditions are to evade immunity and to do that it needs to lose ACE-2 binding efficiency, that loss will make it less virulent.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
No, they are limited by biology.
Not what random means. I mean, do you think fair tosses of a fair coin are non-random because the outcomes are limited to 2?
They are deterministic, depending on force, air pressure etc etc, things we can't measure so we call them "random". From that standpoint practically nothing is "random" unless the word simply means "we don't know or can't compute how it happens".
That's untrue. Quantum effects are thought to be genuinely random rather than immeasurably complex. Stochastic processes ramp up tiny random fluctuations to macroscopic unpredictability (see The Butterfly Effect).
The mutations themselves will be completely random, it is which of those that goes on to become successful that create the evolutionary pathway defined by current conditions for growth and replication. If we had a chance set of mutations that created a new strain of virus that looked exactly like Delta it would simply be unable to infect anyone because we all have very high vaccine and natural immunity to it.
I'm not sure any party gets into government by being 'not another'.
Joe Biden
I think you have me.
I am actually a believer that, when governing parties get kicked out, it is mostly because the government lost the election as opposed to the opposition winning it.
Every change of government in this country in the last 70 years has been down to the government losing it.
1964 - Profumo affair and other related issues
1970 - Devaluation crisis
1974 - 3 day week
1979 - Winter of Discontent
1997 - Black Friday, party splits, and sleaze
2010 - Great Financial Crisis
There's an element of post hoc, ergo propter hoc about that though.
There's always events happening, so you can always assign some event that caused the government to lose the election. You could rewrite history by imagining a government defeat at any of the elections they weren't defeated at and then assign a reason why they were:
[I'm struggling for 87 but I was only 4 years old then, I'm sure someone could think of something]
I'd actually argue that recessions just before an election don't significantly affect governments relative to expectations - see 1983 and 1992 for very clear evidence.
Even 2010, which Labour lost, was a close run thing in terms of anyone else winning.
I'm not sure this out-compete terminology is accurate, viruses co-exist all the time.
Google "viral strain competition". You'll find 30 million + results.
And you will discover that "Closed-loop minimal sampling method for determining viral-load minima during switching" has outcompeted all the other search results for the coveted number one spot on Google.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
It would have to be more transmissable than Omicron
As I understand it a new virus variant doesn't have to be more innately transmissible*, it simply has to have an advantage against other variants in circulation at the same time. Once Omicron has done the grand tour of the world's population it will no longer transmit as well due to natural immunity from prior infections and hopefully future Omicron variant vaccines. At that point a new variant can spread effectively even though it might have a lower reproduction rate and so on. Not because the new variant is innately more transmissible, but simply because it is sufficiently different to not face an up-hill battle against existing immunity in the population.
* I realise that this boils down to how you precisely define the tranmissibility of a virus.
I'm not sure this out-compete terminology is accurate, viruses co-exist all the time.
I understood mutations to be totally random
Outcompete is absolutely correct, Omicron has outcompeted Delta the same as Delta did for Alpha and Beta.
Mutations are random, but those which are successful will follow an evolutionary pathway because of pre-existing immunity forcing them down a certain route. A mutation to Omicron that pushes back to look exactly like Delta will be unable to infect anyone because we've all got very good immunity to Delta, for example.
So the evolutionary pressure is to evade immunity, but to do that it will come at a cost of virulence, Omicron is a big step towards that already.
Evolution is a mechanism of survival of the fittest, it's true for animals, bacteria, viruses and other living or near living organisms (viruses aren't "alive" in the same way bacteria are). That creates a pathway based on what the best growth conditions are, for COVID the best growth conditions are to evade immunity and to do that it needs to lose ACE-2 binding efficiency, that loss will make it less virulent.
This is spot on.
No it isn't. I mean, most of it is correct, but omicron has not snaffled any infection opportunities from delta, so has not outcompeted it, any more than I have outcompeted the last but one owner of my house for my house.
I've mentioned this before, but the changes in Conservative vote share across '79-'92 were pretty small, as were those across '15-'19.
The big changes in Conservative seats across each government were driven by how (spontaneously) organised the opposition vote was. A strong GTTO mood ('92 or '15) can drive the Conservative majority well down; if the opposition are fighting each other ('83 or '19), Conservatives waltz to a landslide.
That doesn't need a pact (though a mod and a wink in a backstreet Westminster bar can't do any harm). And the evidence of 2021's by-elections looks like that's the mood among the 55% again; though I'd like to see a Conservative held/Labour challenger marginal to be sure.
That ought to worry the Blue Team, especially since there's not a lot they can do about it.
Exactly. This is what I mean. The less control you have the more it makes sense to worry.
It's also why "Take Back Control" was such a powerful message in 2016.
We like the idea that we are in control of events, even if it's at one remove. We want to think that we can make what we want happen by voting for the right MP.
The idea that events control politicians more than politicians control events is really scary, even if it has a lot of truth to it.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
No, they are limited by biology.
Not what random means. I mean, do you think fair tosses of a fair coin are non-random because the outcomes are limited to 2?
They are deterministic, depending on force, air pressure etc etc, things we can't measure so we call them "random". From that standpoint practically nothing is "random" unless the word simply means "we don't know or can't compute how it happens".
