Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
Not an expert but wouldn't a mild version of COVID be a good thing in that it boosts immunity without much death and also be a sign things it's getting less serious?
Still, best make sure. I think it's smart to be careful for a few weeks until we see the outcome.
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Yes, if the virus is more mild we need to worry about it less. We don't care about colds and some coronaviruses cause colds, they may well have mutated from something more severe. SARS-CoV-2 is more transmissible and less severe than the original SARS which didn't spread well but which few survived.
It is key for a virus to not kill its host, and to spread to others, and one of the best ways for it to do this is to be mild symptom wise and highly transmissible.
This virus has around 30 mutations from wild type and most of them have been seen before. But whilst we know how they work on other variants they might not work the same together. Some mutations may even render it useless because the spike protein is deformed too much to bind to cells. It may be that having a mutation which makes vaccine resistance in itself and one with increased transmissibility in itself when put together don't do that. This is why they need to look into this, see what the actual illness is, how it progresses after a few weeks, how the vaccines respond etc etc.
We need to be sure of the facts but:
- if this mutation can swerve all immunity and is transmissible enough to outcompete Delta and the course of the illness is unchanged or more severe we have a big problem. None of the infection from previous will mean anything, none of the vaccines we have given out will mean anything, it will leave basically everyone susceptible to hospitalisation or death from covid again, basically the same as 2020 but with a virus which gets around quicker.
- if it can swerve immunity and is more transmissible than Delta but doesn't make people ill then this is probably ideal. It will outcompete the more severe Delta variant which means that yes people will get ill but none of them will get badly ill. Delta will disappear meaning that most people will get the covid immunity with no severe illness.
And let's not also forget any immunity defeating is likely to be partial.