Selection is on transmission: viruses becoming more transmissible makes sense! People may be thinking more transmission via milder disease because host moves around more? But virus could still kill the host, eventually, or transmit early, as this one, without dampening spread.
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Evolution is not a teleological process, bad match for a story-telling species' brain. Things seem to make sense—the just-so story—but we must go back to the mechanism. What's being selected for? How? FWIW, I don't think we have clarity on Omicron's intrinsic virulence, yet.
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No, this doesn't make sense. There is no intrinsic trade-off mechanism between the two, and situations where both can and do go up, like Delta. And the virus doesn't "care" if it eventually kills its host as long as it is spreading.https://twitter.com/PrinzMidas/status/1468228080024137737 …
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SARS-CoV-2 transmits early in the disease course, sometimes before symptoms, and severe illness and death comes much, much later, *after* the most infectious period. "Milder" to vaccinated or previously infected people is different than "it became intrinsically less virulent."
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Assuming omicron did oiginate in a chronically infected individual I suppose this lends some hope it could be milder overall though
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I dont want to oversimplify as I realize that's exactly the problem here, but keeping track of the interplaying predictive factors is fun
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South Africa is seeing a surge on hospitalizations because of Omicron and small % vaccinated. Do you took a look on Rio De Janeiro Flu big surge? Seems like a new mutation H3
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The flu surge is overwhelming the city health system. And federal government is not sending Flu vaccines, the stock ended days ago.
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Louder, for @RichardAEpstein and his disciples.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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No virus would profit from killing its host. When it mutates it makes sense that it changes lethality for infectiousness. But there might be mutations that could be more lethal by chance, right?
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As long as the virus is able to infect more people before it kills its host (i.e. higher viral loads make them more ill AND spreads more, but the latter happens before the former), lethality has no relationship with it. In fact, if it's viral load the driver, it'll be both.
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