That's untrue. Quantum effects are thought to be genuinely random rather than immeasurably complex. Stochastic processes ramp up tiny random fluctuations to macroscopic unpredictability (see The Butterfly Effect).
The mutations themselves will be completely random, it is which of those that goes on to become successful that create the evolutionary pathway defined by current conditions for growth and replication. If we had a chance set of mutations that created a new strain of virus that looked exactly like Delta it would simply be unable to infect anyone because we all have very high vaccine and natural immunity to it.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
No, they are limited by biology.
Not what random means. I mean, do you think fair tosses of a fair coin are non-random because the outcomes are limited to 2?
They are deterministic, depending on force, air pressure etc etc, things we can't measure so we call them "random". From that standpoint practically nothing is "random" unless the word simply means "we don't know or can't compute how it happens".
That's untrue. Quantum effects are thought to be genuinely random rather than immeasurably complex. Stochastic processes ramp up tiny random fluctuations to macroscopic unpredictability (see The Butterfly Effect).
Hm "quantum effects are thought to be..". Like I say, those doing the thinking do not know. The classical butterfly effect (chaos theory) is deterministic, emphatically not random.
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
It has though and could you explain by what mechanism a new mutation that looks like Delta will break out?
You've been spouting a lot of nonsense on mutations CHB.
I am afraid I just don't understand how you can confidently say this variant won't mutate into something else.
I haven't said it won't? Please point out where I've said that. You still haven't outlined by what mechanism we'll get a mutation that is both a very good ACE-2 binding agent and evades our very high levels of immunity against that mechanism. Have a read of how Wuhan/Alpha/Beta/Delta actually interact with cells and how Omicron interacts with cells.
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
CHB, you don't understand natural selection. Omicron may very possibly mutate but whatever it mutates to it won't be Delta. It will be a new entity. Natural selection doesn't go backwards.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
Not at all, no.
The virus is endemic globally now. There's probably going to be billions of cases globally in years to come and a variant can spread around the globe.
So in the context of billions of cases globally, what does a few tens or hundreds of thousands of cases daily matter domestically? Its like pissing into the ocean and thinking that will affect the sea level.
The virus is not endemic. Please stop posting this rubbish.
The more you post, the more it shows that you know little.
The virus is endemic.
If you still think we can eradicate this virus globally with a zero Covid strategy, then you're utterly delusional.
You do not know what endemic means. It is by definition not endemic while it is spreading exponentially.
Terminology aside, your point is gibberish. We have had rather successful zero smallpox and zero polio strategies. And in any case, never mind eradication, what do you propose we do if we get a markedly more lethal variant than we have seen so far? Piles of bodies in the street, or lockdown while the wave passes over us? That question is entirely independent of whether it is endemic, and of whether we could/should pursue a zero covid strategy.
COVID would be closer to having a zero Flu strategy. It would be nice....
For some reason I was reminded of a scientist who said that when we have worked out how to cure AIDS, on the way we will have found out how to cure most cancers, and made the common cold extinct.
Nanobots in the bloodstream would probably do that.
Then a sudden urge to buy Microsoft products.
LOL
On a serious note, I think he was largely right. By the time we have the ability to cure AIDS, we will have acquired, on the way, a vast amount of *fine* control over the human immune system.
The Bio-N-tech bods have got an mRNA HIV vaccine heading to Phase I trials, based on the work they did with the Cov-19 vaccine.
That will be something awesome to have come from the pandemic.
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
Tell that to the poor folk in Gibraltar. 100% vaccination. Lockdown for Christmas.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
Unless the new variant has a sufficiently different immunological profile, you are simply wrong.
If two variants co-exist with the same or very similar immunological profiles, the out-compete point is key. Why do you think we've had successive waves of variants, rather than all of them co-existing? When there have been multiple variants co-existing in large numbers (alpha, gamma, beta), it was because they were geographically separate. Each region had its own dominant variant.
But that is my point. We have had a delta wave followed by an omicron wave. Omicron has not outcompeted delta in any sense that I can see.
It's spreading faster, conveying immunity to delta, and the percentage of omicron cases have increased to the point that delta will become extinct. How is that not outcompeting?
I live in my house, the last but one owner does not, and if he is still alive I would have the right to lock the doors against him. Have I outcompeted him?
I'm not sure this out-compete terminology is accurate, viruses co-exist all the time.
I understood mutations to be totally random
Outcompete is absolutely correct, Omicron has outcompeted Delta the same as Delta did for Alpha and Beta.
Mutations are random, but those which are successful will follow an evolutionary pathway because of pre-existing immunity forcing them down a certain route. A mutation to Omicron that pushes back to look exactly like Delta will be unable to infect anyone because we've all got very good immunity to Delta, for example.
So the evolutionary pressure is to evade immunity, but to do that it will come at a cost of virulence, Omicron is a big step towards that already.
Evolution is a mechanism of survival of the fittest, it's true for animals, bacteria, viruses and other living or near living organisms (viruses aren't "alive" in the same way bacteria are). That creates a pathway based on what the best growth conditions are, for COVID the best growth conditions are to evade immunity and to do that it needs to lose ACE-2 binding efficiency, that loss will make it less virulent.
This is spot on.
No it isn't. I mean, most of it is correct, but omicron has not snaffled any infection opportunities from delta, so has not outcompeted it, any more than I have outcompeted the last but one owner of my house for my house.
I am at a loss as to what sense you are using the word outcompete. Your house-owning analogy makes no sense to me when talking about pandemics and epidemiology.
I am personally much more concerned about inflation than I am of the latest COVID variant that will be along at some point.
I'm looking forward to inflation, it means interest rates are going higher, and as a saver, we savers have had it bad for over a decade.
Though higher interest rates will surely do to house prices what stepsons allegedly do to their stepmoms on the internet?
And for all that needs to happen (I'm totes convinced by the house price theory of everything that's wrong with the world), that really would be an extinction level event for any government.
As someone pointed out the other day there are many more people who think they are part of the farming community, than there are farmers, and many more in the hunting community than there are who ever went hunting. Some are going to sit on their hands next GE, some will vote LD, none Labour. Bloodbath for the tories.
No they aren't, there is not a single rural seat in the top 100 Labour target seats or the top 50 LD target seats. Shropshire North was just a by election protest vote which even on current polls would return to the Tories.
The suburbs and commuter belt and ex industrial redwall is the battleground.
The only rural battleground is in Scottish Tory seats the SNP are targeting on the Borders or in the Northeast
You don't know what the Lab or LD targets are. You can guess by previous results but you can't be sure and I can assure you you will not be 100% correct (90+% maybe). I know because in the past I have had some of those details (for the LDs). Some seats that look like targets won't necessarily be and others that don't look like targets will be because of other factors. Some not so obvious are primed for the future. I noted during one of the GE (can't think which) some pontificating on here which was so wrong, but obviously I couldn't say. In particular in my previous experience the Conservatives tend to rely almost entirely on the previous result as a guide, in which case it is easy to create an ambush. Here are couple of examples where the Tories misjudged (not unreasonably): When the LDs won Guildford the team was a joint SWSurry/Guildford team. I was in that team. Although I live in the area now, then I came from elsewhere as an external resource. SWSurrey was the target, Guildford was secondary. It became apparent that the Tories were putting much more resource into SWSurrey (the obvious target) and not enough into Guildford (and the Guildford candidate that time was a plonker). Guildford became the main target and was won, SWSurrey was a close miss. Guildford was just lost at the next election. At the following election the Tories put up a big defence. We knew we couldn't take it back at that point so it was just fought by locals; no external resources, who were sent elsewhere. The Tories assumed we were targeting it. They were wrong. So didn't think it was a target when it was and assumed it was a target when it wasn't. In both cases not unreasonably.
It is often easier to come from further behind, then being very close but in a seat where you have squeezed every last vote out of it and if the polls are not in your favour you are just not going to win what appears to be a top target.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
Unless the new variant has a sufficiently different immunological profile, you are simply wrong.
If two variants co-exist with the same or very similar immunological profiles, the out-compete point is key. Why do you think we've had successive waves of variants, rather than all of them co-existing? When there have been multiple variants co-existing in large numbers (alpha, gamma, beta), it was because they were geographically separate. Each region had its own dominant variant.
But that is my point. We have had a delta wave followed by an omicron wave. Omicron has not outcompeted delta in any sense that I can see.
It's spreading faster, conveying immunity to delta, and the percentage of omicron cases have increased to the point that delta will become extinct. How is that not outcompeting?
I live in my house, the last but one owner does not, and if he is still alive I would have the right to lock the doors against him. Have I outcompeted him?
And what on earth is the relevance of that to competition between viral strains?
You did not compete with him for the house, but came to a mutually agreed transaction that was beneficial to both of you. If you competed with anyone, it was with the other people who wanted to buy the house from him
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
Not at all, no.
The virus is endemic globally now. There's probably going to be billions of cases globally in years to come and a variant can spread around the globe.
So in the context of billions of cases globally, what does a few tens or hundreds of thousands of cases daily matter domestically? Its like pissing into the ocean and thinking that will affect the sea level.
The virus is not endemic. Please stop posting this rubbish.
The more you post, the more it shows that you know little.
The virus is endemic.
If you still think we can eradicate this virus globally with a zero Covid strategy, then you're utterly delusional.
You do not know what endemic means. It is by definition not endemic while it is spreading exponentially.
Terminology aside, your point is gibberish. We have had rather successful zero smallpox and zero polio strategies. And in any case, never mind eradication, what do you propose we do if we get a markedly more lethal variant than we have seen so far? Piles of bodies in the street, or lockdown while the wave passes over us? That question is entirely independent of whether it is endemic, and of whether we could/should pursue a zero covid strategy.
If we get a markedly more lethal variant then I would propose we learn to live with it.
The dead on the streets doesn't seem smart. Cremate or bury the dead, don't just dump them on the streets.
No lockdowns. That's my choice. I would never approve of another lockdown ever again, in any circumstances I can imagine. In hindsight I think last year's lockdowns were a mistake and we should have had the Swedish strategy.
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
Tell that to the poor folk in Gibraltar. 100% vaccination. Lockdown for Christmas.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
I thought that Gibraltar story had been thoroughly debunked as complete nonsense?
I'm not sure this out-compete terminology is accurate, viruses co-exist all the time.
I understood mutations to be totally random
The mechanism behind mutation is random - errors in replication. However only some confer a survival advantage to the organism (more transmissible, pumps out more virus from the infected, drives the host towards risky behaviour*). These are the ones that take hold. Mistakes in copying happen all the time, but usually do not generate viable mutations.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
Interesting question. I suppose that the chances of mutations increase with a long-lasting host's cells doing the reproducing for the virus, producing substantial mutated replicants consistently. But that is not so because of large numbers of cases necessarily. IANAE
That is correct, and this is one of the things that people get very wrong about bacteria vs viruses. With the bacteria, it is they that do the replicating. With viruses it is, well, us.
The greatest number of mutations will happen in an environment where someone has a long-term chronic disease and the host is replicating the virus billions of times per day. Most of the time, these are minor and/or do not improve the virus's chances of survival. But in a really sick patient, you might see a mutation followed by a mutation followed by a mutation, and that's where you end up with a big shift, like with Omicron.
Of course, the big shift in this case is that the replication takes place mainly in the upper respiratory tract. Simply, the mutation survived because Delta was already in the lungs (doing its thing), and doing it (sadly) very efficiently. The mutation gave up some lung power, but gained the ability to thrive somewhere else. This was then passed to someone else, who didn't get the Delta, but got the Omicron.
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
CHB, you don't understand natural selection. Omicron may very possibly mutate but whatever it mutates to it won't be Delta. It will be a new entity. Natural selection doesn't go backwards.
It could mutate into something more dangerous than Delta, it doesn't have to mutate to be less
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
CHB, you don't understand natural selection. Omicron may very possibly mutate but whatever it mutates to it won't be Delta. It will be a new entity. Natural selection doesn't go backwards.
It could mutate into something more dangerous than Delta, it doesn't have to mutate to be less
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
Tell that to the poor folk in Gibraltar. 100% vaccination. Lockdown for Christmas.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
I'll let the fact that you've never heard of car warranties slide, and simply say that, after you were accused of lying about restrictions in Gibraltar the last time, I went and looked it up, and you were indeed making it up. They were not placed in lockdown for Christmas.
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
CHB, you don't understand natural selection. Omicron may very possibly mutate but whatever it mutates to it won't be Delta. It will be a new entity. Natural selection doesn't go backwards.
It could mutate into something more dangerous than Delta, it doesn't have to mutate to be less
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
CHB, you don't understand natural selection. Omicron may very possibly mutate but whatever it mutates to it won't be Delta. It will be a new entity. Natural selection doesn't go backwards.
It can. IIRC from my studies there is a finite possibility of a mutatin being reversed to the original state.
And changing environmental pressures can reverse the direction of natural selection.
That combination permits the possibility of reverse evolution to exactly the original state. Obviously there may be other mutations which give the same phenotypic effect, if technically a different genetic effect, so in that sense there are other reverse possibilities.
Even to say that natural selectiopn can't go backwards is to ascribe a directionality that is not there in nature.
I'm not sure this out-compete terminology is accurate, viruses co-exist all the time.
Google "viral strain competition". You'll find 30 million + results.
Google "flat earth" and you will find "About 1,260,000,000 results." So what?
No point arguing with you on this. The leading results to the Google search I referenced are all scientific papers from reputable journals, not conspiracy theories.
Nobody at all concerned high cases leads to a mutation that is as bad as Delta? Remember that this strain has mutated from an older strain than Delta did
By what mechanism with the mutations occur?
What are your qualifications Max?
A Chemistry degree, who'd have thought it would be useful all these years later.
Anyway, you've answered my question with a question. By what mechanism do you think the virus will mutate significantly, and I'll add another one, what kind of mutations do you think will occur that will enable this new theoretical variant to outcompete Omicron as well as evade t-cell immunity?
I assumed as much, I just wanted to be sure.
It's perfectly possible Omicron mutates into a variant similar to Delta. It can mutate at any time surely.
If it mutates into a variant similar to Delta there's no issue because the Omicron variant will still massively outcompete it.
It's entirely possible it mutates into a variant that out-competes Omicron and is more like Delta in terms of danger? Mutations are random
Are they? I don't know. But it does have to be more infectious than Omicron in order for it to be of that much concern.
You don't know whether mutations are random or not? They are. Trust me on this.
This out-competition point is simply wrong. A new variant doesn't have to outcompete, or be more infectious than, omicron, it can just come along afterwards.
No, they are limited by biology.
Not what random means. I mean, do you think fair tosses of a fair coin are non-random because the outcomes are limited to 2?
They are deterministic, depending on force, air pressure etc etc, things we can't measure so we call them "random". From that standpoint practically nothing is "random" unless the word simply means "we don't know or can't compute how it happens".
That's untrue. Quantum effects are thought to be genuinely random rather than immeasurably complex. Stochastic processes ramp up tiny random fluctuations to macroscopic unpredictability (see The Butterfly Effect).
Hm "quantum effects are thought to be..". Like I say, those doing the thinking do not know. The classical butterfly effect (chaos theory) is deterministic, emphatically not random.
Quantum physics is still cutting edge despite it being 100 ish years old and there are some unanswered questions. So it is wise to be a little less definitive in the way we describe what is understood, but that is the textbook understanding of it. Processes such as radioactive decay are random. Not deterministic. The butterfly effect connects the microscopic randomness to the macroscopic world we inhabit, it is not the source of the randomness, but the way it becomes magnified to our scale.
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
Tell that to the poor folk in Gibraltar. 100% vaccination. Lockdown for Christmas.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
I thought that Gibraltar story had been thoroughly debunked as complete nonsense?
"Today I am therefore relieved to be able to tell you that I am announcing no further restrictions at all. There is today no requirement to restrict your civil liberties in order to protect life or the GHA’s ability to protect life."
I'm not sure this out-compete terminology is accurate, viruses co-exist all the time.
I understood mutations to be totally random
The mechanism behind mutation is random - errors in replication. However only some confer a survival advantage to the organism (more transmissible, pumps out more virus from the infected, drives the host towards risky behaviour*). These are the ones that take hold. Mistakes in copying happen all the time, but usually do not generate viable mutations.
How do you know the "errors in replication are random"? All you are saying is you don't know what causes them.
It is possible for small changes (such as in the frequency of a single gene) to be reversed by chance or selection, but this is no different from the normal course of evolution and as such de-evolution is not compatible with a proper understanding of evolution due to natural selection.
I'm not sure this out-compete terminology is accurate, viruses co-exist all the time.
I understood mutations to be totally random
Outcompete is absolutely correct, Omicron has outcompeted Delta the same as Delta did for Alpha and Beta.
Mutations are random, but those which are successful will follow an evolutionary pathway because of pre-existing immunity forcing them down a certain route. A mutation to Omicron that pushes back to look exactly like Delta will be unable to infect anyone because we've all got very good immunity to Delta, for example.
So the evolutionary pressure is to evade immunity, but to do that it will come at a cost of virulence, Omicron is a big step towards that already.
Evolution is a mechanism of survival of the fittest, it's true for animals, bacteria, viruses and other living or near living organisms (viruses aren't "alive" in the same way bacteria are). That creates a pathway based on what the best growth conditions are, for COVID the best growth conditions are to evade immunity and to do that it needs to lose ACE-2 binding efficiency, that loss will make it less virulent.
This is spot on.
No it isn't. I mean, most of it is correct, but omicron has not snaffled any infection opportunities from delta, so has not outcompeted it, any more than I have outcompeted the last but one owner of my house for my house.
I am personally much more concerned about inflation than I am of the latest COVID variant that will be along at some point.
I'm looking forward to inflation, it means interest rates are going higher, and as a saver, we savers have had it bad for over a decade.
Which savings product keeps up with 10% inflation?
Dogecoin!
(That’s a joke, past performance is no indicator of future returns, I am not a certified financial advisor, do your own research and consult your own advisor before making investment decisions etc etc etc).
This is from January last year but I missed it at the time. Maybe explains the toxic atmosphere on a lot of online discussion forums and blogs.
"Labour and Tory voters are “disgusted” by one another, according to latest ‘Hostility Barometer’, writes Sarah Harrison (LSE). The latest survey from the Electoral Psychology Observatory at the LSE and Opinium shows 47 per cent of those intending to vote Conservative feel some “disgust” towards Labour voters, while over two-thirds (68 per cent) of those intending to vote Labour feel some “disgust” towards Conservative voters. Two thirds (66 per cent) of UK citizens found the atmosphere of the UK general election “frustrating”, with over 60 per cent seeing it as divisive or hostile. Is electoral reconciliation in sight, she asks?"
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
CHB, you don't understand natural selection. Omicron may very possibly mutate but whatever it mutates to it won't be Delta. It will be a new entity. Natural selection doesn't go backwards.
It can. IIRC from my studies there is a finite possibility of a mutatin being reversed to the original state.
And changing environmental pressures can reverse the direction of natural selection.
That combination permits the possibility of reverse evolution to exactly the original state. Obviously there may be other mutations which give the same phenotypic effect, if technically a different genetic effect, so in that sense there are other reverse possibilities.
Even to say that natural selectiopn can't go backwards is to ascribe a directionality that is not there in nature.
But the current conditions for a new "Delta" variant would be extremely unfavourable. We've got very, very high population immunity against it due to Omicron, boosters and prior infection from Delta. I don't see how such a variant would cause a significant outbreak or spread very much at all.
I am personally much more concerned about inflation than I am of the latest COVID variant that will be along at some point.
I'm looking forward to inflation, it means interest rates are going higher, and as a saver, we savers have had it bad for over a decade.
Though higher interest rates will surely do to house prices what stepsons allegedly do to their stepmoms on the internet?
And for all that needs to happen (I'm totes convinced by the house price theory of everything that's wrong with the world), that really would be an extinction level event for any government.
I took a huge gamble earlier on this year.
I became a bona fide landlord, I realised my savings were getting wiped out/weren't giving me the returns I hoped for, so I took some of the savings and bought some houses.
Worked out the rental income will be more than the interest I'd receive from the banks.
Also is my way of getting my kids on the housing market. I decided cash outright purchases because I feared interest rates would rise.
I'm not sure this out-compete terminology is accurate, viruses co-exist all the time.
I understood mutations to be totally random
Outcompete is absolutely correct, Omicron has outcompeted Delta the same as Delta did for Alpha and Beta.
Mutations are random, but those which are successful will follow an evolutionary pathway because of pre-existing immunity forcing them down a certain route. A mutation to Omicron that pushes back to look exactly like Delta will be unable to infect anyone because we've all got very good immunity to Delta, for example.
So the evolutionary pressure is to evade immunity, but to do that it will come at a cost of virulence, Omicron is a big step towards that already.
Evolution is a mechanism of survival of the fittest, it's true for animals, bacteria, viruses and other living or near living organisms (viruses aren't "alive" in the same way bacteria are). That creates a pathway based on what the best growth conditions are, for COVID the best growth conditions are to evade immunity and to do that it needs to lose ACE-2 binding efficiency, that loss will make it less virulent.
This is spot on.
No it isn't. I mean, most of it is correct, but omicron has not snaffled any infection opportunities from delta, so has not outcompeted it, any more than I have outcompeted the last but one owner of my house for my house.
France expecting to report 200,000+ cases today. The first European country to break that barrier
I thought UK had already broken 300k?
!!!
guess this all depends what you're counting, but the UK highest reported daily total is 129471 (yesterday) and if you go by sample date, either 21st or 22nd (both incomplete and over 134k and counting).
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
Tell that to the poor folk in Gibraltar. 100% vaccination. Lockdown for Christmas.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
I thought that Gibraltar story had been thoroughly debunked as complete nonsense?
France expecting to report 200,000+ cases today. The first European country to break that barrier
I thought UK had already broken 300k?
!!!
guess this all depends what you're counting, but the UK highest reported daily total is 129471 (yesterday) and if you go by sample date, either 21st or 22nd (both incomplete and over 134k and counting).
This one has been answered Rogue 3 day number on OWID plot.
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
Tell that to the poor folk in Gibraltar. 100% vaccination. Lockdown for Christmas.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
I thought that Gibraltar story had been thoroughly debunked as complete nonsense?
"Today I am therefore relieved to be able to tell you that I am announcing no further restrictions at all. There is today no requirement to restrict your civil liberties in order to protect life or the GHA’s ability to protect life."
I just don't understand why people won't give any thought to the idea of Omicron mutating and evading vaccines and possibly being as dangerous as Delta.
A strain mutated to Delta, which was more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to Omicron and mutate again, it could be more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to another strain and evade the vaccines.
People seem to be saying it goes A > B > C when it's actually gone A > B and then A > 1, it could equally go A > $ [couldn't think of another symbol]
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
CHB, you don't understand natural selection. Omicron may very possibly mutate but whatever it mutates to it won't be Delta. It will be a new entity. Natural selection doesn't go backwards.
It could mutate into something more dangerous than Delta, it doesn't have to mutate to be less
Could it?
Yes. There is nothing to say a mutation can't be more deadly. Only if a mutation kills off its host rapidly so as to prevent spread will it likely not become a dominant strain. An obvious example of a more deadly mutation is Spanish Flu.
I just don't understand why people won't give any thought to the idea of Omicron mutating and evading vaccines and possibly being as dangerous as Delta.
A strain mutated to Delta, which was more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to Omicron and mutate again, it could be more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to another strain and evade the vaccines.
People seem to be saying it goes A > B > C when it's actually gone A > B and then A > 1, it could equally go A > $ [couldn't think of another symbol]
As long as the virus is around, it can mutate.
There have been plenty of reasons posted why people think this is less likely.
I am personally much more concerned about inflation than I am of the latest COVID variant that will be along at some point.
I'm looking forward to inflation, it means interest rates are going higher, and as a saver, we savers have had it bad for over a decade.
With respect, that’s rather naive. I think it’s more likely a pound in a savings account will continue to lose purchasing power, however high inflation gets.
Depressing, for us savers.
For people who live off their cash savings if rates go from 1% to 2% their income doubles.
I just don't understand why people won't give any thought to the idea of Omicron mutating and evading vaccines and possibly being as dangerous as Delta.
A strain mutated to Delta, which was more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to Omicron and mutate again, it could be more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to another strain and evade the vaccines.
People seem to be saying it goes A > B > C when it's actually gone A > B and then A > 1, it could equally go A > $ [couldn't think of another symbol]
As long as the virus is around, it can mutate.
There have been plenty of reasons posted why people think this is less likely.
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
CHB, you don't understand natural selection. Omicron may very possibly mutate but whatever it mutates to it won't be Delta. It will be a new entity. Natural selection doesn't go backwards.
It could mutate into something more dangerous than Delta, it doesn't have to mutate to be less
Yes of course it could. But could is doing the heavy lifting. @moonshine’s alien could announce themselves tomorrow by destroying Hull (and receive the grateful thanks of the nation...). I could win the lottery on Saturday. There are a limited number of viable mutations for an organism to take, in order for it to still be able to carry on. Omicron has gained greater transmission at the expense of reduced ACE2 binding. This is just an example that being a virus is not like being a character in a computer game, where you can obtain weapons and shields and get more and more powerful. The outcompete omicron the variant will have to find a way to spread even better. That’s tough to do. Not impossible, but tough.
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
Tell that to the poor folk in Gibraltar. 100% vaccination. Lockdown for Christmas.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
I thought that Gibraltar story had been thoroughly debunked as complete nonsense?
"Today I am therefore relieved to be able to tell you that I am announcing no further restrictions at all. There is today no requirement to restrict your civil liberties in order to protect life or the GHA’s ability to protect life."
If you actually read that speech in full, you will see the guy says we are not imposing new restrictions, because we never actually repealed the old ones....
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
Tell that to the poor folk in Gibraltar. 100% vaccination. Lockdown for Christmas.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
I thought that Gibraltar story had been thoroughly debunked as complete nonsense?
"Today I am therefore relieved to be able to tell you that I am announcing no further restrictions at all. There is today no requirement to restrict your civil liberties in order to protect life or the GHA’s ability to protect life."
If you actually read that speech in full, you will see the guy says we are not imposing new restrictions, because we never actually repealed the old ones....
OK, how about you show us evidence that there were actually restrictions.
It is possible for small changes (such as in the frequency of a single gene) to be reversed by chance or selection, but this is no different from the normal course of evolution and as such de-evolution is not compatible with a proper understanding of evolution due to natural selection.
It is possible for huge numbers of mutations to occur, including reversals of prior ones.
What evolution addresses is which mutations thrive through natural selection. If the de-evolution results in a loss of comparative advantage, it is not likely to thrive in the presence of the better fit variant.
If there is no comparative advantage between various strains, then it is quite possible for multiple strains to co-exist.
PS And as Carnyx states, if the ecosystem has changed since the original mutation, a reversal of the mutation might confer comparative advantage to the older strain (whereas the newer stain had the advantage until the changes in the ecosystem)
That is a load of straw man arguments lumped together.
Vaccination hesitancy stems from the government.
Why would we need restrictions if vaccines are so effective? Why do people need to be careful?
If someone was selling you a car, and they said at the same time you needed insurance against it breaking down after a year, wouldn't you think twice about buying the thing in the first place?
Car manufacturers make a lot of money on warranties, and we still need restrictions because not everyone is vaccinated yet.
Tell that to the poor folk in Gibraltar. 100% vaccination. Lockdown for Christmas.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
I thought that Gibraltar story had been thoroughly debunked as complete nonsense?
"Today I am therefore relieved to be able to tell you that I am announcing no further restrictions at all. There is today no requirement to restrict your civil liberties in order to protect life or the GHA’s ability to protect life."
Interesting they have vaccinated 40,000 when the resident population is <30,000, presumably the extra will be Spaniards who work in Gib and commute across the border.
I just don't understand why people won't give any thought to the idea of Omicron mutating and evading vaccines and possibly being as dangerous as Delta.
A strain mutated to Delta, which was more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to Omicron and mutate again, it could be more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to another strain and evade the vaccines.
People seem to be saying it goes A > B > C when it's actually gone A > B and then A > 1, it could equally go A > $ [couldn't think of another symbol]
As long as the virus is around, it can mutate.
Because the mechanism that Delta uses to infect people is ACE-2 binding, we have got very high population immunity against ACE-2 binding, vaccines, infection and infection by Omicron all confer neutralising immunity to it.
There's no evolutionary pathway to COVID becoming a better ACE-2 binding agent. The pressure is all in the opposite direction, hence Omicron.
I think you're addicted to the negativity and need to take a step back and have a think about how a more virulent strain of COVID could become successful in our current immunity conditions.
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
CHB, you don't understand natural selection. Omicron may very possibly mutate but whatever it mutates to it won't be Delta. It will be a new entity. Natural selection doesn't go backwards.
It can. IIRC from my studies there is a finite possibility of a mutatin being reversed to the original state.
And changing environmental pressures can reverse the direction of natural selection.
That combination permits the possibility of reverse evolution to exactly the original state. Obviously there may be other mutations which give the same phenotypic effect, if technically a different genetic effect, so in that sense there are other reverse possibilities.
Even to say that natural selectiopn can't go backwards is to ascribe a directionality that is not there in nature.
A reversal to the original state would require a further chance mutation which confers environmental advantage, in that it improves the chances of survival to replication. If this new mutation results in a identical or near-identical entity to what came two (three or whatever) steps before then this still means that natural selection is going forward doesn't it? The only "directionality" is in terms of survival and replication. Is this right?
Comments
Omicron is less dangerous than Delta but this seems to be a total coincidence, it didn't mutate from Delta.
It could have easily mutated into Delta?
Alas!
I am a fan of Triggernomety, but it would have been better if he’d finished the video, with its clickbait title, by saying that vaccines are still good, so go and get them!
You've been spouting a lot of nonsense on mutations CHB.
Depressing, for us savers.
What offer will you make me for this bridge I have for sale?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Severn_Crossing
Even 2010, which Labour lost, was a close run thing in terms of anyone else winning.
* I realise that this boils down to how you precisely define the tranmissibility of a virus.
We like the idea that we are in control of events, even if it's at one remove. We want to think that we can make what we want happen by voting for the right MP.
The idea that events control politicians more than politicians control events is really scary, even if it has a lot of truth to it.
I currently race in Saucony Fastwitch.
Trail shoes - look at the wide range produced by Inov-8.
That will be something awesome to have come from the pandemic.
If 100% vaccination truly did mean freedom, I'm sure all but the most nutty refusiks would fall into line. Is the government even promising that? or committing to it? Nope/
They rule nothing out, as ever. And that means restrictions could be brought in post 100% vaccination.
And for all that needs to happen (I'm totes convinced by the house price theory of everything that's wrong with the world), that really would be an extinction level event for any government.
It is often easier to come from further behind, then being very close but in a seat where you have squeezed every last vote out of it and if the polls are not in your favour you are just not going to win what appears to be a top target.
You did not compete with him for the house, but came to a mutually agreed transaction that was beneficial to both of you. If you competed with anyone, it was with the other people who wanted to buy the house from him
The dead on the streets doesn't seem smart. Cremate or bury the dead, don't just dump them on the streets.
No lockdowns. That's my choice. I would never approve of another lockdown ever again, in any circumstances I can imagine. In hindsight I think last year's lockdowns were a mistake and we should have had the Swedish strategy.
*Look it up, it’s cool and scary...
Or will they be taking Putin’s side, against the US, to try and keep their own lights on in January?
The greatest number of mutations will happen in an environment where someone has a long-term chronic disease and the host is replicating the virus billions of times per day. Most of the time, these are minor and/or do not improve the virus's chances of survival. But in a really sick patient, you might see a mutation followed by a mutation followed by a mutation, and that's where you end up with a big shift, like with Omicron.
Of course, the big shift in this case is that the replication takes place mainly in the upper respiratory tract. Simply, the mutation survived because Delta was already in the lungs (doing its thing), and doing it (sadly) very efficiently. The mutation gave up some lung power, but gained the ability to thrive somewhere else. This was then passed to someone else, who didn't get the Delta, but got the Omicron.
And changing environmental pressures can reverse the direction of natural selection.
That combination permits the possibility of reverse evolution to exactly the original state. Obviously there may be other mutations which give the same phenotypic effect, if technically a different genetic effect, so in that sense there are other reverse possibilities.
Even to say that natural selectiopn can't go backwards is to ascribe a directionality that is not there in nature.
I am withdrawing from this conversation.
The butterfly effect connects the microscopic randomness to the macroscopic world we inhabit, it is not the source of the randomness, but the way it becomes magnified to our scale.
"Today I am therefore relieved to be able to tell you that I am announcing no further restrictions at all. There is today no requirement to restrict your civil liberties in order to protect life or the GHA’s ability to protect life."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5uzrn4e0Wg
(That’s a joke, past performance is no indicator of future returns, I am not a certified financial advisor, do your own research and consult your own advisor before making investment decisions etc etc etc).
Tariffs remain on UK exports to US as European Union rivals gain a 25% price advantage from New Year’s Day
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/29/uk-steel-industry-braces-for-slump-in-trade-as-us-eu-tariffs-abolished
In Truss we trusted.
"Labour and Tory voters are “disgusted” by one another, according to latest ‘Hostility Barometer’, writes Sarah Harrison (LSE). The latest survey from the Electoral Psychology Observatory at the LSE and Opinium shows 47 per cent of those intending to vote Conservative feel some “disgust” towards Labour voters, while over two-thirds (68 per cent) of those intending to vote Labour feel some “disgust” towards Conservative voters. Two thirds (66 per cent) of UK citizens found the atmosphere of the UK general election “frustrating”, with over 60 per cent seeing it as divisive or hostile. Is electoral reconciliation in sight, she asks?"
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2020/01/15/is-electoral-reconciliation-in-sight/
I became a bona fide landlord, I realised my savings were getting wiped out/weren't giving me the returns I hoped for, so I took some of the savings and bought some houses.
Worked out the rental income will be more than the interest I'd receive from the banks.
Also is my way of getting my kids on the housing market. I decided cash outright purchases because I feared interest rates would rise.
guess this all depends what you're counting, but the UK highest reported daily total is 129471 (yesterday) and if you go by sample date, either 21st or 22nd (both incomplete and over 134k and counting).
Recent signs of Germany growing a bit of backbone wrt Nordstream.
https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/press-releases/chief-ministers-script-live-statement-from-no-6-convent-place-9552021-7552
"Today I am therefore relieved to be able to tell you that I am announcing no further restrictions at all. There is today no requirement to restrict your civil liberties in order to protect life or the GHA’s ability to protect life."
A strain mutated to Delta, which was more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to Omicron and mutate again, it could be more dangerous.
A strain could mutate to another strain and evade the vaccines.
People seem to be saying it goes A > B > C when it's actually gone A > B and then A > 1, it could equally go A > $ [couldn't think of another symbol]
As long as the virus is around, it can mutate.
We wish this was true but it isn't.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceredigion_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
The boundary review could be key to which way it goes next time.
See an example posted above.
And there are strains that never mutate.
There are a limited number of viable mutations for an organism to take, in order for it to still be able to carry on. Omicron has gained greater transmission at the expense of reduced ACE2 binding. This is just an example that being a virus is not like being a character in a computer game, where you can obtain weapons and shields and get more and more powerful.
The outcompete omicron the variant will have to find a way to spread even better. That’s tough to do. Not impossible, but tough.
If you actually read that speech in full, you will see the guy says we are not imposing new restrictions, because we never actually repealed the old ones....
I am afraid there's an awful lot of complacency around.
What evolution addresses is which mutations thrive through natural selection. If the de-evolution results in a loss of comparative advantage, it is not likely to thrive in the presence of the better fit variant.
If there is no comparative advantage between various strains, then it is quite possible for multiple strains to co-exist.
PS And as Carnyx states, if the ecosystem has changed since the original mutation, a reversal of the mutation might confer comparative advantage to the older strain (whereas the newer stain had the advantage until the changes in the ecosystem)
There's no evolutionary pathway to COVID becoming a better ACE-2 binding agent. The pressure is all in the opposite direction, hence Omicron.
I think you're addicted to the negativity and need to take a step back and have a think about how a more virulent strain of COVID could become successful in our current immunity conditions.